December 21, 2004
Anatol Lieven is senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in Washington, DC. A journalist, writer, and
historian, Mr Lieven writes on a range of security and international
affairs issues. He was previously editor of Strategic Comments
published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in
London.
Anatol Lieven’s journalism career includes work as a correspondent
for the Times (London) in the former Soviet Union from 1990 to
1996. Prior to 1990, Lieven was correspondent for the
Times in
Pakistan and Afghanistan. He also worked as a freelance journalist in
India.
Mr Lieven's articles have been published in a number of journals
and newspapers, among them The Financial Times, The London
Review of Books, The Nation, and The International
Herald Tribune.
In this interview with AsiaSource, Mr Lieven addresses the
urgent foreign policy issues confronting the United States in the
theoretical context laid out in his recent book, America Right or
Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (New York: Oxford UP,
2004).
You argue in your book, America Right or Wrong: An
Anatomy of American Nationalism that American policies following
the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, "divided the West,
further alienated the Muslim world and exposed America itself to greatly
increased danger." You suggest that this response must be understood in
the context of the particular character of American nationalism. What
are the features of American nationalism that are important in this
respect?
In the book I suggested that there are two principal features of
American nationalism, both of which were evident in the response to
9/11. These are, in spirit, to a great extent contradictory but they
often run together in American public life.
- The first is a certain
element of American messianism: the belief in America as a 'city on the
hill', a light to the nations, which usually takes the form of a belief
in the force of America's example. But at particular moments, and
especially when America is attacked, it moves from a passive to an
active form: the desire to go out and actually turn the world into
America, as it were, to convert other countries to democracy, to the
American way of life.
In principle, the desire to spread democracy in the world is of
course not a bad thing. But there are two huge problems with it. One is
that because this element of American messianism is so deeply rooted in
American civic nationalism, in what has been called the "American
Creed", and in fundamental aspects of America's national identity, it
can produce - and after 9/11 did produce - an atmosphere of
debate in America which is much more dominated by myth than by any
serious look at the reality of the outside world. Myths about American
benevolence, myths about America spreading freedom, myths about the rest
of the world wanting America to spread freedom, as opposed to listening
to what the rest of the world really has to say about American policies.
- national
chauvinism, hatred of outsiders, and fear and contempt of the outside
world. The second feature that cuts across this American messianism,
however, is what I have called the "American antithesis", that is to
say, those elements in the American nationalist tradition which actually
contradict both American civic nationalism and the American Creed.
These
elements, which are very strong in parts of America, include
national
chauvinism, hatred of outsiders, and fear and contempt of the outside
world. This is particularly true in the case of the Muslim world, both
because America has been under attack from Muslim terrorists for almost
two generations now, but also because of the relationship with Israel,
and the way in which pro-Israeli influences here have contributed to
demonizing the Muslim world in general.
This results in an incredible situation: on the one hand - and I am
speaking here particularly of the neo-cons - the Bush administration
wants to democratize the Muslim world, while on the other,
neo-conservatives do not even bother to hide their contempt for Muslims
and Arabs. Sometimes you hear, and even read, phrases like, "The only
language that Arabs understand is force," "Let them hate us so long as
they fear us" and so on. This is utterly contradictory: people saying
they want to democratize the Arab world but displaying utter contempt
for Arab public opinion. Of course this is not just a moral failing, or
a propaganda failing. It also leads to practical disasters, like the
extraordinary belief that you could pretend at least to be introducing
democracy, and on the other hand, you could somehow impose
Ahmed Chalabi on Iraqis as a pro-American strongman, and that somehow
the local population would line up to salute you and happily accept
this.
So these are very dangerous aspects of American nationalism. And
these aspects by the way used to be very sharply and profoundly analyzed
by great figures in the American intellectual tradition, conservative as
well as liberal: figures like Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Hoftstadter,
Louis Hartz, George Kennan and William Fulbright. Though most of these
figures were strong anti-Communists, they directed their critique at the
reasons for the particular anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s,
and at the reasons which led America to become involved in the war in
Vietnam. And their arguments and insights are of tremendous importance
to America today in understanding American behavior after 9/11.
But one of the striking and tragic things about the debate leading up
to the Iraq war - although one can hardly call it a "debate" - was that
the vast majority of it, outside certain relatively small left-wing
journals, was conducted with almost no reference to the genesis of the
Vietnam war, the debates which took place then, and the insights which
were generated about aspects of the American tradition. Instead of
analyzing what it was about their own system which was pulling
them in the direction of war with Iraq, too many members of the American
elite, including leading Democrats as well as Republicans, talked only
about the Iraqi side.
Even that, of course, they got completely wrong, but they did not
even once ask the obvious question: "What is it about our
system that may make this a disaster?" After all is this not a general
pattern of American behavior in the whole world by now? This business of
a Green Zone in Baghdad, American officials bunkered down behind
high-protective walls, with no contact with Iraqis, is this not part of
a larger trend? Yet somehow it was assumed that in the case of Iraq it
would be different, that America would go in, be welcomed with open
arms, quickly reshape Iraq in accordance with American norms, and then
quickly leave again.
You have said that, "Belief in the spread of democracy
through American power is not usually consciously insincere. On the
contrary, it is inseparable from American national messianism and the
wider 'American Creed'". You have just talked about some of this, but
could you elaborate your definition of American national messianism? And
what do you think enables such naiveté - or perhaps cynicism?
As the American historian Richard Hofstadter said, "It has been our
fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one." What really
marks out America from the other Western democracies is not the content
of America's democratic creed - because the basic principles are
commonly held in all the democracies. Rather, it is the intensity and
conformity with which these beliefs are held. This is because, precisely
as Hofstadter said, these principles are or are felt to be
essential to holding America together; that is, they are an essential
part of the American national identity in a way that they are not to the
British or the French or the German national identities.
This difference between the US and Europe may change of course
because of the huge immigrant populations in Western Europe now. Western
European countries too are having to rethink their identities and
emphasize common values rather than common heritage or ancestry. But
certainly up to now, America has stood out because of the extent of its
commitment to this so-called American Creed. I should say here that the
word 'creed' was chosen for this advisedly by a series of American
thinkers (though the original phrase was G.K.Chesterton's) as suggesting
an almost religious form of belief.
The extent to which this is fundamental to the American national
identity and is widely believed to keep Americans together means that it
is very difficult in this country to challenge these myths.
They are
also remarkably impervious to experience. Vietnam did not fundamentally
change them, it only battered them for a while. Endless lessons in the
Middle East have failed to change them. Now, despite the lesson of Iraq,
there are still leading Democrats writing about the need to create
alliances of democracies and spread democracy in the region. Not to ask
what the people of the region actually want, not to ask about a sensible
diplomatic strategy, but to use democratization as a
substitute
for any real strategy. This comes again from a central part of the
American national and nationalist heritage.
There is some continuity in American foreign policy, as you
suggest, from the Bush Sr. administration through Clinton to the present
Bush administration. Although you argue that Clinton's multilateralism
was more befitting of a stable hegemonic state, is it not the case that
as far as policy is concerned, this was only a change in form rather
than substance? And if so, what accounts for this extraordinary
unanimity in foreign policy between the only two serious political
parties in this country (further evidence of which was the Kerry
campaign's inability to offer any policy alternatives to the most
pressing foreign policy issues presently confronting the US: Iraq and
Israel-Palestine)?
