Chalmers Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute in San Diego. He offered a blunt assessment titled "America's free trade proselytising is the true root of what is now a global crisis" in the Los Angeles Times (6/25/99).

"After all the endless mouthing off in the pages of the English-language business press about East Asian's `crony capitalism,' the lack of `transparency' in Asian stock exchanges, the `no pain, no gain' logic of the IMF and how the Asian economic challenge to Anglo American capitalism had fizzled, wenow know that none of these things had anything to do with the Asian - now global - economic crisis.

Here's the new explanation as it is developing in seminar rooms from Seoul to Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. With the end of the Cold War, the United States decided it had to launch a rollback operation in East Asia if it was to maintain its global hegemony. The high-growth economies of East Asia had become the main challengers to American power in the region, and it was time they were brought to heel."

"The campaign worked in two phases. First, a major ideological barrage was launched to soften up the Asians. The Americans mobilised famous professors of economics from their universities, who never once faced a `market force' in their own lives, to preach the beauties of globalisation. Then came phase two. Once the Asian economies had begun to `deregulate' and were standing in the world marketplace more or less naked, the `hedge funds' were let loose on them. These funds easily raped Thailand, Indonesia andSouth Korea and then turned the shivering survivors over to the IMF, not to help the victims but to ensure that no Western bank was stuck with `non-performing' loans in the devastated countries."

Obviously Chalmers Johnson is inclined toward a straightforward conspiracy theory. Muthiah Alagappa, a Malaysian scholar at the East-West Center in Honolulu is a little more polite: "The Asian crisis obviously strengthens the position of American companies in Asia." Nicholas Kristof who covered the Asian crisis for the New York Times is more agnostic but does not dismiss the conspiracy theory outright: " There is a growing backlash against what some nations regard as an American model of laissez faire capitalism, which rescues Connecticut hedge funds but sacrifices Indonesian children."

In many respects it matters little if the likes of Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Stanley Fischer, and Alan Greenspan really know and understand what the effects will be of what they are doing. Nor does it matter much ifmouthpieces like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder believe their own rhetoric that liberaliszation and austerity is necessary to strengthen Asian economies, or know full well that the international economic policies they peddle weaken Asian competitors. The only thing that really matters is that US corporate sponsored globalisation is damaging the environment and aggravating global inequalities, it has also dealt US corporations' most dangerous competitors in Asia a stunning body blow while handing US financial institutions and investors a gargantuan windfall gain. But just as the Pentagon Papers revealed a greater degree of self-awareness than most had suspected on the part of those who planned and carried out the US war against Vietnam, I believe as evidence trickles in from leaked Treasury Department and IMF memos we will also discover a greater degree of self-awareness on the part of those who orchestrated neoliberal globalisation than most suspect at present. Speaking for myself, I am moreconvinced than I was a year ago that top policy makers believe very little of their own rhetoric about liberalisation strengthening all economies and globalisation raising the living standards of all.

Excerpted with permission from Znet