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Re: Wallerstein's latest commentary: "The Righteous War"
by John Leonard
15 February 2003 08:04 UTC
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What if the hawks, or maybe the falconers, are not blind to the implications of this folly for the United States, but are scoring on a private match? I ask because of the strange history of the Bush dynasty, with roots in the China opium trade, and perpetuated by at least a century of war profiteering.
These people are in the destruction business - they are asset strippers of the most violent kind. A poacher whose favorite dish is filet of elephant doesn't worry about wasted meat, just wasted opportunities. The chance to bring down an empire doesn't come along that often. An Iraq war and a U.S. protektorat there may have all the catastrophic consequences for America imaginable, but for a clique of war profiteers, it's a mother lode. What other game is left in the forest now?
Surely, their reckless disregard for the national welfare is already quite clear from the record.
The Bushes come from of a plutocratic, fascist coterie; militarism is one of their core values. In WWI, great-grandfather George Herbert Walker made a fortune with his Remington arms company. In WWII, his son-in-law Prescott Bush the same, with the Thyssen steel and armaments Kombinat. His son G. H. W. Bush is still active in the armaments holding company Carlyle. And his son Bush 43 with his cronies is in the oil business, too. Aggression for oil and for its own sake comes to this clan naturally.
The raison-d'etre of another group of neo-cons is the militarist pork barrel of aid to Israel, which has outlived the "commie threat" as a source of funding. Spending on Israel also finds its way back as donations to political campaigns from the AIPAC lobby. Europe is not worth one Euro to this group, but importing Israel's climate of terror to the USA could be immensely useful.
A policy of US-UK-Israel against Iraq and the rest of the world makes a lot of dollars and sense to both these cliques - regardless of the wishes of the people of their own three countries. Profit from permanent war was written up long ago by Orwell. The great side benefit is the receptiveness of the people to a fascist agenda under the threat of war and terror. Fascist corporatism is the natural creed of plutocrats, with their superiority complexes and impatience with dissent and democracy.
Yes, we are witnessing the threat of destruction of a world order by United States policy. This need not come as a surprise. Destruction of the old is a necessary ritual in the establishment of a New World Order, according to the Club of the Skull and Bones, the old school tie and belief system of the Bush clan. The dynasty is old hands at this, having participated in the destruction of fin-de-siecle Europe. It appears the Club's antecessors were similarly active in fomenting the French and American revolutions. Such background would explain the incredible self-confidence. Bush and his Cabinet are not writing the script all by themselves. A venerable old money cabal behind them supplies the pattern. This is not necessarily an all-American organization - or even a single organization; more likely a mafiocracy of competing and colluding cliques.
This destructive mission by no means excludes natural error. It is quite likely here that hubris goeth before a fall. So doth believing one's own propaganda, and other bad habits coddled by our sycophantic media - viz. the Blair dossier, which also showed another thing: the number of individuals involved in these cliques could be quite small. 10 Downing had to DIY an end run around MI5, just as the CIA are contradicting Bush and Powell.
The neofascists may not be mistaken after all, either. The world respects force, as Rumsfeld keeps reminding us. As long as he was winning, Hitler had millions of admirers. And he was a protégé of the Bush dynasty.
There is a lot of talk about geopolitics, and precious little about this micropolitics, the anthropology of power cliques and, yes, secret societies - for the obvious reason of difficulty collecting the data - not to mention lack of stipends, and branding as heresy and breaking of taboos. Yet this neglected, chairless branch of study does seem to describe the relevant mechanisms in terms of simple and direct cause and effect. (Yes, I have been reading Anthony Sutton!) This should only become more true, as globalization continues.


At 15:02 14.2.03 -0500, you wrote:
Wallerstein skillfully reiterates his argument that the war is about US
trying to create "primacy in everything" and get the Europeans to "fall
into line."

However, Wallerstein still does not address the central fact that the US
hawks are not just failing miserably in their project, but that the rift
resulting from this failure is quite historic in it's proportions.
Instead, he focuses on the hawk's self-confidence; how "they really
believe all of this," including that "everyone else will realize that
they have been wrong."  In short, as he notes, they are deaf to the
opposition.  This is all true.

