Maaja
13th September 2002, 05:48
The world has drifted apart from America
By Jonathan Power
Transnational
September 6, 2002
http://www.transnational.org/forum/power/2...iftedWorld.html (http://www.transnational.org/forum/power/2002/09.01_AmericaDriftedWorld.html)
LONDON - The tragedy of September 11th was not just
the incinerated bodies and the shock to the political
nervous system of our one and only superpower, it is
that a year later it has led to America becoming
separated from the world at large. Governments may
still pay formal allegiance to Washington, but behind
the façade of politeness few have a kind word. As for
the people, who last had a conversation where real
empathy for America's predicament was readily
apparent? Even the most sympathetic or most loyal have
their doubts. It was not that "America had it coming
to it". That would be to exaggerate (although a poll
published today reports that a majority of Europeans
think that U.S. policy is partially to blame for the
September 11th attack). But having been hit so hard in
the solar plexus America then seemed to rear up like a
wounded elephant and trample everyone's grass, while
bellowing that "who is not with us is against us". The
world suddenly saw America in a sharper light. What
had been fuzzy before became less ambiguous, the
contours sharper and the image clearer - the pizazz of
American life, cultural, political or militaristic, at
one time considered stimulating, reassuring, even
envy-making, now seemed, depending on the vantage
point, a bridge too far, a highway to damnation, a
path to perdition or, at the very least, simply a road
map to where people did not want their own societies
to head. One didn't have to be an earnest Muslim to
feel this.
Hypocrisy is a tribute which vice pays to virtue. Few
maybe have yet stopped watching the violent and
sexually loaded films or the pornographic Spam that
America pours out to the word. No one, apart from a
few anxious Saudis, has pulled out their fortunes from
their American investments. No one, even the more
economically and political secure Europeans, dare
challenge America directly in a way it hurts, like
announcing the closure of Nato assets for use in a war
against Iraq. But underneath there is an ebb tide that
Americans should ignore at their peril. To win a
round, whether it be in Afghanistan or in Iraq, but
lose the world is not a very clever thing to do.
Americans like to think of their country, to quote
Ronald Regan, as "a shining city on a hill". Maybe in
Madison, Wisconsin, there is something of that. But in
most American big cities there is the most appalling
racial discrimination (despite the remarkable
emancipation of a black middle class), crime, social
and family disintegration, school violence and urban
decay. America's prisons can offer the worst of the
Soviet gulag and American justice is reserved for
those with deep pockets. Its propensity to see
violence as the preferred political solution is no new
philosophy of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld but runs
like a ribbon through the recent history of the
fratricidal Central American wars, the long running
tribal war in Angola, the initial war in Afghanistan
when Osama bin Laden and his friends were operating
against the Soviet army under the tutelage of the CIA,
back to the wars of Vietnam and Cambodia, which even
many on the right in America now consider a terrible
mistake, so pointless became the carnage relative to
what was largely an imagined problem of hostile
communist takeover. Yet on every occasion God is
regularly invoked as a support and sanction, reminding
us of Olusegun Obasanjo's apt and penetrating remark,
"God is quite capable of upholding his own causes".
The threat from global terrorism is "at least partly a
reaction to the looming global presence of the United
States", as Professor Steven Walt of Harvard has
succinctly put it. "Some Americans are likely to ask
if the danger might also be reduced if it were not as
visibly and actively engaged in trying to run the
world." Only when voices from within like his are
seriously listened to will America avoid the disaster
it is now on course to head into. A war with Iraq, as
former National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, has
wisely argued, will throw the whole of Middle East
into a period of serious political disturbance. If
America does manage to depose Saddam Hussein it is
quite likely on past performance to end up putting its
weight behind an equally malevolent figure. (After all
it is not so long ago since Washington gave satellite
intelligence and military guidance to Saddam in his
war against its neighbour Iran.) The outwards waves
thrown up by the turbulence of a war with Iraq is also
likely to embolden the extremists in Pakistan who
could with a deft assassination throw that
nuclear-armed country into the hands of the
politically irresponsible.
America may bully its way past its European allies and
over and round the despairing council of its Arab
friends all the way to Baghdad. Conceivably it will
pull off the regime change, perhaps the
democratisation, it says it wants. But the chances of
success are slim. This operation even more than
Vietnam has too many uncertain and difficult elements
that could make it go badly wrong.
Last time everyone said "come home America" and
friends and partners from all over the world rushed to
help bind up the psychological wounds and help America
simply (too simply) put Vietnam behind it.
But this time if things go wrong the tide has already
turned. When America loses its chutzpah and looks for
support it could well find itself beached on a long
and desolate no man's land. Who any longer will want
to stand up and be seen as a friend of America?
