The Progressive Response
Volume 7, Number 28
October 17, 2003
The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) as part of its Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. FPIF, a "Think Tank Without Walls," is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." FPIF is joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/, or email <feedback@fpif.org> to share your thoughts with us.
John Gershman, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) (online at www.irc-online.org). He can be contacted at <john@irc-online.org>.
Editor: John Gershman (IRC)
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
A WHIRLWIND TOUR: PRESIDENT BUSH IN ASIA
By John GershmanTHE PROLIFERATION SECURITY INITIATIVE: A CHALLENGE TOO NARROW
By Col. Dan Smith (Ret.)THREADING THE NEEDLE: UN RESOLUTION 1511 AND THE IRAQI OCCUPATION
By Ian WilliamsA FIG LEAF TO COVER OCCUPATION
By Phyllis BennisNEW SYRIA LEGISLATION SHOWS NEOCONS STILL IN CHARGE
By Jim LobeIN AFGHANISTAN, U.S. REPLACES ONE TERRORIST STATE WITH ANOTHER
By Sonali Kolhatkar
II. Outside the U.S.
BAGHDAD'S FUTURE ON TABLE IN MADRID
By Herbert Docena
III. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-takes
A WHIRLWIND TOUR: PRESIDENT
BUSH IN ASIA
By John Gershman
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0310asean.html .)
President George W. Bush's trip to Asia offers an opportunity to reflect on how U.S. policy toward Asia is changing. His trip will bring him to Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Bangkok for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit.
What a Difference a Decade Makes
Most notable, perhaps, is APEC's transformation. Founded by dozen countries in 1989, it has developed into a forum of twenty-one countries that addresses economic issues in the Asia-Pacific region. This diverse group includes the U.S., Canada, China, Taiwan (officially Chinese Taipei), Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, South Korea, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Russia, and Vietnam.
Until 1993, APEC was a relatively quiet forum of ministers, but in that year, with the negotiations to complete the Uruguay Round floundering, President Bill Clinton invited all the heads of state of APEC's member countries to Washington and inaugurated what became the first annual summit, held right after APEC's Ministerial Meeting.
An ambitious vision of regional trade and investment integration was first raised at the 1993 meeting. The Bogor Declaration, adopted in 1994, proclaimed the elimination of all trade and investment barriers by 2010 for APEC's wealthiest countries and by 2020 for its poorest ones. Subsequent meetings led to a refinement of these goals in terms of individual and collective action plans with the actual liberalization commitments.
Subsequent efforts at pursuing liberalization floundered primarily due to opposition from Japan, and some covert resistance from some Southeast Asian countries. Since 1998, liberalization has been on a back burner. The annual meetings since then have been dominated either by regional political events (the Asian crisis in 1998 in Kuala Lumpur and East Timor at the 1999 meeting in Auckland, terrorism in 2001) or more technical issues of economic cooperation. This years' meeting, while noting the various technical activities of APEC and calling for progress in the global trade negotiations at the WTO, will also have a heavy focus on economic-related anti-terrorist measures including airline and container security.
During the Clinton administration, the U.S. used APEC meetings as part of an effort to strengthen momentum for new initiatives under the World Trade Organization. While there will likely be some diplomatic genuflections in this area, the main U.S. push on economics will be in bilateral meetings with Japan and China, pressuring both countries to strengthen their currencies vis á vis the dollar.
More recent developments, such as the expansion of U.S. efforts to negotiate bilateral and regional trade and investment agreements (including with Singapore and Australia), as well as various regional efforts (including an acceleration of the ASEAN Free Trade while China and India are both negotiating separately with ASEAN) have accelerated the possibility of a patchwork of bilateral and regional trade and investment agreements. Even Japan and South Korea, previously opponents of such agreements, have gotten into the act.
(John Gershman <john@irc-online.org> is the codirector of Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (online at www.irc-online.org).)
THE PROLIFERATION SECURITY INITIATIVE:
A CHALLENGE TOO NARROW
By Col. Dan Smith (Ret.)
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new policy report available in full at http://www.fpif.org/papers/prolif2003.html .)
