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Also on the
subject of conservative political philosophy, may I recommend John Gray’s
comments in the New York Review of Books.
We discussed Robert
Kaplan’s earlier writings on the subject of American imperialism several years
ago, including, I think, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a
Pagan Ethos (2002),
celebrating the uniqueness
of the American military and encouraging America to embrace its destiny as an
imperial power. While agreeing
with some premises of Kaplan’s geopolitical realism, Gray portrays Kaplan as a
military romanticist – often citing Joseph Conrad - whose analysis is off the
mark, particularly using the ‘taming of the frontier’ theme of US history to
justify American deployments around the globe, military outposts like frontier
forts in “Injun country”, a phrase Kaplan cites the special operations soldiers
use while operational ‘in country’. Gray’s review
of Mandebaum’s book is less involved, but direct: although the US is the only
current superpower, to claim it will continue to impact foreign policy from an
unrivaled advantage is to ignore evidence that the West is in decline and the
rise of the Asian nations is not the only challenge on the horizon. Unfortunately, America’s economic engine
depends on Asian fuel, and unless priorities change, like Rome before it, Washington
DC may burn while geopolitical games are played in search of resources and
maintaining a so-called colony-less empire. kwc Excerpts from The Mirage of Empire By John Gray, NYRB, Jan 12 2006 Issue John Gray is
Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. Among his
books are False Dawn: The Delusions of
Global Capitalism, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals,
and Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern.
(January 2006) Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the
Ground
by Robert D. Kaplan The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the
World's Government in the 21st Century by Michael Mandelbaum The truth is that America lacks most of
the attributes that make an imperial power. It has a large number of countries
over which it has varying degrees of influence—sometimes exercised by the
threat of force, more often though a mix of economic sanctions and inducements.
It does not govern any of these countries and it has little political control
over them. Observing that "the American Empire emerged finally as more
implicit than explicit," Kaplan notes that "America's imperium was
without colonies" and goes on to compare it with the Roman and Persian
empires. However, America's
relations with most of the countries in which it stations troops are not
long-term relationships of the kind cultivated by the Romans and the Persians.
America's presence is conditional on the shifting pattern of American interests
and the contingencies of American politics. When any American overseas military
involvement becomes too costly or unpopular it is likely to be abruptly
terminated. As a result of this fact, which is taken as axiomatic in both
Washington and the countries concerned, long-term alliances with local ruling
classes of the kind that enabled empires to endure for centuries in the past
are seldom possible. …containing terrorism—which is supposed to
be at the core of America's global military deployment today —requires
political and economic initiatives implemented over long periods as well as an
ongoing military engagement. The intervention that was mounted by the US and its
allies in Afghanistan aimed to destroy the Taliban regime and in this it
succeeded; but Taliban forces have since regrouped, and Kaplan's elite
"small light and lethal units" have succeeded only in harrying, not
disabling, them. The difficulties faced by US forces in Iraq do not come from
any lack of prowess or firepower. They come from the deep mistrust of much of
the population and the condition of near anarchy that prevails in most of the
country. Overcoming
these obstacles —assuming such a thing to be feasible and necessary—requires a
labor that extends over decades or generations. There are few countries today
with the capacity to sustain such a commitment, and it is manifestly lacking in
the United States where impatience with "nation-building" runs deep. Yet without some such continuing
engagement there cannot be any kind of American Empire. How can there be
imperialism, when there are no imperialists? The
problem is starkly illustrated in Iraq. It has become conventional wisdom that the Bush
administration had no plan for the country in the aftermath of the invasion,
and many of those who criticize the administration's conduct of the war do so
in the belief that better preparation would have enabled the policy of regime
change to succeed.
There can be no doubt that the war was launched without proper forethought, but
it is questionable whether any degree of planning would have equipped American
forces to cope with the anarchy of post-Saddam Iraq. While gross errors in
policy such as the sudden disbanding of the Iraqi army by the chief American
civilian administrator Paul Bremer contributed to the difficulties, the basic problem comes from the fragility
of the state and the inability of American occupying forces to put anything
enduring in its place. The invasion and
occupation of Iraq may not have produced anything resembling a colonial
administration, but it has allowed the expropriation of the country's oil
reserves. There are many in Iraq and elsewhere who see regime change as a
pretext for securing American control over Iraq's natural resources, and while
this may be an oversimplified view it identifies a crucial factor in American
policies. America remains critically dependent on the depleting oil reserves of
the Gulf at a time when demand is rising inexorably in China and India. Faced
with this situation the US has reverted to classical geopolitics. Its forces
are in central Asia, in such countries as Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, to secure
American interests in the current rerun of the Great Game in which it is in
competition with other countries for the region's energy resources. American
forces serve the same strategy in the Gulf. However, it is far
from clear that this exercise in geopolitics can succeed. Because of the
anarchy that prevails in much of the country, multinational companies are
unable to operate in Iraq. Oil production has failed to reach the levels it
achieved under Saddam, and if oil facilities elsewhere in the Gulf come under
persistent attack it may not be possible to ensure their security. The
underlying political reality in the region is pervasive hostility to American
power. As a result of its oil dependency America has committed itself to a
neoimperial strategy of military intervention that can only aggravate that
enmity. It is doubtful whether the US has the capacity to sustain the
indefinite period of war that could result, and more than doubtful that the
task is worth attempting. Toward the end of Imperial Grunts, Kaplan writes: The
American Empire of the early twenty-first century depended upon a tissue of
intangibles that was threatened, rather than invigorated, by the naked use of
power. It is a sagacious observation, but the damage is already
done. As a result of
the Bush administration's intervention in Iraq the dissolution of America's
global hegemony that is an integral part of the process of globalization has
been accelerated, perhaps by a generation. The United States will continue to be pivotal,
but it cannot expect its interests or its values to be accepted as paramount.
We are moving into a world in which peace will depend on concerted action by
several great powers. In these circumstances a revival of realist thinking is
overdue. Global security is not served by launching messianic campaigns to
export democracy. Nor is it advanced by pursuing a mirage of empire, which even
now is melting away. To read in full, and see Notes http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18611 Gray also reviewed Thomas Friedman’s The
World is Flat in Aug. 2005, titled The World is Round http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18154 |
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