Hi. The clock is ticking, it’s the final countdown to war – whatever cliche you use, we’re all scared. Very scared. Don’t you wish you were John Howard? He’s never had doubts that he was doing the right thing. Me, I’ve always feared people without self-doubt.
Here’s what Howard told TV journalist Mike Hosking in New Zealand yesterday:
Hosking: Is this the greatest test of your leadership so far?
Howard: This is the most difficult issue I’ve had, yes.
Hosking: How hard have you wrestled with it?
Howard: You always anguish over something like this, but I have never thought of changing my position. Never.
Lucky Howard! Lucky Australia? There’s lots of doubt among other world leaders. A mainstream American journo at the Davos meeting of world heavyweights in January wrote this background note on the mood, the fear, and the angst at the top of world political, economic and military power:
I spent a week in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum (WEF). I was awarded a special pass which allowed me full access to not only the entire official meeting, but also private dinners with the likes the head of the Saudi Secret Police, presidents of various countries, your Fortune 500 CEOS and the leaders of the most important NGOs in the world. This was not typical press access. It was full-on, unfettered, class A hobnobbing.
This sweet little chalet village was during the WEF packed with about 3000 delegates and press, some 1000 Swiss police, another 400 Swiss soldiers, numerous tanks and armored personnel carriers, gigantic rolls of coiled barbed wire that gracefully cascaded down snow-covered hillsides, missile launchers and assorted other tools of the national security trade. The security precautions did not, of course, stop there. Every single person who planned to enter the conference site had special electronic badges which, upon being swiped across a reading pad, produced a computer screen filled color portrait of the attendee, along with his/her vital statistics. These were swiped and scrutinized by soldiers and police every few minutes – any time one passed through a door, basically. The whole system was connected to handheld wireless communication devices made by HP, which were issued to all VIPs. I got one. Very cool, except when they crashed. Which, of course, they did frequently. These devices supplied every imaginable piece of information one could want about the conference, your fellow delegates, Davos, the world news, etc. And they were emailing devices – all emails being monitored, of course, by Swiss cops.
Overall, here is what I learned about the state of our world:
* I was in a dinner with heads of Saudi and German FBI, plus the foreign minister of Afghanistan. They all said that at its peak Al Qaeda had 70,000 members. Only 10% of them were trained in terrorism — the rest were military recruits. Of that 7000, they say all but about 200 are dead or in jail.
* But Al Qaeda, they say, is like a brand which has been heavily franchised. And nobody knows how many unofficial franchises have been spawned since 9/11.
* The global economy is in very very very very bad shape. Last year when WEF met here in New York all I heard was, “Yeah, it’s bad, but recovery is right around the corner”. This year “recovery” was a word never uttered. Fear was palpable – fear of enormous fiscal hysteria. The watchwords were “deflation”, “long term stagnation” and “collapse of the dollar”. All of this is without war.
* If the U.S. unilaterally goes to war and it is anything short of a quick surgical strike (lasting less than 30 days), the economists were all predicting extreme economic gloom: falling dollar value, rising spot market oil prices, the Fed pushing interest rates down towards zero with (a) resulting increase in national debt, severe trouble in all countries whose currency is guaranteed against the dollar (which is just about everybody except the EU), (and) a near cessation of all development and humanitarian programs for poor countries. Very few economists or ministers of finance predicted the world getting out of that economic funk for minimally 5 to 10 years, once the downward spiral ensues.
* Not surprisingly, the business community was in no mood to hear about a war in Iraq. Except for diehard American Republicans, a few Brit Tories and some Middle East folks the WEF was in a foul, angry anti-American mood. Last year the WEF was a lovefest for America. This year the mood was so ugly that it reminded me of what it felt like to be an American overseas in the Reagan years. The rich – whether they are French or Chinese or just about anybody – are livid about the Iraq crisis primarily because they believe it will sink their financial fortunes.
