The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time
by Antonia Juhasz

Softcover: 416 pages
ISBN: 9780060878788, 0060878789
HC
May 2007

The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time explores the Bush Administration's plan to invade the world through a corporate globalization agenda, first in Iraq, then the Middle East with the proposed U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area, and ultimately as a cornerstone to the global Bush Doctrine of Pax Americana.

What is Bush's "free trade?" It's an economic model that argues that by removing restrictions on multinational corporations, these companies will be freed to become engines of economic growth in countries around the world, but in fact bring vast wealth of a small number of global elites while entire populations suffer dislocation, poverty and violence, creating a perfect Petri dish for breeding terrorists. The instruments for this takeover include such corporations as Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, ChevronTexaco, Halliburton, and many others.

This book addresses the history of U.S. economic relations throughout the world over the past 25 years, the key role of U.S. corporations, and the larger Bush economic agenda and what the potential impact of this agenda will be on the United States and the world.

Antonia Juhasz is a leading expert on international trade and finance policy with a master's degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University. She has served as a congressional aide and as the project director of the International Forum on Globalization. She is currently a visiting scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. An award-winning writer, her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including the Los Angeles Times and Miami Herald, and she has appeared on CBS News, CNN, Hannity & Colmes, Washington Journal, and NPR's Talk of the Nation. She lives in San Francisco.

In The Bush Agenda, Antonia Juhasz exposes a radical corporate globalization agenda that has been refined by leading members and allies of the Bush administration over decades and reached its fullest, most aggressive implementation under George W. Bush - and Bush Agenda adherents plan for it to outlast him.

Juhasz uncovers the history and key role of U.S. corporations in the creation of this agenda - focusing on Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Chevron, and Halliburton - then presents the Iraq War as its most brutal application to date.

Expertly revealing the oil timeline driving the war, Juhasz charts exactly how the administration has fundamentally transformed Iraq's economy, locked in sweeping advantages to its corporate allies, and expanded its target to the whole Middle East. The results of these same corporate globalization policies - dislocation, extreme poverty, and increased violence and terrorism - have been demonstrated in regions from South America to Africa to the Middle East and Asia, and in the United States.

Extensively researched and now updated with a new afterword, The Bush Agenda is a brilliant, informative analysis, revealing the hard truths about where the Bush administration and its corporate allies are leading the modern world - and what we can do about it.

Even a World Bank report of 1999 admitted, "Globalization appears to increase poverty and inequality ... The costs of adjusting to greater openness are borne exclusively by the poor, regardless of how long the adjustment takes." We should indeed, as Ms Juhasz recommends, end the occupation of Iraq, cancel the debts of the debtor countries and reject the US-Middle East Free Trade Area.

She writes, "It is far easier to replace corporate globalization policy than its advocates would have us believe." But the many who work for peace, prosperity and democracy face frenzied opposition from the few who gain from war, debt and occupation.

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