THE
TIES THAT BIND
As
Robert
Kagan, a senior fellow at the grievously mis-named Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, puts
it, "Even neo-isolationists love missile defense precisely
because they see it as the antithesis of a foreign policy.
Once we put up the shield, they figure, Americans can mind
their own business and the rest of the world can go to hell."
If only it were so. But Kagan is sophisticated enough to
realize that precisely the opposite is the case. In a piece
in the Washington Post [May 21, 2000], Kagan made
a case for missile defense aimed at liberal interventionists,
arguing that as long as America has to live in fear of retaliation
for its global meddling, policy elites will think twice
before intervening: but Star Wars technology will unleash
them. In a world without NMD, he writes,
"The
United States could find itself less and less willing to
undertake the risks that come with global leadership. Adversaries
would be emboldened by American timidity, and friends would
begin to look elsewhere for their security. The ties that
bind America to its allies would loosen. In time, the fabric
of the international order, now dependent on American military
power and on American will to use it, would unravel altogether.
In other words, the neo-isolationists have it exactly backwards.
Nothing is more likely to push the United States toward
an isolationist foreign policy than our increasing vulnerability
to missile attack."
WHAT
MATTERS MOST
This
is a rather disingenuous way to say it – it is our
aggressive foreign policy that is the root of our vulnerability
– but Kagan is right about the peculiar confusion represented
by conservative Republican support for NMD. In his piece,
Kagan seems to scoff at the idea that there is anyone crazy
enough to launch a ballistic missile at the US, and, anyway,
"what matters most is deterrence. Not our ability to deter
others, but their ability to deter us. For the past decade,
American strategy has rested on our ability to project overwhelming
conventional force into vital regions around the world"
– and, in Kagan's view, nothing must deter us from
intervening anywhere and everywhere. Star Wars will make
that possible. For if some "weaker power" got tired of being
pushed around – say, Iraq – and "had an arsenal
of missiles capable of striking Europe and the United States,"
then
"Would
an American president be as quick as George Bush was in
1991 to order an offensive to force him out? Would Congress
vote to approve an invasion, knowing the price might be
an American or European city? Would the Europeans join forces
with us if Paris and Munich were vulnerable?"
BOONDOGGLE
AND PANACEA
Far
from being strictly defensive, then, NMD is being sold as
an offensive weapon, the necessary shield that accompanies
the sword. As such, Kagan seems to realize that the NMD's
real constituency is not the Right, but the Left, for here
is a project that combines aspects of a government boondoggle
and a utopian panacea. In making a direct appeal to Clintonian
interventionists of the "humanitarian" variety, Kagan implores
"liberal internationalists" to "do some hard thinking."
Having opposed NMD in the past because it would undermine
arms control efforts, he argues that they must now rethink
their position in light of their recent born-again conversion
to the joys of militarism. "The day is fast approaching,"
Kagan writes, "when they will have to choose between their
faith in arms control treaties and their belief in America's
role as the world's 'indispensable nation.'" This is how
the NMD lobby sold Clinton and the Democrats on adopting
a modified version of their program, and now the Bushies
are pulling out all the stops in a race to put NMD in place
and unleash the full military potential of Star Wars.
GETTING
OUT OF THE RAIN
In
selling the idea to the Europeans, particularly the British,
the strategy of the Bush administration is to hold out the
promise of extending NMD to other countries. I was astonished
to read the headline in the International Herald Tribune
the other day: "US
Intends to Put Anti-Missile Shield Around the World"!
This stunning news was announced by newly-installed secretary
of defense Donald Rumsfeld: speaking at the Conference on
Security Policy, an annual pow-wow of defense ministers,
policy wonks, and military specialists, Rumsfeld no doubt
caused a stir when he declared that "The United States intends
to develop and deploy a missile defense designed to defend
our people and our forces against a limited missile attack
and is prepared to assist friends and allies threatened
by missile attack to deploy such defenses." In making their
appeal to the Europeans, Team Bush is applying the same
strategy Kagan used on domestic liberals. As the International
Herald Tribune piece put it: "By expanding the system's
coverage in this way, the administration of President George
W. Bush clearly hopes to curb complaints from allies that
missile defense is an umbrella for the United States that
would be liable to make Americans seek security in isolationism."
Don't get rid of the umbrella, Rumsfeld is saying to the
Europeans, join us and get out of the rain. But what, exactly,
will they be joining?
