Who Rules the World? (12 page)

STIRRINGS ABROAD

While conscious, self-inflicted decline went on at home, “losses” continued to mount elsewhere. In the past decade, for the first time in five hundred years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from Western domination. The region has moved toward integration, and has begun to address some of the terrible internal problems of societies ruled by mostly Europeanized elites, tiny islands of extreme wealth in a sea of misery. These nations have also rid themselves of all U.S. military bases and of International Monetary Fund controls. A newly formed organization, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), includes all countries of the hemisphere apart from the U.S. and Canada. If it actually functions, that will be another step in American decline, in this case in what has always been regarded as “the backyard.”

Even more serious would be the loss of the MENA countries—Middle East/North Africa—which have been regarded by planners since the 1940s as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”
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To be sure, if the projections of a century of U.S. energy independence based on North American energy resources turn out to be realistic, the significance of controlling MENA would decline somewhat, though probably not by much. The main concern has always been control more so than access. However, the likely consequences to the planet’s equilibrium are so ominous that discussion may be largely an academic exercise.

The Arab Spring, another development of historic importance, might portend at least a partial “loss” of MENA. The United States and its allies have tried hard to prevent that outcome—so far, with considerable success. Their policy toward the popular uprisings has kept closely to the standard guidelines: support the forces most amenable to U.S. influence and control.

Favored dictators must be supported as long as they can maintain control (as in the major oil states). When that is no longer possible, discard them and try to restore the old regime as fully as possible (as in Tunisia and Egypt). The general pattern is familiar from elsewhere in the world: Somoza, Marcos, Duvalier, Mobutu, Suharto, and many others. In the case of Libya, the three traditional imperial powers, violating the UN Security Council resolution they had just sponsored, became the air force of the rebels, sharply increasing civilian casualties and creating a humanitarian disaster and political chaos as the country descended into civil war and weapons poured out to jihadis in western Africa and elsewhere.
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ISRAEL AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Similar considerations carry over directly to the second major concern addressed in the November/December 2011 issue of
Foreign Affairs
cited above: the Israel-Palestine conflict. In this arena the United States’ fear of democracy could hardly be more clearly exhibited. In January 2006, an election took place in Palestine, pronounced free and fair by international monitors. The instant reaction of the United States (and, of course, Israel), with Europe following along politely, was to impose harsh penalties on Palestinians for voting the wrong way.

That is no innovation. It is quite in keeping with the general principle recognized by mainstream scholarship: the United States supports democracy if, and only if, the outcomes accord with its strategic and economic objectives—the rueful conclusion of neo-Reaganite Thomas Carothers, the most careful and respected scholarly analyst of “democracy promotion” initiatives.

More broadly, for forty years the United States has led the rejectionist camp on Israel-Palestine, blocking an international consensus calling for a political settlement on terms too well-known to require repetition. The Western mantra is that Israel seeks negotiations without preconditions, while the Palestinians refuse such terms. The opposite is more accurate: the United States and Israel demand strict preconditions, which are, furthermore, designed to ensure that negotiations will lead either to Palestinian capitulation on crucial issues or nowhere.

The first precondition is that the negotiations must be supervised by Washington, which makes about as much sense as demanding that Iran supervise the negotiation of Sunni-Shiite conflicts in Iraq. Serious negotiations would have to take place under the auspices of some neutral party, preferably one that commands some international respect—perhaps Brazil. These negotiations would seek to resolve the conflicts between the two antagonists: the United States and Israel on one side, most of the world on the other.

The second precondition is that Israel must be free to expand its illegal settlements in the West Bank. Theoretically, the United States opposes these actions, but with a very light tap on the wrist, while continuing to provide economic, diplomatic, and military support. When the United States does have some limited objections, it very easily bars Israel’s actions, as in the case of the E1 project linking Greater Jerusalem to the town of Ma’aleh Adumim, virtually bisecting the West Bank—a very high priority for Israeli planners across the political spectrum, but one that raised some objections in Washington, so that Israel has had to resort to devious measures to chip away at the project.
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The pretense of opposition reached the level of farce in February 2011, when Obama vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for implementation of official U.S. policy (and also adding the uncontroversial observation that the settlements themselves are illegal, quite apart from their expansion). Since that time there has been little talk about ending settlement expansion, which continues with studied provocation.

Thus, as Israeli and Palestinian representatives prepared to meet in Jordan in January 2011, Israel announced new construction in Pisgat Ze’ev and Har Homa, West Bank areas that it has declared to be within the greatly expanded area of Jerusalem, already annexed, settled, and constructed as Israel’s capital, all in violation of direct Security Council orders.
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Other moves carry forward the grander design of separating whatever West Bank enclaves will be left to Palestinian administration from the cultural, commercial, and political center of Palestinian life in the former Jerusalem.

It is understandable that Palestinian rights should be marginalized in U.S. policy and discourse. Palestinians have no wealth or power. They offer virtually nothing to benefit U.S. policy concerns; in fact, they have negative value, as a nuisance that stirs up “the Arab street.”

