Who
Is To Run The World, And How?
By Noam Chomsky
08 June, 2004
Zmag
We
have just passed the first anniversary of the President's declaration
of victory in Iraq. I won't speak about what is happening on the ground.
There is more than enough information about that, and we can draw our
own conclusions. I will just mention one aspect of it: What has happened
to Iraqis? About that, we know little, because it is not investigated.
Some surprise has recently been voiced in the British press about this
gap in our knowledge. That's a misunderstanding. It is quite general
practice. Thus we do not know within millions how many people died in
the course of the US wars in Indochina. Information and concern are
so slight that in the only careful study I have found, the mean estimate
of Vietnamese who died is 100,000, about 5% of the official figure and
probably 2-3% of the actual figure. Virtually no one knows that victims
of the US chemical warfare that began in 1962 are estimated at about
600,000, still dying, or that it was recently discovered that the use
of devastating carcinogens was at twice the announced rate, and at levels
incomparably beyond anything tolerated within the industrial societies
-- all in South Vietnam; the North was spared this particular atrocity.
As a thought experiment,
we might ask how we would react if Germans estimated deaths in the Holocaust
at 2-300,000 and had little knowledge or interest about the modalities
of the slaughter.
There is one exception
to lack of information about casualties in Indochina. There have been
very intensive efforts from the start to reveal, or very often simply
to invent, atrocities that could be attributed to the Khmer Rouge. Post-KR
literature on the topic is substantial, ranging from astonishingly low
estimates of KR crimes in the curious 1980 CIA demographic study, when
evidence had become available about the peaking of atrocities at the
end, to far higher and more credible estimates by serious and extensive
scholarship. One can hardly fail to observe that the single exception
to the rule involves crimes that are doctrinally useful.
Turning to Iraq,
information is as usual slight, but not entirely lacking. A study by
the London-based health organization MEDACT last November, scarcely
mentioned in the US, gave a rough estimate of between 22,000-55,000
Iraqi dead, and also reported rising maternal mortality rates, near
doubling of acute malnutrition, and an increase in water-borne diseases
and vaccine-preventable diseases. "The most important thing that
comes out of [the study] is that the data are not available," Dr.
Victor Sidel commented. He is a noted US health authority, past president
of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and an
adviser to the study. Two months ago, a fact-finding mission by the
Belgian NGO Medical Aid for the Third World found that even the devastating
effects of the US-UK sanctions have not been overcome, including their
veto of medicines, and that infant mortality is apparently increasing
and general health declining because of deteriorating living conditions:
lack of access to food, potable water, or medical aid and hospitals,
and a sharp decline in purchasing power - largely the result of the
remarkable failures of what should have been one of the easiest military
occupations ever. "It has been one of the most extraordinary failures
in history," the veteran British correspondent Patrick Cockburn
observed, quite plausibly.
The best explanation
I have heard was from a high-ranking official of one of the world's
leading humanitarian and relief organizations, who has had extensive
experience in some of the most awful places in the world. After several
frustrating months in Baghdad, he said he had never seen such a combination
of "arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence" -- referring not
to the military, but to the civilians who run the Pentagon. In Iraq
they have succeeded in achieving pretty much what they did in the international
arena: quickly turning the US into the most feared and often hated country
in the world. The latest in-depth polls in Iraq - before the recent
revelations about torture -- found that among Iraqi Arabs, the US is
regarded as an "occupying force" rather than a "liberating
force" by 12 to 1, and increasing. If we count also Kurds, who
have their own distinct aspirations and hopes, the figures are still
overwhelming: 88% of all Iraqis according to one recent poll, also pre-Abu
Ghraib. Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz and associates have even succeeded in turning
the young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, previously a marginal figure, into
the second most popular leader in Iraq, right below Grand Ayatollah
Ali Sistani, with 1/3 of the population "strongly supporting"
him and another third "somewhat supporting" him. Other Western
polls find support for the occupying forces in single digits, and the
same for the Governing Council they appointed.
But I will put Iraq
aside, and turn to the "new imperial grand strategy" that
was to be set in motion with the conquest of Iraq, and the doctrines
and visions that underlie it.
The phrase "new
imperial grand strategy" is not mine. It has a much more interesting
source: the leading establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, the journal
of the Council on Foreign Relations. The invasion of Iraq was virtually
announced in Sept 2002, along with the Bush Administration's National
Security Strategy, which declared the intention to dominate the world
for the indefinite future and to destroy any potential challenge to
US domination. The UN was informed that it could be "relevant"
if it authorized what Washington would do anyway, or else it could become
a debating society, as Administration moderate Colin Powell instructed
them. The invasion of Iraq was to be the first test of the new doctrine
announced in the NSS, "the petri dish in which this experiment
in pre-emptive policy grew," the New York Times reported as the
experiment was declared a grand success a year ago.
The doctrine and
its implementation in Iraq elicited unprecedented protest around the
world, including the foreign policy elite at home. In Foreign Affairs,
the "new imperial grand strategy" was immediately criticized
as a threat to the world and to the US. Elite criticism was remarkably
broad, but on narrow grounds: the principle is not wrong, but the style
and implementation are dangerous, a threat to US interests. The basic
thrust of the criticism was captured by Madeleine Albright, also in
Foreign Affairs. She pointed out that every President has a similar
doctrine, but keeps it in his back pocket, to be used when necessary.
