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THE WAR NOBODY WON
Part 2: The new
Agincourt
By Henry C K Liu
Part 1: Chaos, crime and
incredulity
John Lewis
Gaddis, Robert A Lovett professor of military and naval
history at Yale University, recently published an
article called "A Grand Strategy of Transformation" in
which he described President George W Bush's
national-security strategy as representing the most
sweeping shift in US grand strategy since the beginning
of the Cold War. But Gaddis warned that its success
depends on the willingness of the rest of the world to
welcome US power with open arms.
The importance
of this article by Gaddis is in its analysis of the Bush
world view, not that the Bush world view is necessarily
valid. In a larger sense, no state can justify waging
war on another on the basis of political morals, since
no state is perfect. War is always about national
interest, not morality, neo-liberal propaganda
notwithstanding. The issue is whether the Bush Grand
Strategy is in the United States' long-term national
interest. There is strong argument that it falls very
short on that measure.
Gaddis observes that
Bush's report on National Security Strategy of the
United States of America (NSSUSA), released on September
17, 2002, is framed by the attacks of September 11,
2001. It echoes the president's speech at West Point on
June 1, 2002, and sets out three tasks: "We will defend
the peace by fighting terrorists and tyrants. We will
preserve the peace by building good relations among the
great powers. We will extend the peace by encouraging
free and open societies on every continent."
Bush's equation of terrorists with tyrants as
sources of danger, an obvious outgrowth of September 11,
is highly problematic. Anarchists, assassins and
saboteurs have always operated without clearly
identifiable sponsors. Their actions have rarely shaken
the stability of states or societies because the number
of victims they targeted and the amount of physical
damage they caused had been relatively small. September
11 showed that terrorists can now inflict levels of
destruction that only states wielding military power
used to be able to accomplish.
Weapons of mass
destruction were the last resort for those possessing
them during the Cold War, the NSSUSA points out. "Today,
our enemies see weapons of mass destruction as weapons
of choice." That elevates terrorists to the level of
tyrants in Bush's thinking, and that prompts him to
insist that preemption must be added to - though not
necessarily in all situations replace - the tasks of
containment and deterrence: "We cannot let our enemies
strike first." That is the rationale for preemptive
strikes.
The doctrine of unilateralism is
spelled out in the NSSUSA: "The United States will
constantly strive to enlist the support of the
international community." But "we will not hesitate to
act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of
self-defense by acting preemptively against such
terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our
people and our country".
Preemption in turn
requires hegemony. Although Bush speaks, in his letter
of transmittal, of creating "a balance of power that
favors human freedom" while forsaking "unilateral
advantage", the body of the NSSUSA makes it clear that
"our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential
adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of
surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United
States".
The West Point speech put it more
bluntly: "America has, and intends to keep, military
strengths beyond challenge." The president had at last
approved, therefore, Paul Wolfowitz's controversial
recommendation to this effect, made in a 1992 "Defense
Planning Guidance" draft subsequently leaked to the
press and then disavowed by the first Bush
administration. It's no accident that Wolfowitz, now
deputy secretary of defense, has been at the center of
the new Bush administration's strategic planning, Gaddis
wrote.
The qualifying balance-of-power caveat is
not at odds with maintaining military strength beyond
challenge. Gaddis the historian points out that in
practice and in history, other great powers prefer
management of the international system by a single
hegemon as long as it's a relatively benign one. When
there's only one superpower, there's no point for anyone
else to try to compete with it in military capability.
International conflict shifts to trade rivalries and
other relatively minor quarrels, none of them worth
fighting a war about. Compared with what great powers
have done to one another in the past, this state of
affairs is no bad thing. Gaddis also argues that US
hegemony is acceptable because it's linked with certain
values that all states and cultures - if not all
terrorists and tyrants - share.
As the NSSUSA
puts it: "No people on Earth yearn to be oppressed,
aspire to servitude, or eagerly await the midnight knock
of the secret police." It's this association of power
with universal principles, Bush argues, that will cause
other great powers to go along with whatever the United
States has to do to preempt terrorists and tyrants, even
if it does so alone. For, as was the case through most
of the Cold War, there's something worse out there than
US hegemony.
The invasion of Iraq punctured the
myth behind this theory. It showed the world that US
hegemony spells arbitrary misapplication of moral values
and selective US occupation in the name of liberation.
The inescapable conclusion is that superpower hegemony
breeds terrorism rather than suppresses it.
The
final innovation in the Bush strategy deals with the
longer-term issue of removing the causes of terrorism
and tyranny. Here again, Gaddis observes that the
president's thinking parallels an emerging consensus
within the neo-conservative intellectual community. For
it's becoming clear to neo-cons that poverty wasn't what
caused a group of middle-class and reasonably
well-educated Middle Easterners to fly three airplanes
into buildings and another into the ground. It was,
rather, resentments growing out of the absence of
representative institutions in their own societies, so
that the only outlet for political dissidence was
religious fanaticism. Yes, there is oppression, but the
oppression comes from the victims' own society and
culture, not from the neo-liberal West, goes the
argument.
