The NAI is sinking into utter unrealism and exacerbating the grave and disabling American tendency to ignore, underestimate and despise the ‘rest of the world’. How can one govern other nations when one persistently fails to understand them? By convincing themselves that the USA represents a social and civilisational model which the whole world will end up embracing, the Americans have taken the flaws of the French Revolution to a higher level. They thus consider all other civilisations and cultures to be temporary, fleeting and illegitimate.
Let us, however, not blame America. The French notion of things is hardly different, and French anti-Americanism is but an expression of the rage felt by a competitor consigned to a position of inferiority. This is because the universalisms that characterise the American and French revolutions (the former having served as inspiration for the latter) are of a highly similar nature. By contrast, German anti-Americanism is of an utterly different kind. It is rooted in a ‘nationalistic’ vision of the world, in which all peoples enjoy their own norms, their own specific moral codes.
The NAI’s approach is surprisingly similar to the French revolutionary and Napoleonian attitude of exporting ‘liberty’ using military force, while simultaneously taking advantage of the situation to impose the dominance of the Great Nation, of course. There is a difference, however: the ‘French civilisation’ established by Napoleon in a certain part of Europe was of a different substantiality, quality, demeanour and cultural profoundness than the neo-primitive American value system and way of life.
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What dictates the behaviour espoused by a cornered USA and provides an explanation for its disrespect of all international law regulations is the fact that it has chosen, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, to act in accordance with a state of emergency and exception; the problem is that the latter is not meant to be temporary and short-lived, but permanent! Owing to the struggle between Good and terrorist Evil, a struggle that is as present as it is resurgent, this state of exception is destined to become a normal state of affairs for American leaders, which generates a sort of infernal spiral, one that may well guide the USA towards despotic forms of domestic power and international behaviour. This is bound to ruin not only the USA’s image, but also the reality of its position as the world’s foremost democracy and the free world’s beacon, both of which constitute the moral basis of its dominance.
A unified dynamic driven by a twofold engine thus emerges: the first is the NAI, which fuels the other, namely Islamic terrorism, in a headlong rush and build-up that will soon become uncontainable. What we may end up witnessing is the spectacle of an America that is falling prey not only to an ever-growing global hostility, but also to permanent terrorist acts, responding to the latter with warmongering military actions whose uncontrollability can only be exacerbated. The state of Israel will be dragged into this downward spiral, of course.
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The NAI has also taken to the extreme its support of Israel, a country that has found itself cornered. Numerous American analysts are horrified by the enormous, direct financial aid and unconditional assistance that the USA grants the adventuresome Ariel Sharon.
Edward Luck, an international relations professor at the University of Columbia and a man considered to be a ‘falcon’ himself, has expressed scepticism with regard to this policy, a policy that breaks completely with Clinton’s:
Our President is under the impression that he has increased Israel’s security by overthrowing Saddam Hussein and exerting pressure upon Syria, the Palestinians and their leaders, and that this factor has furthered reconciliation more than any other. It is, however, a risky venture on his part. (JDD, 20/04/2003)
The NAI’s wager to turn America into the sole, long-term superpower is unmanageable and betrays an extremely severe historical naivety. China and India must be having a good laugh. The theory of absolute unilateralism does not correspond at all to a genuine American hegemony over the rest of the world, whether on a military level or in the economic sphere.
Only the Atlanticist European milieus — particularly in Great Britain and Eastern Europe — believe this tall tale. The ambition to govern the world on one’s own, which is the NAI’s central ideological precept, is a ridiculous objective. It betrays a fatal flaw that has always hastened the downfall of great powers: the overestimation of one’s strength. This is what befell Alexander the Great when he believed he could conquer Asia, Napoleon and Hitler when they thought that they would rule a Europe stretching from Lisbon to Moscow, etc.
America lacks the necessary means to bring its velleity of universal domination to fruition. It does not have a single ace up its sleeve in this poker game. The American setback will occur when the USA finds itself alone, facing the rest of the world. This situation will thus be unmanageable from its perspective. Admittedly, the NAI does manifest a will to power whose aspects are often likeable and which breaks with the pessimistic attitude that typifies European policies, policies that remain confined to a constant cult of weakness. This will, however, is only built on sand. Instead of anticipating the USA becoming the foremost global power (in harmony with the viewpoints embraced by Kennedy, Kissinger and Nixon), Bush’s neoconservatives long to turn it into the sole superpower, an endeavour which is as infantile as it is impossible.
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The issue of military ‘legitimation’ within the NAI resulted in incredible feats during the Iraqi campaign. The USA went as far as to dismiss international law and ended up admitting, in an almost explicit fashion, that its will to wage war was in and of itself a source of legitimacy: the latter, whose essence is both of an ethical and religious nature, no longer requires the legal mechanisms of a signed treaty. This ‘legal obsolescence’, which was already noticeable during the American denunciation of the SALT II treaty on nuclear weapons signed with the USSR and in the American refusal to ratify the prohibition of nuclear testing, represents an interesting return to the kind of practices that Woodrow Wilson wanted to eradicate back in 1919.
