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I'll try maroon this time.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 3:53
PM
Subject: Re: Not psychological denial
(was RE: [Futurework] Denial and Deception
At 05:54 26/06/2003 -0400, you
wrote:
<<<<
Status: U
I'm in blue,
below.
Ed
>>>>
I'm not sure whether you are going to
remain in blue when you get this back, but here goes:
(KH)
> America has been virulently anti-imperialist ever
since its earliest years.
> It was reluctant to get into WWI, and just
as reluctant to be involved in
> WWII, and might never have done so
until Pearl Harbour happened. At the
> Bretton Wood monetary talks,
America tried to strip Britain bare of its
> foreign possessions by
withholding support for Keyne's proposals. America
> is the most
insular and parochial of all the countries in the world
> (probably
because until recently it has been one of the most
> self-sufficient).
Only 9% of Americans have foreign visas; even more
> incredibly so have
only 12% of its Senators! Bush has only been out of the
> country
twice! This sort of mind-set doesn't make for imperialism. (In
>
contrast, I'd lay a bet that every single one of our 600-odd MPs have been
> to America at least once and at least half-a-dozen more foreign
countries.)
(EW)
<<<<
Not sure I would agree that America has been all that insular.
Historically, it has been very active in regions that it considers its own
sphere of interest, most notably the Carribean and Central America. And
one mustn't forget its involvement in Korea, Vietnam and Somalia. It's
been more a case of not wanting to get into "someone else's fight" until there
is clear evidence that its interests are at stake.
>>>>
I'd exempt Korea and Vietnam from the general
theme we're discussing -- those were consequences of the Cold war. As regards
the others, yes, America has interfered, but not from imperialist motives, but
for cordon sanitaire reasons (much the same as China has done in its
'supervision' of countries along its southern flank through to
Pakistan).
OK, one does have to distinguish between
Cold War and post-Cold War.
(KH)
> I don't know what Andrew Bacevich's credentials are, but
I would rather lay
> my money on the opinion of Paul Kennedy (in "The
Rise and Fall of the Great
> Powers" and "Preparing for the
Twenty-first Century"). In these books he
> lays down two general
propositions about great powers. One is that while
> they are in their
fastest phase of economic growth they don't worry about
> imperialism
because other countries fall over themselves in offering
> resources to
them. (Britain only went fully imperialist when it was being
> rapidly
overtaken economically by America and Germany.) The other is that
>
once great powers are in economic decline, it is then and only then that
> they start to spend much more on armaments than ever before in order
to
> protect their supplies and trade routes -- and this can continue
for as
> long as two generations after their economic
peak.
(EW)
<<<<
I
read "Preparing for the 21st Century" some years ago and have read parts of
"...Great Powers". Bacevich, as I read him, is not being a theoretical
historian. What he has attempted to do is catalogue American behaviour
and explore why and how it broke out of its insularity to become the dominant
global power. Whether it has reached an apex is a moot point. The
seeds of decline are certainly there in the administration's domestic
policies, and the US had better be careful. Decline is also relative to
something else rising. At this stage of history, this would not seem to
be another nation state (though perhaps Europe) but an increasing ground level
resistance to its foreign adventures (terror, militants killing US
soldiers).
>>>>
Well . . . I'd
suggest that Bacevish is observing what Kennedy has already suggestged -- that
America is really in decline (let's say, its economy as a proportion of the
world's GDP) and is now trying to compensate for its growing (unconscious)
inferiority.
Perhaps. With growth in China, India, and
other "developing" countries, the US share is bound to decline
proportionately. However, I think that if Americans are battling
anything unconsciously, it's fear and paranoia, not inferiority.
(KH)
> Now America doesn't exactly fit Paul Kennedy's
second proposition (mainly
> because, I suggest, because the Cold War
interpolated a temporary hump into
> their armaments spending) but
there are some close similarities. It appears
> now to be increasing
its armaments spending again even though it hasn't any
> particular
enemy. (I doubt very much much whether this would decline in the
>
future even under a Democratic president.*) America now has over 200
>
military bases around the world but they're to protect its various
>
interests, not as the or the outposts of a new empire. America could easily
> be imperialist in the usual sense of the term. For example, it could
take
> over large chunks of South America and/or Africa with scarcely
any
> resistance worth speaking of if it wanted
to.
<<<<
(EW)
According to Bacevich, what the US has attempted to do is make its
military so diversified and so technologically superior that it can accomplish
anything far better than any other power. To a considerable degree, it
has succeeded in this, though it still has problems with guys taking pot shots
at its soldiers. It has also tried to make its military more
efficient. Here, because of inter-service rivalries, it has not
succeeded. The army and the marines duplicate each other. Each
service has its air arm. Etc.
