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Former British Defence Minister: Defending ourselves from American Imperialism
Peter Kilfoyle: Only a united Europe can counterbalance an increasingly paranoid and hawkish America
Defending ourselves
Monday September 23, 2002
The Guardian
In ancient Rome, the statesman Cato the Elder was renowned for declaiming, at the end of every speech, that "Carthage must be destroyed", referring to Rome's long-standing enemy. It is perhaps appropriate, therefore, that one of the rightwing thinktanks in the US should be called the Cato Institute - except that the ultra-right of American politics sees enemies everywhere.
The thinking of these ideologues is alien to most of us. So extreme is one of their number, Paul Wolfowitz, that it is said that the description "hawk" does not do him justice ("What about velociraptor?" one of his former colleagues once remarked). Yet this world is cosily comfortable for its inhabitants. They speak to each other and for each other, and their websites are seamlessly linked.
If, for example, one accesses the website of the National Institute for Public Policy - largely responsible for the current posture whereby the US is ready to attack non-nuclear nations with nuclear weapons - better known organisations like the Heritage Foundation appear, together with an eclectic collection of bodies, from the Korean Central News Agency, the Government of Pakistan and the US Department of Defence's Missile Defence Agency (for which the institute works).
Possibly the strangest pair of these factories of paranoia are the Centre for Security Policy, and the Project for the New American Century. The former is run by the ultra-hawk Frank J Gaffney. He calls UN inspections in Iraq "harebrained" and is very well-connected in Washington.
Back in 1997 Gaffney was cosignatory of the principles of PNAC, along with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby (all senior officials to President Bush), together with Jeb Bush, brother of the president and famed for his dimpled chads. It was this organisation that wrote to President Bush last Friday saying: "Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply with [our demands], the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism." War without end.
What does the PNAC stand for? Four things: increased defence spending; challenging regimes "hostile to our interests and values"; the promotion of "political and economic freedom"; and America's need to keep the world "friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles". In short, they wish to impose an imperialist Pax Americana on the world.
The links and ideas among the far right are well-embedded in the current administration. Those links are both personal and ideological, and heavily influence American government policy. They are closely tied in, too, with the defence industry, oil interests, hawkish Israel supporters and the fundamentalist Christian right.
Its current manifestation is the bellicose demand for a military solution to the problem of Saddam Hussein. Many around the world breathed a sigh of relief when President Bush went to the UN recently, unaware that the approach was merely a tactic. This administration and its leading lights have been consistently hostile to the UN; and they quickly made clear after Bush's address that, UN mandate or not, they will take out Saddam. This can hardly have comforted the British government, which switched under the pressure of public opinion to the inspections option, only to find it blocked by American determination to effect regime change.
The ramifications of this hardline American policy on the US relationship with the world are huge. First, no one can doubt in the short term America's ability to enforce its will on much of the globe. Indeed, its defence document Joint Vision 2020 explicitly states: "The label 'full spectrum dominance' implies that US forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained and synchronised operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations, and with access to and freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air and information." It clearly intends total military domination - including missile defence - to effect such a strategy.
The present administration also has the will to pursue such a course. It is both unilateral and isolationist, and will act in America's immediate national interest, regardless of international opinion and convention. Thus, the administration has unilaterally rejected Kyoto, the international criminal court, the ABM treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, World Trade Organisation provisions and many more - all in favour of narrow American interests. It openly despises any restraint on its autonomy.
For international organisations, this "might is right" approach is disastrous. What value is the UN when the world's only superpower treats it with open contempt? What of the EU, derided as "wimps"? What of the WTO, portrayed as a one-way street to American advantage? What of Nato, wherein national armies are seen as subordinate to American control and whim?
Here in the UK, we are in a substantially worse predicament. Successive governments have deluded themselves that we have a "special relationship" with the US - special only in so far as we tend to fall in with every crazed administration notion, and ask for nothing in return. We end up as America's handrag, with diminished credibility within Europe and facing increased hostility across the globe. Is this in the British national interest? I fear not.
A unipolar world is a dangerous place. It is like standing on one leg - one is far more liable to lose balance than when one is standing on two, or even four legs. Increasingly, it is clear that there needs to be an effective counterbalance to this over-powering American hegemony, best illustrated by the tragedy of Palestine. Here, the EU invested large amounts in the civilian infrastructure of the embryonic Palestinian Authority. Along came the Israeli government, using massive American military aid, and with tacit American approval, to destroy that peace-building capacity. Where is the sense, or the justice, in that? Is British and European opinion of no account?