Plenty are also infuriated because they disagree on policy grounds. For example:
* If Al Qaeda is down to merely 200 terrorists cadres and a handful of wannabe franchises, what’s all the fuss?
* The Middle East situation has never been worse. All hope for a settlement between Israel and Palestine seems to have evaporated. The energy should be focused on placing painful financial pressure on all sides in that fight, forcing them to the negotiating table. Otherwise, the ME may well explode. The war in Iraq is at best a distraction from that core issue, at worst may aggravate it. Jordan’s Queen Rania spoke of the “desperate search for hope”.
* Serious Islamic leaders (eg the King of Jordan, the Prime Minster of Malaysia, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia) believe that the Islamic world must recapture the glory days of 12-13th C Islam. That means finding tolerance and building great education institutions and places of learning. The King was passionate on the subject. It also means freedom of movement and speech within and among the Islamic nations. And, most importantly to the WEF, it means flourishing free trade and support for entrepreneurs with minimal state regulation. (However, there were also several Middle East representatives who argued precisely the opposite. They believe bringing down Saddam Hussein and then pushing the Israel/Palestine issue could actually result in a Golden Age for Arab Islam.)
* US unilateralism is seen as arrogant, bullyish. If the U.S. cannot behave in partnership with its allies – especially the Europeans – it risks not only political alliance but BUSINESS as well. Company leaders argued that they would rather not have to deal with US government attitudes about all sorts of multilateral treaties (climate change, intellectual property, rights of children, etc.) – it’s easier to just do business in countries whose governments agree with yours. And it’s cheaper, in the long run, because the regulatory environments match. War against Iraq is seen as just another example of the unilateralism.
* For a minority of the participants there was another layer of anti-Americanism that focused on moralisms and religion. I often heard delegates complain that the US “opposes the rights of children”, because we block all treaties and UN efforts that would support sex education and condom access for children and teens. They spoke of sex education as a “right”. Similarly, there was a decidedly mixed feeling about Ashcroft, who addressed the conference. I attended a small lunch with Ashcroft, and observed Ralph Reed and other prominent Christian fundamentalists working the room and bowing their heads before eating. The rest of the world’s elite finds this American Christian behavior at least as uncomfortable as it does Moslem or Hindu fundamentalist behavior. They find it awkward every time a US representative refers to “faith-based” programs. It’s different from how it makes non-Christian Americans feel – these folks experience it as downright embarrassing.
* When Colin Powell gave the speech of his life, trying to win over the nonAmerican delegates, the sharpest attack on his comments came not from Amnesty International or some Islamic representative – it came from the head of the largest bank in the Netherlands!
I learned that the only economy about which there is much enthusiasm is China, which was responsible for 77% of the global GDP growth in 2002. But the honcho of the Bank of China, Zhu Min, said that fantastic growth could slow to a crawl if China cannot solve its rural/urban problem. Currently 400 million Chinese are urbanites, and their average income is 16 times that of the 900 million rural residents. Zhu argued China must urbanize nearly a billion people in ten years!
The US economy is the primary drag on the global economy, and only a handful of nations have sufficient internal growth to thrive when the US is stagnating.
The WEF was overwhelmed by talk of security, with fears of terrorism, computer and copyright theft, assassination and global instability dominating almost every discussion.
I learned from American security and military speakers that: “We need to attack Iraq not to punish it for what it might have, but preemptively, as part of a global war. Iraq is just one piece of a campaign that will last years, taking out states, cleansing the planet.”
