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Year 2002
Douglass Carmichael
As I continue to try and figure out the current situation,
I am forwarding this excellent article.
Original at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n19/liev01_.html
The Push for War
Anatol Lieven considers what the US Administration hopes
to gain
The most surprising thing about the Bush Administration's
plan to invade Iraq is not that it is destructive of international
order; or wicked, when we consider the role the US (and
Britain) have played, and continue to play, in the Middle
East; or opposed by the great majority of the international
community; or seemingly contrary to some of the basic needs
of the war against terrorism. It is all of these things,
but they are of no great concern to the hardline nationalists
in the Administration. This group has suffered at least
a temporary check as a result of the British insistence
on UN involvement, and Saddam Hussein's agreement to weapons
inspections. They are, however, still determined on war
- and their power within the Administration and in the US
security policy world means that they are very likely to
get their way. Even the Washington Post has joined the radical
rightist media in supporting war.
The most surprising thing about the push for war is that
it is so profoundly reckless. If I had to put money on it,
I'd say that the odds on quick success in destroying the
Iraqi regime may be as high as 5/1 or more, given US military
superiority, the vile nature of Saddam Hussein's rule, the
unreliability of Baghdad's missiles, and the deep divisions
in the Arab world. But at first sight, the longer-term gains
for the US look pretty limited, whereas the consequences
of failure would be catastrophic. A general Middle Eastern
conflagration and the collapse of more pro-Western Arab
states would lose us the war against terrorism, doom untold
thousands of Western civilians to death in coming decades,
and plunge the world economy into depression.
These risks are not only to American (and British) lives
and interests, but to the political future of the Administration.
If the war goes badly wrong, it will be more generally excoriated
than any within living memory, and its members will be finished
politically - finished for good. If no other fear moved
these people, you'd have thought this one would.
This war plan is not like the intervention in Vietnam,
which at the start was supported by a consensus of both
political parties, the Pentagon, the security establishment
and the media. It is true that today - for reasons to which
I shall return - the Democrats are mostly sitting on the
fence; but a large part of the old Republican security establishment
has denounced the idea and the Pentagon has made its deep
unhappiness very clear.
The Administration has therefore been warned of the dangers.
And while a new attack by al-Qaida during the war would
help consolidate anti-Muslim American nationalism, the Administration
would also be widely accused of having neglected the hunt
for the perpetrators of 11 September in order to pursue
an irrelevant vendetta. As far as the Israeli lobby is concerned,
a disaster in the Middle East might be the one thing that
would at last bring a discussion of its calamitous role
into the open in the US.
With the exception of Donald Rumsfeld, who conveniently
did his military service in the gap between the Korean and
Vietnam Wars, neither Bush nor any of the other prime movers
of this war served in the military. Of course, General Colin
Powell served in Vietnam, but he is well known to be extremely
dubious about attacking Iraq. All the others did everything
possible to avoid service. If the war goes wrong, the 'chicken
hawk' charge will be used against them with devastating
political effect.
Vietnam veterans, both Democrat and Republican, have already
started to raise this issue, stirred up in part by the insulting
language used by Richard Perle and his school about the
caution of the professional military. As a recent letter
to the Washington Post put it, 'the men described as chicken
hawks avoided military service during the Vietnam War while
supporting that war politically. They are not accused of
lacking experience and judgment compared to military men.
They are accused of hypocrisy and cowardice.' Given the
political risks of failure - to themselves, above all -
why are they doing this? And, more broadly, what has bred
this reckless spirit?
