Anatol Lieven-America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism

Anatol Lieven is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in Washington, DC. A journalist, writer, and
historian, Mr Lieven writes on a range of security and international
affairs issues. He was previously editor of Strategic Comments
published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
in London.

Anatol Lieven's journalism career includes work as a correspondent
for the Times (London) in the former Soviet Union from 1990 to 1996.
Prior to 1990, Lieven was correspondent for the Times in Pakistan and
Afghanistan. He also worked as a freelance journalist in India. Mr
Lieven's articles have been published in a number of journals and
newspapers, among them The Financial Times ,The London Review of Books
,The Nation , and The International Herald Tribune .

In this interview with AsiaSource , Mr Lieven addresses the urgent
foreign policy issues confronting the United States in the theoretical
context laid out in his recent book, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy
of American Nationalism (New York: Oxford UP, 2004).

You argue in your book, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American
Nationalism that American policies following the terrorist attacks on
September 11th, 2001, "divided the West, further alienated the Muslim
world and exposed America itself to greatly increased danger." You
suggest that this response must be understood in the context of the
particular character of American nationalism. What are the features of
American nationalism that are important in this respect?


***

In the book I suggested that there are two principal features of
American nationalism, both of which were evident in the response to
9/11. These are, in spirit, to a great extent contradictory but they
often run together in American public life. The first is a certain
element of American messianism: the belief in America as a 'city on the
hill', a light to the nations, which usually takes the form of a belief
in the force of America's example. But at particular moments, and
especially when America is attacked, it moves from a passive to an
active form: the desire to go out and actually turn the world into
America, as it were, to convert other countries to democracy, to the
American way of life.

In principle, the desire to spread democracy in the world is of course
not a bad thing. But there are two huge problems with it. One is that
because this element of American messianism is so deeply rooted in
American civic nationalism, in what has been called the "American
Creed", and in fundamental aspects of America's national identity, it
can produce - and after 9/11 did produce - an atmosphere of debate in
America which is much more dominated by myth than by any serious look
at the reality of the outside world. Myths about American benevolence,
myths about America spreading freedom, myths about the rest of the
world wanting America to spread freedom, as opposed to listening to
what the rest of the world really has to say about American policies.

The second feature that cuts across this American messianism, however,
is what I have called the "American antithesis", that is to say, those
elements in the American nationalist tradition which actually
contradict both American civic nationalism and the American Creed.
These elements, which are very strong in parts of America, include
national chauvinism, hatred of outsiders, and fear and contempt of the
outside world. This is particularly true in the case of the Muslim
world, both because America has been under attack from Muslim
terrorists for almost two generations now, but also because of the
relationship with Israel, and the way in which pro-Israeli influences
here have contributed to demonizing the Muslim world in general.

This results in an incredible situation: on the one hand - and I am
speaking here particularly of the neo-cons - the Bush administration
wants to democratize the Muslim world, while on the other,
neo-conservatives do not even bother to hide their contempt for Muslims
and Arabs. Sometimes you hear, and even read, phrases like, "The only
language that Arabs understand is force," "Let them hate us so long as
they fear us" and so on. This is utterly contradictory: people saying
they want to democratize the Arab world but displaying utter contempt
for Arab public opinion. Of course this is not just a moral failing, or
a propaganda failing. It also leads to practical disasters, like the
extraordinary belief that you could pretend at least to be introducing
democracy, and on the other hand, you could somehow impose Ahmed
Chalabi on Iraqis as a pro-American strongman, and that somehow the
local population would line up to salute you and happily accept this.

So these are very dangerous aspects of American nationalism. And these
aspects by the way used to be very sharply and profoundly analyzed by
great figures in the American intellectual tradition, conservative as
well as liberal: figures like Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Hoftstadter,
Louis Hartz, George Kennan and William Fulbright. Though most of these
figures were strong anti-Communists, they directed their critique at
the reasons for the particular anti-Communist hysteria of the early
1950s, and at the reasons which led America to become involved in the
war in Vietnam. And their arguments and insights are of tremendous
importance to America today in understanding American behavior after
9/11.

But one of the striking and tragic things about the debate leading up
to the Iraq war - although one can hardly call it a "debate" - was that
the vast majority of it, outside certain relatively small left-wing
journals, was conducted with almost no reference to the genesis of the
Vietnam war, the debates which took place then, and the insights which
were generated about aspects of the American tradition. Instead of
analyzing what it was about their own system which was pulling them in
the direction of war with Iraq, too many members of the American elite,
including leading Democrats as well as Republicans, talked only about
the Iraqi side.

Even that, of course, they got completely wrong, but they did not even
once ask the obvious question: "What is it about our system that may
make this a disaster?" After all is this not a general pattern of
American behavior in the whole world by now? This business of a Green
Zone in Baghdad, American officials bunkered down behind
high-protective walls, with no contact with Iraqis, is this not part of
a larger trend? Yet somehow it was assumed that in the case of Iraq it
would be different, that America would go in, be welcomed with open
arms, quickly reshape Iraq in accordance with American norms, and then
quickly leave again.

You have said that, "Belief in the spread of democracy through American
power is not usually consciously insincere. On the contrary, it is
inseparable from American national messianism and the wider 'American
Creed'". You have just talked about some of this, but could you
elaborate your definition of American national messianism? And what do
you think enables such naivet=E9 - or perhaps cynicism?

As the American historian Richard Hofstadter said, "It has been our
fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one." What really
marks out America from the other Western democracies is not the content
of America's democratic creed - because the basic principles are
commonly held in all the democracies. Rather, it is the intensity and
conformity with which these beliefs are held. This is because,
precisely as Hofstadter said, these principles are or are felt to be
essential to holding America together; that is, they are an essential
part of the American national identity in a way that they are not to
the British or the French or the German national identities.

This difference between the US and Europe may change of course because
of the huge immigrant populations in Western Europe now. Western
European countries too are having to rethink their identities and
emphasize common values rather than common heritage or ancestry. But
certainly up to now, America has stood out because of the extent of its
commitment to this so-called American Creed. I should say here that the
word 'creed' was chosen for this advisedly by a series of American
thinkers (though the original phrase was G.K.Chesterton's) as
suggesting an almost religious form of belief.

The extent to which this is fundamental to the American national
identity and is widely believed to keep Americans together means that
it is very difficult in this country to challenge these myths. They are
also remarkably impervious to experience. Vietnam did not fundamentally
change them, it only battered them for a while. Endless lessons in the
Middle East have failed to change them. Now, despite the lesson of
Iraq, there are still leading Democrats writing about the need to
create alliances of democracies and spread democracy in the region. Not
to ask what the people of the region actually want, not to ask about a
sensible diplomatic strategy, but to use democratization as a
substitute for any real strategy. This comes again from a central part
of the American national and nationalist heritage.

