A
Time for Truth
The Middle East US
foreign policy in the Middle East has been based on two
pillars that are fast crumbling: military support for
the medieval monarchies of the oil-rich Arabian peninsula
and unconditional support for the democratic legitimacy
of the Israeli state. Both these certitudes are up for
reexamination.
Israel
The US relationship to Israel has distorted
our regional policy by subordinating every other
factor to Israeli interests. This must end, for
two reasons: a) It is unjust, since no people, in
this case the Palestinians, should be treated as
helots, and ethnically cleansed from their own lands,
and b) It is not in our national interest, no matter
how one defines it, to earn the undying enmity of
the Arab world, in defiance of all reason and morality.
The US sends more aid to Israel than to any other
country, and yet seems to have almost no leverage;
not only that, but Israel regularly spies on the
US, as the case of Jonathan Pollard made all too
clear as if we were enemies! Aid to Israel
subsidizes Israeli economic inefficiencies, and
actually endangers the Israeli economy: it also
creates resentment, in Israel and the US, and poisons
relations between the two countries. It should be
phased out with relative swiftness.
While
the tendency of the Bush administration to bow out of
the role of Middle East mediator is supposed to represent
a new aloofness toward the ongoing crisis, in reality
it represents an effusive endorsement of the new hardline
Israeli government of Ariel Sharon and the expansionist
wing of the Likud party. Just as Albanian fanatics are
building a "Greater Albania" in the Balkans, so extremists
on the Israeli right envision a "Greater Israel" that
stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. For a long
time, no one listened to them as they advocated expulsion
of the Arabs from Israel proper, and a war of conquest
to "defend" the Israeli state: now they are in power.
The danger to the peace of the region has never been
greater and, tragically, the blanket US endorsement
of Israeli policy has never been more unequivocal. US
aid to Israel must be conditioned on a recognition that
Palestinians, after all, are human beings too, and that
no government has the right to single out disfavored
religious or ethnic groups for dispossession and persecution
especially not with US tax dollars. Instead of
withdrawing from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process,
the US needs to re-engage on different terms: that is,
it needs to frame the problem in terms of what is in
America's national interest, not Israel's.
The
Arabian peninsula We went to war to preserve
the dynasty of a Kuwaiti emir: the absolute ruler of a
country where women cannot vote, and expressions of Christian
faith are barely legal. The idea that we are the guarantors
of the House of Saud, one of the most brutal and repressive
regimes on earth, stands in stark contradiction to the
conceits of our global hegemonists, who see the US as
the world champion of capital-'D' Democracy. The Saudi
monarchy, the mini-monarchies that line the tip of the
Arabian peninsula, the Egyptian "democracy" that outlaws
the Islamic opposition, the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan,
and especially the authoritarian Turkish "democracy" ruled
by the "Two No's" (no Kurds, and no Muslims) that is the
linchpin of US strategic doctrine in the region
all these regimes are faced with a rising spirit of pan-Arabic
nationalism such as first swept the region in the wake
of decolonization. The religious and nationalist tides
that are sweeping the old regimes from power will not
be held back no matter how much money we pour into local
coffers: the Arab sheiks, emirs, and princelings will
all go the way of the Shah of Iran, the late and unlamented
Reza Pahlavi, and the new rulers will be in possession
of the finest military equipment courtesy of US arms manufacturers.
As in other areas of the world, on the Arabian peninsula
and throughout the Middle East, US policies are generating
a reaction: a virulent anti-Americanism that manifests
itself, today, in the form of terrorism and may
take on an even more extensive character in the future.
This crumbling pillar of US policy in the region is a
danger to all those who are in the vicinity: we need to
get out from under it, before it crushes American interests.
This means ending aid to any state that engages in cartel-like
price-fixing of basic commodities: we are protecting and
subsidizing our own blackmailers. The next time Saddam
threatens Kuwait, and the Emir comes knocking at our door,
demanding protection, perhaps the best answer would be
a brief note reminding him of his country's vote to keep
OPEC prices higher.
