The months since Texas ex-governor George W. Bush came to the White House are enough to prove that the new U.S. administration is yet again aiming at implementing an imperial, hegemonistic and arbitrary policy, with shades of the return of the "hawks" and the ultraright to the presidency. It will bring more tension and problems for the world community.

It will mean continuing to implement Plan Colombia. It will mean measures of force and repression for U.S. military and police troops in Vieques, Puerto Rico.

It will mean financing for the new School of the Americas to train officers in counterinsurgency doctrine and in anti-people national security. It will mean attempts to impose a "Democratic Charter," a U.S. court, upon the members of the Organization of American States. It will mean support for the Puebla-Panama Plan as an axis for imperial hegemony over a vast area of the region. It means the rejection of signing the Kyoto Treaty to protect the planet's environment.

It means the continued deployment of officers and troops of the U.S. Armed Forces to Colombia, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Puerto Rico, and the Guantanamo region of Cuba.

It means the attempt to increase political pressure on Eastern Europe and on the NATO member states.

It means maneuvers to support the right wing in Venezuela and the wild coup attempts to destabilize the government of President Hugo Chavez.

It means the racist and repressive policies on the border with Mexico, costing the lives of hundreds of migrants. It means continued pressure on Latin American countries to pay the foreign debt and to continue privatizations, pressure exercised through the World Bank, the IMF, and the Interamerican Development Bank.

All these are examples of the continuity and reaffirmation of imperialistic, dominating, antidemocratic and warlike policies by the U.S. and President Bush. The goal of these policies is to strengthen its economic, financial, military, diplomatic, and political domination.

Much is said about a new century, a new millennium, modernity, and of the end of history. Nevertheless, the U.S. government continues applying the same formulas of intervention, hegemonic influence, threats, the use of force, and arbitrariness as before, since the days when it became a power with no friends, only interests.

The examples above are leading to a strengthening of unipolar domination on the international arena, putting forward the dominant economic model in the hands of the U.S. Latin American and the Caribbean are considered bases to sustain a greater power for the White House to confront the European Union and Asia, and to advance Washington's military buildup.

Not only that. In the arms race, quickly restarted by Bush and his Secretary of State, ex-general Colin Powell, the decision to end the Antiballistic Missile Treaty signed by the U.S. and Russia has already been announced. This way the White House and its Secretary of Defense will be able to push its Antimissile Defense Shield for the northern power-better known as "Star Wars", that is, a return to the "Reagan era"-without obstacles.

With respect to Latin America and the Caribbean, there are two nodal points in U.S. policy along the lines of the elements described above. One is to carry out a series of plans aimed at consecrating economic, financial and political hegemony in the hemisphere. To do this, they are envisioning imposing the Free Trade Area of the Americas beginning in 2005. With the Puebla-Panama Plan, they hope to apply measures directed by the financial bodies at their service within a year or two.

The other point is the strengthening the military and political presence in the region. The White House is relying on Plan Colombia as well as bases and military advisers in at least eight nations of the continent, as well as the declaration of a supposed "Democratic Charter" of America.

The complicity of the big majority of right wing, populist and capitulating governments in the region, combined with ambiguous, confused and conservative positions taken by those that consider themselves the democratic camp, and the giving in by social forces and the left in many countries, are permitting the United States to be able to advance in those two plans.

But it is also true that a movement of resistance to U.S. policies is rising up beyond just rhetoric. That includes in some cases governments holding themselves back from helping Washington in the face of U.S. arrogance.

In Colombia, together with the persistent and solid struggle of the FARC-EP, the people are mobilizing against Plan Colombia.

In Mexico, Panama, and other Central American countries, a popular wave is rising against the Puebla-Panama Plan.

Every day the struggle of the Puerto Rican independentistas against the U.S. base in Vieques grows more heroic and consistent.

The political mobilization and temperance of some governments, along with the coherent position of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and some other Caribbean heads of state, are blocking the White House from being able to push ahead with its "Democratic Charter".

That is, for as much as the application of imperial policies are provable, so too is the popular struggle in sectors of the hemisphere, which will need to be strengthened.

You would have to be blind or a pro-imperialist to not see that the U.S. is energetically continuing to carry out its policy of domination throughout the continent. Many facts affirm this claim. If this neoliberal and militaristic trajectory of George W. Bush is not contained, many social, economic and human evils will be spread over the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is an epoch of expansion and imperial interference. Of that, Bush is convinced. The popular and revolutionary forces are more convinced than ever of the need to carry out a policy of resistance and offensives at the national and international levels. At the end of the day, the history of class struggle and anti-imperialist battles continues. Don't let the conservatives or the pseudo-leftists hide that history.