[Marxism] A useful book on US imperialism: Bacevich's "American Empire"

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

(I haven't read Bacevich's book yet, but judging by this review essay it is
certainly worth a read, thought I would post it - JB)

Probably no effort to explain [the epoch of American Empire] matches a
little book called American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S.
Diplomacy, by Andrew J. Bacevich, a soldier turned academic. Bacevich, who
teaches at Boston
University and directs its Center for International Relations, doesn't avoid
entirely a common flaw in this kind of critical analysis. A pungent critic
of American policy in the post-Cold War era, he neglects to explain what
policies he would have favored over those he criticizes. But his book,
published by Harvard University Press, is laced with insights that lay bare
the underlying realities of our time. Of all the recent writings purporting
to explain how we got where we are, his may be the most probing and
complete.

He posits three essential questions: What is the underlying geopolitical
philosophy guiding American foreign policy today? Where did it come from?
And what are its implications and consequences? He calls the prevailing
philosophy "global openness"--a drive, often called "globalization," to
remove barriers that inhibit the movement of goods, capital, ideas, and
peoples across national borders. The ultimate goal, he says, is "an open and
integrated international order based on the principles of democratic
capitalism, with the United States as the ultimate guarantor of order and
enforcer of norms."

Although this philosophy is almost universally described by American leaders
and policymakers in idealistic and benign terms, at its foundation lies the
motivation of American self-interest. It isn't simply that proponents of
openness believe American security requires an open world friendly to
liberal values, says Bacevich. They also believe that "an open world that
adheres to the principles of free enterprise is a precondition for continued
American prosperity." That's because ongoing economic growth in America, and
the wealth it fuels, is viewed as impossible without unfettered access to
global markets.

This outlook certainly isn't new. Think of Secretary of State John Hay's
"Open Door" policy at the turn of the last century, demanding access to
Chinese markets for U.S. business. This was readily embraced by the American
people, who saw a connection between this concept of openness and their own
particular way of life. "Openness became a precondition of freedom and
democracy. It implied stability and security," writes Bacevich. "America's
own commitment to openness testified to its own benign intentions--and
therefore justified American exertions on behalf of an open world."

During the following century, this strain of thinking ribboned itself
through the country's foreign policy debates, rising or receding according
to circumstances of the time. It dominated the rhetoric of Theodore
Roosevelt at the dawn of the 20th century, guided Woodrow Wilson's grand
global ambitions at the time of World War I, then faded as America sought
postwar "normalcy" during the 1920s and 1930s. It played a role, though
probably not a dominant one, as America once again entered the global fray
after Pearl Harbor and remained relatively dormant during the Cold War
half-century of "containment." Then it rose to hegemonic status among ideas
in the post-Cold War environment.

Bacevich offers a startling insight when he debunks the commonly held notion
that the foreign policies of presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton
were based on incoherent flailings producing little more than a strategic
void. In the emergent post-Cold War rhetoric he perceived "coded messages
deeply rooted in American history"--namely, the orthodoxy of openness.
"Linking American words to American actions," he writes, "the key revealed a
pattern and offered evidence of a coherent grand strategy conceived many
decades earlier and now adapted to the circumstances of the post-Cold War
era."

That adaptation emerged, however, over time and through trial and error, as
evidenced by what Bacevich calls the "Wolfowitz indiscretion." Named after
Paul Wolfowitz, who served the first President Bush as undersecretary of
defense for policy, this episode concerned a Pentagon position paper
developed under his supervision and circulated in draft form in 1991 and
1992. It identified American preeminence as the premier geopolitical reality
in the post-Cold War era and posited the notion that American foreign policy
should be aimed at perpetuating that reality. Thus, the primary U.S. goal
should focus on "convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire
to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their
legitimate interests." America, said the paper, should "sufficiently account
for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from
challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political
and economic order." Further, the country should "maintain the mechanisms
[read: power] for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a
larger regional or global role."

When this breathtaking manifesto inevitably was leaked to the press, critics
rose up to attack such thinking as arrogant, foolhardy, and un-American. The
language was promptly scrapped, substituted by the idiom of freedom, peace,
and liberty.

But Wolfowitz returned in the second Bush administration as deputy defense
secretary and is credited with being one of the architects of the war on
Iraq and America's far-reaching post-9/11 ambitions. And his outlook guided
George W. Bush when he put forth his National Security Strategy document
delivered to Congress last year. The document's doctrine of
pre-emption--America's right to take action to protect itself from potential
threats even before an attack against the United States-garnered the most
attention and criticism. But its most aggressive assertion was the country's
expressed resolve to prevent potential adversaries from developing the
military capacity to surpass or even equal the power of the United
States--in other words, the revival of the Wolfowitz manifesto, now
enshrined in presidential language.

America's apparent march to empire in the post-Cold War era can be traced in
its trek from a government forced to squelch the Wolfowitz formulation to
one that embraced it. Although the trek includes a multitude of actions and
words, it is seen most vividly in six big developments--the 1991 Gulf War,
Somalia, the Bosnia intervention, the Kosovo air campaign, the 9/11
terrorist attacks, and the Iraqi war.

After George H.W. Bush's brilliant victory [sic. - JB] over Saddam Hussein
in the Gulf
War, the president proved himself ill-suited to the task of articulating
just what that victory meant. He spoke vaguely of a "new world order" and
mouthed platitudes about spreading democracy, but he never really explained
what this new order was. Worse, he seemed incapable of grasping the full
significance of the Soviet demise. In his famous "chicken Kiev" speech in
mid- 1991, he lectured the people of Ukraine on the virtues of their staying
within the Soviet orbit, thus suggesting, as Bacevich puts it, "a preference
for propping up the existing order even at the expense of denying the
aspirations of peoples hitherto categorized as oppressed."

But the world did get a stark message as it watched America send an
expeditionary force of half a million soldiers half way around the world to
protect status quo borders and the West's access to abundant Middle Eastern
oil. And many nations inevitably concluded there was added significance in
America's decision to leave 23,000 troops in the region for a decade after
the Gulf victory. A new world had emerged, dominated by a lone superpower.

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2633/3_17/106423901/p2/article.jhtml?term=







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