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Wars and Empire

S >> Sam Vaknin >> Wars and Empire



(c) 2002, 2003 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.



Wars and Empire

1st EDITION

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.

Editing and Design:

Lidija Rangelovska

Lidija Rangelovska

A Narcissus Publications Imprint, Skopje 2003

First published by United Press International - UPI

Not for Sale! Non-commercial edition.

(c) 2002, 2003 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.

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Created by: LIDIJA RANGELOVSKA

REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA

C O N T E N T S

I. The Author

II. About "After the Rain"

Containing the United States

I. Why is American Hated

II. Containing the United States

The War in Afghanistan

I. Afghan Myths

II. Pakistan's Nice Little War

III. The Afghan Trip

On the Road to Iraq - Central and East Europe

I. EU and NATO - The Competing Alliances

II. The Euro-Atlantic Divide

III. Russia Straddles the Divide

IV. Russia's Stealth Diplomacy

V. Losing the Iraq War

VI. Germany's Rebellious Colonies

VII. The Disunited Nations

The War in Iraq - Coalition Building

I. The Economies of the Middle East

II. The Costs of Coalition Building

III. Is It All about Oil?

IV. The Axis of Oil

V. Saddam's One Thousand Nights

VI. Turkey's Losing Streak

VII. Turkey's Jewish Friend

VIII. Israel - The Next Target

IX. Oil for Food Program

X. Iraq's Middle Class

XI. Iraq's Revenant Sons

XII. Forgiving Iraq's Debts

XIII. Kosovo's Iraqi Lessons

XIV. The Iraqi and the Madman

XV. Just War or Just a War?

Why is America Hated?

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also Read:

To Give with Grace

The Sergeant and the Girl



It is hard to articulate, let alone justify hatred. It is, by
definition, irrational and one is immediately suspected of
intellectualizing that which is really visceral and counterfactual. It
is politically incorrect to hate, an insensitive and "primitive" "gut"
reaction. Hating is widely decried as counterproductive.

Collective hatred is reserved to "hate figures" designated by the media
and the elite and rendered obnoxious and abominable by ceaseless
indoctrination, often tinged with falsities. One hates a Hitler or a
bin Laden. One is exhorted in most Western media to merely disagree
with the United States, or to criticize Americans - but never to hate
them.

Mercifully, larges swathes of humanity - being less synthetic and fake
- are still prone to the unbridled expression of their emotions. One of
the most frequent and all-pervasive sentiments among them seems to be
anti-Americanism - a spectrum of reactions ranging from virulent
aversion, through intense dislike, to vocal derision.

The United States is one of the last remaining land empires. That it is
made the butt of opprobrium and odium is hardly surprising, or
unprecedented. Empires - Rome, the British, the Ottomans - were always
targeted by the disgruntled, the disenfranchised and the dispossessed
and by their self-appointed delegates, the intelligentsia.

Yet, even by historical standards, America seems to be provoking
blanket repulsion.

The Pew Research Center published last December a report titled "What
the World Thinks in 2002". "The World", was reduced by the pollsters to
44 countries and 38,000 interviewees. Two other surveys published last
year - by the German Marshall Fund and the Chicago Council on Foreign
Relations - largely supported Pew's findings.

The most startling and unambiguous revelation was the extent of
anti-American groundswell everywhere: among America's NATO allies, in
developing countries, Muslim nations and even in eastern Europe where
Americans, only a decade ago, were lionized as much-adulated
liberators.

"People around the world embrace things American and, at the same time,
decry U.S. influence on their societies. Similarly, pluralities in most
of the nations surveyed complain about American unilateralism."-
expounds the Pew report.

Yet, even this "embrace of things American" is ambiguous.

Violently "independent", inanely litigious and quarrelsome,
solipsistically provincial, and fatuously ignorant - this nation of
video clips and sound bites, the United States, is often perceived as
trying to impose its narcissistic pseudo-culture upon a world exhausted
by wars hot and cold and corrupted by vacuous materialism.

Recent accounting scandals, crumbling markets, political scams,
technological setbacks, and rising social tensions have revealed how
rotten and inherently contradictory the US edifice is and how concerned
are Americans with appearances rather than substance.

