US foreign policy 'experts' only ever provide an echo chamber for American imperial power. A longer, broader view is necessary
Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated – Japan's attack
on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored,
and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely
to lie ahead. Right now, in fact.
At the moment, we are failing to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F Kennedy's decision
to launch the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the
post-second world war period: the invasion of South Vietnam, later all
of Indochina, leaving millions dead and four countries devastated, with
casualties still mounting from the long-term effects of drenching South
Vietnam with some of the most lethal carcinogens known, undertaken to
destroy ground cover and food crops.
The prime target was South
Vietnam. The aggression later spread to the North, then to the remote
peasant society of northern Laos, and finally to rural Cambodia, which
was bombed at the stunning level of all allied air operations in the
Pacific region during second world war, including the two atom bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this,
Henry Kissinger's orders were being carried out
– "anything that flies on anything that moves" – a call for genocide
that is rare in the historical record. Little of this is remembered.
Most was scarcely known beyond narrow circles of activists.
When
the invasion was launched 50 years ago, concern was so slight that there
were few efforts at justification, hardly more than the president's
impassioned plea that "we are opposed around the world by a monolithic
and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for
expanding its sphere of influence", and if the conspiracy achieves its
ends in Laos and Vietnam, "the gates will be opened wide."
Elsewhere,
he warned further that "the complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft
societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history [and]
only the strong … can possibly survive," in this case reflecting on the
failure of US aggression and terror to crush Cuban independence.
By
the time protest began to mount half a dozen years later, the respected
Vietnam specialist and military historian Bernard Fall, no dove,
forecast that "Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity … is threatened
with extinction … [as] … the countryside literally dies under the blows
of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this
size." He was again referring to South Vietnam.
When the war ended
eight horrendous years later, mainstream opinion was divided between
those who described the war as a "noble cause" that could have been won
with more dedication, and at the opposite extreme, the critics, to whom
it was "a mistake" that proved too costly. By 1977, President Carter
aroused little notice when he explained that we owe Vietnam "no debt"
because "the destruction was mutual."
There are important lessons
in all this for today, even apart from another reminder that only the
weak and defeated are called to account for their crimes. One lesson is
that to understand what is happening, we should attend not only to
critical events of the real world, often dismissed from history, but
also to what leaders and elite opinion believe, however tinged with
fantasy. Another lesson is that alongside the flights of fancy concocted
to terrify and mobilize the public (and perhaps believed by some who
are trapped in their own rhetoric), there is also geo-strategic planning
based on principles that are rational and stable over long periods
because they are rooted in stable institutions and their concerns. That
is true in the case of Vietnam, as well. I will return to that, only
stressing here that the persistent factors in state action are generally
well concealed.
The Iraq war is an instructive case. It was
marketed to a terrified public on the usual grounds of self-defense
against an awesome threat to survival: the "single question", George W
Bush and Tony Blair declared, was whether Saddam Hussein would end his
programs of developing weapons of mass destruction. When the single
question received the wrong answer, government rhetoric shifted
effortlessly to our "yearning for democracy", and educated opinion duly
followed course; all routine.
Later, as the scale of the US defeat
in Iraq was becoming difficult to suppress, the government quietly
conceded what had been clear all along. In 2007-2008, the administration
officially announced that a final settlement must grant the
US military
bases and the right of combat operations, and must privilege US
investors in the rich energy system – demands later reluctantly
abandoned in the face of Iraqi resistance. And all well kept from the
general population.
Gauging American decline
With such
lessons in mind, it is useful to look at what is highlighted in the
major journals of policy and opinion today. Let us keep to the most
prestigious of the establishment journals,
Foreign Affairs. The headline blaring on the cover of the December 2011 issue reads in bold face: "Is America Over?"
The
title article calls for "retrenchment" in the "humanitarian missions"
abroad that are consuming the country's wealth, so as to arrest the
American decline that is a major theme of international affairs
discourse, usually accompanied by the corollary that power is shifting
to the East, to China and (maybe) India.