I can be reached by phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail:
[email protected]
By Jonathan Power
Transnational
September 6, 2002
http://www.transnational.org/forum/power/2...iftedWorld.html (http://www.transnational.org/forum/power/2002/09.01_AmericaDriftedWorld.html)
LONDON - The tragedy of September 11th was not just
the incinerated bodies and the shock to the political
nervous system of our one and only superpower, it is
that a year later it has led to America becoming
separated from the world at large. Governments may
still pay formal allegiance to Washington, but behind
the façade of politeness few have a kind word. As for
the people, who last had a conversation where real
empathy for America's predicament was readily
apparent? Even the most sympathetic or most loyal have
their doubts. It was not that "America had it coming
to it". That would be to exaggerate (although a poll
published today reports that a majority of Europeans
think that U.S. policy is partially to blame for the
September 11th attack). But having been hit so hard in
the solar plexus America then seemed to rear up like a
wounded elephant and trample everyone's grass, while
bellowing that "who is not with us is against us". The
world suddenly saw America in a sharper light. What
had been fuzzy before became less ambiguous, the
contours sharper and the image clearer - the pizazz of
American life, cultural, political or militaristic, at
one time considered stimulating, reassuring, even
envy-making, now seemed, depending on the vantage
point, a bridge too far, a highway to damnation, a
path to perdition or, at the very least, simply a road
map to where people did not want their own societies
to head. One didn't have to be an earnest Muslim to
feel this.
Hypocrisy is a tribute which vice pays to virtue. Few
maybe have yet stopped watching the violent and
sexually loaded films or the pornographic Spam that
America pours out to the word. No one, apart from a
few anxious Saudis, has pulled out their fortunes from
their American investments. No one, even the more
economically and political secure Europeans, dare
challenge America directly in a way it hurts, like
announcing the closure of Nato assets for use in a war
against Iraq. But underneath there is an ebb tide that
Americans should ignore at their peril. To win a
round, whether it be in Afghanistan or in Iraq, but
lose the world is not a very clever thing to do.
Americans like to think of their country, to quote
Ronald Regan, as "a shining city on a hill". Maybe in
Madison, Wisconsin, there is something of that. But in
most American big cities there is the most appalling
racial discrimination (despite the remarkable
emancipation of a black middle class), crime, social
and family disintegration, school violence and urban
decay. America's prisons can offer the worst of the
Soviet gulag and American justice is reserved for
those with deep pockets. Its propensity to see
violence as the preferred political solution is no new
philosophy of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld but runs
like a ribbon through the recent history of the
fratricidal Central American wars, the long running
tribal war in Angola, the initial war in Afghanistan
when Osama bin Laden and his friends were operating
against the Soviet army under the tutelage of the CIA,
back to the wars of Vietnam and Cambodia, which even
many on the right in America now consider a terrible
mistake, so pointless became the carnage relative to
what was largely an imagined problem of hostile
communist takeover. Yet on every occasion God is
regularly invoked as a support and sanction, reminding
us of Olusegun Obasanjo's apt and penetrating remark,
"God is quite capable of upholding his own causes".
The threat from global terrorism is "at least partly a
reaction to the looming global presence of the United
States", as Professor Steven Walt of Harvard has
succinctly put it. "Some Americans are likely to ask
if the danger might also be reduced if it were not as
visibly and actively engaged in trying to run the
world." Only when voices from within like his are
seriously listened to will America avoid the disaster
it is now on course to head into. A war with Iraq, as
former National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, has
wisely argued, will throw the whole of Middle East
into a period of serious political disturbance. If
America does manage to depose Saddam Hussein it is
quite likely on past performance to end up putting its
weight behind an equally malevolent figure. (After all
it is not so long ago since Washington gave satellite
intelligence and military guidance to Saddam in his
war against its neighbour Iran.) The outwards waves
thrown up by the turbulence of a war with Iraq is also
likely to embolden the extremists in Pakistan who
could with a deft assassination throw that
nuclear-armed country into the hands of the
politically irresponsible.
America may bully its way past its European allies and
over and round the despairing council of its Arab
friends all the way to Baghdad. Conceivably it will
pull off the regime change, perhaps the
democratisation, it says it wants. But the chances of
success are slim. This operation even more than
Vietnam has too many uncertain and difficult elements
that could make it go badly wrong.
Last time everyone said "come home America" and
friends and partners from all over the world rushed to
help bind up the psychological wounds and help America
simply (too simply) put Vietnam behind it.
But this time if things go wrong the tide has already
turned. When America loses its chutzpah and looks for
support it could well find itself beached on a long
and desolate no man's land. Who any longer will want
to stand up and be seen as a friend of America?
I can be reached by phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail:
[email protected]