Israel, in contrast, is a rich society with a sophisticated, largely militarized high-tech industry. For decades, it has been a highly valued military and strategic ally, particularly since 1967, when it performed a great service to the United States and its ally Saudi Arabia by destroying the Nasserite “virus,” establishing its “special relationship” with Washington in the form that has persisted since.
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It is also a growing center for U.S. high-tech investment. In fact, high-tech—and particularly military—industries in the two countries are closely linked.
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Apart from such elementary considerations of great-power politics, there are cultural factors that should not be ignored. Christian Zionism in Britain and the United States long preceded Jewish Zionism, and has been a significant elite phenomenon with clear policy implications (including the Balfour Declaration, which drew from it). When General Edmund Allenby conquered Jerusalem during World War I, he was hailed in the American press as Richard the Lion-Hearted, who had at last won the Crusades and driven the pagans out of the Holy Land.

The next step was for the Chosen People to return to the land promised to them by the Lord. Articulating a common elite view, President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, described Jewish colonization of Palestine as an achievement “without comparison in the history of the human race.”
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Such attitudes find their place easily within the Providentialist doctrines that have been a strong element in popular and elite culture since the country’s origins, the belief that God has a plan for the world and the United States is carrying it forward under divine guidance, as articulated by a long list of leading figures.

Moreover, evangelical Christianity is a major popular force in the United States. Further toward the extreme, End Times evangelical Christianity also has enormous popular outreach, invigorated by the establishment of Israel in 1948 and revitalized even more by the conquest of the rest of Palestine in 1967—all signs, in this view, that End Times and the Second Coming are approaching.

These forces have become particularly significant since the Reagan years, as the Republicans have abandoned the pretense of being a political party in the traditional sense while devoting themselves in virtual lockstep uniformity to servicing a tiny percentage of the superrich and the corporate sector. However, the small constituency that is primarily served by the reconstructed party cannot provide votes, so they have to turn elsewhere. The only choice is to mobilize social tendencies that have always been present, though rarely as an organized political force: primarily nativists trembling in fear and hatred and religious elements that are extremist by international standards but not in the United States. One outcome is reverence for alleged Biblical prophecies; hence not only support for Israel and its conquests and expansion but a passionate love for Israel—another core part of the catechism that must be intoned by Republican candidates (with Democrats, again, not too far behind).

These factors aside, it should not be forgotten that the “Anglosphere”—Britain and its offshoots—consists of settler-colonial societies, which rose on the ashes of indigenous populations suppressed or virtually exterminated. Past practices must have been basically correct—in the case of the United States, even ordained by divine providence. Accordingly, there is often an intuitive sympathy for the children of Israel when they follow a similar course. But primarily, geostrategic and economic interests prevail, and policy is not graven in stone.

THE IRANIAN “THREAT” AND THE NUCLEAR ISSUE

Let us turn finally to the third of the leading issues addressed in the establishment journals cited earlier, the “threat of Iran.” Among elites and the political class this is generally taken to be the primary threat to world order—though not among populations. In Europe, polls show that Israel is regarded as the leading threat to peace.
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In the MENA countries, that status is shared with the United States, to the extent that in Egypt, on the eve of the Tahrir Square uprising, 80 percent of the population felt that the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons.
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The same polls found that only 10 percent of Egyptians regard Iran as a threat—unlike the ruling dictators, who have their own concerns.
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In the United States, before the massive propaganda campaigns of the past few years, a majority of the population agreed with most of the world that, as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has a right to carry out uranium enrichment. Even today, a significant majority favors peaceful means for dealing with Iran. There is even strong opposition to military engagement if Iran and Israel are at war. Only a quarter of Americans regard Iran as an important concern for the United States.
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But it is not unusual for there to be a gap—often a chasm—dividing public opinion and policy.

Why exactly is Iran regarded as such a colossal threat? The question is rarely discussed, but it is not hard to find a serious answer—though not, as usual, in the fevered pronouncements of the political elite. The most authoritative answer is provided by the Pentagon and the intelligence services in their regular reports to Congress on global security, which note that “Iran’s nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy.”
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This survey comes nowhere near being exhaustive, needless to say. Among major topics not addressed is the shift of U.S. military policy toward the Asia-Pacific region, with new additions to the huge military base system underway on Jeju Island off South Korea and in northwest Australia, all elements of the policy of “containment of China.” Closely related is the issue of U.S. bases in Okinawa, bitterly opposed by the population for many years and a continual crisis in U.S.-Tokyo-Okinawa relations.
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Revealing how little fundamental assumptions have changed, U.S. strategic analysts describe the result of China’s military programs as a “classic ‘security dilemma,’ whereby military programs and national strategies deemed defensive by their planners are viewed as threatening by the other side,” writes Paul Godwin of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
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The security dilemma arises over control of the seas off China’s coasts. The United States regards its policy of controlling these waters as “defensive,” while China regards it as threatening; correspondingly, China regards its actions in nearby areas as “defensive,” while the United States regards them as threatening. No such debate is even imaginable concerning U.S. coastal waters. This “classic security dilemma” makes sense, again, on the assumption that the United States has a right to control most of the world, and that U.S. security requires something approaching absolute global control.

While the principles of imperial domination have undergone little change, our capacity to implement them has markedly declined as power has become more broadly distributed in a diversifying world. The consequences are many. It is, however, important to bear in mind that—unfortunately—none of them lift the two dark clouds that hover over all consideration of global order: nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, both literally threatening the decent survival of the species.

Quite the contrary: both threats are ominous and increasing.