It is a serious error to smash people in face with it, and to implement
it in brazen defiance even of allies, let alone rest of world. That
is simply foolish, another illustration of the dangerous combination
of "arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence."
Albright of course
knew that Clinton had a similar doctrine. As UN Ambassador, she had
reiterated to the Security Council President Clinton's message to them
that the US will act "multilaterally when possible but unilaterally
when necessary." And later as Clinton's Secretary of State, she
surely knew that the White House had spelled out the meaning in messages
to Congress declaring the right to "unilateral use of military
power" to defend vital interests, which include "ensuring
uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources,"
without even the pretexts that Bush and Blair devised. Taken literally,
the Clinton doctrine is more expansive than Bush's NSS, but it was issued
quietly, not in a manner designed to arouse hostility, and the same
was true of its implementation. And as Albright correctly pointed out,
the doctrine has a long tradition in the US - elsewhere as well, including
precedents that one might prefer not to think about.
Despite the precedents,
the new imperial grand strategy was understood to be highly significant.
Henry Kissinger described it as a "revolutionary" doctrine,
which tears to shreds the international order established in the 17th
century Westphalian system, and of course the UN Charter and modern
international law, not worth mentioning. The revolutionary new approach
is correct, Kissinger felt, but he also cautioned about style and implementation.
And he added a crucial qualification: it must not be "universalized."
The right of aggression at will (dropping euphemisms) is to be reserved
to the US, perhaps delegated to selected clients. We must forcefully
reject the most elementary of moral truisms: That we apply to ourselves
the same standards we apply to others.
Others criticized
the doctrine and its first test on sharply different grounds. One was
Arthur Schlesinger, perhaps the most respected living American historian.
As the first bombs fell on Baghdad, he recalled the words of FDR when
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on "a date which will live in infamy."
Now it is Americans who live in infamy, Schlesinger wrote, as their
government follows the course of imperial Japan. He added that Bush
and his planners had succeeded in converting a "global wave of
sympathy" for the US to "a global wave of hatred of American
arrogance and militarism." A year later, it was much worse, international
polls revealed. In the region with the longest experience with US policies,
opposition to Bush reached 87% among the most pro-US elements, Latin
American elites: 98% in Brazil and almost as high in Mexico. Again,
an impressive achievement.
As also anticipated,
the war increased the threat of terror. Middle East specialists who
moniter attitudes in the Muslim world were astonished by the revival
of the appeal of "global jihadi Islam," which had been in
decline. Recruitment for al-Qaeda networks increased. Iraq, which had
no ties to terror before, became a "terrorist haven" (Harvard
terrorism specialist Jessica Stern), also suffering its first suicide
attacks since the 13th century. Suicide attacks for 2003 reached their
highest level in modern times. The year ended with a terror alert in
the US of unprecedented severity.
On the first anniversary
of the war, New York's Grand Central Station was patrolled by heavily-armed
police, a reaction to the Madrid bombing, the worst terrorist crime
in Europe. A few days later, Spain voted out the government that had
gone to war against the will of the overwhelming majority, and by so
doing, had won great praise for its stellar role in the New Europe was
the hope of the future; Western commentators succeeded brilliantly in
"not noticing" that the criterion for membership in New Europe
was willingness to dismiss the popular will and follow orders from Crawford,
Texas. A year later, Spain was bitterly condemned for appeasing terror
by calling for withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq unless they were
under UN authority. Commentators failed to point out that this is essentially
the position of 70% of Americans, who call for the UN to take the lead
in security, economic reconstruction, and working with Iraqis to establish
a democratic government. But such facts are scarcely known, and the
issues are not on the electoral agenda, another illustration of the
reality of "democratic credentials."
There is a curious
performance underway right now among Western commentators, who are solemnly
debating whether the Bush administration downgraded the "war on
terror" in favor of its ambitions in Iraq. The only surprising
aspect of the revelations of former Bush administration officials that
provoked the debate is that anyone finds them surprising - particularly
right now, when it is so clear that by invading Iraq the administration
did just that: knowingly increased the threat of terror to achieve their
goals in Iraq.
But even without
this dramatic demonstration of priorities, the conclusions should be
obvious. From the point of view of government planners, the ranking
of priorities is entirely rational. Terror might kill 1000s of Americans;
that much has been clear since the attempt by US-trained jihadis to
blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. But that is not very important
in comparison with establishing the first secure military bases in a
dependent client state at the heart of the world's major energy reserves
- "a stupendous source of strategic power" and an incomparable
"material prize," as high officials recognized in the 1940s,
if not before. Zbigniew Brzezinski writes that "America's security
role in the region" - in plain English, its military dominance
- "gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European
and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the
region." As Brzezinski knows well, concern that Europe and Asia
might move on an independent course is the core problem of global dominance
today, and has been a prime concern for many years. Fifty years ago,
the leading planner George Kennan observed that control of the stupendous
source of strategic power gives the US "veto power" over what
rivals might do. Thirty years ago, Europe celebrated the Year of Europe,
in recognition of its recovery from wartime destruction. Henry Kissinger
gave a "Year of Europe" address, in which he reminded his
European underlings that their responsibility is to tend to their "regional
responsibilities" within the "overall framework of order"
managed by the US. The problems are more severe today, extending to
the dynamic Northeast Asian region. Control of the Gulf and Central
Asia therefore becomes even more significant. The importance is enhanced
by the expectation that the Gulf will have an even more prominent role
in world energy production in decades to come. US-UK support for vicious
dictatorships in Central Asia, and the jockeying over where pipelines
will go and under whose supervision, are part of the same renewed "great
game."