There is some continuity in American foreign policy, as you suggest,
from the Bush Sr. administration through Clinton to the present Bush
administration. Although you argue that Clinton's multilateralism was
more befitting of a stable hegemonic state, is it not the case that as
far as policy is concerned, this was only a change in form rather than
substance? And if so, what accounts for this extraordinary unanimity in
foreign policy between the only two serious political parties in this
country (further evidence of which was the Kerry campaign's inability
to offer any policy alternatives to the most pressing foreign policy
issues presently confronting the US: Iraq and Israel-Palestine)?

On the Middle East, both of the American parties are, frankly, crippled
above all by their inability to confront the question of America's
relationship with Israel. Indeed not just to confront it, but even to
mention it, as we saw in the presidential debate.

On a range of other issues, though, Bush has not actually been as bad
as many people think, or at least he has been much closer to Clinton -
whatever that means. In the case of China, for example, the Bush
administration came in with a very un-Clintonesque policy of
confronting China, of containing China - and this could have led to
some extremely dangerous results. But then 9/11 came along and ever
since, the Bush administration has been pursuing an extremely
Clintonesque policy of engaging China, of putting pressure on Taiwan
not to declare independence, and so on. There was that moment in the
presidential debates when it was Bush who was saying that the US needs
a multilateral policy towards the threat of North Korea with a key role
for China; a curious irony given the Bush administration's frequent
celebration of its own unilateralism, but not actually wrong. Similarly
with Russia, while I would not necessarily describe the Bush
administration's policy as multilateralist, they have certainly been
pursuing a very traditional, pragmatic, realist policy, and not an
aggressive one.

The area where the Clinton and Bush administrations have moved farthest
apart is in relations with Europe. Clearly the Bush administration is
not nearly as interested in Europe as Clinton was,and it is not nearly
as interested in NATO. I should emphasize here that it was not
interested even in the eight months before 9/11, let alone afterwards.
If Gore had won in 2000, there would have been a very real difference:
he would have made a much greater effort to engage NATO and to consult
with European governments after 9/11.

That does bring out certain key differences between Bush and the
Clinton tradition. Of course they are both interested in expanding
America's power in the world; they are both imperialists, in a certain
sense. They both profess at least their belief in spreading democracy.
But Clinton, I think, was much more of a genuine Wilsonian. Bush in
many ways is a fake Wilsonian because while he professes this
messianic, democratization line, he has completely ignored the other
key aspect of Wilson's strategy: international cooperation,
international institutions, creating a web of alliances and so forth.
Clinton talked about this a great deal and was savagely attacked by the
right-wing in this country for doing so. Clinton's idea was to place
"America at the center of every world network" - a position which
implies influence, leadership, and even hegemony, but also consultation
and negotiation.

So when it comes to the differences between Bush and Clinton, and the
similarities, one requires a rather nuanced picture in which in some
ways they are closer than it appears, but in other ways, they are
genuinely quite different.

In several articles and in your book, you point out that unlike in
previous empires, the vast majority of ordinary Americans do not think
of themselves as imperialist, or as possessing an empire. At the same
time, you mention repeatedly the extent to which the American
population is unaware of the policies pursued in its name, is indeed
alarmingly ignorant of world affairs. Given this, how could they
conceive of the United States as an imperial power? And why is the
perception of "ordinary" Americans relevant to understanding the place
of America in the world today?

If I remember rightly, according to a poll in Britain in the 1930s, a
very small proportion of the British population could remember the name
of more than two British colonies. They could remember maybe India and
Australia, or probably they remembered the white colonies, but most of
them could not remember the name of a single African colony. No one
would ever have used that as an argument that the British people did
not believe in empire; they were just ignorant.

In the book, I quote C. Vann Woodward on this subject, another great
American critic of the past, whose insights I wanted to try to revive
for contemporary Americans. Woodward talked about the American people
as being bellicose but not militarist, and I think it is also true that
they are bellicose but not imperialist. That said, this kind of
bellicosity, this instinctive reaction to lash out if attacked or even
if insulted, has been repeatedly, and by the way quite explicitly on
the part of the neo-cons, used as a way of whipping up nationalist
anger, and nationalist commitment to what are in fact imperialist
projects.

This is a very old tradition in imperialism. In my book, I cite many
examples from history to show that in general even at the height of the
Western empires, ordinary Western people were not really very
interested in great imperial projects if they were going to be
expensive. They liked the idea of power and glory but they were very
dubious about losing lives and spending large amounts of money to go
out and conquer bits of Africa and so forth. If they could be convinced
that this was not simply an imperialist project, but rather part of
national rivalry with France or Germany, then it was possible to
generate much more support.

In some ways, the American people do fit into this tradition. It is
quite clear, for example, that even most of the ones who do consider
themselves imperialist would be dead against the reintroduction of
conscription in America. Even if it were proved to them that
conscription was absolutely necessary in order to maintain America's
imperial power in the world, they would not be persuaded. Equally the
assorted jackasses who bray in the media about the American empire and
the need for great sacrifices in its cause have shown no very ardent
desire to go and serve themselves in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere
else.

There is therefore a good deal of lack of underlying commitment to
American power on the part of Americans themselves. More commitment
certainly than exists almost anywhere else in the world by now but
still not enough to generate a really full-scale imperial project. This
also explains in part the relative pragmatism of the Bush
administration in some areas of the world. After all even this
administration recognizes that it cannot simultaneously run its present
program in the Middle East and risk war with China and radically
alienate Russia. If there were war with China or with North Korea then
America would have to reintroduce conscription. Then the end of the
American imperial project would be very close indeed.

Another differentiating feature of 19th century empires and the
American empire is that the former were characterized by the so-called
"civilizing mission" whereas the latter, in its self-conception, is
motivated by the purely benevolent aspiration of spreading democracy
and freedom. Are these two imperial strategies not more similar than
they at first appear?

Well in some ways, yes, of course. The 19th century liberal-imperialist
strategy was also enormously benevolent in its own esteem. The European
powers conquered most of Africa while assuring their own populations
and everybody else who would listen that this was all part of the
process of ending slavery, expanding progress, bringing peace,
spreading Christianity and so forth. Even the most ghastly European
colonial project of all, King Leopold of Belgium's conquest of the
Congo, professed benevolent goals: Belgian propaganda was all about
bringing progress, railways and peace, and of course, ending slavery.
In other words, hypocrisy is completely common to both, as it was to
the Soviet or communist imperial project. So in that way they are very
close.

But there is a critical difference. There was no absolutely intrinsic
or self-evident clash between what the 19th century liberal
imperialists said that they were going to do - leave aside what they
actually did in terms of massacres, land theft, etc. - in terms of
bringing progress and the inherent nature of their project, these were
not radically incompatible because the 19th century liberal
imperialists never talked about quickly bringing democracy to the
countries they conquered. To have done so would have been logically
completely counter to the assumptions of Western superiority and
"native" cultural inferiority and incapacity for self-rule upon which
the entire ideology of the "civilizing mission" was based.

