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The
logic of empire: US a threat to the rest of the world
The US is now a threat
to the rest of the world. The sensible response is non-cooperation.
George Monbiot
Tuesday August 6, 2002
The Guardian
There is something
almost comical about the prospect of George Bush waging war on another
nation because that nation has defied international law. Since Bush came
to office, the United States government has torn up more international
treaties and disregarded more UN conventions than the rest of the world
has in 20 years.
It has scuppered the biological weapons convention while
experimenting, illegally, with biological weapons of its own. It has
refused to grant chemical weapons inspectors full access to its
laboratories, and has destroyed attempts to launch chemical inspections
in Iraq. It has ripped up the anti-ballistic missile treaty, and appears
to be ready to violate the nuclear test ban treaty. It has permitted CIA
hit squads to recommence covert operations of the kind that included, in
the past, the assassination of foreign heads of state. It has sabotaged
the small arms treaty, undermined the international criminal court,
refused to sign the climate change protocol and, last month, sought to
immobilise the UN convention against torture so that it could keep
foreign observers out of its prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. Even its
preparedness to go to war with Iraq without a mandate from the UN
security council is a defiance of international law far graver than
Saddam Hussein's non-compliance with UN weapons inspectors.
But the US government's declaration of impending war has, in truth,
nothing to do with weapons inspections. On Saturday John Bolton, the US
official charged, hilariously, with "arms control", told the
Today programme that "our policy ... insists on regime change in
Baghdad and that policy will not be altered, whether inspectors go in or
not". The US government's justification for whupping Saddam has now
changed twice. At first, Iraq was named as a potential target because it
was "assisting al-Qaida". This turned out to be untrue. Then
the US government claimed that Iraq had to be attacked because it could
be developing weapons of mass destruction, and was refusing to allow the
weapons inspectors to find out if this were so. Now, as the promised
evidence has failed to materialise, the weapons issue has been dropped.
The new reason for war is Saddam Hussein's very existence. This, at
least, has the advantage of being verifiable. It should surely be
obvious by now that the decision to wage war on Iraq came first, and the
justification later.
Other than the age-old issue of oil supply, this is a war without
strategic purpose. The US government is not afraid of Saddam Hussein,
however hard it tries to scare its own people. There is no evidence that
Iraq is sponsoring terrorism against America. Saddam is well aware that
if he attacks another nation with weapons of mass destruction, he can
expect to be nuked. He presents no more of a threat to the world now
than he has done for the past 10 years.
But the US government has several pressing domestic reasons for going
to war. The first is that attacking Iraq gives the impression that the
flagging "war on terror" is going somewhere. The second is
that the people of all super-dominant nations love war. As Bush found in
Afghanistan, whacking foreigners wins votes. Allied to this concern is
the need to distract attention from the financial scandals in which both
the president and vice-president are enmeshed. Already, in this respect,
the impending war seems to be working rather well.
The United States also possesses a vast military-industrial complex
that is in constant need of conflict in order to justify its
staggeringly expensive existence. Perhaps more importantly than any of
these factors, the hawks who control the White House perceive that
perpetual war results in the perpetual demand for their services. And
there is scarcely a better formula for perpetual war, with both
terrorists and other Arab nations, than the invasion of Iraq. The hawks
know that they will win, whoever loses. In other words, if the US were
not preparing to attack Iraq, it would be preparing to attack another
nation. The US will go to war with that country because it needs a
country with which to go to war.
Tony Blair also has several pressing reasons for supporting an
invasion. By appeasing George Bush, he placates Britain's rightwing
press. Standing on Bush's shoulders, he can assert a claim to global
leadership more credible than that of other European leaders, while
defending Britain's anomalous position as a permanent member of the UN
security council. Within Europe, his relationship with the president
grants him the eminent role of broker and interpreter of power.
By invoking the "special relationship", Blair also avoids
the greatest challenge any prime minister has faced since the second
world war. This challenge is to recognise and act upon the conclusion of
any objective analysis of global power: namely that the greatest threat
to world peace is not Saddam Hussein, but George Bush. The nation that
in the past has been our firmest friend is becoming instead our foremost
enemy.
As the US government discovers that it can threaten and attack other
nations with impunity, it will surely soon begin to threaten countries
that have numbered among its allies. As its insatiable demand for
resources prompts ever bolder colonial adventures, it will come to
interfere directly with the strategic interests of other quasi-imperial
states. As it refuses to take responsibility for the consequences of the
use of those resources, it threatens the rest of the world with
environmental disaster. It has become openly contemptuous of other
governments and prepared to dispose of any treaty or agreement that
impedes its strategic objectives. It is starting to construct a new
generation of nuclear weapons, and appears to be ready to use them pre-emptively.
It could be about to ignite an inferno in the Middle East, into which
the rest of the world would be sucked.
The United States, in other words, behaves like any other imperial
power. Imperial powers expand their empires until they meet with
overwhelming resistance.
For Britain to abandon the special relationship would be to accept
that this is happening. To accept that the US presents a danger to the
rest of the world would be to acknowledge the need to resist it.
Resisting the United States would be the most daring reversal of policy
a British government has undertaken for over 60 years.
We can resist the US neither by military nor economic means, but we
can resist it diplomatically. The only safe and sensible response to
American power is a policy of non-cooperation. Britain and the rest of
Europe should impede, at the diplomatic level, all US attempts to act
unilaterally. We should launch independent efforts to resolve the Iraq
crisis and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. And we should
cross our fingers and hope that a combination of economic mismanagement,
gangster capitalism and excessive military spending will reduce
America's power to the extent that it ceases to use the rest of the
world as its doormat. Only when the US can accept its role as a nation
whose interests must be balanced with those of all other nations can we
resume a friendship that was once, if briefly, founded upon the
principles of justice.
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