Howard to the rescue as Europe bashes Bush: “Prime Minister John Howard faced down a wave of anti-American attacks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, leaping in to defend absent ally George Bush from European critics.”

Firstly, I’m really quite embarrassed that Howard has just become a spokes person for the Bush administration as Australia and the US continue with policies of militarism and market fundamentalism. Both ideas are fundamentally flawed and we are part of a shrinking minority that are supporting them.

Secondly, doesn’t it say something that pretty much all of Europe – including close ally Britain – are now taking issue with US (and therefore Australian) foreign policy. The fact that these countries who have supported the US so much in the past, who devised the international institutions that have ensured the dominance of the US and Western Europe on the global stage, are now taking issue with the unilateral approach that the US is using to undermine these institutions which are there primarily to prevent militarism and generate stability. On a ideological level it is the difference between the post-modernist approach of Europe and the modernist approach of the US. On a day to day level it means the lives of Iraqis, acid rain in Zimbabwe and shocking labour condition in the Economic Processing Zones of Indonesia.

Yet little Johnny stands up and takes one for Bush. Certainly not the first time.

EDIT: It is also noteworthy that the US government did not attend the World Economic Forum. Surely this has, in the past, been a bastion of US economic dominance. However, like the WTO which the US is frustrated with because it is adhering to loosely (and very loosely) democratic ideals and commitment to multilateralism, the US is now choosing to abstain from these debates and enforce its wishes through the use of economic and military dominance in other spheres where it is in complete control. The US-Aust FTA was a significant undermining of the WTO, perhaps this snub is a significant undermining of the WEF.