The lead articles are on Israel-Palestine. The first, by two high Israeli officials, is entitled
"The Problem is Palestinian Rejection":
the conflict cannot be resolved because Palestinians refuse to
recognize Israel as a Jewish state – thereby conforming to standard
diplomatic practice: states are recognized, but not privileged sectors
within them. The demand is hardly more than a new device to deter the
threat of political settlement that would undermine Israel's
expansionist goals.
The opposing position, defended by an American professor, is entitled
"The Problem Is the Occupation."
The subtitle reads "How the Occupation is Destroying the Nation." Which
nation? Israel, of course. The paired articles appear under the heading
"Israel under Siege".
The January 2012 issue features yet
another call to bomb Iran now, before it is too late. Warning of "the dangers of deterrence", the author suggests that:
"[S]keptics
of military action fail to appreciate the true danger that a
nuclear-armed Iran would pose to US interests in the Middle East and
beyond. And their grim forecasts assume that the cure would be worse
than the disease – that is, that the consequences of a US assault on
Iran would be as bad as or worse than those of Iran achieving its
nuclear ambitions. But that is a faulty assumption. The truth is that a
military strike intended to destroy Iran's nuclear program, if managed
carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat and
dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States."
Others
argue that the costs would be too high, and at the extremes, some even
point out that an attack would violate international law – as does the
stand of the moderates, who regularly deliver threats of violence, in
violation of the UN Charter.
Let us review these dominant concerns in turn.
American
decline is real, though the apocalyptic vision reflects the familiar
ruling-class perception that anything short of total control amounts to
total disaster. Despite the piteous laments, the US remains the world
dominant power by a large margin, and no competitor is in sight, not
only in the military dimension, in which, of course, the US reigns
supreme.
China and India have recorded rapid (though highly
inegalitarian) growth, but remain very poor countries, with enormous
internal problems not faced by the West. China is the world's major
manufacturing center, but largely as an assembly plant for the advanced
industrial powers on its periphery and for western multinationals. That
is likely to change over time. Manufacturing regularly provides the
basis for innovation, often breakthroughs, as is now sometimes happening
in China. One example that has impressed western specialists is China's
takeover of the growing global solar panel market, not on the basis of
cheap labor, but by coordinated planning and, increasingly, innovation.
But the problems China faces are serious. Some are demographic,
reviewed in Science,
the leading US science weekly. The study shows that mortality sharply
decreased in China during the Maoist years, "mainly a result of economic
development and improvements in education and health services,
especially the public hygiene movement that resulted in a sharp drop in
mortality from infectious diseases." This progress ended with the
initiation of the capitalist reforms 30 years ago, and the death rate
has since increased.
Furthermore, China's recent economic growth
has relied substantially on a "demographic bonus", a very large
working-age population. "But the window for harvesting this bonus may
close soon," with a "profound impact on development": "Excess cheap
labor supply, which is one of the major factors driving China's economic
miracle, will no longer be available."
Demography is only one of many serious problems ahead. For India, the problems are far more severe.
Not
all prominent voices foresee American decline. Among international
media, there is none more serious and responsible than the London
Financial Times. It recently
devoted a full page to the optimistic expectation
that new technology for extracting North American fossil fuels might
allow the US to become energy-independent, hence to retain its global
hegemony for a century. There is no mention of the kind of world the US
would rule in this happy event, but not for lack of evidence.
At about the same time, the
International Energy Agency reported
that, with rapidly increasing carbon emissions from fossil fuel use,
the limit of safety will be reached by 2017, if the world continues on
its present course. "The door is closing," the IEA chief economist said,
and very soon it "will be closed forever".
Shortly before
the US Department of Energy reported
the most recent carbon dioxide emissions figures, which "jumped by the
biggest amount on record" to a level higher than the worst-case scenario
anticipated by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That
came as no surprise to many scientists, including the MIT program on
climate change, which for years has warned that the IPCC predictions are
too conservative.
Such critics of the IPCC predictions receive
virtually no public attention, unlike the fringe of denialists who are
supported by the corporate sector, along with huge propaganda campaigns
that have driven Americans off the international spectrum in dismissal
of the threats. Business support also translates directly to political
power. Denialism is part of the catechism that must be intoned by
Republican candidates in the farcical election campaign now in progress,
and in Congress, they are powerful enough to abort even efforts to
inquire into the effects of global warming, let alone do anything
serious about it.