Why, then, should
there be any surprise that terror should be downgraded in favor of the
invasion of Iraq? Or that Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney and associates were
pressuring the intelligence community to come up with some shreds of
evidence to justify invasion, Blair and Straw as well: Iraqi links to
terror, WMD, anything would do. It is rather striking that as one after
another pretext collapses, and the leadership announces a new one, commentary
follows dutifully along, always conspicuously avoiding the obvious reason,
which is virtually unmentionable. Among Western intellectuals, that
is; not in Iraq. US polls in Baghdad found that a large majority assumed
that the motive for the invasion was to take control of Iraq's resources
and reorganize the Middle East in accord with US interests. It is not
unusual for those at the wrong end of the club to have a clearer understanding
of the world in which they live.
There are plenty
of other current illustrations of the fact, obvious enough to Baghdadis,
that terror is regarded as a minor issue in comparison with ensuring
that the Mideast is properly disciplined. There was a revealing example
just last week, when Bush imposed new sanctions on Syria, implementing
the Syria Accountability Act passed by Congress in December, virtually
a declaration of war unless Syria follows US commands. Syria is on the
official list of states sponsoring terrorism, despite acknowledgment
by the CIA that Syria has not been involved in sponsoring terror for
many years and has been highly cooperative in providing important intelligence
to Washington on al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups, and in
other anti-terrorist actions. The gravity of Washington's concern over
Syria's links to terror was revealed by Clinton ten years ago, when
he offered to remove Syria from the list of states sponsoring terror
if it agreed to US-Israeli peace terms. When Syria insisted on recovering
its conquered territory, it remained on the list. Had it been removed,
that would have been the first time a country was dropped from the list
since 1982, when the present incumbents in Washington, in their Reaganite
phase, removed Saddam from the list so that they could provide him with
a flow of badly needed aid while he carried out his worst atrocities,
joined by Britain and many others - which again tells us something about
the attitude towards terror and state crimes, as does the fact that
Iraq was replaced on the list by Cuba, perhaps in recognition of the
fact that the US terrorist war against Cuba that has been underway since
the Kennedy years had reached a peak of ferocity just then.
None of this, and
much more like it, is supposed to tell us anything about the "war
on terror" that was declared by the Reagan administration in 1981,
quickly becoming a murderous terrorist war, and re-declared with much
the same rhetoric 20 years later.
The implementation
of the Syria Accountability Act, passed near unanimously, deprives the
US of a major source of information about radical Islamist terrorism
in order to achieve the higher goal of establishing in Syria a regime
that will accept US-Israeli demands - not an unusual pattern, though
commentators continually find it surprising no matter how strong the
evidence and regular the pattern, and no matter how rational the choices
in terms of clear and understandable planning priorities.
The Syria Accountability
Act of last December tells us more about state priorities and prevailing
doctrines of the intellectual and moral culture, as international affairs
scholar Steven Zunes points out. Its core demand refers to UN Security
Council Resolution 520, calling for respect for the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of Lebanon, violated by Syria because it still
retains in Lebanon forces that were welcomed there by the US and Israel
in 1976 when their task was to carry out massacres of Palestinians.
Overlooked by the congressional legislation, and news reporting and
commentary, is the fact that Resolution 520, passed in 1982, was explicitly
directed against Israel, not Syria, and also the fact that while Israel
violated this and other Security Council resolutions regarding Lebanon
for 22 years, there was no call for any sanctions against Israel or
for reduction in the huge unconditional military and economic aid to
Israel. The silence for 22 years includes those who now signed the Act
condemning Syria for its violation of the Security Council resolution
ordering Israel to leave Lebanon. The principle is very clear, Zunes
writes: "Lebanese sovereignty must be defended only if the occupying
army is from a country the United States opposes, but is dispensable
if the country is a US ally." The principle applies quite broadly
in various manifestations, not only in the US of course.
A side observation:
by 2-1, the US population favors an Israel Accountability Act, holding
Israel accountable for development of WMD and human rights abuses in
the occupied territories. That, however, is not on the agenda, or apparently
even reported.
There are many other
illustrations of the clear but imperceptible priorities. To mention
one, the Treasury Department has a bureau (OFAC, Office of Foreign Assets
Control) that is assigned the task of investigating suspicious financial
transfers, a crucial component of the "war on terror." OFAC
has 120 employees. A few weeks ago, OFAC informed Congress that four
are dedicated to tracking the finances of Osama bin Laden and Saddam
Hussein, while almost two dozen are dedicated to enforcing the embargo
against Cuba - incidentally, declared illegal by every relevant international
organization, even the usually compliant Organization of American States.