The justification of warfare has always been conducted on two levels: that of genuine motivation (usually the country’s expansion or the elimination of a rival) and that of pretexts or ‘legitimacy’. The Trojan War represents the foundational model of this kind of warfare: the Greek pretext was Helen’s abduction at the hands of the Trojans, but the real purpose lay in the necessity to weaken their competitors, who, from their headquarters by the Dardanelles, rivalled the Greek commercial ambitions in the Aegean Sea.
The NAI has introduced a new type of war legitimation: that of pre-emptive war. But is it truly a new notion? The answer is no. It is, in fact, the very same mechanism that was employed by the declining Roman Empire, which consisted of attacking the dangerous Barbarians that were gathering on the other side of the limes. The current American doctrine of ‘pre-emptive war’ is that of an equally declining power. Unable to persuade others using threats or diplomacy, the USA can only intervene directly.
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Despite the fact that the new global American strategy has adopted the principles of ‘power realism’ advocated by Richelieu, Bismarck and Napoleon and that the Americans have espoused the new imperialistic theory of ‘deficient sovereignty’, the USA tirelessly perseveres in its holy war, its crusade, in a display of utter naivety. This crusade is being conducted in the name of Good, which makes it akin to Islamic holy war, which, likewise, embodies a straightforward attempt to conquer the world.
During the Cold War, Eisenhower believed himself to be opposing Communism in the name of God and demanded that prayers be said in schools. Nowadays, the puritanical G. W. Bush expects his Ministers to pray before the start of every single council meeting, thinking of himself more or less as God’s sword arm, with America being the Lord’s ‘blessed’ nation. This stupid attitude obviously exacerbates the jihadist tendencies of the Muslims, who are thus convinced that the USA does not target terrorism and despotism, but rather Islam and the Arabs, which in turn leads to an increase
in Muslim ardour and their desire for vengeance. In the minds of all Arabs worldwide, even those who were once moderate, anti-British-American and anti-Jewish terrorism is now legitimated, all thanks to Bush’s stupidity.
His neocon administration is the most mediocre in a hundred years and the least well-informed concerning the global state of affairs, validating clichés and caricatures at the expense of infantile and simplistic Americans. It has failed to comprehend that its approach is bound to trigger an upheaval among entire ominous masses in poor countries, most of whom are Muslims and will thus turn against the USA in a tidal wave of hatred. This is not only true of the various public opinions, but also of the elites and an ever-growing number of governments whose members will not always be open to bribery. In its entire history, never has America, a country that longs to be ‘loved’ and portrays itself as a global ethical civilizational model, been the target of such hatred. For the first time ever, anti-Americanism has become the dominant ‘global sentiment’, which has even had a cultural impact, since Afro-Maghrebians now refuse to wear jeans, watch American films or drink Coca-Cola. In Europe, which was once the sole part of the world where anti-Americanism was both contained and fought, the latter is soaring in public opinion polls, especially among the young. In Germany, for instance, as much as 75 % of all respondents espouse anti-Americanistic stances.
This situation is extremely dangerous for the USA: it increases the risk of a terrorist attack on its own soil and, on a global scale, against both its nationals and interests. Above all, however, the USA may well end up facing a worldwide boycott targeting its material and cultural products, a development that would deal American power an unbearable blow. As for us, we can only rejoice at this situation, of course, a situation through which the USA will undoubtedly incur the world’s wrath.
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A mixture of religious messianism and hegemonism, the NAI is deeply enrooted and garnered its first political expression during Senator Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign. Although a renowned alcoholic (just like G. W. Bush), Kennedy must have been completely sober the day he stated that the USA had the right to govern the world spiritually.
Just like Patrick Buchanan, there are Americans who are lucid enough to realise that, from the American perspective, this economic and messianic imperialism will lead to suicide. What follows is a warning issued by U.S Senator Fullbright in April 1966:
The Vietnam war has paralysed the great American society and arouses a power frenzy in the United States. America betrays certain signs of the fatal presumptuousness, the excessive power expansion and the ambitiousness that brought ruin upon Athens, Napoleonian France and Nazi Germany. The process has barely just begun, but the war we are currently waging can only increase its pace. (Le Monde, 20/12/1966)
Fullbright was endowed with the power of foresight. The defeat suffered by the USA in the Vietnamese open terrain (the first of its kind) was a huge shock, a wound that has left America scarred.
And the Bush administration is at it again! High on power, it has forgotten the lessons that America learnt during the Vietnam war. Here is my personal prediction: having come out victorious from the Iraqi campaign, in which it outnumbered the enemy 100 to 1 (a Pyrrhic victory), the USA will be dragged into a dreadful Middle-Eastern quagmire. The war in the Middle East is just commencing and will go on for years; America will suffer a disastrous defeat, which will mark the beginning of its final decline and the collapse of the state of Israel.