This position of denial is widely held
in the United States because of its own experience with
domestic terrorism, which evidently had less to do with
poverty than issues of liberty, but it is not at all
obvious globally. Further, Americans take comfort in
believing that poverty is the result of unfree systems,
a belief that is verified by their own pride in
America's riches. It never occurs to many Americans that
their riches might have come from institutionalized and
structural exploitation of other economies. Just as the
race issue in the US is inseparable from the issue of
poverty, the appeal of Islamic religious fundamentalism
cannot be separated from poverty.
Hence, Bush
insists, the ultimate goal of US strategy must be to
spread democracy everywhere, particularly to regions
deeply rooted in tribal and theocratic culture.
"Democracy", a fashionable word that never appears in
the US constitution nor the Declaration of Independence,
is now a pretext for preemptive war to effectuate regime
change everywhere, notwithstanding that the Declaration
of Independence declares: "Prudence, indeed, will
dictate that governments long established should not be
changed for light and transient causes ..."
The
Bush NSSUSA declares that the United States must finish
the job that Woodrow Wilson (president 1913-21) started.
The world, quite literally, must be made safe for
democracy, even those parts of it, like the Middle East,
that have so far resisted that tendency. Terrorism - and
by implication the authoritarianism that breeds it -
must become as obsolete as slavery, piracy, or genocide:
"behavior that no respectable government can condone or
support and that all must oppose". And within weeks! But
imperialism is exempt from this list of evils.
Still, the record of Wilsonian world order was
less than sterling. Wilson's own election was the result
of a scandalous split among his Republican opponents
over the controversial issue of the creation of the
Federal Reserve System, a development strongly opposed
by Populists. His Fourteen Points proposal for the
post-World War I world order was considered naive by
seasoned European diplomats and the Treaty of Versailles
was rejected by the US Congress. The League of Nations
was violently attacked by Republicans led by senator
Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. Further, Wilsonian
ideology was multilateral internationalism, a concept to
which the Bush NSSUSA only pays lip service. Wilson's
main legacy was the creation of the League of Nations,
which was founded on the principle that all nations
should settle disputes peacefully.
The Bush
NSSUSA differs in several ways from its recent
predecessors, according to Gaddis. Its proactive parts
mostly interconnect, and Bush's analysis of how hegemony
works and what causes terrorism is in tune with current
neo-con academic thinking. And the Bush administration,
unlike several of its predecessors, sees no
contradiction between power and principles. It is, in
this sense, thoroughly Wilsonian. Finally, the new
strategy is candid. This administration speaks plainly,
with no attempt to be polite or diplomatic or "nuanced".
What you hear and what you read are pretty much what you
can expect to get.
Coercive democracy becomes
the justification for military preemption. And
superpower hegemony is the means to achieve that end.
Gaddis thinks the Bush NSSUSA has a hidden
agenda. It has to do with why the administration regards
tyrants, in the post-September 11 world, to be at least
as dangerous as terrorists.
Bush tried to
explain the connection in his January 2002 State of the
Union address when he warned of an "axis of evil" made
up of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. The phrase confused
more than it clarified, though, since Saddam Hussein,
the Iranian mullahs, and Kim Jong-il are hardly the only
tyrants around, nor are their ties to one another
evident. Nor was it clear why containment and deterrence
would not work against these tyrants, since they were
all more into survival than suicide.
Both the
West Point speech and the NSSUSA are silent on the "axis
of evil". Gaddis raises a more important question: Why
is Bush still so keen on burying Saddam Hussein? Despite
his comment that this is "a guy that tried to kill my
daddy", George W Bush is no Hamlet, agonizing over how
to meet a tormented parental ghost's demands for
revenge. Gaddis the historian suggests that Shakespeare
might still help, if you shift the analogy to Henry V.
That English monarch understood the psychological value
of victory - of defeating an adversary sufficiently
thoroughly that you shatter the confidence of others, so
that they'll roll over themselves before you have to
roll over them.
For Henry V, the demonstration
was Agincourt, the famous victory over the French in
1415. The Bush administration got a taste of Agincourt
with its victory over the Taliban at the end of 2001.
Suddenly, it seemed, American values were transportable,
even to the remotest and most alien parts of the world.
The vision that opened up was not one of the clash among
civilizations, but rather, as the NSSUSA puts it, a
clash "inside a civilization, a battle for the future of
the Muslim world". In that battle, it is curious that it
should start with Iraq, the most secular and modernized
state in the region, and by far not the poorest, at
least until US sanctions began a decade ago.
Yet, lest we forget, Agincourt was part of the
Hundred Years' War. The battle demonstrated the
effectiveness of longbow archers over heavily armored
French knights. It marked the end of warfare appropriate
for the age of chivalry. Prior to the battle, King Henry
spoke to his troops from a little gray horse. French
accounts state that in his speech he told his men that
he and the dukes, earls and other nobles had little to
worry about if the French won because they would be
captured and ransomed for a good price. The common
soldier, on the other hand, was worth little and so he
told them that they had better fight hard.