On the Middle East, both of the American parties are, frankly,
crippled above all by their inability to confront the question of
America's relationship with Israel. Indeed not just to confront it, but
even to mention it, as we saw in the presidential debate.
On a range of other issues, though, Bush has not actually been as bad
as many people think, or at least he has been much closer to Clinton -
whatever that means. In the case of China, for example, the Bush
administration came in with a very un-Clintonesque policy of confronting
China, of containing China - and this could have led to some extremely
dangerous results. But then 9/11 came along and ever since, the Bush
administration has been pursuing an extremely Clintonesque policy of
engaging China, of putting pressure on Taiwan not to declare
independence, and so on. There was that moment in the presidential
debates when it was Bush who was saying that the US needs a multilateral
policy towards the threat of North Korea with a key role for China; a
curious irony given the Bush administration's frequent celebration of
its own unilateralism, but not actually wrong.
Similarly with Russia,
while I would not necessarily describe the Bush administration's policy
as multilateralist, they have certainly been pursuing a very
traditional, pragmatic, realist policy, and not an aggressive one.
The area where the Clinton and Bush administrations have moved
farthest apart is in relations with Europe. Clearly the Bush
administration is not nearly as interested in Europe as Clinton was, and
it is not nearly as interested in NATO. I should emphasize here that it
was not interested even in the eight months before 9/11, let
alone afterwards. If Gore had won in 2000, there would have been a very
real difference: he would have made a much greater effort to engage NATO
and to consult with European governments after 9/11.
That does bring out certain key differences between Bush and the
Clinton tradition. Of course they are both interested in expanding
America's power in the world; they are both imperialists, in a certain
sense. They both profess at least their belief in spreading democracy.
But Clinton, I think, was much more of a genuine Wilsonian. Bush in many
ways is a fake Wilsonian because while he professes this messianic,
democratization line, he has completely ignored the other key aspect of
Wilson's strategy: international cooperation, international
institutions, creating a web of alliances and so forth. Clinton talked
about this a great deal and was savagely attacked by the right-wing in
this country for doing so. Clinton's idea was to place "America at the
center of every world network" - a position which implies influence,
leadership, and even hegemony, but also consultation and negotiation.
So when it comes to the differences between Bush and Clinton, and the
similarities, one requires a rather nuanced picture in which in some
ways they are closer than it appears, but in other ways, they are
genuinely quite different.
In several articles and in your book, you point out that
unlike in previous empires, the vast majority of ordinary Americans do
not think of themselves as imperialist, or as possessing an empire. At
the same time, you mention repeatedly the extent to which the American
population is unaware of the policies pursued in its name, is indeed
alarmingly ignorant of world affairs. Given this, how could they
conceive of the United States as an imperial power? And why is the
perception of "ordinary" Americans relevant to understanding the place
of America in the world today?
If I remember rightly, according to a poll in Britain in the 1930s, a
very small proportion of the British population could remember the name
of more than two British colonies. They could remember maybe India and
Australia, or probably they remembered the white colonies, but most of
them could not remember the name of a single African colony. No one
would ever have used that as an argument that the British people did not
believe in empire; they were just ignorant.
In the book, I quote C. Vann Woodward on this subject, another great
American critic of the past, whose insights I wanted to try to revive
for contemporary Americans. Woodward talked about the American people as
being bellicose but not militarist, and I think it is also true that
they are bellicose but not imperialist. That said, this kind of
bellicosity, this instinctive reaction to lash out if attacked or even
if insulted, has been repeatedly, and by the way quite explicitly on the
part of the neo-cons, used as a way of whipping up nationalist anger,
and nationalist commitment to what are in fact imperialist
projects.
This is a very old tradition in imperialism. In my book, I cite many
examples from history to show that in general even at the height of the
Western empires, ordinary Western people were not really very interested
in great imperial projects if they were going to be expensive. They
liked the idea of power and glory but they were very dubious about
losing lives and spending large amounts of money to go out and conquer
bits of Africa and so forth. If they could be convinced that this was
not simply an imperialist project, but rather part of national rivalry
with France or Germany, then it was possible to generate much more
support.
In some ways, the American people do fit into this tradition. It is
quite clear, for example, that even most of the ones who do consider
themselves imperialist would be dead against the reintroduction of
conscription in America. Even if it were proved to them that
conscription was absolutely necessary in order to maintain America's
imperial power in the world, they would not be persuaded. Equally the
assorted jackasses who bray in the media about the American empire and
the need for great sacrifices in its cause have shown no very ardent
desire to go and serve themselves in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere
else.
There is therefore a good deal of lack of underlying commitment to
American power on the part of Americans themselves. More commitment
certainly than exists almost anywhere else in the world by now but still
not enough to generate a really full-scale imperial project. This also
explains in part the relative pragmatism of the Bush administration in
some areas of the world. After all even this administration recognizes
that it cannot simultaneously run its present program in the Middle East
and risk war with China and radically alienate Russia.
If there were war with China or with North Korea then America would have
to reintroduce conscription. Then the end of the American imperial
project would be very close indeed.
Another differentiating feature of 19th century empires and
the American empire is that the former were characterized by the
so-called "civilizing mission" whereas the latter, in its
self-conception, is motivated by the purely benevolent aspiration of
spreading democracy and freedom. Are these two imperial strategies not
more similar than they at first appear?
Well in some ways, yes, of course. The 19th century
liberal-imperialist strategy was also enormously benevolent in its own
esteem. The European powers conquered most of Africa while assuring
their own populations and everybody else who would listen that this was
all part of the process of ending slavery, expanding progress, bringing
peace, spreading Christianity and so forth. Even the most ghastly
European colonial project of all, King Leopold of Belgium's conquest of
the Congo, professed benevolent goals: Belgian propaganda was all about
bringing progress, railways and peace, and of course, ending slavery. In
other words, hypocrisy is completely common to both, as it was to the
Soviet or communist imperial project. So in that way they are very
close.
But there is a critical difference. There was no absolutely intrinsic
or self-evident clash between what the 19th century liberal imperialists
said that they were going to do - leave aside what they actually did in
terms of massacres, land theft, etc. - in terms of bringing progress and
the inherent nature of their project, these were not radically
incompatible because the 19th century liberal imperialists never
talked about quickly bringing democracy to the countries they conquered.
To have done so would have been logically completely counter to the
assumptions of Western superiority and "native" cultural inferiority and
incapacity for self-rule upon which the entire ideology of the
"civilizing mission" was based.
When they did talk of bringing democracy, they only did in the
context of the far future, something that might come about after several
generations; in Africa, they talked about a thousand years of British or
French rule eventually leading to self-government and democracy. In
other words, they were absolutely clear and logical. These countries
would need a long period, centuries literally, of Western authoritarian,
imperial rule before they would be capable of self-government,
constitutional rule, democracy and so forth. Indeed to an extent this
was the way that it actually worked out: the British had ruled India or
parts of India for 150 years before they introduced the first very
limited local, district elections with fairly circumscribed powers and a
franchise of less than 0.5 per cent of the population. They started
doing that only from the 1880s on. They and the other liberal
imperialists had a policy of what one might call authoritarian progress,
not of democratization.