Look for the Bush administration to push its "Proliferation Security Initiative" (PSI) during the president's October trip to Asia. Look for Asian leaders already not on board (only Japan an Australia are participating) to politely agree--and get on with other priorities.
Such a reaction would be consistent with the plethora of "proliferation" challenges confronting the world. Speaking a month after a suicide car bomb destroyed the UN headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 people, Secretary General Kofi Annan, bluntly told the UN General Assembly that the world must come to grips with the multiple instances of proliferation that constitute "the many pressing crises that confront [the world] today."
Given the trauma in Baghdad, Annan spoke first of the need to meet the challenge of terrorists employing conventional and home-made explosives. He named other "proliferation" challenges: the widespread trade in small arms, the growth and stubborn persistence of poverty, the spread of infectious diseases, and increased environmental degradation, all of which are present dangers.
But the Secretary General was not done. As pervasive and compelling as these challenges are, Annan's chief proliferation concern is an idea: that countries would succumb to the temptation to copy the Bush administration's preventive (or "preemptive") war doctrine that the White House implemented when it attacked Iraq in March. Clearly, Annan believes the routine acceptance and use of preventive war is a corruption of the concept of self-defense as contained in Article 51 of the UN Charter. He regards preventive war as an abandonment of containment and deterrence which, during the first half-century of the UN's existence, kept the superpowers from direct conflict and restrained Saddam's activities between the two Gulf wars.
Although the Secretary General did not explicitly do so in this UN speech, he effectively dissected the three strands that constitute the basis of and justification for the U.S. policy of perpetual war. The first two produce "new imminent threats" (or perhaps more accurately, old threats enhanced by new capabilities) through the proliferation of technology--specifically, the potential for terrorists to acquire chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Fearful that a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) will someday be used on its soil, a government may opt to launch a preventive attack (the third strand) on another country where anarchic conditions might allow terrorists to establish a base or whose leaders might someday be complicit in terrorists acquiring WMD.
This third strand is the very antithesis of Annan's call for spending the "time and patience to forge a policy that is collective, coherent, and workable… [regarding] all the many pressing crises that confront us [the UN] today." While the UN has condemned terrorism and committed itself to defeat it, the "war on terror" rubric has become an all too common justification for military actions by governments against non-conforming ethnic, religious, or cultural subgroups among their citizens or even against another country.
While not renouncing preventive war, Washington is constrained in its further use at this time because it simply doesn't have the forces to keep 133,000 personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan and thousands more in Kuwait. Les Brownlee, Acting Secretary of the Army, noted in early October that the U.S. Army had 300,000 soldiers in 117 countries around the globe. And the globe is heating up with Israeli air strikes into Syria (the first since 1973) and Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian declaring "The people of Taiwan firmly believe that there is one country on each side of the straits--one China and one Taiwan" (The Washington Post, October 7, 2003).
Nonetheless, the Bush administration is still obsessed with trying to counter what it regards as the world's most dangerous weapons proliferator: North Korea, a country suspected of having at least two nuclear weapons and known to have intermediate- and long-range missiles.
Since 1987, Washington's main line of defense against such proliferation has been the informal, voluntary Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). Originally consisting of seven countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, U.S.), the regime now boasts 33 countries. It attempts to control the spread of missile and rocket technology that could be used to carry WMD. The weakness of the MTCR is that it is a "supply-side" effort to control a technology that has spread beyond its members. Moreover, some countries that have either acquired or enhanced missile capabilities to the point that their neighbors are concerned, such as is the case with North Korea, have not been invited to join. Nor do MTCR members engage in diplomatic or economic exchanges or otherwise reward countries that might want missile technology--the "demand" side--but forego acquiring it surreptitiously.
That leaves, essentially, inspections, seizures, and other punitive measures. Washington has won agreements to station U.S. inspectors in some overseas ports to examine cargo (especially containers) bound for the U.S. But Washington's apparent preferred remedy for the MTCR's shortfalls in controlling WMD and missile proliferation is embodied in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a still nascent scheme for stopping and searching ships at sea and requiring (or even forcing ) aircraft to land for searches of cargo.