To religious fundamentalists, America is the Great Satan, a latter-day
Sodom and Gomorrah, a cesspool of immorality and spiritual decay. To
many European liberals, the United states is a throwback to darker ages
of religious zealotry, pernicious bigotry, virulent nationalism, and
the capricious misrule of the mighty.

According to most recent surveys by Gallup, MORI, the Council for
Secular Humanism, the US Census Bureau, and others - the vast majority
of Americans are chauvinistic, moralizing, bible-thumping,
cantankerous, and trigger-happy. About half of them believe that Satan
exists - not as a metaphor, but physically.

America has a record defense spending per head, a vertiginous rate of
incarceration, among the highest numbers of legal executions and
gun-related deaths. It is still engaged in atavistic debates about
abortion, the role of religion, and whether to teach the theory of
evolution.

According to a series of special feature articles in The Economist,
America is generally well-liked in Europe, but less so than before. It
is utterly detested by the Moslem street, even in "progressive" Arab
countries, such as Egypt and Jordan. Everyone - Europeans and Arabs,
Asians and Africans - thinks that "the spread of American ideas and
customs is a bad thing".

Admittedly, we typically devalue most that which we have formerly
idealized and idolized.

To the liberal-minded, the United States of America reified the most
noble, lofty, and worthy values, ideals, and causes. It was a dream in
the throes of becoming, a vision of liberty, peace, justice,
prosperity, and progress. Its system, though far from flawless, was
considered superior - both morally and functionally - to any ever
conceived by Man.

Such unrealistic expectations inevitably and invariably lead to
disenchantment, disillusionment, bitter disappointment, seething anger,
and a sense of humiliation for having been thus deluded, or, rather,
self-deceived. This backlash is further exacerbated by the haughty
hectoring of the ubiquitous American missionaries of the
"free-market-cum-democracy" church.

Americans everywhere aggressively preach the superior virtues of their
homeland. Edward K. Thompson, managing editor of "Life" (1949-1961)
warned against this propensity to feign omniscience and omnipotence:
"Life (the magazine) must be curious, alert, erudite and moral, but it
must achieve this without being holier-than-thou, a cynic, a
know-it-all, or a Peeping Tom."

Thus, America's foreign policy - i.e., its presence and actions abroad
- is, by far, its foremost vulnerability.

According to the Pew study, the image of the Unites States as a benign
world power slipped dramatically in the space of two years in Slovakia
(down 14 percent), in Poland (-7), in the Czech Republic (-6) and even
in fervently pro-Western Bulgaria (-4 percent). It rose exponentially
in Ukraine (up 10 percent) and, most astoundingly, in Russia (+24
percent) - but from a very low base.

The crux may be that the USA maintains one set of sanctimonious
standards at home while egregiously and nonchalantly flouting them far
and wide. Hence the fervid demonstrations against its military presence
in places as disparate as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and
Saudi Arabia.

In January 2000, Staff Sergeant Frank J. Ronghi sexually molested,
forcibly sodomized ("indecent acts with a child") and then murdered an
11-years old girl in the basement of her drab building in Kosovo, when
her father went to market to do some shopping.

His is by no means the most atrocious link in a long chain of
brutalities inflicted by American soldiers overseas. In all these
cases, the perpetrators were removed from the scene to face justice -
or, more often, a travesty thereof - back home.

Americans - officials, scholars, peacemakers, non-government
organizations - maintain a colonial state of mind. Backward natives
come cheap, their lives dispensable, their systems of governance and
economies inherently inferior. The white man's burden must not be
encumbered by the vagaries of primitive indigenous jurisprudence. Hence
America's fierce resistance to and indefatigable obstruction of the
International Criminal Court.

Opportunistic multilateralism notwithstanding, the USA still owes the
poorer nations of the world close to $200 million - its arrears to the
UN peacekeeping operations, usually asked to mop up after an American
invasion or bombing. It not only refuses to subject its soldiers to the
jurisdiction of the World Criminal Court - but its facilities to the
inspectors of the Chemical Weapons Convention, its military to the
sanctions of the (anti) land mines treaty and the provisions of the
Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, and its industry to the environmental
constraints of the Kyoto Protocol, the rulings of the World Trade
Organization, and the rigors of global intellectual property rights.