The time has surely come for the UK government, along with its European partners, to have the courage, within the restraints of realpolitik, to reassess its foreign policy priorities in line with our national interests and these new realities. Do those interests lie with those with whom we do our trade? Do we have more to gain in a strengthened relationship with Europe? Are we to be Europe's heartland or America's frontline? As we approach a heightening of the debate on the euro, it would be appropriate to widen that debate to include a full consideration of our community of interest with our European partners in a world overshadowed by the rampant hawks in Washington. As recent events have shown, a truly independent common defence and security policy for the EU is long overdue.
· Peter Kilfoyle is MP for Liverpool Walton and a former defence minister (1999-2000)
kilfoylep [at] parliament.uk
Monday September 23, 2002
The Guardian
In ancient Rome, the statesman Cato the Elder was renowned for declaiming, at the end of every speech, that "Carthage must be destroyed", referring to Rome's long-standing enemy. It is perhaps appropriate, therefore, that one of the rightwing thinktanks in the US should be called the Cato Institute - except that the ultra-right of American politics sees enemies everywhere.
The thinking of these ideologues is alien to most of us. So extreme is one of their number, Paul Wolfowitz, that it is said that the description "hawk" does not do him justice ("What about velociraptor?" one of his former colleagues once remarked). Yet this world is cosily comfortable for its inhabitants. They speak to each other and for each other, and their websites are seamlessly linked.
If, for example, one accesses the website of the National Institute for Public Policy - largely responsible for the current posture whereby the US is ready to attack non-nuclear nations with nuclear weapons - better known organisations like the Heritage Foundation appear, together with an eclectic collection of bodies, from the Korean Central News Agency, the Government of Pakistan and the US Department of Defence's Missile Defence Agency (for which the institute works).
Possibly the strangest pair of these factories of paranoia are the Centre for Security Policy, and the Project for the New American Century. The former is run by the ultra-hawk Frank J Gaffney. He calls UN inspections in Iraq "harebrained" and is very well-connected in Washington.
Back in 1997 Gaffney was cosignatory of the principles of PNAC, along with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby (all senior officials to President Bush), together with Jeb Bush, brother of the president and famed for his dimpled chads. It was this organisation that wrote to President Bush last Friday saying: "Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply with [our demands], the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism." War without end.
What does the PNAC stand for? Four things: increased defence spending; challenging regimes "hostile to our interests and values"; the promotion of "political and economic freedom"; and America's need to keep the world "friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles". In short, they wish to impose an imperialist Pax Americana on the world.
The links and ideas among the far right are well-embedded in the current administration. Those links are both personal and ideological, and heavily influence American government policy. They are closely tied in, too, with the defence industry, oil interests, hawkish Israel supporters and the fundamentalist Christian right.
Its current manifestation is the bellicose demand for a military solution to the problem of Saddam Hussein. Many around the world breathed a sigh of relief when President Bush went to the UN recently, unaware that the approach was merely a tactic. This administration and its leading lights have been consistently hostile to the UN; and they quickly made clear after Bush's address that, UN mandate or not, they will take out Saddam. This can hardly have comforted the British government, which switched under the pressure of public opinion to the inspections option, only to find it blocked by American determination to effect regime change.
The ramifications of this hardline American policy on the US relationship with the world are huge. First, no one can doubt in the short term America's ability to enforce its will on much of the globe. Indeed, its defence document Joint Vision 2020 explicitly states: "The label 'full spectrum dominance' implies that US forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained and synchronised operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations, and with access to and freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air and information." It clearly intends total military domination - including missile defence - to effect such a strategy.
The present administration also has the will to pursue such a course. It is both unilateral and isolationist, and will act in America's immediate national interest, regardless of international opinion and convention. Thus, the administration has unilaterally rejected Kyoto, the international criminal court, the ABM treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, World Trade Organisation provisions and many more - all in favour of narrow American interests. It openly despises any restraint on its autonomy.
For international organisations, this "might is right" approach is disastrous. What value is the UN when the world's only superpower treats it with open contempt? What of the EU, derided as "wimps"? What of the WTO, portrayed as a one-way street to American advantage? What of Nato, wherein national armies are seen as subordinate to American control and whim?
Here in the UK, we are in a substantially worse predicament. Successive governments have deluded themselves that we have a "special relationship" with the US - special only in so far as we tend to fall in with every crazed administration notion, and ask for nothing in return. We end up as America's handrag, with diminished credibility within Europe and facing increased hostility across the globe. Is this in the British national interest? I fear not.