To understand the Administration's motivation, it is necessary
to appreciate the breathtaking scope of the domestic and
global ambitions which the dominant neo-conservative nationalists
hope to further by means of war, and which go way beyond
their publicly stated goals. There are of course different
groups within this camp: some are more favourable to Israel,
others less hostile to China; not all would support the
most radical aspects of the programme. However, the basic
and generally agreed plan is unilateral world domination
through absolute military superiority, and this has been
consistently advocated and worked on by the group of intellectuals
close to Dick Cheney and Richard Perle since the collapse
of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
This basic goal is shared by Colin Powell and the rest
of the security establishment. It was, after all, Powell
who, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared
in 1992 that the US requires sufficient power 'to deter
any challenger from ever dreaming of challenging us on the
world stage'. However, the idea of pre-emptive defence,
now official doctrine, takes this a leap further, much further
than Powell would wish to go. In principle, it can be used
to justify the destruction of any other state if it even
seems that that state might in future be able to challenge
the US. When these ideas were first aired by Paul Wolfowitz
and others after the end of the Cold War, they met with
general criticism, even from conservatives. Today, thanks
to the ascendancy of the radical nationalists in the Administration
and the effect of the 11 September attacks on the American
psyche, they have a major influence on US policy.
To understand the genesis of this extraordinary ambition,
it is also necessary to grasp the moral, cultural and intellectual
world of American nationalism in which it has taken shape.
This nationalism existed long before last September, but
it has been inflamed by those attacks and, equally dangerously,
it has become even more entwined with the nationalism of
the Israeli Right.
To take the geopolitical goals first. As with National
Missile Defense, the publicly expressed motive for war with
Iraq functions mainly as a tool to gain the necessary public
support for an operation the real goals of which are far
wider. The indifference of the US public to serious discussion
of foreign or security affairs, and the negligence and ideological
rigidity of the US media and policy community make searching
debate on such issues extremely difficult, and allow such
manipulation to succeed.
The immediate goal is indeed to eliminate Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction. There is little real fear, however,
that Saddam Hussein will give those weapons to terrorists
to use against the United States - though a more genuine
fear that he might conceivably do so in the case of Israel.
Nor is there any serious prospect that he would use them
himself in an unprovoked attack on the US or Israel, because
immediate annihilation would follow. The banal propaganda
portrayal of Saddam as a crazed and suicidal dictator plays
well on the American street, but I don't believe that it
is a view shared by the Administration. Rather, their intention
is partly to retain an absolute certainty of being able
to defend the Gulf against an Iraqi attack, but, more important,
to retain for the US and Israel a free hand for intervention
in the Middle East as a whole.
From the point of view of Israel, the Israeli lobby and
their representatives in the Administration, the apparent
benefits of such a free hand are clear enough. For the group
around Cheney, the single most important consideration is
guaranteed and unrestricted access to cheap oil, controlled
as far as possible at its source. To destroy and occupy
the existing Iraqi state and dominate the region militarily
would remove even the present limited threat from Opec,
greatly reduce the chance of a new oil shock, and eliminate
the need to woo and invest in Russia as an alternative source
of energy.
It would also critically undermine the steps already taken
towards the development of alternative sources of energy.
So far, these have been pitifully few. All the same, 11
September brought new strength to the security arguments
for reducing dependence on imported oil, and as alternative
technologies develop, they could become a real threat to
the oil lobby - which, like the Israeli lobby, is deeply
intertwined with the Bush Administration. War with Iraq
can therefore be seen as a satisfactory outcome for both
lobbies. Much more important for the future of mankind,
it is also part of what is in essence a strategy to use
American military force to permit the continued offloading
onto the rest of the world of the ecological costs of the
existing US economy - without the need for any short-term
sacrifices on the part of US capitalism, the US political
elite or US voters.
The same goes for the war against al-Qaida and its allies:
the plan for the destruction of the existing Iraqi regime
is related to this struggle, but not as it has been presented
publicly. Links between Baghdad and al-Qaida are unproven
and inherently improbable: what the Administration hopes
is that by crushing another middle-sized state at minimal
military cost, all the other states in the Muslim world
will be terrified into full co-operation in tracking down
and handing over suspected terrorists, and into forsaking
the Palestinian cause. Iran for its part can either be frightened
into abandoning both its nuclear programme and its support
for the Palestinians, or see its nuclear facilities destroyed
by bombardment.
