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SPENGLER
Bush's nerve is going to
snap
Sir John Keegan remarks in
his History of the First World War that if
Austria had struck at Serbia immediately after the
murder of Archduke Ferdinand, world war would have been
avoided. Terrorists supported by the Serbian government
had murdered the heir to the Austrian throne, and some
form of response was inevitable. It was Austria's
vacillation that gave time for the other Great Powers to
take sides, and for the pan-Slavists to convince Czar
Nicholas II that Russia's destiny demanded support for
the Serbs.
Had Washington struck Iraq shortly
after September 11, 2001, that would have been that. By
giving the rest of the world time to form a stop-America
coalition, Washington has done something similar. Its
choices now boil down to standing down or acting alone
upon a stage crafted to place American motives in the
worst possible light. The danger is that America will
find itself fighting a sort of Chechnyan war on a global
scale. President George W Bush cannot wrap his mind
around this.
It is a matter of conjecture when
Bush's nerve will snap. What we know with certainty is
that the world looks uncannily different to him than it
did on February 26, when he delivered a rousing call for
democratic reform throughout the Middle East.
The democratic institutions of Turkey, the
region's largest republic, have rejected an American
troop presence, as American ships waited off the Turkish
coast to unload material for the Iraq war. Ninety-four
percent of Turks oppose Bush's war to bring democracy to
the Arab world they ruled until the end of the Ottoman
Empire in 1918. Bush has his answer.
Iraq,
meanwhile, sprang the trap it had baited with its Al
Samoud 2 missiles. After Hans Blix and his inspectors
declared themselves shocked, shocked to discover banned
weaponry - something they never could have done without
Iraqi help - the Iraqis are destroying them, and Blix
obligingly has declared this to be a significant act of
disarmament.
Among the "coalition of the
willing", such stalwarts as Italian Premier Silvio
Berlusconi make they will support the United States, but
only if the United States obtains the backing of the
Security Council. That makes American foreign policy, as
some wags observe, dependent on the vote of Guinea.
Washington's war hawks will blame Secretary of
State Colin Powell for entangling America's interest in
the spider-webs of the UN Security Council. The blame
lies at the doorstep of the neo-conservative war-hawks,
who persuaded the president that America should
undertake a democratizing mission among a people who
never once voted for their own leaders.
George W
Bush is a tough-minded and effective leader, not the
fumble-mouthed cowboy of European press caricature. But
his predicament brings to mind Clausewitz's observation
that all the commanders whom history derides for
vacillation had risen through the ranks as men of daring
and decisiveness - in junior command positions. Not
personal courage as such, but strategic vision, makes
possible Entschlossenheit - decisiveness. It is
strategic vision, a clear notion of the array of forces
at work on the battlefield and in the wider war, which
enables the commander to see beyond the fog of war.
If only Bush employed the rhetoric of democracy
as a cynical screen behind which to pursue American
security interests, all might be well. In his heart of
hearts, however, he believes that Islam is a religion no
different in its foundations than Christianity, and
Arabs are no different from the rest of us. Here is what
he said on February 26: "There was a time when many said
that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of
sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong.
Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken. The
nation of Iraq with its proud heritage, abundant
resources and skilled and educated people is fully
capable of moving toward democracy and living in
freedom."
Japan and Germany, to be sure, had
industrial economies to rival America's before World War
II. Yet American occupiers succeeded in humiliating
their cultures, with the result that birth rates have
collapsed in both nations. Within a couple of centuries
German and Japanese will be spoken only in Hell (as
Admiral Nimitz predicted after Pearl Harbor). Fixing
other folks' cultures is not such a simple matter.
Much of the Islamic world does not want to be
absorbed into American values in this fashion. It will
fight to the death to prevent this. On September 22,
2001, 11 days after the World Trade Center burned, I
wrote in this space (Washington's
racism and the Islamist trap), to the irritation of
some Asia Times Online readers:
"Implicit in
America's pompous elocution against terrorism is a
Kiplingesque premise that it is carrying the White Man's
Burden to the underprivileged Middle East and South
Asia. Except for a few "fundamentalist" recalcitrants,
Washington believes, everyone in those parts of the
world wants what it wants: suburban tract housing
developments, video on demand, fast food egalitarianism
and economic opportunity ... America's unwarranted
contempt for its Islamist adversary already has had
terrible consequences, and well might have catastrophic
ones.
"The notion that intelligent and educated
Muslims who know Western culture, speak Western
languages and have studied at Western universities well
might choose a different civilization does not occur to
Midwesterners and Texans. What else is there besides
economic opportunity? They have known nothing but their
own surroundings and cannot conceive of anything
different."
What happens now? If President Bush
settles accounts with Saddam Hussein under present
conditions, the Arab world (and much of the rest of the
world) will view his action as illegitimate and
unreasonable, thanks to the cupidity of Blix and the
European diplomatic corps. If America stands down, or
delays indefinitely, the center will not hold, and we
will slouch towards Gomorrah.
Backing off and
leaving the field to Saddam, to be sure, remains highly
improbable. Like the German General Staff in 1914, who
urged an attack on Russia before it finished its rail
network, Washington will act now rather than wait for a
second North Korea to emerge. Before long, however, Bush
may find himself in the unenviable company of Russian
Premier Vladimir Putin, who is conducting a prolonged
war of attrition against the Chechnyans. Russia is used
to such things. America is not. The consequences for
American morale are unpredictable.
(©2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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