Gaddis is right that historians view the
Agincourt victory as having overshadowed English
political and economic unrest. Yet for Bush, the
overshadowing may turn out to be as short-lived as the
war itself.
But Agincourt was a real battle and
the victory was earned. The Iraq war was a no-show by
the enemy. The victory is as bogus is the pretext for
the war.
This bogus victory is in fact built on
a pile of political defeats. This war did serious damage
to multilateral internationalism, weakened the United
Nations, and soiled the credibility of US values. US
hegemony is built on economic power, which in turn is
based on globalization, which in turn requires
multilateral internationalism. Abandoning multilateral
internationalism is to jeopardize US hegemony.
Far from providing conclusive demonstration of
US invincibility and political resolve, the non-war
leaves the vulnerability of US political will to sustain
heavy war casualties untested, and turned a
much-heralded holy war to spread democracy into a dirty
scheme of petty bribery. It has won the United States a
reputation of being as capable and eager to use the same
evil devices as its condemned enemy. This war has not
eliminated the axis of evil, it merely added the US to
the axis. The war between good and evil is won by good
turning evil.
How, Gaddis asks, to maintain the
momentum, given that the Taliban are no more and that
al-Qaeda isn't likely to present itself as a conspicuous
target? Gaddis thinks this is where Saddam Hussein came
in: Iraq was the most feasible place where the US could
strike the next blow. If we can topple this tyrant, went
the reasoning, if we can repeat the Afghan Agincourt on
the banks of the Euphrates, then we can accomplish a
great deal. We can complete the task the Gulf War left
unfinished. We can destroy whatever weapons of mass
destruction Saddam Hussein may have accumulated since.
We can end whatever support he's providing for
terrorists elsewhere, notably those who act against
Israel. We can liberate the Iraqi people. We can ensure
an ample supply of inexpensive oil. We can set in motion
a process that could undermine and ultimately remove
reactionary regimes elsewhere in the Middle East,
thereby eliminating the principal breeding ground for
terrorism. And, as Bush did say publicly in a powerful
speech to the United Nations on September 12, 2002, we
can save that organization from the irrelevance into
which it will otherwise descend if its resolutions
continue to be contemptuously disregarded.
Gaddis views this as a truly grand strategy for
transforming the entire Muslim Middle East: for bringing
it, once and for all, into the modern world. There's
been nothing like this in boldness, sweep, and vision
since Americans took it upon themselves, more than half
a century ago, to democratize Germany and Japan, thus
setting in motion processes that stopped short of only a
few places on Earth, one of which was the Muslim Middle
East.
Gaddis acknowledges that these plans
depend critically, however, on Americans' being welcomed
in Baghdad if they invaded, as they were in Kabul. If
they aren't, the whole strategy collapses, because it's
premised on the belief that ordinary Iraqis will prefer
a US occupation over the current conditions in which
they live. There's no evidence that the Bush
administration is planning the kind of military
commitments the United States made in either of the two
world wars, or even in Korea and Vietnam. This strategy
relies on getting cheered, not shot at.
The
trouble with Agincourts - even those that happen in
Afghanistan - is the arrogance they can encourage, along
with the illusion that victory itself is enough and that
no follow-up is required. It's worth remembering that,
despite Henry V, the French never became English. And
the war went on for a hundred years.
The United
States has already lost the moral high ground by
resorting to a coalition of the willing. Gaddis makes a
perfect point: A nation that sets itself up as an
example to the world in most things will not achieve
that purpose by telling the rest of the world, in some
things, to shove it.
Terrorists fully
anticipated a hardening of reaction from the US to the
horrors they perpetrated on September 11, 2001, as
embodied in the NSSUSA, for it is this hardening of
reaction that will produce more terrorists.
As
Charles Clover of the Financial Times reported from
Baghdad: "Over the next few months in Baghdad I will get
to see 'nation-building': the curious process of
international intervention I have witnessed throughout
Eurasia in the past decade that seems to enrich about 10
percent of the population while the rest get 'civil
society'. Iraq will be transformed from a pariah
dictatorship into a normal dysfunctional, underdeveloped
country with ethnic violence, IMF [International
Monetary Fund] programs, and satellite dishes. Charlie
Company patrolling the streets of Baghdad will give way
to a weak and politicized local police force, then a
rickety power-sharing arrangement, and finally a
'national army'. Will it be worth it?"
If a
democratic election, reflecting the honest and freely
expressed wishes of the Iraqi people, produces a leader
deemed insufficiently committed to the goals set out by
the NSSUSA, the Bush administration will be forced to
affirm or reject its alleged attachment to the principle
of democracy. Worse yet, if such a democratically
elected leader should decide that Iraq need weapons of
mass destruction for its own defense in response to WMD
already present in the region, would the NSSUSA call for
a re-invasion of Iraq, this time against a
democratically elected government, or a Central
Intelligence Agency-induced coup, as in Venezuela?
This was not a war. It was a spectacular
reality-TV production that caused the death of thousands
of extras. The only real war had been the verbal duel
between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the
inquisitive Pentagon press corps.
Henry C
K Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu
Investment Group.
(©2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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