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

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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. Bush?s visit to the region and the unfolding of the ?road map? 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 Bush?s critics who believe that his decision to overthrow Saddam
Hussein has made matters worse, not better ­ stirring up a hornets? 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 East?s 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 ?road maps? 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 Saddam?s 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 Saddam?s 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 ?the culture of extremism and
violence.? 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 ?occupation? since 1967; to pledge to
?evacuate unauthorized outposts? 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, today?s 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 ­ that?s 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 world?s intelligence agencies.
Even the terrorism that has raged in Israel and the Occupied Territories since
the ?second intifada? 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 ?supercarrier? battle groups.
The rest of the world has none. And in the air, the US has three different kinds
of undetectable ?stealth? aircraft. The rest of the world has none. The US is
also miles ahead in the production of ?smart? missiles and high-altitude
pilotless drones. Pentagon specialists call this ?full-spectrum dominance.?
There is an obvious irony here. As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush
spoke as if he actually wanted to diminish America?s military presence overseas.
Immediately after his election, the talk was of bringing US troops home and
leaving the world?s 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 Bush?s thinking. Within a year, the administration had produced a new
National Security Strategy that explicitly stated America?s
intention ?to extend the benefits of freedom ? to every corner of the world.?
(For ?freedom,?
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
America?s security.
Many critics have seized upon this ?Bush Doctrine? as a dangerous, even
revolutionary departure from post-1945 American practice. I?m not so sure. For
one thing, it is eminently desirable that free markets, the rule of law, and
democracy should be introduced in ?failed states? or countries languishing under
?rogue regimes.? For another, regime changes of the sort we have seen in
Afghanistan and Iraq are a necessary, indeed indispensable element of the ?war
on terror.?
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 ?every corner of the world? he really can. And he really does.
But it?s not just that the American military has achieved full-spectrum
dominance. It?s also the fact that America can so easily afford its daunting
firepower. The Pentagon?s 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 40­45 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 America?s GDP, for the simple reason that its economy is so huge. And at
present, America?s 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 America?s 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 doesn?t ?do empire.?
?America has never been an empire,? Bush declared during the 2000 election
campaign. ?We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and
refused.? Speaking on board the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, he echoed
the sentiment: ?Other 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.?
A few days before, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked by a journalist
from Al-Jazeera if the US was engaged in ?empire-building? in Iraq. ?We don?t
seek empires,? shot back Rumsfeld. ?We?re not imperialistic. We never have
been.? 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
?conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.? 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.
It?s not hard to explain such attitudes, given the anti-imperial origins of the
United States. But just because you were once a colony doesn?t mean you can?t
become an empire. England was once a Roman colony, after all. Americans like to
point out that they don?t 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: ?Our armies do not come into your
cities and lands as conquerors, but as liberators,? were General F. S. Maude?s
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 Bush?s tax cut as to Iraq?s
reconstruction. As for Afghanistan, it is all but forgotten.
In short, America may be a ?hyperpower? ­ 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.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/19_06_03_b.asp


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