From 1990 to 2003, OFAC informed Congress, there were 93 terrorism-related
investigations with $9000 in fines; and 11,000 Cuba-related investigations
with $8 million in fines. No interest was aroused among those now pondering
the puzzling question of whether the Bush administration -- and its
predecessors -- downgraded the war on terror in favor of other priorities.
Why should the Treasury
Department devote vastly more energy to strangling Cuba than to the
war on terror? The US is a uniquely open society; we therefore have
quite a lot of information about state planning. The basic reasons were
explained in secret documents 40 years ago, when the Kennedy administration
sought to bring "the terrors of the earth" to Cuba, as Arthur
Schlesinger recounted in his biography of Robert Kennedy, who ran the
terror operations as his highest priority. State Department planners
warned that the "very existence" of the Castro regime is "successful
defiance" of US policies going back 150 years, to the Monroe Doctrine;
no Russians, but intolerable defiance of the master of the hemisphere.
Furthermore, this successful defiance encourages others, who might be
infected by the "Castro idea of taking matters into their own hands,"
Schlesinger had warned incoming President Kennedy, summarizing the report
of the President's Latin American mission. These dangers are particularly
grave, Schlesinger elaborated, when "the distribution of land and
other forms of national wealth greatly favors the propertied classes
and the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of
the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent living."
The whole system of domination might unravel if the idea of taking matters
into one's own hands spreads its evil tentacles.
Successful defiance
remains intolerable, ranked far higher as a priority than combating
terror, just another illustration of principles that are well-established,
internally rational, clear enough to the victims, but not perceptible
to the agents. The clamor about revelations of Bush administration priorities,
and the current 9-11 hearings in Washington, are just further illustrations
of this curious inability to perceive the obvious, even to entertain
it as a possibility.
Turning to terror,
there is a broad consensus among specialists on how to reduce the threat
- keeping now to the subcategory that is doctrinally admissible: their
terror against us - and also on how to incite further terrorist atrocities,
which sooner or later may become truly horrendous. It is just a matter
of time before terror and WMD are linked, as has been anticipated in
technical literature well before 9/11.
The Iraq invasion
is typical: violence quite commonly incites a violent response. Serious
investigations of al-Qaeda and bin Laden reveal that they were virtually
unknown until Clinton bombed Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998. The bombings
led to a sharp increase in support, recruitment, and financing for networks
of the al-Qaeda type (al-Qaeda is not really an organization), turned
bin Laden into a major figure, and forged closer relations between bin
Laden and the Taliban, previously cool or hostile.
We can, if we like,
learn something more about Western civilization by the reaction to the
bombing in Sudan, which led to tens of thousands of deaths according
to the few credible estimates, a humanitarian catastrophe that was predicted
at once by the director of Human Rights Watch. As usual, investigation
is sparse, and interest non-existent. The reaction might be different
if a terrorist attack destroyed the major source of pharmaceutical supplies
in the US, England, Israel, or some other place that matters - which
would have been far less serious, since supplies could easily be replenished
in a rich country. That is not at all unusual. Again, those at wrong
end of the clubs tend to see world rather differently, arousing fury
among the guardians of civilized values.
After Clinton's
bombings in 1998, the next major contribution to the growth of al-Qaeda
and the prominence of bin Laden was the bombing of Afghanistan, with
no credible pretext, as later quietly conceded. That led to a sharp
increase in recruitment and enthusiasm for "the cosmic struggle
between good and evil," the rhetoric shared by bin Laden and President
Bush's speech-writers (I presume bin Laden writes his own orations).
I have been virtually
paraphrasing the most careful and detailed study of al-Qaeda, the very
important book by British journalist Jason Burke. Reviewing many examples,
he concludes that that "Every use of force is another small victory
for bin Laden." The general conclusion is widely shared: among
others, by former heads of Israeli military intelligence and the General
Security Services (Shabak), in their own context.
There are new illustrations
almost daily. The raising of Moqtada al-Sadr to prominence is an illustration.
A still more instructive one is the recent horrors in Fallujah. The
Marine invasion, killing 100s, was a reaction to the murder of four
American security contractors. Responsibility for those brutal murders
was claimed by a new organization calling itself "Brigades of Martyr
Ahmed Yassin." They were avenging the murder of the quadriplegic
cleric Sheikh Yassin, along with half a dozen bystanders, as he left
a Mosque in Gaza a week earlier. That was reported as an Israeli assassination,
but inaccurately. Sheikh Yassin was killed by a US helicopter, flown
by an Israeli pilot. Israel does not produce helicopters. The US sends
them with the understanding that they will be used for such purposes,
not defense, as they have been, regularly. Some of the circumstances,
well documented but systematically evaded, are quite remarkable. In
the preceding 6 months, "targeted assassinations" had killed
about 50 suspects and 80-90 passersby. None of this enter the annals
of state terrorism, by virtue of agency: the US is exempt from any such
charge, by definition, and its clients inherit the immunity, particularly
in joint actions. A crucial condition of the intellectual and moral
culture is that the powerful are granted the right to make the rules.
