… there is no other solution but to sign international accords and support such organisms as the UN, both of which are rejected by the USA as being an impediment to its power. America has no alternative but to accept the world as it is, or prepare itself for a tragedy.
***
For Caroline Meyer, a columnist at The Magazine of Future Warfare, hypermilitarism and the massive increase in the current American administration’s military expenditures are a sign of panic and weakness. In an article entitled The cost of Empire (May 2003), she adopts the views of New York Times editorialist Paul Krugman according to which the American Defence budget (which officially totalled 400 million dollars in 2002) is actually as high as 500 million dollars from the ‘black budget’ perspective, including secret expenses that were never voted into effect. This could be compared to the 1.4 billion dollars spent by the Iraqi government on military expenditures before the start of the war. Meyer also reveals that more than 100 US marines were killed during the battle of Nasiriya and that the commander of the first marines regiment has been sacked. Furthermore, she denounces the fact that the current budget relating to the ‘anti-terrorist war’ is greater in size to that of the Cold War, which was intended to contain the USSR. She identifies with the opinion advocated by political scientist H.-L. Mecken, which states that if the USA does indeed spend more money on protecting itself from a new terrorist attack (akin to the one conducted on 9/11) than it once did on the prevention of a Soviet nuclear attack (which seems absurd), one reason for this is that the neoconservatives are eager to maintain a general atmosphere of danger and threat, so as to impose their power upon a terrorised population.
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Is the USA the new embodiment of the Roman Empire or a pseudo-superpower founded upon a bluffing technique? What follows is an analytical synthesis based on diverse sources.
In The Globalist (19/06/2002), Michael Lind, member of the New America Foundation, expressed the opinion that America’s power is highly exaggerated and, on a global scale, inferior to what it was like back in 1945. In his view, in no way is the USA a ‘new Roman Empire’, and Bush’s arrogant militaristic supremacism (baptised ‘the Wolfowitz doctrine’, in accordance with the American Deputy Defence Minister) is not founded on sufficient military or even economic means. This doctrine aims to dissuade Europe, Russia, India and China from developing excessively powerful military forces and from abiding by foreign policies that are not dependent upon American directives. In exchange, the USA is to commit itself to protecting them and resolving their disputes. This ambition is untenable. With 20 % of the world’s GDP, the USA lacks the importance it had during the 1960s; it is losing ground on the demographical level; Asia may well catch up with it in the field of high technologies; in time, the USA is bound to find itself geopolitically disadvantaged as a result of its insular position; and the deployment of military forces is costlier for the Americans than for Eurasian countries.
There is yet another troubling sign from the American perspective: the Hispanics inhabiting the American South-Eastern states (especially Texas) have been demanding autonomy and their own political parties, which may eventually lead to pure and simple secession. During the 1990s, the number of Texan Hispanics increased by 2.3 million, which equals 60 % of the overall population growth in Texas.
James Caroll, a chronicler at The Boston Globe, explains (in America The Fearful, 22/05/2002) that the current American mentality is dominated by pathological anxiety and paranoia, which renders it fragile and prevents it from overcoming severe crises, whether in the sphere of economics or that of terrorism. He predicts that in the event of another giga-terroristic attack, the USA would be brought to its knees for a long time to come.
Numerous articles published by the American and British press have highlighted the following evident truth: the USA has suffered defeat in the face of Islamic terrorism, Bin Laden (who is not to be found anywhere) and the various networks such as Al-Qaida, none of which have been dismantled and are now even more menacing than they were prior to the Afghan campaign. The interrogation of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay (all of whom played a secondary role) has not yielded any results worth mentioning. Additionally, the Iraqi military expedition has given Islamic terrorism both a new target to strike at, namely the American army (now in open terrain), and a new holy war territory that had hitherto been preserved — Mesopotamia.