Now, of course, it is completely different. The liberal imperialists
of today, because of the completely different ideological era in which
we are living, have to say that what they are bringing is democracy.
So they conquer a place and then within a year or two, they have to hold
elections, they have to claim to be introducing free government and so
forth. That is just, once again, absolutely, manifestly
contradictory. There would have been nothing contradictory in the 19th
century about imposing Ahmed Chalabi on Iraq; the British and French did
that kind of thing again and again. They had some client ruler, some
dissident prince or whatever, whom they wanted to make emir of
Afghanistan or of somewhere in Africa, and they just marched in and
imposed him. People may have criticized it, but there was no suggestion
that this was incompatible with what they were setting out to do. Of
course, if you say that you are bringing democracy, if you preach about
democracy, if you say your whole moral position is based on
democracy, and then you impose a puppet leader, then frankly
you look not just hypocritical but ridiculous, which is
essentially how the US appears in much of the Muslim world.
In the wake of nationalist movements in the colonial world,
imperial powers - in particular Britain - slowly ceded a variety of
powers to local elites, in effect developing sophisticated ways of
ruling through them (what Marxists called a "comprador elite").
Is it possible to say that the US empire runs the Third World - of which
the Muslim world is an important part - through such a model of what has
been called "indirect rule"?
Yes, to a considerable extent this is the case. Of course the
comprador model, in the strict Latin American sense, never quite fits
because very few governments elsewhere in the world have been so
completely subservient as some of the Latin American elites in the past.
After all, Egypt still tries to take a different line on Israel; Jordan
supported Saddam Hussein in 1991; Saudi Arabia could be seen as a
comprador state in that it exists to produce and export oil, but clearly
in its internal arrangements, it is not at all responsive to what
America would like.
Perhaps it may be more difficult these days to run such manifestly
comprador systems given that, as I suggested earlier, there does tend to
be more democratic pressure from below than in the 19th century. A good
example is Russia, although admittedly Russia also has its tradition of
Great Power status and so forth which prevents it from becoming
completely subservient to America. As I wrote in a previous book on the
reasons for Russia's defeat in Chechnya between 1994 and 1996, there was
a real attempt by America in the 1990s, with tremendous help from the
Russian elites themselves, to turn Russia into a kind of comprador
state, whose elites would be subservient to America in foreign policy
and would exist to export raw materials to the West and transfer money
to Western bank accounts. In the end, neither the Russian state nor the
Russian people would accept that. The Yeltsin order was replaced by a
kind of authoritarian, nationalist backlash under Putin. One sees the
same thing in a rather different form in Venezuela, for example.
So I think there are strong elements of this comprador tradition in
the present American-dominated international system but at the same time
it is a troubled and contested setup.
You have said that the era inaugurated by the attacks of
September 11th, 2001, brought out into the open "the complete absence of
democratic modernization, or indeed any modernization, in all too much
of the Muslim world." What do you mean by modernization, and how is its
absence related to the professed motivations for earlier imperial
conquests?
How many hours do I have! Modernization is after all such a tricky
concept. If we take our canonical attitudes to modernization from Max
Weber, as most of us do, unconsciously at least, then of course, as I
wrote in the book, America itself today does not conform to Eurocentric
patterns of modernization!
Certainly much of the Muslim world - not all by any means, there are
exceptions, but certainly large parts of the Middle East - does not
conform to many of the criteria laid down by Weber for successful modern
states. These countries have clearly not been able to imitate some of
the East Asian countries in bringing about radical economic growth and
reform. Many of these countries remain ruled by what are essentially
clans. The famous unkind phrase of Charles Glass of Arab states being
"tribes with flags" is, I am afraid, rather accurate. Syria is a
monarchy of the Alawite clan. The Ba'ath started very much as a
modernizing fascistic movement, like fascists in Italy, but broke down
into a kind of monarchical oligarchy. Then there are the formal
autocratic monarchies in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. As East Asia
has demonstrated, authoritarian rule as such is not necessarily an
obstacle to economic modernization and progress. But then again, this
has not worked in the Middle East either.
One of the tragedies is precisely that so many different models have
been tried in the region and all in a sense have failed, if not
absolutely then certainly to bring the countries concerned up to the
economic level of the West or East Asia. The failure to compete
successfully with the West has been horribly demoralizing in view of the
Muslim world's past cultural and economic superiority, now followed by
several hundred years of relative decline. Just as for several centuries
Muslim states exploited the relative weakness of the Christian world to
expand their power, so later Western states took advantage of Muslim
weakness to conquer most of the Muslim world. This was followed by the
establishment in the heart of the Muslim world of Israel, a tremendously
militarily and economically successful Western surrogate power. Israel's
successes, and Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, have underlined
various aspects of Arab failure. Israel is in no sense the originator of
these historical feelings of resentment and humiliation, but in recent
decades has acted as a catalyst and focus for these older and deeper
feelings.
If you take the example of Pakistan, the part of the Muslim world
that I know best, that country of course is in some ways a vastly more
modern society than it was 50 years ago, but then again in some ways it
is not. In this context, it is interesting to ask what constitutes
"modernity" in the case of political religion. Radical Islam in Pakistan
and elsewhere is after all in many ways a modern force. It is not just a
reaction to modernity, but also uses modern methods so one certainly
cannot say that it is purely reactionary or regressive.
But certainly so far there has been in Pakistan a failure of
political modernization in the form of democracy. Pakistan has
essentially remained a state that is run by the military and the civil
service. The political elites, with the exception of the MQM and to some
extent the Islamists, cannot really be described as modern political
parties with a serious mass base. The PPP is a cult of personality party
presiding over an alliance of big landowners and urban bosses. And while
the military and civil service have held the country together, they have
obviously failed to develop Pakistan as a successful modern state.
The weakness of political culture, when added to economic and
military weakness, lays the Muslim world open to the threat of physical
intervention by the new world imperialist power, and it also weakens
Muslim states morally and ideologically in terms of resisting such
intervention.
You have pointed out several times the authoritarian
character of most states in the Arab and Muslim worlds but do not
mention the fact that a majority of these regimes depend for their
existence on continued American patronage. Is it not the case that a
number of these states are viewed as client regimes of the United States
and that this is one of the major sources of Muslim resentment against
the US? This is particularly true of your comments about Pakistan, where
the US supported the Zia regime for over a decade and now supports the
military government of General Musharraf.
As I have often said with regard to American and British professed
support for democratization: we can all believe in a human capacity for
redemption even if we are not born-again Christians, but most of us, not
being saints, do not ask reformed burglars to guard our houses! We
should not therefore ask Arabs and Muslims, given the British-American
record on democracy in the Muslim world, to trust our professions today
that we are sincere in our wish to bring democracy.
By contrast, I have always believed and continue to believe in the
force of the US and Western example when it comes to spreading
democracy. If we can go on demonstrating to the world that our societies
are more peaceful, more stable, less oppressive and more economically
successful than authoritarian or theocratic states, then there will be a
strong tendency for democracy to spread without our having to intervene
in other places to bring this about. In this sense, I am a strong
believer in the American tradition stretching from President Adams to
George Kennan which takes immense and justifiable pride in the American
political system, but believes that America spreads democracy best when
it maintains the health and strength of its own system. By the way,
President Eisenhower said much the same thing at the end of his second
term, so this is hardly a radical position, let alone an anti-American
one.
