power & legitimacy

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Back in 1992-96, after the US had beaten the USSR in Afghanistan and then
abandoned the country to its fate, the central government collapsed. Thus,
Afghanistan was "ruled" by a bunch of warring tribal groups and
miscellaneous mujahadeen groupings (many of which had been trained and/or
armed by the US). This created a classic "Hobbesian" situation -- where life
was nasty, brutish and short due to constant conflict, including the
physical destruction of most of Kabul -- which meant most Afghans craved
"law and order" over all else. So the rise of the Taliban, which shoved the
various combatants aside, was popular. (Leftists and even liberals sometimes
sneer at "law and order" -- because it's often a code-phrase for something
bad -- but the vast majority see real law and order as necessary to having
even a minimally acceptable life. That's an important reason why "anarchy"
has so many negative connotations to the vast majority of people.)

The problem with the Taliban, besides the obvious (its interpretation of
Islam as being ultra-conservative on all social issues), was that it had the
power but not the legitimacy, i.e., spontaneous support from the Afghan
people. In most of Afghanistan, it was supported almost entirely because of
its imposition of order, not because of anything positive that they did.
(Even the Taliban's Pushtun ethnic roots didn't count for much if there were
competing Pushtun leaders. The Taliban also seems to have based some of its
power on support from "Arab-Afghans," i.e., al Qaida, but that didn't help
with legitimacy.) This lack of legitimacy seems a major part of the
explanation of why the Taliban fell so rapidly to the US onslaught in 2001,
acting as if it were a thin and brittle stick rather than resilient steel, a
political force with organic links to the population.

Another reason for the Taliban's brittleness was that power corrupts: they
were probably also venial (as some reports about Taliban leaders decamping
with bags of money suggest) while it seems quite likely that they used their
power to push programs that were far beyond what people (even male people)
wanted. If so, that also contributed to the sudden collapse of the regime,
not only by undermining its legitimacy but by weakening its leadership's
ability to defend itself.

Why this sketch of the past, in an era when things that happened last year
are seen as "ancient history" and we should be discussing the Grammys? I
think it's quite possible that the US drive to dominate the world could
follow a similar pattern.

Under the Bush League, the US is unilaterally trying to impose its rule on
the world, in effect to establish itself as the world government. (That is,
it isn't going to its traditional allies in NATO or the EU for consent or
even advice. The US elite has never cared that much about the consent of
third-world peoples or leaders. The UN is ignored if it's not guaranteed to
support the US.) Due to the widespread concern about non-governmental
terrorism (exemplified by the atrocities of 911), it's got a lot of support,
not only in Europe but from terrorist governments such as Algeria, Libya,
and Israel. Like the Taliban, the US has gained a lot because it is fighting
for international "law and order" while supporting existing governments'
efforts to defend their own internal power.

But as the Dubyans leverage their power to impose their will on more and
more of the world (Iraq, the Phillipines, the Georgian republic, etc.) it
becomes increasingly clear that power requires legitimacy. This suggests the
rise of new movements opposed to the rising US power, along with the revival
of some old ones (including, alas, al Qaida). Assuming that US power doesn't
snap like a stiff twig. If we're lucky, the struggle against the US will
allow the rise of world democracy. If we're not... hey, let's not go there.

Also, there's the problem of power corrupting. The US power elite is
nowadays clearly not seeking simply world order but is linked to the vested
interests of the oilagarchy, which means that those of us who pay the cost
of high consumption and production of oil will suffer. The single-minded
pro-oil style of policy will even alienate many capitalists. World
environmental disaster would further destabilize the world.

thinking aloud as usual,

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine