[A-List] RE: Us imperialism: Iraq

["Mark Jones" <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 24-10-02 03:33, John wrote:

are you saying that Bush and company have
gone too far out on a limb, too many inflexible commitments have been made,
such that a liberal internationalist foreign policy of the sort favored by
most sectors of capital in the U.S. (minus the military contractors that
feed at the trough and the energy giants) could not be
restored come 2005, that an easing of hegemonic succession (of the sort
you speculated about some months ago in your China post, which I must
revisit) is utterly out of the picture ?

I don't believe that a hegemonic succession is possible, for reasons you
yourself  put better than anyone when we discussed it earlier. China cannot
be world-hegemon.

Now (just as with ancient Rome, but in quick-time) the provinces are asking,
why do we need to pay all these taxes and imperial overheads? Why do we need
to give up so much, just to satisfy the arbitrary whims of people like
Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld? Isn't it easier  and even more in the
longrun interests of the hegemon itself, as well as of the rest of us, to
thwart these surely temporary occupants of the White House, with their
desire to impose irrational and highly-onerous burdens, which are anyway
just the product of what German chancellor Schroeder calls 'adventurism'?

But the truth is that the desire of the satraps, 'allies', etc, to return to
the good old days of rational US hegemony, are just as destructive as would
be capitulating to the alleged 'irrationality' of the Bush regime. The world
can no longer afford US hegemony; but doing without it is fraught with
terrible danger. Therefore, caught between the Scylla of US paranoia,
imperial exaltation and tax-gathering on the one hand, and the Charybdis of
a prolonged interregnum heralding economic slumps, war, civil unrest,
institutional failure etc, all the players--including China--shows clears
signs of being in denial. To read pro-China commentaries in places like Asia
Times, there is a strong current of thought in the Chinese leadership, not
entirely opportunistic either, which seems to be saying that it is better to
let the US get their way in Iraq, even if that only brings closer the day
when US troops will put their boots on the Tibet border and when the US
begins a new staring-match over the Straits of Taiwan; because (they seem to
calculate) relative stability for another decade or so plus oil at
$10-15/bbl is the optimum solution which gives China the best chance to go
on industrialising and to go on waging its deflationary stealth-war designed
to hollow-out the industrial bases of its rivals (Japan, Germany, USA etc).
But this better-the-devil-you-know advocacy has such obvious side-dangers
that the Chinese leadership, craven and opportunistic though it is, is not
evidently in a hurry to do US bidding in the Security Council. For what
other lessons of history are there, above all the history of the last
century, than that to appease a ravening and desperate, waning world power,
is always a fatal error? This is exactly what the Russians think, to judge
from the recent remarks of Russian military chief Ivashko, who openly on
Russian national television recently likened Bush to Hitler and the present
world conjuncture to that of 1939-41, when appeasement resulted in the
catastrophe of Hitler's attack on Russia. Now here is my nugget: I have had
conversations with Russian diplomats who are a heartbeat away from the
Kremlin and who are now quite openly saying the same.  No,  it is not just
Russian oil contracts in Iraq, but an altogether bigger game they are
playing, against a background of deep national desire for revenge, of
feelings of national humiliation and of widespread popular hatred of the US,
of US popular culture etc, among the Russian masses. It is the concept of
'multipolarity', favoured by the Russian elite since Gorbachev's time and
supposedly buried along with the Primakov premiership, that still informs
Russian thinking; but by multipolarity they no longer mean simply a
sentimental vision of a world of friendly competitors who are peers, albeit
with the USA accepted as first among equals. No, what they know mean (I
think) is manoeuvring in the shifting sands and hidden currents of a world
that is sliding out of America's grasp. a world in which America is the only
formal ally everyone publicly acknowledges, but the only real enemy any of
them have, so that secret alliances, tactical blocs dictated only but
shortrun interests, will predominate rather than the stable architecture
which emerged after 1945. Russia today proclaims its devotion to the cause
of the Christian west, and seeks wholehearted acceptance by western
counsels; it no longer objects (much) to Nato expansion, to US troops in
former Soviet Central Asia etc; it proclaims, in Huntingtonian terms, that
the 21st century will be driven by a clash of civilisations. Yet in
practice, in reality, we see a different thing altogether: we see a strong
and growing secret alliance between Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin; we
see Russia blocking with Iraq to destroy the Bush administration. That,
actually, is what is going on right now. In 1991, the (nominally communist)
Soviet Union permitted Bush Sr  to attack Iraq (and it is forgotten that it
was American finagling of oil issues that directly drove Saddam to invade
Kuwait, so this was never a 'principled' war etc, it was no less dirty than
the war being contemplated now). In 2002, allegedly capitalist Russia, the
bright new friend of the USA, is doing its damnedest to stop Bush Jr
attacking Iraq and in the process Russia is seeking to destroy the
go-it-alone pretensions not only of the Bush administration, but of any
successor.

If they succeed, and the French and Chinese, British and Germans succeed
(because they are all doing their damnedest to block Bush and thus to
destroy Bush politically) then US imperialism will be weakened, will it not?

But behind the realism and machiavellian clarity and cynicism of these
manoeuvrings, are these players still not driven by a desire to revert to
the longed-for golden age of US rationalism and paternalism? Which of them
has a game-plan to deal with open and uncontrolled crisis, with no hegemon
capable of refereeing play?

I suppose that every major player (France, Russia, China, the UK etc) is
making the same calculation, i.e., how to spin things out so that Bush loses
the moment to make war, and how to dump Bush and get back to a softer
so-called multilateral US foreign policy; but also like with the fall of
Rome, these sorts of calculations (which both Roman provincial governors and
invading tribal chieftains constantly made) are based on illusions, above
all the illusion that there ever was a golden age of multilateralism to
revert to.  In reality there were temporary phases of apparent stability of
calm, local areas of equilibrium, on the surface of processes which were
anything but calm, which were characterised by great flux, incipient crisis,
and by long-run trends (demography, resource-depletion,

There was only ever, since 1945, extraordinary US global dominance, but
always within the confines of what 1917 created. The weakness of US hegemony
inevitably invokes an era of turbulence chaos and unpredictability, and
however much the players may want to go back to the golden age of quiet
peaceful gluttony they hanker for, there is no road back and in practice all
the players, including the US, are now doing all they can to bring the whole
tottering structure down on their own heads.  If Al Gore wins the next
election for example, how will that help overcome the inevitable dollar/debt
crisis, US slump, world market contraction etc? What can slay the wolves of
deflation now howling around the campfires?

This is why it's surely not clear that any of the players will wish to
become bona fide, open foes of US hegemony. Thus the crisis is real and the
turbulence of the moment and unpredictability of the outcome remain the key
factors.

There is no cash left in the cash register, just a lot of blank IOU's which
no-one believes in an y more.

Mark