[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Poles apart
Morton K.Brussel
brussel at staff.uiuc.edu
Mon Mar 17 11:13:44 CST 2003
A dispassionate summary geopolitical analysis of Bush administration
aims and the Iraq crisis.
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Le Monde diplomatique <english at monde-diplomatique.fr>
> Date: Mon Mar 17, 2003 08:06:12 US/Central
> To: Le Monde diplomatique <english at monde-diplomatique.fr>
> Subject: Poles apart
>
>
> Le Monde diplomatique
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
> March 2003
>
> GLOBAL CRISIS OVER IRAQ
>
> Poles apart
>
> By IGNACIO RAMONET
>
> "History is again on the move" - Arnold Toynbee
>
> FUNDAMENTAL global issues are clearly at stake in Iraq.
> Alarm bells ring as international relations disintegrate.
> The United Nations is sidelined, the European Union
> divided and Nato fractured. In February 10 million people
> took to the streets around the world: anti-war
> protesters, convinced that tragic events had been set in
> motion, renounced the return of brutality to the
> political stage and the rise in violence, passion and
> hatred.
>
> Collective fears produce anxious questions. Why should we
> wage war on Iraq? Why now? What are the real intentions
> of the United States? Why are France and Germany so
> adamant in their opposition? Does this conflict point to
> a new geopolitical arrangement? Will it change worldwide
> balances of power?
>
> Many observers believe that the real reasons for this war
> are secret. People of good will who have paid close
> attention to US arguments remain sceptical. Having failed
> to make its case for war, Washington has forcefully
> presented feeble justifications while causing doubt
> around the world.
>
> What is the official rationale? In September President
> George Bush addressed the Security Council, outlining
> seven charges against Iraq in a document, A Decade of
> Defiance and Deception. This made three main accusations:
> Iraq has flouted 16 UN resolutions; it possesses or is
> seeking ballistic missiles and weapons of mass
> destruction (WMD), nuclear, biological and chemical; it
> is guilty of human rights violations, including torture,
> rape and summary executions.
>
> There are four more charges. The US blames Baghdad for
> abetting terrorism by harbouring Palestinian
> organisations and sending $25,000 to families of those
> who carry out suicide attacks on Israel (1). It accuses
> Iraq of holding prisoners of war, including a US pilot;
> of confiscating property, including artworks and military
> material, during its invasion of Kuwait; and of diverting
> revenues from the UN oil-for-food programme.
>
> These accusations led to a unanimous Security Council
> vote in November. Resolution 1441 mandated "an enhanced
> inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and
> verified completion the disarmament process". Considering
> these disturbing charges, should all countries see Iraq
> as the world's number one enemy? Is it the biggest threat
> to humanity? Do US accusations justify all-out war?
>
> The US and some allies - the United Kingdom, Australia
> and Spain - say yes. Without the approval of any
> recognised international body, the US and UK have
> dispatched some 250,000 troops to the Gulf. This a
> formidable fighting force with massive powers of
> destruction. But, backed by substantial international
> public opinion, Western countries such as France, Germany
> and Belgium say no. Although they acknowledge the
> seriousness of the charges, they contend that accusations
> of flouting UN resolutions, violating human rights and
> possessing WMD could be levelled against other countries,
> especially Pakistan and Israel. But since both are close
> US allies, no one will declare war on them. There is no
> shortage of dictatorships (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia,
> Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Equatorial Guinea)
> that trample on human rights (2). Because they are
> allies, Washington is silent.
>
> In the eyes of France, Germany and Belgium, the Iraqi
> regime does not immediately threaten its neighbours
> because of 12 years of non-stop surveillance,
> restrictions on its airspace and that devastating
> embargo. About the endless search for impossible-to-find
> weapons, many agree with Confucius:"You can't catch a cat
> in a dark room, especially when there is no cat." They
> believe that the inspectors from the UN Monitoring,
> Verification and Inspection Commission, led by Swedish
> diplomat Hans Blix, and the UN International Atomic
> Energy Agency (IAEA), headed by Egyptian disarmament
> expert Mohammed al-Baradei, are making steady progress,
> as their reports to the Security Council, in particular
> at the 7 March meeting, indicate. The goal of disarming
> Iraq could be achieved without war.