When they did talk of bringing democracy, they only did in the context
of the far future, something that might come about after several
generations; in Africa, they talked about a thousand years of British
or French rule eventually leading to self-government and democracy. In
other words, they were absolutely clear and logical. These countries
would need a long period, centuries literally, of Western
authoritarian, imperial rule before they would be capable of
self-government, constitutional rule, democracy and so forth. Indeed to
an extent this was the way that it actually worked out: the British had
ruled India or parts of India for 150 years before they introduced the
first very limited local, district elections with fairly circumscribed
powers and a franchise of less than 0.5 per cent of the population.
They started doing that only from the 1880s on. They and the other
liberal imperialists had a policy of what one might call authoritarian
progress, not of democratization.

Now, of course, it is completely different. The liberal imperialists of
today, because of the completely different ideological era in which we
are living, have to say that what they are bringing is democracy . So
they conquer a place and then within a year or two, they have to hold
elections, they have to claim to be introducing free government and so
forth. That is just, once again, absolutely, manifestly contradictory.
There would have been nothing contradictory in the 19th century about
imposing Ahmed Chalabi on Iraq; the British and French did that kind of
thing again and again. They had some client ruler, some dissident
prince or whatever, whom they wanted to make emir of Afghanistan or of
somewhere in Africa, and they just marched in and imposed him. People
may have criticized it, but there was no suggestion that this was
incompatible with what they were setting out to do. Of course, if you
say that you are bringing democracy, if you preach about democracy, if
you say your whole moral position is based on democracy, and then you
impose a puppet leader, then frankly you look not just hypocritical but
ridiculous , which is essentially how the US appears in much of the
Muslim world.

In the wake of nationalist movements in the colonial world, imperial
powers - in particular Britain - slowly ceded a variety of powers to
local elites, in effect developing sophisticated ways of ruling through
them (what Marxists called a "comprador elite"). Is it possible to say
that the US empire runs the Third World - of which the Muslim world is
an important part - through such a model of what has been called
"indirect rule"?

Yes, to a considerable extent this is the case. Of course the comprador
model, in the strict Latin American sense, never quite fits because
very few governments elsewhere in the world have been so completely
subservient as some of the Latin American elites in the past. After
all, Egypt still tries to take a different line on Israel; Jordan
supported Saddam Hussein in 1991; Saudi Arabia could be seen as a
comprador state in that it exists to produce and export oil, but
clearly in its internal arrangements, it is not at all responsive to
what America would like.

Perhaps it may be more difficult these days to run such manifestly
comprador systems given that, as I suggested earlier, there does tend
to be more democratic pressure from below than in the 19th century. A
good example is Russia, although admittedly Russia also has its
tradition of Great Power status and so forth which prevents it from
becoming completely subservient to America. As I wrote in a previous
book on the reasons for Russia's defeat in Chechnya between 1994 and
1996, there was a real attempt by America in the 1990s, with tremendous
help from the Russian elites themselves, to turn Russia into a kind of
comprador state, whose elites would be subservient to America in
foreign policy and would exist to export raw materials to the West and
transfer money to Western bank accounts. In the end, neither the
Russian state nor the Russian people would accept that. The Yeltsin
order was replaced by a kind of authoritarian, nationalist backlash
under Putin. One sees the same thing in a rather different form in
Venezuela, for example.

So I think there are strong elements of this comprador tradition in the
present American-dominated international system but at the same time it
is a troubled and contested setup.

You have said that the era inaugurated by the attacks of September
11th, 2001, brought out into the open "the complete absence of
democratic modernization, or indeed any modernization, in all too much
of the Muslim world." What do you mean by modernization, and how is its
absence related to the professed motivations for earlier imperial
conquests?

How many hours do I have! Modernization is after all such a tricky
concept. If we take our canonical attitudes to modernization from Max
Weber, as most of us do, unconsciously at least, then of course, as I
wrote in the book, America itself today does not conform to Eurocentric
patterns of modernization!

Certainly much of the Muslim world - not all by any means, there are
exceptions, but certainly large parts of the Middle East - does not
conform to many of the criteria laid down by Weber for successful
modern states. These countries have clearly not been able to imitate
some of the East Asian countries in bringing about radical economic
growth and reform. Many of these countries remain ruled by what are
essentially clans. The famous unkind phrase of Charles Glass of Arab
states being "tribes with flags" is, I am afraid, rather accurate.
Syria is a monarchy of the Alawite clan. The Ba'ath started very much
as a modernizing fascistic movement, like fascists in Italy, but broke
down into a kind of monarchical oligarchy. Then there are the formal
autocratic monarchies in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. As East Asia
has demonstrated, authoritarian rule as such is not necessarily an
obstacle to economic modernization and progress. But then again, this
has not worked in the Middle East either.

One of the tragedies is precisely that so many different models have
been tried in the region and all in a sense have failed, if not
absolutely then certainly to bring the countries concerned up to the
economic level of the West or East Asia. The failure to compete
successfully with the West has been horribly demoralizing in view of
the Muslim world's past cultural and economic superiority, now followed
by several hundred years of relative decline. Just as for several
centuries Muslim states exploited the relative weakness of the
Christian world to expand their power, so later Western states took
advantage of Muslim weakness to conquer most of the Muslim world. This
was followed by the establishment in the heart of the Muslim world of
Israel, a tremendously militarily and economically successful Western
surrogate power. Israel's successes, and Israel's oppression of the
Palestinians, have underlined various aspects of Arab failure. Israel
is in no sense the originator of these historical feelings of
resentment and humiliation, but in recent decades has acted as a
catalyst and focus for these older and deeper feelings.

If you take the example of Pakistan, the part of the Muslim world that
I know best, that country of course is in some ways a vastly more
modern society than it was 50 years ago, but then again in some ways it
is not. In this context, it is interesting to ask what constitutes
"modernity" in the case of political religion. Radical Islam in
Pakistan and elsewhere is after all in many ways a modern force. It is
not just a reaction to modernity, but also uses modern methods so one
certainly cannot say that it is purely reactionary or regressive.

But certainly so far there has been in Pakistan a failure of political
modernization in the form of democracy. Pakistan has essentially
remained a state that is run by the military and the civil service. The
political elites, with the exception of the MQM and to some extent the
Islamists, cannot really be described as modern political parties with
a serious mass base. The PPP is a cult of personality party presiding
over an alliance of big landowners and urban bosses. And while the
military and civil service have held the country together, they have
obviously failed to develop Pakistan as a successful modern state.

The weakness of political culture, when added to economic and military
weakness, lays the Muslim world open to the threat of physical
intervention by the new world imperialist power, and it also weakens
Muslim states morally and ideologically in terms of resisting such
intervention.

