Paper Tiger on the prowl.
Imperialism
will not last long because it always does evil things. It persists in grooming
and supporting reactionaries in all countries who are against the people, it
has forcibly seized many colonies and semi-colonies and many military bases,
and it threatens the peace with atomic war. Thus, forced by imperialism to do
so, more than 90 per cent of the people of the world are rising or will rise in
struggle against it.
Mao Tse Tung: (
The world has changed profoundly since the 1950s, and that
change is accelerating: yet when it comes to the diminishing imperial power of
the last superpower not many people noticed, until recently, just how low this
mighty power has fallen. Now quite a few
are noticing; but they are more often than not supporters seeking to arrest the
trend and not left-wingers delighted at the progress.
Take this example;
‘Bush and Cheney have done more than merely
bungle a war and damage the Army. They have destroyed the foundation of the
post-Cold War world security system, which was the accepted authority of
American military power. That reputation is now gone. It cannot be restored
simply by retreating from
From this point of view, the fuss over
whether we were misled into war—Is the sky blue? Is the grass green?—stands in
the way of a deeper debate that should start quite soon and ask this question:
Now that Bush and Cheney have screwed up the only successful known model for
world security under our leadership, what
the devil do we do?’
James K. Galbraith teaches economics at the
Galbraith is quite genuine he does
not know what to do and he is not alone; the old foreign policy establishment warriors
are all in spin. People like Madeline
Albright are being ignored and they are not happy at all. They viscerally know that the result of
applying the Bush policy for eight years is the destruction of their carefully
constructed old world of ‘measured steps’ towards democracy in the
The game is now up for the old US as
it was for the British and French 50years ago when the
The US ruling elite (now looking every bit as doddery as Anthony Eden) are now realizing that there will be nothing left of the old policy position to even hope to rebuild from if the next President follows the same path; so a ‘mighty battle’ over who is to be President next is unfolding. But I think it’s even worse than the old crowd imagines. I think it doesn’t matter who is elected.
It seems that Jupiter had no impulse of compassion when he crammed into Bush’s
box all the problems that afflict the poor old imperialists; the box is open
and they are out. Opening the box a
second time, won’t release the hope, sought by this discredited bunch of policy
failures. Hope was in Pandora’s Box.
‘What the devil do we do?’ Go back to school that’s what.
War is the best school that the people attend, and the
deaths of young soldiers make them first rate students. Indeed the modern
Nowadays, as a consequence, ruling elites, are kept on a fairly firm leash – by members of the ruling class itself - lest the lot of them, are done away with by an enraged populace many of whom have been already educated by earlier struggle. The case for any war these days has got to be well made.
The case for the liberation of
Qaeda by destroying the Taliban in
9/11 let loose the leash and surprising results have happened. When the Bush administration was forced by
this attack to wield its political, diplomatic and military power in a strategic
manner, the credibility of the ruling elite was stretched to breaking
point. They were forced to adopt a
strategy that required a profound understanding of how the world works. Yet
they could not shout this strategy to the world lest the Congress prevent the
war or perhaps the people took some lesson and developed things further.
The Bush administration has found the going very tough despite
the fact that in
They went into the war in
But three years later, the Administration’s credibility is in tatters. It would be just
‘spin’ to suggest that they have now built up support for a revolutionary war
of intervention - rather than having lost support for a war that they had always
maintained was to liberate the people of Iraq.
The Bush Administration is now both coping with the changes that have been
building for the last 40 years, and demonstrating in the manner of its coping, that
those changes have really happened.
They are in retreat but managing their retreat far better
than the
In contrast , the US has managed to disguise its retreat by
voluntarily reversing its previous approach while at the same time attempting to fool the world into believing
that was sort of its intention all along - even when it ‘made mistakes’. Not many in
the international community are buying the spin. But it plays very well at
home.
The
For the past 3 years we have been saying on LastSuperpower that 60 years after WW2 and having run out of all other options, the Bush team are stuck with promoting
bourgeois democracy as their only remaining
policy option.
The fact that this is now the only policy they could follow - because any other policy would be more dangerous to their class - is still not widely understood by most people who think of themselves as progressives or “on the left”.