The idea, in other words, is to scare these states not
only into helping with the hunt for al-Qaida, but into capitulating
to the US and, more important, Israeli agendas in the Middle
East. This was brought out in the notorious paper on Saudi
Arabia presented by Laurent Murawiec of the Rand Corporation
to Richard Perle's Defense Policy Board. Murawiec advocated
sending the Saudis an ultimatum demanding not only that
their police force co-operate fully with US authorities,
but also the suppression of public criticism of the US and
Israel within Saudi Arabia - something that would be impossible
for any Arab state. Despite this, the demand for the suppression
of anti-Israeli publications, broadcasts and activities
has been widely echoed in the US media.
'The road to Middle East peace lies through Baghdad' is
a line that's peddled by the Bush Administration and the
Israeli lobby. It is just possible that some members of
the Administration really believe that by destroying Israel's
most powerful remaining enemy they will gain such credit
with Israelis and the Israeli lobby that they will be able
to press compromises on Israel.
But this is certainly not what public statements by members
of the Administration - let alone those of its Likud allies
in Israel - suggest. Rumsfeld recently described the Jewish
settlements as legitimate products of Israeli military victory;
the Republican Majority Leader in the House, Dick Armey
(a sceptic as regards war with Iraq), has advocated the
ethnic cleansing ('transfer') of the Palestinians across
the Jordan; and in 1996 Richard Perle and Douglas Feith
(now a senior official at the Pentagon) advised Binyamin
Netanyahu to abandon the Oslo Peace Process and return to
military repression of the Palestinians.
It's far more probable, therefore, that most members of
the Bush and Sharon Administrations hope that the crushing
of Iraq will so demoralise the Palestinians, and so reduce
wider Arab support for them, that it will be possible to
force them to accept a Bantustan settlement bearing no resemblance
to independent statehood and bringing with it no possibility
of economic growth and prosperity.
How intelligent men can believe that this will work, given
the history of the past fifty years, is astonishing. After
all, the Israelis have defeated Arab states five times with
no diminution of Palestinian nationalism or Arab sympathy
for it. But the dominant groups in the present Administrations
in both Washington and Jerusalem are 'realists' to the core,
which, as so often, means that they take an extremely unreal
view of the rest of the world, and are insensitive to the
point of autism when it comes to the character and motivations
of others. They are obsessed by power, by the division of
the world into friends and enemies (and often, into their
own country and the rest of the world) and by the belief
that any demonstration of 'weakness' immediately leads to
more radical approaches by the 'enemy'.
Sharon and his supporters don't doubt that it was the Israeli
withdrawal from Lebanon - rather than the Israeli occupation
of the Palestinian territories - which led to the latest
Intifada. The 'offensive realists' in Washington are convinced
that it was Reagan's harsh stance and acceleration of the
arms race against the Soviet Union which brought about that
state's collapse. And both are convinced that the continued
existence of Saddam Hussein's regime of itself suggests
dangerous US weakness and cowardice, thus emboldening enemies
of the US and Israel across the Middle East and beyond.
From the point of view of the Arab-Israeli conflict, war
with Iraq also has some of the character of a Flucht nach
vorn - an 'escape forwards' - on the part of the US Administration.
On the one hand, it has become clear that the conflict is
integrally linked to everything else that happens in the
Middle East, and therefore cannot simply be ignored, as
the Bush Administration tried to do during its first year
in office. On the other hand, even those members of the
American political elite who have some understanding of
the situation and a concern for justice are terrified of
confronting Israel and the Israeli lobby in the ways which
would be necessary to bring any chance of peace.
When the US demands 'democracy' in the Palestinian territories
before it will re-engage in the peace process it is in part,
and fairly cynically, trying to get out of this trap. However,
when it comes to the new rhetoric of 'democratising' the
Arab world as a whole, the agenda is much broader and more
worrying; and because the rhetoric is attractive to many
liberals we must examine this agenda very carefully.
Belief in the spread of democracy through American power
isn't usually consciously insincere. On the contrary, it
is inseparable from American national messianism and the
wider 'American creed'. However, this same messianism has
also proved immensely useful in destroying or crippling
rivals of the United States, the Soviet Union being the
outstanding example.
