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Ed wrote: A good book on neo-con origins, connections and rise to power is
"America Alone" by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, Cambridge, 2004. Here is more ‘backstory’ history about the neoconservative movement,
possibly in decline, unless you consider the steps taken to assure permanency. Interesting and provocative commentary,
although motive is only implied. Much like the arguments about the pros and cons of globalization, if
one ignores the enduring bond of local culture and community, the advances of
technology will be exploited and/or fail. Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on
America's neocons Richard Drayton, The Guardian UK, Wednesday, December 28,
2005 The tragic irony of the 21st century is that
just as faith in technology collapsed on the world's stock markets in 2000, it
came to power in the White House and Pentagon. For the Project for a New
American Century's ambition of "full-spectrum dominance" - in which
its country could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major-theatre
wars" - was a monster borne up by the high tide of techno euphoria of the
1990s. Ex-hippies talked of a wired age of Aquarius. The fall of the Berlin wall
and the rise of the internet, we were told, had ushered in Adam Smith's dream
of overflowing abundance, expanding liberty and perpetual peace. Fukuyama
speculated that history was over, leaving us just to hoard and spend.
Technology meant a new paradigm of constant growth without inflation or
recession. But darker dreams
surfaced in America's military universities. The theorists of the
"revolution in military affairs" predicted that technology would lead
to easy and perpetual US dominance of the world. Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters advised on "future warfare" at
the Army War College - prophesying in 1997 a coming "age of constant
conflict". Thomas
Barnett
at the Naval War College assisted Vice-Admiral Cebrowski in developing "network-centric
warfare". General
John Jumper
of the air force predicted a planet easily mastered from air and space.
American forces would win everywhere because they enjoyed what was unashamedly
called the "God's-eye" view of satellites and GPS: the "global
information grid". This
hegemony would be welcomed as the cutting edge of human progress. Or at worst,
the military geeks candidly explained, US power would simply terrify others
into submitting to the stars and stripes. Shock and Awe:
Achieving Rapid Dominance -
a key strategic document published in 1996 - aimed to understand how to destroy
the "will to resist before, during and after battle". For Harlan Ullman of the National Defence University, its main
author, the perfect example was the atom bomb at Hiroshima. But with or without
such a weapon, one could create an illusion of unending strength and
ruthlessness. Or one could deprive an enemy of the ability to communicate,
observe and interact - a macro version of the sensory deprivation used on
individuals - so as to create a "feeling of impotence". And one must
always inflict brutal reprisals against those who resist. An alternative was
the "decay and default" model, whereby a nation's will to resist
collapsed through the "imposition of social breakdown". All of this came to be
applied in Iraq in 2003, and not merely in the March bombardment called
"shock and awe". It has been usual to explain the chaos and looting
in Baghdad, the destruction of infrastructure, ministries, museums and the
national library and archives, as caused by a failure of Rumsfeld's planning.
But the evidence
is this was at least in part a mask for the destruction of the collective
memory and modern state of a key Arab nation, and the manufacture of disorder
to create a hunger for the occupier's supervision. As the Süddeutsche
Zeitung reported in May 2003, US troops broke the locks of museums,
ministries and universities and told looters: "Go in Ali Baba, it's all
yours!" For the American
imperial strategists invested deeply in the belief that through spreading
terror they could take power. Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard
Perle and the recently indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, learned from Leo Strauss that a strong and wise minority of humans had
to rule over the weak majority through deception and fear, rather than
persuasion or compromise. They read Le Bon
and Freud on the relationship of crowds to authority. But most of all they
loved Hobbes's
Leviathan.
While Hobbes saw authority as free men's chosen solution to the imperfections
of anarchy, his 21st century heirs seek to create the fear that led to
submission. And technology would make it possible and beautiful. On the logo of the
Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, the motto is Scientia est potentia - knowledge is power
. The IAO promised "total information awareness", an all-seeing eye
spilling out a death-ray gaze over Eurasia. Congressional pressure led the IAO
to close, but technospeak, half-digested political theory and megalomania still
riddle US thinking. Barnett, in The Pentagon's New Map and Blueprint for Action, calls for a "systems
administrator" force to be dispatched with the military, to
"process" conquered countries. The G8 and a few others are the
"Kantian core", writes Barnett, warming over the former Blair adviser
Robert Cooper's poisonous guff from 2002; their job is to export their economy
and politics by force to the unlucky "Hobbesian gap". Imperialism is imagined as an industrial
technique to remake societies and cultures, with technology giving sanction to
those who intervene. The Afghanistan war of
2001 taught the wrong lessons. The US assumed this was the model of how a
small, special forces-dominated campaign, using local proxies and calling in
gunships or airstrikes, would sweep away opposition. But all Afghanistan showed
was how an outside power could intervene in a finely balanced civil war. The
one-eyed Mullah Omar's great escape on his motorbike was a warning that the
God's-eye view can miss the human detail. The problem for the US
today is that Leviathan has shot his wad. Iraq revealed the hubris of the
imperial geostrategy. One small nation can tie down a superpower. Air and space
supremacy do not give command on the ground. People can't be terrorised into
identification with America. The US has proved able to destroy massively - but
not create, or even control. Afghanistan and Iraq lie in ruins, yet the
occupiers cower behind concrete mountains. The spin machine is on
full tilt to represent Iraq as a success. Peters, in New Glory: Expanding America's Supremacy, asserts: "Our country is a force
for good without precedent"; and Barnett, in Blueprint, says: "The US military is a force for
global good that ... has no equal." Both offer ambitious plans for how the
US is going to remake the third world in its image. There is a violent hysteria
to the boasts. The narcissism of a decade earlier has given way to an extrovert
rage at those who have resisted America's will since 2001. Both urge utter
ruthlessness in crushing resistance. In November 2004, Peters told Fox News
that in Falluja "the best outcome, frankly, is if they're all
killed". But he directs his
real fury at France and Germany: "A haggard Circe, Europe dulled our
senses and fooled us into believing in her attractions. But the dugs are dry in
Germany and France. They deluded us into prolonging the affair long after our
attentions should have turned to ... India, South Africa, Brazil." While a good Kleinian
therapist may be able to help Peters work through his weaning trauma, only
America can cure its post 9/11 mixture of paranoia and megalomania. But Britain
- and other allied states - can help. The US needs to discover, like a child
that does not know its limits, that there is a world outside its body and
desires, beyond even the reach of its toys, that suffers too. Dr Richard Drayton, a senior lecturer in history at
Cambridge University, is the author of Nature's Government, a study of science,
technology and imperialism http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1674403,00.html |
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