SPEAKING FREELY What the neo-cons can't
tell Americans By Richard Daniel
Ewing
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
Why did the United
States invade Iraq? President George W Bush claims that
Iraq was an immediate threat, while Senator John Kerry
says we Americans were misled into war. Other theories
abound: filial revenge, oil dependency, or Halliburton's
profits. But in fact, Bush's foreign policy advisers are
driven by Cassandra-like visions of a dangerous future.
Bush's foreign-policy team is a bold group. They
do not see history in terms of news cycles or election
intervals. These grand strategists view the world in
century-long sweeps. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz, often identified as the chief
neo-conservative architect, is a gifted intellectual. He
fully appreciates the Iraq campaign's complexities and
the historic parallels to Vietnam. Still, Wolfowitz and
Bush's other advisers perceive the world in a light that
ordinary Americans do not.
So what did they see
on September 11, 2001? As New York's World Trade Center
burned, this group saw two new terrifying trends coming
together with devastating results. First, they saw a
deadly new terrorist enemy and a greater Middle East
festering with anti-Americanism. But we all saw this.
Wolfowitz, however, saw this trend arcing decades into
the future. To him, the Persian Gulf was becoming more
dangerous and increasingly unstable. Next, Wolfowitz saw
the inevitable spread of weapons of mass destruction. In
1950, only the US and the Soviet Union had atomic bombs.
By 2000, poverty-stricken Pakistan and autarkic North
Korea had acquired nuclear capabilities. With the
threshold clearly dropping, what's to stop Micronesia or
Sudan from getting the bomb in 2050? Only lack of
effort.
Foreseeing a porous anti-American region
possessing nuclear weapons, the architects of Bush's
security strategy became driven by the fear of a nuclear
terrorist attack on a major US city. While the odds of a
mushroom cloud over Manhattan are unlikely this year, it
increases substantially over the longer term. If by 2050
the Gulf region became a mix of unstable nuclear-armed
autocracies, weapons would inevitably leak to nameless
terrorist groups - resulting in undeterrable
destruction.
Like the Greek prophet Cassandra,
endowed with the gift of prophecy but fated by Apollo
never to be believed, Wolfowitz & Co see a doomsday
looming on the horizon and they are desperately working
backward to change our fate. They decided to divert
either the diffusion of nuclear technology or Middle
Eastern instability. Because globalization makes
technological quarantine impossible, and they hold
multilateral conventions in low esteem, they chose to
accelerate the spread of democracy. If the region is
going nuclear down the road, it must be as benign as
possible. With no confidence that a participatory
government was likely in the next few decades on its
own, the administration wanted to give the region a
superpower push. September 11 gave them the perfect
opportunity to act.
Iraq became the lever to
transform the region for several reasons. To start, the
US had been making a case against Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein for more than a decade. Advancing that argument
was easier than starting over with another country.
Second, Iraq would certainly acquire nuclear weapons -
it might just take decades for the technology to spread.
But if Iraq could become a stable democracy, it would
send shock waves through the region, forcing other
governments to change. In that case, the inevitable
spread of nuclear technology would involve safe
democracies, not hostile theocracies.
Make no
mistake - Bush's advisers believe that the US, guided by
their policies, can change the world. National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice argued that the geopolitical
"tectonic plates" started shifting after September 11 as
they had after World War II. Consider that comparison.
That period witnessed America's determination to contain
Soviet power, to reconstruct Europe and to establish a
global economic system. It was the most audacious
peacetime decision to use US power to reshape the
planet.
Bush's advisers have identical
aspirations today. The collapse of the Soviet Union
validated their belief that US power can be globally
transformative. Wolfowitz & Co embraced a
willingness to act - over the short and long runs - to
enhance US security (not credibility or status). If US
muscle could fell the Soviet colossus, they calculated,
why couldn't it create stability in the Middle East?
The major obstacle for that policy, however, was
that Americans have always been uncomfortable exercising
power for naked national interest. Instead, as historian
Walter McDougall argues, Americans picture their role in
the world as an extension of their personal values -
promoting liberty, spreading democracy, and fighting
evil. Moreover, Bush's advisers believe that ordinary
Americans cannot comprehend and should be shielded from
complex foreign policy (or even energy policy). Knowing
that the US will not go to war based on hazy
geopolitical trend lines, Bush's advisers justified
their grand strategy in tangible terms - chemical
weapons, links to terrorists, and tyranny. September 11
provided an opportunity to cloak geopolitical
transformation in righteous intervention.
This
Machiavellian gambit carries several deeply troubling
implications. To start, the controversy over the
intelligence used to justify the war becomes nearly
irrelevant when grand strategy drives planning. But most
important, it begs the question: if transformation was
the goal, why has the post-war reconstruction gone so
badly? Where were the planning and resources? Besides
miscalculating the Iraqi reception, Bush's advisers were
unable to ask Americans for prolonged sacrifice of blood
and treasure to ensure its desired, yet unspoken,
objectives. Unfortunately, this is where Wolfowitz's
grand world view collided with nearsighted media cycles.
The result is a less stable Iraq and a more dangerous
region. Perhaps, like Cassandra, Wolfowitz hasn't
changed the future after all.
Richard
Daniel Ewing is a non-resident fellow at the Nixon
Center in Washington, DC.
(Copyright 2004
Richard Daniel Ewing.)
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