Moreover, according to Times Online (14/05/2002), Bush got fleeced by Putin during the Russia-NATO negotiations, thus allowing the Russians to exercise a right of veto upon the organisation’s decisions.
In short, the sabre-rattling manifested by the American ‘hyperpower’ and its Bush administration is akin to the Coué method. In Europe, hysterically anti-American milieus have fallen for it (as have those who worship the USA) and acknowledged the alleged colossal power enjoyed by an America that arouses both their hatred and their unjustified fascination. If Europe had any will to speak of, it would surpass all others in terms of power…
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Despite the Airbus A 380 claiming to be the largest aeroplane ever built, this honour will instead be claimed by the ‘Pelican’, currently under review at Boeing. It is a true colossus with a wingspan of 166 metres (70 metres in the case of a 747) and a length of 84 metres (only 42 metres for the 747), driven by 4 enormous turboprops equipped with 8-blade propellers. It will be capable of transporting loads of up to 14,000 tonnes over a 19,000-kilometre distance, thus surpassing the Russian Antonov 225, a giant that can only carry a quarter of such weight over a mere distance of 5,000 kilometres. It will be incredible. Its aerodynamical profile (wings that curve downwards and a chassis whose breadth exceeds its height) will allow it to make use of an ‘air cushion’ and fly at an altitude of 18 metres above sea level, at an approximate speed of 400 kilometres an hour. Each hour on board the Pelican will be twice as cheap as on any high-capacity aircraft currently available.
But what purpose will this airborne leviathan serve? It will, of course, transport enormous quantities of cargo over very long distances, but according to the statement made by Boeing project manager Blaine Rawdon in an interview with British newspaper Metro, the Pelican will, above all,
… be very interesting to military decision-makers. Each aircraft will be able to carry thousands of soldiers and a total of 17 50-tonne tanks over huge distances, all within a reduced time scale and at lower cost compared to ships.
It will, furthermore, be virtually undetectable by radars thanks to its ability to skim the ground or the sea like a cruise missile.
So, what is the point of such a gargantuan programme? Is it meant to rejuvenate the military-industrial complex a little more? Yes, but there is more to it than that. The real reason, in my view, is that Pentagon strategists have realised that the USA, the ‘Empire of Good’, is targeted by such global hatred (stemming from peoples that fail to comprehend the American military-civilising mission) that the countless US bases on foreign soil will not remain there forever, especially when it comes to Asia and the Middle-East. The states that have allowed such bases to be established on their own soil (ranging from South Korea to Saudi Arabia) may, at any given moment, shut the latter down, especially when we consider how volatile history has become at the start of the 21st century, a century fraught with brutal and unpredictable changes.
The USA is thus considering the medium-term deployment of massive forces from its own territory, without the necessity of investing large sums of money into maintaining expensive military bases on the soil of its rather unreliable ‘allies’. This attitude is a mixture of isolationism and interventionism. It constitutes, however, a worrying development, since it betrays the fact that the Pentagon has deemed it necessary for the USA to undertake global military campaigns over the next two decades for the purpose of maintaining order in a manner that serves its own interests. It is obvious that the Americans will not emerge victorious, succeeding only in destabilising the world a little further. The ‘super drone’ programm
e, involving the use of pilotless aircrafts capable of carrying out long-distance bombardments from the American territory, reinforces this hypothesis.
A secret inquiry conducted by the Pentagon at the behest of the White House has predicted that the USA will be compelled to undertake numerous military operations over the next ten years, across every continent, regardless of whether the UN endorses them or not. Those who oppose this strategy fear that the USA will suffer utter defeat and trigger a retaliatory giga-terroristic response. The future is likely to prove them right.
