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The War Party Versus Global Capitalism
If anti-globalization radicals really want to tear down the world capitalist system they might want to go door-to-door next year on behalf of incumbent U.S. president, George W. Bush.

While Bush brags about his business experience and identifies with the interests of wealthy US capitalists, a continuation of the policies he has pursued since Sept. 11, 2001 threatens not only the US economy, whose ballooning defense-driven federal deficit risks a potentially disastrous collapse of the dollar.

But his insistence on effectively exempting the United States from the rule of international law – commercial as well as human rights law – also threatens the very foundation of the multilateral economic system under which global corporate capitalism has prospered for more than 50 years, according to a growing number of economic analysts.

For multinational corporations, which act as both the chief engines and beneficiaries of the global system, the rule of law provides the predictability they need to make investment decisions. Without it, countries find it much more difficult to attract capital and benefit from global trade and investment regimes....

...The danger is that once the US brazenly departs from international treaties, it invites widespread cynicism about all global agreements and opens the door to other nations' flaunting them too," Garten argued at the time.

Unconstrained either by Congress, the UN Security Council or the captains of finance and industry, Bush went to war, fueling a new round of warnings.

"Uncertainty is anathema to investment and growth," wrote Business Week editorial page editor Bruce Nussbaum as US troops crossed into Iraq from Kuwait, noting that the war's possible consequences, as well as the flaunting of international law, posed serious threats to global confidence.

"Chief executives are beginning to worry that globalization may not be compatible with a foreign policy of unilateral preemption," he went on.

"US corporations may soon find it more difficult to function in a multilateral economic arena when their overseas business partners and governments perceive America to be acting outside the bounds of international law and institutions." ...

..."American imperialism is, by definition, a retreat away from global capitalism, a retreat from the invisible hand of markets in favor of a more dominant role for the visible fist of governments," argued Paul McCulley, a managing director of PIMCO, the world's largest bond investment fund. ...