Two predictions: 1) George W
Bush will win a second term as president of the United
States. 2) He will be sorry he did.
The dog that did not bark at the
Democratic Party's convention was opposition to the Iraq
war. To the chagrin of the Europeans, who
oppose the war by vast margins, the
Democratic leadership all but muzzled opponents of a
war. The battle will be fought on Bush's ground.
Senator John Kerry set himself up for defeat by
making an issue of the conduct of the Iraq war, rather
than the war itself. Bush will pull a rabbit out of his
hat or, to be more precise, a bear, as I reported last
week (When Grozny comes to Fallujah,
July 27).
Replacing the commander-in-chief in
the midst of war is something Americans never have done,
although Abraham Lincoln had some sleepless nights
before the 1864 elections. Americans want a war, and
will choose the war party in the end, however they may
chastise the president for his numerous errors. As in
war, in politics as well, the threat is mightier than
the execution. Poor results in the opinion polls are a
warning to the president, not repudiation.
Bush
opened Pandora's box a year ago, and not even Kerry
proposes to shut it. In this case Pandora's box better
resembles a nested set of Russian dolls. Open one, and a
bevy of demons flies out, forcing you to open the next
one, and so forth. Dubya will be the president who led
the US into a world civilizational war, although it is
more precise to say that civilizational war led the US
into it. Many will be the night during his second term
that Bush will wish he were still in Texas, and still
drunk.
In his own unassuming fashion, Bush is a
world-historical figure in Georg Hegel's sense of the
term - never mind that he does not know who Hegel was. A
more thoughtful man would recoil in horror at the
choices before him and fade into paralysis, like the
unfortunate president James Buchanan in 1859. World War
I was declared by elderly statesmen who had spent their
entire careers (since the 1878 Treaty of Berlin)
avoiding a European war. By delaying until the Central
and Allied powers had sorted themselves out into two
equally matched entities, they ensured that the outcome
of war would be the mutual destruction of all the
combatants.
World War I could not be forever
delayed, though. With its declining population, France
stood one generation away from helplessness at the hands
of the German Empire; with its rapid industrialization,
Russia stood one generation away from military parity
with Germany. By analogy, if Washington were to sit on
its hands until Iran, Pakistan and other Islamic states
developed nuclear weapons, the inevitable future
conflict would be ruinous beyond imagination. Europe's
demographic collapse and the replacement of European
Christians by Middle Eastern and North African Muslims
present an even deadlier long-term threat.
Washington will choose preemptive war.
Narrow-minded but principled, trusting no one's judgment
but his own, petty and ruthless, George W Bush is the
man of the hour. The Weltgeist will give him a
second term.
Among Pandora's nested boxes, the
next one to be opened will extend the conflict into
Central Asia. Turkey's status as the "sick man of
Europe" drew the European powers into World War I, and
it is Turkey's present role as the sick man of Central
Asia that will draw in the Russians. Last week I
predicted that Russian President Vladimir Putin would
ride to Bush's rescue by introducing Russian forces into
Iraq's Sunni triangle. On July 27, the pro-government
Russian daily Izvestia editorialized on behalf of such
an action:
Washington, to be sure, would like Russian
peacekeepers in the Sunni belt in Iraq: they have a
great deal of experience operating in such Muslim hot
spots as Bosnia and Kosovo ... One should take note
that in all these areas, the Russian peacekeepers
enjoyed a very good relationship with the locals,
without incidents and terrorist acts. Truthfully, the
Russian leadership should consider this option quite
carefully.
Bush thinks he needs Putin to
prove his strategy right before the American electorate,
but Putin will do so precisely because US strategy in
the region is dead wrong. Washington believes that
stabilizing Iraq will stabilize the entire region:
Moscow knows that the Iraq war already has destabilized
the region. In the 21st century version of the Great
Game, Russia's winning chess move is to replace Turkey
as the dominant power in Central Asia.
Russia's
most important strategic interest lies in the Black Sea
oilfields, and its greatest worry is pan-Turkish
agitation along its southern border. Sergei Blagov in
Asia Times Online (Tug-of-war over Uzbekistan,
July 31) reported Russia's alarm over Islamic drift in
Central Asia. On July 28, K Gajendra Singh detailed the
weakening of Turkey's traditional alliances (Turkey, Israel aim to forgive and
forget).
It is more probable that
Turkey will revert to an Islamic model under Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan than it is that Iraq will
emerge as a secular democracy on the old Turkish model.
Erdogan wants involvement in regional conflict less than
anything in the world, except for one thing, which is
the humiliation of Turkic populations in adjacent
countries. He no more can remain indifferent to the
plight of ethnic Turks in the Central Asian republics of
the former Soviet Union than could Nicholas II of Russia
abandon the Serbs to Austria in 1914. By the same token,
Russia does not want to engage its weakened and
demoralized army in a foreign venture. But it no more
can remain indifferent to Turkish agitation in the
Caucasus and Black Sea than could Austria tolerate
Russian subsidies to Serbian terrorists in 1914.
Those are the characters in the next act of the
tragedy, and their motivations. The role of tragic lead
falls to George W Bush, who will be re-elected and
regret it.
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oppose the war by vast margins, the
Democratic leadership all but muzzled opponents of a
war. The battle will be fought on Bush's ground.
