How the US Became the World’s Dispensable Nation

A decade ago, American triumphalists mocked those who argued that the world was becoming multipolar, rather than unipolar. Where was the evidence of balancing against the US, they asked. Today the evidence of foreign co-operation to reduce American primacy is everywhere — from the increasing importance of regional trade blocs that exclude the US to international space projects and military exercises in which the US is conspicuous by its absence.

It is true that the US remains the only country capable of projecting military power throughout the world. But unipolarity in the military sphere, narrowly defined, is not preventing the rapid development of multipolarity in the geopolitical and economic arenas — far from it. And the other great powers are content to let the US waste blood and treasure on its doomed attempt to recreate the post-first world war British imperium in the Middle East.

That the rest of the world is building institutions and alliances that shut out the US should come as no surprise. The view that American leaders can be trusted to use a monopoly of military and economic power for the good of humanity has never been widely shared outside of the US. The trend toward multipolarity has probably been accelerated by the truculent unilateralism of the Bush administration, whose motto seems to be that of the Hollywood mogul: “Include me out.”

Michael Lind, Financial Times | read more |

January 27th, 2005 || PermaLink

End-Timers & Neo-Cons

The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals’ abiding faith in government. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person’s civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof. Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.

There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.

American liberals called the Brownshirts “conservative,” because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts’ delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.

Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a “strategic blunder.”

It is amazing that only a short time ago the Bush administration and its supporters believed that all the US had to do was to appear in Iraq and we would be greeted with flowers. Has there ever been a greater example of delusion? Isn’t this on a par with the Children’s Crusade against the Saracens in the Middle Ages?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, ZNet | read more |

January 26th, 2005 || PermaLink

The New Bush Doctrine

To explain what is wrong with the new Bush doctrine, I have to invoke the concept of open society. That is the concept that guides me in my efforts to foster freedom around the world. The work has been carried out through foundations operating on the ground and led by citizens who understand the limits of the possible in their countries. Occasionally, when a repressive regime expels our foundation–as happened in Belarus and Uzbekistan–we operate from the outside.

Paradoxically, the most successful open society in the world, the United States, does not properly understand the first principles of an open society; indeed, its current leadership actively disavows them. The concept of open society is based on the recognition that nobody possesses the ultimate truth. To claim otherwise leads to repression. In short, we may be wrong.

That is precisely the possibility that Bush refuses to acknowledge, and his denial appeals to a significant segment of the American public. An equally significant segment is appalled. This has left the United States not only deeply divided, but also at loggerheads with much of the rest of the world, which considers our policies high-handed and arbitrary.

President Bush regards his re-election as an endorsement of his policies, and feels reinforced in his distorted view of the world. The “accountability moment” has passed, he claims, and he is ready to confront tyranny throughout the world according to his own lights.

But the critical process that is at the core of an open society–which the United States abandoned for 18 months after 9/11–cannot be forsaken. That absence of self-criticism is what led America into the Iraq quagmire.

George Soros, CommonDreams | read more |

January 26th, 2005 || PermaLink

Bush’s Widening Credibility Gap

Instead of flamboyantly—almost childishly—summoning divine inspiration for an American global ‘calling’, as Bush did in his speech, the United States would do better to craft practical foreign policies that are consistent, undiscriminating and based on working with like-minded partners around the world.

Middle Easterners and people around the world would jump over each other to work with the United States to promote freedom and democracy—but only if Washington’s policies sought such goals consistently, in all lands, for all peoples, without whimsy or exceptions. The United States should not merely affirm that freedom is indivisible; it should implement a foreign policy that gives life to that belief. In recent years, Washington has been too willing to support dictators and occupying powers for its sudden calls for freedom everywhere to be taken seriously. That is why Bush will hear a great deal of skepticism from around the Middle East—and other parts of the world—in the next few days. The gap between the rhetoric and the policy is simply too wide, and has been for many, many years.

Rami G. Khouri, TomPaine.com | read more |

January 25th, 2005 || PermaLink

What Could Go Wrong in 2005?

In his 1849 novel, Les Guepes, Alphonse Karr penned the classic line: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” In the case of the United States in 2005, however, the opposite might be true: The more things stay the same, the more they are likely to change…for the worse. In that regard, compiling a list of potential threats to the U.S. this year has a strangely déjà-vu-all-over-again feeling. After all, such a list would represent nothing more than a longstanding catalogue of economic policy-making run amok. Virtually the same list could have been drawn up in 2004, or 2003, or previous years.

Such threats would include: a persistent and increasing resort to debt-financed growth and a concomitant, growing imbalance in the trade deficit, leading the U.S. ever further into financial dependency and so leaving it dangerously indebted to rival nations, which could (at least theoretically) pull the plug at any time. This, in turn, is occurring against the backdrop of an increasingly problematic, Vietnam-style quagmire in Iraq, against imperial overstretch, and against a related ongoing crisis in energy prices, itself spurring an ever more frantic competition for energy security, which will surely intensify existing global and regional rivalries.

Just as a haystack soaked in kerosene will appear relatively benign until somebody strikes a match; so too, although America’s longstanding economic problems have not yet led to financial Armageddon, this in no way invalidates the threat ultimately posed. For economy watchers in 2005, the key, of course, is to imagine which event (or combination of them) might represent the match that could set this “haystack” alight – if there is indeed one “event” which has the capability of precipitating the bursting of a historically unprecedented credit bubble.

The odd thing about credit bubbles is that they have no determined resolution, nor is there anything about such a dynamic that specifies the path by which it will be reversed; nor is there some specific level of financial excess guaranteed to eventually put an end to it. The beginning of that end could potentially be set off at any level at any time. Nevertheless, it is possible to sketch out several scenarios which could conceivably, in the eleven months left to 2005, trigger such a reversal or even something approaching economic collapse.

Marshall Auerback, Tomdispatch.com | read more |

January 24th, 2005 || PermaLink

Talking Back To Bush

Below is my running commentary on Bush’s inaugural speech. Too bad heckling the president is a federal crime.

….We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

And have you notified the leaders of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China and Uzbekistan that you’re going to make bringing liberty and freedom to their lands the number-one national security priority for your administration?

America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government.

Is that why we overthrew democratic governments in Iran and Chile and cozied up to the racist regime in South Africa? for years.

David Corn, The Nation | read more |

January 23rd, 2005 || PermaLink

Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home

We must withdraw our military from Iraq, the sooner the better. The reason is simple: Our presence there is a disaster for the American people and an even bigger disaster for the Iraqi people.

It is a strange logic to declare, as so many in Washington do, that it was wrong for us to invade Iraq but right for us to remain. A recent New York Times editorial sums up the situation accurately: “Some 21 months after the American invasion, United States military forces remain essentially alone in battling what seems to be a growing insurgency, with no clear prospect of decisive success any time in the foreseeable future.”

And then, in an extraordinary non sequitur: “Given the lack of other countries willing to put up their hands as volunteers, the only answer seems to be more American troops, and not just through the spring, as currently planned. . . . Forces need to be expanded through stepped-up recruitment.”

Here is the flawed logic: We are alone in the world in this invasion. The insurgency is growing. There is no visible prospect of success. Therefore, let’s send more troops? The definition of fanaticism is that when you discover that you are going in the wrong direction, you redouble your speed.

Howard Zinn, Miami Herald | read more |