You have pointed out several times the authoritarian character of most
states in the Arab and Muslim worlds but do not mention the fact that a
majority of these regimes depend for their existence on continued
American patronage. Is it not the case that a number of these states
are viewed as client regimes of the United States and that this is one
of the major sources of Muslim resentment against the US? This is
particularly true of your comments about Pakistan, where the US
supported the Zia regime for over a decade and now supports the
military government of General Musharraf.

As I have often said with regard to American and British professed
support for democratization: we can all believe in a human capacity for
redemption even if we are not born-again Christians, but most of us,
not being saints, do not ask reformed burglars to guard our houses! We
should not therefore ask Arabs and Muslims, given the British-American
record on democracy in the Muslim world, to trust our professions today
that we are sincere in our wish to bring democracy.

By contrast, I have always believed and continue to believe in the
force of the US and Western example when it comes to spreading
democracy. If we can go on demonstrating to the world that our
societies are more peaceful, more stable, less oppressive and more
economically successful than authoritarian or theocratic states, then
there will be a strong tendency for democracy to spread without our
having to intervene in other places to bring this about. In this sense,
I am a strong believer in the American tradition stretching from
President Adams to George Kennan which takes immense and justifiable
pride in the American political system, but believes that America
spreads democracy best when it maintains the health and strength of its
own system. By the way, President Eisenhower said much the same thing
at the end of his second term, so this is hardly a radical position,
let alone an anti-American one.

As to US (and British) support for dictatorships, and the resentment
this has caused, this is true. On the other hand, I think it cuts both
ways. Does one believe that if these authoritarian regimes fell then
viable democracies would follow? In Pakistan, unfortunately, this did
not happen. Of course it is true that the army always stepped in
eventually but then again look at the PPP government under Bhutto in
the 1970s - certainly not a regime that was strongly supported by
Washington - and its extremely brutal treatment of dissent. Look at the
fact that when Musharraf took power he was supported by the great
majority of the population, because of the outrageous corruption of
governments in the 1990s.

I think that is a rather misleading claim. How do we know what
proportion of Pakistan's population supported Musharraf's coup?

Quite right. Opinion polls are not necessarily reliable in a country
like Pakistan. Let me put it another way: a great majority of the
people certainly did not protest against it. If there had been true
faith in democracy and its record in Pakistan, they presumably would
have done so. My point is that when Musharraf assumed power, he was
certainly not acting on behalf of America. Clearly, several of these
authoritarian regimes do not stand because of American support but
because of local tradition and domestic support: Iran, which is
directly opposed to America; Libya; and the House of Saud, which is in
some sense America's tool but who also have their own tradition and
legitimacy which has nothing to do with American support.

Well the argument could be made that the Americans are only interested
in Saudi Arabia's domestic political setup to the extent that it
continues to serve their interests: oil, and in the case of the first
Gulf war, the provision of military bases. Therefore the present
arrangement works rather better for them than any subsequent setup
might.

Until 9/11, this was true. But since then, there has been a strong and
widespread belief in the US that the Saudi system is incubating
terrorism, which of course is a somewhat belated realization. I met
Saudi-backed extremists in Afghanistan while I was based in Peshawar in
the late-80s and it was already apparent that we were building up a
monster for ourselves. Since 9/11 this has been recognized.

I do not believe that America will improve its image in the Muslim
world just by abandoning its present allies and preaching democracy,
because I do not believe that given its geopolitical and other
interests America will ever be truly sincere in this regard. America's
professed ideals of democracy and freedom are always likely to come to
a screeching halt at Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories
but also whenever American ideals seem likely to lead to a result which
will be really harmful for American geopolitical interests. One of the
images which has been seared into American elite consciousness is what
happened to Carter. When Carter tried to pursue a more moral policy, by
putting pressure on the Shah over Savak atrocities, by putting pressure
on Central American governments, was he thanked for it by the American
establishment? No, he was pilloried as na=EFve, weak, as supporting
communism, as giving opportunities to America's enemies, and so forth.

If a US President were to push Saudi Arabia really hard, for example,
over democratic reform, and the Saudi regime collapses and there is an
Islamist takeover, that American president would simply fall in the
next election, as Carter did. Ditto with Pakistan. So America is
trapped in this.

Looking beyond the publicly stated goals for the American invasion of
Iraq, you said that the neo-conservative nationalists were all more or
less unanimous in their agreement on one basic plan: "unilateral world
domination through absolute military superiority". To what extent did
the Iraq invasion have the intended results and what is the likelihood
that such policies will continue to be pursued in the second term of
the Bush presidency?

Iraq has been a disaster for their aims. They have gotten away with it
of course in that they have been re-elected but it is perfectly obvious
that they cannot launch another war of choice, another invasion of
Iran, say. They simply do not have the troops. With almost 150,000 men
pinned down in Iraq, they could not launch another war on that scale
without introducing conscription. That would tear American society
apart and for the first time since Vietnam lead to a significant
anti-imperialist movement in this country. It would also, for the first
time, lead to really serious questions about what America is doing in
the Middle East at all.

From that point of view, Iraq really has not worked out as they had
anticipated and has greatly reduced their plans. After all, in the
immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, all the
neo-cons were going around saying: "Next stop: Iran". Or Syria. This
kind of rhetoric has not disappeared completely - they are still
refusing to talk to the Iranians - but the agenda on Iran has really
narrowed just to the issue of nuclear weapons. So Iraq has had a major
effect in this respect .

You suggest that various practices and institutions put into place
during the Cold War make the constant threat of war a virtual necessity
for the American foreign policymaking and security establishment. This
may account in part for why Islam came very quickly to replace
communism as the great ideological enemy of the United States. Given
that Islam has no locus, that there are a billion Muslims spread out
across the world, how is the US security establishment likely to
continue to deal with this kind of enemy?

I say in the book that what seems essential is not the imminent threat
of war, but rather constant belief in the possibility of war. There are
all these institutions and economic interests which were put in place
by the Second World War and still more by the Cold War. Eisenhower's
original phrase apparently was "military-industrial- academic
-complex". There are so many people in my world of think tanks in
American universities with a deep stake in all these foreign policy
agendas. In the book I also point out that - and this has been
mentioned in other forms by people like James Mann, Richard Clarke,
Paul O'Neill and others - one of the reasons why 9/11 was able to
happen was that the security elites under Clinton, and very much under
Bush, were not looking seriously at the terrorist threat because, due
to their Cold War backgrounds, they were obsessed with the very much
lesser threat from major rival states.

When the Bush administration came to power, they had radical
anti-Chinese agendas of containing China, of rolling back China, of
creating a new Cold War with China. On the other hand, now there is
this tremendous effort, certainly among the neo-cons, to present Islam
or the Muslim world as the new Cold War enemy. You see all this
nonsense by people like Norman Podhoretz about the Fourth World War.
The interesting thing is precisely because, as you say, Islam is not a
superpower like the Soviet Union, nor does it represent a relatively
clear set of social, economic, and political principles like communism.
One is dealing with an extremely diverse world with different cultures
and societies and multiple motivations.