>>>>
Well . . . now you're touching on
military matters. Here we have a situation which is probably novel in the
whole history of warfare where the invasion was so easy by the virtue of
overwhelming technical superiority and yet the occupation is becoming more
difficult by the day and probably impossible within 12 months. The Americans
and the British will only be able to venture forth in tanks. It will be like
Northern Ireland for the past 30 years (where there is still no possible
agreement on an acceptable form of government), only ten times more complex. I
cannot see how the Americans can ever devise any sort of government acceptable
to the Iraqis that doesn't involve either former senior Baathists or the ever
present danger of a takeoever of control by the Shias that would put the women
back into burqas and set the clock back 50 years. The only way that the
Americans could obviate the type of religious control that presently obtains
in Saudi Arabia and Iran (both with constitutions that give primacy to Sharia
law) is if it invaded those countries, too, and instituted some form of Arab
government that would be imposed for 50-100 years until at least one
generation had grown up with and through a decent educational system and were
then capable of operating some sort of reasonably representative
government.
Yes, getting there was easy, being there
may prove impossible, getting out will be extremely difficult. The
Americans simply can't get out. That would be conceding a defeat they
would never recover from. This suggests they're stuck in a terrible
jam.
There is another tremendously intriging situation in the Middle East
and it is this. As you'll know, some immensely large gas and oil contracts
between Saudi Arabia and western oil companies have been negotiated for the
past tow or three years. The Saudi royal family have been eager to sign the
deal, but the Wahhabi clerics have been insisting that the oil companies take
on a great number of other projects as well -in order to soak up part of the
ever-growing number of young unemployed young men in SA. The oil companies
refused to do so and the talks collapsed completely a couple of months
ago.
Now then, you'd think that the same oil companies would fall over
themselves to help the Americans get the Iraqi oilfields back into full
production and also develop the 70-odd untapped oil fields. Not so. The reason
is that the oil authority now being set up by the Americans might be deemed by
a later UN resolution or an international court of law to be illegal. The oil
corporations will have already paid once for the oil they extract; they may be
instructed to re-pay the rightful owners (the Iraqi government). So they may
have to pay twice. So the paradox is that the large oil corporations are
actually on the side of tghe angels.
Bush and Co are in much deeper
water -- or, rather oil -- than they could ever have imagined possible! The
trouble is that they didn't use their imaginations at all and took no notice
of the advikce of the State Department when they thought up their
wheeze.
I agree.
It looks to me that there are
going to be all sorts of internal strife between different parts of the
American government from now onwards. The State Department, the CIA, the FBI,
the Pentagon and the Bush group -- never mind Congress and the American
Supreme Court, never mind the oil corporations or the UN -- all seem to have
their own pronounced views on the matter.
It'll be messy. However, as I've argued before,
US policy in the Middle East may also be unsustainable. It may
simply cost too much and require very large cuts in domestic programs that
Americans will ultimately not stand for. What we may see, in the
next decade, is America bunkered down on its own soil, weapons pointed
outward. The triumph of the isolationists?
(KH)
> But even though America is hardly taking any practical steps
at
> establishing an administration in Iraq, it's going to sit in
Iraq's
> oil-fields with its tanks for a long, long time however! And
it's going to
> keep its Special Forces ringed around Saudi Arabia, and
to maintain large
> forces in Kuwait, too. Of this I'm sure. But it
doesn't want to govern
> them, or lord it over the natives, as imperial
powers did of old -- it's
> merely protecting its oil supplies, that's
all!
(EW)
<<<<
Here I disagree. Bacevich quite persuasively makes the case that
Americans see their way of life and their way of doing things is the best
thing that ever happened to the world. Yes, they want their oil supplies
and the hegemony this brings, but they also want the world, including the
Iraqis and everyone else in the Middle East, to become globalized, peace
loving mutations of themselves. Why people are to stubborn to accept
this is a source of genuine puzzlement to them.
Well, yes. Bacevich is quite right here. The Americans see their form
of democracy as somehow God-given and perfect. I can't speak for the condition
of American government but if it's deteriorating as fast as the British
variety has been in the last few years, then there'll be precious little
that's democratic about it before too long. (Mind you, I cannot see how our
present electoral system can work for very mnuich longer anyway because most
problems are becoming too complex for even political parties to decide about,
never mind the electorate. Some other form of government in which decisions
are taken by expert constituencies -- such as the modern Chinese mandarinate
ystem -- might have to come about.) No governmental system in history survives
forever, and there's no reson why our present form of "democracy" should be
exempt from that rule.
(KH)
> (*When Clinton came over here last
autumn to address a special Labour Party
> convention he told the
delegates that, of course, they must support Bush's
> policy on Iraq.
He didn't say why -- just that "of course" they must
> support him. I
was a bit surprised at the time, but since then I understand
> why
Clinton supported Bush -- because the real reasons are seen to be vital
> for his country's
future.)
(EW)
<<<<
Americans don't have to say why. It simply follows that if it's
American, it's the best thing there is.
<<<<
Well, maybe. But I got the impression that
Blair invited him to the conference to strengthen Blair's credibility as he
was gathering his courage to support Bush. So, although Clinton didn't speak
at length about the possible forthcoming war (that would have been too clumsy)
he sujpported it in a folksy sort of way that went over well with the trad
union section of the conference.
Keith Hudson
Keith
Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
To be continued, though not for the
moment.
Ed
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