The planned war against Iraq is not after all intended
only to remove Saddam Hussein, but to destroy the structure
of the Sunni-dominated Arab nationalist Iraqi state as it
has existed since that country's inception. The 'democracy'
which replaces it will presumably resemble that of Afghanistan
- a ramshackle coalition of ethnic groups and warlords,
utterly dependent on US military power and utterly subservient
to US (and Israeli) wishes.
Similarly, if after Saddam's regime is destroyed, Saudi
Arabia fails to bow to US wishes and is attacked in its
turn, then - to judge by the thoughts circulating in Washington
think-tanks - the goal would be not just to remove the Saudi
regime and eliminate Wahabism as a state ideology: it would
be to destroy and partition the Saudi state. The Gulf oilfields
would be put under US military occupation, and the region
run by some client emir; Mecca and the Hejaz might well
be returned to the Hashemite dynasty of Jordan, its rulers
before the conquest by Ibn Saud in 1924; or, to put it differently,
the British imperial programme of 1919 would be resurrected
(though, if the Hashemites have any sense, they would reject
what would without question be a long-term death sentence).
Beyond lies China. When the Bush Administration came to
power, its major security focus was not the Middle East.
There, its initial policy was benign neglect ('benign' at
any rate in the case of Israel). The greatest fears of right-wing
nationalist gurus such as Robert Kagan concerned the future
emergence of China as a superpower rival - fears lent a
certain credibility by China's sheer size and the growth
of its economy. As declared in the famous strategy document
drawn up by Paul Wolfowitz in the last year of the first
Bush Administration - and effectively proclaimed official
policy by Bush Jr in his West Point speech in June - the
guiding purpose of US strategy after the end of the Cold
War should be to prevent the emergence of any 'peer competitor'anywhere
in the world.
What radical US nationalists have in mind is either to
'contain' China by overwhelming military force and the creation
of a ring of American allies; or, in the case of the real
radicals, to destroy the Chinese Communist state as the
Soviet Union was destroyed. As with the Soviet Union, this
would presumably involve breaking up China by 'liberating'
Tibet and other areas, and under the guise of 'democracy',
crippling the central Chinese Administration and its capacity
to develop either its economy or its Army.
To judge by the right-wing nationalist media in the US,
this hostility to China has survived 11 September, although
in a mitigated form. If the US can demonstrate overwhelming
military superiority in the Middle East, there will certainly
be groups in the Republican Party who will be emboldened
to push for a much tougher line on China. Above all, of
course, they support formal independence for Taiwan.
Another US military victory will certainly help to persuade
these groups that for the moment the US has nothing to fear
from the Chinese Navy or Air Force, and that in the event
of a Taiwanese declaration of independence, the island can
be defended with relative impunity. Meanwhile, a drastic
humiliation of China over Taiwan might well be seen as a
key stepping-stone to the overthrow of Communism and the
crippling of the Chinese state system.
At present these are only long-term ambitions - or dreams.
They are certainly not shared even by a majority of the
Administration, and are unlikely to be implemented in any
systematic way. On the other hand, it's worth bearing in
mind that the dominant groups in this Administration have
now openly abandoned the underlying strategy and philosophy
of the Clinton Administration, which was to integrate the
other major states of the world in a rule-based liberal
capitalist order, thereby reducing the threat of rivalry
between them.
This tendency is not dead. In fact, it is strongly represented
by Colin Powell, and by lesser figures such as Richard Haass.
But their more powerful nationalist rivals are in the meantime
publicly committed to preventing by every possible means
the emergence of any serious rival or combination of rivals
to the US, anywhere in the world, and to opposing not just
any rival would-be world hegemon, but even the ability of
other states to play the role of great power within their
own regions.
