SPEAKING
FREELY Chicken hawks do have a
plan By Joe Nichols
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
A recent
article in Asia Times Online (Chicken hawk groupthink?, May
12) gives evidence that intellectual inbreeding and the
comradery of a closed circle of associates has led the
in-group in the Bush administration to make some stupid
decisions regarding Iraq, such as waging war, despite
much reason and qualified opinion against the idea.
This is likened to the attempted invasion of
Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War. Without
discounting the probability that any number of very
high-level personalities supporting the current campaign
are suffering from a number of delusions, I think the
insistence to "stay the course" in Iraq by the principle
architects is based on a recognition of several
"imperatives" that are clearly understood, correct from
a certain point of view, but not quite ripe for public
articulation, either in the US or abroad.
As a
baseline for my judgment, I put forward several
propositions: 1) The political class in every nation is
a crop of cultivated liars - to be generous,
obfuscators. Power has always resided in the hands of a
minority in all societies of significant scale, and with
the advent of mass politics and its language of
egalitarianism, it became necessary to spin yarns to
either justify or conceal the disparity; 2) Humanity is
entering the condition of critical mass, leading to a
level of competition within and between human groups and
areas of the world that will amount to cannibalization:
the possibilities for either economic growth or
cost-free migration are coming to an end. This is true
not simply because of the number of people that now
exist and are coming to be, but also hinges on aspects
of human nature and a set of divisive and irremediable
historical developments, as well as environmental limits
preset beneath a rising tide of expectations that are
unsupportable.
The first proposition about
political dishonesty can be applied to the current
in-group in Washington to an exceptional degree, in
large part because it is made up mostly of a minority
within a minority - they are Jewish. A good deal of
controversy surrounds this observation already and I
have no space or allowance to repeat such here, so I
simply point to the fact with another fact in mind.
Facts presented here and elsewhere have also raised the
issue of "dual loyalty" between Israel and the US by
Jewish neo-conservatives, with former Defense Policy
Board chairman Richard Perle's affiliations to the
Jerusalem Post, the crafting of Israel's regional
strategy ("A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing
the Realm") and the revolving door between the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and US
administrators being but a few more notable
manifestations. Again, I take it as a simple matter of
fact (having much to do with assessing group solidarity
among Jews in crisis) that Jews in the US are, in
general, committed to Israel. From here one should turn
to Israel itself.
Israel in
danger Israel is in dire straits: despite its
nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal and
conventional arms; despite its per capita gross domestic
product; despite its linkages to the last superpower.
Israel is in the grips of an environmental, demographic,
social and, potentially, an economic disaster and no
amount of crafty diplomacy or even economic investment
can salvage the huge historical mistake of creating
Israel in the first place. One need only look at the
problem of water in this sliver of land, couched within
an enormously water-stressed region overall.
Israel's coastal aquifers are depleted. At least
60 percent of its fresh water comes from the West Bank
and the Golan Heights, both areas where it must either
maintain control or become subject to collaborative
management arrangements - not realistic in the current
climate, and getting worse all the time. In its last
attempt to seize control of the Litani River in Lebanon
it was routed by Hezbollah, but left only with the
incentive of a big compensation package from the US. Now
it buys water from Turkey.
With population
growth across the region surrounding Israel averaging
around 2.5 percent per annum, and even greater growth in
the West Bank and Gaza, Israel must concentrate its
development and growth within an increasingly stressed
and crowded atmosphere or it must continue to expand.
Socially, Israel is as contentious and divided as any
country on earth, as well as being riddled with crime,
corruption and near caste divisions within its populace.
In all, both within Israel and in its regional context,
something has to give in order for it to carry on.
As an outsider with no immediate stake in the
welfare of the Israeli state, I assume that I am less
sensitive to these dilemmas than Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, Perle,
National Security Council Middle East Affairs head Eliot
Abrams or Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas
Feith, so I adopt the easy position that they understand
as much about Israel's vulnerabilities and needs as I
do. If one goes back to the point of view of Vladimir
Jabotinsky, father of the Likud, it becomes also clear
that my stream of thought was shrewdly projected even
before Israel's foundation: Israel must exist at the
expense of Arabs in the region, and the current Israeli
historian Benny Morris agrees. In simple terms, Israel
is at the edge of its viability as a state unless it
either redefines its identity or conquers new territory,
beginning with the Golan and the West Bank, but
extending necessarily by proxy into at least Syria,
Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and, because of its specifics,
Iraq. Conquering in this sense, with regard to
established nations, is tantamount to imposing one's
will, and to be effective for practical purposes the
will of Israel resides in the US.