Yet, I'm not convinced by Wallerstein's implication that the hawks
really believe they can succeed in getting everyone to fall into line.
I don't believe that the hawks are blind to the serious geopolitical
rift they've created and deepen with each passing day of macho
statements.   Wallerstein would be more convincing if he abandoned the
argument that the hawks truly believe they can succeed in getting the
Europeans and others to "fall into line," and instead argued that the
hawks just don't care if Old Europe and others do not acquiesce or if
the US becomes isolated.  They believe the US has the power to go it
alone.  Wallerstein even seems to recognize this when he writes, "The
full-speed-ahead, torpedoes-be-damned attitude of the Bush
administration."  This is what seems to be happening.  It perfectly
jibes with the hawks' outlandish arrogance.  They are ready to take on
the world come hell or high water.

Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University

http://fbc.binghamton.edu/commentr.htm

Commentary No. 107 - Feb. 15, 2003

"The Righteous War"

George Bush is about to lead the valiant troops into battle in righteous
war against the despotic tyrant. He will not turn back, no matter what
pusillanimous or venal European politicians, major religious figures
around the world, retired generals, and other erstwhile friends of
liberty and the U.S. may think or do. Never has a war had so much prior
discussion and so little backing from world public opinion. No matter!
The decision for war, based on a calculus of American power was made in
the White House a long time ago.

We have to ask ourselves why. To begin with, we have to lay to rest two
major theories about the motivations of the U.S. government that have
been insistently put forth. The first is that of those who favor the
war. They argue that Saddam Hussein is a vicious tyrant who presents an
imminent danger to world peace, and the earlier he is confronted the
more likely he can be stopped from doing the damage he intends to do.
The second theory is put forward primarily by opponents of the war. They
argue that the U.S. is interested in controlling world oil. Iraq is a
key element in the edifice. Overthrowing Hussein would put the U.S. in
the driver's seat.

Neither thesis holds much water. Virtually everyone around the world
agrees that Saddam Hussein is a vicious tyrant but very few are
persuaded he is an imminent danger to world peace. Most people regard
him as a careful player of the geopolitical game. He is accumulating
so-called weapons of mass destruction, to be sure. But it is doubtful he
would use them against anyone now for fear of the reprisals. He is
certainly less likely, not more likely, to use them than North Korea. He
is in a tight political corner and, were absolutely nothing done, he
would probably be unable to move out of it. As for the links with
Al-Qaeda, the whole affair lacks credibility. He may play tactically and
marginally with Al-Qaeda, but not one-tenth as intensively as the U.S.
government did for a long time. In any case, should Al-Qaeda grow
stronger, he is near the top of their list for liquidation as an
apostate. These charges of the U.S. government are propaganda, not
explanations. The motives must be other.

What about the alternative view, that it's all about oil? No doubt oil
is a crucial element in the operation of the world-economy. And no doubt
the United States, like all the other major powers, would like to
control the oil situation as much as it can. And no doubt, were Saddam
Hussein to be overthrown, there might be some reshuffling of the world
oil cards. But is the game worth the candle? There are three things
about oil that are
important: participating in the profits of the oil industry; regulating
the world price of oil (which has such a great impact on all other kinds
of production); and access of supply (and potential denial of access to
others). In all three matters, the U.S. is doing quite well right now.
U.S. oil firms have a lion's share of the world profits at the present
time. The price of oil has been regulated to U.S. preferences most of
the time since 1945, via the efforts of the government of Saudi Arabia.
And the U.S. has a fairly good hold on the strategic control of world
oil supply. In each of these three domains, perhaps the U.S. position
could be improved. But can this slight improvement possibly be worth the
financial, economic, and political cost of the war? Precisely because
Bush and Cheney have been in the oil business, they must surely be aware
of how small would be the advantage. Oil can be at most a collateral
benefit of an enterprise undertaken for other motives.

So why then? We start with the reasoning of the hawks. They believe that
the world position of the United States has been steadily declining
since at least the Vietnam War. They believe that the basic explanation
for this decline is the fact that U.S. governments have been weak and
vacillating in their world policies. (They believe this is even true of
the Reagan administration, although they do not dare to say this aloud.)
They see a remedy, a simple remedy. The U.S. must assert itself
forcefully and demonstrate its iron will and its overwhelming military
superiority. Once that is done, the rest of the world will recognize and
accept U.S. primacy in everything. The Europeans will fall into line.
The potential nuclear powers will abandon their projects. The U.S.
dollar will once again rise supreme. The Islamic fundamentalists will
fade away or be crushed. And we shall enter into a new era of prosperity
and high profit.