These are important principles of world order, rather as in the Mafia,
to which the international order has more than a passing resemblance.
Tracing the chain
of violence in this case, we find that it leads directly from the US-Israeli
assassination of Sheikh Yassin to the conflagration in Iraq. That was
known right away, but was virtually silenced in media; in the US at
least, where media coverage is carefully studied.
Apologists for state
terror will object that the chain of violence does not begin with the
Yassin assassination. True, but irrelevant. And tracing the chain beyond
yields even uglier conclusions.
There is also a
broad specialist consensus on how to reduce threat of terror. It is
two-pronged. Terrorists see themselves as a vanguard, seeking to mobilize
others, welcoming a violent reaction that will serve their cause. The
proper reaction to criminal acts is police work, which has been quite
successful: in Europe, South and Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. Much
more important is the broad constituency whom the terrorists seek to
mobilize, people who may hate and fear them, but nevertheless see them
as fighting for cause that is right and just. Here the proper response
is to pay attention to their grievances, which are often legitimate
and should be addressed irrespective of any connection to terror.
There are many illustrations.
England and Northern Ireland, to take a recent case. As long as London's
response to IRA terror was violence, terror and support for it increased.
When, finally, some attention began to be paid to legitimate grievances,
it declined. Belfast is not utopia, but it is a far better place than
it was a decade ago. Incidentally, IRA terror was funded in the US,
right where I live in fact. FBI counterterror experts were aware of
this, but did not interfere, and believe that it would not have been
possible to do so, though now such measures are demanded of Saudi Arabia,
and are apparently being carried out with some success. As usual, "possibility"
depends on whose ox is being gored.
Violence can succeed.
There are many examples of that too. The fate of the indigenous population
of the US is a dramatic example - also ignored or denied, often in startling
ways, a typical reaction to one's own crimes.
Violence can succeed,
but at tremendous cost. It can also provoke greater violence in response,
and often does. Inciting terror is not the most ominous current example.
Two months ago,
Russia carried out its largest military exercises in two decades, displaying
new and more sophisticated WMD, targeting the US. Russian political
and military leaders made it clear that this was a direct response to
Bush administration actions and programs, exactly as had been predicted.
One prime example that they stressed was US development of low-yield
nuclear weapons - "bunker busters," so-called. Russian strategic
analysts know as well as their American counterparts that these weapons
can target command bunkers hidden in mountains that control Russian
nuclear arsenals. Washington's insistence on using space for offensive
military purposes is another major concern.
US analysts suspect
that Russia is duplicating US development of a hypersonic Cruise Vehicle,
which can orbit the earth and re-enter the atmosphere suddenly, launching
devastating attacks anywhere without warning. US analysts also estimate
that Russian military expenditures may have tripled in the Bush-Putin
years.
Russia has adopted
the Bush doctrine of "preemptive attack" - meaning aggression
at will - the "revolutionary" new doctrine that impressed
Kissinger. They are also relying on automated response systems, which,
in the past, have come within minutes of launching a nuclear strike,
barely aborted by human intervention. By now the systems have deteriorated,
with the collapse of the Russian economy under the market fanaticism
of the last years.
US systems allow
3 minutes for human judgment after computers warn of a missile attack
- reported to be a daily occurrence. Then comes a 30 second presidential
briefing. Pentagon analysts have found serious design flaws in computer
security systems, which could allow terrorist hackers to break in and
simulate a launch. It is "an accident waiting to happen,"
one leading US strategic analyst warns - Bruce Blair, head of Center
for Defense Information. Russian systems are far less reliable.
The dangers are
being consciously escalated by the threat and use of violence - and
now we are considering real threats to survival.
The Bush administration
announced that it will deploy the first elements of a missile defense
system in Alaska in the summer of 2004, in time for the presidential
elections. These plans have been criticized because they are obviously
timed for partisan political purposes, use untested technology at huge
expense, and probably won't work. All of that may be correct, but there
is a more serious criticism: the systems might work, or at least look
as though they might work. In the logic of nuclear war, what counts
is perception, not reality, and planners have to make worse case analyses.
It is understood on all sides that "missile defense" is an
offensive weapon, which provides freedom for aggression, including a
first nuclear strike. That is pretty much agreed by US analysts and
potential targets, who even use the same words: a missile defense system
is not just "a shield," but also "a sword."
Recently released
documents reveal how the US reacted to a small ABM system deployed around
Moscow in 1968. The US at once targeted the system and radar installations
with nuclear weapons. Current US plans are expected to provoke a similar
Russian response, though now it is all on a much larger scale. China
is expected to react the same way, maybe even more so, since a missile
defense system would undermine the credibility of its currently very
limited deterrent. That may have a ripple effect: India will react to
expansion of China's offensive strategic weapons, Pakistan to India's
expansion, and perhaps on beyond. Those prospects are discussed and
are of real concern.
