The United States is a nation in a state of irreversible
decline; its foundational principles have been abandoned and its
center of political power is a moral swamp. The Bush presidency
represents the ethical low point in American history.
By Mike Whitney -- Information Clearing House
March 10, 2007 -- The United States has been defeated in
Iraq. That doesn’t mean that there’ll be a troop withdrawal
anytime soon, but it does mean that there’s no chance of
achieving the mission’s political objectives. Iraq will not be a
democracy, reconstruction will be minimal, and the security
situation will continue to deteriorate into the foreseeable
future.
The real goals of the invasion are equally unachievable. While
the United States has established a number of military bases at the heart
of the world’s energy-center; oil output has dwindled to 1.6
million barrels per day, nearly half of post-war production.
More importantly, the administration has no clear strategy for
protecting pipelines, oil tankers and major facilities. Oil
production will be spotty for years to come even if security
improves. This will have grave effects on oil futures;
triggering erratic spikes in prices and roiling the world energy
markets. If the contagion spreads to the other Gulf States, as
many political analysts now expect, many of the world’s
oil-dependent countries will go through an agonizing cycle of
recession/depression.
America’s failure in Iraq is not merely a defeat for the Bush
administration. It is also a defeat for the “unipolar-model” of
world order. Iraq proves that that the superpower model cannot
provide the stability, security or guarantee of human rights
that are essential for garnering the support of the 6 billion
people who now occupy the planet. The mushrooming of armed
groups in Iraq, Afghanistan and, now, Somalia foreshadows a
broader and more violent confrontation between the
over-stretched American legions and their increasingly adaptable
and lethal enemies. Resistance to the imperial order is on the
rise everywhere.
The United States does not have the resources or the public
support to prevail in such a conflict. Nor does it have the
moral authority to persuade the world of the merit of its cause.
The Bush administration’s extra-legal actions have galvanized
the majority of people against the United States. America has
become a threat to the very human rights and civil liberties
with which it used to be identified. There’s little popular
support for imprisoning enemies without charges, for torturing
suspects with impunity, for kidnapping people off the streets of
foreign capitals, or for invading unarmed sovereign nations
without the approval of the United Nations. These are
fundamental violations to international law as well as commonly
held principles of human decency.
The Bush administration defends its illegal activities as an
essential part of the new world order; a model of global
governance which allows Washington to police the world according
to its own discretion. The vast majority of people have rejected
this model and polls clearly indicate declining support for US
policies nearly everywhere. As former Jimmy Carter National
Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski noted:
“American power may be greater in 2006 than in 1991, (but) the
country’s capacity to mobilize, inspire, point in a shared
direction and thus shape global realities has significantly
declined. Fifteen years after its coronation as global leader,
America is becoming a fearful and lonely democracy in a
politically antagonistic world.”
The United States is a nation in a state of irreversible
decline; its foundational principles have been abandoned and its
center of political power is a moral swamp. The Bush presidency
represents the ethical low point in American history.
The United States now faces a decades-long struggle that will engulf the
Middle East and Central Asia leading to the steady and
predictable erosion of America’s military, political and
economic power.
This is not the “new century” that Bush and his fellows
envisioned.
There are still dead-enders within the Bush administration who
believe that we are winning the war. Vice President Dick Cheney
has celebrated the “enormous success” of the Iraqi occupation,
but he finds himself increasingly isolated in his views.
Reasonable people agree that the war has been a strategic and
moral catastrophe. The United States has paid a heavy price for its
recklessness; losing more than 3,000 servicemen while seriously
undermining its standing in the world. A small cadre of Iraqi
guerillas has demonstrated that it can frustrate the efforts of
best-equipped, best-trained, high-tech military in the world.
They have made Iraq an ungovernable quagmire which, by the
standards of asymmetrical warfare, is the very definition of
success.
But what if Bush’s plans had succeeded? What if his dark vision
of “victory” had been realized and the United States was able to subjugate
the Iraqi people, control their resources, and create an “Arab
façade” through which the administration could carry out its
policies?
Is there any doubt that Bush would quickly march on Tehran and
Damascus? Is there any doubt that Guantanamo and other CIA
“black sites” around the world would increase in number and
size? Is there any doubt that global warming, peak oil, nuclear
non proliferation, poverty, hunger and AIDS would continue to be
brushed aside by Washington’s corporatists and banking elites?
Is there any doubt that success in Iraq would further strengthen
a tyrannical system that limits the decision-making on all the
issues of global importance, even the very survival of the
planet, to a small fraternity of well-heeled plutocrats and
gangsters?
The “new world order” promises despotism, not democracy.
Many people believe that America has undergone a silent coup and
has been taken over by a cabal of political fantasists and
war-mongers. But this is only partially true. The United States has a long
history of covert activity, black-ops, and other clear
violations to international law. Perhaps, we are reluctant to
accept the truth because it’s easier to stick our heads in the
sand and let the marauding continue.
The truth is there’s a straight line from the founding of this
country to the killing fields of Baghdad. That line may be
interrupted by periods of enlightenment and peace, but it is
still an unbroken stripe from the Continental Congress to Abu
Ghraib, from Bunker Hill to Falluja, from Valley Forge to
Guantanamo Bay. It all grows from the same root.
The United States now faces mounting resistance from all corners
of the earth. Russia, China, and the Central Asian countries
have joined together in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
to fend off US-NATO influence in the region. And in Latin
America, an alliance of leftist governments has formed (Mercosur)
under the leadership of Hugo Chavez. Africa still remains
politically fragmented and open to western exploitation,
although ham-fisted interventions in Somalia, Nigeria and Sudan
suggest that the empire will face escalating resistance there as
well.
