Defeated in Iraq, Bankrupt at Home, Despised Around the Globe ( And That's Just the Good News)
- From: alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Alan)
- Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 09:38 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
December 17, 2005
Defeated in Iraq, Bankrupt at Home, Despised Around the Globe (And That's
Just the Good News)
The Decline of the American Empire
By Gabriel Kolko
<http://www.counterpunch.org/kolko12172005.html>
The dilemma the US has had for a half-century is that the priorities it must
impose on its budget and its imperial plans have never guided its actual
behavior and action. It has always believed, as well it should, that Europe
and its control would determine the future of world power. But it has fought
in Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq--the so-called "Third World" in
general--where the stakes of power were much smaller.
The American priorities were specific, focused on individual nations, but
they also set the United States the task of guiding or controlling the
entire world--which is a very big place and has proven time and again to be
far beyond American resources and imperial power. In most of those places in
the Third World where the US massively employed its power directly it has
lost, and its military might has been ineffective. The US's local proxies
have been corrupt and venal in most nations where it has relied upon them.
The cost, both in financial terms and in the eventual alienation of the
American public, has been monumental.
The Pentagon developed strategic airpower and nuclear weapons with the USSR
as its primary target, and equipped itself to fight a massive land war in
Eastern Europe. Arms makers much preferred this expensive approach, and they
remain very powerful voices in shaping US foreign and budgetary policy.
But the Soviet enemy no longer exists. The US dilemma, and it is a
fundamental contradiction, is that its expensive military power is largely
useless as an instrument of foreign policy. It lost the war in Vietnam, and
while it managed to overthrow popular regimes in Brazil, Chile, and
elsewhere in Latin America, its military power is useless in dealing with
the effects of larger social and political problems--and Latin America, the
Middle East, and East Asia are more independent of American-control than
ever.
Strategically, also, the US is far worse off in the oil-rich Middle East
because it made every mistake possible. It supported Islamic fundamentalism
against Communism but also against secular nationalism, Iraq against Iran in
the 1980s, and it is not simply losing the war in Iraq militarily but also
alienating most of its former friends in the region. And Iran is emerging as
the decisive power in the area.
The basic problem the world today confronts is American ambition, an
ambition based on the illusion that its great military power allows it to
define political and social trends everywhere it chooses to do so. When the
USSR existed it was somewhat more inhibited because Soviet military power
neutralized American military might and there was a partial equilibrium-a
deterring balance of terror-- in Europe. Moreover, the USSR always advised
its friends and nations in its orbit to move carefully not to provoke the
US, an inhibition that no longer exists.
On the other hand, just as the Warsaw Pact has disappeared, NATO is well
along in the process of breaking up and going the way of SEATO, CENTO, etc.
The 1999 war against Serbia made its demise much more likely but the US-led
alliance disagreed profoundly over the Iraq War and now is likely to
dissolve in fact, if not formally. The Bush Administration produced a crisis
with its alliance and has created profound instability in Iraq, which was
always an artificial state since the British created it after World War One
resulted in the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Eight nations have nuclear weapons already, but the UN says another 30 or so
have the skill and resources to become nuclear powers. The world is escaping
the US, but it is also escaping the forms of control which were in place
when the USSR existed and states were too poor to build nuclear weapons. The
world is more dangerous now, in large part because the US refuses to
recognize the limits of its power and retains the ambitions it had 50 years
ago. But the spread of all kinds of weapons also has its own momentum-one
that US arms exports aids immeasurably.
Iraq was not at the top of the Bush Administration's agenda when it came to
power in 2001. Bush was committed, however, to a "forward-leaning" foreign
policy, to use Rumsfeld's words, and greater military activism. Had
September 11 not occurred, it is more likely that the Bush administration
would have confronted China, which has nuclear weapons. This administration
deems China a peer competitor in the vast East Asia region. It still may do
so, although Iraq has been a total disaster for the
administration--militarily and geopolitically--and greatly alienated the US
public (faster than Vietnam did).
The US military is falling apart: its weapons have been ineffective,
politically Iraq is likely to break up into regional fiefdoms (as
Afghanistan has), and perhaps civil war--no one knows. From the Iraqi
viewpoint the war was a disaster, but it also repeated the failures the
Americans confronted in Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
That the Iraq resistance is divided will not save the US from defeat. Few
believe Iraq will be spared great trauma. In fact, many American officials
predicted this before the war began and they were ignored--just as they were
ignored when they predicted disaster in Vietnam in the 1960s.
We live in a tragic world and war is considered more virtuous than
peace--and since arms-makers profit from wars and not peace, conventional
wisdom is reinforced by their lobbies and by preaching the cult of weaponry.
The US may explore how to end its predicament in Iraq but only Iran can help
it. Ironically, Iran has gained most geopolitically from Saddam Hussein's
defeat and has no incentive to save the Bush Administration from the defeat
now staring at it--both in Iraq and in future elections in the US.
The world is escaping American control, and Soviet prudence no longer
inhibits many movements and nations. World opposition is becoming
decentralized to a much greater extent and the US is less than ever able to
control it--although it may go financially bankrupt and break up its
alliances in the process of seeking to be hegemonic.
This is cause for a certain optimism, based on a realistic assessment of the
balance-of-power in the world. I think we must avoid the pessimism-optimism
trap but be realistic. Although the Americans are very destructive, they are
also losing wars and wrecking themselves economically and politically. But
for a century the world has fought wars, and while the US has been the
leading power by far-in making wars since 1946, it has no monopoly on folly.
But it is crucial to remember that the US is only a reflection of the
militarism and irrationality that has blinded many leaders of mankind for
over a century.
The task is not only to prevent the US from inflicting more damage on the
hapless world--Iraq at this moment--but to root out the historic, global
illusions that led to its aggression.
Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author
of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914
and Another Century of War?. He has also written the best history of the
Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical
Experience. His latest book, The Age of War, will be published in March
2006. He can be reached at: kolko@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Lord Cerne Abbas
Humpty Dumpty Bush fell off the Iraq wall.
Humpty Dumpty Bush had a big fall.
All his spin doctors and all the President's men
couldn't put Humpty Dumpty Bush together again.
http://www.veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk/identity.html
http://www.veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk/mylinks.html
http://www.john-lennon.com/
.
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