As to US (and British) support for dictatorships, and the resentment
this has caused, this is true. On the other hand, I think it cuts both
ways. Does one believe that if these authoritarian regimes fell then
viable democracies would follow? In Pakistan, unfortunately, this did
not happen. Of course it is true that the army always stepped in
eventually but then again look at the PPP government under Bhutto in the
1970s - certainly not a regime that was strongly supported by Washington
- and its extremely brutal treatment of dissent. Look at the fact that
when Musharraf took power he was supported by the great majority of the
population, because of the outrageous corruption of governments in the
1990s.
I think that is a rather misleading claim. How do we know
what proportion of Pakistan's population supported Musharraf's coup?
Quite right. Opinion polls are not necessarily reliable in a country
like Pakistan. Let me put it another way: a great majority of the people
certainly did not protest against it. If there had been true faith in
democracy and its record in Pakistan, they presumably would have done
so. My point is that when Musharraf assumed power, he was certainly not
acting on behalf of America. Clearly, several of these authoritarian
regimes do not stand because of American support but because of local
tradition and domestic support: Iran, which is directly opposed to
America; Libya; and the House of Saud, which is in some sense America's
tool but who also have their own tradition and legitimacy which has
nothing to do with American support.
Well the argument could be made that the Americans are only
interested in Saudi Arabia's domestic political setup to the extent that
it continues to serve their interests: oil, and in the case of the first
Gulf war, the provision of military bases. Therefore the present
arrangement works rather better for them than any subsequent setup
might.
Until 9/11, this was true. But since then, there has been a strong
and widespread belief in the US that the Saudi system is incubating
terrorism, which of course is a somewhat belated realization. I met
Saudi-backed extremists in Afghanistan while I was based in Peshawar in
the late-80s and it was already apparent that we were building up a
monster for ourselves. Since 9/11 this has been recognized.
I do not believe that America will improve its image in the Muslim
world just by abandoning its present allies and preaching democracy,
because I do not believe that given its geopolitical and other interests
America will ever be truly sincere in this regard. America's professed
ideals of democracy and freedom are always likely to come to a
screeching halt at Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories
but also whenever American ideals seem likely to lead to a result which
will be really harmful for American geopolitical interests. One of the
images which has been seared into American elite consciousness is what
happened to Carter. When Carter tried to pursue a more moral policy, by
putting pressure on the Shah over Savak atrocities, by putting pressure
on Central American governments, was he thanked for it by the American
establishment? No, he was pilloried as naïve, weak, as supporting
communism, as giving opportunities to America's enemies, and so forth.
If a US President were to push Saudi Arabia really hard, for example,
over democratic reform, and the Saudi regime collapses and there is an
Islamist takeover, that American president would simply fall in
the next election, as Carter did. Ditto with Pakistan. So America is
trapped in this.
Looking beyond the publicly stated goals for the American
invasion of Iraq, you said that the neo-conservative nationalists were
all more or less unanimous in their agreement on one basic plan:
"unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority". To
what extent did the Iraq invasion have the intended results and what is
the likelihood that such policies will continue to be pursued in the
second term of the Bush presidency?
Iraq has been a disaster for their aims. They have gotten away with
it of course in that they have been re-elected but it is perfectly
obvious that they cannot launch another war of choice, another invasion
of Iran, say. They simply do not have the troops. With almost 150,000
men pinned down in Iraq, they could not launch another war on that scale
without introducing conscription. That would tear American society apart
and for the first time since Vietnam lead to a significant
anti-imperialist movement in this country. It would also, for the first
time, lead to really serious questions about what America is doing in
the Middle East at all.
From that point of view, Iraq really has not worked out as they had
anticipated and has greatly reduced their plans. After all, in the
immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, all the neo-cons
were going around saying: "Next stop: Iran". Or Syria. This kind of
rhetoric has not disappeared completely - they are still refusing to
talk to the Iranians - but the agenda on Iran has really narrowed just
to the issue of nuclear weapons. So Iraq has had a major effect in this
respect .
You suggest that various practices and institutions put into
place during the Cold War make the constant threat of war a virtual
necessity for the American foreign policymaking and security
establishment. This may account in part for why Islam came very quickly
to replace communism as the great ideological enemy of the United
States. Given that Islam has no locus, that there are a billion Muslims
spread out across the world, how is the US security establishment likely
to continue to deal with this kind of enemy?
I say in the book that what seems essential is not the
imminent
threat of war, but rather constant belief in the possibility of war.
There are all these institutions and economic interests which were put
in place by the Second World War and still more by the Cold War.
Eisenhower's original phrase apparently was "military-industrial-academic-complex".
There are so many people in my world of think tanks in American
universities with a deep stake in all these foreign policy agendas. In
the book I also point out that - and this has been mentioned in other
forms by people like James Mann, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill and others
- one of the reasons why 9/11 was able to happen was that the security
elites under Clinton, and very much under Bush, were not looking
seriously at the terrorist threat because, due to their Cold War
backgrounds, they were obsessed with the very much lesser threat from
major rival states.
When the Bush administration came to power, they had radical
anti-Chinese agendas of containing China, of rolling back China, of
creating a new Cold War with China. On the other hand, now there is this
tremendous effort, certainly among the neo-cons, to present Islam or the
Muslim world as the new Cold War enemy. You see all this nonsense by
people like Norman Podhoretz about the Fourth World War. The interesting
thing is precisely because, as you say, Islam is not a superpower like
the Soviet Union, nor does it represent a relatively clear set of
social, economic, and political principles like communism. One is
dealing with an extremely diverse world with different cultures
and societies and multiple motivations.
Even if you narrow the war on terror down to Al Qaeda and its allies,
which of course the Bush administration and Israeli lobby have
deliberately and manifestly failed to do, even then one is speaking of a
web, a network of many, many different groups and nodes in this web
which sometimes cooperate, sometimes act independently, with varying
degrees of relative importance. Zarqawi's group in Iraq, like the
international forces fighting in Chechnya, are in no sense subordinate
to Al Qaeda.
To combat these groups requires a really detailed and acute knowledge
of the societies concerned. Something once again that America failed to
generate in the case of Vietnam before going to war there, failed to
generate about Iraq before going to war there, and is indeed failing to
generate in the case of large parts of the Muslim world. It does seem
that there is a natural pull towards concentration on alleged threats
from states. This was especially clear after 9/11: the astonishing speed
with which the Bush administration turned its attention from the actual
terrorist perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks to confront the "axis of
evil" states and draw up plans for war with Iraq.
It is clearly much easier to threaten and invade Iraq than to think
seriously about how to combat the appeal of groups like Al Qaeda and its
allies in the Muslim world. Similarly it is much easier to concentrate
on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons than having to think
seriously about the Shia-Sunni relationship, or what to do about the
Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is part of the built-in bias of military
bureaucracies, but also owes much to the effects of the Cold War and the
present intellectual configuration of American academia.