Given that North Korea is the chief U.S. worry, it is instructive that only two of the eleven countries who have agreed to act under the PSI are Asian nations. (The eleven countries forming PSI membership and participating in PSI-related naval "exercises" are Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, UK, and U.S.) Countries have agreed in principle to share intelligence, coordinate activities, and cooperate when suspect vessels are under the flag of any PSI state.
Just how and how many PSI interdictions will occur is uncertain because PSI is not international law and interdiction is not even "common practice" except in the case of unflagged vessels, which are deemed pirates. PSI risks violations of international law (e.g., Law of the Sea Convention), which in general forbids interdicting vessels on the high seas and in international airspace.
For a nation that has always insisted that freedom of the seas is a fundamental part of international law, the PSI runs close to subverting this principle. In fact, the PSI itself may well be seen as constituting an unlawful solution--and thus a very basic and serious challenge to--the multiple challenges of "proliferation."
(Dan Smith <dan@fcnl.org> is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) is a retired U.S. army colonel and Senior Fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.)
THREADING THE NEEDLE: UN RESOLUTION
1511 AND THE IRAQI OCCUPATION
By Ian Williams
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0310res1511.html .)
Well-spun by U.S. and British press handlers, the wire services announced the unanimous passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1511 as a victory for American diplomacy. And so it was, in the sense that a bald man winning a hair brush in a raffle could claim a victory.
The resolution called on the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to return governing authority to the people of that country "as soon as practicable." In addition, the Council urged Member States to contribute to a multinational force in Iraq to maintain security under a unified command until the establishment of a representative government, at which time its mandate would expire. The Security Council will review the requirements and mission of the force within one year.
The Bush administration did finally get their resolution, but the question is, can they do anything with it? The short answer is "not a lot." The White House did not seek this resolution because they felt a need for moral and legal absolution and approbation from the United Nations. It wanted it as a means to four specific goals: to coax more troop contributions from reluctant governments; to coax more cash for Iraqi reconstruction; to coax Kofi Annan to return UN civilian staff to Iraq; and perhaps most of all, reinforced by the previous three, to persuade the bulk of Iraqis that they weren't really occupied at all.
It is highly unlikely to secure any of those goals. On the other hand, it contains so many verbal concessions, and pledges for a rapid transition to Iraqi self-governance, that, even if they are thoroughly hedged in substance, the U.S. has put itself ineluctably on a slippery slope to a more genuinely multilateral approach. The slope is of course helpfully greased with facts on the ground in Iraq, and impending votes on the ground in the U.S.
The key issue for which Russia, France, and Germany had been holding out was a time table for a constitution, elections, and independence, and for the possibility of handing over power before the whole process was finished. They seem to have won the latter point, more as a hypothesis than a promise, and they ended up with a timetable for a timetable. The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) must present a timetable for constitution and elections by December 15th.
(Ian Williams <uswarreport@igc.org> contributes frequently to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) on UN and international affairs.)
A FIG LEAF TO COVER OCCUPATION
By Phyllis Bennis
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://fpif.org/commentary/2003/0310figleaf.html .)
The U.S.-driven UN resolution passed by the Security Council provides only an internationalist fig-leaf for Washington's occupation; the occupation remains illegal and in violation of the UN Charter. The new resolution does nothing to change the fundamental problems of the U.S. occupation of Iraq--its illegitimacy, its unilateralism, and its responsibility for so much destruction in Iraq and for the on-going crisis of violence in the country.
The resolution calls only for a new deadline for the U.S.-selected Iraqi Governing Council to announce its timeline for drafting a constitution and holding elections; it does not set a timeframe for turning Iraqi sovereignty back to Iraq. It does not foresee any central or even significant role for the United Nations. The Council's initial opposition, led by France, Germany, and Russia, largely collapsed in the face of relentless U.S. pressure. But the U.S. "victory" is a pyrrhic one. The new resolution may provide enough cosmetic cover for governments such as Turkey, eager to prove loyalty to Washington, but it will almost certainly not result in other countries sending significant new troop deployments or funds to bolster Washington's occupation.