Under the guise of National Missile Defense, the Administration
- or elements within it - even dreams of extending US military
hegemony beyond the bounds of the Earth itself (an ambition
clearly indicated in the official paper on Defense Planning
Guidance for the 2004-09 Fiscal Years, issued this year
by Rumsfeld's office). And while this web of ambition is
megalomaniac, it is not simply fantasy. Given America's
overwhelming superiority, it might well work for decades
until a mixture of terrorism and the unbearable social,
political and environmental costs of US economic domination
put paid to the present order of the world.
As things stand, the American people would never knowingly
support such a programme - nor for that matter would the
US military. Even after 11 September, this is not by historical
standards a militarist country; and whatever the increasingly
open imperialism of the nationalist think-tank class, neither
the military nor the mass of the population wishes to see
itself as imperialist. The fear of casualties and of long-term
overseas military entanglements remains intense. And all
opinion polls suggest that the majority of the American
public, insofar as it considers these issues at all, is
far more interested than this Administration in co-operation
with allies.
Besides, if the US economy continues to stagnate or falls
sharply, the Republicans will most probably not even be
in power after 2004. As more companies collapse, the Administration's
links to corrupt business oligarchies will become more and
more controversial. Further economic decline combined with
bloated military spending would sooner or later bring on
the full consequences of the stripping of the public finances
caused by this Administration's military spending and its
tax cuts for the rich. At that point, the financial basis
of Social Security would come into question, and the Republican
vote among the 'middle classes' could shatter.
It is only to a minimal degree within the power of any
US administration to stimulate economic growth. And even
if growth resumes, the transformation of the economy is
almost certain to continue. This will mean the incomes of
the 'middle classes' (which in American terminology includes
the working proletariat) will continue to decline and the
gap between them and the plutocracy will continue to increase.
High military spending can correct this trend to some extent,
but because of the changed nature of weaponry, to a much
lesser extent than was the case in the 19th and most of
the 20th centuries. All other things being equal, this should
result in a considerable shift of the electorate to the
left.
But all other things are not equal. Two strategies in particular
would give the Republicans the chance not only of winning
in 2004, but of repeating Roosevelt's success for the Democrats
in the 1930s and becoming the natural party of government
for the foreseeable future. The first is the classic modern
strategy of an endangered right-wing oligarchy, which is
to divert mass discontent into nationalism. The second,
which is specifically American, is to take the Jewish vote
away from its traditional home in the Democratic Party,
by demonstrating categorical Republican commitment not just
to Israel's defence but to its regional ambitions.
This is connected both to the rightward shift in Israel,
and to the increasingly close links between the Republicans
and Likud, through figures like Perle and Feith. It marks
a radical change from the old Republican Party of Eisenhower,
Nixon and Bush père, which was far more independent
of Israel than the Democrats. Of key importance here has
been the growing alliance between the Christian Right -
closely linked to the old White South - and the Israeli
lobby, or at least its hardline Likud elements.
When this alliance began to take shape some years back,
it seemed a most improbable combination. After all, the
Christian Right and the White South were once havens of
anti-semitic conspiracy theories. On the other hand, the
Old Testament aspects of fundamentalist Christianity had
created certain sympathies for Judaism and Israel from as
far back as the US's 17th-century origins.
For Christian fundamentalists today the influence of millenarian
thought is equally important in shaping support for Israel:
the existence of the Israeli state is seen as a necessary
prelude to the arrival of the Antichrist, the Apocalypse
and the rule of Christ and His Saints. But above all, perhaps,
this coming together of the fundamentalist Right and hardline
Zionism is natural, because they share many hatreds. The
Christian Right has always hated the United Nations, partly
on straight nationalist grounds, but also because of bizarre
fears of world government by the Antichrist. They have hated
Europeans on religious grounds as decadent atheists, on
class grounds as associates of the hated 'East Coast elites',
and on nationalist grounds as critics of unconstrained American
power. Both sides share an instinctive love of military
force. Both see themselves as historical victims. This may
seem strange in the case of the American Rightists, but
it isn't if one considers both the White South's history
of defeat, and the Christian Right's sense since the 1960s
of defeat and embattlement by the forces of irreligion and
cultural change.