>
> The French president, Jacques Chirac, through his foreign
> minister, Dominique de Villepin, has used this sensible
> reasoning at the UN. In the minds of those opposed to
> war, Chirac person ifies resistance to overwhelming US
> firepower. Although we may be overstating the case,
> Chirac has now achieved a level of international
> popularity enjoyed by few French leaders before him. Like
> "General Della Rovere" in Roberto Rossellini's celebrated
> film, fate may have thrust him into the role of
> resistance fighter, but Chirac has taken up the challenge
> (3). The US has failed to make its case for war. It is
> vulnerable to France's potential veto and has already
> suffered two setbacks in the Security Council. The first
> was on 4 February, when US Secretary of State Colin
> Powell's presentation of evidence against Baghdad
> flopped; and the second was on 14 February, when Hans
> Blix delivered a fairly positive report, in which he
> implied that some of Powell's evidence was barely cred
> ible. The same day the French foreign minister made a
> similar statement: "Ten days ago the US Secretary of
> State reported the alleged links between al-Qaida and the
> regime in Baghdad. Given the present state of our
> research and intelligence, in liaison with our allies,
> nothing allows us to establish such links." Establishing
> links between Osama bin Laden's network and Saddam
> Hussein's regime is a crucial factor that could justify
> war, particularly to the US public, still in shock after
> 11 September 2001.
>
> Europe and America: poles apart
> Because there appears to be no demonstrable case for war,
> many are rallying in opposition. So we must question the
> real motives of the US, which are threefold. The first
> stems from a US preoccupation, which became a total
> obsession after 11 September, with preventing links between rogue
> states and international terrorists. In 1997 President
> Bill Clinton's defence secretary, William Cohen, voiced
> US fears: "The US faces a heightened prospect that
> regional aggressors, third-rate armies, terrorist cells
> and even religious cults will wield disproportionate
> power by using, or even threatening to use, nuclear,
> biological or chemical weapons" (4). In a statement in
> January 1999 Bin Laden indicated that the threat was
> real: "I do not consider it a crime to try to obtain
> nuclear, chemical and biological weapons" (5). Last
> September President Bush acknowledged that such dangers
> haunted him: "Our greatest fear is that terrorists will
> find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw
> regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a
> massive scale." (6)
>
> For Bush this outlaw regime is Iraq. Hence the
> unprecedented US national security directive of
> preventive war, issued last September. Former CIA
> director James Woolsey summed up the Bush doctrine,
> saying that it was born of the asymmetric battle against
> terror, and about advanced dissuasion or preventive war.
> Since terrorists always had the advantage of attacking in
> secret, he said, the only defence was to find them
> wherever they were, before they got into a position to
> mount an attack (7). The US will hardly be seeking UN
> authorisation for this new mode of warfare. The second,
> albeit unspoken, motive, is to control the Gulf and its
> oil resources. More than two thirds of the world's known
> reserves are in Gulf states: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi
> Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. For the
> developed countries, particularly the US with its vast
> appetite for oil, the Gulf is critical to assure economic
> growth and maintain a way of life. The US would
> immediately interpret any attack on the Gulf states as a
> threat to its vital interests. In 1980 President Jimmy
> Carter (later winner of the 2002 Nobel peace prize),
> outlined in his State of the Union address the US policy
> in the Gulf: "Any attempt by any outside force to gain
> control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an
> assault on the vital interests of the US, and such an
> assault will be repelled by any means necessary,
> including military force" (8).
>
> Placed under British control after the first world war
> and the dismantling of the Ottoman empire, the Gulf came
> under growing US influence after the second world war.
