The real danger of Pat Buchanan's campaign is not his call for protectionism but his promise of jobs for all downsized Americans -- a promise he can deliver only if America reverts to a war economy. Whether Buchanan sustains his momentum or sputters out, pressures are already building towards a Cold War II. PNS associate editor Franz Schurmann is professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of numerous books on foreign affairs.

American big business fears Pat Buchanan because his radical protectionism could cut them off from the lucrative global economy. Yet far more threatening to the future well-being of all Americans is his implied promise of all kinds of good jobs, especially for those forced out of the industrial system.

Those jobs can open up in only one way: through a military-industrial complex beefed up to feed a new American war machine. What makes the threat more real is the fact that, even without Buchanan, forces are already in motion pushing America towards a new Cold War-type economy.

Mainline big business nowadays realizes that big profits come far more from peace than from war. But military-industrial complexes need the ongoing threat of war, rather than war itself, to rake in big profits. They thrive best in the gray areas between peace and war. That is exactly what the old Cold War was -- a real war in which each sought victory but neither of the main adversaries resorted to direct armed conflict with each other.

The U.S. military-industrial complex was badly hurt when global peace appeared to have broken out with the end of the Cold War. Big states like California that depended heavily on defense spending plunged into recession. Now, as threatening clouds once again gather over Asia and Europe, their CEOs are perking up.

The current electoral campaign is almost entirely about domestic issues. Yet overshadowing it is a spreading sense that once again Americans are living in a threatening world. One can detect it in the way both Clinton and the Republican candidates have shifted to a new toughness in foreign and national security policy, in contrast to the peace promises still common in the 1992 campaign.

Clinton acted tough by intervening militarily in Bosnia and now getting into a confrontational stance with China over Taiwan. Republican candidates like Dole and particularly Alexander have taken tough stances on the Middle East where a U.S. military buildup is occurring. Among most Republicans there is a sense that Russia is again emerging as a rival if not an enemy.

Buchanan has given few specifics on his foreign policy plans but pounds home his overall America-first stance. In earlier years "America-First" was the flip side of "Fortress America." By calling for drastic tariffs against foreign imports, especially from China and Japan, Buchanan is stigmatizing them as enemies. And having enemies is just the self-justification a Fortress America stance needs.

During the old Cold War the chief prize was Western Europe, the world's most advanced industrial region outside the United States. For some 40 years of U.S.-Soviet rivalry, no armed conflict occurred in Europe, only in Asia. Now Bosnia's civil conflict has scalded Europe for four years and is simmering in the nearby Middle East. East Asia, on the other hand, has now replaced both Europe and America as the world's greatest economic growth machine.

The situation seems tailor-made for a Cold War II in which the two superpower enemies will be China and the U.S. Already a confrontation between the two, reminiscent of the many U.S.-Soviet confrontations over Berlin during Cold War I, is threatening over Taiwan. Singapore's leading Chinese-language newspaper reports that the super-secret one-hour meeting in Los Angeles on February 23 between Clinton and Japanese prime minister Hashimoto dealt with Taiwan tensions.

When Clinton goes to Japan next month he hopes to turn the old security treaty into a new military alliance between the two countries. Yet even as Japan accepts the U.S. alliance, it is increasing co-operation with China. Shortly after arriving at the recent Asia-Europe meeting in Bangkok, Hashimoto made a bee-line for Chinese prime minister Li Peng. Hashimoto wants to keep Japan's options open.

Cold War II well suits the military-industrial complexes of America and China -- not to mention a fast rising one in Japan where the collapse of its bubble economy has created economic trauma almost as great as defeat in World War II. So long as it remains gray it will also suit the booming tigers of the region.

Buchanan opposes the Japan alliance pushed by Clinton and supported by Dole, Alexander and most likely Forbes. Cold War II with Japan as an ally would mean much less for Buchanan's job hungry followers than a Fortress America stance.

Fortress America would create lots of good jobs. Huge high-tech and weapons exports would provide the capital. And inflation could be kept in check by rigorous government controls.

Most of America's elites and many ordinary people are convinced Fortress America spells disaster -- as it did for Hitler's Germany. But even if Buchanan sputters out, he has reminded many of the advantages of a war footing precisely at a moment in history when America could be heading into Cold War II.