Not discussed, in
the US at least, is the threat from West Asia. Israel's nuclear capacities,
supplemented with other WMD, are regarded as "dangerous in the
extreme" by the former head of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM),
Gen. Lee Butler, not only because of the threat they pose but also because
they stimulate proliferation in response. The Bush administration is
now enhancing that threat. Israeli military analysts allege that its
air and armored forces are larger and technologically more advanced
than those of any NATO power (apart from the US), not because this small
country is powerful in itself, but because it serves virtually as an
offshore US military base and high tech center. The US is now sending
Israel over 100 of its most advanced jet bombers, F16I's, advertised
very clearly as capable of flying to Iran and back, and as an updated
version of the F16s that Israel used to bomb Iraq's nuclear reactor
in 1981. It was known at once that the bombed reactor had no real capacity
to produce nuclear weapons. Later evidence from Iraqi scientists who
fled to the West revealed that the Israeli bombing had not retarded
Saddam's nuclear weapons program, but had initiated it, in the familiar
cycle of violence. The Israeli press now also reports (only in Hebrew)
that the US is sending the Israeli air force "`special' weapons."
Iranian intelligence, to whose ears these reports are presumably directed,
are likely to make a worst case analysis, assuming that these may be
nuclear warheads for Israeli bombers. Perhaps these very visible moves
are intended to incite some Iranian action that will be pretext for
an attack, perhaps just to rattle the leadership, contributing to internal
conflict and chaos. Whatever the goal, the likely consequences are not
attractive.
The collapse of
the pretexts for invading Iraq is familiar. But insufficient attention
has been paid to the most important consequence of the collapse of the
Bush-Blair pretexts: lowering the bars for aggression. The need to establish
ties to terror was quietly dropped. More significantly, the Bush administration
- Powell, Rice, and others -- now declare the right to attack a country
even if it has no WMD or programs to develop them, but has the "intent
and ability" to do so. Just about every country has the "ability"
to develop WMD, and intent is in the eye of the beholder. It follows
that virtually anyone is declared to be subject to devastating attack
without pretext.
There is one particle
of (apparent) evidence remaining in support of the invasion: it did
depose Saddam Hussein, an outcome that can be welcomed without hypocrisy
by those who strenuously opposed US-UK support for him through his worst
crimes, including the crushing of the Shi'ite rebellion that might have
overthrown him in 1991, for reasons that were frankly explained in the
national press at the time, but are now kept from the public eye.
The end of Saddam's
rule was one of two welcome "regime changes." The other was
the formal end of the sanctions regime, which killed hundreds of thousands
of people, devastated Iraq's civilian society, strengthened the tyrant,
and compelled the population to rely on him for survival. It is for
these reasons that the respected international diplomats who administered
the UN "oil for food" programs, Denis Halliday and Hans von
Sponeck, resigned in protest over what Halliday called the "genocidal"
sanctions regime. They are the Westerners who knew Iraq best, having
had access to regular information from investigators throughout the
country. Though sanctions were administered by the UN, their cruel and
savage character was dictated by the US and its British subordinate.
Ending this regime is a very positive aspect of the invasion. But that
could have been done without an invasion.
Halliday and von
Sponeck had argued that if sanctions had been re-directed to preventing
weapons programs, then the population of Iraq might well have been able
to send Saddam Hussein to the same fate as other murderous gangsters
supported by the current incumbents in Washington and their British
allies: Ceausescu, Suharto, Marcos, Duvalier, Chun, Mobutu.... - an
impressive list, some of them comparable to Saddam, to which new names
are being added daily by the same Western leaders. If so, both murderous
regimes could have been ended without invasion. Postwar inquiries, such
as those of Washington's Iraq Survey Group headed by David Kay, add
weight to these beliefs by revealing how shaky Saddam's control of the
country was in the last few years.
We may have our
own subjective judgments about the matter, but they are irrelevant.
Unless the population is given the opportunity to overthrow a brutal
tyrant, as they did in the case of other members of the Rogue's Gallery
supported by the US and UK, there is no justification for resort to
outside force to do so. These considerations alone suffice to eliminate
the particle of truth that might support the new doctrines contrived
after the collapse of the official pretexts. There are other reasons
as well, some discussed in the introduction to the 2004 annual report
of Human Rights Watch by executive-director Kenneth Roth.
Returning to the
improved doctrine of invasion without pretext, capabilities to carry
out the plans are being enhanced by new military programs. One major
program, announced shortly after the release of the NSS, is intended
to advance from "control of space" for military purposes -
the Clinton program - to "ownership of space," meaning "instant
engagement anywhere in world." This implementation of the NSS puts
any part of the world at risk of instant destruction, thanks to sophisticated
global surveillance and lethal weaponry in space.
The world's intelligence
agencies can read the AIR FORCE SPACE COMMAND STRATEGIC MASTER PLAN,
from which I've been quoting, as easily as I can. And they will draw
appropriate conclusions, increasing the risk to all of us. We should
recall that history -- including recent history -- offers many examples
of leaders consciously enhancing very serious threats in pursuit of
narrow power interests. By now, however, the stakes are much higher.