Chapter IV: A Pseudo-Empire
A. The Historical Utopianism and Stupidity Pervading American ‘Unilateralism’
In the eyes of any serious historian, the objective of the neoconservatives heading the NAI (meaning unilateralism or ‘unequal bilateralism’) cannot yield any success. Regardless of American power and without falling into the excesses embraced by Emmanuel Todd (a man who tends to mistake his desires for reality when announcing America’s imminent and brutal collapse), no power has ever managed to exercise absolute hegemony, especially not the Roman Empire, a fact that becomes clear when one studies its history. The ambition of accomplishing rapid and complete world domination, which the NAI’s neoconservatives strive for so as to impose the ‘American paradise’, is a utopia whose naivety exceeds that of the communist paradise. This is due to conjunctural reasons (America’s current weaknesses, which are discussed elsewhere and are not impacted by its enormous techno-military effort), but above all historical and structural ones.
The fact of having one single people, nation and civilisation indefinitely dominate all others is unheard of. Current American leaders are sinking deeper into the Founding Fathers’ evangelical messianism than their predecessors ever did, the very same messianism that once longed to turn America into the prefiguration of God’s absolute reign on Earth. Islam and Communism would subsequently espouse the same attitude, though with a greater degree of subtleness.
The NAI is founded upon utter historical ignorance, which constitutes a mere exacerbation of a highly characteristic American trait. For the first time ever, the leaders of a single nation (one that has been the most powerful one for a short period of time and will remain so for an equally limited timespan) are earnestly imagining that they could claim dominion over the Earth, i.e. global domination, using a mixture of moral theodicy (low-end theology), techno-military supremacy and generalised mercantilism. Such an objective is as foolish as the claim that one could have five aces in hand during a poker game. This dream of absolute hegemony is a completely unattainable historical chimera that may well turn out to be a fatal wager for the Americans, since their versatile and fragile public opinion will plummet into despair, contrition and panic as soon as the USA tastes its first defeat, as already witnessed in the past. There is nothing wrong with a desire to be one of several ‘superpowers’, but the dream of being the ‘sole hyperpower’ embraced by the NAI may well lead to an utter nightmare.
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The Iraqi quagmire is the perfect illustration of this fact. How on earth were the Americans stupid enough to believe that pacifying Iraq would be a labour of love? The level of naivety displayed by Bush’s neoconservative administration in this regard is confounding and surpasses any other such attitude in American history, a history that is nonetheless particularly rife with blunders and enormous diplomatic and geostrategic mistakes. As stated by Patrick Buchanan, what we have here is, in all likelihood, the worst government the USA has ever had.
America’s defeat and powerlessness is combined with the ridiculous: following the repetitive tall-tale regarding the Iraqi WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) and the claims that the USA could manage things on its own, Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s boastful and infantile sword-rattling was exacerbated by the humiliation of turning to the UN and NATO for military assistance so as to either relieve or support the impotent Americans; the pathetic spectacle which the world’s allegedly ‘most powerful army’ offered us all through its inability to bear a few casualties a day or endure harsher living conditions than those in California only served to make matters worse.
What follows is a statement made by an American Marine sergeant during an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche (20/07/2003), a statement that would have been unthinkable in any other army:
Iraq makes me sick. When, a week ago, we were told that we would have to stay here longer, there was dead silence. That’s when I understood what it meant to lose hope. […] When I think that I’ve actually missed the release of Star Trek and The Matrix… As soon as I close my eyes, I think of my future honeymoon. Once I leave Iraq, there’s only one thing I want: to go to Alaska.
A so-called elite army whose members confide in the press using such words has obviously no military value to speak of.
***
In actual fact, the paradox regarding all of this is that, at a time when the NAI intends to turn the American military power into the central pillar of its unilateralism (while particularly basing its attitude on the untenable notion of ‘pre-emptive war’), it is blatantly visible that the US army is not genuinely operational, which is probably even truer now than it has ever been. Its only strength, which is a considerable one, of course, is exclusively founded upon a fantastic technology of aerial and ballistic strikes conducted from a distance; but it turns out to be incapable of holding its ground on the battlefield or even of conquering soil through traditional warfare (so as to defeat an already exsanguinated Iraq, for instance, the USA had to bribe its generals). Unless the new form of American militarism employs android robots to keep the invaded lands or monitored zones under its control, one can hardly see how it could ever achieve palpable success.