We need to understand that they really believe all of this, and with a
great sense of certitude and determination. That is why all the public
debate, worldwide, about the wisdom of launching a war has been falling
on deaf ears. They are deaf because they are absolutely sure that
everyone else is wrong, and furthermore that shortly everyone else will
realize that they have been wrong. It is important to note one further
element in the self-confidence of the hawks. They believe that a swift
and relatively easy military victory is at hand - a war of weeks, not of
months and certainly not of still longer. The fact that virtually all
the prominent retired generals in the U.S. and the U.K. have publicly
stated their doubts on this military assessment is simply ignored. The
hawks (almost all civilians) do not even bother to answer them. One
doesn't know, of course, how many U.S. and U.K. generals still in
service are saying, or at least thinking, the same thing.

The full-speed-ahead, torpedoes-be-damned attitude of the Bush
administration has already had four major negative effects on the world
position of the United States. Anyone with the most elementary knowledge
of geopolitics would know that, after 1945, the one coalition the United
States had to fear was that of France, Germany, and Russia. U.S. policy
has been geared to rendering this impossible. Every time there was the
slightest hint of such a coalition, the U.S. mobilized to break away at
least one of the three. This was true when DeGaulle made his early
gestures to Moscow in 1945-46, and when Willi Brandt announced the
Ostpolitik. There are all sorts of reasons why it has been quite
difficult to put together such an alliance. George Bush has overcome the
obstacles and achieved the realization of this nightmare for the U.S.
For the first time since 1945, these three powers have lined up publicly
together against the U.S. on a major issue. U.S. reaction to this public
stand is having the effect of cementing the alliance further. If Donald
Rumsfeld thinks that waving the support of Albania and Macedonia, or
even Poland and Hungary, in their face sends shivers up the spines of
the new trio, he must be very naive indeed.

The logical riposte to a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis would be for the U.S.
to enter into a geopolitical alliance with China, Korea, and Japan. The
U.S. hawks are making sure that such a riposte will not be easily
achieved. They have goaded North Korea into displaying its teeth of
steel, offended South Korea by not taking its concerns seriously, made
China more suspicious than before, and led Japan to think about becoming
a nuclear power. Bravo!

Then there's oil. Controlling the world price of oil is the most
important of the three oil issues mentioned earlier. Saudi Arabia has
been the key. Saudi Arabia has done the work for the U.S. for 50 years
for a simple reason. It needed the military protection of the U.S. for
the dynasty. The U.S. rush to war, its obvious ricochet effect on the
Muslim world, the open disdain of the U.S. hawks for the Saudis, the
virtually full support for Sharon have led the Saudis to wonder, out
loud, whether U.S. support is not an albatross rather than a mode of
sustaining them. For the first time, the faction in the royal house that
favors loosening its links with the U.S. seems to be gaining the upper
hand. The U.S. is not going to find easily a substitute for the Saudis.
Remember that the Saudis have always been more important for U.S.
geopolitical interests than Israel. The U.S. supports Israel for
internal political reasons. It has supported the Saudi regime because it
has needed them. The U.S. can survive without Israel. Can it survive the
political turmoil in the Musim world without Saudi support?

Finally, U.S. administrations have been valiantly trying to stop nuclear
proliferation for fifty years. The Bush administration has managed in
two short years to get North Korea, and now Iran, to speed up their
programs, and not to be afraid to indicate this publicly. If the U.S.
uses nuclear devices in Iraq, as it has hinted it may, it will not
merely break the taboo, but it will ensure a speedy race of a dozen more
countries to acquire these devices.

If the Iraq war goes splendidly for the U.S., perhaps the U.S. can
recuperate a little from these four geopolitical setbacks. If the war
goes badly, each negative will be immediately reinforced. I have been
reading recently about the Crimean War, in which Great Britain and
France went to war against the Russian tyrant in the name of
civilization, Christianity, and the struggle for liberty. A British
historian wrote in 1923 of these
motives: "What Englishmen condemn is almost always worthy of
condemnation, if only it has happened." The Times of London was in 1853
one of the strongest supporters of the war. In 1859, the editors wrote
their regret: "Never was so great an effort made for so worthless an
object. It is with no small reluctance that we admit a gigantic effort
and an infinite sacrifice to have been made in vain." When George Bush
leaves office, he will have left the United States significantly weaker
than it was when he assumed office. He will have turned a slow decline
into a much speedier one. Will the New York Times write a similar
editorial in 2005?


Immanuel Wallerstein

Elson Boles
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Sociology
Saginaw Valley State University
University Center
Saginaw MI, 48710

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