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World Opposes Bush's AggressionLarge majorities in every country polled except Israel oppose the Bush administration's drive for war in Iraq. (See chart on page 1.) Washington's militaristic foreign policy incites resentment and resistance on every continent. Bush's attempt to bully the rest of the world is dramatically increasing the threat of nuclear warfare and terrorism. Popular Upsurges in Latin AmericaOpposition to U.S. policy has fueled powerful new popular movements for social justice in Latin America. After a decade of increased debt, poverty and crisis, these movements have reached a new crescendo in response to President Bush's turn to militarism and the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Even conservative leaders like Vicente Fox of Mexico are publicly seeking to block U.S. aggression in Iraq. As a member of the United Nations Security Council, Mexico was instrumental in defeating the U.S. demand that the U.N. endorse the use of military force against Iraq. In Venezuela more than 300,000 mostly poor people took to the streets on Jan. 23 to support embattled President Hugo Chavez against an opposition strike. Greg Palast, reporting for BBC said, "Venezuela is actually the second front in the Bush war against Iraq. In order to continue its control over oil supply and price during an invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration is pushing hard to get rid of the non-compliant, elected government of Hugo Chavez." 
Hugo Chavez and Lula Most dramatically, Latin American voters have rejected pro-U.S. candidates in favor of a variety of leftist, populist and indigenous leaders over the last year. In October 2002, Brazil, Latin America's most populous and powerful country, elected Luiz da Silva ("Lula"), a socialist trade unionist, as its newest president. After years of pro-U.S. presidents, da Silva is taking the lead in blazing a more independent path for Brazil and Latin America. At the World Social Forum this January, da Silva exclaimed, "The world doesn't need a war. It needs understanding. It is not possible to continue with a world in which a few eat up to five times a day and many do not eat for five days." The whole Andean region--Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia--is turning against U.S. policies that, they say, have increased debt and poverty. In November 2002 Ecuadorans elected populist Lucio Gutierrez as their first ever president representing indigenous people. Gutierrez triumphed over U.S.-backed billionaire Alvaro Noboa. In June 2002, Evo Morales, an indigenous leader and spokesman for the Movement Toward Socialism, nearly won the Bolivian election. Denounced by the U.S. press as a "coca chewing Amymara Indian leader who would nationalize Bolivia's industries, [and] stop payment of its foreign debt," Morales lost the election by a mere two points. In Uruguay, Tabare Vasquez of the leftist Broad Front is widely favored to win the March presidential election. 
Nuclear Crisis in KoreaThe current nuclear face-off between the U.S. and North Korea and the mass anti-U.S. movement in South Korea shows the extreme dangers and limits of the Bush administration's aggressive foreign policy. In recent months, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)--the official name of North Korea--has ejected international weapons inspectors and withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. It threatened to restart nuclear weapons production "as an act of self-defense" unless the U.S. agreed to a mutual non-aggression pact. These defiant acts followed more than a year of threatening moves by the Bush administration. In January 2002, Bush tagged the DPRK as part of an "Axis of Evil" along with Iraq and Iran. Then Bush listed it as one of the targets for a possible preemptive nuclear strike. More recently Washington violated the previous U.S.-DPRK nuclear agreement by conducting mock nuclear strike exercises in South Korea. The New York Times reports that Bush's policies give countries like the DPRK few options. "The Bush administration seems only willing to confront regimes that are militarily weak. The incentives for North Korea are clear. There's no point in playing nice--it will bring neither aid nor security. The best self-preservation strategy for [North Korea] is to be dangerous." Nonetheless, Washington angrily declared that if North Korea failed to immediately back down, the U.S. was willing to attack Iraq and North Korea simultaneously. It sought to unite its Asian allies--Japan, China and South Korea--behind this hard-line approach, but they refused.
The U.S. has long posed itself as South Korea's protector against socialist China and North Korea. More than 37,000 U.S. troops and numerous nuclear weapons are stationed there. Now anti-American sentiment is sweeping the South. In December, tens of thousands demonstrated against the U.S. military after one of its vehicles killed two Korean schoolgirls. That same month South Korean voters rejected a pro-U.S. conservative presidential candidate in favor of liberal Roh Moo Hyun. Roh campaigned for open and positive relations with the North. The Los Angeles Times reports that many South Koreans believe the U.S. poses a greater danger than North Korea. So instead of a U.S.-led alliance against the DPRK, Washington faces the possibility of an alliance between North and South against the U.S. Washington has therefore been forced to retreat from its hard-line approach and to seek a negotiated settlement to the Korean crisis. The Korean crisis also suggests that the U.S. drive for war with Iraq is not just about nuclear weapons. Instead, Iraq's vast oil reserves and its inability to defend itself against the U.S. may explain why Bush is so eager to attack.
Afghanistan's AgonyEven Bush's "victory" in Afghanistan seems to have increased the misery of the people. The bloody battle that broke out on Jan. 28 shows the instability of the regime. Frida Berrigan of the World Policy Institute reports: "There has been a ten-fold increase in opium production in the last year, and the drug lords are Northern Alliance leaders and U.S. allies who helped oust the Taliban. The government of President Hamid Karzai is so shaky that he counts on three separate security details--his own, U.S. Special Forces and personnel from a private military company called DynCorp. According to the United Nations, half of all Afghan children suffer from chronic malnutrition and one out of every four children dies before the age of five. There are almost 4 million Afghan refugees, mostly women and children. An estimated 16,000 women are dying each year from pregnancy-related causes; this is the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world. Human Rights Watch asserts that U.S. military forces are actively backing Ismail Khan, a warlord in western Afghanistan with a disastrous human rights record. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with Khan and described him as "an appealing person." Human Rights Watch documents widespread abuses by officials under Khan's command, including arbitrary and politically motivated arrests, intimidation, extortion and torture."
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