In brief, American decline can perhaps be
stemmed if we abandon hope for decent survival – prospects that are all
too real, given the balance of forces in the world.
'Losing' China and Vietnam
Putting
such unpleasant thoughts aside, a close look at American decline shows
that China indeed plays a large role, as it has for 60 years. The
decline that now elicits such concern is not a recent phenomenon. It
traces back to the end of the second world war, when the US had half the
world's wealth and incomparable security and global reach. Planners
were naturally well aware of the enormous disparity of power, and
intended to keep it that way.
The basic viewpoint was outlined with admirable frankness in a
major state paper of 1948 (PPS 23).
The author was one of the architects of the "new world order" of the
day, the chair of the State Department policy planning staff, the
respected statesman and scholar George Kennan, a moderate dove within
the planning spectrum. He observed that the central policy goal was to
maintain the "position of disparity" that separated our enormous wealth
from the poverty of others. To achieve that goal, he advised, "We should
cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights,
the raising of the living standards, and democratization," and must
"deal in straight power concepts", not "hampered by idealistic slogans"
about "altruism and world-benefaction."
Kennan was referring
specifically to Asia, but the observations generalize, with exceptions,
for participants in the US-run global system. It was well understood
that the "idealistic slogans" were to be displayed prominently when
addressing others, including the intellectual classes, who were expected
to promulgate them.
The plans that Kennan helped formulate and
implement took for granted that the US would control the western
hemisphere, the Far East, the former British empire (including the
incomparable energy resources of the Middle East), and as much of
Eurasia as possible, crucially its commercial and industrial centers.
These were not unrealistic objectives, given the distribution of power.
But decline set in at once.
In 1949, China declared independence,
an event known in Western discourse as "the loss of China" – in the US,
with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for
that loss. The terminology is revealing. It is only possible to lose
something that one owns. The tacit assumption was that the US owned
China, by right, along with most of the rest of the world, much as
postwar planners assumed.
The "loss of China" was the first major
step in "America's decline". It had major policy consequences. One was
the immediate decision to support France's effort to reconquer its
former colony of Indochina, so that it, too, would not be "lost".
Indochina
itself was not a major concern, despite claims about its rich resources
by President Eisenhower and others. Rather, the concern was the "domino
theory", which is often ridiculed when dominoes don't fall, but remains
a leading principle of policy because it is quite rational. To adopt
Henry Kissinger's version, a region that falls out of control can become
a "virus" that will "spread contagion", inducing others to follow the
same path.
In the case of Vietnam, the concern was that the virus
of independent development might infect Indonesia, which really does
have rich resources. And that might lead Japan – the "superdomino" as it
was called by the prominent Asia historian John Dower – to
"accommodate" to an independent Asia as its technological and industrial
center in a system that would escape the reach of US power. That would
mean, in effect, that the US had lost the Pacific phase of the second
world war, fought to prevent Japan's attempt to establish such a new
order in Asia.
The way to deal with such a problem is clear:
destroy the virus and "inoculate" those who might be infected. In the
Vietnam case, the rational choice was to destroy any hope of successful
independent development and to impose brutal dictatorships in the
surrounding regions. Those tasks were successfully carried out – though
history has its own cunning, and something similar to what was feared
has since been developing in East Asia, much to Washington's dismay.
The
most important victory of the Indochina wars was in 1965, when a
US-backed military coup in Indonesia led by General Suharto carried out
massive crimes that were compared by the CIA to those of Hitler, Stalin,
and Mao. The "staggering mass slaughter", as the New York Times
described it, was reported accurately across the mainstream, and with
unrestrained euphoria.
It was "a gleam of light in Asia", as the
noted liberal commentator James Reston wrote in the Times. The coup
ended the threat of democracy by demolishing the mass-based political
party of the poor, established a dictatorship that went on to compile
one of the worst human rights records in the world, and threw the riches
of the country open to western investors. Small wonder that, after many
other horrors, including the
near-genocidal invasion of East Timor, Suharto was welcomed by the Clinton administration in 1995 as "our kind of guy".
Years
after the great events of 1965, Kennedy-Johnson national security
adviser McGeorge Bundy reflected that it would have been wise to end the
Vietnam war at that time, with the "virus" virtually destroyed and the
primary domino solidly in place, buttressed by other US-backed
dictatorships throughout the region.