Finally, and most dangerously, both are conditioned to
see themselves as defenders of 'civilisation' against 'savages'
- a distinction always perceived on the Christian Right
as in the main racially defined. It is no longer possible
in America to speak openly in these terms of American blacks,
Asians and Latinos - but since 11 September at least, it
has been entirely possible to do so about Arabs and Muslims.
Even in the 2000 elections, the Republicans were able to
take a large part of the white working-class vote away from
Gore by appealing to cultural populism - and especially
to those opposed to gun control and environmental protection.
Despite the real class identity and cultural interests of
the Republican elite, they seem able to convince many workers
that they are natural allies against the culturally alien
and supercilious 'East Coast elites' represented as supporting
Gore.
These populist values are closely linked to the traditional
values of hardline nationalism. They are what the historian
Walter Russell Mead and others have called 'Jacksonian'
values, after President Andrew Jackson's populist nationalism
of the 1830s. As Mead has indicated, 11 September has immensely
increased the value of this line to Republicans.
If on top of this the Republicans can permanently woo the
Jewish vote away from the Democrats - a process which purely
class interests would suggest and which has been progressing
slowly but steadily since Reagan's day - there is a good
chance of their crippling the Democrats for a generation
or more. Deprived of much of their financial support and
their intellectual backbone, the Democrats could be reduced
to a coalition of the declining unionised white working
class, blacks and Latinos. And not only do these groups
on the whole dislike and distrust each other, but the more
the Democrats are seen as minority dominated, the more whites
will tend to flee to the Republicans.
Already, the anti-semitism of some black leaders in the
Democratic Party has contributed to driving many Jews towards
the Republicans; and thanks to their allegiance to Israel,
the liberal Jewish intelligentsia has moved a long way from
their previous internationalism. This shift is highly visible
in previously liberal and relatively internationalist journals
such as the New Republic and Atlantic Monthly, and maybe
even in the New Yorker. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to
say that as a result the internationalist position in the
Democratic Party and the US as a whole has been eviscerated.
The Democrats are well aware of this threat to their electorate.
The Party as a whole has always been strongly committed
to Israel. On Iraq and the war against terrorism, its approach
seems to be to avoid at all costs seeming 'unpatriotic'.
If they can avoid being hammered by the Republicans on the
charge of 'weakness' and lack of patriotism, then they can
still hope to win the 2004 elections on the basis of economic
discontent. The consequence, however, is that the Party
has become largely invisible in the debate about Iraq; the
Democrats are merely increasing their reputation for passionless
feebleness; whereas the Republican nationalists are full
of passionate intensity - the passion which in November
2000 helped them pressure the courts over the Florida vote
and in effect steal the election.
It is this passion which gives the nationalist Right so
much of its strength; and in setting out the hopes and plans
of the groupings which dominate the Bush Administration,
I don't want to give the impression that everything is simply
a matter of conscious and cynical manipulation in their
own narrow interests. Schematic approaches of this kind
have bedevilled all too much of the reporting of nationalism
and national conflict. This is odd and depressing, because
in recent decades the historiography of pre-1914 German
nationalism - to take only one example - has seen an approach
based on ideas of class manipulation give way to an infinitely
more subtle analysis which emphasises the role of socio-economic
and cultural change, unconscious identifications, and interpenetrating
political influences from above and below.
To understand the radical nationalist Right in the US,
and the dominant forces in the Bush Administration, it is
necessary first of all to understand their absolute and
absolutely sincere identification of themselves with the
United States, to the point where the presence of any other
group in government is seen as a usurpation, as profoundly
and inherently illegitimate and 'un-American'. As far as
the hardline elements of the US security establishment and
military industrial complex are concerned, they are the
product of the Cold War, and were shaped by that struggle
and the paranoia and fanaticism it bred. In typical fashion
for security elites, they also became conditioned over the
decades to see themselves not just as tougher, braver, wiser
and more knowledgeable than their ignorant, innocent compatriots,
but as the only force standing between their country and
destruction.