You explain in your book why the Cold War legacy has made it
difficult for US policymakers, trained for the most part in the
so-called "Realist" tradition, to conceive of a security threat as
emanating from somewhere other than a nation-state, an assumption that
is rather inadequate for addressing the threat of terrorism, as you just
pointed out (and may account in part for why, as you say, quoting Bob
Woodward, the Bush administration seemed incapable of staying focused on
a terrorist threat, before and after the attacks on the US, and started
planning for war on Iraq on November 21st, 2001; that is, 72 days after
9/11). Yet you supported the American invasion of Afghanistan when it
seemed clear that Al Qaeda was a diffuse, dynamic network, with no state
to claim as its own. Why was Afghanistan, then, a legitimate - morally,
but also pragmatically - target for military strike?
The invasion of Afghanistan was justified by absolutely traditional
and universally accepted traditions of self-defense. Al Qaeda had
launched this attack; this was generally accepted by every rational
person in the world. Al Qaeda were quickly and clearly identified as the
perpetrators, and indeed subsequently made no real attempt to deny it.
When it comes to the responsibility of the Taliban, Al Qaeda after all
was functioning very much as part of the Afghan state under the Taliban,
and provided the Taliban's praetorian guard.
It is true that, had I been in a position of authority, I would have
made a greater effort to get the Taliban to extradite the Al Qaeda
leadership if not directly to America then to somewhere else in the
Muslim world from where they could be passed on to America. This was
partly because I was afraid of what to some extent has in fact happened
which is that by going in to Afghanistan with the Northern Alliance,
America would alienate the Pashtuns.
Nonetheless, I thought the invasion of Afghanistan was covered by
self-defense. Al Qaeda launched this attack, Al Qaeda was functioning as
part of the Taliban and was being protected by the Taliban. Al Qaeda
had, after all, also launched a series of attacks previously on American
targets, which one should not forget: they were responsible for the
massacre of very large numbers of Africans and others. I also regarded
their Taliban protectors as a genuine "rogue" regime in a way that Iran
certainly is not. They really were in the business of spreading
instability, radicalism and terrorism (especially of course anti-Shia
terrorism) in their area.
On a personal note, I detested what the Taliban stood for, and the
damage that they and their allies were doing to Pakistan. Above all, I
supported the US invasion of Afghanistan as legitimate self-defense and
because of genuine shock at 9/11, shock at the idea that this could
happen to a great modern city, and the belief that forces like Al Qaeda
are a real threat to modern civilization - Muslim as well as Western.
America did also enjoy a general international consensus behind its
invasion of Afghanistan. To some extent the US even managed to gain some
support in the Muslim world for the invasion, at least as far as states
and elites are concerned. This is largely because the Sunni
revolutionary element represented by Al Qaeda and the Taliban is of
course a threat to every organized Muslim state as well.
So I felt that both on what Kerry called the "global test" and on the
traditional test of self-defense, Afghanistan passed. Iraq did not.
You have suggested that radical American nationalists - many
of who will continue in the present Bush administration - either wish 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."
Have these radical elements in the present administration been
sufficiently chastened by their experience in Iraq to relinquish such
aspirations?
Yes, I believe so. Not to permanently relinquish their aspirations in
principle: obviously they would still very much like to destroy China if
they could, or at least destroy China as a potential future threat to
American hegemony. But as long as they are tied down in the Middle East
in the way they are, they will not have the military forces to do so.
Therefore, I believe that the Bush administration and future Democrat
administrations will continue the existing line. That said of course
there is always room for mistakes either on the part of Washington or of
Beijing or of Taipei or most likely of all three simultaneously. The
Taiwanese can go too far, and the Chinese can overreact, not because the
Chinese want war but because they would trap themselves into a position
where they would have to do something. If they were sensible of course
the Chinese leadership would not react militarily, they would just tell
any power that recognized Taiwan that China would break off diplomatic
and trade relations the next day. Nobody would in fact recognize
Taiwanese independence and then the Chinese could simply declare that
these people have declared independence but no one recognizes them so
why does it matter. This is by the way what Russia should have done in
the case of Chechnya before 1994. But the Chinese could of course
miscalculate and use force, and then the US, and particularly the
American Congress, have put themselves in such a position that they
would be forced to fight as well.
So I certainly do not rule out some kind of stumbling towards
conflict. If that happens, of course, then all the old agendas would
come back. Then the anti-Chinese hardliners in the bureaucracy, the
think tanks and Congress would start roaring again about Communist
aggression, they would gain greater influence and the Cold War agenda
vis-à-vis China would be re-established. But I do not believe that any
really powerful forces in Washington today actually want that.
In a recent article, you say that, "The Bush administration
may be stumbling toward an attack on Iran's nuclear program that could
have the most disastrous consequences for Iraq, Afghanistan and the
entire American position in the Middle East." What is the likelihood of
such an attack being carried out in the near future either by the
Americans or the Israelis?
It is still a possibility. Not I believe such a strong possibility
now because apart from everything else the Iranians do seem very anxious
to play along with Europe, and are willing at least to suspend their
nuclear weapons plans in response to a mixture of European pressure and
incentives with American threats. But if America were to attack Iran, it
would be a catastrophe. Poor old Tony Blair has accepted so many
shattering blows already maybe nothing will finish him, but having
invested so much in this process with Iran, if it were to end in an
American attack, it seems likely that there would be a serious revolt
within his government and party and he would have to resign. There are
leading members of the British government briefing in private that
whatever Tony Blair says, if America attacks Iran, that is the end. They
will resign. This would almost certainly be the end of Blair's tenure as
prime minister. It would also create a massive crisis with the
Europeans. Moreover, given the fact that Iran's nuclear sites are
dispersed and buried, America would very likely miss, at which
point we will have the worst of all possible worlds. As the American
military know very well, Iran in these circumstances would have numerous
means of retaliation against American forces and plans in Iraq - whereas
an American invasion of Iran looks impossible because of America's lack
of troops.
So I am less worried on that score than I have been in the past.
There is however a wild card involved: this is that the Israeli
government appears implacably determined to prevent Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons, without themselves offering any concessions in return;
and may either attack itself or exert irresistible pressure on the US to
reject a deal with the Iranians. The present deal between Iran and the
West Europeans could also break down for a number of other reasons. It
is not inconceivable that there could emerge some disastrous quid
pro quo whereby Israel will make certain concessions towards the
Palestinians and in return America go after Iran's nuclear weapons. But
of course the consequences might be frightful because of course Iran
would then have every incentive to try to really destabilize Iraq.
Hezbollah could be reactivated as an international terrorist force. Iran
would set out to destabilize Afghanistan, and so forth and so on.
All this is known to the American security elites. The uniformed
military is certainly extremely opposed to anything like this. Of course
they were also opposed to Iraq, but it still happened.
Could you elaborate on your argument regarding what accounts
for the special relationship between Israel and America: namely the
parallel between the situation of Palestinians and Native Americans?
This is not the core either of my argument or of the relationship
itself, but only a subsidiary factor. At the core of the relationship
lie completely legitimate sympathies and identifications between a
majority of Americans and the state of Israel. These are rooted in old
features of religion and culture, and more recent admiration for the
achievements of the Israeli state. I should say by the way that I
believe strongly in US support for Israel within the borders of 1967. in
my book I express a number of positions which are certainly extremely
unpopular in the Muslim world, and on the Left in Europe: support for
the Jewish character of the Israeli state, opposition to all but the
most limited Palestinian refugee return, and opposition to ideas of a
binational state. I also accept that given the tragic circumstances of
1948, and the imperatives created by the Holocaust, a measure of ethnic
cleansing was probably inevitable and would also undoubtedly have been
carried out in the other direction if the Arab side had won.