These WEF folks are freaked out. They see very bad economics ahead, war, and more terrorism. About 10% of the sessions were about terrorism, and it’s heavy stuff. One session costed out what another 9/11-type attack would do to global markets, predicting a far, far worse impact due to the “second hit” effect – a second hit that would prove all the world’s post-9/11 security efforts had failed. Another costed out in detail what this or that war scenario would do to spot oil prices. Russian speakers argued that “failed nations” were spawning terrorists – code for saying, “we hate Chechnya”. Entire sessions were devoted to arguing which poses the greater asymmetric threat: nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Finally, who are these guys? I actually enjoyed a lot of my conversations, and found many of the leaders and rich quite charming and remarkably candid. Some dressed elegantly, no matter how bitter cold and snowy it was, but most seemed quite happy in ski clothes or casual attire. Women wearing pants was perfectly acceptable, and the elite is sufficiently Multicultural that even the suit and tie lacks a sense of dominance. Watching Bill Clinton address the conference while sitting in the hotel room of the President of Mozambique – we were viewing it on closed circuit TV – I got juicy blow-by-blow analysis of US foreign policy from a remarkably candid head of state. A day spent with Bill Gates turned out to be fascinating and fun. I found the CEO of Heinekin hilarious, and George Soros proved quite earnest about confronting AIDS. Vicente Fox – who I had breakfast with – proved sexy and smart like a – well, a fox. David Stern (Chair of the NBA) ran up and gave me a hug.
The world isn’t run by a clever cabal. It’s run by about 5,000 bickering, sometimes charming, usually arrogant, mostly male people who are accustomed to living in either phenomenal wealth, or (with) great personal power. A few have both. Many of them turn out to be remarkably naive – especially about science and technology. All of them are financially wise, though their ranks have thinned due to unwise tech-stock investing. They pay close heed to politics, though most would be happy if the global political system behaved far more rationally – better for the bottom line. They work very hard, attending sessions from dawn to nearly midnight, but expect the standards of intelligence and analysis to be the best available in the entire world. They are impatient. They have a hard time reconciling long term issues (global warming, AIDS pandemic, resource scarcity) with their daily bottomline foci. They are comfortable working across languages, cultures and gender, though white caucasian males still outnumber all other categories. They adore hi-tech gadgets and are glued to their cell phones.
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The New York Times yesterday announced its opposition to war without UN sanction (The Sydney Morning Herald has yet to state its position):
Saying No to War
Within days, barring a diplomatic breakthrough, President Bush will decide whether to send American troops into Iraq in the face of United Nations opposition. We believe there is a better option involving long-running, stepped-up weapons inspections. But like everyone else in America, we feel the window closing. If it comes down to a question of yes or no to invasion without broad international support, our answer is no.
Even though Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, said that Saddam Hussein was not in complete compliance with United Nations orders to disarm, the report of the inspectors on Friday was generally devastating to the American position. They not only argued that progress was being made, they also discounted the idea that Iraq was actively attempting to manufacture nuclear weapons. History shows that inspectors can be misled, and that Mr. Hussein can never be trusted to disarm and stay disarmed on his own accord. But a far larger and more aggressive inspection program, backed by a firm and united Security Council, could keep a permanent lid on Iraq’s weapons program.
By adding hundreds of additional inspectors, using the threat of force to give them a free hand and maintaining the option of attacking Iraq if it tries to shake free of a smothering inspection program, the United States could obtain much of what it was originally hoping to achieve. Mr. Hussein would now be likely to accept such an intrusive U.N. operation. Had Mr. Bush managed the showdown with Iraq in a more measured manner, he would now be in a position to rally the U.N. behind that bigger, tougher inspection program, declare victory and take most of the troops home.
Unfortunately, by demanding regime change, Mr. Bush has made it much harder for Washington to embrace this kind of long-term strategy. He has talked himself into a corner where war or an unthinkable American retreat seem to be the only alternatives visible to the administration. Every signal from the White House is that the diplomatic negotiations will be over in days, not weeks. Every signal from the United Nations is that when that day arrives, the United States will not have Security Council sanction to attack.
There are circumstances under which the president would have to act militarily no matter what the Security Council said. If America was attacked, we would have to respond swiftly and fiercely. But despite endless efforts by the Bush administration to connect Iraq to Sept. 11, the evidence simply isn’t there. The administration has demonstrated that Iraq had members of Al Qaeda living within its borders, but that same accusation could be lodged against any number of American allies in the region. It is natural to suspect that one of America’s enemies might be actively aiding another, but nations are not supposed to launch military invasions based on hunches and fragmentary intelligence.
