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THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
Part 2: Righteous king
By
Francesco Sisci
Part 1: Reluctant hegemon
 BEIJING - Unfortunately,
haughty ideologies live off selfish interests. To fight
fascism and impose democracy in Europe and Asia the
United States needed more than a superior ideology - it
needed force. In fact, it needed a huge military might
that would help not only American ideals, but also the
more earthly interests of the American nation and its
companies.
The confusion between the two sides
is so intimate that many in the United States believe
that American ideals can coincide with the interests of
American companies. But companies in a market are
natural competitors, and the interests of US companies
clash among themselves and with the interests of foreign
companies, especially if the latter come from weaker
emerging markets.
All in all it is impossible to
convince a weaker country, say in Asia, that in order to
side with freedom and democracy it must lay its market
wide open and let its frail, upstart companies come
under the boot of stronger US companies using their
world-dominating market position.
This is bound
to happen more and more, as the big fights against such
ideas as communism and fascism are waning, and national
interests take the front stage.
In fact, this is
a completely new ball game where the United States needs
to redefine itself, choosing a path true to its origin
and identity but also adapting to the new environment
without huge ideological clashes.
In China in
the period between the 7th and 4th centuries BC the land
was divided among many states, but there were periods in
which a single state would become ba - overlord
or hegemon. That state would lead the others, even if it
didn't directly rule all the others. From the ancient
word ba comes the modern Chinese baquan
zhuyi, the "hegemonism" so bitter to American
palates. In fact even in the Chinese literature
ba came to assume a derogatory connotation as it
was contrasted with the power of wang, what we
might understand as the righteous king. The overlord,
the hegemon, would impose its lead only by the use of
force, while the wang, the righteous king, would
lead by virtue, by what in modern terms we could define
as persuasion.
Can the United States now lead by
persuasion and not merely by force? This it is what it
would like to do, and what could be necessary to
forestall what al-Qaeda terrorists hoped to trigger - a
new war of ideas of Muslims against the rest of the
world.
But to forestall this war and future
challenges, the US has to change the perception it gives
and mark its power as wang, not as ba - it
must transform its perception from baquan zhuyi
to wangquan zhuyi, the power of the righteous
king. This is something the Americans feel they are (or
want to be) but this perception is often not shared
abroad. The gap between the domestic and foreign
perceptions of US policy also contributes to the
frustration of the American public with foreign
intervention and fuels further drives toward
isolationism and unilateralism in her actions.
All this is extremely important for the war on
Iraq, as that war will have three aims: to combat
terrorism, to control oil resources, and to enforce
world order. On all these fronts the United States must
win not only for its own good, but for that of the
world. Here the war of ideas (or, if one wishes, of
propaganda) is even more important than that fought on
the battlefield. The war of ideas in fact presents many
more snares than that of the military, and yet it is
arguably grossly overlooked.
The present
division of opinions in Europe on the war could be very
dangerous for both Europeans and Americans. Although in
Asia many pundits have overstressed the many commercial
frictions on the two sides of the Atlantic, in fact the
partnership between Western Europe and the United States
has shaped the past century. The main war theater for
the two most formidable threats to the world was Europe,
and it was there that the Americans and free Europeans
defeated first fascism and then communism. To think that
the US would go it alone and fight terrorism without
Europe would be a huge break from a century of
experience and would have unfathomable consequences for
both the US and Europe.
What Europe does not
understand, or the United States has not been able to
explain convincingly to Europe, is the importance of the
fight against terrorism. Europe has lived with terrorism
for decades. First it was domestic, although sponsored
by the Soviets (Red Brigades, Rote Armee Faction), then
the threat came from the Middle East. Both Moscow and
the Middle East were very close to Europe, they could
not be made to disappear. The policy in Europe has thus
been to live with terrorism and minimize its effects,
without trying to eradicate terrorism completely. This
frame of mind clashes with that of the United States,
which feels it must and can eradicate terrorism.
Europeans tend to think that terrorism can't be
eradicated and that attempts to do so could bring about
even worse scenarios. This debate could be endless, as
both sides could present a good case that could hardly
be conclusive on either side.
But the issue is
imperial order, not mere safety.
For about three
decades a cartel of oil producers, the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has blackmailed a
cartel of industrial countries by controlling the price
of the energy fueling the industries. During these three
decades the industrial countries have withstood the
pressure by means of a series of economic and technical
measures to minimize the use of oil and differentiate
the sources of energy.
Ultimately the oil
producers were unwilling to bring their threat to a
showdown because they were afraid that an even bigger
enemy, the Soviets, could make use of the weakness of
the industrial countries, defeat them and then come for
a reckoning against the oil producers as well. In a way
the fear of the Soviets was greater than the temptation
to bring the industrial countries to their knees. At the
same time the presence of the Soviets also served to
restrain the industrial countries from any pushy action
against the OPEC countries for fear that this could
trigger a Soviet intervention in the Middle East.
But the Soviet Union is no more.
Next: The fear within
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