Do citizens of the United States really believe that the current regime can subjugate foreign peoples who deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as much as anyone, without fear of repercussion?
This appeared to be a major assumption defining the recent much-anticipated and well-attended Historians Against the War (HAW) conference in Austin, Texas.
Keynote speaker Howard Zinn expressed passionately the moral imperatives confronting U.S. citizens in light of the Bush Administration's reckless foreign policy. "We must rise up and put an end to regime outrages," he implored. "We must acknowledge that these outrages have been occurring for much longer than the last six years," ... We must finally become the nation our ideology says we are." But Zinn overlooked what could happen should Americans fail to rise to this challenge.
(This is a reposting. When I tried to edit the original, sections somehow got lost. I wrote to Kos and received no reply forbidding this posting, in this special case.)
During the question and answer period that followed someone broached this topic specifically: Would the U.S. survive if the regime's actions were not halted? What if we simply continue to watch television and shop at malls while our bullies beat up the have-nots of the world and muscle aside our own allies when they object? Or might we suffer terrible blowback, as Chalmers Johnson, Noam Chomsky and other well respected analysts have suggested. In short, were we to understand that citizen action was a moral necessity, but not necessarily a physical necessity?
Dr. Zinn responded that of course the nation would survive, however at the cost of a terrible moral failure. The possibility that we in the audience, and our children and grandchildren, might find ourselves immersed in chaos as phantoms poison water supplies and spread deadly germs and radioactive isotopes - and more - went unmentioned, perhaps unnoticed by most of the more than a thousand scholars, citizens and activists gathered for his address. Blowback had fallen off the conference radar even as a significant variable.
One might assume from this fact that U.S. vulnerability to terrorist attack described in the November 1, 2001 New York Times have been addressed by Homeland Security in the years since 9/11. The Times article listed Anthrax, Plague, Botulinum, Q Fever, Eastern Equine Encephalitis, Yellow Fever, and Marburg Virus as particular biochemical threats.
Concerning nuclear threats: smuggling entire bombs into the country, building them from smuggled in materials or obtaining radioactive material and detonating them with dynamite, thus infecting large urban areas, were within terrorist capabilities. "Experts no longer believe that getting a complete weapon is impossible...Russia is believed to have developed extremely small nuclear weapons -- 'suitcase' bombs -- probably with yields equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT or fewer.... Another possibility would be to obtain the grapefruit like core of uranium from, say, the Pakistanis, which would be easier to smuggle out of the country than an entire bomb."
A year later, this prognosis remained in effect. The Hart-Rudman Senate Foreign Relations Committee Task Force on Homeland Security reported on October 25, 2002 that the nation remained unprotected and the Administration still had no adequate plan for redressing this condition.
Nearly another year passed, then economist Paul Krugman observed in the April 1, 2003 New York Times that Homeland Security still failed to target funds rationally to address the nation's vulnerabilities. "The most natural targets for terrorism lie in or near great metropolitan areas; surely protecting those areas is the highest priority, right? Apparently not...the Bush administration isn't serious about protecting the homeland. Instead, it continues to subordinate U.S. security needs to its unchanged political agenda."
By February 20, 2005, the New York Times lead editorial found it striking "how much has not changed in the three and a half years since nearly 3,000 people were killed on American soil. The nation's chemical plants are still a horrific accident waiting to happen. Nuclear material that could be made into a 'dirty bomb' or even a nuclear device, and set off in an American city remains too accessible to terrorists. Critical tasks, from inspecting shipping containers to upgrading defenses against biological weapons, are being done poorly or not at all."
One year later, less than a month ago, a February, 2006 article in The Scientific American, titled Thwarting Nuclear Terrorism, reinforces the Times report, describing how High Energy Uranium (HEU) is abundant and readily available to terrorist organizations that might wish to make use of it. Such abundance serves no useful purpose, the authors note; however "The effort to convert HEU- fueled reactors has already dragged on for more than a quarter of a century. That the use of HEU continues has little to do with technical reasons. This failure has resulted largely from a dearth of sufficient high-level governmental support." This may constitute the hardest evidence of all that the country is neither secure, nor becoming secure under the stewardship of the current regime.
The History of Homeland Security's ineffectualness weighed against the threat of blowback never came up at the HAW conference. That this history might enhance the public's motivation to oppose the war, however, did come up during the final session. Frequently during the conference panelists had stated with certainty, without, however, citing evidence to this effect, that U.S. citizen opposition to the war was becoming overwhelming. At a certain point, one of the previous day's panelists, an expert on the Middle East, observed that actually data seem to indicate that about half the U.S. public supports the war, at least in some fashion.
