casus belli

In "The Quarrel Over Iraq Gets Ugly" by Serge Schmemann (NYT, January 26,
2003), the author quotes Zbigniew Brzezinski as arguing:

"At stake is not Iraq, or whether we can deal with it, but
the larger issue of how America leads, how much confidence,
how much support it has,"

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/weekinreview/26SCHM.html?ex=1044641185&ei=1&en=092f9b9cb4334b72

This is identical to the point made by Wallerstein in his latest
commentary:

"The point of the force is not to achieve regime change in Iraq (probably
a minor benefit, considering what might replace the current regime). The
point of using the force is to intimidate the allies of the United States,
so that they stop their carping, their criticisms, and fall back into
line, meekly as the schoolchildren they are considered to be by the
hawks."

The upshot is that the war is undertaken primarily out of ideological
considerations - it is about the defense of the leading US position
globally.  Both the means of this policy (projection of military power)
and its ultimate aim bespeak the fundamental weakness of the US position.

This is not to say that economic (i.e. oil) and geostrategic (i.e. Israel)
concerns are irrelevant to the adoption of the current course - the
background of the major players in this administration's security and
foreign policy teams make it impossible to argue otherwise.  However, if
the coming war was really about gaining greater control of oil, then the
Bush administration would be able to come up with a rational blueprint
for financing the occupation of Iraq and underwriting a relatively stable
puppet regime even as the US takes control of existing Iraqi oil wealth
and developing its (much larger) reserves, all this in the face of the
likely adoption of a scorched-earth policy by Saddam, the real possibility
of a spreading Middle East conflagration, and greater uncertainty in the
oil and financial markets which will result in higher, not lower oil
prices.  The articles in the mainstream press which argue that it is not
about oil tend to gall leftists, but it generally goes unnoticed that such
pieces (e.g. a recent one by industry expert Daniel Yergin in Asiatimes
online, methinks) also take aim at those who believe that the conquest of
Iraq will result in a windfall for the US.  In other words, the promise of
oil control is really an attempt to justify a policy rooted in ideology,
without much reflection as to the likelihood of success.

Much the same might be said about the "it's all about Israel"
justification.  Just as there is little reason to expect that the US will
reinforce its position by gaining control of Iraqi oil, so there is little
reason to see the current policy (support of Israel as the regional
enforcer) as contributing to Israel's longterm security.  There is every
reason to expect the strengthening of radical elements in Arab countries,
and every reason to expect that sooner or later (probably sooner), a
Muslim state will develop a nuclear deterrent.  The only way to forestall
this is probably to resort to a preemptive nuclear strategy in the region;
the obvious outcome will be the classification of Israel as a pariah state
by the whole world (outside the US).  So the "security for Israel" cry on
the part of the hawks is no less a pie-in-the-sky than the "end of
the dependence on authoritarian oil-regimes".

Even the traditional ideological undergirding of US power, which in its
day was not without influence, is beginning to wear thin because of the
coming war in Iraq.  The justification of US hegemony by linking it with
modernization and democratization was always premised on a certain
"Occidentalism" - i.e. US power guaranteed the spread of Western values
and Western forms of governance around the world.  This claim could only
be convincingly advanced only if the West was seen as being both
successful and unified (as it was under the aegis of NATO).  However, with
the rift between the US and the EU, it is not clear that there is a West
at all anymore.  Just last week, Bill Safire expelled Germany and France
from this club for their opposition to the US on Iraq.  The remaining
Western values are, apparently, only martial ones, and in view of this,
Western power as represented by the US will lose all its remaining
legitimacy in the world.

So the coming conflict won't even be a clash of
civilizations, but a final, and rather desperate roll of the dice by the
"last remaining superpower".  It is a policy of madness, and should be
resisted with all our strength because it is grounded in a completely
unrealistic assessment of the current global situation, and hence
presents a much greater danger than conventional imperialism.