Even if you narrow the war on terror down to Al Qaeda and its allies,
which of course the Bush administration and Israeli lobby have
deliberately and manifestly failed to do, even then one is speaking of
a web, a network of many, many different groups and nodes in this web
which sometimes cooperate, sometimes act independently, with varying
degrees of relative importance. Zarqawi's group in Iraq, like the
international forces fighting in Chechnya, are in no sense subordinate
to Al Qaeda.

To combat these groups requires a really detailed and acute knowledge
of the societies concerned. Something once again that America failed to
generate in the case of Vietnam before going to war there, failed to
generate about Iraq before going to war there, and is indeed failing to
generate in the case of large parts of the Muslim world. It does seem
that there is a natural pull towards concentration on alleged threats
from states. This was especially clear after 9/11: the astonishing
speed with which the Bush administration turned its attention from the
actual terrorist perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks to confront the "axis
of evil" states and draw up plans for war with Iraq.

It is clearly much easier to threaten and invade Iraq than to think
seriously about how to combat the appeal of groups like Al Qaeda and
its allies in the Muslim world. Similarly it is much easier to
concentrate on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons than
having to think seriously about the Shia-Sunni relationship, or what to
do about the Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is part of the built-in bias of
military bureaucracies, but also owes much to the effects of the Cold
War and the present intellectual configuration of American academia.

You explain in your book why the Cold War legacy has made it difficult
for US policymakers, trained for the most part in the so-called
"Realist" tradition, to conceive of a security threat as emanating from
somewhere other than a nation-state, an assumption that is rather
inadequate for addressing the threat of terrorism, as you just pointed
out (and may account in part for why, as you say, quoting Bob
Woodward, the Bush administration seemed incapable of staying focused
on a terrorist threat, before and after the attacks on the US, and
started planning for war on Iraq on November 21st, 2001; that is, 72
days after 9/11). Yet you supported the American invasion of
Afghanistan when it seemed clear that Al Qaeda was a diffuse, dynamic
network, with no state to claim as its own. Why was Afghanistan, then,
a legitimate - morally, but also pragmatically - target for military
strike?

The invasion of Afghanistan was justified by absolutely traditional and
universally accepted traditions of self-defense. Al Qaeda had launched
this attack; this was generally accepted by every rational person in
the world. Al Qaeda were quickly and clearly identified as the
perpetrators, and indeed subsequently made no real attempt to deny it.
When it comes to the responsibility of the Taliban, Al Qaeda after all
was functioning very much as part of the Afghan state under the
Taliban, and provided the Taliban's praetorian guard.

It is true that, had I been in a position of authority, I would have
made a greater effort to get the Taliban to extradite the Al Qaeda
leadership if not directly to America then to somewhere else in the
Muslim world from where they could be passed on to America. This was
partly because I was afraid of what to some extent has in fact happened
which is that by going in to Afghanistan with the Northern Alliance,
America would alienate the Pashtuns.

Nonetheless, I thought the invasion of Afghanistan was covered by
self-defense. Al Qaeda launched this attack, Al Qaeda was functioning
as part of the Taliban and was being protected by the Taliban. Al
Qaeda had, after all, also launched a series of attacks previously on
American targets, which one should not forget: they were responsible
for the massacre of very large numbers of Africans and others. I also
regarded their Taliban protectors as a genuine "rogue" regime in a way
that Iran certainly is not. They really were in the business of
spreading instability, radicalism and terrorism (especially of course
anti-Shia terrorism) in their area.

On a personal note, I detested what the Taliban stood for, and the
damage that they and their allies were doing to Pakistan. Above all, I
supported the US invasion of Afghanistan as legitimate self-defense and
because of genuine shock at 9/11, shock at the idea that this could
happen to a great modern city, and the belief that forces like Al Qaeda
are a real threat to modern civilization - Muslim as well as Western.
America did also enjoy a general international consensus behind its
invasion of Afghanistan. To some extent the US even managed to gain
some support in the Muslim world for the invasion, at least as far as
states and elites are concerned. This is largely because the Sunni
revolutionary element represented by Al Qaeda and the Taliban is of
course a threat to every organized Muslim state as well.

So I felt that both on what Kerry called the "global test" and on the
traditional test of self-defense, Afghanistan passed. Iraq did not.

You have suggested that radical American nationalists - many of who
will continue in the present Bush administration - either wish to
'contain' China by overwhelming military force and the creation of a
ring of American allies, or "in the case of the real radicals, to
destroy the Chinese Communist state as the Soviet Union was destroyed."
Have these radical elements in the present administration been
sufficiently chastened by their experience in Iraq to relinquish such
aspirations?

Yes, I believe so. Not to permanently relinquish their aspirations in
principle: obviously they would still very much like to destroy China
if they could, or at least destroy China as a potential future threat
to American hegemony. But as long as they are tied down in the Middle
East in the way they are, they will not have the military forces to do
so.

Therefore, I believe that the Bush administration and future Democrat
administrations will continue the existing line. That said of course
there is always room for mistakes either on the part of Washington or
of Beijing or of Taipei or most likely of all three simultaneously. The
Taiwanese can go too far, and the Chinese can overreact, not because
the Chinese want war but because they would trap themselves into a
position where they would have to do something. If they were sensible
of course the Chinese leadership would not react militarily, they would
just tell any power that recognized Taiwan that China would break off
diplomatic and trade relations the next day. Nobody would in fact
recognize Taiwanese independence and then the Chinese could simply
declare that these people have declared independence but no one
recognizes them so why does it matter. This is by the way what Russia
should have done in the case of Chechnya before 1994. But the Chinese
could of course miscalculate and use force, and then the US, and
particularly the American Congress, have put themselves in such a
position that they would be forced to fight as well.

So I certainly do not rule out some kind of stumbling towards conflict.
If that happens, of course, then all the old agendas would come back.
Then the anti-Chinese hardliners in the bureaucracy, the think tanks
and Congress would start roaring again about Communist aggression, they
would gain greater influence and the Cold War agenda vis-=E0-vis China
would be re-established. But I do not believe that any really powerful
forces in Washington today actually want that.

In a recent article, you say that, "The Bush administration may be
stumbling toward an attack on Iran's nuclear program that could have
the most disastrous consequences for Iraq, Afghanistan and the entire
American position in the Middle East." What is the likelihood of such
an attack being carried out in the near future either by the Americans
or the Israelis?