The collapse of
the pretexts for invasion led to another new doctrine: the war in Iraq
was inspired by the President's "messianic vision" - as it
is called in the elite liberal media -- to bring democracy to Iraq,
the Middle East, and the world. The President affirmed the vision in
an address last November.
The reaction ranged
from reverential awe to criticism, which praised the "nobility"
and "generosity" of the messianic vision but warned that it
may be beyond our means: too costly, the beneficiaries are too backward,
others may not share our nobility and altruism. That this is the motive
for the invasion is simply presupposed in news reporting and commentary.
The worshipful attitude extends to England, where, for example, the
Economist reports that "America's mission" of turning Iraq
into "an inspiring example [of democracy] to its neighbors"
is facing problems.
It is a useful exercise
to search for evidence that the invasion was inspired by the messianic
vision. One will discover that evidence reduces to the fact that our
leader proclaimed the doctrine, so there can plainly be no question
about veracity - even though we know perfectly well that such professions
of noble intent carry no information because they are entirely predictable,
including the worst monsters. And in this case, unquestioning acceptance
of the "vision" faces an added difficulty: it is necessary
to suppress the fact that the visionary is thereby declaring himself
to be a most impressive liar, since when mobilizing the country for
war the "single question" was whether Iraq would disarm. If
there is an exception to this reaction of blind acceptance in mainstream
reporting and commentary, I haven't found it.
To be more accurate,
I did find one exception. A few days after the President revealed his
messianic vision to much awed acclaim, the Washington Post published
the results of a US-run poll in Baghdad, in which people were asked
why they thought the US invaded Iraq. Some agreed with near-unanimous
articulate opinion among the invaders (including mainstream critics)
that the goal was to bring democracy: 1 percent. Five percent felt that
the goal was to help Iraqis. The opinions of most of the rest I have
already mentioned: the motive dismissed in polite circles as "conspiracy
theory" or some other intellectual equivalent of the four-letter
words used by the less elevated classes.
The results of the
Baghdad poll were in fact more nuanced. About half felt that the US
wanted democracy, but only if it could maintain its influence over the
outcome. In brief, democracy is just fine, in fact preferable if only
to make us feel and look good, but only if you do what we say. Iraqis,
again, know us better than we choose to know ourselves: choose, because
evidence is ample, indeed overwhelming. Just in the past few months
there has been ample evidence on the front pages, concerning noble "democracy
enhancement" efforts in Haiti and El Salvador. Once again, it takes
consider discipline "not to see" that the judgment of Baghdadis
is very accurate in these cases, once again, but there is no time to
run through the details here.
Iraqis, however,
do not have to know American history to draw conclusions about the "messianic
vision" that is driving US-UK policies, so we are instructed. Their
own history suffices. They are well aware that Iraq was created by Britain
with boundaries established to ensure that Britain, not Turkey, would
gain control of the oil of northern Iraq, and that Iraq would be effectively
blocked from the sea by the British-run principality of Kuwait, hence
would be dependent. Iraq was granted "independence," a "constitution,"
etc., but Iraqis did not have to await the release of secret records
to learn that the British intended to impose in Iraq and elsewhere an
"Arab facade" that would allow Britain effectively to rule
behind various "constitutional fictions." Nor did they have
to wait for the declassification of the US-UK records of 1958 to learn
that after Iraq broke out of the Anglo-American condominium, in high-level
joint discussions Britain agreed to give nominal independence to Kuwait
to stem the tide of independent nationalism while reserving the right
"ruthlessly to intervene" if anything went wrong in this pillar
of Britain's economy, while the US reserved the same right for the really
big prizes elsewhere in the Gulf - all publicly available well before
the first Gulf war, and clearly quite relevant to the unfolding events,
but systematically avoided, apart from the margins.
Furthermore, Iraqis
can see what is happening before their eyes.
On the diplomatic
front, the US is constructing the biggest embassy in the world. To underscore
its goals, it appointed as Ambassador John Negroponte, an interesting
choice. The Wall Street Journal described him (accurately) as a "Modern
Proconsul," who learned his craft in Honduras in the 1980s, during
the Reaganite phase of the current incumbents. There he was known as
"the proconsul" as he presided over the second largest embassy
in Latin America and the largest CIA station in the world - doubtless
because Honduras was such a centerpiece of world power. As proconsul,
Negroponte's task was to lie to Congress about state terror in Honduras
so that the flow of military aid would continue in violation of law,
but more importantly, to supervise the bases for the US mercenary army
that was attacking Nicaragua, devastating it, and leading to the US
becoming the only country in the world to have been condemned by the
World Court for international terrorism (technically, "unlawful
use of force"), backed by two Security Council resolutions, which
the US vetoed with Britain politely abstaining, then escalating the
international terrorist attack. So Negroponte is well-qualified to run
the world's largest embassy, and probably, again, its largest CIA station
- all to transfer full sovereignty to Iraqis. Proconsul Negroponte is
replacing the Pentagon's Paul Bremer, whom UN special envoy Lakhdar
Brahimi refers to affectionately as "the dictator" of Iraq.