Despite its instinctual unilateralism, the United States is never
averse to exploiting multilateral institutions to its ends. It is the
only shareholder with a veto power in the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), by now widely considered to have degenerated into a long arm of
the American administration. The United Nations Security Council,
raucous protestations aside, has rubber-stamped American martial
exploits from Panama to Iraq.

It seems as though America uses - and thus, perforce, abuses - the
international system for its own, ever changing, ends. International
law is invoked by it when convenient - ignored when importune.

In short, America is a bully. It is a law unto itself and it legislates
on the fly, twisting arms and breaking bones when faced with opposition
and ignoring the very edicts it promulgates at its convenience. Its
soldiers and peacekeepers, its bankers and businessmen, its traders and
diplomats are its long arms, an embodiment of this potent and malignant
mixture of supremacy and contempt.

But why is America being singled out?

In politics and even more so in geopolitics, double standards and
bullying are common. Apartheid South Africa, colonial France, mainland
China, post-1967 Israel - and virtually every other polity - were at
one time or another characterized by both. But while these countries
usually mistreated only their own subjects - the USA does so also
exterritorialy.

Even as it never ceases to hector, preach, chastise, and instruct - it
does not recoil from violating its own decrees and ignoring its own
teachings. It is, therefore, not the USA's intrinsic nature, nor its
self-perception, or social model that I find most reprehensible - but
its actions, particularly its foreign policy.

America's manifest hypocrisy, its moral talk and often immoral walk,
its persistent application of double standards, irks and grates. I
firmly believe that it is better to face a forthright villain than a
masquerading saint. It is easy to confront a Hitler, a Stalin, or a
Mao, vile and bloodied, irredeemably depraved, worthy only of
annihilation. The subtleties of coping with the United States are far
more demanding - and far less rewarding.

This self-proclaimed champion of human rights has aided and abetted
countless murderous dictatorships. This alleged sponsor of free trade -
is the most protectionist of rich nations. This ostensible beacon of
charity - contributes less than 0.1% of its GDP to foreign aid
(compared to Scandinavia's 0.6%, for instance). This upright proponent
of international law (under whose aegis it bombed and invaded half a
dozen countries this past decade alone) - is in avowed opposition to
crucial pillars of the international order.

Naturally, America's enemies and critics are envious of its might and
wealth. They would have probably acted the same as the United States,
if they only could. But America's haughtiness and obtuse refusal to
engage in soul searching and house cleaning do little to ameliorate
this antagonism.

To the peoples of the poor world, America is both a colonial power and
a mercantilist exploiter. To further its geopolitical and economic
goals from Central Asia to the Middle East, it persists in buttressing
regimes with scant regard for human rights, in cahoots with venal and
sometimes homicidal indigenous politicians. And it drains the
developing world of its brains, its labour, and its raw materials,
giving little in return.

All powers are self-interested - but America is narcissistic. It is
bent on exploiting and, having exploited, on discarding. It is a global
Dr. Frankenstein, spawning mutated monsters in its wake. Its "drain and
dump" policies consistently boomerang to haunt it.

Both Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega - two acknowledged monsters -
were aided and abetted by the CIA and the US military. America had to
invade Panama to depose the latter and plans to invade Iraq for the
second time to force the removal of the former.

The Kosovo Liberation Army, an American anti-Milosevic pet, provoked a
civil war in Macedonia two years ago. Osama bin-Laden, another CIA
golem, restored to the USA, on September 11, 2001 some of the materiel
it so generously bestowed on him in his anti-Russian days.

Normally the outcomes of expedience, the Ugly American's alliances and
allegiances shift kaleidoscopically. Pakistan and Libya were transmuted
from foes to allies in the fortnight prior to the Afghan campaign.
Milosevic has metamorphosed from staunch ally to rabid foe in days.

This capricious inconsistency casts in grave doubt America's sincerity
- and in sharp relief its unreliability and disloyalty, its short term
thinking, truncated attention span, soundbite mentality, and dangerous,
"black and white", simplism.

