Spain is the first nation to sack a pro-war leader. Professor Gabriel Kolko gave me permission to publish this analysis.
The American elections, the future of alliances and the lessons of Spain
by Gabriel Kolko
The author is a leading historian of modern warfare. He wrote ‘Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914″ and, in 2002, ‘Another Century of War?’
We are now experiencing fundamental changes in the international system whose implications and consequences may ultimately be as far-reaching as the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
The United States’ strength, to a crucial extent, has rested on its ability to convince other nations that it was to their vital interests to see America prevail in its global role. But the scope and ultimate consequences of its world mission, including its extraordinarily vague doctrine of “preemptive wars,” is today far more dangerous and open-ended than when Communism existed. Enemies have disappeared and new ones – many once former allies and even congenial friends – have taken their places. The United States, to a degree to which it is itself uncertain, needs alliances, but these allies will be bound into uncritical “coalitions of the willing.”
But the events in Spain over the past days, from the massive deadly explosions in Madrid to the defeat of the ruling party because it supported the Iraq war despite overwhelming public opposition to doing so, have greatly raised the costs to its allies of following Washington’s lead.
So long as the future is to a large degree – to paraphrase Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – “unknowable,” it is not to the national interest of its traditional allies to perpetuate the relationships created from 1945 to 1990. The Bush Administration, through ineptness and a vague ideology of American power that acknowledges no limits on its global ambitions, and a preference for unilateralist initiatives which discounts consultations with its friends much less the United Nations, has seriously eroded the alliance system upon which U. S. foreign policy from 1947 onwards was based. With the proliferation of all sorts of destructive weaponry, the world will become increasingly dangerous.
If Bush is reelected then the international order may be very different in 2008 than it is today, much less in 1999, but there is no reason to believe that objective assessments of the costs and consequences of its actions will significantly alter American foreign policy priorities over the next four years.
If the Democrats win they will attempt in the name of internationalism to reconstruct the alliance system as it existed before the Yugoslav war of 1999, when even the Clinton Administration turned against the veto powers built into the NATO system. America’s power to act on the world scene would therefore be greater. Kerry voted for many of Bush’s key foreign and domestic measures and he is, at best, an indifferent candidate. His statements and interviews over the past weeks dealing with foreign affairs have been both vague and incoherent. Kerry is neither articulate nor impressive as a candidate or as someone who is likely to formulate an alternative to Bush’s foreign and defense policies, which have much more in common with Clinton’s than they have differences. To be critical of Bush is scarcely justification for wishful thinking about Kerry. Since 1947, the foreign policies of the Democrats and Republicans have been essentially consensual on crucial issues – “bipartisan” as both parties phrase it – but they often utilise quite different rhetoric.
Critics of the existing foreign or domestic order will not take over Washington this November. As dangerous as it is, Bush’s reelection may be a lesser evil because he is much more likely to continue the destruction of the alliance system that is so crucial to American power. One does not have to believe that the worse the better but we have to consider candidly the foreign policy consequences of a renewal of Bush’s mandate.
Bush’s policies have managed to alienate, in varying degrees, innumerable nations, and even its firmest allies – such as Britain, Australia, and Canada – are being required to ask if giving Washington a blank check is to their national interest or if it undermines the tenure of parties in power. Foreign affairs, as the terrorism in Madrid has so dramatically shown, are too important to simply endorse American policies. Not only the parties in power can pay dearly for it; more important are the innumerable victims among the people.
Germany has already called for European Union action to prevent repetitions of the Madrid catastrophe but nations that have supported the Iraq war enthusiastically, particularly Great Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands, have made their populations especially vulnerable to terrorism, and they now have the expensive responsibility of protecting them – if they can.
The way the war in Iraq was justified compelled France and Germany to become far more independent, much earlier, than they had intended, and NATO’s future role is now questioned in a way that was inconceivable two years ago. Europe’s future defense arrangements are today an open question but there will be some sort of European military force independent of NATO and American control.
Germany, with French support, strongly opposes the Bush doctrine of preemption. Tony Blair, however much he intends acting as a proxy for the U.S. on military questions, must return Britain to the European project, and his willingness since late 2003 to emphasise his nation’s role in Europe reflects political necessities. To do otherwise is to alienate his increasingly powerful neighbors and risk losing elections. His domestic credibility is already at its nadir due to his slavish support for the war in Iraq.
In a word, politicians who place America’s imperious demands over national interest have less future than those who are responsive to domestic opinion and needs. The tragedy in Madrid and the defeat of the ruling party in last Sunday’s Spanish election is a warning that no politician in or out of power will ignore.