A unipolar world is a dangerous place. It is like standing on one leg - one is far more liable to lose balance than when one is standing on two, or even four legs. Increasingly, it is clear that there needs to be an effective counterbalance to this over-powering American hegemony, best illustrated by the tragedy of Palestine. Here, the EU invested large amounts in the civilian infrastructure of the embryonic Palestinian Authority. Along came the Israeli government, using massive American military aid, and with tacit American approval, to destroy that peace-building capacity. Where is the sense, or the justice, in that? Is British and European opinion of no account?
The time has surely come for the UK government, along with its European partners, to have the courage, within the restraints of realpolitik, to reassess its foreign policy priorities in line with our national interests and these new realities. Do those interests lie with those with whom we do our trade? Do we have more to gain in a strengthened relationship with Europe? Are we to be Europe's heartland or America's frontline? As we approach a heightening of the debate on the euro, it would be appropriate to widen that debate to include a full consideration of our community of interest with our European partners in a world overshadowed by the rampant hawks in Washington. As recent events have shown, a truly independent common defence and security policy for the EU is long overdue.
· Peter Kilfoyle is MP for Liverpool Walton and a former defence minister (1999-2000)
kilfoylep [at] parliament.uk
For more information:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,276...
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Comments
(Hide Comments)
To Those On The "Right" Ensconced in Think Tanks-
NOTE:
what happened to rome and pax britannia will happen to pax america. just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, every day. you can count on it.
do you like playing with hornets nests? i can't hear you. is this what smart nations do?
do you like taking on responsiblities that will drag down this nation? biting off more than we can chew? running the entire world by force? is this what smart nations do?
is there really no way to insure america's security except by the domination of the entire world? is that how security works?
"if we can monitor and control everything, every damn square inch with our troops and sensors, then there will be nothing to be afraid of."
... but the very act of forcing and dominating causes groups and nations to rebel and get violent (just like we did, remember...), and so in response we, the U.E.A., get more violent and dominate even more, and it cycles upward, and soon everyone in the world turns against us, even the average man in the street, not just the radicals or the terrorists? does this sound like a smart strategy?
do you like playing with fire?
when you read the declaration of independence and the bill of rights, it's difficult to find imperial language in it. the fuel that created these documents, and that created the strongest nation on earth, was the idea of freedom and throwing off the repression of the british empire. these documents don't read like an imperial charter. now wouldn't it be sad if america became the new world empire and it too was crushed for the same reasons. history has lessons for america. but the "right" thinks america is special and the lessons don't apply...
so did britannia. so did rome.
what happened to the empire in star wars...
sorry folks, america isn't "the rebels" anymore. we got a little too big for our britches to play that role...
let's ask this question:
who needs this empire? if you ask somebody you know if they want america to become an empire, what would they say?
ahh, but if you ask a president or a chief executive, what would they say?
was this idea of world domination coming from the ground up, like some kind of popular movement? are people out there organizing saying "YES, we want the responsibility of controlling the world!"
no. people are out there trying to find jobs and make ends meet in a recession. the idea for The United Empire of America, the U.E.A., came from the top down. it came from the powerful men in tailored suits. it came from the wealthy men who need more markets to open up. it came from the "best minds" who are supposedly smarter than everyone else.
so if the world is slowly starting to hate us because we are acting imperial, is the answer then to just go ahead and become imperial? is that the ticket? fuck them, they're our bitches now. they can suck our dick and like it? does that make for friendly relationships?
does america need to be an empire?
it doesn't. america was never meant to control the world. our way of life doesn't need the burden. if we are smart, we'll turn this job offer down in a second.
NOTE:
what happened to rome and pax britannia will happen to pax america. just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, every day. you can count on it.
do you like playing with hornets nests? i can't hear you. is this what smart nations do?
do you like taking on responsiblities that will drag down this nation? biting off more than we can chew? running the entire world by force? is this what smart nations do?
is there really no way to insure america's security except by the domination of the entire world? is that how security works?
"if we can monitor and control everything, every damn square inch with our troops and sensors, then there will be nothing to be afraid of."