The second argument the Bush administration cites for invading Iraq is its refusal to obey U.N. orders that it disarm. That’s a good reason, but not when the U.N. itself believes disarmament is occurring and the weapons inspections can be made to work. If the United States ignores the Security Council and attacks on its own, the first victim in the conflict will be the United Nations itself. The whole scenario calls to mind that Vietnam-era catch phrase about how we had to destroy a village in order to save it.
President Bush has switched his own rationale for the invasion several times. Right now, the underlying theory seems to be that the United States can transform the Middle East by toppling Saddam Hussein, turning Iraq into a showplace democracy and inspiring the rest of the region to follow suit. That’s another fine goal that seems impossible to accomplish outside the context of broad international agreement. The idea that the resolution to all the longstanding, complicated problems of that area begins with a quick military action is both seductive and extremely dangerous. The Bush administration has not been willing to risk any political capital in attempting to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, but now the president is theorizing that invading Iraq will do the trick.
Given the corner Mr. Bush has painted himself in, withdrawing troops even if a considerable slice remains behind would be an admission of failure. He obviously intends to go ahead, and bet on the very good chance that the Iraqi army will fall quickly. The fact that the United Nations might be irreparably weakened would not much bother his conservative political base at home, nor would the outcry abroad. But in the long run, this country needs a strong international body to keep the peace and defuse tension in a dozen different potential crisis points around the world. It needs the support of its allies, particularly embattled states like Pakistan, to fight the war on terror. And it needs to demonstrate by example that there are certain rules that everybody has to follow, one of the most important of which is that you do not invade another country for any but the most compelling of reasons. When the purpose is fuzzy, or based on questionable propositions, it’s time to stop and look for other, less extreme means to achieve your goals.
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Voon C. Chin
Thank you for providing the Webdiary as effectively as you have in this time of international crisis. There is currently so much confusion in the media its hard to separate propaganda (both government and corporate) from the news. The Howard government has taken so many liberties with the Australian public that my only surety in this matter is in their dishonesty.
As a child I asked my father how I would ever be able to discern the truth from the media. He answered that Truth is a collage of facts. Each fact as true or as untrue as the other – depending on what you want to believe. But if you REALLY want to know the truth then place all the different pieces before you and the truth will present itself. If you don’t like what you see then you can be sure its the truth. Thank you for providing the canvass.
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What is this new world order we’re watching develop, or should I say mutate, amid this terrifying chaos? Here’s Chris Murphy’s analysis.
Balancing hegemony: The real New World Order begins to emerge
by Chris Murphy
So what if the United Nations does fracture? Presumably the United States, having shown its contempt for the organisation by totally ignoring world opinion, will officially pull out, leaving the rest of the world to ponder the future of alliances.
My guess is that the vast majority of nations will decide to remain in the U.N. for two reasons – it offers support to the powerless, and it provides a global forum for the lesser powers to influence the powerless. Very soon the world will find itself divided into two camps, one governed by U.S. foreign policy, and the other most likely led by a European-Asian alliance.
Let’s be clear: The United States is not totally isolated in the United Nations. At the government level at least, it already has the support of Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia and Japan to launch a “unilateral” attack on Iraq. And when the Security Council sits down this week to vote on the proposed U.S.-U.K. resolution, there are likely to be a number of other states willing to side with the Americans.
George W. Bush showed last week that he is willing to call the UN’s bluff. He may just be hoping that he can find the numbers, but in reality he is left with no choice. He must break through or break. Three of the permanent members of the Security Council – France, Russia and China – have indicated they are prepared to veto the proposed resolution. Bush knows, however, that he cannot abide by any U.N. decision disallowing an attack on Iraq. With 250,000 coalition troops biting at the bit on Iraq’s borders, he knows that to defer “decisive action” now would not only mean his own political suicide but the destruction of Republican neoconservative orthodoxy for decades to come, as well as a severe loss of face for the American nation.
