[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Prashad / Primacy / Oct 30

[Morton K. Brussel]

Views from abroad…

>
> Today's commentary:
> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-10/30prashad.cfm
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> Primacy October 30, 2005
> By Vijay Prashad
>
> Finally, from an unlikely direction, the US media has asked the  
> question:
> why did the Bush administration take the US to war with Iraq? The  
> timing is
> awkward. As Rove-Libbygate unravels, so does the power of the  
> Hammer and the
> Scalpel: the executive branch's two reliable allies in Congress are
> embroiled in corruption probes. And meanwhile, in a Baghdad fantasy  
> court,
> the US presents an unrepentant Saddam Hussein, ready to unmask his
> paymasters for their combined chemical crimes. The jubilation of  
> this trial
> is eclipsed by the fetid smell of Washington corruption. What the
> DeLay-Frist-Rove events reveal is that there is a close connection  
> between
> corporate and military corruption, and that the political class is  
> simply
> the conduit for the overwhelming power of the corporate elites.
>
> Little of that is in the papers, because it is far easier to be  
> obsessed
> over the lies of a reporter (Judith Miller) or the downfall of a  
> political
> titan (Rove). The tendency to see the Bush clique as a "rogue  
> fraction" of
> the ruling class enables the establishment media to exculpate the  
> system
> itself, and to lay the blame, as it were, on the "cabal" (as  
> Powell's man,
> Lawrence Wilkerson, did in late October). Did the US go to war  
> because of
> the machinations of a small fraction of intellectuals and policy  
> hawks, or
> did the machinery go to war because of a long-standing and well- 
> entrenched
> policy that intends to maintain US primacy across the planet?
>
> Very useful books like James Bamford's A Pretext for War and George  
> Packer's
> Assassin's Gate indicate that the Iraq war came as a result of  
> deception,
> not of long-standing policy. But, if this is the case, then why did  
> the
> establishment figures in the Democratic Party (including John Kerry)
> consider the overthrow of Saddam Hussein a fitting strategic goal?  
> They
> disagreed in the tactics, but not in the overall strategy. In other  
> words,
> the Democratic Party's elites would have gone to the UN for more  
> ammunition,
> and it might have strengthened the murderous sanctions (recall:  
> President
> Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which further  
> emboldened
> then Pentagon-neocon stooge, Ahmed Chalabi).
>
> Either way, both political fractions dominated by the ruling class  
> agreed on
> the strategic necessity to overthrow the inconvenient regime led by  
> Saddam
> Hussein. Its inconvenience stemmed not only from its threat to its
> neighbors, but also to the Dollar-Wall Street Regime (a concept  
> developed by
> Peter Gowan). On November 6, 2000, Iraq switched its oil sales from  
> dollars
> to euros, a challenge to the dollar-Wall Street hegemony. In July  
> 2003,
> China shifted a part of its dollar reserves into euros. These gestures
> terrified both factions of the US elite.
>
> The view from around the former Third World is different. A series  
> of new
> books from well-established figures in India, for example,  
> demonstrate a
> deep suspicion of the entire strategy of US primacy. "In Cairo,  
> Damascus,
> Teheran, Delhi, Islamabad, Djakarta, Seoul, Pyongyang, Tokyo or  
> Tashkent,
> you will find a premonition of impending disaster in peoples'  
> minds: a sense
> of unease at the growing awareness of a distant power's  
> determination to
> make the world its economic and political domain." So writes  
> Patwant Singh,
> the former editor of Design magazine, in one of the many new books  
> (this
> one, The World According To Washington: An Asian View, has been  
> recently
> republished by Common Courage Press in Maine).
>
> The "unease" is well founded, not only because of the virulence of  
> US policy
> in Asia over the past fifty years, but also because the three "axis  
> of evil"
> nations reside in the continent. Asia, from the counter-insurgency  
> campaign
> in the Philippines to the Iraq conflict itself, is the primary  
> theatre for
> the US attempt to consolidate its hegemonic position: that is the  
> simple
> fact that produces the "unease" so clearly developed in Singh's  
> book (and in
> the work of Ninan Koshy's two books from Leftword in New Delhi).
>
> The demand for primacy is not new. In 1947, the State Department's  
> Policy
> Planning Staff argued, "To seek less than the preponderant power  
> would be to
> opt for defeat. Preponderant power must be the object of US  
> policy." In
> other words, the US must seek not only to consolidate its position of
> military and economic strength earned during World War II, but it must
> ensure that all its rivals, in every sector, must be crushed.
>
> In 1993, Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington defended the primacy  
> strategy
> because "it is central to the welfare and security of America and  
> the future
> of freedom." It is therefore entirely rational that more than  
> eighty percent
> of Indonesians and seventy percent of Pakistanis believe that the  
> US might
> pose a military threat to them. Their freedom is not guaranteed by US
> primacy, even though "our" freedom in such an unequal world might  
> rely upon
> it. Those within the advanced industrial states are beneficiaries  
> of the
> policy of US primacy, because it is this that enables the  
> extraction of
> wealth, resources and knowledge from the darker nations with impunity.
>
>
>> From Asia come myriad proposals against US primacy. Before 9/11,  
>> Russia and
>>
> China gathered four Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzistan,
> Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) into the Shanghai Cooperation  
> Organization. The
> US shunned this group as a means to constrain al-Qaeda. The Chinese  
> talked
> about "multipolarity" at the initial meetings of the SCO, and the  
> phrase has
> continued to resonate among its leadership. Before he took over  
> leadership
> in China, Hu Jintao went on a trip to Europe just after 9/11, where he
> explained, "Multipolarity constitutes an important base for world  
> peace and
> the democratization of international relations is an essential  
> guarantee for
> that peace." In other words, the UN and inter-state collaboration  
> should be
> the ground for conflict resolution rather than the guns of the US.
>
> In January 2005, the Indian and Chinese governments agreed on the  
> need to
> promote "multipolarity," "that the current international situation
> characterized by globalization presented an opportunity as well as  
> posed a
> challenge. They emphasized the need for making international relations
> democratic in order to face the challenge."
>
> In December 2004, the South American countries gathered in Cusco to  
> craft
> the South American Community of Nations, whose principle of  
> international
> relations were "based on the affirmation of the effective exercise of
> multilateralism that link up economic and social development firmly  
> and
> effectively on the world agenda."
>
> The demand for "democratization" of the UN Security Council might  
> be simply
> be the "great power" ambitions of regional powerhouses (South  
> Africa, India,
> Brazil), but the only reason this has traction is because of the  
> general
> frustration around the planet with the US policy of primacy.
>
> When Condoleezza Rice visited London in 2003, she said that  
> multipolarity
> "is a theory of rivalry, of competing powers  and at its worst,  
> competing
> values. We have tried this before. It led to the Great War" (this  
> argument
> received intellectual "heft" from Robert Kagan in the Summer 1998  
> issue of
> Foreign Policy, although it was also repudiated by John Mersheimer  
> in his
> book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics).
>
> Any talk of the messiness of democracy is met with impatience, and  
> fear
> mongering. To allow other views onto the table is to invite  
> "rivalry" and
> not democracy. Such is the anti-democratic ethos of US primacy  if  
> you are
> not with us, you are against us, where the different fractions of  
> the elite
> are united in the formula even if they disagree with its contents. The
> curtailment of the Bush regime is essential, but so too is the  
> repudiation
> of the idea of US primacy.
>
>