Iraqis do not have
to read the Wall St. Journal to discover that "Behind the Scenes,
U.S. Tightens Grip on Iraq's Future," staffing Iraqi ministries
with US "advisers" and "hand-picked proxies" while
proconsul Bremer is "quietly building institutions that will give
the U.S. powerful levers for influencing nearly every important decision
the interim government will make," along with edicts "that
effectively take away virtually all the powers once held by several
ministries." Hence after Bush-Blair's "full sovereignty"
is turned over, "the new Iraqi government will have little control
over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be
unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit
U.S. approval"; and crucially, will cede "operational control"
of all Iraqi military forces to US commanders. Just to be on the safe
side, for the largely US-appointed interim administration that replaces
the US-appointed Governing Council, Washington made sure that top military
posts are in the hands of Kurdish commanders, who have good reasons
to support the US military presence. To make doubly sure that Iraqis
don't miss the point and get funny ideas about "taking matters
into their own hands," Negroponte's embassy will remain in a Saddam
palace that is "seen by many Iraqis as a symbol of Iraqi sovereignty."
Investors can feel confident that everything is on track.
To be fair, we should
recognize that the interim government that presents "the opinions
of Iraqis" to the world is not devoid of domestic support. Recent
polls reveal that the prime minister Ayad Allawi has almost 5 percent
support, just below the president, with a 7 percent approval rating.
A current article
by the Diplomatic Editor of the Daily Telegraph has the headline "Handover
still on course." Its last paragraph reports that "A senior
British official put it delicately: `the Iraqi government will be fully
sovereign, but in practice it will not exercise all its sovereign functions'."
Lord Curzon would nod sagely.
Speaking for the
Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz announced that there would be a prolonged US
troop presence and weak Iraqi army -- in order to "nurture democracy."
Wolfowitz is greatly admired by the national liberal press as the visionary
leading the messianic mission to bring democracy. He is the "idealist
in chief" of the administration, according to senior commentator
David Ignatius, former editor of the International Herald Tribune. He
also happens to have a unusually shocking record of visceral hatred
of democracy, which there is no time to review here; easy to discover,
but concealed. Since the idealist in chief declares that the Pentagon
must remain in control to "nurture democracy," it doesn't
matter that according to Western-run polls, Iraqis overwhelmingly want
Iraqis to be in charge of security, as the US command was forced to
accept in Fallujah. Not all, it is true: 7 percent want US forces to
be in control, and 5 percent the US-appointed Governing Council, since
disbanded; not, however, Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi, who had no
detectable support.
None of this is
relevant to the messianic vision.
While watching US
efforts to maintain control through diplomatic and military measures,
Iraqis can also see the modalities imposed by dictator Bremer, in particular,
his decrees opening up industry and banking to effective US takeover
(with Britain presumably thrown a few crumbs), along with a 15% flat
tax that will leave Iraq among the least taxed countries in the world,
eliminating hope for desperately needed social benefits and reconstruction
of infrastructure. The plans were immediately denounced by Iraqi business
representatives, who charged that they would be destroyed, apart from
those who choose to be the local agents of the foreigners who run the
economy. It is a well-established conclusion of economic history that
without economic sovereignty, development is likely to be limited, and
political independence can hardly be more than a shadow.
There may be fewer
problems with Iraqi workers, despite their long tradition of labor militancy.
The occupying army immediately took action to destroy unions, breaking
into offices and arresting leaders, blocking strikes, enforcing Saddam's
brutal anti-labor laws, and handing over concessions to bitterly anti-union
US businesses. Sooner or later the US union bureaucracy and the National
Endowment for Democracy will probably move in to "build democratic
unions," replaying a dismal record that is all too familiar elsewhere.
The economic measures
being imposed are also familiar. They played a large part in creating
today's "Third World" by imperial force, while England and
its offshoots, and the rest of Western Europe, followed a radically
different course, relying on a powerful state and crucial state intervention
in the economy, as they still do - most dramatically the US. The same
is true of Japan, the one part of the South that resisted colonization,
and developed.
It is an open question
whether Iraqis can be coerced into submitting to the "messianic
vision," with nominal sovereignty offered under various "constitutional
fictions." For privileged Europeans and Americans, there is, however,
a much more pertinent question: Will they permit their governments to
"nurture democracy" in the style of "idealist in chief"
Wolfowitz, as throughout the traditional domains of their power and
influence? In part they have given an answer. The steadfast refusal
of Iraqis to accept the traditional "constitutional fictions"
has compelled Washington to yield step by step, with some assistance
from "the second superpower," as the New York Times described
world public opinion after the huge demonstrations of mid-February 2003,
the first time in the history of Europe and its offshoots that mass
protests against a war took place before it had even been officially
launched. That makes a difference. Had the problems of Fallujah, for
example, arisen in the 1960s, they would have been resolved by B-52s
and mass murder operations on the ground. Today, a more civilized society
will not tolerate such measures, providing at least some space for the
traditional victims to act to gain authentic independence. It is even
possible that the Bush administration may have to abandon its original
war plans, well understood by Iraqis, though kept in the shadows in
the societies of the occupiers.
Right at this point
crucial questions arise about the nature of industrial democracy and
its future - extremely important questions. The survival of the species
is at stake, literally. But that is for another time.