So I am not arguing against sympathy for Israel as such, but only
against certain forms of this identification. Sympathy rooted in
comparisons between the American and Israeli settlement processes are
generally confined to the American Right. Leo Strauss made land-theft
the founding principle of every state, which, it must be said, if you go
back far enough historically, is actually true to a considerable extent.
Admittedly you have to go back in Britain 1,500 years. Certainly in the
US there is a very interesting contrast in attitudes to this issue
between Americans on the East Coast and in the South or the West of the
country. East Coast Americans are either embarrassed about the
dispossession of the Indians or have simply forgotten it. For most it is
totally irrelevant, since they never encounter any Native Americans and
since their ancestors in many or even most cases arrived in the US long
after the East Coast Indians were dispossessed. In the South and the
West, however, the frontier tradition is so much stronger. There is no
real embarrassment over the dispossession; there is basically a
celebration of the fact that their ancestors conquered this land and
turned it, as the phrase used to be, into a "white man's country".
It does seem to me - and I am not original in pointing this out;
there have been leading Israelis like Amos Elon who have done so - that
this began by creating a certain community of sentiment between sections
of the conservative Christian heartland in America and the rightwing in
Israel, or Israel in general. In other words, it is a mistake when
looking at this community of sentiment just to look at the apocalyptic
element: millenarian religion. This is present but it would not have
nearly the resonance that it does if it were not set in a wider context.
Now of course here I am talking about the conservative tradition in
the American heartland, the Christian tradition, but of course sympathy
with Israel is much broader: it has a great deal to do with the
Holocaust, it has to do with the perception of Israel as a modern,
democratic society, as a very successful society. This goes together,
obviously, with tremendous support from the Jewish community for Israel
on the whole. So all these factors work in concert.
There is nothing at all in principle wrong with people here
supporting Israel as such, or admiring Israel for its tremendous success
as a society. But on the American Right there are very much darker
elements to this affinity, one of which is precisely the radical
religious one but the other is a kind of sublimated racism.
You have also argued that American nationalism has become
increasingly entwined with the nationalism of the Israeli Right. What
are the historical reasons for the alliance between Christian
fundamentalists in this country and Zionists? In other words, how should
we understand the words of Jerry Falwell when he says, "The Bible belt
of the United States is the security belt of Israel"?
If one just looks at the Christian fundamentalist issue, leaving the
millenarian question aside, American evangelical Protestantism is Old
Testament Protestantism - just as its forbearers in English radical
Protestantism and Scottish radical Protestantism were in the 16th and
17th centuries. This creates a natural affinity with the Jewish
religious tradition. When evangelical Christian Lieutenant-General
William Boykin was quoted last year as saying, "My God is bigger than
his," in reference to a Muslim, he was directly citing from Isaiah and
this is obviously a man who spends a lot of his time in the Old
Testament.
It is fascinating the degree to which the Old Testament eclipses the
New Testament in the thought of evangelical Christians and this
automatically leads one to a sympathy with Israel. Cromwell was the
first ruler of England who allowed Jews to settle again in England after
the Middle Ages. He was very much influenced in this by his Old
Testament-based Christianity. But also it seems, from the time of
Cromwell on, there has been this millenarian idea as well: the
restoration of Israel is essential to bringing about the Apocalypse.
Given the influence of millenarian thought on a minority of
Evangelicals, but a very significant minority, one cannot deny this
influence. Look at the immense popularity of the "Left Behind" series,
for example.
Finally, there is also a considerable element of straight political
opportunism. The Republicans are already well on their way to putting
the Democrats in a very difficult position from the point of view of
political demographics. The Republicans have this tremendously solid
base. Mostly white, not just Protestant anymore but Protestant and
Catholic conservative, including many Latinos. Unlike the deeply
fractured Democrat base, the Republican base agrees on a majority of
important issues. The Democrats by contrast are trying to tie together
the remnants of the white working classes in the northern cities, the
blacks, the Latinos, more progressive women and the various cultural
liberals - groups which often detest each other.
If on top of this advantage the Republicans can take away a majority
of the Jewish vote and campaign financing from the Democrats, they stand
a chance of actually destroying the Democratic Party's chances of power
for a generation to come. This hope is not a secret. It has been written
about quite openly by conservative commentator Robert Novak and others.
If the Republicans can conclusively seize the issue of support for
Israel from the Democrats, then they can rule for the foreseeable
future. Rightly or wrongly, that at least is the calculation the
Republicans are making.
You point out the complicity of the American media in both
supporting the government in various foreign policy adventures - you say
in fact that the "propaganda program" in the wake of the Iraq war has
few parallels in peacetime democracies for the systematic mendacity of
its reportage - and for the most part, keeping silent on the excesses of
the Israeli state. What accounts for this blindness in the context of a
free press in a democratic country?
This is a little stronger than what I actually said. What I said was
that the Bush administration's propaganda program had few parallels in
peacetime democracies and that the American media had not criticized
this. I did not mean to suggest that the American media as a whole were
all part of the same propaganda machine. Even in some of the papers
which supported the war, dissenting voices appeared.
When it comes to keeping silent on the excesses of the Israeli state,
the reporting as such has not been very unfair or inaccurate - certainly
if you look at the respectable media: the serious newspapers and some of
the serious television channels. Israeli bombing raids are reported,
shooting of Palestinian civilians is reported, and the issue of
settlements too is reported to an extent. There are two things which are
completely missing, as Michael Lind pointed out in Prospect
magazine in England last year. The first is historical context and the
second is the almost complete absence of analysis or critique. One of
the questions I raise in my book has to do with why Palestinians were
expected to have peacefully acquiesced to what was being done to them in
the 1940s. According to any historical precedent, this would have been
absurd. No other people would have ever accepted this. Are we suggesting
that the Palestinians should have been insane? This is ridiculous. So
that is the context. Secondly, as Michael also pointed out, in terms of
analysis, the violence and its causes are always presented as
Palestinian "terrorism", not Israeli occupation. Finally the
number of opinion pieces seriously criticizing Israeli policies are
simply heavily outnumbered, even in the mainstream and liberal media, by
expressions of support.
On Iraq, why did the media not stand out against the war? It was
partly because of the role of the Israel lobby. It is very difficult to
conduct a truly searching analysis of the underlying reasons for
American policy in the Middle East, and very difficult to draw up really
serious alternatives to existing policies, if you are not prepared to
address the question of Israeli policies and the part they play in
damaging American interests in the Middle East. This does not mean that
Israel must be at the heart of the argument but its influence cannot be
denied: it is there not just in the form of the effects of the struggle
with the Palestinians but in relations with Iran, Syria and the Muslim
world in general. If this is to be swept aside, as it so often is by the
accusation of anti-Semitism, it just makes the entire debate here much,
much more difficult. You could as well ask why there was no really
serious debate in the presidential campaign over the "War on Terror" as
a concept. The Israel factor is a part of that too.
