Afterword to Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed "Behind the War on Terror" now fully

HTTP:  http://druckversion.studien-von-zeitfragen.net/Afterword%20BWoT.pdf  


Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq by: 
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Manufacturer: Clairview Books Release Date: 23 June, 2003 
Media: Paperback Sales Rank: 3,781 

http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3825

http://www.studien-von-zeitfragen.de/

This afterword to this brilliant book starts from the assumption that both 
Europe and the Arab world are facing the same tendency of a basic and 
underlying shift in global economic activity away from the West of the 
Euro/Asian/African landmass towards the countries of the Pacific, and that the 
United States Government's main interest today is in preserving and 
intensifying the US Government global hegemony after the end of the Cold War, 
and to maximize access to global wealth and energy resources in a world that 
looks more and more like the late 19th Century. The conditions of this 
political economy of the 21st Century were spelled out by the world system 
theory school of thought in the social sciences, pioneered by such scholars as 
Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Volker Bornschier, Christopher K. Chase-Dunn, 
Andre Gunder Frank, and Immanuel Wallerstein (Professor Wallerstein's work is 
actually referred to in the book). Chances to arrive at an alternative world 
order - one that is based on strengthened United Nations, on global 
cooperation, and global civilizational dialogue, were lost in the decade after 
the end of the Cold War. The positioning in the global power game, and nothing 
else, was the reason for this Iraq war, and forget all about the fight against 
"WMD" (weapons of mass destruction) and all the other "holy" principles. 
America's long term agenda under Bush, the argument runs, is not just 
interested in establishing its vision in the Near East (something that the 
present book brilliantly shows), but in the end is interested in blocking 
European peaceful ascent to global leadership - as envisioned by the European 
Union's Lisbon agenda until 2000 - at the same time. As it is well-known, at 
the Lisbon European Council (March 2000), the European Union set itself a new 
strategic goal for the next decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic 
knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth 
with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. The rift between Europe 
and America - especially between France, Germany and Russia on the one hand and 
the US on the other hand, has a very basic political economic background - the 
growing hegemonic rivalry between the world's leading capitalist blocs, that 
characterize world capitalism since 1450. An EU comprising up to 40 nations of 
the third and fourth enlargement wave indeed would be a major change in the 
structure of the international system and could be driven by America's power 
play, but also by its own internal deficient dynamics, characterized by low 
innovation and high government spending, into such a position. A large, wider 
Europe, driven into hegemonic rivalry by the present hyperpower play by the 
United States - is a somber scenario, it enjoys a high kind of probability, and 
it has dire world political consequences. 


Ministerial Counselor Dr. Arno TAUSCH,
Associate Visiting Professor 
of Political Science at Innsbruck University

Department of European and International Affairs 
Federal Ministry of Social Security, Generations and Consumer Protection 
A-1010 Vienna, Stubenring 1 
Republic of Austria

Tel. (++ 43 - 1) 711 - 00 - 2272; Facs. (++ 43 - 1) 711 - 00 - 6591 

e-mail: Arno.Tausch@BMSG.gv.at
http://www.bmsg.gv.at

Austrian Foreign Policy: http://www.bmaa.gv.at

personal academic website: 

http://www.gdnet.org/cf/search/display.cfm?search=GDNSITE&act=people&gdnpno=2735
 
(Global Development Network, IDS Sussex)


recent articles in scholary and political journals

*Alternatives. Turkish Journal of International Relations (Istanbul) 
http://www.alternativesjournal.net/tausch.htm
*Collections. The Polish Institute for International Affairs (Warsaw) 
http://www.pism.pl/
*Die Zukunft (Vienna) 
http://www.echo.at/html/produkte/zukunft.html
*Evropa (Polish Institute for International Affairs, Warsaw; in Russian 
language) 
http://www.pism.pl/pdf/Europa%203%20Tausz.pdf
*International. Die Zeitschrift fuer Internationale Politik (Vienna) 
http://www.litera.at/international/
*Oesterreichische Monatshefte (Vienna) 
http://www.dicosoft.co.at/
*Wiener Zeitung (Vienna)
 http://www.wienerzeitung.at/


Books available from

http://www.amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com

http://www.blackwell.co.uk/bobuk/scripts/welcome.jsp


forthcoming

(with Peter Herrmann, Eds.) Dar al Islam. The Mediterranean, the world system 
and the "wider EUrope". Nova Science Publishers, 2004. With contributions by 
Samir Amin, Syed M. Ahsan, Pat Cox, Andre Gunder Frank, Johan Galtung, Peter 
Herrmann, Gernot Kohler, Victor Krassilchtchikov, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Syed 
Mansoob Murshed, Hans-Heinrich Nolte, John R. Oneal, Kunibert Raffer, Bruce 
Russett, Clara Mira Salama, David Skidmore, Arno Tausch, The First Declaration 
of Alexandria, Alfred Tovias, and Patrick Ziltener