[Marxism] Forwarded from Daniel Evans

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Dan. I am sending it along...

In the British liberal papers at the moment there are a lot of 
commentators trying to put across the notion that perhaps Bush will be 
obliged to tone it down in his second term. I wrote the article below as 
a kind of ante-dote to this and sent it to the Guardian newspaper to see 
if they will publish it. I doubt that they will and wondered if you 
thought it was suitable for posting on marxmail.org for discussion.

George, what big teeth you have!

Daniel Evans

By way of response to Philip Bobbit’s `optimistic view’ (Guardian, 
November 6)

The war on terrorism has been a useful but increasingly irritating 
distraction for George W. and his neo-conservative friends in the White 
House but his re-election gives them an opportunity to get back to the 
really big issues that were obliged to take a back seat during his first 
term. The biggest of these, from a non-domestic point of view, is the 
deployment of a National Missile Defence System.

Known amongst the Bush clique as the `Ring of Confidence’ after the 
long-time Colgate toothpaste slogan, and in the media as `Son of Star 
Wars’, it is hoped that NMD will allow the US to bare its highly 
polished white and perfect, if rather large, teeth to the rest of the 
world with impunity and give it the ability to act more unilaterally 
than ever before. It is designed to make wannabe nuclear states give up 
the ghost and those who have already got them wonder why they bothered. 
It works on the premise that Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles armed 
with nuclear warheads can be intercepted and shot down by interceptor 
missiles relatively early on in their flight.

Of course, the Democrats argued that 9/11 showed that NMD was an 
irrelevance in the face of the new realities of global terrorism that 
required robust but multilateral action amongst all nations to combat. 
But with Al Qaeda and other like-minded groups now holed up in small 
enclaves in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Gaza Strip, and this achieved, 
virtually, unilaterally, it will now be possible to re-focus on the real 
enemy. For the neo-realist theorists of international politics who 
inhabit Bush’s White House when it comes to the real enemy `it’s other 
states, stupid’. In fact, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the War on 
Iraq, rather than demonstrating the dangers of unilateralism and global 
terrorism, has merely confirmed to the Bush camp just how many enemies 
there are out there and just how traditional is the form that they take. 
From Iran to North Korea, to China and Russia and even France and the 
EU, potential enemies are everywhere frustrating US power projection.

This is all very ironic in the face of opinion polls which suggested, as 
the Liberal Democrats campaign chief, Lord Rennard, pointed out that: 
`In America, if voters said Iraq was the most important issue, they 
voted four-to-one Democrat, but if they responded terrorism was the 
biggest issue they voted overwhelmingly for Bush.’ Such was the strange 
dialectic of the presidential campaign. Actually, perhaps not so strange 
as Bush had successfully, and without scruple, managed to manipulate 
public opinion in the wake of 9/11to support his already existing policy 
of attacking Iraq. Bush’s so-called War on Terrorism is a sham and the 
fact that a January deadline has been set for democratic elections in 
Iraq, despite the obvious need for a great deal more ground work, shows 
just how impatient and how anxious the Bush team are to move on to next 
business. This is why I say that the War on Terrorism, whilst initially 
useful, has now become an irritation preventing triumphalism over the 
fall of Saddam and making it slightly more difficult for Bush to fulfil 
his original programme of taking on the increasing number of `rogue 
states’. This will not however not stop him as the Bush lie machine now 
believes it is capable of selling sand to the Arabs. His claim, though 
possibly sincere, that he wants to unite America will surely prove as 
hollow as Mrs Thatcher’s promise to bring harmony where there was 
discord and is far more dependent on a brutal foreign policy to cover up 
an assault on the vulnerable at home.

Returning to the question of NMD, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence 
with all the myriad treaties and institutions that go along with it was, 
in its own way, as physical a structure to emerge during the Cold War as 
the Berlin Wall used to be. When first elected Bush vowed to tear this 
institution down just as comprehensively as the wall had been. He 
declared NMD to be `an important opportunity for the world to re-think 
the unthinkable, and to find new ways to keep the peace’. Bush was 
announcing America’s intention to escape the constraints of this 
institution with its financial and politico-military constraints and go 
it alone. America no longer wanted alliances only followers. It would no 
longer accept other states placing limitations on its right or ability 
to act. It had won the Cold War and it wanted to realise that victory in 
the fullest possible way. Democrats, by clinging on to outdated 
institutions were preventing this from happening.

NMD immediately puts in to doubt the validity of the Nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty and its verification system designed to prevent 
cheating, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Anti Ballistic Missile 
Treaty, the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, the Strategic Arms 
Reduction Treaties and a host of separate agreements between the US and 
Russia designed to prevent proliferation and to help manage 
decommissioning. It jeopardises by-product agreements on chemical and 
biological weapons which prevent their being substituted for nuclear 
weapons but more importantly in reintroduces the inability of even 
allies to trust each other into the international system. Bush is 
determined to reshape the international order to America’s, or more 
precisely the neo-conservative’s, taste and NMD, in his second term, 
will play a much bigger propaganda and instrumental role in realising 
this end than it did in his first.

When Bush and Blair first met they discussed NMD behind closed doors and 
when asked what he thought he had in common with the British Prime 
Minister, Bush cryptically replied that they both used Colgate 
toothpaste. An agreement, we later found out, had been struck to 
incorporate the RAF Fylingdales Base into proposals for planned NMD 
system. Little did we know at the time that that agreement went much, 
much further and allowed for the stationing of US interceptor missiles 
on British soil. Not only do they use the same toothpaste, it appears, 
but they share the same tooth brush as well.

Those who expect a more moderate Bush in his second term are living more 
through hope than experience and I think it is safe to predict 
increasing global conflict from this belligerent President.

Daniel Evans is preparing a PhD thesis on National Missile Defence and 
its implications.


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