Iraq
US policy toward Iraq is a shameful and difficult
issue for any American to face: no one wants to believe
that their own government is guilty of war crimes. But
the death of 5,000 children per month as a direct result
of UN-imposed sanctions is a war crime if ever there was
one. The daily bombing of Iraq continues, a full decade
after George Herbert Walker Bush announced that he was
not just going to war against Iraq for invading Kuwait,
but because we had to fight for something he called "a
new world order." The policy of internationalism has rarely
been so baldly stated. This was a war clearly fought to
preserve the overseas assets of American and British corporate
interests: the oil companies that benefited from skyrocketing
oil prices due to war and the constant threat of war in
the region. For a solid decade, US government policy was
to keep Iraqi oil off the market after having started
the war ostensibly because Saddam was going to conquer
not only Kuwait but also Saudi Arabia, and cut off the
West from a major source of oil. Instead of establishing
a "new world order," the Gulf war in retrospect seems
to have been fought for a new world oil price one
significantly higher than it would have been had the US
not intervened.
Clinton-Bush
policy a failure
The
present administration is firmly committed to the same
policies: Bill Clinton pummeled Iraq with bombs, and even
appropriated money to finance dubious "revolutionary"
groups to overthrow the Baghdad regime: The Bush-Rumsfeld
policy is merely a continuation of the same policy, in
spite of secretary of state Colin Powell's attempt to
moderate US hostility. Ironically, the real potential
danger to US interests in the region is being generated
by US policy a widespread resentment, even hatred,
of the US translates into dire consequences for the future
if present trends escalate.
The
focus on Iraq has neglected the very real danger posed
by Iraq's arch-enemy, Iran, a country whose official ideology
(unlike Saddam's secular Baathist socialism) really does
have widespread regional appeal. As a consequence of our
Iraqi-phobic policy, it was only natural for the US to
promote a rapprochement with our old enemy, Iran.
The Clinton administration pursued this policy relentlessly,
going so far as to openly back Iranian "moderates"
you know, the ones who only want to stone heretics and
other impure elements to death, instead of holding televised
beheadings. Now the Iranians have turned on us, and sought
an alliance with the Russians, while the US is left high
and dry. As long as the Bush administration carries out
the failed policies of the past eight years in
Iraq, a policy that might be termed "demonize and pulverize;
alternately demonizing Saddam and pulverizing his suffering
subjects the judgment of history, when it comes
to our policy in the region, is likely to be harsh.
The
Americas
The
natural economic and political interests of the US are
hemispheric, and the peoples of the Americas have certain
values and concerns in common. One is an aversion to foreign
intervention and colonial domination, and another is a
common heritage of revolutionary struggle against a European
occupier. But history also reveals an ambiguous relationship
between north and south, with the former often intervening
in the affairs of the latter much as the Spaniards once
dominated and plundered the region. This history of commonality
and conflict colors our relations with nations south of
the border, and nothing really exemplifies this better
than our sorely troubled relationship with Mexico.
The
bleeding border The biggest threat to
US national security is not to be found in the Middle
East, or Russia, or China, but along our extensive
and volatile border with Mexico. A condition of
low-level warfare has existed all along the Rio
Grande for years, and the flow of illegal immigration
pouring over that porous border is greatly facilitated
by the Mexican government, which is more than happy
to be rid of its excess population. The border states
have been literally overrun with illegal immigrants,
and the boundary between the two countries is, today,
essentially a fiction one which newly-elected
President Vicente Fox would like to erase. This
represents a threat to the sovereignty of the US
especially now that Mexico is offering American
residents the option of exercising dual citizenship.
Colombia:
The Next Vietnam? The "drug war" now being
conducted in Colombia, and first presented by the Clinton
administration under the rubric of "Plan Colombia,"
has been renamed (the 'Andean Initiative') and relaunched
with no more prospect of success than the original.
What we are faced with in Colombia is a three-sided
civil war that is much more than a simple black-and-white
struggle between the Colombian government and the "drug
lords." No amount of aid, either economic or military,
can win a war against a hundred years of ignorance,
grinding poverty, and the kind of desperation Americans
cannot even imagine. The Colombian civil war has been
going on virtually since that nation's inception, long
before the drug culture infected Colombian society:
the drug business has merely exacerbated it, and drawn
the attention of the regional hegemon. A "drug war"
in Colombia is a futile crusade, one that will eventually
drag in US troops as "advisors," and then combatants,
and, finally, as casualties. Here's another quagmire
that we ought to be out of.
