COMMENT US loses wattage to China in Iraq
By Dmitry Shlapentokh
Recently, the US media reported what seems to be a not very important event:
China is among the countries that has received contracts for building electric
power plants in Iraq. Still, close scrutiny of the event revealed a lot about
the nature of not so much China's but the US's foreign policy and political
system, and the real state of the US economy.
The very fact that China was invited to build power stations in Iraq looks like
a rather surprising development. The point is that this should be done by the
Americans, who not only have the
expertise but - and this should be quite an important consideration - have
allocated literally billions of dollars of taxpayer money for Iraqi
"reconstruction", ie, providing the country with essential services, without
which, as the George W Bush administration rightly asserts, a stable government
is not possible. Still, after several years of work and all the billions spent,
as one Iraqi official acknowledged, little has been done to provide even such
essentials as electricity.
The report added that one should not blame the US companies engaged in projects
because the security situation in the country is appalling. Still, the same
security situation will exist for the Chinese, and Iraqi authorities are
clearly aware that transferring the assignment to non-US companies will quite
displease their masters in Washington.
Still, they decided to do so because the entire experience of the American
occupation demonstrates to them the extreme inefficiency of not just the US
military machine - the huge dinosaur of a superpower unable to deal with
comparatively poorly armed insurgents - but also of the US's economic
management. And this might have much more direct implications in the long run
for the American imperial presence than a military defeat.
The comparison between the US and Nazi Germany has been quite popular in the
press and Internet. Logically the pundits - following the well-known model -
have tried to find these signs of American aggressiveness in the past as the
way to provide historical legitimacy to the US's present geopolitical posture.
In many publications one can easily find the image of the US as a militaristic
monster that has engaged in imperial aggrandizement since the early days of
American history. But this is hardly the case. In the 19th to early 20th
centuries, the US had engaged in wars of aggression and imperial acquisition.
But what the US had done, European nations had done on a much larger scale.
The American colonial empire was actually rather small in comparison to
America's size and economic might. Americans were not choirboys in dealing with
subjugated people. Still, US atrocities, eg, in the Philippines, were far from
being the exception. In fact European nations often treated their colonial
subjects much worse.
Belgium is a good example. In the beginning of the 20th century, the German
rape of Belgium during World War I would be proclaimed as one of the worst
examples of the brutality of the "Huns" (Germans). The Germans' treatment of
Belgians would be abhorred because Belgium was seen as tiny and one of the most
peaceful nations in Europe. Still, Belgium had a Belgian Congo equal to all of
Western Europe in size, where Belgians exploited and brutalized the population.
One might state here that US geopolitical expansion, starting in the 19th
century, was in a way different from that of the Europeans. American power
emanated not so much from American guns but from the American purse: it rested
on America's increasing economic might. And this became especially clear in the
second half of the 20th century. In the Cold War world, American power and its
imperial span rested not so much on its nuclear arsenal and its navy and air
force but on the power of the American economy and the image of the US as the
richest and most efficient economic machine in the world.
It was assumed that friendship with the US would make a country's economic
machine run smoothly, and that generous American largess would provide plenty
of dollars - as good as gold. And this, indeed, was true. Not only did the
dollar have direct gold backing, but also America was the leader of economic
and managerial techniques. Indeed it is American management techniques and the
generous Marshall Plan that were responsible for Europe's rising from the ashes
with remarkable speed.
During the Cold War era, the nations of Eastern Europe publicly proclaimed
their desire for liberty as the major reason for their attachment to the US.
Still, liberty was not the major attraction: the desire was for the American
way of life - as it was visualized - and it was the life of economic plenty, a
life where everything ran smoothly and efficiently and the American dollar was
the king of currencies.
Still, as the experience of those who encounter Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan
and many other parts of the world reveal, these characteristics - efficiency
and concern for results - have become more and more passe. American companies
have behaved in extremely "non-American" ways; they immediately created several
layers of highly paid but absolutely useless management, brought workers from
abroad for exorbitant wages and spent on themselves all the "aid" money -
presumably given to help the populace - and then departed with with little to
show for their "expertise".
And this image of US management as wasteful, corrupt and inefficient, after
years and billions of dollars spent, and unable not just to improve the life of
ordinary people but even to return Iraq's basic services in many areas to a
level existing even during Saddam Hussein's rule, has damaged the US's image
much more than all the abuses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. At the same time,
however, the inefficiencies of the American economy are not just reflected in a
change of the image of the US. The implication is much more serious.
It is true that the US continues to be one of the major economies of the world
and has considerable financial resources. Still, as the dollar's value
continues to fall against all major currencies (this in itself reflects the
realities of America's economic health) and the US's debt continues to rise to
astronomical levels, the ability of the US to maintain its imperial presence
continues to erode.
It is not only that the weakening dollar makes maintaining the US global
presence more and more burdensome but also that the US has fewer and fewer
resources for providing substantial amounts of largess for its friends and
satellites.
The US has started to lose its major weapon: the checkbook. And it is here that
other nations who became "Americanized", ie, efficient and rich, have started
to replace the US. And it is this that is indicated by what seems to be the
trivial fact of replacing an American company by a Chinese one in building an
electricity plant in Iraq.
Dmitry Shlapentokh, PhD, is associate professor of history, College of
Liberal Arts and Sciences, Indiana University South Bend. He is author of
East Against West: The First Encounter - The Life of Themistocles, 2005.
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