> But two countries resisted US domination: Iran after its
> Islamic revolution in 1979, and Iraq after its invasion
> of Kuwait in 1990. Since 11 September 2001, there have
> been suspicions about Saudi Arabia and its links with
> militant Islamists and alleged financial support for
> al-Qaida. The US takes the position that it cannot afford
> to lose a third pawn on the Gulf chessboard, especially
> one as important as Saudi Arabia. Hence the temptation to
> use false pretences to occupy Iraq and regain control of
> the region.
>
> Aside from military difficulties, it will not be easy for
> US occupation forces to run Iraq in the post-Saddam era.
> When he was still lucid, Colin Powell described the
> intricacies of such an undertaking (9). He said in his
> autobiography that although the US had condemned Saddam
> for invading Kuwait, the US had no desire to destroy
> Iraq. According to Powell, the US's major rival in the
> Gulf in the 1980s was Iran, not Iraq; in those years the
> US needed Iraq to counterbalance Iran. Powell also
> insisted that Saudi Arabia opposed a Shi'ite rise to
> power in southern Iraq; Turkey did not want the Kurds in
> northern Iraq to secede; and the Arab states did not want
> Iraq to be invaded and then divided into Sunni, Shi'ite
> and Kurdish factions; that would have dashed US hopes for
> stability in the Middle East. Powell concluded that to
> prevent such scenarios, the US would have had to conquer
> and occupy a faraway nation of 20 million people, which
> would have run counter to the wishes of the American
> people. Yet that is what Bush wants today.
>
> The third, also unspoken, US motive is world supremacy.
> For years Bush's rightwing advisers - including the
> vice-president, Dick Cheney, the defence secretary,
> Donald Rumsfeld, the deputy defence secretary, Paul
> Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, the chairman of the
> Pentagon's Defence Policy Board - have hypothesised that
> the US would become a global imperial power (see United
> States: inventing demons, page 6). These men held similar
> positions from 1989 to 1993 in the administration of
> President George Bush Senior. The cold war was ending:
> although most strategists favoured a reduced role for US
> armed forces, they gave preference to restructuring the
> military, relying on new technologies to re-establish war
> as a foreign policy tool.
>
> One observer explained: "The Vietnam syndrome was still
> alive. The military didn't want to use force unless
> everyone was in agreement. The stated conditions required
> virtually a national referendum before force could be
> used. No declaration of war would have been possible
> without a catalysing event such as Pearl Harbor" (10). In
> December 1989 White House hawks, with General Colin
> Powell's agreement and without congressional or UN
> approval, instigated the invasion of Panama, ousting
> General Manuel Noriega and causing 1,000 deaths. The same
> men prosecuted the Gulf war, in which US military might
> left the world thunderstruck.
>
> After returning to the White House in January 2001,
> Bush's hawks recognised that 11 September was their
> long-awaited "catalysing event". Now nothing restrains
> them. They used the USA Patriot Act to give the
> government alarming powers against civil liberties; they
> promised to exterminate terrorists; they put forward
> their theory of global war against international
> terrorism; they conquered Afghanistan and overthrew the
> Taliban; they sent troops to Colombia, Georgia and the
> Philippines. They then developed the preventive war
> doctrine and used their propaganda to justify war on
> Iraq.
>
> The hawks ostensibly agreed that the US should focus its
> efforts on globalisation's power centres: the G7, the
> International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation
> and the World Bank. But they have sought incrementally to
> end US involvement in multilateral organisations. That is
> why they urged Bush to condemn the Kyoto protocol on
> global warming; the anti-ballistic missile treaty; the
> International Criminal Court; the treaty on
> anti-personnel mines; the biological weapons protocol;
> the convention on small arms; the treaty banning nuclear
> weapons; and the Geneva conventions on prisoners of war
> relevant to the Guantanamo detainees. Their next step
> could be to reject the authority of the Secur ity
> Council, jeopardising the UN's existence. Under the guise
> of lofty ideals - freedom, democracy, free trade - these
> rightwing ideologues seek to transform the US into a new
> military state. They have embraced the ambitions of all
> empires: reshaping the globe, redrawing frontiers and
> policing the world's peoples.