Cuba
after Castro The survival of Cuban communism
is due almost entirely to the policies that harden the
hearts of the people against the obvious advantages
of liberty. Castro's legitimacy and that of his regime
is derived almost entirely from his successful standoff
against the Americans, who have been trying to kill
him for what seems like the past hundred years. If Communist
party rule survives Fidel's death, it will be because
the US refuses to let Cuba itself weave the bonds that
would otherwise bind the tiny island to the mainland
with countless threads of economic, familial, and emotional
ties. Here, once again, we see the boomerang effect
of US foreign policy in full operation: the seeming
anomaly of US policy achieving the exact opposite of
its ostensible objective.
Puerto
Rico Libre The American empire has never
been about outright conquest or so we are told, and
that is true in the modern version, where the procedure
is to set up protectorates, usually under some properly
internationalized rubric, such as NATO or the UN. But
we still retain the remnants of the colonial empire
we began to acquire around the turn of the century,
and while Cuba escaped colonial status, along with the
Philippines (although not without a long and bloody
struggle in the case of the latter), Puerto Rico was
diverted into America's imperial orbit. Neither a state,
nor exactly a colonial possession, Puerto Rico is in
a legal and political limbo. It is high time to resolve
its status, and either admit it as a state, or else
wish Puerto Rico godspeed and grant the island its independence.
Most of the opposition to this solution to Puerto Rico's
continuing status as a political and economic dependency
comes from within Puerto Rico itself, and from the Democratic
Party in the US, which hopes to herd Puerto Rican voters
to the polls in defense of generous welfare benefits
and other subsidies. But why limit the choice of a colonial
overlord to a single country, namely the US? If it's
dependency they want, then why not apply for admission
to once again become a province of Spain? They, after
all, have a socialist government, one that will no doubt
be more than glad to extend the benefits of their system
to their former subjects. As for American Samoa, and
all the rest of our island territories in the Pacific:
as our "forward stance" in the Pacific becomes a thing
of the past, the dismantling of a network of military
bases that has turned the Pacific into an American lake
will put an end to the dangerous overextension of American
power.
Foreign
policy and the Constitution
The
Legacy of Empire The words of the conservative
writer Garet Garrett ring down through the years, prescient
and more relevant than when they were published in 1950:
"Between government in the republican meaning, that
is, Constitutional, representative, limited government,
on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there
is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or
one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never
has the choice been put to a vote of the people." This
is the essential insight that stands at the heart of
conservative opposition to interventionism and globalism:
that we cannot station our centurions from Okinawa to
Oman, subsidize our satraps and satisfy the transnational
corporate entities that build the physical infrastructure
of Empire, and yet still remain faithful to the conservative
idea that government power must be severely limited.
A power that girdles the globe, and polices the planet
one that wages war on a perpetual basis,
all in the name of "peace" must necessarily burst
forth from its constitutional constraints. Indeed, such
a power can know no constraints, and is inherently dangerous
especially to those who wield it. They will,
in the end, find themselves transformed: once the citizens
of a relatively young and eternally vital republic,
Americans will wake up one day to find themselves the
subjects of a worldwide imperium, hailing the next Caesar
as he returns home in triumph at the head of his centurions,
and forgetting that their forefathers rose in rebellion
against a British king. The temptation of Empire is
fatal to any republic that falls for its lure.
Peace
versus the two-party system
Reformulating
US foreign policy The foreign policy issue
never came to the fore in the last presidential campaign,
because the two "major" candidates agreed in principle,
if not in every particular, all rhetoric aside. What
is clear is that the Republicans found it necessary
to reassure the growing numbers of their noninterventionist
wing that Bush, if elected, would ratchet down American
hyperactivity on the foreign policy front. Instead,
what has happened is that most of the same old policies
endless meddling, mostly on behalf of US corporate
and domestic political interests remain in place.
US foreign policy in the post-cold war era requires
a bottom-up, top-down, all-around review, from basic
premises to specific policy objectives and what
is clear, even at this early stage of the Bush administration,
is that the Republicans are no more capable of this
than were the Democrats. This task awaits the emergence
of new leadership one that is more than likely
to arise completely outside the old politics, as part
of a more general reform movement that topples the two-party
monopoly.
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