[A-List] U.S Imperialism: Dons to the rescue

[jenyang <enyang@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There are a few problems with the formatting of this copy. Original
can be found at http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/19_06_03_b.asp

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Mass myopia: United States is a colossus in denial

Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at New York and Oxford
universities, is the author of Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World.
He wrote this article for The DAILY STAR


The news from the Middle East is grim. After the confident morning of
President George W. Bushfs visit to the region and the unfolding of the
groad maph for peace, it is back to bloody business as usual. Israeli hit
squads go gunning for Hamas top brass. Suicide bombers claim more lives in
Jerusalem. Fighting continues in Iraq.
You could be forgiven for shrugging your shoulders and concluding that
peace in the Middle East is a contradiction in terms. You might even be
tempted to agree with those of Bushfs critics who believe that his
decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein has made matters worse, not better ?
stirring up a hornetsf nest of terrorism.
Yet you would be wrong. For although it is not yet detectable, future
historians may well look back on the year 2003 as a turning point in the
troubled politics of the region. And they will give much of the credit for
that transformation to the courageous ? and undoubtedly risky ? strategy
that Bush has adopted. It is a strategy that is imperial in all but name.
And if it ultimately fails it will not be because the Middle Eastfs
problems are insoluble. It will be because the United States lacks the
stamina needed to run a successful empire.
First, the up-side. This month has seen the biggest step forward in the
Arab-Israeli conflict since the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat,
recklessly spurned the deal he was offered by then-US President Bill
Clinton in December 2000. It might even prove to be the biggest step
forward since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Indeed, we
may be witnessing the most radical reshaping of the region since it
acquired its modern form (and many of its modern problems) after World War
I. What the British Empire began, the American Empire may be about to
finish.
Why be optimistic when so many previous Middle Eastern groad mapsh led not
to peace but back to violence? Because the Anglo-American overthrow of
Saddam Hussein has been the mother of all wake-up calls for the Muslim
states of the Middle East. By showing them how easily Saddamfs vicious
little tyranny could be overthrown, Bush has made it clear to the leaders
of Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia that he is in deadly earnest. If their
countries continue to sponsor terrorism ? as all three are accused of
doing ? then Saddamfs fate could befall them too.
Such saber-rattling evidently works. When five key Arab leaders met with
Bush at Sharm el-Sheikh on June 3, it was to pledge, with apparently
sincere penitence, that they would henceforth actively fight gthe culture
of extremism and violence.h To be meaningful, this must signify an end to
the funding not just of Al-Qaeda but also those terrorist groups, like
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have murdered hundreds of Israelis in the
last two and a half years.
Will it happen? Ariel Sharon clearly thinks it is possible. There is no
other way to explain his willingness to acknowledge that the West Bank and
Gaza have been, in his words, under Israeli goccupationh since 1967; to
pledge to gevacuate unauthorized outpostsh in the Occupied Territories;
and to agree to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
None of this would be happening if Bush had not resoundingly established
his credibility in the Middle East ? by force. For this reason, the
renewed violence of the past weeks should be interpreted not as proof that
peace is impossible, but as evidence that terrorists are on the defensive.
The American road map leads to compromise and conciliation, a nightmare
destination for the extremists, explaining why they have repeatedly
refused to accept a cease fire. Their only hope of staying in the business
of bloodshed is to derail the peace process.
Let us not overestimate the power of the terrorists. Although the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were the most lethal and spectacular
in history (and the first major terrorist assaults on the United States),
the reality is that the number of such operations has been declining since
their peak in the mid-1980s. Last year, according to the US State
Department, there were a total of just under 200 cross-border terrorist
actions, compared with 665 in 1987. True, todayfs mainly Islamic
fundamentalist terrorists kill and wound more people per attack than their
Marxist and nationalist predecessors did some 20 years ago ? suicide
bombing is much deadlier than old-style hijacking. But even the 2,940
deaths in the attack on the World Trade Center need to be put in some kind
of perspective.