In its heartland, America is isolationist. Its denizens erroneously
believe that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is an
economically self-sufficient and self-contained continent. Yet, it is
not what Americans trust or wish that matters to others. It is what
they do. And what they do is meddle, often unilaterally, always
ignorantly, sometimes forcefully.

Elsewhere, inevitable unilateralism is mitigated by inclusive
cosmopolitanism. It is exacerbated by provincialism - and American
decision-makers are mostly provincials, popularly elected by
provincials. As opposed to Rome, or Great Britain, America is
ill-suited and ill-equipped to micromanage the world.

It is too puerile, too abrasive, too arrogant - and it has a lot to
learn. Its refusal to acknowledge its shortcomings, its confusion of
brain with brawn (i.e., money or bombs), its legalistic-litigious
character, its culture of instant gratification and one-dimensional
over-simplification, its heartless lack of empathy, and bloated sense
of entitlement - are detrimental to world peace and stability.

America is often called by others to intervene. Many initiate conflicts
or prolong them with the express purpose of dragging America into the
quagmire. It then is either castigated for not having responded to such
calls - or reprimanded for having responded. It seems that it cannot
win. Abstention and involvement alike garner it only ill-will.

But people call upon America to get involved because they know it rises
to the challenge. America should make it unequivocally and
unambiguously clear that - with the exception of the Americas - its
sole interests rest in commerce. It should make it equally known that
it will protect its citizens and defend its assets - if need be by
force.

Indeed, America's - and the world's - best bet are a reversion to the
Monroe and (technologically updated) Mahan doctrines. Wilson's Fourteen
Points brought the USA nothing but two World Wars and a Cold War
thereafter. It is time to disengage.

Containing the United States

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also published by United Press International (UPI)

Also Read

In God We Trust

Why America is Hated

The Iraqi and the Madman

God's Diplomacy and Human Conflicts



European intellectuals yearn for the mutually exclusive: an America
contained and a regime-changed Iraq. The Chinese are more pragmatic -
though, bound by what is left of their Marxism, they still ascribe
American behavior to the irreconcilable contradictions inherent in
capitalism.

The United States is impelled by its economy and values to world
dominion, claimed last week an analysis titled "American Empire Steps
Up Fourth Expansion" in the communist party's mouthpiece People's
Daily. Expansionism is an "eternal theme" in American history and a
"main line" running through its foreign policy.

The contemporary USA is actually a land-based empire, comprising the
territorial fruits of previous armed conflicts with its neighbors and
foes, often one and the same. The global spread of American influence
through its culture, political alliances, science and multinationals is
merely an extrapolation of a trend two centuries in the making.

How did a small country succeed to thus transform itself?

The paper attributes America's success to its political stability,
neglecting to mention its pluralism and multi-party system, the sources
of said endurance. But then, in an interesting departure from the
official party line, it praises US "scientific and technological
innovations and new achievements in economic development". Somewhat
tautologically, it also credits America's status as an empire to its
"external expansions".

The rest of the article is, alas, no better reasoned, nor better
informed. American pilgrims were forced westward because "they found
there was neither tile over their heads nor a speck of land under their
feet (in the East Coast)." But it is the emphases that are of interest,
not the shoddy workmanship.

The article clearly identifies America's (capitalistic) economy and its
(liberal, pluralistic, religious and democratic) values as its
competitive mainstays and founts of strength. "US unique commercial
expansion spirit (combined with the) the puritan's 'concept of mission'
(are its fortes)", gushes the anonymous author.

The paper distinguishes four phases of distension: "First, continental
expansion stage; second, overseas expansion stage; third, the stage of
global contention for hegemony; and fourth, the stage of world
domination." The second, third and fourth are mainly economic, cultural
and military.

In an echo of defunct Soviet and Euro-left conspiracy theories, the
paper insists that expansion was "triggered by commercial capital."
This capital - better known in the West as the military-industrial
complex - also determines US foreign policy. Thus, the American Empire
is closer to the commercially driven British Empire than to the
militarily propelled Roman one.

Actually, the author thinks aloud, isn't America's reign merely the
successor of Britain's? Wasn't it John Locke, a British philosopher,
who said that expansion - a "natural right" - responds to domestic
needs? Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who claimed that the United States
must "constantly acquire new land to open up living space" (the
forerunner of the infamous German "Lebensraum")?