Similar procedures have been
routinely followed elsewhere. Kissinger was referring specifically to
the threat of socialist democracy in Chile. That threat was ended on
another forgotten date, what Latin Americans call
"the first 9/11",
which in violence and bitter effects far exceeded the 9/11 commemorated
in the west. A vicious dictatorship was imposed in Chile, one part of a
plague of brutal repression that spread through Latin America, reaching
Central America under Reagan. Viruses have aroused deep concern
elsewhere as well, including the Middle East, where the threat of
secular nationalism has often concerned British and US planners,
inducing them to support radical Islamic fundamentalism to counter it.
The concentration of wealth and American decline
Despite
such victories, American decline continued. By 1970, US share of world
wealth had dropped to about 25%, roughly where it remains, still
colossal but far below the end of the second world war. By then, the
industrial world was "tripolar": US-based North America, German-based
Europe, and East Asia, already the most dynamic industrial region, at
the time Japan-based, but by now including the former Japanese colonies
Taiwan and South Korea, and, more recently, China.
At about that
time, American decline entered a new phase: conscious self-inflicted
decline. From the 1970s, there has been a significant change in the US
economy, as planners, private and state, shifted it toward
financialization and the offshoring of production, driven in part by the
declining rate of profit in domestic manufacturing. These decisions
initiated a vicious cycle in which wealth became highly concentrated
(dramatically so in the top 0.1% of the population), yielding
concentration of political power, hence legislation to carry the cycle
further: taxation and other fiscal policies, deregulation, changes in
the rules of corporate governance allowing huge gains for executives,
and so on.
Meanwhile, for the majority, real wages largely
stagnated, and people were able to get by only by sharply increased
workloads (far beyond Europe), unsustainable debt, and repeated bubbles
since the Reagan years, creating paper wealth that inevitably
disappeared when they burst (and the perpetrators were bailed out by the
taxpayer). In parallel, the political system has been increasingly
shredded as both parties are driven deeper into corporate pockets with
the escalating cost of elections – the Republicans to the level of
farce, the Democrats (now largely the former "moderate Republicans") not
far behind.
A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute,
which has been the major source of reputable data on these developments
for years, is entitled
Failure by Design.
The phrase "by design" is accurate. Other choices were certainly
possible. And as the study points out, the "failure" is class-based.
There is no failure for the designers. Far from it. Rather, the policies
are a failure for the large majority, the 99% in the imagery of the
Occupy movements – and for the country, which has declined and will
continue to do so under these policies.
One factor is the
offshoring of manufacturing. As the solar panel example mentioned
earlier illustrates, manufacturing capacity provides the basis and
stimulus for innovation leading to higher stages of sophistication in
production, design, and invention. That, too, is being outsourced, not a
problem for the "money mandarins" who increasingly design policy, but a
serious problem for working people and the middle classes, and a real
disaster for the most oppressed, African Americans, who have never
escaped the legacy of slavery and its ugly aftermath, and whose meager
wealth
virtually disappeared after the collapse of the housing bubble in 2008, setting off the most recent financial crisis, the worst so far.
American Decline in Perspective, Part 2 By
Noam Chomsky
In the years of conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, “losses”
continued to mount elsewhere. In the past decade, for the first time in
500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself
from western domination, another serious loss. The region has moved
towards integration, and has begun to address some of the terrible
internal problems of societies ruled by mostly Europeanized elites,
tiny islands of extreme wealth in a sea of misery. They have also rid
themselves of all U.S. military bases and of IMF controls. A newly
formed organization, CELAC, includes all countries of the hemisphere
apart from the U.S. and Canada. If it actually functions, that would
be another step in American decline, in this case in what has always
been regarded as “the backyard.”
Even more serious would be the loss of the MENA countries -- Middle
East/North Africa -- which have been regarded by planners since the
1940s as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the
greatest material prizes in world history.” Control of MENA energy
reserves would yield “substantial control of the world,” in the words of
the influential Roosevelt advisor A.A. Berle.
