America's self-image is
of the lonely caped crusader of comics, Superman.
I think a more appropriate analogy would be the
faintly entertaining but almost always irritating
fat cat Garfield, albeit with more lethal weapons
than bad breath at its disposal.
The
comparison to Garfield is not accidental, as the
latest report by the Trust for America's Health
[1] showed a marked increase in the number of
overweight and obese Americans. Another reason
this analogy strikes a nerve is that the cat's
handler is an
incompetent buffoon -
comparisons to the current leadership seem almost
too easy from there. The analogy means,
unfortunately, that the Middle East must be
compared to lasagna, but that probably reads as
among the nicest things said about the region
recently.
Fat okay, but where do the guns
come into it? Read on.
America's
backward leap A wealthy family that got
rich on oil co-opts religious extremists to
maintain its stranglehold on power. Western
readers of that statement would immediately assume
that I am referring to the Saudi royal family,
while at least some non-Western readers would
surmise that my reference is to the Bush White
House.
For neutral observers, the
comparison is quite compelling. Much as the Saudi
royal family signed away its role in society to
Wahhabi leaders in return for political patronage,
US Republicans have coasted to electoral victory
on a combination of support for the rich that is
balanced with concern for society's morals, as
defined by the religious right. In other words, it
is the politics of fear that is used to put
harried middle-class voters into submission. This
is very similar to the politics of fear that
Muslim countries use to keep their populations in
line, often engaging in lectures on threats to the
religion.
There are many other
similarities. Muslim governments often change
education syllabi to accommodate the demands of
religious authorities. Charles Darwin's theory of
evolution is virtually unknown in Muslim schools,
as Islamic scholars object to the idea of human
beings descending from monkeys. The religious
right in the United States has adopted similar
tactics of late, pushing notions such as
"intelligent design" back on to campuses. The
generation of Americans growing up in such schools
could well approach the world with the same
narrowness of mind and rigidity of purpose that
Islamic countries produce.
Middle Eastern
dictators need Israel as an available excuse so
that they can themselves stay in power. Being
portrayed as an opponent of Israel in Arab media
carries with it a decided advantage, as any
political opponent would immediately be labeled as
pro-Israeli. In much the same way, US President
George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney
probably need the Middle East to remain the sorry
mess that it is for their own selfish reasons.
This week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
indulged in name-calling of Americans opposed to
the Iraq war, likening them to Nazi-era
sympathizers. In doing this, he has pulled a page
straight out of the "Arab Despot Book of
Governance". Before you ask, the tome is available
for members and their friends only.
The
Cold War kept the United States honest, by
providing a tangible enemy. The resulting focus on
innovation and technological leadership, combined
with a free market for entrepreneurs, produced
much of the success that characterizes the
country's attraction to immigrants from
everywhere. During this period, Americans learned
from their initial failures in World War II to
construct a strong technological infrastructure
that was designed to sustain economic growth. US
universities welcomed academics fleeing the rigid
structures of their own countries, allowing them
to explore and debate the limits of scientific
knowledge. That in turn provided the world with a
succession of breakthroughs that improved living
standards everywhere.
The end of the Cold
War removed a key element in this balance, namely
the omnipresent external threat. True to form,
that provided lopsided behavior as Americans
focused more on guaranteeing their standards of
living, while resisting the influx of new ideas.
Quite simply, they did not see the need to
accommodate quaint foreign customs anymore, seeing
as the war had already been won. That bit of
national hubris did hide the important demographic
change of an aging population. Leave aside
projections of continued immigration for now, and
the fact is that the United States is aging at the
same rate as Old Europe. The relatively free
system I talked about above did not include
payments for retirement or medical insurance,
leaving an ever-increasing hole in the ability of
the nation to sustain its living standards.
Initially, this was handled by increasing welfare
payments that were offset by rising tax revenues -
but once the latter fell, America's structural
deficit became visible to everyone.
Confronting this dynamic, America's aging
population rebels against anything that could make
the situation worse in its mind. The abortion
issue is an example - people who fret about who
will be around to pay for their medical insurance
and welfare would naturally prefer more children
than fewer. In much the same way, fears of future
job losses may well push US political parties,
which have thus far remained blessedly liberal,
further toward protectionism. This is a disaster,
as the time when the US could make things
competitively has long passed.
Immigration As I wrote earlier,
demographic calculations vary wildly once you
remove immigration from the calculations. The
question that Americans need to ask is whether
ongoing trends allow their country to remain a
magnet for immigrants. Assuming that the rightward
shift in policies and practices is fully executed,
will anyone from Asia want to live in America?
It's a difficult question, but one that is easy to
answer when you ask yourself why Asian immigrants
do not fancy living in Japan even if immigration
authorities can be persuaded to grant them
residency. A helpful hint would be to consider
Japanese political changes in the face of that
country's own rapidly aging population.
Americans recognize that the main
attraction for foreigners to own their financial
assets is their country's status as a solitary
superpower. Any threat to that status would
logically cause investors to diversify their
holdings, at an obvious financial cost. This is
what the financial implication of a multipolar
world is. A terrorist attack produces an
overreaction from the US precisely because the
country cannot economically handle these
consequences. It needs to be the solitary
superpower to keep its girth intact, in other
words. Hence "Garfield, with guns".
Food fight Assuming that sea
changes in demographics do not occur immediately,
as they never do, restoring the system to balance
would require significant sacrifices that
America's ruling elite would find difficult to
justify, particularly in the absence of an
overwhelming external threat. This is where
"Islamic fascism" (to use the White House term,
not my own) presents itself as the logical answer,
albeit to a question that should never have arisen
in the first place.
For their part,
Islamic tyrants have long used external threats to
justify their continuity, which is why they will
relish and prolong the current standoff with the
US. It can be truthfully said though that the
reasons leading the tyrants to this end-game are
substantially different from those leading the
United States. For one, Islamic countries have a
poor record of economic growth. Saudi Arabia saw
its per capita income fall to one-third the level
prevailing at the end of the 1970s, due to its
careless management of productivity
infrastructure. The resulting plethora of jobless
youth could be fed, clothed and sheltered, but not
satisfied. Thus the country's ruling elite turned
the attention of the disaffected youth externally,
toward the problems in Palestine and Afghanistan.
This situation explains why neither the
US-led West nor Islamic tyrants have any reason to
control an escalation of the current situation.
The result will be tragic, leading to World War
III, although it will benefit any country that
stays out. China and India should keep that in
mind. [2]
Americans who like to portray
the conflict in the Middle East in civilizational
terms need to confront the notion that they are
attacking Islamic fascism not because it
represents anything different from their own
values, but because it possibly represents the
future of their own culture. Like poles repel,
after all.
