Bush plans world domination

["John O'Neill" <johnfergaloneill@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Bush hawks plan unilateral world domination through absolute US military
superiority



  WORLD VIEW/Paul Gillespie: The nostrum that the road to Middle East peace
lies through Baghdad has become conventional wisdom in the Bush
administration, according to observers in Washington.

The single-minded concentration on that objective was not changed by last
weekend's bombing atrocity in Bali, in which more than 180 people were
killed. The attack reopened the question of al- Qaeda's responsibility and
whether there are credible links between that organisation and the Saddam
Hussein regime. They have yet to be convincingly established.

As a result, more and more questions were raised this week about whether the
Iraq strategy deflected attention and efforts from combating terrorism - not
only among US allies insisting on a United Nations mandate for any attack on
Iraq, but from a growing band of critics in the United States who have up to
now been mute on the question for fear of being branded anti-patriotic.

The right-wing nationalists controlling foreign policy believe that toppling
the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq would open up the prospect of a
democratic revolution in the region, led by the United States. Economic
development and cultural reconciliation with the West would follow.

The recently disclosed plan to occupy Iraq after defeating Saddam is part of
this plan. It breaks radically with the administration's previous resistance
to "nation-building" - necessarily so, because it is difficult to imagine
otherwise how the break-up of Iraq would be prevented.

The plan envisages preventing the Iraqi Kurds from seceding, to appease
Turkey. An audacious commitment to reform and re-educate Iraq, on the model
of the US occupation of Japan and Germany after the second World War, would
deal with the other potential secessionist problem - that of the Shia Muslim
community in southern Iraq by destroying the Sunni-dominated state machine.

Up to 100,000 US troops would be required to put this into effect, costing
an estimated $16 billion a year. Were there to be significant Iraqi
resistance, these numbers and costs would escalate rapidly - raising the
question of how far US public opinion would support it, not to mention
European and other allies.

Taking full charge of the Iraqi oil fields would be a central aspect of the
occupation. It would confer immense benefits on the US, enabling it to
guarantee cheap oil, undermine the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting
Countries, remove or delay the necessity to develop Russian oil reserves and
head off growing demands for alternative energy sources for the foreseeable
future.

Within the wider Middle East region, geopolitical engineering is envisaged
to reorder the Gulf states and possibly to topple and partition Saudi
Arabia. This, it is assumed, would intimidate Iran and Arab states inclined
to resist such US domination. It would also intimidate Palestinian
resistance to Israeli occupation.

The most determined of these US nationalist hawks identify fully with the
Sharon government in Israel. They say a successful military attack on Iraq
would transform the Middle East and make it much easier to find a settlement
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stopping well short of the Oslo accords
and ensuring Israeli dominance of the region.

These scenarios are not pipe-dreaming or wishful thinking on the part of
armchair hawks in Washington's policy think tanks. They are now becoming
official policy as the build-up to war in Iraq proceeds apace.

Within the Bush administration, figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul
Wolfowitz, Richard Cheney and Richard Perle are directly associated with
such contingency planning. The recently published strategic doctrine of
pre-emptive strikes against powers threatening US hegemony underlines how
serious they should be taken.

This group has worked consistently for the last decade to fashion this plan
for unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority.

In a comment this week in the Washington Post, Leon Fuerth, who was National
Security Adviser to the former Vice President Al Gore, warns that the plan
to topple Saddam and replace him by Gen Tommy Franks, commander of the US
Central Comman, with a brief to run and redesign Iraq means there "may be a
dangerous intoxication with American power and a serious loss of judgment as
to its limits", among the most senior persons in the US government.

He adds that if this puppet government "is supposed to win international
legitimacy and to gain the loyalty of its own population, then the Bush
administration's reading of human nature and of the politics of this region
is very strange".

We can expect to hear more such criticism as the Iraq plans are developed
and encounter growing international resistance.

A brilliant essay on the push to war by Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie
Foundation in the London Review of Books (October 3rd) underlines the
extraordinary risks involved. The consequences of failure would be
catastrophic: "A general Middle Eastern conflagration and the collapse of
more pro-Western states would lose us the war against terrorism, doom untold
thousands of Western civilians to death in coming decades and plunge the
world economy into depression."

The dangers include the possibility that Saddam Hussein would retaliate
against a US invasion with chemical and biological weapons. According to the
Central Intelligence Agency director, George Tenet, this risk would move
from "low" to "pretty high" if Saddam felt cornered by US military might.

This was an inconvenient estimate from the administration's point of view,
published in a letter to a congressional committee. It reflects reportedly
deep disquiet about the push to war strategy among the US intelligence,
armed forces and the Pentagon.

Fuerth says if the strategy is pursued, the US "will be seen as having
decided to establish its security on the basis of empire". Indeed, Lieven
points out there are striking parallels between these plans for the Middle
East and British imperial designs for the region in the 1920s.

A new hard-nosed imperialism based on military might is unrealistic and
dangerous, according to many analysts. However much mobilising for it would
take attention away from economic problems and be bolstered by a new kind of
US nationalism, it would encounter growing opposition at home and abroad.

For Europe it poses the key question of whether to co-operate or to organise
increasingly independently of a more unilateralist US superpower.




© The Irish Times




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