The American debacle during the Vietnam war was a warning that the NAI pays no heed to and whose consequences were counterbalanced in a matter of fifteen years, since the Vietnam campaign was merely a major geostrategic endeavour when compared to the Middle East (due to the country’s remoteness and lack of oil) and its only purpose was to combat Communism and the USSR in an indirect fashion, which is less of a challenge than the Muslim-Arab cauldron that has emerged from the depths of the ages. The Middle East may well entomb the American superpower and act as the latter’s Russian campaign.
Chapter II: The Bible and Business
A. The Return of Biblical Messianism to the Core of American Politics
The NAI has re-established the biblical messianism of the Founding Fathers, a messianism that had been curbed for more than a century. This constitutes a naïve return to the sources. America is thus seen as the new Israel (hence the neoconservative alliance between Protestant and Jewish fundamentalists), a land that must simultaneously pacify and dominate the world. This self-righteous good conscience, one that aims to govern all other nations in the name of both Good and God, was castigated by British political scientist George Monbiot in an article entitled ‘America is a Religion’, published in The Guardian (29/07/2003). He states: ‘Nowadays, American leaders consider themselves to be priests with a divine mission — that of ridding the world of its demons’. He adds that ‘America is no longer a nation, but a religion’. In this regard, it is obvious that the NAI is highly similar to the ideological conformation espoused by Islamism, in which Good struggles against Evil.
Monbiot points out that the entire American foreign policy is no longer defined by intelligence, the reasonable exploitation of information and the logical prediction of future developments, but by a sort of ideological, para-religious and irrational passion that causes the USA to scramble forward chaotically. This passion thus prevails over the technological and analytical means which America has at its disposal. How else could one account for the Iraqi quagmire? The NAI has gone insane, because it has attempted to reinstate the old doctrines advocated by Machiavellianism and Bismarckism (the prevalence of the strongest and the most cunning) without masking the latter with any skilful pretexts, all in the name of its messianic naivety.
Monbiot believes that
American soldiers no longer restrict their actions to waging terrain warfare; they have now become missionaries. They are no longer there just to kill the enemy, but to drive out the demons.
The mistake made by both America and Islam is that of attempting to convert the world. It is a utopian endeavour that China does not share, which is precisely why it will emerge victorious in the course of the 21st century. The Chinese alone have learnt their Machiavellian lesson.
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In actual fact, the NAI’s use of biblical legitimation is ancient, and all that the neoconservatives have done is reactivate it. In his book entitled Chosen People (2002), Clifford Longley reminds us that the Founding Fathers were convinced of the fact that God had bestowed upon them a divine purpose. As for Thomas Jefferson, he equated the Americans with ‘the new Hebrews’. On his part, George Washington claimed that the American independence was a sign of God’s divine intervention in human history. The Lord Himself had allegedly decided to turn the new American people into His own instrument and herald, thus replacing the Jewish people, in accordance with a logic that is highly reminiscent of the one adopted by the Roman Catholic Church when it envisioned itself as the Judaic faith’s rightful successor and thus the new ‘true religion’.
The American neoconservatives, whose ranks comprise an equal rate of Protestants and Jews, subsequently decided to make a ‘biblical compromise’, which accounts for the unconditional American support granted to the state of Israel. Neoconservative Protestants (such as Bush himself) feel that there is not much of a difference between the USA and Israel with regard to the accomplishment of divine purpose. Bush is the only president in the entire American history to expect a kind of prayer to be said before every governmental Council. He has made the following declaration, in which he basically quoted the words of Woodrow Wilson: ‘America is endowed with a unique spiritual power to liberate the human species, a mission that no other nation could ever contribute to’. Never would Kennedy or Nixon have dared utter such nonsense. Ronald Reagan, who, just like Bush, was hardly considered a man of intelligence, had already set out to inaugurate this neo-messianism when he declared America to be ‘a shining city on a hill’, in a reference
to the biblical Sermon on the Mount. Back then, America opposed the existence of the ‘Empire of Evil’ (Communism), which was then superseded by Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ (terrorism).
The 9/11 attacks only served to exacerbate this neo-messianism. On the very same day, Rudolf Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York at the time, declared: ‘You must believe in America; America is a religion’.
In his book entitled No Man’s Land (Green Books, 2003), the above-mentioned political scientist, Monbiot, depicts the neoconservatives’ deepest conviction, a conviction that is as infantile as it is fanatical:
The USA does not need to preach God’s will because it is His very embodiment, and the Americans who travel abroad do so in order to spread the light of the celestial domains. The American flag has become as holy as the Bible itself and the nation’s name as holy as the Lord’s. The American government has been transformed into a clergy.
Anyone who criticises Bush’s foreign policy ‘is anti-American and therefore a blasphemer’. The countries that attempt to negotiate with Washington are drawing a blank, since ‘negotiations are possible when dealing with politicians, but not priests’. In a classic English manner, he also points out that the deifying attitude towards the American nation, which has led Bush to assert that America is ‘defending the hopes of all mankind’, has a fetid aspect to it, since, beneath the surface of those grandiose humanitarian and messianic proclamations, one also encounters an element of doom: ‘Woe betide those who hope for something other than the American way of life’.
A Global Coup Page 5