... but the very act of forcing and dominating causes groups and nations to rebel and get violent (just like we did, remember...), and so in response we, the U.E.A., get more violent and dominate even more, and it cycles upward, and soon everyone in the world turns against us, even the average man in the street, not just the radicals or the terrorists? does this sound like a smart strategy?
do you like playing with fire?
when you read the declaration of independence and the bill of rights, it's difficult to find imperial language in it. the fuel that created these documents, and that created the strongest nation on earth, was the idea of freedom and throwing off the repression of the british empire. these documents don't read like an imperial charter. now wouldn't it be sad if america became the new world empire and it too was crushed for the same reasons. history has lessons for america. but the "right" thinks america is special and the lessons don't apply...
so did britannia. so did rome.
what happened to the empire in star wars...
sorry folks, america isn't "the rebels" anymore. we got a little too big for our britches to play that role...
let's ask this question:
who needs this empire? if you ask somebody you know if they want america to become an empire, what would they say?
ahh, but if you ask a president or a chief executive, what would they say?
was this idea of world domination coming from the ground up, like some kind of popular movement? are people out there organizing saying "YES, we want the responsibility of controlling the world!"
no. people are out there trying to find jobs and make ends meet in a recession. the idea for The United Empire of America, the U.E.A., came from the top down. it came from the powerful men in tailored suits. it came from the wealthy men who need more markets to open up. it came from the "best minds" who are supposedly smarter than everyone else.
so if the world is slowly starting to hate us because we are acting imperial, is the answer then to just go ahead and become imperial? is that the ticket? fuck them, they're our bitches now. they can suck our dick and like it? does that make for friendly relationships?
does america need to be an empire?
it doesn't. america was never meant to control the world. our way of life doesn't need the burden. if we are smart, we'll turn this job offer down in a second.
Since when? I don't expect the USA to last forever.
"the ultra-right of American politics sees enemies everywhere."
Looking around this place, the left and anarchists hold the banner for seeing a bogey man around every corner.
"the ultra-right of American politics sees enemies everywhere."
Looking around this place, the left and anarchists hold the banner for seeing a bogey man around every corner.
"Looking around this place, the left and anarchists hold the banner for seeing a bogey man around every corner."
You mean the Bushladen bogey man? Or the BushHussein bogey man?
Or the new one - BushHitler?
The fact is, the left doesn't advocate dropping bombs for 'peace,' or cozying up to murders for a cause so that bombs have to fall 10 years from now.
Some bogeymen are real - what matters is what you do about it.
You mean the Bushladen bogey man? Or the BushHussein bogey man?
Or the new one - BushHitler?
The fact is, the left doesn't advocate dropping bombs for 'peace,' or cozying up to murders for a cause so that bombs have to fall 10 years from now.
Some bogeymen are real - what matters is what you do about it.
.... so this whole empire thing is cool with you, cause we won't be around much longer anyway. gee, i hadn't thought of that one... man we could really blow off some steam with that attitude couldn't we...
"we're goin' down, but before we go, we're gonna live like there's no tommorow. grab your good time girl, fella's. we're gonna be robbin' and stealin', fuckin' shit up, and nobody can stop us. you try n' touch us, we'll take you down too, fool..."
haa! that should have been the opening statement to the new strategic policy document. it says the same thing in plain english. what a world we live in...
"we're goin' down, but before we go, we're gonna live like there's no tommorow. grab your good time girl, fella's. we're gonna be robbin' and stealin', fuckin' shit up, and nobody can stop us. you try n' touch us, we'll take you down too, fool..."
haa! that should have been the opening statement to the new strategic policy document. it says the same thing in plain english. what a world we live in...
you dont see. and i have no desire to help you out to see.
it doesn't take an american empire to insure our safety. that's what i'm saying. the world's fate is not for us to decide. it's not a burden we need to have. if the world starts to hate us even more, because the plan we laid out for them is not what they wanted, then what have we accomplished? nothing. we've moved backward, in fact.
security begins in peace. but does peace begin because america killed all the bogeymen, launched wars in iraq, iran, cuba, north korea, and china, and forcibly set up shop in backyards accross the face of the earth, and told the world to like it, or else? are we helping the world, or are we helping ourselves...
security begins in peace. the kind of security the bush administration is creating is the kind in a pan-opticon prison under lockdown. it's just that the nations are not going peacefully to their numbered, color-coded cells, and hence the armed escorts, and all the problems of a prison riot waiting to happen.
never bite off more than you can chew...
security begins in peace. but does peace begin because america killed all the bogeymen, launched wars in iraq, iran, cuba, north korea, and china, and forcibly set up shop in backyards accross the face of the earth, and told the world to like it, or else? are we helping the world, or are we helping ourselves...
security begins in peace. the kind of security the bush administration is creating is the kind in a pan-opticon prison under lockdown. it's just that the nations are not going peacefully to their numbered, color-coded cells, and hence the armed escorts, and all the problems of a prison riot waiting to happen.
never bite off more than you can chew...
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