The participant who had raised the question about blowback threats the first evening observed that perhaps most citizens care more about whether the regime can kick ass competently than about whether it operates too ruthlessly in the process. The following discussion indicated that many felt it important to explore this question, and to determine systematically where people actually stand on the war.
If in fact U.S. citizens can live with the current regime's policies, so long as they work, examining whether these policies can actually produce security, rather than severe blowback, is essential. This assessment requires an historical review of U.S. foreign relations un-included in the conference. The following brief sketch illustrates that U.S. policy makers have been dealing poorly with two huge challenges: the rise of the Third World and an impending energy crisis. Their ineptness could well be placing the citizenry at great personal risk.
The irresistible force of Asian ascendance
Following WW II, Asian resistance to Western imperial control showed signs of accelerating. Especially vexing to imperial strategists was the tendency for the new Arabic nations -- carefully designed by the Grand Alliance powers following WWI to discourage Arabic independence -- to take their nationalisms seriously. In the atmosphere of the Cold War this concern occupied center stage, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called upon Owen Lattimore, the nation's leading expert on Asia, to assess the situation.
The first sentence of his 1949 report, titled The Situation in Asia stated that, "Asia is out of control. From Suez to the western Pacific we face one problem after another, in one country after another, which we cannot settle either by an American decision or by joint action with countries that we consider our allies." It was not feasible, Lattimore advised, for the West in general, and the United States in particular to continue to pursue policies of Third World domination. These would only produce more and more competent forms of resistance, and potentially retaliation. What was required, now, was negotiation.
In the late 1970s Zbigniew Brzesinski, top security advisor to Jimmy Carter, reaffirmed Lattimore's analysis and expressed the need for effective strategizing to deal with its implications. He foresaw in The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy and It's Geostrategic Imperative, that "... an Islamic revival - already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia....is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms ..."
Brzezinski's Harvard colleague, Samuel Huntington, molded The Grand Chessboard into ruling class ideology. In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, which appeared first in 1993 as an article in Foreign Affairs and then as a book in 1996, Huntington claimed that with the Iron Curtain's collapse, the world now divided itself into a plethora of uncontrollable tribal-ethnic regions, armed to the teeth and bent on conflict.
The West in general and the United States in particular, he said, must assert dominance over Asia, Africa and all other non-Western geographies. Failure to do so would result in "... a world in anarchy. ... the breakdown of governmental authority; the breakup of states; the intensification of tribal, ethnic, and religious conflict; the emergence of international criminal mafia ..." Furthermore, Huntington asserted, "Whatever economic connections may exist between them, the fundamental cultural gap between Asian and American societies precludes their joining together in a common home."
In the context of Huntington's paradigm, The Grand Chessboard became a form of Social Darwinist ideology, promoting Western world domination not merely as a nationalistic goal, but as necessary for the salvation of humankind's very evolutionary process. The current regime's religio-ethnic stance fits well within the Clash of Civilizations paradigm, gaining from it a façade of cultural superiority and a patina of pseudo-intellectual legitimacy.
If Huntington's paradigm relied little upon historical evidence for its support, Eminent Historian Eric Hobsbawm's view of the modern world rested upon a mountain of it. In The Age of Extremes, the final of his four volume political/economic history of the world since the Industrial Revolution, he described a world in which The Clash of Civilizatons made no sense. "Though capitalism was certainly not in the best of shape at the end of the Short Twentieth Century [1914-1999], Soviet-type communism was unquestionably dead, and quite unlikely to revive." One after another of the Third World nations sought not to dismantle Western Capitalism, but to join it.
Hobsbawm acknowledged that international conflict was likely, but the West had no choice but to deal with it through negotiation, not repression. Fortunately, global capitalism had matured to the point where it might be able to include once-disenfranchised have-nots at the foot of the Capitalist table without causing drastic lifestyle reductions for the Western elite whom their virtual slavery had once enhanced.
Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz came to similar conclusions in Globalization and its Discontents, published in 2002: "The problem is not with globalization, but with how it has been managed."" U.S. controlled organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank "all too often, have served the interests of the more advanced countries -- and particular interests within those countries --rather than those of the developing world." Stiglitz cited example after example of these organizations acting to repress rather than enhance the independent development of Third World countries.