To be sure, if the projections of a century of U.S. energy independence based on
North American energy resources
turn out to be realistic, the significance of controlling MENA would
decline somewhat, though probably not by much: the main concern has
always been control more than access. However, the likely consequences
to the planet’s equilibrium are so ominous that discussion may be
largely an academic exercise.
The Arab Spring, another development of historic importance, might
portend at least a partial “loss” of MENA. The US and its allies have
tried hard to prevent that outcome -- so far, with considerable
success. Their policy towards the popular uprisings has kept closely to
the standard guidelines: support the forces
most amenable to U.S. influence and control.
Favored dictators are supported as long as they can maintain control
(as in the major oil states). When that is no longer possible, then
discard them and try to restore the old regime as fully as possible (as
in Tunisia and Egypt). The general pattern is familiar: Somoza,
Marcos, Duvalier, Mobutu, Suharto, and many others. In one case,
Libya, the three traditional imperial powers intervened by force to
participate in a rebellion to overthrow a mercurial and unreliable
dictator, opening the way, it is expected, to more efficient control
over Libya’s rich resources (oil primarily, but also water, of
particular interest to French corporations), to a possible base for the
U.S. Africa Command (so far
restricted to Germany), and to the reversal of growing Chinese penetration. As far as policy goes, there have been few surprises.
Crucially, it is important to reduce the threat of functioning
democracy, in which popular opinion will significantly influence
policy. That again is routine, and quite understandable. A look at the
studies of public opinion undertaken
by U.S. polling agencies in the MENA countries easily explains the
western fear of authentic democracy, in which public opinion will
significantly influence policy.
Israel and the Republican Party
Similar considerations carry over directly to the second major concern addressed in the issue of Foreign Affairs
cited in part one of this piece: the Israel-Palestine conflict. Fear
of democracy could hardly be more clearly exhibited than in this case.
In January 2006, an election took place in Palestine, pronounced free
and fair by international monitors.
The instant reaction of the U.S.
(and of course Israel), with Europe following along politely, was to
impose harsh penalties on Palestinians for voting the wrong way.
That is no innovation. It is quite in accord with the general and
unsurprising principle recognized by mainstream scholarship: the U.S.
supports democracy if, and only if, the outcomes accord with its
strategic and economic objectives, the rueful conclusion of
neo-Reaganite Thomas Carothers, the most careful and respected scholarly
analyst of “democracy promotion” initiatives.
More broadly, for 35 years the U.S. has led the rejectionist camp on
Israel-Palestine, blocking an international consensus calling for a
political settlement in terms too well known to require repetition. The
western mantra is that Israel seeks negotiations without preconditions,
while the Palestinians refuse. The opposite is more accurate. The
U.S. and Israel demand strict preconditions, which are, furthermore,
designed to ensure that negotiations will lead either to Palestinian
capitulation on crucial issues, or nowhere.
The first precondition is that the negotiations must be supervised by
Washington, which makes about as much sense as demanding that Iran
supervise the negotiation of Sunni-Shia conflicts in Iraq. Serious
negotiations would have to be under the auspices of some neutral party,
preferably one that commands some international respect, perhaps
Brazil. The negotiations would seek to resolve the conflicts between
the two antagonists: the U.S.-Israel on one side, most of the world on
the other.
The second precondition is that Israel must be free to expand its
illegal settlements in the West Bank. Theoretically, the U.S. opposes
these actions, but with a very light tap on the wrist, while continuing
to provide economic, diplomatic, and military support. When the U.S.
does have some limited objections, it very easily bars the actions, as
in the case of the E-1 project linking Greater Jerusalem to the town of
Ma’aleh Adumim, virtually bisecting the West Bank, a very high priority
for Israeli planners (across the spectrum), but raising some objections
in Washington, so that Israel has had to resort to devious measures to
chip away at the project.
The pretense of opposition reached the level of farce last February
when Obama vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for
implementation of official U.S. policy (also adding the uncontroversial
observation that the settlements themselves are illegal, quite apart
from expansion). Since that time there has been little talk about
ending settlement expansion, which continues, with studied provocation.