Compared with the existential threats posed to the West by Nazism and
Communism in the mid-20th century, Islamic
fundamentalism has so far achieved little. On average,
Hitler and his allies killed roughly 3,500 West Europeans and North
Americans every week of World War II ? thatfs one Sept. 11, 2001 a week
for almost six years. Bin Laden is no Hitler. The threat he and his
confederates pose can be contained by a combination of American pressure
on the regimes that sponsor terror and cooperation between the worldfs
intelligence agencies.
Even the terrorism that has raged in Israel and the Occupied Territories
since the gsecond intifadah was proclaimed in September 2000 should be
seen for what it is: something smaller than a real war. The number of
Israelis killed in the past three years has been around 720; the number of
Palestinians 2,220. Substantially more people (2,680 Israelis and around
14,800 Egyptians and Syrians) were killed in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli
war, which lasted just over two weeks.
Terrorism can be defeated. But its defeat hinges on the willingness of the
United States to sustain the war against the terrorists and their backers.
That the United States has the means to do so no one can
doubt. Even before the deployment of troops for the invasion of Iraq, the
American military already had around 752 military installations located in
more than 130 countries ? two-thirds of all the sovereign states in the
world. The unrivaled logistical capability of the US military means that
within days of an overseas crisis it can deploy large numbers of its
home-based forces literally wherever in the world they are needed. And, of
course, these troops are by far the best-equipped in the world.
On land, the US has 9,000 M1 Abrams tanks. The rest of the world has
nothing that can compete. At sea, the US possesses nine gsupercarrierh
battle groups. The rest of the world has none. And in the air, the US has
three different kinds of undetectable gstealthh aircraft. The rest of the
world has none. The US is also miles ahead in the production of gsmarth
missiles and high-altitude pilotless drones. Pentagon specialists call
this gfull-spectrum dominance.h
There is an obvious irony here. As a presidential candidate, George W.
Bush spoke as if he actually wanted to diminish Americafs military
presence overseas. Immediately after his election, the talk was of
bringing US troops home and leaving the worldfs trouble spots to their own
devices. Europeans worried about a new era of American isolationism.
But the calamity of Sept. 11, 2001, led to a 180-degree turn
in Bushfs thinking. Within a year, the administration had produced a new
National Security Strategy that explicitly stated Americafs
intention gto extend the benefits of freedom c to every corner of the
world.h (For gfreedom,h
needless to say, read American economic and political institutions.) It
also asserted that the United States reserved the right, if the president
deemed it necessary, to take preemptive action against any state perceived
as a threat to Americafs security.
Many critics have seized upon this gBush Doctrineh as a dangerous, even
revolutionary departure from post-1945 American practice. Ifm not so sure.
For one thing, it is eminently desirable that free markets, the rule of
law, and democracy should be introduced in gfailed statesh or countries
languishing under grogue regimes.h For another, regime changes of the sort
we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq are a necessary, indeed indispensable
element of the gwar on terror.h
Although they are capable of infiltrating open societies like the United
States, terrorist organizations could not function without the support of
dictatorships and can train their recruits most easily in conditions of
anarchy. Containment of the terrorist threat will never be achieved if the
US does not eradicate the breeding grounds of terror. And a strategy of
global containment is not really a major departure in American policy,
having been employed for a half-century against the late USSR ? a point
well made at an Oxford lecture last month by American historian Melvyn
Leffler.
The radical aspect of the Bush Doctrine is not the theory but the
practice. The point is simply that when Bush says he is prepared to fight
for freedom and against terror in gevery corner of the worldh he really
can. And he really does.
But itfs not just that the American military has achieved full-spectrum
dominance. Itfs also the fact that America can so easily afford its
daunting firepower. The Pentagonfs budget is equal to the combined defense
budgets of the next dozen or so countries. Indeed, according to one
calculation, the United States accounts for 40?45 per cent of all defense
spending in the world. Yet total American military spending this year will
amount to less than 4 per cent of Americafs GDP, for the simple reason
that its economy is so huge. And at present, Americafs GDP amounts to a
staggering 31 per cent of world output.