According to these analysts, U.S. foreign policy appears to have distanced this nation from the realities illuminated by Lattimore. Like an enraged bull unable to shift its gaze from the illusion of threat to real causal forces, the current regime seems pathologically addicted to control strategies that no longer work, if they ever worked in the first place. Chalmers Johnson, an ex-U.S. Naval officer and esteemed political scientist described some of the most flagrant of these failures in his best selling 2000 book, Blowback: the Costs and Consequences of American Empire. Concerning South Korea he wrote, "The rule of Syngman Rhee and the U.S.-backed generals was merely the first instance in East Aisa of the American sponsorship of dictators. The list is long, but it deserves reiterations simply because many in the United States fail to remember (if they ever knew) what East Asians cannot help but regard as a major part of our postwar legacy."
The immovable crisis of peak oil
The failure of successive administrations to heed the advice of their own experts to develop foreign policies of negotiation rather than suppression enhanced the rise of increasingly competent competitors -- not discontent but manageable client states -- in Asia and elsewhere, well before the end of the twentieth century. As early as the 1950s, though not well publicized until two decades later, an impending global crisis began to provide additional motivation for America's new enemies to mobilize.
In 1979 a National Research Council report titled Science and Technology: A Five Year Outlook, predicted a world poised on the brink of a narrow chasm of great depth: too many people, most rapidly modernizing, and not enough energy to sustain them. Beginning in a few decades and lasting for a period of probably half a century, or a little more, the report said, no technology would be capable of filling the gap left by diminishing fossil fuel energy.
This prognosis remains intact today. As reported in the current World Watch Magazine, and similarly among other publications, "The peak in global oil production marks a fundamental change in supply....No alternative fuel now being researched generates a greater surplus or can be used more efficiently than oil."
Until the transition from fossil fuel to solar and/or nuclear fusion energy, scientists agree, multitudes will experience great hardship in the near future. In this light, Huntington's warnings and prescriptions take on new meaning. Stripped of façade, they assert that the experience of energy deprivation must be unequally distributed. The West, i.e. "Our Tribe," - or in more modern terms, "Our Gang" -- must suffer less. Those scheduled to suffer most surely possess more than an inkling of this fact.
Though barely hinted at by journalists of the right or the left, the U.S. public probably perceives this scenario as well. Citizens may sense that the current regime plans, by whatever means necessary -- overt and covert, legal and illegal -- to carry out Huntington's advice to the fullest extent possible. The President's designation of an Axis of Evil, his demonization of adversaries, rather than viewing them as rational people, capable of negotiating, embodies the dangerous us-against-them mentality of the Clash of Civilizations paradigm. Huntington insists that "The futures of the United States and the West depend upon Americans reaffirming their commitment to Western civilization. Domestically this means rejecting the divisive siren calls of multiculturalism."
It may be that HAW's call upon citizens to act to minimize the likely effects of the current regime's policies on millions of people will have profound effect. It is also possible that when it comes right down to it most citizens care mainly for their own well being. It may be that only if evidence suggests that their inaction jeopardizes their well being, will they act.
The Likelihood of Blowback
With every act of blatant, arrogant dishonesty (the invasion of Iraq), of open disdain for criticism (the handling of Katrina), of intentionally demonstrative illegality (presidential eavesdropping), of brutality and ruthlessness (Guantanamo and other institutions of torture), of disdain for Democratic traditions ( the suspension of habeas corpus under the Patriot Act), the current regime provides a steady flow of reassurance that it is the worlds toughest gang and can do whatever it likes with impunity. Daily it proclaims its competence to brutally dominate in a world run by nation-gangs (Huntington's "tribes").
Critics of the regime, who seem intent upon discrediting it in every way possible, barely address the question of U.S. vulnerability to retaliation as a result of the regime's seemingly bizarre, and sociopathic, policies. As a result, the average citizen might well feel assured (however horrified s/he may be by the regime's actions) that in the wake of 9/11, further concern about blowback from U.S. enemies appears to be unfounded.
Just below the public radar, however, exists a burgeoning cache of evidence suggesting the opposite. According to Jonathan Schell, considered a leading experts on issues of national physical security since the beginning of the Cold War, in the October 1, 2001 The Nation, "There is no technical solution to the vulnerability of modern populations to weapons of mass destruction."
A month later, The Scientific American editorial observed that "Not only is the U.S. unprepared to recover from a biological attack, it might not even recognize that one is occurring until the contagion had already spread.... Meanwhile, researchers have gained a new appreciation of how easy it is to create bioweapons."
During his recent presidential campaign, John Kerry urged public awareness of how vulnerable the nations port system was, and of how little the Administration addressed this issue. On February 24 of this year, United Press International (UPI), reporting on the President's approval of the recently revealed planned management take-over of U.S. ports by a Saudi concern, noted that "In a January report, the Council on Foreign Relations pointed out the vulnerability of the shipping security system to terrorist exploitation. ... 'All a terrorist organization needs to do is find a single weak link within a 'trusted' shipper's complex supply chain, such as a poorly paid truck driver taking a container from a remote factory to a port. They can then gain access to the container in one of the half-dozen ways well known to experienced smugglers,' CFR wrote."
