As was indicated by the title of this blog, I'm interested here in looking at how, following the unfolding of the November 2006 American elections, political life in both the US and throughout the world has evolved.  Clearly, the first step in such an inquiry is to determine what indeed did transpire in America during the elections in question.

This analyst is of the view that it is entirely inappropriate to speak of the victory of the Democrats; rather, a more fitting description of the results -- that is, o­ne more consistent with what we know about the motivations and attitudes of the majority of those who went to the polls then -- would be a defeat (indeed a rather grave o­ne) suffered by the Republicans, the Party of current President Bush.

All the indications are that the issue that drove the largest number of people to decide to vote was the war in Iraq.  Of this majority, some 2/3 declared themselves to be in favor of a withdrawal, either right away or over the course of the next year or so.  And 80% of this massive 2/3 majority -- this proportion in and of itself equalling some 53-54% of those who decided to go to the polls -- voted for the Democratic Party.  In simple political terms, the net result of all this was that control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed from the hands of the Republicans, to those of the Democrats.

The results of the election -- and especially the principal political developments regarding Washington's foreign policy course that have transpired in the intervening 100 days -- should constitute a stark warning for those who believe that the return of the Democrats to supremacy over the legislative branch will somehow mean a return to the conditions of "normal" bourgeois-democratic governance in the United States.  The stark truth is that the prospect of the establishment of a fascistic police-state dictatorship in the United States, combined with the precipitation by the government of the country in question of World War III, is currently closer at hand than at any other time in history.

In voting for the Democrats, the majority of those who went to the polls were in hardly any case expressing positive support for the respective political formation.  o­n the contrary, due to the dirty campaigns waged by the operatives of this steadfast political balast of big-business against the attempt by all left-leaning -- and especially, openly socialist -- organizations with an anti-war platform to place their candidates o­n the ballot, among those voters who were animated by an aversion to Bush and his entire political outlook, in almost every case, the Democrats were the o­nly "alternative."

Just as they had done prior to the election, the Democratic politicians who subsequently took up leadership positions in the new Congress made clear on repeated occassions that they were unwilling to comtemplate any kind of full withdrawal of America troops from Iraq.  The Democrats continue even now to criticize Bush vis-a-vis the war in Iraq, but not because it was launched o­n the basis of outright lies regarding Saddam Hussein's supposed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) or ties to Al-Qaeda and not because it has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands Iraqis and further ravaged the infrastructure necessary for the functioning of a modern society, but because, from the perspective of the American politico-economic elite, the White House has proceeded incompetently there.  That is, the American army has been incapable of seizing the lion's share of control over Iraq's massive oil resources through the drowning in blood of that nation's anti-occupation resistance. 

The Democrats' "opposition" to Bush's Iraq policy centers purely o­n means used to carry out the war, not over the end -- universally held by the leading personnel within the American ruling class -- of enabling US-owned transational energy companies to establish their dominance over the massive oil and natural gas resources of the Middle East.  This explains why the report of the Baker-Hamilton commission (a body which consisted of 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans, all of them long-time, trusted representatives of the American ruling elite who had been active in the spheres of electoral politics, the military and diplomacy) was generally received with more-or-less uncritical support by most of the leadership of the Democratic Party.  The report, which advocated enhancing "stability" in American-occupied Iraq by withdrawing some of the US forces there, using others to more intensively train the troops of the Baghdad-puppet regime and also making attempts in the diplomatic sphere to engage the Syrian and Iranian governments in talks, was by no means whatsoever a prescription for ending the war; it can be considered an attempt by a section of the American elite to repair the damage done to its vital global interests by the deepening quagmire confronted by the US military in Iraq.

The Democrats' thoroughly pro-war and pro-imperialist orientation explains their impotence in the wake of Bush's rejection of the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton Commission.  Although such a step is fully within the rights of the Congress, no significant figure in the party hierarchy has publicly stated that he or she is in favor of wholly cutting off the flow of funds that finances the American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And while such a step would be eminently justified, no leading Democratic member of Congress has proposed initiating impeachment proceedings against the war criminal that occupies the White House.  Fully sharing with Bush and Cheney the objective of placing the massive oil and natural gas resources of the Middle East and Central Asia under the stewardship of American-owned transnational energy-giants like Exxon-Mobil, the Democrats are unwilling and unable to seriously oppose the plans of the current occupants of the White House for intensifying their aggressive, criminal strategy of endless warmongering.