It is still a possibility. Not I believe such a strong possibility now
because apart from everything else the Iranians do seem very anxious to
play along with Europe, and are willing at least to suspend their
nuclear weapons plans in response to a mixture of European pressure and
incentives with American threats. But if America were to attack Iran,
it would be a catastrophe. Poor old Tony Blair has accepted so many
shattering blows already maybe nothing will finish him, but having
invested so much in this process with Iran, if it were to end in an
American attack, it seems likely that there would be a serious revolt
within his government and party and he would have to resign. There are
leading members of the British government briefing in private that
whatever Tony Blair says, if America attacks Iran, that is the end.
They will resign. This would almost certainly be the end of Blair's
tenure as prime minister. It would also create a massive crisis with
the Europeans. Moreover, given the fact that Iran's nuclear sites are
dispersed and buried, America would very likely miss , at which point
we will have the worst of all possible worlds. As the American military
know very well, Iran in these circumstances would have numerous means
of retaliation against American forces and plans in Iraq - whereas an
American invasion of Iran looks impossible because of America's lack of
troops.

So I am less worried on that score than I have been in the past. There
is however a wild card involved: this is that the Israeli government
appears implacably determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons, without themselves offering any concessions in return; and may
either attack itself or exert irresistible pressure on the US to reject
a deal with the Iranians. The present deal between Iran and the West
Europeans could also break down for a number of other reasons. It is
not inconceivable that there could emerge some disastrous quid pro quo
whereby Israel will make certain concessions towards the Palestinians
and in return America go after Iran's nuclear weapons. But of course
the consequences might be frightful because of course Iran would then
have every incentive to try to really destabilize Iraq. Hezbollah could
be reactivated as an international terrorist force. Iran would set out
to destabilize Afghanistan, and so forth and so on.

All this is known to the American security elites. The uniformed
military is certainly extremely opposed to anything like this. Of
course they were also opposed to Iraq, but it still happened.

Could you elaborate on your argument regarding what accounts for the
special relationship between Israel and America: namely the parallel
between the situation of Palestinians and Native Americans?

This is not the core either of my argument or of the relationship
itself, but only a subsidiary factor. At the core of the relationship
lie completely legitimate sympathies and identifications between a
majority of Americans and the state of Israel. These are rooted in old
features of religion and culture, and more recent admiration for the
achievements of the Israeli state. I should say by the way that I
believe strongly in US support for Israel within the borders of 1967.
in my book I express a number of positions which are certainly
extremely unpopular in the Muslim world, and on the Left in Europe:
support for the Jewish character of the Israeli state, opposition to
all but the most limited Palestinian refugee return, and opposition to
ideas of a binational state. I also accept that given the tragic
circumstances of 1948, and the imperatives created by the Holocaust, a
measure of ethnic cleansing was probably inevitable and would also
undoubtedly have been carried out in the other direction if the Arab
side had won.

So I am not arguing against sympathy for Israel as such, but only
against certain forms of this identification. Sympathy rooted in
comparisons between the American and Israeli settlement processes are
generally confined to the American Right. Leo Strauss made land-theft
the founding principle of every state, which, it must be said, if you
go back far enough historically, is actually true to a considerable
extent. Admittedly you have to go back in Britain 1,500 years.
Certainly in the US there is a very interesting contrast in attitudes
to this issue between Americans on the East Coast and in the South or
the West of the country. East Coast Americans are either embarrassed
about the dispossession of the Indians or have simply forgotten it. For
most it is totally irrelevant, since they never encounter any Native
Americans and since their ancestors in many or even most cases arrived
in the US long after the East Coast Indians were dispossessed. In the
South and the West, however, the frontier tradition is so much
stronger. There is no real embarrassment over the dispossession; there
is basically a celebration of the fact that their ancestors conquered
this land and turned it, as the phrase used to be, into a "white man's
country".

It does seem to me - and I am not original in pointing this out; there
have been leading Israelis like Amos Elon who have done so - that this
began by creating a certain community of sentiment between sections of
the conservative Christian heartland in America and the rightwing in
Israel, or Israel in general. In other words, it is a mistake when
looking at this community of sentiment just to look at the apocalyptic
element: millenarian religion. This is present but it would not have
nearly the resonance that it does if it were not set in a wider
context.

Now of course here I am talking about the conservative tradition in the
American heartland, the Christian tradition, but of course sympathy
with Israel is much broader: it has a great deal to do with the
Holocaust, it has to do with the perception of Israel as a modern,
democratic society, as a very successful society. This goes together,
obviously, with tremendous support from the Jewish community for Israel
on the whole. So all these factors work in concert.

There is nothing at all in principle wrong with people here supporting
Israel as such, or admiring Israel for its tremendous success as a
society. But on the American Right there are very much darker elements
to this affinity, one of which is precisely the radical religious one
but the other is a kind of sublimated racism.

You have also argued that American nationalism has become increasingly
entwined with the nationalism of the Israeli Right. What are the
historical reasons for the alliance between Christian fundamentalists
in this country and Zionists? In other words, how should we understand
the words of Jerry Falwell when he says, "The Bible belt of the United
States is the security belt of Israel"?

If one just looks at the Christian fundamentalist issue, leaving the
millenarian question aside, American evangelical Protestantism is Old
Testament Protestantism - just as its forbearers in English radical
Protestantism and Scottish radical Protestantism were in the 16th and
17th centuries. This creates a natural affinity with the Jewish
religious tradition. When evangelical Christian Lieutenant-General
William Boykin was quoted last year as saying, "My God is bigger than
his," in reference to a Muslim, he was directly citing from Isaiah and
this is obviously a man who spends a lot of his time in the Old
Testament.

It is fascinating the degree to which the Old Testament eclipses the
New Testament in the thought of evangelical Christians and this
automatically leads one to a sympathy with Israel. Cromwell was the
first ruler of England who allowed Jews to settle again in England
after the Middle Ages. He was very much influenced in this by his Old
Testament-based Christianity. But also it seems, from the time of
Cromwell on, there has been this millenarian idea as well: the
restoration of Israel is essential to bringing about the Apocalypse.
Given the influence of millenarian thought on a minority of
Evangelicals, but a very significant minority, one cannot deny this
influence. Look at the immense popularity of the "Left Behind" series,
for example.

Finally, there is also a considerable element of straight political
opportunism. The Republicans are already well on their way to putting
the Democrats in a very difficult position from the point of view of
political demographics. The Republicans have this tremendously solid
base. Mostly white, not just Protestant anymore but Protestant and
Catholic conservative, including many Latinos. Unlike the deeply
fractured Democrat base, the Republican base agrees on a majority of
important issues. The Democrats by contrast are trying to tie together
the remnants of the white working classes in the northern cities, the
blacks, the Latinos, more progressive women and the various cultural
liberals - groups which often detest each other.