Thus, as Israeli and Palestinian representatives prepared to meet in Jordan in January 2011, Israel announced new construction
in Pisgat Ze’ev and Har Homa, West Bank areas that it has declared to
be within the greatly expanded area of Jerusalem, annexed, settled, and
constructed as Israel’s capital, all in violation of direct Security
Council orders. Other moves carry forward the grander design of
separating whatever West Bank enclaves will be left to Palestinian
administration from the cultural, commercial, political center of
Palestinian life in the former Jerusalem.
It is understandable that Palestinian rights should be marginalized
in U.S. policy and discourse. Palestinians have no wealth or power.
They offer virtually nothing to U.S. policy concerns; in fact, they have
negative value, as a nuisance that stirs up “the Arab street.”
Israel, in contrast, is a valuable ally. It is a rich society with a
sophisticated, largely militarized high-tech industry. For decades, it
has been a highly valued military and strategic ally, particularly
since 1967, when it performed a great service to the U.S. and its Saudi
ally by destroying the Nasserite “virus,” establishing the “special
relationship” with Washington in the form that has persisted since. It
is also a growing center for U.S. high-tech investment. In fact, high
tech and particularly military industries in the two countries are
closely linked.
Apart from such elementary considerations of great power politics as
these, there are cultural factors that should not be ignored. Christian
Zionism in Britain and the U.S. long preceded Jewish Zionism, and has
been a significant elite phenomenon with clear policy implications
(including the Balfour Declaration, which drew from it). When General
Allenby conquered Jerusalem during World War I, he was hailed in the
American press as Richard the Lion-Hearted, who had at last won the
Crusades and driven the pagans out of the Holy Land.
The next step was for the Chosen People to return to the land
promised to them by the Lord. Articulating a common elite view,
President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes
described Jewish colonization of Palestine as an achievement “without
comparison in the history of the human race.” Such attitudes find their
place easily within the Providentialist doctrines that have been a
strong element in popular and elite culture since the country’s origins:
the belief that God has a plan for the world and the U.S. is carrying
it forward under divine guidance, as articulated by a long list of
leading figures.
Moreover, evangelical Christianity is a major popular force in the
U.S. Further toward the extremes, End Times evangelical Christianity
also has enormous popular outreach, invigorated by the establishment of
Israel in 1948, revitalized even more by the conquest of the rest of
Palestine in 1967 -- all signs that End Times and the Second Coming are
approaching.
These forces have become particularly significant since the Reagan
years, as the Republicans have abandoned the pretense of being a
political party in the traditional sense, while devoting themselves in
virtual lockstep uniformity to servicing a tiny percentage of the
super-rich and the corporate sector. However, the small constituency
that is primarily served by the reconstructed party cannot provide
votes, so they have to turn elsewhere.
The
only choice is to mobilize tendencies that have always been present,
though rarely as an organized political force: primarily nativists
trembling in fear and hatred, and religious elements that are extremists
by international standards but not in the U.S. One outcome is
reverence for alleged Biblical prophecies, hence not only support for
Israel and its conquests and expansion, but passionate love for Israel,
another core part of the catechism that must be intoned by Republican
candidates -- with Democrats, again, not too far behind.
These factors aside, it should not be forgotten that the
“Anglosphere” -- Britain and its offshoots -- consists of
settler-colonial societies, which rose on the ashes of indigenous
populations, suppressed or virtually exterminated. Past practices must
have been basically correct, in the U.S. case even ordained by Divine
Providence. Accordingly there is often an intuitive sympathy for the
children of Israel when they follow a similar course. But primarily,
geostrategic and economic interests prevail, and policy is not graven in
stone.
The Iranian “Threat” and the Nuclear Issue
Let us turn finally to the third of the leading issues addressed in
the establishment journals cited earlier, the “threat of Iran.” Among
elites and the political class this is generally taken to be the primary
threat to world order -- though not among populations. In Europe,
polls show that Israel is regarded as the leading threat to peace. In
the MENA countries, that status is shared with the U.S., to the extent
that in Egypt, on the eve of the Tahrir Square uprising, 80% felt that
the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons. The same
polls found that only 10% regard Iran as a threat -- unlike the ruling
dictators, who have their own concerns.
In the United States, before the massive propaganda campaigns of the
past few years, a majority of the population agreed with most of the
world that, as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has a
right to carry out uranium enrichment. And even today, a large majority
favors peaceful means for dealing with Iran. There is even strong
opposition to military engagement if Iran and Israel are at war. Only
a quarter regard Iran as an important concern for the U.S. altogether.