>
> These were the intentions of previous colonialists. They
> believed, as historians Douglas Porch and John Keegan
> have argued, that the spread of trade, Christianity,
> science and efficient Western-style administration would
> push forward the frontiers of civilisation and reduce
> zones of conflict. Thanks to imperialism, poverty would
> turn into prosperity, savages find salvation,
> superstition become enlightenment, and order arrive in
> places of confusion and barbarism (11).
>
> Thanks to their distinctive conception of the EU, France
> and Germany seek to forestall growing US hegemony, and
> choose to act as a non- belligerent counterweight to the
> US within the UN (12). As Dominique de Villepin said: "We
> believe that a multipolar world is needed, that no one
> power can ensure order throughout the world" (13). The
> shape of a bipolar world is becoming evident. The second
> pole could either be the EU (if its member states can
> overcome their differences), a new Paris-Berlin-Moscow
> alliance or other formations (Brazil, South Africa,
> India, Mexico). France and Germany have taken a bold and
> historic step that could enable Europe to overcome its
> fears of the past 60 years and reaffirm its political
> will. They have exposed the pusillanimity of European
> countries (including the UK, Spain, Italy and Poland)
> that have been vassal states for far too long.
>
> The US had been making itself comfortable in a unipolar
> world dominated by its military forces; the war on Iraq
> was meant to display new US imperial power. But France
> and Germany have joined together to remind the US that
> political, ideological, economic and military
> considerations are crucial to the exercise of power.
> Globalisation led some to believe that economics and
> neoliberal ideology were the only essential factors;
> political and military considerations were relegated to
> the back burner. That was a mistake. As the world is
> being formed anew, the US focuses on the military and the
> media. France and Germany have opted for a political
> strategy. In their attempt to address global problems,
> France and Germany bet on perpetual peace. Bush and his
> entourage of hawks seek perpetual war.
> ____________________________________________________
>
> (1) Unlike Powell at the UN on 4 February, Bush's report
> mentioned no links between Baghdad and al-Qaida.
>
> (2) For more than 20 years Egypt, which receives about
> $3bn in annual aid from the US, almost as much as Israel,
> has banned street demonstrations, brutally repressed
> political opposition (the country has more than 20,000
> political prisoners) and persecuted homosexuals. After 22
> years in power, General Hosni Mubarak has groomed his
> son, Gamal, as his successor. Yet the French and American
> media describe the Egyptian dictatorship as "moderate",
> and Mubarak is viewed as a respectable leader.
>
> (3) In General Della Rovere (1959) Roberto Rossellini
> tells the story of a crook persuaded by the Nazis to pass
> himself off as a resistance leader, " Della Rovere", to
> identify those fighting in the resistance. But he
> gradually comes to identify with his role, takes an
> active part in the resistance and dies a hero.
>
> (4) Barthélémy Courmont and Darko Ribnikar, Les Guerres
> asymétriques, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris,
> 2002.
>
> (5) Ibid.
>
> (6) Speech to the UN General Assembly, 12 September 2002.
>
> (7) El País, Madrid, 3 August 2002.
>
> (8) Quoted by Bob Woodward in The Commanders, Simon &
> Schuster, New York, 1991.
>
> (9) Colin Powell, My American Journey: An Autobiography,
> Random House, New York, 1995.
>
>
>
> Translated by Ed Emery and Luke Sandford
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
>
> ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1997-2003 Le Monde diplomatique
>
> <http://MondeDiplo.com/2003/03/01polesapart>
>
>
Morton K. Brussel
2003 George Huff Drive
Urbana, Illinois, 61801-6203
Tel. 217 337-0118
Preferred email: brussel at uiuc.edu
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