I should say by the way that I never wrote about this issue before
9/11. I have no history whatsoever of attacking Israel. But after the
terrorist attacks on America, the Carnegie Endowment asked me to
concentrate on the war on terror and on aspects of the situation in the
Muslim world. After that, it would have been intellectually dishonest
and morally cowardly not to discuss this critical issue. I may add, as a
British citizen, that it would have been unpatriotic, since my country
is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside America and is running the
same risks of terrorist attack. British citizens therefore have both a
right and a duty to speak out against policies and attitudes which are
undermining the war on terror and endangering British security.
Concerning the behavior of the media and intelligentsia in the US,
the second point is that after 9/11 people were clearly running scared.
There was this tremendous militant nationalist wave sweeping the
country. This is not unique to America - the same would have been true
in most countries which suffered an attack of this kind. However, in the
US the response took certain forms which have precedents in US history.
The silencing effects of such a wave have been seen before: McCarthyism
most recently, and the anti-German, then the anti-communist hysteria in
the First World War and the 1920s. People were to a considerable degree
intimidated into silence.
Finally, there was a very good piece by Russell Baker about AJ
Liebling in the November 18th issue of the New York Review of Books
in which Baker was talking about how journalists used to regard
themselves as just hacks. I used to be a journalist myself, essentially
writing for money, trying to be accurate in my reporting and as amusing
and intelligent as possible. Now there is this ghastly tendency of
journalists, particularly those who get to the top of the US media, to
regard themselves not as hacks but as pillars of the state. So they
begin to behave almost as if they were senior officials not hacks like
the rest of us; and not just that, but as if they had occupied a great
office of state during some great crisis in American affairs, as if they
had been Acheson during the Second World War or the Korean War. So many
of these columnists and television journalists are like that now.
One last point, and this may appear at first sight contradictory: the
figure of Bob Woodward bridges these two things. After Watergate, on the
one hand journalists got an exaggerated sense of their own importance as
the Fourth Estate, a political force which makes and breaks
administrations. On the other hand, they became more and more addicted
to being given enormous dollops of constructed information and "spin" on
a plate - instead of doing real fieldwork and investigative reporting
like Woodward did. So Woodward is turned from an investigative reporter
into a court chronicler. He has fascinating information and very good
insights but is nonetheless essentially a praise-singer of the American
system. I think a lot of American journalists are like that now. When
they depend for leaks and for information on either the government in
power or the opposition they are clearly not going to say anything that
will wreck their chances of getting what they regard as scoops.
You have said that, "The younger intelligentsia [in the
United States] 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…. This has reduced still further
their capacity for serious analysis of their own country and its
actions." In addition, you point out the very close links that exist
between relevant university departments and government institutions.
What are the implications of this?
Well it contributes enormously to the conformism when it comes to
debates like that about the Iraq war or about Israel. As Henry Kissinger
pointed out almost thirty years ago, too many people in the academic
world are either defending previous records when in government or aiming
to be in the next administration. This is not a situation likely to
produce radical critiques or really strong alternative policies. These
people are not at all anxious to say something which will either lead to
them not being selected or to their being vetoed by a Senate committee.
I used to think that it is wonderful that the American state can
recruit from people in academia but I have come to find it deeply
corrupting. I almost prefer the British system now, of career civil
servants who serve one administration after another. But one needs a
strong ethos of the independence of the civil service and a very strong
ethos that people cannot be sacked or penalized for political views as
long as they maintain the discipline of their service. This actually
leaves the public debate in the UK freer than in the US, particularly in
the strange, solipsistic world of Washington DC. It is amazing in a
republic with a strong tradition of individualism and cultural
egalitarianism, that in DC the sense of hierarchy, of sometimes
obsequious deference, of the court game, who is in, who out, dominates
everything just as much as it did in an early medieval court. It does
contribute to this lack of debate in America.
This is compounded by the tremendously strong power of American
national myths. As previous American authors like Loren Baritz pointed
out, Vietnam knocked these myths off their pedestal, but many Americans
spent a whole generation resuscitating them. Reagan was elected very
much to do just that, to restore America's image of itself. It would
seem that these myths are so important to America's national identity
and image of itself that the American political and intellectual
establishment is simply incapable in the end of seriously examining them
and asking what flaws they may embody. Of course, there are dissidents -
even some very senior ones like Senator Fulbright; but it is striking
how little influence they seem to have had in the long run.
In consequence, there are all these people running around Washington
- very much among the Democratic intellectual elites as well as the
Republicans - who really believe that all America has to do is try
harder to generate and display a sense of will. If only America
wants something badly enough, anything can be achieved. Any
society in the world can be transformed, irrespective of the wishes and
traditions of its people. Any country can become not just a democracy,
but a pro-American democracy, irrespective of its own national
interests or ideals.
This is part of a deep inability to see America as others see it. It
is incredible but again and again I have found myself at meetings
discussing Russia and China in Washington at which I have been the
only person to point out that America does after all have its own
sphere of influence in Central America and the Caribbean. Not just that,
but a sphere of influence which is not doing very well either
economically, or to a great extent, in terms of real democracy either.
The rest of the world sees this perfectly well, and as a result,
develops a belief in American hypocrisy which is itself very bad for
American prestige and influence.
After all, how much did Haiti get after floods which killed thousands
of people and devastated the country? Peanuts. A mere fifty million
dollars or so from America. And Haiti is only a few hundred miles from
America's own shores. Haiti also has a very large population here in the
US and they got virtually nothing. Yet when I point this out to people
in DC, and suggest that pouring money into the Middle East when
countries close to America's shores and within America's old sphere of
influence are suffering so badly, they often become furious. There is
this strange moral bubble, it seems, and of course it is particularly
bad in Washington, but then again, outside Washington and the
universities, nobody thinks about these issues at all!
You end your recent article in The Nation with the
following quote from Arnold Toynbee: "Great empires do not die by
murder, but suicide." Is that the present trajectory of the United
States?
I must state very strongly that in principle, and when thinking of
the historical alternatives, I do not want the American empire to end. I
have never been against a moderate, civilized and rational version of
American hegemony. I certainly would not want to replace it with Chinese
hegemony!
But it is easy to see how a combination of different events could
bring American hegemony down over the next generation. America at
present has no serious strategy for the Middle East. It has a series of
ad hoc strategies for dealing with bits of the terrorist
threat, and for trying to contain Iran, and manage Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia. It does not however have anything approaching a general
strategy. If America continues to infuriate more and more Muslims, if
then there is either a revolution elsewhere in the Middle East or a
terrorist attack on the American mainland again, then it is very easy to
see America lashing out in a way which will not only spread chaos and
instability still further, but will lead to a complete breakdown of the
alliance with Europe.
If America gets involved in another major war of occupation, then
conscription will be back. When conscription comes back, Americans will
come out on to the streets and start demanding answers: maybe even about
energy saving and about the relationship with Israel.
Even given the profound weaknesses of America's strategy and position
in the Middle East, however, the American empire has immense underlying
strengths. In the Far East, for example, as long as the US does not
grossly overplay its hand, most of the East Asian states actually want
America to stay there as a balancer against China. In Europe, East
Europeans in particular are anxious for the US to remain strongly
present, whether out of continued fear of Russia or resentment at French
and German domination. In Central America and the Caribbean, the US will
always be predominant through sheer force of economic and military
might.