This process of alienating traditional close friends is best seen in Australia, but in different ways and for quite distinctive reasons it is also true elsewhere – especially Canada and Mexico, the U.S.’ two neighbors. In the case of Australia, Washington is willing to allow it to do the onerous chores of policing the vast South Pacific and even take greater initiatives, at least to a point, on Indonesia.
But the Bush Administration passed along to it false intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, which many of Australia’s own experts disputed, and Bush even telephoned Prime Minister John Howard to convince him to support America’s efforts in innumerable ways. As Alexander Downer, the foreign minister, admitted earlier this month, “it wasn’t a time in our history to have a great and historic breach with the United States,” and the desire to preserve the alliance became paramount. But true alliances are based on consultation and an element of reciprocity is possible, and the Bush Administration prefers “coalitions of the willing” that raise no substantive questions about American actions – in effect, a blank check. Giving it produced strong criticism of the Howard government’s reliance on Washington’s false information on WMD and it has been compelled to endorse a joint parliamentary committee to investigate the intelligence system – sure to play into opposition hands this election year.
Even more dangerous, the Bush Administration has managed to turn what was in the mid-1990s a blossoming cordial friendship with the former Soviet Union into an increasingly tense relationship. Despite a 1997 non-binding American pledge not to station substantial numbers of combat troops in the territories of new members, Washington plans to extend NATO to Russia’s very borders–Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania especially concern Moscow – and it is in the process of establishing a vague number of bases in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Russia has stated that the U.S. encircling it warrants its retaining and modernizing its nuclear arsenal – to remain a military superpower – that will be more than a match for the increasingly expensive and ambitious missile defense system the Pentagon is now building. It has over 4,600 strategic nuclear warheads and over 1,000 ballistic missiles to deliver them. Last month Russia threatened to pull out of the crucial Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which has yet to enter into force, because it regards America’s ambitions in the former Soviet bloc as provocation.
“I would like to remind the representatives of [NATO],” Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told a security conference in Munich last February, “that with its expansion they are beginning to operate in the zone of vitally important interests of our country.”
The question Washington’s allies will ask themselves is whether their traditional alliances have far more risks than benefits – and if they are necessary.
In the case of China, Bush’s key advisers were publicly committed to constraining its burgeoning military and geopolitical power the moment they took office. But China’s military budget is growing rapidly – 12 percent this coming year – and the European Union wants to lift its 15-year old arms embargo and get a share of the enticingly large market. The Bush Administration, of course, is strongly resisting any relaxation of the export ban. Establishing bases on China’s western borders is the logic of its ambitions.
The United States is not so much engaged in “power projection” against an amorphously defined terrorism by installing bases in small or weak Eastern European and Central Asian nations as again confronting Russia and China in an open-ended context which may have profound and protracted consequences neither America’s allies nor its own people have any interest or inclination to support. Even some Pentagon analysts have warned against this strategy because any American attempt to save failed states in the Caucasus or Central Asia, implicit in its new obligations, will risk exhausting what are ultimately its finite military resources.
There is no way to predict what emergencies will arise or what these commitments entail, either for the U. S. or its allies, not the least because – as Iraq proved last year and Vietnam long before it – its intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of possible enemies against which it is ready to preempt is so completely faulty.
Without accurate information a state can believe and do anything, and this is the predicament the Bush Administration’s allies are in. It is simply not to their national interest, much less to their political interests or the security of their people, to pursue foreign policies based on a blind, uncritical acceptance of fictions or flamboyant adventurism premised on false premises and information. It is far too open-ended both in terms of time and political costs.
If Bush is reelected, America’s allies and friends will have to confront such stark choices, a painful process that will redefine and perhaps shatter existing alliances. Independent, realistic foreign policies are likely to be the outcome, and the dramatic events in Spain over the past days have reinforced this probability.
But America will be more prudent and the world will be far safer only if the Bush Administration is constrained by a lack of allies and isolated.
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Scott Burchill recommends the Washington Post’s Al Qaeda Implicated In Madrid Bombings. Antony Loewenstein recommends MEMRI for a translation of and commentary on the Al Qaeda statement of responsibility. Webdiary’s conservative columnist Noel Hadjimichael comments in Appeasement or action: the lessons from Madrid.
The British people just released from Guantanamo Bay tell their stories to The Guardian at Revealed: the full story of the Guantanamo Britons.
Antony also recommends Robert Fisk on the anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq at Happy first birthday, war on Iraq. In case you’ve missed it, the expose by former American defence analyst Karen Kwiatkowski on the dirty ‘intelligence’ tricks used to convince the American people to invade Iraq is a must read. See The New Pentagon Papers.
American actor and anti-war campaigner Tim Robbins (star of the movie Bob Roberts, well worth a viewing before the American presidential campaign gets really down and dirty) is involved in a new play calledEmbedded.