Commentary No. 102 - Dec. 1, 2002
"Aciu! Bush Fiddles While Rome Burns"
Aciu is the Lithuanian word for "thank you." This is what the crowd in Vilnius shouted when Pres. Bush addressed them, saying that now that Lithuania had joined NATO, an attack on Lithuania would be considered an attack on the United States. The President was very pleased. He said, thank you. The United States and President Bush are popular in East-Central Europe. This is about the last region of the world, other than Israel, where Pres. Bush can be assured of such a reception today. So Bush bathed in the cheers of this friendly zone. But like Nero, he was fiddling while Rome is burning. The United States is burning, and President Bush seems completely unaware of this. So, unfortunately, do most Americans. Like Nero, Bush is sure that he can do what he wants, and this arrogant naivety makes him blind to the political realities of the world and the nature of the real alternatives any American president has in the twenty-first century. Bush thinks this is the age of the American empire and savors it. The world left does not help clarity in agreeing that this is indeed the age of the American empire, even if they denounce it. A world in political chaos is not an imperial world. And we would all do well to absorb this elementary fact into our consciousness.
The massive misperception of reality will only increase the level of damage and suffering that will be the consequence of the chaos from which no one, least of all the United States, will benefit. Bush is about to lead the United States into a war with Iraq, and he will do so even if the U.N. inspectors find nothing of significance to report. Richard Perle recently told a group of U.K. Labor Party M.P.'s that the fact that U.N. inspectors would find nothing would be politically meaningless, since the U.S. already knows that Saddam Hussein is violating the U.N. resolution and will act on its knowledge. The M.P.'s were said to have been shocked. The groundwork is being laid in the denigration of the U.N. effort. The press is full these days of long explanations by members of the Bush administration and their media acolytes as to why the head of the U.N.'s inspection efforts, Hans Blix, is programmed to find nothing, which therefore means that he and his team can be ignored (and no doubt will be).
The U.S. press is also full of attacks on Saudi Arabia - by members of the U.S. Congress, the press, and pundits - for not having decided to support unreservedly the attack on Iraq (as well as for parallel sins in the past). This is said to be embarrassing for Pres. Bush, who is apparently still hoping to be able to twist the arms of the Saudis into at least passive cooperation with the invasion of Iraq. This political attack on the Saudis however is being orchestrated by the right wing of the right wing, who are seeking not Saudi Arabia's cooperation but Saudi Arabia's destruction. Who knows? They may succeed.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden has not been exactly inactive. There have been two major attacks on Western soft targets - in Bali and in Mombasa - both of which are probably his doing, or that of his allies. And he has released a long letter to the American people, which The Observer (London) published in English on Nov. 24. It doesn't tell us anything new. What is striking about the long letter is its total militancy and its clarity of detail about a whole series of political issues around the globe. It is not illiterate screech. He has made complaints about Israel the centerpiece of this letter, which was not true of his previous letter, but he does not neglect other issues. The United States clearly has an intelligent enemy, who denounces the U.S. repeatedly for its double standards.
In terms of world geopolitics, the world has seen three major national elections in the second half of 2002: Germany, the United States, and Brazil. Yes. Bush won the U.S. but he lost Germany and Brazil. There is a fourth key election coming up very soon - South Korea. That election is now said to be close. A defeat for Bush there would not be a source of joy in the White House. Bush even lost a less important, but still meaningful, election - in Ecuador. There a populist soldier, Col. Lucio Gutiérrez, defeated a super neoliberal opponent. What is significant about this is not merely that the victor's rhetoric was populist, but that Gutiérrez is someone with partially indio ancestry, and he was supported by the strongest federation of indigenous organizations in the Americas, CONAIE. He is a hero of the failed attempt of these same forces to come to power in a coup two years ago (see Commentary No. 33, Feb. 1, 2000). Now he was elected by a clear majority. It is true that Gutiérrez is speaking a cautious language on economic issues, but he will be an ally of Lula and not of Bush in the coming debates on a pan-American free trade zone (FTAA/ALCA). And he will be a voice for compromise and peace in Colombia, a development the Bush administration and the present President of Colombia are doing everything in their power to keep from happening.
Bush faces a difficult war in Iraq; a collapsing facade of pro-American "moderate" regimes in the Middle East; a very uncertain world economy, which will be made worse by the Iraq adventure; populism in the Americas; an ever stronger China combined with a general recalcitrance in Northeast Asia (that is, Japan, South Korea, and China) to support the tough line on North Korea which the Bush administration espouses. But all of this is almost minor in its consequences for the United States in comparison with the determined efforts of the United States to isolate itself from its hitherto closest friends. Bush won't invite the Prime Minister of Canada to his ranch. He remains frigid to the Chancellor of Germany. This is because neither thinks it's a terribly smart idea to invade Iraq. And there are many in the Bush administration who think that Bush's response to their heresy has been much too mild. They argue that these so-called closest allies of the United States are unreliable, foolish, even cowardly, and certainly wrong (about almost everything). They feel that western Europe and Canada should be put in their place. They may soon add Japan and South Korea to the list of schoolboys to reprimand, if necessary punish.
They have written off NATO because they can't count on it to do their bidding. The east-central Europeans may be celebrating their entry into NATO, feeling that they will thereby get closer to the U.S. They will soon learn that the U.S. is in the process of scuttling NATO by making it irrelevant to world politics. But can the United States even survive in today's world, not to speak of do well, without the strong support of those who have been its closest allies in the past fifty years? I doubt it very much. Rome is burning, and Bush is fiddling.
Immanuel Wallerstein
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]
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