But if the Bush administration were feeling suicidal, and were
actually in the mood to throw itself over a cliff, like the Hapsburgs in
1914, there are a number of ways it could do that. It could invade Iran,
that would do it very quickly. Or it could invade Saudi Arabia. Or it
could support Taiwanese independence. I don't believe they will actually
do any of those things. Unfortunately, one can much more easily imagine
the Bush administration doing something like bombing Iran, which would
not lead to immediate disaster but which could begin a spiral of
retaliation leading ultimately to catastrophic conflict.
It has become increasingly clear that world oil reserves are
depleting and their exhaustion is within sight. In addition, global oil
and energy resources have formally been a "national-security" concern of
the United States since Carter. How, and to what extent, will the
geopolitics of oil determine US foreign policy in the coming decade?
To a great extent, they already do. One has seen the tremendous
attempt to build up the Caspian as an alternative to the Persian Gulf as
a source of oil. But the striking thing is that this has to a great
extent failed. It has failed both because there is not enough oil in the
Caspian really to compete with the Persian Gulf but also because there
are other buyers: a great deal of that oil will go east to China and
even to Japan. If the Chinese economy continues to grow, it is likely
that oil prices will rise and rise - until, perhaps, environmental
disaster destroys the present world economy and forces the world to
limit its consumption.
So America's presence in the Middle East is of course not just about
Israel. A tremendous amount of it is about oil - and not just the
interests of the oil companies, but genuinely, in the view of many
Americans, the preservation of the American way of life. It
will be interesting if one sees serious instability in several of the
major oil-producers simultaneously. If there were major instability in
the Persian Gulf and some kind of meltdown in Nigeria, which is
entirely possible, and in a very different way of course
serious instability in Venezuela, then there is the possibility that
somewhere at least America would intervene with its own troops on the
ground to guarantee its oil supplies. Then once again we will be
confronted with the whole question of whether America has enough troops,
what this will lead to, etc. In some places in Africa American
intervention could be presented as a peacekeeping operation, and indeed
could even have genuine elements of that.
I am not saying that any of this will happen, but the geopolitics of
oil will be absolutely central to America's global strategy in the years
to come. Of course what I would like to see would be an approach to the
same issue from the other end which is simply to reduce America's
dependence on oil. This has been one of the very worst things that Bush
has done, or rather not done: his complete failure to use 9/11
to make an argument for decreasing America's reliance on oil. Instead we
have just seen American consumption going up and up. There is a strong
possibility in future that just as in Iraq, America could again be drawn
into occupying a country (or countries) in a way that would be perceived
by the rest of the world as just about keeping its grip on oil supplies.
The thing that might discourage a US administration from this however is
that as Iraq has demonstrated, there is nothing easier to blow up than
an oil pipeline.
Such a contingency has been widely discussed in the case of Saudi
Arabia. If the US were to occupy other countries in order to secure its
oil supplies, then every suspicion of the rest of the world concerning
the US and its motives for the invasion of Iraq would essentially be
confirmed. The US would begin to shed its last elements of true
international idealism. It would become much more like a classical
empire preoccupied with seizing raw materials and controlling them,
irrespective of the wishes or the well-being of the populations
concerned. In this case, America's ancient and very positive role as a
beacon of democracy and progress for mankind would be destroyed. We
should all pray, therefore, that this does not happen.
Interview conducted by Nermeen Shaikh of AsiaSource
Bowles: Exactly. Or if you look at the emergence of ethnic nationalism in the
former Soviet Union, I spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union when it was still
the Soviet Union, traveling, and I was astounded at the speed with which these
ethnic hostilities emerged during that period. And it's also true that you can
have a transformation of attitudes, for example, as it's going on right now
about the question of race in America where people of European descent are
markedly less racially prejudiced than they were when I was growing up.
The comments on this story tell a sorry tale: each one eager to invoke the Marshall Plan as a grand sign of U.S. largesse toward Europe, but apparently having forgotten that that's the kind of thing that we did fifty years ago under a Democratic administration. Today, we have spent more money destroying Iraq than we spent during the ENTIRE Marshall Plan, even after having adjusted for inflation -- and instead of winning the goodwill of the Europe and the whole world as we did then, we have alienated everyone. Silly people, the Archbishop isn't some kind of lone left-wing voice shouting into the wind; it is you who are the tiny reactionary minority who still imagine that there is something good to be said about George Bush's debacle in Iraq.
David Cunningham, Holland, Michigan
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How predicatable and how utterly depressing. Dr. Williams must live in a parallel universe. There are malign, despotic, corrupt regimes aplenty and he can only criticise the US. It is infantile, lefty student hogwash. Williams and his ilk have never, ever, levelled the same public damnation on a single crackpot or dispicable left wing regime. And he would certainly not want to offend the Islamists ( or whatever it is we are permitted to call them these days) who would have us all dead. No, far easier to blame the world's woes on the Americans. After all they are not likely to take such offence that it would demand they decapitate you in public. This joker certainly doesn't speak for the whole of Britain.
tony, london, uk
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What the Archbishop says is findamentally true. Of course we need the USA strength along side our other allies in Europe and around the world, but we should all be singing from the same hymn sheet, not pressing ahead with our own adgendas and motives. Have we leant nothing from the past?
The Archbishop is right to mock the "God is on our side" notion of the US. God in whichever religion you care to name, is always there. How well do the American people know the beliefs and aspirations of the average Muslim, or of the average Hindu, Sikh, Buddist?
American policy reminds me of an Engishman abroad, shouting at the French cafe owner to make himself understood, without the slightest thought of trying to speak a word of French. If he doesn't understand, shout louder and then hit him to get your point over.
Simon Cotton, West Mersea, Essex
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The United States is behaving like the Soviet Union did before: it is intervening in other countries in an imperialistic way, at the same time accusing them of being "imperialists" or "racists", i.e. it is using basically Marxist rhetoric (presently called "political correctness") in order to undermine countries it views as competitors. Hence the dismantling of Yugoslavia, the support of Bosnian Muslim, Kosovo Albanian and Chechen terrorists, as wel as the "liberation" of Iraq (that is, from 655,000 inhabitants).
Arthur Rambler, Yushnokurilsk, Russia
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As an american i am deeply ashamed of the current administration. As a democracy, we asked for what we got by not voting the right way. I dislike though his reference on islam being a good belief system. Its a very violent religion calling for holy wars. Makes the catholic inquistion look like a field day in the park. As to our manufacturing muscle during world war 2, it was not an easy taski getting our industry into a war effort. Also world war 2 ended the US depression.
Philip B Kirschner, Brooklyn,NY, USA
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He has struck a blow against the biggest travesty of Christianity in recent times -- the hijacking of its language for the nefarious purposes of American imperialism. The naivety and genuine innocence of many of the American responses on this thread show how deep is the enthrallment of Americans to this idol. The adhominem attacks on the speaker, his church and Christianity itself actually suggest to me that all three are more relevant that is sometimes imagined. The Gospel was surely never more verified nor more clearly needed than in these times where the largest allegedly Christian nation is openly justifying torture and fomenting war. To most Europeans the Archbishop will seem to be pointing out the obvious, though they may be happy that a churchman says it, and to most Americans he will seem to be gratuitously insulting their country. The divide of perception here is vast -- vaster than that between Sunni and Shiite!
Joseph S. O'Leary, Tokyo, Japan