But it is not unusual for there to be a gap, often a chasm, dividing
public opinion and policy.
Why exactly is Iran regarded as such a colossal threat? The question
is rarely discussed, but it is not hard to find a serious answer --
though not, as usual, in the fevered pronouncements. The most
authoritative answer is provided by the Pentagon and the intelligence
services in their regular reports to Congress on global security. They
report that Iran does not pose a military threat. Its military spending
is very low even by the standards of the region, minuscule of course in comparison with the U.S.
Iran has little capacity to deploy force. Its strategic doctrines
are defensive, designed to deter invasion long enough for diplomacy to
set it. If Iran is developing nuclear weapons capability, they report,
that would be part of its deterrence strategy. No serious analyst
believes that the ruling clerics are eager to see their country and
possessions vaporized, the immediate consequence of their coming even
close to initiating a nuclear war. And it is hardly necessary to spell
out the reasons why any Iranian leadership would be concerned with deterrence, under existing circumstances.
The regime is doubtless a serious threat to much of its own
population -- and regrettably, is hardly unique on that score. But the
primary threat to the U.S. and Israel is that Iran might deter their
free exercise of violence. A further threat is that the Iranians
clearly seek to extend their influence to neighboring Iraq and
Afghanistan, and beyond as well. Those “illegitimate” acts are called
“destabilizing” (or worse). In contrast, forceful imposition of U.S.
influence halfway around the world contributes to “stability” and order,
in accord with traditional doctrine about who owns the world.
It makes very good sense to try to prevent Iran from joining the
nuclear weapons states, including the three that have refused to sign
the Non-Proliferation Treaty -- Israel, India, and Pakistan,
all of which have been assisted in developing nuclear weapons by the
U.S., and are still being assisted by them. It is not impossible to
approach that goal by peaceful diplomatic means. One approach, which
enjoys overwhelming international support, is to undertake meaningful
steps towards establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle
East, including Iran and Israel (and applying as well to U.S. forces
deployed there), better still extending to South Asia.
Support for such efforts is so strong that the Obama administration
has been compelled to formally agree, but with reservations: crucially,
that Israel’s nuclear program must not be placed under the auspices of
the International Atomic Energy Association, and that no state (meaning
the U.S.) should be required to release information about “Israeli
nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to
previous nuclear transfers to Israel.” Obama also accepts Israel’s
position that any such proposal must be conditional on a comprehensive
peace settlement, which the U.S. and Israel can continue to delay
indefinitely.
This survey comes nowhere near being exhaustive, needless to say. Among major topics not addressed is the shift
of U.S. military policy towards the Asia-Pacific region, with new
additions to the huge military base system underway right now, in Jeju Island off South Korea and Northwest Australia, all elements of the policy of “containment of China.” Closely related is the issue of U.S. bases in Okinawa, bitterly opposed by the population for many years, and a continual crisis in U.S.-Tokyo-Okinawa relations.
Revealing how little fundamental assumptions have changed, U.S.
strategic analysts describe the result of China’s military programs as a
“classic 'security dilemma,' whereby military programs and national
strategies deemed defensive by their planners are viewed as threatening
by the other side,” writes Paul Godwin of the Foreign Policy Research
Institute. The security dilemma arises over control of the seas off
China’s coasts. The U.S. regards its policies of controlling these
waters as “defensive,” while China regards them as threatening;
correspondingly, China regards its actions in nearby areas as
“defensive” while the U.S. regards them as threatening. No such debate
is even imaginable concerning U.S. coastal waters. This “classic
security dilemma” makes sense, again, on the assumption that the U.S.
has a right to control most of the world, and that U.S. security
requires something approaching absolute global control.
While the principles of imperial domination have undergone little
change, the capacity to implement them has markedly declined as power
has become more broadly distributed in a diversifying world.
Consequences are many. It is, however, very important to bear in mind
that -- unfortunately -- none lifts the two dark clouds that hover over
all consideration of global order: nuclear war and environmental
catastrophe, both literally threatening the decent survival of the
species.
Quite the contrary. Both threats are ominous, and increasing