The Cold War led to the creation of governmental, economic
and intellectual structures in the US which require for
their survival a belief in the existence of powerful national
enemies - not just terrorists, but enemy states. As a result,
in their analyses and propaganda they instinctively generate
the necessary image of an enemy. Once again, however, it
would be unwise to see this as a conscious process. For
the Cold War also continued, fostered and legitimised a
very old discourse of nationalist hatred in the US, ostensibly
directed against the Communists and their allies but usually
with a very strong colouring of ethnic chauvinism.
On the other hand, the roots of the hysteria of the Right
go far beyond nationalism and national security. Their pathological
hatred for the Clinton Administration cannot adequately
be explained in terms of national security or even in rational
political or economic terms, for after a very brief period
of semi-radicalism (almost entirely limited to the failed
attempt at health reform), Clinton devoted himself in a
Blairite way to adopting large parts of the Republican socio-economic
agenda. Rather, Clinton, his wife, his personal style, his
personal background and some of his closest followers were
all seen as culturally and therefore nationally alien, mainly
because associated with the counter-culture of the 1960s
and 1970s.
The modern incarnation of this spirit can indeed be seen
above all as a reaction to the double defeat of the Right
in the Vietnam War - a defeat which, they may hope, victory
in Iraq and a new wave of conservative nationalism at home
could cancel out once and for all. In Vietnam, unprecedented
military defeat coincided with the appearance of a modern
culture which traditionalist Americans found alien, immoral
and hateful beyond description. As was widely remarked at
the time of Newt Gingrich's attempted 'Republican Revolution'
of the mid-1990s, one way of looking at the hardline Republicans
- especially from the Religious Right - is to see them as
motivated by a classical nationalist desire for a return
to a Golden Age, in their case the pre-Vietnam days of the
1950s.
None of these fantasies is characteristic of the American
people as a whole. But the intense solipsism of that people,
its general ignorance of the world beyond America's shores,
coupled with the effects of 11 September, have left tremendous
political spaces in which groups possessed by the fantasies
and ambitions sketched out here can seek their objectives.
Or to put it another way: the great majority of the American
people are not nearly as militarist, imperialist or aggressive
as their German equivalents in 1914; but most German people
in 1914 would at least have been able to find France on
a map.
The younger intelligentsia meanwhile has also been stripped
of any real knowledge of the outside world by academic neglect
of history and regional studies in favour of disciplines
which are often no more than a crass projection of American
assumptions and prejudices (Rational Choice Theory is the
worst example). This has reduced still further their capacity
for serious analysis of their own country and its actions.
Together with the defection of its strongest internationalist
elements, this leaves the intelligentsia vulnerable to the
appeal of nationalist messianism dressed up in the supposedly
benevolent clothing of 'democratisation'.
Twice now in the past decade, the overwhelming military
and economic dominance of the US has given it the chance
to lead the rest of the world by example and consensus.
It could have adopted (and to a very limited degree under
Clinton did adopt) a strategy in which this dominance would
be softened and legitimised by economic and ecological generosity
and responsibility, by geopolitical restraint, and by 'a
decent respect to the opinion of mankind', as the US Declaration
of Independence has it. The first occasion was the collapse
of the Soviet superpower enemy and of Communism as an ideology.
The second was the threat displayed by al-Qaida. Both chances
have been lost - the first in part, the second it seems
conclusively. What we see now is the tragedy of a great
country, with noble impulses, successful institutions, magnificent
historical achievements and immense energies, which has
become a menace to itself and to mankind.
Anatol Lieven, a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace in Washington DC, is the author
of Chechnya and Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry.
From the LRB letters page: [ 17 October 2002 ] Jonathan
Sinclair-Wilson [ 31 October 2002 ] Andrew Glencross, Derick
Schilling, Peter Reavy [ 14 November 2002 ] Duncan Hunter,
Sanford Gabin.
Douglass Carmichael
email doug@bigmindmedia.com
home page www.dougcarmichael.com
weblog www.dougcarmichael.com/roughcut.html
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