The U.S. will certainly use the resolution to claim that the war and its occupation of Iraq were sanctioned by the United Nations. The perception that the UN agreed with the U.S. occupation will of course weaken the UN. Many will not recognize the intensity of U.S. pressure and threats that forced the decision, and the position will increase hostility to the global organization in Iraq and elsewhere, making it difficult later (when the U.S. occupation is acknowledged a failure) for the UN to work in Iraq. Further, the Council decision was a slap to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had finally, in the wake of the horrific bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, begun to show some backbone in challenging the U.S.
The U.S. should publicly acknowledge its obligations, under international law and the Geneva Conventions, to fund the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. It should turn over to an Iraqi-run and internationally supervised development fund, the billions of dollars Washington now owes for the actual rehabilitation of Iraq.
The UN General Assembly, as well as individual governments and groups of governments, should be pressured to take up the Iraq question, removing it from the sole control of the Security Council. The Assembly should be urged to condemn pre-emptive war and to call for an immediate end to the U.S.-UK occupation.
(Phyllis Bennis <pbennis@compuserve.com> is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and frequently contributes to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
NEW SYRIA LEGISLATION SHOWS NEOCONS
STILL IN CHARGE
By Jim Lobe
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0310syria.html .)
The neoconservatives in and around the administration of President George W. Bush may be on the defensive with respect to the Iraqi occupation, but recent developments in U.S. policy toward Syria show that they remain firmly in control of the foreign policy agenda in the White House.
Two developments in particular are of note. First, Bush's endorsement of Israel's first attack on Syrian territory in 30 years as "self-defense," and then the approval by the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives of the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003. The bill, which has nearly 300 co-sponsors, accuses Syria of sponsoring terrorism, occupying Lebanon, and seeking weapons of mass destruction and requires the President to impose sanctions on Syria until he certifies that Syria has ceased those activities, although some sanctions may be waived on national security grounds. President Bush has indicated he would sign it; similar legislation was introduced in the Senate in May.
The list of charges in the legislation read remarkably like the list used to justify the invasion of Iraq. While most observers agree that war against Syria in the short term is highly unlikely particularly given the fears of Bush's political handlers that a major new military engagement in the Middle East would only deepen the spectacular plunge since last May in the president's approval ratings the recent developments have served to divert media attention away from Iraq, if only for a brief moment, and move Washington closer to confrontation with a state that Israel has long considered its most steadfast regional foe.
"There's got to be a change in Syria," Wolfowitz said in April, adding that the government was a "strange regime, one of extreme ruthlessness." At the same time, another prominent conservative closely associated with Wolfowitz and Perle, in particular, former CIA director James Woolsey, was widely quoted on television as saying that the "war on terrorism" should be seen as "World War IV" that should include as targets "fascists of Iraq and Syria."
Within this context, Sharon's decision to attack Syria appears designed to shine the spotlight once again on Syria as a key target in the war on terrorism. Coming at a time when the neocons in Washington are on the defensive over their pre-war claims about the dangers posed by Hussein in Iraq and the welcome that U.S. troops were supposed to have been accorded by the Iraqi population, the renewed focus on Syria conveniently changes the subject.
The fact that Bush appears to have endorsed the attack and justified it publicly as self-defense also confirms that Bush sees the strategic relationship with Israel in much the same way as the neocons have long wanted U.S. president to do.
(Jim Lobe <jlobe@starpower.net> is a political analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
IN AFGHANISTAN, U.S. REPLACES ONE
TERRORIST STATE WITH ANOTHER
By Sonali Kolhatkar
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0310afghan.html .)
"If you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists. And the Taliban found out what we meant," U.S. President George W. Bush told military personnel in Fort Stewart, Ga., on Sept. 12.
But now all Afghans have found out what it means, as U.S.-backed warlords keep alive the Taliban's legacy: Two years after the start of U.S. bombing to topple the Taliban, the United States is replacing the former terrorist state with yet another of its own design.
Less than a year away from planned elections in Afghanistan, UN Rapporteur Miloon Kothari accused U.S.-backed Afghan warlords of demolishing homes and grabbing land. Kothari named Afghan Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Education Minister Younis Qanooni as offenders, calling for their removal from office this Sept. 13. In a quick backpedal, however, the head of the UN in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said a day later that Kothari had gone too far in naming ministers.