Not going to war, therefore, is simply not an option for Bush. The question therefore must be: What happens if and when the U.N. has been ignored by the world’s only superpower?
Leaving aside the grave doubts that many now have about a post-war Iraq, the much broader concern must be with the structure of global politics if the U.S. abandons the U.N.
In very simple terms, I believe the world will be divided into those who are “with” the United States and those who are “against” it. After all, according to George Bush’s own simple view of the world, there can be nowhere in between.
There are very many reasons to question the need for a war, and certainly a war that puts a premature end to the gradual dismantling of Iraqi weapons programs via UN weapons inspections. These reasons have been expounded by those opposing the US in the UN, most notably France.
But, in the world of international politics, all is never as simple as it seems. As much as we know that the Americans are pursuing their own agenda in the UN for their own self-interested reasons, we can be absolutely certain that the the French and others are certainly pursuing a hidden agenda for their own reasons, too. And it has little to do with reasoned argument.
This is make or break politics. For the big players, the results may well be death or glory, in geo-political terms. If nine or more members of the UN Security Council support the proposal for war, then France will be effectively sidelined and diminished as a world leader. It’s sphere of influence will be severely deflated to a point where it encompasses little more than – perhaps – its close German ally and a short list of former French colonies.
The UN may also be saved, but only because the Americans will have won for themselves a very handy tool for endorsing any future foreign adventures.
However if the Security Council rejects the US-UK proposal for war and the “coalition of the willing” decides to go to war without UN endorsement, the UN will be seen to have “failed”. But, although it will be diminished as a truly international body, if US is opposed by the French, Russians, Chinese and others, then the remnants of a fractured UN will present quite a prize – a fully constituted international body just waiting for a new leader to emerge from the next round of international power politics.
My guess is that this is probably what recent French manoeuvring on the world stage has really been all about. And it has been no coincidence that the other dominant power in the European Union, Germany, has been fully supportive of the French. It may even explain the “suicidal” strategy of Tony Blair to support George Bush in the face of massive public opposition.
If the Security Council votes this week to oppose a United States-led war on Iraq, then we will all be almost certainly witnessing the next great moment in world history, one just as momentous as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.
Just as the start of the First World War signalled the beginning of the 20th century, this week’s imminent event will no doubt be seen to mark the beginning of the 21st century and how the world is shaped for the next 100 years.
One side of this split in world power can be clearly observed already. The US will obviously continue to wield immense military and economic power across the globe. Its philosophy will be simple – the spread of Western-style democracy and capitalism.
Yet the US will not be left unchallenged as it has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In many ways this new balance of power will resemble the resumption of another Cold War, except this time the US will be opposed not by one ideology but by an alliance of democratic states and authoritarian regimes.
We will witness the emergence of an increasingly self-confident and strident European power sharing the stage with a staunchly authoritarian yet increasingly capitalistic China.
The “New Cold War” will not be a military stand-off but an economic one. The new race will not be waged in terms of arms or outer space but in terms of trading partners and resources.
The rest of the world will be left to choose – or be chosen – between these two alliances. To some extent, this has already happened. Clearly, Britain wants to be America’s main ally, sitting on the doorstep of Europe but looking firmly west for strategic guidance. Japan has signalled that it will remain strongly allied with the US, no doubt fully aware of its vulnerability in the face of an expanding and expansionist China. And Canada will be forced – for geographic reasons but somewhat reluctantly – to rejoin the American “team”.
On the other side, the (new) European Union will vie with China for leadership of the “anti-American” group. Who belongs to this group will be anyone’s guess.
But one thing is certain: Henceforth, international alliances will almost totally depend on the economic power wielded – and the benefits offered – by these two opposing spheres of influence. If they play their cards right, developing countries could be the main beneficiaries of this immense power play.