Why
Iraq? In a recent interview on public
broadcasting in the US with a trio of the typical,
dreary pundits one has come to expect,
Lieutenant-General William Odom (retired) called for the
hasty withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, fully admitting
the probability that the country will descend into civil
war as a consequence: the subject of discussion was
simply whether or not the war could be won. Odom
presented three reasons the US went to war - weapons of
mass destruction, overthrowing the Saddam Hussein
regime, and establishing a constitutional democracy
"friendly" to the US. In that order, he declared the
first irrelevant (didn't exist), the second
accomplished, and the third not possible to achieve, at
least for several decades. Ergo, let's get the hell out
and deal with whoever comes out on top.
I
imagine President George W Bush, his deputy Dick Cheney,
Rumsfeld, Pearl and Wolfowitz sitting in a room
listening to this drivel and reacting, with Bush fuming
about god and freedom until he goes for a jog with the
secret service - the others listen on and nod. After the
president leaves, the party in power gets out the cognac
and heaves a collective sigh: "Why do they put such
people on TV in the first place?" any one of them might
ask rhetorically. Odom is either intellectually
conditioned or obedient enough to keep the discussion
about the causes for the war within the narrow lines the
establishment wants, but for whatever reason he draws
the wrong conclusion. The Bush cabal didn't go to Iraq
for any of Odum's reasons as Odom understands them, and
so they are all irrelevant to the decision on whether or
not to get out.
While Bush is rubbing his crotch
with talcum powder and putting on his sneakers, our
quartet of idealists turn to discussing real issues,
such as oil, the prospects for privatizing the region,
derailing any possibilities for a common currency among
Arab nations, the position of the dollar in petroleum
markets and for the central reserves in Asia, and the
balance of trade between the US and the nations of the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
All agree that as the price of crude oil goes
through the roof, the last thing they want is to
continue to give all that money and leverage to states
governed by a bunch of vulnerable autocrats continually
threatened by their own population's demands for reform,
a population that is rapidly growing, getting poorer
and, throughout the Middle East, running out of water -
think Iran in 1979 times X: We'll have no more
willy-nilly Mr Jimmy Carters at the helm, thank you. All
also agree that the information age is making global
public relations a good bit trickier, even on the home
front, despite a largely obedient media and an ignorant
and distracted citizenry. During Rumsfeld's testimony on
prisoner abuse before the US Congress, his most
impassioned remarks were directed at the appalling
availability of digital cameras and the Internet: a few
pictures and blamo, he's scratching ass and his
face is hanging out. The retail handling of
dictatorships for the benefit of capital and the Old/New
World Order is flying apart. The situation, on the
whole, is just becoming unmanageable and big change is
needed.
Again, our quartet agrees: We have to
bring democracy to the Middle East! And funnily enough,
they somewhat mean it. Here I sense the influence of
Wolfowitz, a reasonably good mockup of Leo Strauss.
Democracy on the scale of nation states is a pretty
flexible institution and one needn't (shouldn't) take
its egalitarian language too seriously. In the US, for
example, the disparity of wealth is impressive, the
agenda is managed at the top and as long as things are
going reasonably well half the population is completely
politically asleep - they just don't participate; even
before the law, wealth and status get unequal
representation, and if things go wrong it's Fed-Med
rather than hard lockup.
Indeed, the US has
always preferred to establish a system of rules and
privileges similar to its own in the countries that it
has tortured and helped to ruin, and despite a few burps
along the way the Philippines might be one of the best
examples of what the US regards a success - huge
disparity in wealth, investment privilege, debt service,
military cooperation and ideological agreement. The
essential thing has been that US "interests" are given a
special place in the system so that US capital can be
extended into new territory and inequality across
nations can be maintained. If the local population has
other ideas and can represent these effectively, the
managers in Washington will co-opt the worst class of
savages imaginable to put them in their place - often a
prison or a grave.
But why the sea change in
rhetoric over the Middle East now? The promotion of
"democracy" in Iraq conforms to past US policy and
rhetoric in the sense that we are actually invading the
country, and such pronouncements have always been
necessary to justify US aggression; but Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Yemen, Syria (we can send a few folks there for
"interrogation" but still demand an open society), still
want back the Golan Heights (which Israel can never
allow, mainly for its watershed) and complicates Lebanon
for Israel (at least up to the Litani River) - so yes,
democracy for Syria. Iran: an important threat to Israel
after 1979 (Iraq, under the umbrella of the US until
Gulf War I, not a threat to Israel except to far-seeing
Israeli xenophobes), a broker of its own oil and in the
Caspian Basin and imposing hugely over the future
disposition of oil in Iraq - yes, democracy for Iran.
Egypt: decades of marshal law and the second biggest
recipient of US cash (mostly to support the police
state), booming population with its own water woes
(possibly to trigger wars in the future all up the
Nile), home of the Muslim Brotherhood and with a change
of direction, Israel's worst nightmare - yes, democracy
for Egypt, but enormously complicated to pull off
temporarily with even modest success, largely for
economic and environmental reasons, so a relatively
subdued call for reform.