If this combination of military and economic dominance is not imperial
power, then what is? But here is the paradox: Vast though Americafs
military power has become, the idea that the US is now an authentic empire
remains entirely foreign to a majority of Americans, who uncritically
accept what has long been the official line: that the United States just
doesnft gdo empire.h
gAmerica has never been an empire,h Bush declared during the 2000 election
campaign. gWe may be the only great power in history that had the chance,
and refused.h Speaking on board the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1,
he echoed the sentiment: gOther nations in history have fought in foreign
lands and remained to occupy and exploit. Americans, following a battle,
want nothing more than to return home.h
A few days before, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked by a
journalist from Al-Jazeera if the US was engaged in gempire-buildingh in
Iraq. gWe donft seek empires,h shot back Rumsfeld. gWefre not
imperialistic. We never have been.h Nor are such views limited to the
political elite. Most ordinary Americans become indignant when told their
country has become an empire.
The Victorian historian J. R. Seeley famously joked that the British had
gconquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.h But
the Americans have gone one better. The greatest empire of modern times
has come into existence without the great majority of the American people
even noticing. This is not a fit of absence of mind. This is mass myopia.
Itfs not hard to explain such attitudes, given the anti-imperial origins
of the United States. But just because you were once a colony doesnft mean
you canft become an empire. England was once a Roman colony, after all.
Americans like to point out that they donft formally rule over much
foreign land. In total, American dependencies (such as Puerto Rico) amount
to just over 10,000 square kilometers. But nowadays, thanks to air power,
a network of strategically situated military bases is no longer needed to
control vast amounts of territory. As for the claim that Americans come
not to subjugate but to emancipate when they invade countries, the British
said exactly the same thing when they occupied Baghdad in March 1917: gOur
armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors, but as
liberators,h were General F. S. Maudefs words to the people of
Mesopotamia.
Unfortunately, the American refusal to recognize the reality of their own
imperial role in the world is one of the things making their empire very
different from, and less effective than, the last great English-speaking
empire. For a start, Americans feel no qualms about sending their
servicemen to fight wars in faraway countries. But they expect those wars
to be short and the casualty lists to be even shorter. Since the war
against Iraq officially ended, more than 40 US servicemen have lost their
lives, some as a result of terrorist attacks and guerrilla warfare.
Already one can sense a growing queasiness at home about this. The refrain
is constantly heard in the American media: When can our boys come home?
The realistic answer to this question is: not for at least five years ?
the minimum duration of occupation that will be needed to stabilize
post-Saddam Iraq. Indeed, if the British experience of first governing and
then strongly influencing Iraq after World War I is anything to go by, 40
years might be a more realistic time frame. Alas, literally nobody I have
met in the United States is willing to contemplate a military presence on
anything like that time scale. And as minds begin to turn to the next
presidential election, American impatience to clear out of Iraq will grow.
Since the end of the war, almost as much space in the American press has
been devoted to Bushfs tax cut as to Iraqfs reconstruction. As for
Afghanistan, it is all but forgotten.
In short, America may be a ghyperpowerh ? the most militarily powerful
empire in all history. But it is an empire in denial, a colossus with an
attention deficit disorder. And that is potentially very dangerous.
I began this essay by pointing out just how much has been achieved by the
war in Iraq. If the overthrow of Saddam Hussein marks the beginning of a
sustained attempt to stamp out terrorism and build peace, prosperity and,
ultimately, democracy in the Middle East, we will have cause to celebrate
the advent of this new American empire.
But if, instead, the war in Iraq is just another ephemeral military
adventure, then I am filled with foreboding. For the moment America loses
interest in what it has initiated, the much-vaunted road map will be
crumpled up and forgotten. And the cycle of terror will never end.