AN
IRON CURTAIN
In
his speech, Rumsfeld pointedly neglected to use the word
"national" to describe the missile defense plan envisioned
by the Bush administration, and the implications of this
omission are enormous. For what he is offering them is a
global missile defense system that would give new meaning
to the word "protectorate": from South Korea to the Gulf
states, covering the Balkans and certainly Israel, an international
missile defense (IMD) system would give our various regional
satraps the benefit of living behind an iron curtain, so
to speak, against which the missiles of "rogue" nations
would bounce off: one that afforded them same dubious benefits
as the last one, eternal "protection" – but at what
price?
SHARON
UNLEASHED
Ah,
say the Bushies, but we'll make it worth your while. For
if the US, unafraid of ballistic missile "blowback," is
going to be unleashed, then the same privilege will be extended
to its friends and allies. That, at least, is the implicit
promise – and very real danger – of IMD. Consider
the recent election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister of
Israel in the context of the Bushian international missile
defense concept: would not the same logic of deterrence
outlined above by Kagan apply to Israel? While Sharon might
be otherwise restrained from launching an all-out war and
achieving his dream of a Greater Israel, the missile shield
erected by the US would hardly act as a restraint. The potential
costs of war – for Israel – would be so greatly
reduced that it is hard to see how Sharon could resist embarking
on a course of conquest: huddled under the IMD umbrella,
Israeli forces could perhaps fulfill the old Zionist dream
of extending Israel's borders from the Nile to the Euphrates.
MISSILE
DEFENSE NOW, UNION LATER
Britain,
too, would be unleashed, and the Tories are practically
swooning at the thought of it: dreams of a restored Empire,
more adventures in Africa, and maybe even an Anglo-American
confederation, dance in their heads. The
old idea of an Anglo-American union is being raised,
tentatively and even shyly, so as not to offend the nationalist
sensibilities of American conservatives, who, after all,
cheered Mel Gibson in The Patriot and booed his British
tormentors. While Labor naturally seeks integration into
the European socialist superstate, Hague and his front-bencher
Tories, faced with the choice of rule from Brussels, or
from Washington, D.C., have thrown their lot in with the
latter. National independence, apparently, is not even an
option.
KRAUTHAMMER'S
VISION
This
is what the extension of the IMD over half the globe would
mean, symbolically at first, but soon enough in actuality:
the de facto merger of the territories protected
by the IMD system. A few years ago, the neoconservative
columnist Charles
Krauthammer, invoking Francis
Fukuyama's famous "End
of History" thesis, proclaimed that at this "unipolar
moment" we need to forget about the outmoded concept of
national sovereignty and replace it with "a new universalism."
In Krauthammer's view, the "wish and work" of America should
be to integrate with Europe and Japan inside a "super-sovereign"
entity that is "economically, culturally, and politically
hegemonic" in the world. "This new universalism," he writes,
"would require the conscious depreciation not only of American
sovereignty, but of the notion of sovereignty in general."
The idea of merging the US into a trans-national union "is
not," he opined, "as outrageous as it sounds."
FRAMEWORK
OF EMPIRE
It
still sounds outrageous, even with the Bush-Rumsfeld
IMD plan in place – but rather less impossible. While
the missile defense tests carried out so far have been nothing
short of disastrous, there is no doubt that, given the lavish
resources being poured into this boondoggle, a system like
IMD could be developed in time. This would provide the military
framework for a more extensive and gradual integration.
In effect, constructing an international missile defense
means building an overseas empire, its frontiers defined
by the outer limits of the IMD umbrella.
TECHNOLOGY
AND IDEOLOGY
But
couldn't missile defense technology still be used to defend
the legitimate interests of the US, i.e. the safety of its
citizens right here at home? No technology has a moral or
political content, but is merely an instrument in the hands
that wield it. How technology is used reflects the moral
and ideological outlook of its creators, and in IMD we are
seeing the true face of Team Bush reflected in the mirror
of power. Whether a different administration, one that upheld
the foreign
policy principles of the Founders and saw itself as
the guardian of American sovereignty, would employ a missile
defense is another question for another column, but as far
as this new crowd in Washington is concerned we are dealing
with an altogether different case. Rumsfeld's conception
of a global missile defense is the technological embodiment
of Krauthammer's "new universalism," the empty phrase that
is the "patriotism" of the new millennium. If "the ties
that bind will loosen" in a world without international
missile defense, as Kagan puts it, then in the world Team
Bush is building for us the ties that bind will tighten
– until the concept of American separateness is, at
best, superfluous, at worst abolished by the new global
hegemons.
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