These new coalitions are an indication of the massive
geopolitical changes that are already underway. The world is
realigning in reaction to Washington’s aggression. We can expect
to see these groups continue to strengthen as the administration
pursues its resource war through force of arms. That means that
the “old order” -- the United Nations, NATO and the transatlantic
Alliance -- will come under greater and greater strain until
relations are eventually cut off.
The UN has already become irrelevant through its blind support
of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Its silence during Israel’s
destructive rampage through Lebanon, as well as its failure to
acknowledge Iran’s “inalienable rights” under the terms of the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has exposed the UN as a
“rubber stamp” for U.S.-Israeli belligerence. An attack on Iran
will be the end of the UN, an institution that held great
promise for the world, but now merely provides cover for an
elite-western agenda. On balance, the UN facilitates more wars
than it stops. It won’t be missed.
Afghanistan holds the key for understanding what’s in store for
the EU, NATO and the transatlantic Alliance. There is no
possibility of success in Afghanistan. If the men who planned
the invasion had a grasp of the country’s history they would
have known how the war would progress. They would have realized
that Afghanis traditionally take their time to fight back; (Eric
Margolis predicted that the real war would not take place until
four or five years after the initial invasion) measuring the strength
of their enemy and garnering greater public support. Then they
proceed with deliberate steps to rid their country of the
invaders. These are fiercely nationalistic and independent
people who have fought occupation before and know what it takes
to win.
We are mistaken to think that the war in Afghanistan is merely a
Taliban (or worse still) “terrorist” insurgency. The present
conflict represents a general uprising of Pushtun nationals who
seek to end foreign occupation. They know first-hand that
U.S.-NATO policy has strengthened the warlords, expanded the drug
trade, reduced security, and increased terrorism. According to
the Senlis Council Report, the occupation has triggered “a
humanitarian crisis of starvation and poverty … U.S. policies in
Afghanistan have re-created a safe-haven for terrorism that the
2001 invasion aimed to destroy.”
The Afghan armed resistance is resourceful and intractable and
has a growing number of recruits to swell its ranks. Eventually,
they will prevail. It’s their country and they’ll be there long
after we’ve gone.
A U.S. defeat in Afghanistan could be the straw that breaks
NATO’s back. The administrations’ global schema depends heavily
on support from Europe; persuading the predominantly white,
western nations to join the battle and secure pipeline corridors
and landlocked energy supplies throughout Central Asia. Failure
in Afghanistan would send tremors through Europe’s political
landscape and give rise to a generation of anti-American
politicians who will seek to dissolve relations between the two
traditional allies. But a breakup seems inevitable. After all,
Europe has no imperial aspirations and its economies are
thriving. They don’t need to invade and occupy countries to get
access to vital resources. They can simply buy them on the open
market.
As Europeans begin to see that their national interests are
better served through dialogue and friendship, (with suppliers
of resources in Central Asia and Russia) then the ties that bind
Europe to America will loosen and the continents will drift
further apart.
The end of NATO is the end of America as a global power. The
present adventurism is not sustainable “unilaterally” and
without the fig-leaf of UN cover. America needs Europe, but the
chasm between the two is progressively growing.
It is impossible to predict the future with any degree of
certainty, but the appearance of these coalitions strongly
suggests a new world order is emerging. It is not the one,
however, that Bush and the neoconservatives anticipated.
America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue to
prevent it from addressing brush-fires in Latin America and
Russia, further strengthening U.S. rivals and precipitating
macroeconomic changes that could crush the American middle
class. The likelihood of a major economic retrenchment has never
been greater as the administrations’ reckless defense spending,
lavish tax cuts, and trade deficit have set the stage for the US
dollar to be dethroned as the world’s “reserve currency.” The
three pillars of American imperial power -- political, economic
and military --r est on the crumbling foundation of the U.S.
greenback. If the dollar falls, as many currency traders now
expect, then foreign (baskets of) currencies will rise, and
America will slip into a deep recession/depression.
America’s military and economic unraveling is likely to take a
decade or more depending on the situation in Iraq. If the Bush
administration is able to exert control over Middle East oil,
then the dollar will continue to be linked to vital resources
and American supremacy will persist. If, however, conditions on
the ground deteriorate, then Central Banks around the world will
decrease their dollar holdings, Americans will face
hyper-inflation at home, and the US will lose its grip on the
global economic system. The Bush administration must, therefore,
ensure that oil continues to be denominated in U.S. dollars and that the
world economy remains in the hands of western elites, banking
giants and corporatists.
The chances for success in Iraq are gradually diminishing. The
United States has shown that it is incapable of establishing security,
providing basic social services, or keeping the peace. The
guerilla war continues to intensify while the over-extended U.S.
military has been pushed to the breaking point. We expect the
occupation of Iraq to be untenable within five years if present
trends continue.
America’s military and economic unraveling will undoubtedly be
painful, but it may generate greater parity among the nations,
which would be a positive development. The superpower model has
been an abysmal failure. It has wreaked havoc on civil liberties
at home and spread war and instability across the world. The
present system needs a major shakeup so that power can be more
evenly distributed according to traditional democratic
standards. America’s decline presents a unique opportunity to
restore the Republic, restructure the existing global-paradigm,
and begin to build consensus on the species-threatening
challenges which face us all.
LINK: Information Clearing House