http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0808-06.htm
Published on Thursday,
August 8, 2002 in the Guardian of London
The Logic of Empire
The US is Now a Threat to the Rest of the World.
The Sensible Response is Non-Cooperation
by George Monbiot
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 immobilize 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 program 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 materialize, 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 recognize 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.
www.monbiot.com
© Guardian Newspapers
Limited 2002
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