As I (and many other analysts) have been predicting for some time, Iran has now become, without a doubt, the principal target of the leading personnel in the administration formally headed by George W. Bush.  Besides possessing both the world's third-largest oil reserves and sizeable natural gas reserves, as well, Iran is bordered o­n the east by US-NATO occupied Afghanistan and o­n the west by US-occupied Iraq.  Though its reactionary Muslim-fundamentalist leaders backed the US's colonizations of both Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran -- "cursed" by its geostrategically critical location and, moreover, by its enormous reserves of oil and gas -- cannot, realistically speaking, do anything to dissuade the criminal regime in Washington from attacking it.

The source of Washington's ever-increasing reliance o­n military violence can be found in the evolution of the world economy over the course of the last 60 years.  Due in large measure to the fact that, while Western Europe and Japan had been ravaged by the horrors of World War II, American territory had not been the scene of any battles, the US emerged from the conflagration as the undisputed economic, political and diplomatic leader of the capitalist camp of nations.  This predominant position was signified, formalized and consolidated by the special role accorded to the American currency, the dollar, which, by having its value fixed at a particular level in relation to an ounce of gold, constituted the base for all the monies of the other capitalist nations.

This system collapsed in the early 1970s and cannot -- contrary to the wishes of some nostalgic liberal Keynesian-type economists -- simply be put back together again.  Its demise reflected the fact, that the 25-year long, post-World War II period marked by American hegemony over the camp of capitalist states could no longer be realistically maintained.

The increasingly unrestrained character of Washington's militarism in the post-Cold War period is a reflection of the realization made by the American ruling elite that the o­nly way they may be able to preserve their increasingly shaky economic lead over the capitalist elites of other powerful imperialist and rising power states is through the use of the US's clear advantage in the military sphere.

World War I and World War II occurred largely as a result of the same fundamental contradictions that are inherent to the capitalist economic order and the system of rivalrous nation-states to which it is inextricably linked: in short, the chaos stemming from the attempt of all of the different nationally-based capitalist elites to "organize" the continental and world economic systems under their own hegemony.  Leaving aside the complicating secondary factors, World Wars I and II can be seen as having been provoked by the attempts of the German bourgeoisie to bring order to the increasingly chaotic and competition-ridden European continental economy by placing it under their boot.  In attacking o­ne country after another, the American bourgeoisie is trying to do the same thing, except that this time, the target is an increasingly diverse, complex and internally integrated global, not continental economy. 

These fundamental considerations show us clearly why the defeat of the Republican Party and the victory of the Democrats in the 2006 US midterm elections has not led to any significant change in the truly criminal, homicidal and seemingly insane trajectory pursued by Washington in foreign affairs.  The Democrats and Republicans share the same fundamental objective: the conquest by American-owned transnational corporations of the Middle East's and Central Asia's incomparably massive energy resources as a means of securing the US elite's dominance over the entire world economy; the two parties disagree o­nly about tactics, not about this end, and the tactical differences are generally reduced to precisely how, when and where and with what pretexts the US military should intervene overseas, not if it is morally proper for it to do so.

The unspeakable horrors produced by the US attacks o­n Afghanistan and Iraq will be magnified many times over in the (increasingly probable) event of an American military assault o­n Iran.  Furthermore, the economic and geo-strategic stakes of such a military adventure would be so large that there is no guarantee that other nations -- like possibly Russia and China -- wouldn't be drawn into the fray, in this instance as open enemies of Washington.

The world now faces a situation which, in the dangers its poses to all humanity, has no precedent since the dark days marked by the aggression of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan in the 1930s and 1940s.  The o­nly solution is to join and support an internationally-based and oriented Socialist party which stands resolutely for peace between nations, the preservation and extension of democratic rights and the raising of the living standards of the working class and poor all throughout the world.  Such a party already exists and is named the Socialist Equality Party.  It has formally-established branches in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany, Sri Lanka and thousands of supporters in many other nations all around the globe.  The address of its extraordinary, daily-updated website is  www.wsws.org [3]  I urge all of you to visit the site daily, read the articles posted o­n it, familiarize yourself with the outlook of the party and, if you agree with it, to contact the members of its editorial board and to join it. Even now it is not too late to save our troubled world.