The author quotes James Jerome Hill, the American railway magnet, as
exclaiming, during the US-Spanish War, that "If you review the
commercial history, you will discover anyone who controls oriental
trade will get hold of global wealth." Thus, US expansion was concerned
mainly with "protecting American commercial monopoly or advantageous
position." America entered the first world war only when "its free
trade position was challenged," opines the red-top.

American moral values are designed to "serve commercial capital". This
blending of the spiritual with the pecuniary is very disorienting.
"Even the Americans themselves find it hard to distinguish which matter
is expanding national interests under the banner of 'enforcing justice
on behalf of Heaven' and which is propagating their ideology and
concept of value on the plea of national interests."

The paper mentions the conviction, held by most Americans, that their
system and values are the "best things in human society." Moreover,
Americans are missionaries with a "manifest destiny" and "the duty and
obligation to help other countries and nations" and to serve as the
"the beacon lighting up the way for the development of other countries
and nations." If all else fails, it feels justified to "force its best
things on other countries by the method of Crusades."

This is a patently non-Orthodox, non-Marxist interpretation of history
and of the role of the United States - the prime specimen of capitalism
- in it. Economy, admits the author, plays only one part in America's
ascendance. Tribute must be given to its values as well. This view of
the United States - at the height of an international crisis pitting
China against it - is nothing if not revolutionary.

American history is re-cast as an inevitable progression of concentric
circles. At first, the United States acted as a classic colonial power,
vying for real estate first with Spain in Latin America and later with
the Soviet Union all over the world. The Marshall Plan was a ploy to
make Europe dependent on US largesse. The Old Continent, sneers the
paper, is nothing more than "US little partner".

Now, with the demise of the USSR, bemoans the columnist, the United
States exhibits "rising hegemonic airs" and does "whatever it pleased",
concurrently twisting economic, cultural and military arms. Inevitably
and especially after September 11, calls for an American "new empire"
are on the rise. Iraq "was chosen as the first target for this new
round of expansion."

But the expansionist drive has become self-defeating: "Only when the
United States refrains from taking the road of pursuing global empire,
can it avoid terrorists' bombs or other forms of attacks befalling on
its own territory", concludes the opinion piece.

What is China up to? Is this article a signal encrypted in the best
Cold War tradition?

Another commentary published a few days later may contain the public
key. It is titled "The Paradox of American Power". The author quotes at
length from "The Paradox of American Power - Why the World's Only
Superpower Can't Go It Alone" written by Joseph Nye, the Dean of the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a former Assistant
Secretary of Defense:

"Hard power works through coercion, using military sticks and economic
carrots to get others to do our will. Soft power works through
attraction ... Our attractiveness rests on our culture, our political
values and our policies by taking into account the interests of others".

As it summarizes Nye's teachings, the tone of the piece is avuncular
and conciliatory, not enraged or patronizing:

"In today's world, the United States is no doubt in an advantageous
position with its hard power. But ... power politics always invite
resentment and the paradox of American power is that the stronger the
nation grows, the weaker its influence becomes. As the saying goes, a
danger to oneself results from an excess of power and an accumulation
of misfortunes stems from lavish of praises and favors. He, whose power
grows to such a swelling state that he strikes anybody he wants to and
turns a deaf ear to others' advice, will unavoidably put himself in a
straitened circumstance someday. When one indulges oneself in wars of
aggression under the pretext of 'self security' will possibly get, in
return, more factors of insecurity ... Military forces cannot
fundamentally solve problems and war benefits no one including the war
starter."

Nor are these views the preserve of the arthritic upper echelons of the
precariously balanced Chinese Communist party.

In an interview he granted to Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, last
week, Shen Jiru, chief of the Division of International Strategy of the
Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences, reiterated his conviction that "the United States aims to
create a unipolar world through the Iraq issue."

Mirroring the People's Daily, he did not think that the looming Iraq
war can be entirely explained as a "dispute on oil or economic
interests." It was, he thought, about "the future model of
international order: a multipolar and democratic one, or the US
strategic goal of a unipolar world." China has been encouraged by
dissent in the West. It shows that the "multipolar international
community is an "inevitable" momentum of history."

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