Newsletter
Numéro
32
14
février
2006
The Decline of the
American Empire
by
Gabriel Kolko(*)
by Gabriel Kolko
*[Gabriel Kolko has been affiliated with
CEIMSA since the fall semester 2001, when he
agreed to serve as a co-director of our Atelier N°18 ("Les Banques américaines
multinationales"). He is a leading American
historian of modern warfare
and has written several U.S. history classics,
including Century of War:
Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914 and Another Century
of War?.
He is also the author of Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since
1914,
Another Century of War?, and Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States and the
Modern
Historical Experience. His latest
book, The Age of War, will be
published in March 2006.] Professor Kolko has contributed to our research
center’s work on many occasions, and has helped guide our graduate
students to new sources for their original research in our American
Studies
program at Stendhal University.]
The dilemma the US
has had for a half-century is that the priorities it must impose on its
budget
and its imperial plans have never guided its actual behavior and
action. It has
always believed, as well it should, that Europe
and its control would determine the future of world power. But it has
fought in
Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq
– the so-called "Third World" in
general – where the stakes of power were much smaller.
The American priorities were specific, focused on individual
nations, but
they also set the United
States the task of guiding or
controlling
the entire world – which is a very big place and has proven time and
again to
be far beyond American resources and imperial power. In most of those
places in
the Third World where the US
massively employed its power directly it has lost, and its military
might has
been ineffective. The US's
local proxies have been corrupt and venal in most nations where it has
relied
upon them. The cost, both in financial terms and in the eventual
alienation of
the American public, has been monumental.
The Pentagon developed strategic airpower and nuclear weapons with
the USSR as its
primary target, and equipped itself
to fight a massive land war in Eastern Europe.
Arms makers much preferred this expensive approach, and they remain
very
powerful voices in shaping US
foreign and budgetary policy.
But the Soviet enemy no longer exists. The US
dilemma, and it is a fundamental
contradiction, is that its expensive military power is largely useless
as an
instrument of foreign policy. It lost the war in Vietnam, and while it
managed
to overthrow popular regimes in Brazil, Chile, and elsewhere in Latin
America,
its military power is useless in dealing with the effects of larger
social and
political problems – and Latin America, the Middle East, and East Asia
are more
independent of American control than ever.
Strategically, also, the US
is far worse off in the oil-rich Middle East
because it made every mistake possible. It supported Islamic
fundamentalism
against Communism but also against secular nationalism, Iraq against Iran
in the 1980s, and it is not simply losing the war in Iraq
militarily but also alienating
most of its former friends in the region. And Iran
is emerging as the decisive
power in the area.
The basic problem the world today confronts is American ambition, an
ambition based on the illusion that its great military power allows it
to
define political and social trends everywhere it chooses to do so. When
the USSR existed it
was somewhat more inhibited
because Soviet military power neutralized American military might and
there was
a partial equilibrium – a deterring balance of terror – in Europe.
Moreover, the USSR
always
advised its friends and nations in its orbit to move carefully not to
provoke
the US,
an inhibition that no longer exists.
On the other hand, just as the Warsaw Pact has disappeared, NATO is
well
along in the process of breaking up and going the way of SEATO, CENTO,
etc. The
1999 war against Serbia made its demise much more likely but the US-led
alliance disagreed profoundly over the Iraq War and now is likely to
dissolve in
fact, if not formally. The Bush Administration produced a crisis with
its
alliance and has created profound instability in Iraq,
which was always an artificial state since the British created it after
World
War One resulted in the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Eight nations have nuclear weapons already, but the UN says another
30 or so
have the skill and resources to become nuclear powers. The world is
escaping
the US, but it is
also
escaping the forms of control which were in place when the USSR
existed and
states were too poor to build nuclear weapons. The world is more
dangerous now,
in large part because the US
refuses to recognize the limits of its power and retains the ambitions
it had
50 years ago. But the spread of all kinds of weapons also has its own
momentum
– one that US arms exports aids immeasurably.
Iraq
was not at the top of the Bush Administration's agenda when it came to
power in
2001. Bush was committed, however, to a "forward-leaning" foreign
policy, to use Rumsfeld's words, and
greater military
activism. Had September 11 not occurred, it is more likely that the
Bush
administration would have confronted China, which has nuclear
weapons.
This administration deems China
a peer competitor in the vast East Asia
region. It still may do so, although Iraq
has been a total disaster for the administration – militarily and
geopolitically – and greatly alienated the US
public (faster than Vietnam
did).
The US military
is
falling apart: its weapons have been ineffective, politically Iraq is likely to break up into
regional
fiefdoms (as Afghanistan
has), and perhaps civil war – no one knows. From the Iraqi viewpoint
the war
was a disaster, but it also repeated the failures the Americans
confronted in Korea,
Vietnam,
and elsewhere.
That the Iraq
resistance
is divided will not save the US
from defeat. Few believe Iraq
will be spared great trauma. In fact, many American officials predicted
this
before the war began and they were ignored – just as they were ignored
when
they predicted disaster in Vietnam
in the 1960s.
We live in a tragic world and war is considered more virtuous than
peace –
and since arms-makers profit from wars and not peace, conventional
wisdom is
reinforced by their lobbies and by preaching the cult of weaponry.
The US may
explore how to
end its predicament in Iraq
but only Iran
can help it. Ironically, Iran
has gained most geopolitically from Saddam Hussein's defeat and has no
incentive to save the Bush Administration from the defeat now staring
at it –
both in Iraq and in
future
elections in the US.
The world is escaping American control, and Soviet prudence no
longer
inhibits many movements and nations. World opposition is becoming
decentralized
to a much greater extent and the US is less than ever able
to
control it – although it may go financially bankrupt and break up its
alliances
in the process of seeking to be hegemonic.
This is cause for a certain
optimism, based on a realistic assessment of the balance-of-power in
the world.
I think we must avoid the pessimism-optimism trap but be realistic.
Although
the Americans are very destructive, they are also losing wars and
wrecking
themselves economically and politically. But for a century the world
has fought
wars, and while the US
has been the leading power by far in making wars since 1946, it has no
monopoly
on folly.
But it is crucial to remember that the US is
only a
reflection of the militarism and irrationality that has blinded many
leaders of
mankind for over a century.
The task is not only to prevent the
US
from inflicting more damage on the hapless world – Iraq
at this moment – but to root
out the historic, global illusions that led to its aggression.
___________
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