A second cache of evidence indicates how likely it is that determined attackers could take advantage of U.S. vulnerabilities. Many of them were trained by our own experts. In Dollars for Terror, published in 2000, prize winning Swiss journalist Richard Labeviere described how during the late 1940s and 50s the CIA made common cause with the fundamentalist Wahabi tribes of Saudi Arabia to create a force capable of undermining other Arabic states. The U.S. intelligence community insisted against criticisms that this alliance could prove dangerous to the United States, that otherwise Arab nations would likely join Russia in the Cold War. The CIA and Wahabis formed an Eastern style gentlemen's agreement: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." This organization became Al Qaeda. In his recently published Devils Game: How the U.S. Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, Robert Dreyfus'affirms and extends Labevier's analysis.
As indicated earlier in this essay, when U.S. intelligence agencies did not train potential attackers, they produced them through abuse. Recent events in our hemisphere demonstrate that the employment of such institutions as The School of the Americas (about which Hidden in Plain Sight, an excellent documentary, is now circulating ) to install arguably the most brutal regimes in history for no other discernable purpose than to render Latin America submissive to U.S. corporate control, have failed to consolidate such control and only bred tough, capable people filled with contempt and distrust for this country.
In the January 7, 2006 The Nation Daphne Eviatar reports of Evo Morales' recent election in Bolivia that "while the U.S. government has expressed deep fears about a Morales presidency, in many ways it's the United States that has put Morales in the position he is in today... On its face, the election of Evo Morales to the presidency of Bolivia would seem like an enormous victory for the left -- another domino in the line of Latin American nations turning away from Washington Consensus-style economics to forge a path of its own."
It seems likely that any of this nation's expanding coalition of adversaries, tempered like fine steel in the fires our imperial regimes have subjected them to for more than a century, can competently inflict great injury upon our society. Conceivably, they could destroy us without defeating our military. The Bush Administration itself repeatedly offers some version of this conclusion as its reason for (1) gutting the Bill-of-Rights and imposing a Patriot Act designed to facilitate a police state, (2) overtly sanctioning the torture of people allegedly suspected of possible terrorist affiliations, and (3) covertly overhauling and redesigning the intelligence community.
These actions the Administration deems necessary because of the formidable threat posed by potential terrorists. By its own accounts, those threatening the United States are well organized and highly sophisticated at guerilla warfare techniques, presenting no target for our full military power. That they must only grow stronger as the energy crisis deepens seems obvious.
The Administration further insists, consistent with the Clash of Civilizations world-view, that the threats our alleged enemies pose would only increase should the U.S. adopt a policy of negotiation rather than bullying. The bulk of historical evidence, however, seems to support an opposite conclusion. Certainly, in light of this evidence, none of the regime's new anti-democratic policies would seem to have much potential for protecting the nation against its determined enemies.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Gen. Curtis LeMay said he was willing to risk the possibility of global atomic devastation in defense of American pride. Fortunately, even his peers regarded this stance as pathological at the time. Were LeMay part of the current Administration, the opposite might be true. To Bill Moyers, noted TV columnist and best selling author of several brilliant analyses of American society, among many other observers, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfield, former Attorney General Ashcroft and other key members of the Administration seem no less Strangelovian than LeMay.
What will happen when citizens perceive the U.S. juggernaut to be hurtling into a chasm? Will men like Cheney and Rumsfield depart the stage quietly when public alarm demands this of them? The President has asserted repeatedly that laws such as the Patriot Act, vastly enhancing the Chief Executive's police powers, will never be used to suppress the citizens of this country. History encourages deep skepticism of such a promise if things fall apart for the current regime.
The public may be confused from time to time, but contrary to the opinions of some political activists, Abraham Lincoln was surely correct: the public is not stupid. We are a social species, and overwhelming evidence indicates that perception and intelligence are not so differentially distributed among us as propagandists would have us believe. We can and must address issues of our survival honestly and realistically, whatever the consequences. No effective movement can be built on hype and misdirection. The history of the ineptitude of imperial repression of Third World ascension, and its implications for U.S. physical security, constitutes a crucial dimension of civic understanding. It also constitutes a necessary ingredient of effective strategy. There seems little doubt that we face more than moral damage should the people of the United States fail to restrain leaders who have lost their sense of direction, and decency. We face annihilation.