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July 17, 2003
The
Empire Stops Striking
by Christopher Montgomery
It's
good to go away for a month, because when you come back, you can
see that little bit more clearly what hasn't happened (and as importantly,
what's not going to happen). One thing that a lot of people were
predicting in the immediate aftermath of the war against Iraq, either
happily or unhappily, depending on their point of view, was that,
Iran's next. This hasn't happened yet, and you know, I don't
think that if Dubya has his way that it's going to happen at all.
Which brings us to something that perhaps too few readers will appreciate
me for saying: President Bush is the best chance we have of seeing
a halt to American militarism. For to the right [sic] of
him, are the neocons, the frothing alternative, and to the left
of him are the Blairo-Clintonites, the mewling alternative. We know
all too well what the neocons would do, if ever they gained control
of the state, but equally we ought to remember what the all-weather
humanitarian bombers of the Clinton/Albright era did do when they
were in charge. Therefore what sensible Conservatives ought to be
doing is trying to offer support to George Bush, and the policy
of restraint that he clearly would like to follow.
The
problem with American foreign policy is not that it is imperial
in form (it most certainly is, and has been for three generations
now) but that it runs the risk of being hideously inept imperialism.
The problems this will entail for the United States herself, in
terms of blowback, are already evident, but no one in the wider
West should readily wish the US to come a cropper. That she will
if people like Stanley
Kurtz ever become representative Conservative ideologists is
certain:
"The
North Korean problem is the most serious issue facing our country
right now. Thank goodness President Bush dispatched Saddam Hussein
before he became an 'imminent danger.' Korea is an imminent danger
right now, and that's exactly why it's so hard to do anything about
it . . . [but] here is the bottom line. We need to at least consider
a strike against North Korea, even if that puts Seoul at risk. A
strike against North Korea may not be the right policy, but it has
got to be openly debated. We have to understand that in very short
order, we could lose the war against terror. In fact, we may be
losing it right now. Korea has every reason to sell bombs to Iran
and Al Qaeda. They may already have the capability to do so. If
Saddam were still around, the North Koreans would be sell him a
bomb as well. This country is wasting its time on a silly debate
about Iraqi WMD and missing the point. There really is an axis of
evil. Any part of it with nuclear capacity will sell bombs to all
the rest. The end result will be the destruction of a major American
citypossibly the decapitation of our government. After that, we
face military rule and at least the temporary suspension of government
as we know it. We are at great risk. Yet for the most part, the
press is silent about this."
ll
the usual loopy stuff there (the 'war against terror', the need
to have wars to stop wars, the hysteria about the dark things in
the night coming for America, all perfectly familiar, and all equally
dangerous if this ever becomes what governing Conservatives end
up doing in, to and for America. Not that in any individual aspect
you can't make a case of sorts for these policies. Obviously, for
instance, there are terrorists out there. Equally obviously, there's
not much point to a state if it doesn't formulate policies for removing
them as a threat (and surely still more obviously, this isn't always
going to be possible to achieve by means of negotiation or shifts
in whatever policy has got the terrorists' goat in first place:
sometimes you do just have to kill them). But, as the 'war against
terrorism' daily demonstrates, that's not what the American government
is fighting. Irish terrorism, Chechen terrorism, even, God knows,
Islamic terrorism inside Red China, all these provide murderous
gangs for whom America has no intention at all of waging 'war' on.
What this ludicrously misnamed 'war' is of course about is the maintenance,
by force, of post-Cold War American primacy. And the predictably
ironic truth is that, the people recently arrived inside the Republican
party who want wars against North Korea and Iran, and everywhere
at least as dangerous as oh so threatening Iraq was, aren't, as
things stand, going to get them. And they're not going to get them
in part because of the outcome of their war against Iraq.
If
the recent war has done nothing else, it has made the electorates
of Britain and America terminally suspicious of 'I can't tell you
why, but unless we act right now, we're all doomed' statements from
government ministers. Consciously or not, this suspicion arises
at least as much from the fact that the war was a cakewalk
(and hence Iraq plainly wasn't a clear and present danger), than
it does to any great lack of WMD discoveries. The other thing the
whole death-a-day business in Mesopotamia is doing is reminding
our placid fellow countrymen (and remember, we, in the West come
from what is, in truth, the least violent society in human history)
what a nasty job of work telling foreign people what to do can be.
There's only so much of that you want to see being done each night
on your television screen, and there's certainly no way, other than
for the tiny percentage of us inclined that way, that you'd want
to have to end up doing any of that telling yourself. As Anglo-American
society becomes ever less militarised in its values and personal
experiences, the more and more alien doing what needs to be done
in the desert must seem to most people.
Thus
it is that realists, like the clever
people clsutered round The National Interest (this quarter,
go out and buy it, and read the first four essays to see what I
mean about whose side they're really on, ours or Richard Perle's),
and even some in the NR/NRO
crowd know that the key thing for the maintenace of such American
primacy as there is, lies not in attempts to extend it, but rather
in efforts to display restraint, so as to conserve it.
This
doctrine of restraint, pace Mr
Kurtz earlier, shines out from William Perry's attitude to North
Korea. President Clinton's former, and formerly Republican, Defense
Secretary sees that this is an unstable regime, which is indeed
a bad thing for a regime to be, but he has a much more sane way
of dealing it. Never mind the specifics of what neocons will doubtless
call the proposed 'appeasement' (so many degrees those people, yet
so few words in their lexicon), the point is that Mr
Perry knows that the end sought, North Korea being prevented
from doing unspeakable things, is that bit more likely attained
by not putting her in a place where lunacy is the only diplomatic
option she has left. An awareness of the choices the other side
faces is the essence of statecraft, and seemingly far beyond the
appreciation of our silly
Vulcan chums.
The
only way in which Mr Perry would be advocating the 'wrong' policy
would be if instead of the end of American statecraft being stability,
it was instead the promotion of its imperium. Since the United States
is already on top, and therefore has a vested interest in remaining
there, it really should not be the hardest lesson to learn that
her interests are best served by modest strategies designed to hold
what she has, rather than immodest insanity designed to achieve
what she's never going to end up with.
As
ever, another column on Antiwar.com spends it time attacking the
neocons for their serried faults, albeit from the viewpoint that
what's wrong with them is not their imperialism per se, but the
fact that it's such inadequate imperialism. But we should not forgot
that when this invaluable website first came into its own, it was
in arguing against the liberal imperialism of Messrs Blair and Clinton
in the 1990s. Now, there's a case to be made, similar to the one
followed above, that Bill Clinton's imperialism suffered from being
both dilatory and morally incontinent. Though he's history, Mr Blair's
still here, and is without doubt having an impact on international
affairs. It's not yet the
impact he wants to have, but that it's all too possible to imagine
this administration being won over to a form of it is something
we need to think. With the thing we need to think about most of
all being, does Liberal Imperialism really suit either the interests
of Britain of the United States, provided that it is pursued as
sensibly as possible? On the principle adhered throughout this article
(that the less bad is better than worse) we should next time give
serious consideration to whether Lib Imps are in fact the most congenial
makers of foreign policy Conservatives are likely to get any time
soon. It being, after all, impossible on either side of the Atlantic,
to see where exactly a practical, in-office Tory or paleo-con foreign
policy is going to come from.
–
Christopher Montgomery
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