If on top of this advantage the Republicans can take away a majority of
the Jewish vote and campaign financing from the Democrats, they stand a
chance of actually destroying the Democratic Party's chances of power
for a generation to come. This hope is not a secret. It has been
written about quite openly by conservative commentator Robert Novak and
others. If the Republicans can conclusively seize the issue of support
for Israel from the Democrats, then they can rule for the foreseeable
future. Rightly or wrongly, that at least is the calculation the
Republicans are making.

You point out the complicity of the American media in both supporting
the government in various foreign policy adventures - you say in fact
that the "propaganda program" in the wake of the Iraq war has few
parallels in peacetime democracies for the systematic mendacity of its
reportage - and for the most part, keeping silent on the excesses of
the Israeli state. What accounts for this blindness in the context of a
free press in a democratic country?

This is a little stronger than what I actually said. What I said was
that the Bush administration's propaganda program had few parallels in
peacetime democracies and that the American media had not criticized
this. I did not mean to suggest that the American media as a whole were
all part of the same propaganda machine. Even in some of the papers
which supported the war, dissenting voices appeared.

When it comes to keeping silent on the excesses of the Israeli state,
the reporting as such has not been very unfair or inaccurate -
certainly if you look at the respectable media: the serious newspapers
and some of the serious television channels. Israeli bombing raids are
reported, shooting of Palestinian civilians is reported, and the issue
of settlements too is reported to an extent. There are two things which
are completely missing, as Michael Lind pointed out in Prospect
magazine in England last year. The first is historical context and the
second is the almost complete absence of analysis or critique. One of
the questions I raise in my book has to do with why Palestinians were
expected to have peacefully acquiesced to what was being done to them
in the 1940s. According to any historical precedent, this would have
been absurd. No other people would have ever accepted this. Are we
suggesting that the Palestinians should have been insane? This is
ridiculous. So that is the context. Secondly, as Michael also pointed
out, in terms of analysis, the violence and its causes are always
presented as Palestinian "terrorism", not Israeli occupation . Finally
the number of opinion pieces seriously criticizing Israeli policies are
simply heavily outnumbered, even in the mainstream and liberal media,
by expressions of support.

On Iraq, why did the media not stand out against the war? It was partly
because of the role of the Israel lobby. It is very difficult to
conduct a truly searching analysis of the underlying reasons for
American policy in the Middle East, and very difficult to draw up
really serious alternatives to existing policies, if you are not
prepared to address the question of Israeli policies and the part they
play in damaging American interests in the Middle East. This does not
mean that Israel must be at the heart of the argument but its influence
cannot be denied: it is there not just in the form of the effects of
the struggle with the Palestinians but in relations with Iran, Syria
and the Muslim world in general. If this is to be swept aside, as it so
often is by the accusation of anti-Semitism, it just makes the entire
debate here much, much more difficult. You could as well ask why there
was no really serious debate in the presidential campaign over the "War
on Terror" as a concept. The Israel factor is a part of that too.

I should say by the way that I never wrote about this issue before
9/11. I have no history whatsoever of attacking Israel. But after the
terrorist attacks on America, the Carnegie Endowment asked me to
concentrate on the war on terror and on aspects of the situation in the
Muslim world. After that, it would have been intellectually dishonest
and morally cowardly not to discuss this critical issue. I may add, as
a British citizen, that it would have been unpatriotic, since my
country is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside America and is
running the same risks of terrorist attack. British citizens therefore
have both a right and a duty to speak out against policies and
attitudes which are undermining the war on terror and endangering
British security.

Concerning the behavior of the media and intelligentsia in the US, the
second point is that after 9/11 people were clearly running scared.
There was this tremendous militant nationalist wave sweeping the
country. This is not unique to America - the same would have been true
in most countries which suffered an attack of this kind. However, in
the US the response took certain forms which have precedents in US
history. The silencing effects of such a wave have been seen befo
McCarthyism most recently, and the anti-German, then the anti-communist
hysteria in the First World War and the 1920s. People were to a
considerable degree intimidated into silence.

Finally, there was a very good piece by Russell Baker about AJ Liebling
in the November 18th issue of the New York Review of Books in which
Baker was talking about how journalists used to regard themselves as
just hacks. I used to be a journalist myself, essentially writing for
money, trying to be accurate in my reporting and as amusing and
intelligent as possible. Now there is this ghastly tendency of
journalists, particularly those who get to the top of the US media, to
regard themselves not as hacks but as pillars of the state. So they
begin to behave almost as if they were senior officials not hacks like
the rest of us; and not just that, but as if they had occupied a great
office of state during some great crisis in American affairs, as if
they had been Acheson during the Second World War or the Korean War. So
many of these columnists and television journalists are like that now.

One last point, and this may appear at first sight contradictory: the
figure of Bob Woodward bridges these two things. After Watergate, on
the one hand journalists got an exaggerated sense of their own
importance as the Fourth Estate, a political force which makes and
breaks administrations. On the other hand, they became more and more
addicted to being given enormous dollops of constructed information and
"spin" on a plate - instead of doing real fieldwork and investigative
reporting like Woodward did. So Woodward is turned from an
investigative reporter into a court chronicler. He has fascinating
information and very good insights but is nonetheless essentially a
praise-singer of the American system. I think a lot of American
journalists are like that now. When they depend for leaks and for
information on either the government in power or the opposition they
are clearly not going to say anything that will wreck their chances of
getting what they regard as scoops.

You have said that, "The younger intelligentsia [in the United States]
has also been stripped of any real knowledge of the outside world by
academic neglect of history and regional studies in favour of
disciplines which are often no more than a crass projection of American
assumptions and prejudices.... This has reduced still further their
capacity for serious analysis of their own country and its actions." In
addition, you point out the very close links that exist between
relevant university departments and government institutions. What are
the implications of this?

Well it contributes enormously to the conformism when it comes to
debates like that about the Iraq war or about Israel. As Henry
Kissinger pointed out almost thirty years ago, too many people in the
academic world are either defending previous records when in government
or aiming to be in the next administration. This is not a situation
likely to produce radical critiques or really strong alternative
policies. These people are not at all anxious to say something which
will either lead to them not being selected or to their being vetoed by
a Senate committee.

I used to think that it is wonderful that the American state can
recruit from people in academia but I have come to find it deeply
corrupting. I almost prefer the British system now, of career civil
servants who serve one administration after another. But one needs a
strong ethos of the independence of the civil service and a very strong
ethos that people cannot be sacked or penalized for political views as
long as they maintain the discipline of their service. This actually
leaves the public debate in the UK freer than in the US, particularly
in the strange, solipsistic world of Washington DC. It is amazing in a
republic with a strong tradition of individualism and cultural
egalitarianism, that in DC the sense of hierarchy, of sometimes
obsequious deference, of the court game, who is in, who out, dominates
everything just as much as it did in an early medieval court. It does
contribute to this lack of debate in America.

