Commentary No. 111, Apr. 15, 2003
"Shock and Awe?"
The U.S. hawks promised us "shock and awe." Have they accomplished it? They think so. But whom were they supposed to shock and awe? Most immediately, the Iraqi regime and its internal supporters. The U.S. did win the war militarily quite rapidly, and those of us (many military figures, but also me) who had predicted that a long difficult war was the greater possibility were proven wrong. The relatively quick victory does however, it should be said, undo the argument of the hawks that the Iraqi regime posed a serious military threat to anyone.
Does it follow that those of us who thought the war a folly were wrong on everything else? I don't think so. In my Foreign Policy article (July/August 2002), I opened with the following sentences: "The United States in decline? Few people today would believe the assertion. The only ones who do are the U.S. hawks, who argue vociferously for policies to reverse the decline." The hawks now think they have succeeded in doing this. They are awash with inflated self-confidence. They seem to have adopted Napoleon's motto, "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace." It worked for Napoleon - for a while.
They didn't even wait for the end of the fighting to begin a campaign against Syria - chosen in part because it doesn't have a policy friendly to the U.S., plays a key role in the Middle East, and is militarily virtually helpless. Not having found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (at least to date), the U.S. government is now suggesting that they are to be found in Syria. Rumsfeld has designated it a "rogue state." President Bush has some simple advice to the Syrians: They should cooperate with the U.S.
Having moved on from Afghanistan to Iraq without achieving anything there other than the overthrow of the previous regime and turning over power to a series of local warlords, will the U.S. now do the same in Iraq, moving on to elsewhere? Quite possibly. And if Syria is next, what comes after Syria? Palestine and Saudi Arabia, or North Korea and Iran? No doubt fierce debates about priorities are going on right now in the inner councils of the U.S. regime. But that the U.S. will now move on to further military threats seems not to be in question. The regime seems to be sure that they have (and ought to have) the world's future in their hands, and they have exhibited not the least sign of humility about the wisdom of their course of action. After all, how many troops does the Pope have, as Stalin famously said?
Still, one should look at the priorities they seem to have established. Number one seems to be reconfiguring the Middle East. This includes three key elements: eliminating hostile regimes, undermining the power (and perhaps the territorial integrity) of Saudi Arabia, and imposing a solution on the Palestinians by getting them to accept a Bantustan regime. This is why they have immediately raised the issue of Syria as a new "threat" to the security of the United States.
While this Middle Eastern reorganization is going on, the U.S. would, I believe, prefer to freeze the situation in Northeast Asia. Immediate military action is risky, and the hawks hope to use China to persuade the North Koreans not to go further in their nuclear quest. One might think of this as a temporary truce. Such a truce would allow the U.S. hawks time to deal with other matters first, North Korea later when their hands would be freer. For they have no intention of allowing the North Korean regime to survive.
My guess is that priority number two is the home front. The hawks want to shape the U.S. government budget so that it has no room for anything but military expenditures. And they will move on all fronts to cut other expenses - by reducing federal taxes, and privatizing as much of social security and medicare as they can. They also want to limit the expression of opposition - to give them a freer hand to deal with the rest of the world, and to ensure their perpetual hold on power. The immediate issue is making permanent the so-called Patriot Act, which has a clause that causes it to expire in three years. Thus far, the Patriot Act has been used primarily against persons of Arab or Moslem identity. But the federal authorities can be expected steadily to expand its reach. On both these fronts, the 2004 elections are crucial.
Europe is probably priority number three. It seems to the hawks harder to break the back of Europe than that of the Middle East or of the U.S. opposition. So they will probably wait a bit, counting on spreading enough shock and awe so as to weaken fatally the will of the Europeans. In their spare time, the U.S. hawks may ask that troops be sent to Colombia, that the U.S. consider a new invasion of Cuba, and otherwise flex its muscles around the globe.
One must say, the U.S. hawks think big. L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace. In that same Foreign Policy article, I said: "Today, the United States is a superpower that lacks true power, a world leader nobody follows and few respect, and a nation drifting dangerously amidst a global chaos it cannot control." I reaffirm that assessment today, specifically in the light of the U.S. military conquest of Iraq. My view is based on my belief that U.S. decline in the world-system is structural, not conjunctural. It cannot be reversed. To be sure, it can be managed intelligently, but that is precisely what is not happening now.
The structural decline has two essential components. One is economic, and one is political/cultural. The economic component is really quite simple. In terms of basic capabilities - available capital, human skills, research and development - western Europe and Japan/East Asia are at a competitive level with the United States. The U.S. monetary advantage - the dollar as a reserve currency - is receding and will probably disappear entirely soon. The U.S. advantage in the military sphere translates into a long-term disadvantage in the economic sphere, since it diverts capital and innovation away from productive enterprises. When the world-economy begins to revive from its now quite long-term stagnation, it is quite likely that both western European and Japanese/East Asian enterprises will do better than U.S.-based enterprises.
The U.S. has slowed down this creeping economic decline relative to its major competitors for thirty years by political/cultural means. It based its claims to do this on residual legitimacy (as the leader of the free world) and the continuing existence of the Soviet Union. The collapse of the Soviet Union undermined these claims severely and unleashed the growing anarchy of the world-system - "ethnic" wars in the former Soviet zone, civil wars in multiple African states, the two Gulf wars, the expanding cancer of Colombian civil war, and the severe economic recessions in a number of Third World states.
Under Reagan, George Bush father, and Clinton, the U.S. continued to negotiate with western Europe and Japan/East Asia to keep them more or less on the same side in what have been essentially North-South struggles. The hawks under George Bush son have thrown aside this strategy and substituted one of unilateral machismo. The backs of everyone else are up everywhere, and the U.S. victory over Saddam will get them further up, not despite the fact that but precisely because they are so terrified.
On legitimacy, note two things. In March, the United States had to withdraw a resolution from the U.N. Security Council. This was an issue that was really important to the U.S. and in which it invested all its efforts, including repeated telephone calls by George Bush to leaders around the world. It was the first time in 50 years that the U.S. was unable to get a simple 9-vote majority on the Council. This was humiliation.
Secondly, notice the use of the word "imperial." Up to two years ago, to speak of imperialism was the reserve of the world left. All of a sudden, the hawks started to use the term with a positive connotation. And then, western Europeans who were not at all on the left began to use the term, worrying that the U.S. was being imperial. And since the collapse of Saddam Hussein, suddenly the word is found in almost every news story. Imperial(ism) is a delegitimating term, even if hawks think it is clever to use it.
Military power never has been sufficient in the history of the world to maintain supremacy. Legitimacy is essential, at least legitimacy recognized by a significant part of the world. The U.S. hawks have undermined the claim of the U.S. to legitimacy very fundamentally. And thus they have weakened the U.S. irremediably in the geopolitical arena.
by Immanuel Wallerstein
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