Easter in Iraq. A year since the Americans pulled down Saddam�s statue, and they�re losing control. Or lost it. It�s hard to keep up with, but Webdiary readers are trying. I�ll post their recommendations soon, but here�s a very big picture view of what�s going on from new Webdiarist Matt Southon. He thinks we�re watching the beginning of the fall of the American empire.
Matt Southon
I’ve tried to put together my opinion on this US policy of preemptive action and how I understand it to fit within the greater historical picture of the rise and fall of pre-eminent nation states.
The theoretical benchmark loosely employed in this analysis is the school of dependency theorists such as Gunder-Frank, Celso and the more refined theoretical position of Immanuel Wallerstein, author of World System Theory (vol 1-3). The situation in Iraq is a fine example of what Wallerstein may describe as a transition of power and an eventual shift in Core versus semi-peripheral states.
The first point is that since 1945, the US has been in the position to direct capital globally through world financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, all stemming from the GATT treaty. Therefore, any market that wished to engage in the capitalist process did so under rules controlled by the US.
The second point is that a nation state may have economic power but will not achieve pre-eminence unless that capital control is overlaid with an ideological hegemony. Simply, not only does this system dictate where the money flows, but the general population believe it to be right as a fundamental truth, and that Western values as prescribed by the Core power are true and desirable for all.
The US has purveyed this hegemony since 1945, however its power has been slowly reducing since the 1970s. Some may suggest this is in parallel with the rise in globalisation and the opening up of new information about non western values and traditions, however that is another debate.
So, since 1945 the US has had both economic and ideological hegemony which it has used to access markets and free up non capitalist markets (customers are the name of the game). The economic agenda is to engage more of the global population in the quest for jeans and soft drink (and oil, weaponry etc).
This is obviously an unpalatable argument for attempting to control a nation state, so the ideological warm and fuzzy of democracy, freedom et al is used as a blanket to hide the true agenda, both for the home front and the newly liberated territory. It is much easier to say `We are liberating the Iraqis from oppression’ than `We are liberating the Iraqis from their strategic position in the middle east and their oil’.
We are witnessing the death dance of a Core nation which has started to believe too firmly in the ideological nonsense of ‘freedom’ and the theological rightness of the US position (Bush is as fundamentalist as many Islamic practitioners).
We know the neo-cons and other hawks have always had their eye on Iraq, but it is the ideological fervour of the justifications that leave me unsettled. They seem to really believe their own press!
Why has US hegemonic power been slowly disintegrating since the 1970s? One answer, exhaustion of markets. The end of the cold war saw Russia and China deciding to play the game, opening their borders to jeans and burgers. But that is not enough for the engine of the world’s growth. The Middle East is an untapped resource of potential MTV converts and the US wants in.
It would also like to suppress dissenting religious choice and Islam is a hard religion to marry with consumption. It also wants in for the oil required to run the engine but that is a historical not ahistoric specific and doesn’t need discussion here (except to say that while some of the world’s great artifacts were being looted, the US had a defensive perimeter around the Oil Ministry).
What of other major powers that have fallen victim to their own narcissism – Rome, Great Britain and the Happsburg Empire? The key link is that they rose to control via modernisation of agricultural and manufacturing practices, developed armies and weaponry, and developed social frameworks. They all also exported their own brand of reality as the true way. Rome and Great Britain operated under a capitalist system of trade. So too, to a lesser degree, did the Happsburg Empire, but the point is there is a noticable trend in all of the above. They operated as unchallenged ideological and economic hegemons for a long time unscathed but were eventually felled by their own `foreign policies’.
It is the shift from Core power, whereby the pre-eminent nation state dictates or controls global direction via market forces that are at least at some level mutually beneficial to both vendor and vendee. A good example of this is Ahmed Chalabi – a man with close links to Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s baby. He is manipulating and being manipulated to serve each purpose and the greater good or nationalist sentiment is the first chip off the bargaining table. History is littered with similar examples of a more affluent class enriching themselves at the expense of a majority of poverty stricken individuals.
A Core power could potentially be benevolent, however its addiction to the growth of the economy, combined with a generational indoctrination of the nation’s `fundamental truths’, neccessarily causes the need to access new markets to increase expodentially – you are only as strong as your economy.
This is where the US should have heeded history. The pivotal decision taken by all these superpowers is the policy of preemptive action – utilising military force to suppress the true nature of the population until they are consumed by the ideology being rammed into them.
This is where Iraq is totally different from Vietnam. The US was there to protect its ideological hegemony, not its strategic position or economy. That is another reason why theorists suggest the peak was in the 70s, as the illegal action in Vietnam forced a generation to question the depth of the ideology it had so believed in and found it to be shallow and wanting.
So where is all this leading? Wallerstein would suggest that the shift from a Core state to a state in decline is the use of force. As with Rome, Great Britain and the Happsburg Empire of Germany, the powers became so narcissistic they felt invincible. Military power was spread far and wide across all known borders, weakening both the domestic security of the nation and, more importantly, the economic structure of the nation.
Global conquest is not cheap, nor does it allow distraction. We are witnessing a modern version of over extension of military capability to impose ideology, compounded by a worsening domestic scene which directly effects the greater population. Why spend in Iraq when I can’t get a job?
This exposes the mob at the top of the heap and allows less strong nations an opportunity to move in. We are seeing the slow formation of a combined Europe and the Euro, and the opening of markets in China which will, due to market share, be able to start calling bigger shots in relation to trade deals. India, also a nuclear power, is experiencing unprecedented growth and Indonesia is starting to get its act together. Japan is also getting back on track.
These nations have the economic potential to either join or replace the US over time, diffusing the USA’s sole directional forces, and the US needs to be careful not to cut off its nose to spite its face. The US has stretched itself financially thin through drawn out military exercises, severely jeopardised severely its ideological claims by clearly acting against its basic tenets – just like in Vietnam – and by dogmatically pursuing unilateralist policies despite global condemnation.
So here we are. The US has done untold damage to the validity of its freedom loving ways, hurting its ability to continue to assert it stands for these things when its actions show that it does not.
It is hurting itself economically through an expensive and protracted campaign of force allowing sneak attacks by other strong nations, (not by force but by diplomacy and policy shifts), ignoring growing domestic unrest at the risk of alienating the electorate, forcing other global players to position themselves away from the ideology of the US.
The US is being disgraced globally with its heavy handed tactics, which again forces consumers to seek solace in another ideology not so connected to the United States.
Like the other Core nations that attempted to become Empire builders it will fall heavily from grace, as its geo-political position is so severely weakened it will need to revert to multilateral co-operation in which it will be a bit player, not a star, and its domestic policies begin to reflect a more inward looking direction.
Wallerstein draws conclusions in part on what he calls long and short economic cycles, short ones or Kondratieff cycles lasting 50-60 years and longer ones of about 100-200 years.
The short cycles generally mark a fall from grace, the longer ones a fall into the dustbin of history. We therefore not be surprised to realise that 1945 was 54 years ago. Spooky.