This is compounded by the tremendously strong power of American
national myths. As previous American authors like Loren Baritz pointed
out, Vietnam knocked these myths off their pedestal, but many Americans
spent a whole generation resuscitating them. Reagan was elected very
much to do just that, to restore America's image of itself. It would
seem that these myths are so important to America's national identity
and image of itself that the American political and intellectual
establishment is simply incapable in the end of seriously examining
them and asking what flaws they may embody. Of course, there are
dissidents - even some very senior ones like Senator Fulbright; but it
is striking how little influence they seem to have had in the long run.


In consequence, there are all these people running around Washington -
very much among the Democratic intellectual elites as well as the
Republicans - who really believe that all America has to do is try
harder to generate and display a sense of will . If only America wants
something badly enough, anything can be achieved. Any society in the
world can be transformed, irrespective of the wishes and traditions of
its people. Any country can become not just a democracy, but a
pro-American democracy, irrespective of its own national interests or
ideals.

This is part of a deep inability to see America as others see it. It is
incredible but again and again I have found myself at meetings
discussing Russia and China in Washington at which I have been the only
person to point out that America does after all have its own sphere of
influence in Central America and the Caribbean. Not just that, but a
sphere of influence which is not doing very well either economically,
or to a great extent, in terms of real democracy either. The rest of
the world sees this perfectly well, and as a result, develops a belief
in American hypocrisy which is itself very bad for American prestige
and influence.

After all, how much did Haiti get after floods which killed thousands
of people and devastated the country? Peanuts. A mere fifty million
dollars or so from America. And Haiti is only a few hundred miles from
America's own shores. Haiti also has a very large population here in
the US and they got virtually nothing. Yet when I point this out to
people in DC, and suggest that pouring money into the Middle East when
countries close to America's shores and within America's old sphere of
influence are suffering so badly, they often become furious. There is
this strange moral bubble, it seems, and of course it is particularly
bad in Washington, but then again, outside Washington and the
universities, nobody thinks about these issues at all!

You end your recent article in The Nation with the following quote from
Arnold Toynbee: "Great empires do not die by murder, but suicide." Is
that the present trajectory of the United States?

I must state very strongly that in principle, and when thinking of the
historical alternatives, I do not want the American empire to end. I
have never been against a moderate, civilized and rational version of
American hegemony. I certainly would not want to replace it with
Chinese hegemony!

But it is easy to see how a combination of different events could bring
American hegemony down over the next generation. America at present has
no serious strategy for the Middle East. It has a series of ad hoc
strategies for dealing with bits of the terrorist threat, and for
trying to contain Iran, and manage Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It does
not however have anything approaching a general strategy. If America
continues to infuriate more and more Muslims, if then there is either a
revolution elsewhere in the Middle East or a terrorist attack on the
American mainland again, then it is very easy to see America lashing
out in a way which will not only spread chaos and instability still
further, but will lead to a complete breakdown of the alliance with
Europe.

If America gets involved in another major war of occupation, then
conscription will be back. When conscription comes back, Americans will
come out on to the streets and start demanding answers: maybe even
about energy saving and about the relationship with Israel.

Even given the profound weaknesses of America's strategy and position
in the Middle East, however, the American empire has immense underlying
strengths. In the Far East, for example, as long as the US does not
grossly overplay its hand, most of the East Asian states actually want
America to stay there as a balancer against China. In Europe, East
Europeans in particular are anxious for the US to remain strongly
present, whether out of continued fear of Russia or resentment at
French and German domination. In Central America and the Caribbean, the
US will always be predominant through sheer force of economic and
military might.

But if the Bush administration were feeling suicidal, and were actually
in the mood to throw itself over a cliff, like the Hapsburgs in 1914,
there are a number of ways it could do that. It could invade Iran, that
would do it very quickly. Or it could invade Saudi Arabia. Or it could
support Taiwanese independence. I don't believe they will actually do
any of those things. Unfortunately, one can much more easily imagine
the Bush administration doing something like bombing Iran, which would
not lead to immediate disaster but which could begin a spiral of
retaliation leading ultimately to catastrophic conflict.

It has become increasingly clear that world oil reserves are depleting
and their exhaustion is within sight. In addition, global oil and
energy resources have formally been a "national-security" concern of
the United States since Carter. How, and to what extent, will the
geopolitics of oil determine US foreign policy in the coming decade?

To a great extent, they already do. One has seen the tremendous attempt
to build up the Caspian as an alternative to the Persian Gulf as a
source of oil. But the striking thing is that this has to a great
extent failed. It has failed both because there is not enough oil in
the Caspian really to compete with the Persian Gulf but also because
there are other buyers: a great deal of that oil will go east to China
and even to Japan. If the Chinese economy continues to grow, it is
likely that oil prices will rise and rise - until, perhaps,
environmental disaster destroys the present world economy and forces
the world to limit its consumption.

So America's presence in the Middle East is of course not just about
Israel. A tremendous amount of it is about oil - and not just the
interests of the oil companies, but genuinely, in the view of many
Americans, the preservation of the American way of life . It will be
interesting if one sees serious instability in several of the major
oil-producers simultaneously. If there were major instability in the
Persian Gulf and some kind of meltdown in Nigeria, which is entirely
possible, and in a very different way of course serious instability in
Venezuela, then there is the possibility that somewhere at least
America would intervene with its own troops on the ground to guarantee
its oil supplies. Then once again we will be confronted with the whole
question of whether America has enough troops, what this will lead to,
etc. In some places in Africa American intervention could be presented
as a peacekeeping operation, and indeed could even have genuine
elements of that.

I am not saying that any of this will happen, but the geopolitics of
oil will be absolutely central to America's global strategy in the
years to come. Of course what I would like to see would be an approach
to the same issue from the other end which is simply to reduce
America's dependence on oil. This has been one of the very worst things
that Bush has done, or rather not done: his complete failure to use
9/11 to make an argument for decreasing America's reliance on oil.
Instead we have just seen American consumption going up and up. There
is a strong possibility in future that just as in Iraq, America could
again be drawn into occupying a country (or countries) in a way that
would be perceived by the rest of the world as just about keeping its
grip on oil supplies. The thing that might discourage a US
administration from this however is that as Iraq has demonstrated,
there is nothing easier to blow up than an oil pipeline.

Such a contingency has been widely discussed in the case of Saudi
Arabia. If the US were to occupy other countries in order to secure its
oil supplies, then every suspicion of the rest of the world concerning
the US and its motives for the invasion of Iraq would essentially be
confirmed. The US would begin to shed its last elements of true
international idealism. It would become much more like a classical
empire preoccupied with seizing raw materials and controlling them,
irrespective of the wishes or the well-being of the populations
concerned. In this case, America's ancient and very positive role as a
beacon of democracy and progress for mankind would be destroyed. We
should all pray, therefore, that this does not happen.

"Foxtrot" wrote in message
ups.com...

Enough already

Plonked for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty.

Keith



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