And why was Saddam set
up to invade Kuwait in the first place (his motivations
"slant drilling into Iraqi oil, demands for the
repayment of debt after the Iran-Iraq war, from which an
ungrateful Sunni elite in Kuwait was relieved of the
specter of a resurgent Shi'ite majority in the south of
Iraq" could have been dispelled by US pressure), if not
to isolate and undermine his regime. Why do this to a
good fella like Saddam? He had been there for the US and
could still be managed, given a little leg up in his
time of need. The strategic decision to get rid of
Saddam preceded his invasion of Kuwait.
Combinations of factors have brought about the
shift in policy in the Middle East.
1.) The
collapse of the Soviet Union - opening the floodgates
for neo-liberal aggression and leading immediately to a
huge wave of privatizations of national assets
throughout the world. But with oil being the most
strategic, coveted, controversial and thus best
protected of such assets, the privatization of oil has
been delayed. The circumstances for artificial elites in
control of the major reserves of oil in less-developed
nations, from Saudi Arabia and Iraq to Nigeria, from
Indonesia or Angola to Venezuela, have changed: the near
universal adoption of capitalism by national elites has
radicalized the arena in which negotiation, leverage,
alliance or self-determination occur.
2.) Human
critical mass and globalization - as indicated above,
too many people in highly unequal conditions demanding
too much from a finite, over-attended pie. The old claim
that a rising tide lifts all boats is horribly
mismatched across the seven seas. India's population,
for example, is scheduled to peg out at above 1.6
billion by 2050, and the 150 million there currently
feasting at the consumer's table will not assure a place
for the 700 million literally without a pot to piss in.
The Philippines is another excellent example, as the
country approaches biological collapse. Nigeria, at 130+
million, is about to go bonkers. This bears on
democratization across the Middle East not only because
it is basically in the same boat as these other nations,
but also because oil is increasingly assuming the
character of a global asset, and with fully half of it
in and around the Persian Gulf, the relevant resource
rich but weak nations' efforts to defend the concept of
their sovereignty will be pitted against a general
atmosphere of desperation, a philosophy of macroeconomic
functionalism, and a belief that all resources must be
integrated into a global economy without either
prejudice or undue advantage. Democracy/free trade is
the mantra for this process, to be dictated by the
industrialized world.
3.) The Judaization of the
American elite - Jews are the most prosperous subset of
the elite in the US, the biggest political campaign
contributors, the principle managers of US media, and
have dominated the last two presidential
administrations. For better or for worse, informed
observers must concede that Jews in the US have reached
a pinnacle of wealth and influence fantastically beyond
their numbers. Nevertheless, Jewish influence on US
Middle East policy has historically been offset by
broader American strategic interests in Persian Gulf
oil, much to the frustration of the rising Jewish elite.
This helps to explain much of what appears lumpen and
confused about US policy in the region. After the Jewish
invasion into the Levant, Israel's initially defensive
wars and its chronic abuse of the local Arab population,
as well as its encroachments on its hostile neighbors,
have in fact been constrained - first by its essential
weakness, and increasingly (as it has accrued real power
after 1973) by US national interests in managing Middle
East oil. But with the global strategic scenario being
radically altered by the collapse of the Soviet Union,
population growth in the region and underdevelopment
with its discontents have been linked with an overall
increase in competition for resources to emerge - in the
hands of realists among the Jewish intelligentsia
involved in geopolitical strategizing - to become more
credible indicators of an entrenched regional
instability that threatens America's access to and
control over the same oil. Muslim militants conducting
terrorist operations against US interests in the region
are understood as simply the vanguard of a more general
uprising to come.
In sum, the world has changed
since 1990. A bipolar struggle went poof, and quickly
evolved beyond the presumptions of the survivor into an
undefined multi-polar, up-for-grabs environment in which
rhetoric is chasing after an emerging reality. The
shrewdest (the Jews) and the most cynical (the
capitalists) respondents to this situation overlap, and
they have seized the moment for the time being, focusing
their energies on the precise point that most satisfies
their mutual aims - the Persian Gulf, as the greatest
material prize in world history and the strategic lever
for Arab influence.
Such a perspective suggests
to me that Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle agree
that long term, joint US/Israeli interests are centered
on establishing control over the Persian Gulf.
Democratization of the Middle East is not about human
rights per se, but it is about updating the means by
which Gulf oil is made available on a predictable basis
to US control and integrated into a globalizing economy
to the advantage of the US. The Jewish Diaspora
community has put most of its eggs in the US basket,
which is increasingly at economic risk - with the
decline of the one also goes the other.
What I
wonder about most deeply is whether this quartet must
divide itself to speak frankly about what should be done
if the Iraq campaign fundamentally fails. My concern
would be that their planned response to such an
eventuality would be like their hidden rationale for the
current war: a consequence of a desperation to maintain
their interests, clearly thought out, and too frightful
for public discussion. Either now or then, however, I
believe they know exactly what they are doing.
(Copyright Joe Nichols.)
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