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Max Phillips
Disclosure: Max is a member of The Greens
You say: “In the end, it gets back to whether you think the war will help or hinder world peace. In the end, pro and anti war debaters are focused on this question, and the moral arguments for and against war are subsidiary. In other words, we’re all thinking real politic here, whether we’re for or against the war, and for or against Australian involvement.” (A letter from the SAS?)
I disagree that we all believe that moral or ethical arguments are subsidiary to real politic in regard to the war. If you look at the slogans anti-war protesters carry on their banners, most are about ethics over any pragmatic real politic – “No Blood for Oil!”, “You Can’t Bomb for Peace!”, “How Many Children Per Litre?”. In fact many of us on the anti-war side would argue that ethics and real politic can not be divorced.
You write: “He [Wojdylo] seems to be saying that it doesn’t matter what the reason for the war is if its effect is to liberate the Iraqi people. I can go along with that, provided there are guarantees the peace will also be just.”
This seems to be the utilitarian argument – “the greatest good for the greatest number” and it seems that the pursuit of this goal legitimises discarding ethical considerations. Perhaps it can be condensed and expressed as: “If we kill 100,000 Iraqi children so that 400,000 can be saved from the long-term tyranny of Saddam Hussein then the price is worth it, the war is just.”
I’m no expert of philosophy of ethics, but I will try and have a go at why such thinking is wrong and will lead to bad decisions.
Let me pose some other utilitarian questions:
* If the genocide of 900,000 indigenous people of West Papua and the destruction of their culture would lead to the greater prosperity for 200 million Indonesians, is the price worth it?
* Is it OK to deny basic human and legal rights to the prisoners of Camp X-Ray because it pleases 100 million Americans?
* If the physical torture of John Wojdylo provides immense pleasure for 200 Web Diary readers, does this more than make up for the pain that John will feel?
* Can someone murder John Howard for what he believes is the greater good of 19 million Australians?
I don’t think it is acceptable, nor sensible, to make decisions on a solely utilitarian basis. To replace ethics with a ledger book in which we calculate a balance of human lives and happiness is a big mistake.
If we start calculating the justice of a war by the same methods we use to judge the prudence of a business deal or a chess move, then we have lost our humanity. It would be better to admit we are barbarians and are adhering to tribal loyalty than to pontificate about the ‘justice’ of murdering thousands of fellow human beings.
And exactly who should hold and administer the utilitarian ledger book? The mightiest power? The Security Council? The General Assembly? The media? The protesting public? John Wojdylo? I’m not sure anyone but God, if she exists, has that right.
Appealing to “real politic” pragmatism to justify the abandonment of ethical considerations is a recipe for disaster. Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther-King are just three prominent figures whose philosophy claimed that ethics and action must not be divorced and to do so will not solve a problem, only prolong it.
If we look at the spiral of violence in Israel/Palestine it is obvious that the many pragmatic moves by both sides do nothing to solve the situation, rather the lack of ethics on both sides only inflames and prolongs the whole conflict.
When less ethical people (war criminals and terrorists) are in power the conflict and suffering only deepens.
If we look closer to home, the ALP abandoned its ethics in the name of pragmatism when the MV Tampa sailed into Australian politics. Their pragmatic stance failed to win the election and the abandonment of ethics has cost both the soul and effectiveness of the party.
Conversely the ethical stance of the Greens has catapulted them from the fringe to a real force in Australian politics. Meanwhile the pragmatic Democrats flounder in their puddle of pragmatism.
Pragmatic but unethical actions might seem to solve a problem in the short term, it might create a sense of security, but it can never solve a problem in the long term. To really solve a problem it must be through ethical means. It must be with love not hate, cooperation not conflict, peace not war.
Basically what I’m struggling to say is that you can’t abandon ethics in pursuit of an ethical outcome. It is internally inconsistent. You can’t bomb for peace. You can’t kill one Iraqi child to save another. It just doesn’t make sense.
Margo: The argument John Wojdylo is making is that the Iraqi people have collectively decided that the deaths of some of their number are acceptable for the good of all. If anyone is qualified to make that decision it is they, and only they.