One thus has the impression of being faced with an oneiric sort of warmongering, whose ‘Rambo-esque’ nature is solely rooted in spectacle and does not reflect the reality of things, thus automatically collapsing upon itself like a bellows. Its purpose is to leave public opinion in awe using a muscular (and budgetary) demonstration of force. However, just like the cicada in La Fontaine’s fable, the US will find itself deprived of power once the north wind begins to blow. It made use of enormous means to vanquish a tiny power that is presented as being a menacing monster, only to find itself unable to restore order. Remember the comical episode where Bush, as under-skilled as ever, proceeded to play ‘Top Gun’ as he got off a military plane on the Abraham Lincoln bridge and announced America’s glorious victory over Saddam-Hitler? This kind of theatrical production is typical of powers that are completely overtaken by the events.
B. The ‘Declinist’ Theory
Even in the USA itself, the opponents of this new neoconservative imperialism are often labelled ‘declinists’; they explain the American military fury (which resorts to vigilante-like pretexts) through America’s awareness of its own waning power, an awareness that one seeks to deny in a most half-hearted manner. It seems that following the collapse of the USSR, American leaders became convinced that the US superpower would easily manage to dominate the entire world on a permanent basis. It was, however, not to be: the 9/11 terrorist attacks (the very first act of war to take place on American soil since the British aggression in 1812) came as a bolt from the blue and were followed by further anti-American attacks around the world, all of which were Islamic in origin. Faced with such disillusionment, a certain part of the Protestant Republican elite appears to have rejected this impotence and chosen to counterattack through warmongering acts (as witnessed during the Iraqi and Afghan campaigns), even at the price of contravening international law.
The declinists consider this attitude catastrophic, since it precipitates an even greater decline. They point out that all waning empires which no longer enjoy a natural authority founded upon power resort to straightforward violence where once mere menace sufficed. The NAI is thus seen as the embodiment of a desperate and irrational reaction in an effort to impose American domination in a most thunderous and callous fashion. Its endeavour is undoubtedly do
omed to fail, because it is fraught with countless blunders not only in the field of communication, but also in its onsite military and political strategy.
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Emmanuel Todd, author of After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, develops this ‘declinist’ view (often encountered in the US), according to which current American imperialism is not to be understood as a powerful type of imperialism, but as a mere means of concealing and offsetting a severe military, financial and even techno-economic decline. He states: ‘America is attempting to mask its own waning through theatrical military activism targeting insignificant countries’.
The belief in the existence of an American hyperpower that has had no match since the fall of the USSR is but a myth. The USA may actually be on the brink of a systematic ‘imperial’ collapse, just like the USSR during the first Afghan war. ‘Military posturing is the last display of a declining empire’s waning power’, says Todd (Le Figaro, 05/04/2003). His opinion is based on the Roman example.
America’s weaknesses are blatant: an enormous commercial deficit (1.5 billion dollars a day), an insufficient amount of domestic oil resources, the deterioration of US diplomatic credibility in the aftermath of the lies that served to justify the Gulf War (in its second version), the failure of the melting-pot, the domestic Latino invasion, endemic poverty, etc. According to Todd, ‘the American society is falling apart on all levels, which leads the USA to project its inner disorder upon the world’.
It would seem that America is becoming geopolitically isolated in the face of the immense Eurasian continent and feels overlooked compared to the ‘old world’. As Robert Steuckers and I already sensed back in the 1980s, America is no longer the ‘new world’, but the old one, while Europe and Asia are becoming the new. As a result, the USA feels the irrepressible and pathetic urge to flex its muscles in order to come across as being indispensable; hence its attack upon Iraq.
A Global Coup Page 9