Of course ever since WW2, the
Communists understand that eventually democracy will open the door to communism,
and this is also in a certain sense understood by some of the old style
Old scoundrels like Madeline Albright remind me of the even sillier old Soviet Generals.
One only has to remember the absolute farce of the coup by these Soviet
Generals, to get the point that by that time, the issues had ripened far beyond
their control and they looked ridiculous. After 9/11, there was no other choice really
available to Bush - just as there was no real choice available to Gorbechev
once things had reached the point where reform was required to prevent a complete
breakdown. Glastnost and Perestroika were the desperate last policy choice
after all the rest had been tried and failed
Most people who don’t have a clue about what is happening now are far too “sophisticated”.
As Arthur said; Indeed many supporters of Bush (and all opponents), took it for
granted that when using the terms “liberation” or “democratic government” what
Bush actually meant was simply the installation of a government more "congenial"
to the US. They didn’t take Bush to be
embarking on a course of action in which the Iraqi people would be free to
choose their own government even if such a government was likely not to be particularly congenial to the
Now that the
The French and the Germans and all the rest have no chance other than to tag
along with the new policies as implemented by the
Future wannabe powers like
Until people understand that there was never even a vague possibility of the
Coalition installing any form of puppet regime in
Contrary to all the face-saving posturing and breast-beating
coming from Bush et al, imperialism is in deep decay. Realizing this is the key to grasping what is
going on in the world today.
In
be no going back, because no one would have the military capacity to put humpty
together again. Nobody!
As for reversing US policy directions again; the contest for who is to be the
next US president is to be fought within the ranks of the establishment over
just this wider policy issue and it seems to me to be the logic of a Tweedledum
and Tweedledee system in its dotage that either party could put up either type
of candidate or any possible combination.
The result (if a return to the old policies candidate gets up) could only be to
slow down the issue of this strategic retreat, because it can’t be undone, and
that’s because it is now a process that is internal to the region; a region
that is already free from being dictated to and having puppets installed.
So the direct
Either way, the autocracies cannot hold out for very many years, once substantial
progress has been made in
But in my opinion, Bush won’t deliver very much more on the second front,
My prediction is that the US will want to keep up sufficient pressure to get
the withdrawal back to the Israeli apartheid wall and that they show that the
wall is not final, by getting a few of it’s most shocking incursions undone and
having it repositioned in these instances on the green line.
With deliberate foot dragging there are more than enough settlers for the
Israeli government to pull out and settlements to hand over during this period,
just to get them back to their rotten wall, that the real issues will be
delayed that long.
After the Israeli elections there will be some very extensive pull outs of West
Bank settlements unfolded bit by bit, as the Israeli Government takes
unilateral measures to ‘impose a peace’.
The
If the Israeli government delays these last inevitable further pullouts they
would be running the clock down on Bush, hoping to see a reversal or softening
from the next administration, and Bush would be demonstrating further weakness
and not any Lincolnesque pacing if at the end of his Presidency he hasn’t moved
the process this far.
There are several orderly retreats in simultaneous progress in this period and
all conflict with timing requirements. The
leaves.
In my view, the
True, the most stunningly provocative settlements, like in
However when one looks at the maps of the wall and the various settlements
there are some areas that I would have expected to have been addressed in order
to show others good intent. This shows a poor leadership unable to walk and
chew gum. An alternative is that because everything is connected to everything
it has to be all tackled at once
but I don’t buy that.
I accept that any ruling elite making a retreat of this magnitude would not
want it to appear as a defeat in the eyes of their own people or globally and
that this is a very big issue for them. So naturally they have to change the
perception of what the war aims have been.
The war for greater Israel is in tatters but peace is not to come from an
Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank but rather from an ending of terrorism
and the Zionists have to be made to wear the defeat as the US forces them to
take the last steps, so that it looks like the US achieved its forty year goal
of establishing a Palestinian state!
Looked at from the Israeli side, even they have to keep the most offensive
settlements for now in order to convince their public that there really is no
alternative but to abandon the whole failed Zionist dream.
But this thinking only goes so far.
Once public opinion has been created the steps have to be taken, and delays in
one region affect issues in another so the period after the Israeli elections
is crucial to determining just how good the Bush team are at applying the new
policies.
The