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Can the US be defeated?

The Guardian | 14.02.2002 05:07

"Instead, this is a war against regimes the US dislikes: a war for
heightened US global hegemony and the "full spectrum dominance" the
Pentagon has been working to entrench since the end of the cold
war.....No previous military empire - from the Roman to the British -
had anything like this preponderance, let alone America's global
reach."

Can the US be defeated?
The Guardian

"Instead, this is a war against regimes the US dislikes: a war for
heightened US global hegemony and the "full spectrum dominance" the
Pentagon has been working to entrench since the end of the cold
war.....No previous military empire - from the Roman to the British -
had anything like this preponderance, let alone America's global
reach."

And yet not too many of them [US people] ask, or even care, why we
don't like them.)

Can the US be defeated?

America's global power has no historical precedent, but its room for
manoeuvre is limited

Seumas Milne
Thursday February 14, 2002
The Guardian

Those who have argued that America's war on terror would fail to
defeat terrorism have, it turns out, been barking up the wrong tree.
Ever since President Bush announced his $45bn increase in military
spending and gave notice to Iraq, Iran and North Korea that they had
"better get their house in order" or face what he called the "justice
of this nation", it has become ever clearer that the US is not now
primarily engaged in a war against terrorism at all.

Instead, this is a war against regimes the US dislikes: a war for
heightened US global hegemony and the "full spectrum dominance" the
Pentagon has been working to entrench since the end of the cold war.
While US forces have apparently still failed to capture or kill Osama
bin Laden, there is barely even a pretence that any of these three
states was in some way connected with the attacks on the World Trade
Centre. What they do have in common, of course, is that they have all
long opposed American power in their regions (for 10, 23 and 52
years respectively) and might one day acquire the kind of weapons the
US prefers to reserve for its friends and clients.

With his declaration of war against this absurdly named "axis of
evil", Bush has abandoned whatever remaining moral high ground the US
held onto in the wake of September 11. He has dispensed with the
united front against terror, which had just about survived the
onslaught on Afghanistan. And he has made fools of those, particularly
in Europe, who had convinced themselves that America's need for
international support would coax the US Republican right out of its
unilateralist laager. Nothing of the kind has happened. When the
German foreign minister Joschka Fischer plaintively insists that
"alliance partners are not satellites" and the EU's international
affairs commissioner Chris Patten fulminates at Bush's "absolutist and
simplistic" stance, they are swatted away. Even Jack Straw, foreign
minister of a government that prides itself on its clout in
Washington, was slapped down for his hopeful suggestion that talk of
an axis of evil was strictly for domestic consumption. Allied
governments who question US policy towards Iraq, Israel or national
missile defence are increasingly treated as the "vassal states" the
French president Jacques Chirac has said they risk becoming. Now Colin
Powell, regarded as the last voice of reason in the White House, has
warned Europeans to respect the "principled leadership" of the US even
if they disagree with it.

By openly arrogating to itself the prerogative of such leadership -
and dispensing with any restraint on its actions through the United
Nations or other multilateral bodies - the US is effectively
challenging what has until now passed for at least formal equality
between nations. But it is only reflecting reality. The extent of
America's power is unprecedented in human history. The latest
increases will take its military spending to 40% of the worldwide
total, larger than the arms budgets of the next 19 states put
together. No previous military empire - from the Roman to the British
- had anything like this preponderance, let alone America's global
reach. US officials are generally a good deal more frank about the
situation than their supporters abroad. In the early 1990s, the
Pentagon described US strategy as "benevolent domination" (though
whether those who have recently been on the receiving end of US
military power, from the Middle East to Latin America, would see it
that way seems doubtful). A report for the US Space Command last year,
overseen by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, rhapsodised about
the "synergy of space superiority with land, sea, and air superiority"
that would come with missile defence and other projects to militarise
space. This would "protect US interests and investment" in an era when
globalisation was likely to produce a further "widening between haves
and have-nots". It would give the US an "extraordinary military
advantage".

In fact, it would only increase further what became an overwhelming
military advantage a decade ago with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But the experience of Bush's war on Afghanistan has rammed home the
lessons for the rest of the world. The first is that such a gigantic
disproportion of international power is a threat to the principles of
self- determination the US claims to stand for on a global scale. A
state with less than one 20th of the earth's population is able to
dictate to the other 95% and order their affairs in its own interests,
both through military and economic pressure. The issue is not one of
"anti-Americanism" or wounded national pride (curiously, those
politicians around the world who prattle most about patriotism are
also usually the most slavish towards US power), but of democracy.
This is an international order which, as the September 11 attacks
demonstrated, will not be tolerated and will generate conflict.

Many doubt that such conflict can amount to anything more than
fleabites on an elephant, which has demonstrated its ability to crush
any serious challenger, and have come to believe US global domination
is here for good. That ignores the political and economic dimensions
(including in the US itself), as well as the problems of fighting
asymmetric wars on many fronts. In economic terms, the US has actually
been in decline relative to the rest of the world since it accounted
for half the world's output after the second world war. In the past
few years its share has bounced back to nearly 30% on some measures,
partly because of the Soviet implosion and Japanese stagnation,
and partly because of America's own long boom. But in the medium term,
the strain of military overstretch is likely to make itself felt. More
immediately, the US could face regional challenges, perhaps from China
or Russia, which it would surely balk at pushing to military conflict.
Then there is the likelihood of social eruptions in client states like
Saudi Arabia which no amount of military technology will be able to
see off. America's greatest defeat was, it should not beforgotten,
inflicted by a peasant army in Vietnam. US room for manoeuvre may well
prove more limited than might appear.

When it comes to some of America's richer and more powerful allies,
the opposite is often the case: they can go their own way and get
away with it. The Foreign Office minister Peter Hain argued at the
weekend that being a steadfast ally of the US didn't mean being a
patsy, pointing as evidence to the fact that Britain was able to
maintain diplomatic relations with two out of three of President
Bush's axis of evil states.

The test of his claim will come when the US government turns its
rhetoric into action and demands British support for a full-scale
assault on Iraq (as yesterday's Washington drumbeat suggests could be
only months away), or the use of the Fylingdales base in Yorkshire for
its missile defence plans. Tony Blair has demonstrated none of the
limited independence shown by earlier Labour prime ministers, such as
Harold Wilson, and all the signs are that he will once again agree to
whatever he is asked to do on Britain's behalf. If he is going to
stand up to the global behemoth, he's going to need some serious
encouragement - both inside and outside parliament.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,649931,00.html

The Guardian
- Homepage: http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,649931,00.html

Comments

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limits on US power

14.02.2002 13:45

I may get jumped on ;-) but there was a good article on the limits of US power in the last Socialist Review:

internationalist
- Homepage: http://www.swp.org.uk/SR/259/SR1.HTM