Still, Kothari's accusation confirms what human rights and political organizations have been repeating for months. The Afghan Human Rights Commission, established by U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai this June, also corroborates the demolishing, calling it a "clear abuse of human rights." The BBC correspondent to Afghanistan said the accusation of bulldozing homes "has hit a nerve among Afghans, tens of thousands of whom are homeless after more than two decades of war. Many have just returned from refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran to find their homes occupied by commanders and their cronies."
But who are Qasim Fahim, Younis Qanooni, and the various other men, distinguished by the title of warlords? Many were commanders in the Northern Alliance opposition to the Taliban. Fahim and Qanooni are both successors to Ahmed Shah Masood, the charismatic warlord hailed by many as the probable future leader of Afghanistan in a post-Taliban nation, had he lived. Masood was the most powerful figure in the Mujahedeen party Jamiat-i Islami and was involved in the indiscriminate killing of thousands of civilians during the civil war of 1992-1996. For example, according to the U.S. State Department's 1996 report on human rights practices in 1995, "Masood's troops went on a rampage, systematically looting whole streets and raping women" after the capture of Kabul's predominantly Hazara neighborhood of Karte Seh.
The cooperation of warlords such as Fahim and Qanooni was central to U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom and in fact they were paid off by the United States and Britain in return for supporting Karzai and fighting against the Taliban. In addition to monetary and other bribes, former Northern Alliance commanders were rewarded with high positions in the Afghan government. Fahim and Qanooni won their posts as ministers of Defense and Education in the summer 2002 loya jirga council to select a transitional government, where U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad played a central role to ensure that Karzai and the Northern Alliance remained in power. Fahim has also been keeping the Taliban's legacy alive. According to Human Rights Watch, in December 2002, troops loyal to Gen. Fahim, "have been enforcing Taliban-era 'moral' restrictions" such as "forbidding families from playing music at weddings and dancing, and in some cases arresting and beating musicians."
Clearly the cooperation of these warlords has come at a price that the Afghan people are bearing. According to Brad Adams, executive director of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, "Human rights abuses in Afghanistan are being committed by gunmen and warlords who were propelled into power by the United States and its coalition partners after the Taliban fell in 2001."
(Sonali Kolhatkar <sonali@afghanwomensmission.org> is a founding director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a nonprofit organization that works in solidarity with Afghan women on political and social issues. She is also the host and producer of KPFK Pacifica Radio's daily prime time morning program "Uprising," which airs Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m.)
II. Outside the U.S.
BAGHDAD'S FUTURE ON TABLE IN
MADRID
By Herbert Docena
(Editor's Note: With Iraqi oil proving to be insufficient to finance the occupation of post-war Iraq and with U.S. taxpayers recoiling at covering the shortfall, the result of a donors' conference in Madrid will decide whether the United States can stay on in Iraq. The donors' decision, in turn, depends on whether the occupation turns from a unilateral to a multilateral form of corporate invasion. In this excerpt from a special report (available in full at http://www.fpif.org/papers/donors2003.html ) analyst Herbert Docena discusses the stakes at the upcoming donors conference scheduled for October 23-24.)
On Oct. 23 and 24, the United States will be sitting down with rich creditor countries, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank (WB) during an international donors' conference on Iraq in Madrid. The IMF, the World Bank, and the UN had earlier estimated that Iraq would need $36 billion for reconstructing Iraq within the next four years, in addition to the $19 billion for other nonmilitary needs calculated by the U.S. occupation regime. [1] With few options left, the United States will be passing the hat.
This meeting could be a turning point in the occupation because whether the hat goes back to the United States full or not will determine how much longer the United States can afford to stay. The decision of donor countries to cough up cash will depend, in turn, on whether this continues to be a unilateral or multilateral economic take-over of an occupied country.
Germany, France, and other potential donors have long indicated that they will only be bringing money to the table if their companies are given more opportunities to take part in the multibillion dollar post-war reconstruction bonanza in Iraq. They will be more willing to cough up cash if they will be assured that their corporations will not be shut out of Iraq by U.S. corporations.
What the donor government negotiators will be bringing in their pockets to Madrid, however, will not be their personal money nor that of the corporations but that of their country's taxpayers. The Madrid meeting is an effort by the United States to transfer the burden of Iraq from the U.S. public to, say, French, Japanese, and German taxpayers. Borrowing from the IMF and the World Bank on behalf of the Iraqi people will pass the liability to future Iraqi generations who will then be indebted to the IFIs and subjected to their conditions. For the burden they'll bear, others will be reaping the profits.
Whether the United States would still consider it financially worthwhile to continue occupying Iraq thus depends on the following: how quickly Iraq's oil wells can rake in cash, the U.S. taxpayers' willingness to part with their money, and the readiness of the donor countries to infuse funds. The Iraqis seem not to figure anywhere in the equation. Relying on oil is simply impossible today. When the going gets really tough, the second could still be an option but not something Bush--as champion of tax cuts for the rich and presiding over a weak and deficit-ridden economy--would really want to push. The third then could be the only available option left.
But the possibility of getting billions from donors, in turn, appears to be solely dependent on whether the United States will lock its firm grip on the business opportunities in Iraq or relax it. The question before Madrid, then, is whether this will continue to be a unilateral corporate take-over or a multilateral one. And since what the donor countries will be pledging will be taxpayers' money, the question in Madrid will also be whether the world's taxpayers would be willing--in the face of the liberators' reluctance--to finance this multilateral corporate invasion.
One thing is sure: The drive for money for the occupation is now the only game in town. This was a war of choice, not of necessity, and opinion surveys are increasingly saying that more and more people think it was a wrong choice. Without the assurance of funding and public backing, the U.S. troops and the Halliburton crew may have to pack up at some point. Without money holding the occupation together, there is a real chance that the U.S.-led enterprise in Iraq could continue to unravel--not in Baghdad, but in Madrid.
(Herbert Docena <herbert@focusphilippines.org> is with Focus on the Global South, a research and advocacy organization based in Bangkok (www.focusweb.org). He wrote this for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
III. Letters and Comments
Re: Is the Neocon Agenda for Pax Americana Losing Steam?
In a brief but outstanding article Jim Lobe wrote on the loss of momentum in the tide of Neocons, he noted that the Pentagon's post-war planning was now seen as an "appalling failure." I have some questions about these last two words.
What if the very deterioration of the situation is their real hidden agenda? Looking at the situation from a different perspective if you destroy the country completely (every looter is an indirect and unintended ally of Halliburton, Kellog Brown & Root, and all the (re)construction firms gaining business), the oil industry sees competitors destroyed and future oil supplies for Europe and Asia controlled, pro-Israelis see hopes of Palestinian Resistance being sandwiched so to speak between the two most powerful armies in the world (Israel and U.S.), cut off from its backing by Syria. I think the neocons are, in a very cynical sense, still right about their success.
Don't forget the necessity of shifting military bases from Saudi Arabia to some other convenient spot. And then there are other good reasons: trying out new weapons, more Depleted Uranium experiments, some cluster-bombing probes, steps toward small nuclear warheads, a test for the "Space force" in the making. etc. The War in Iraq had to hit many birds with one stone, and it did. Conclusion? Appalling? Yes. A Failure? Not so sure. Even if they go down quickly, they might wink to one another and whisper: "mission accomplished."
One way, and maybe the best way, to reshuffle the cards in the Middle East, was to overthrow the whole table. That is what they said--or at least suggested--in the PNAC report Rebuilding America's Defense as early as 2000 and that is what they did.
We know the scene from western movies. If you're the strongest and the quickest, and you have guts, overthrowing the whole table is a good bet, certainly if you want to impress the whole saloon. Revolver heroes tend to overestimate themselves and become reckless. We may agree that they will lose, but the question is: what does losing mean? And when will they lose? How much damage will have been done to world peace and the fragile texture of globalization, and how many lives will be lost before they do?
Or, they might just win. What these characters are doing to the planet and its people, is really scary and despicable. But for the time being we are living in their New Imperial World Order. That is the most revolting thought of all. I hope resistance will grow.
- Lieven De Cauter <lieven.decauter@asro.kuleuven.ac.be>
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