[A-List] Iraq & geopolitics, by Henry C K Liu (4)

[Michael Keaney]

The burden of being a superpower
By Henry C K Liu
Asia Times, September 17 2004

Iraq rebuilds, with a little US help
A ceasefire agreement between Iraq and Iran was signed on August 20, 1988.
Iraq then rebuilt its military capability with bank credits and technology
from Western Europe and the United States, financed mostly by Saudi Arabia.
Five days after the ceasefire, Saddam Hussein sent planes and helicopters to
northern Iraq to begin massive chemical attacks against Kurd separatists. In
September, 1988 the US Department of Commerce again approved shipment of
weapons-grade anthrax and botulinum to Iraq for use in domestic security
operations. In September 1988, Richard Murphy, assistant secretary of state
said: "The US-Iraqi relationship is ... important to our long-term political
and economic objectives." In December, 1988, Dow Chemical sold US$1.5
million in pesticides to Iraq, despite knowledge that these would be used in
chemical weapons domestically. Brutal actions against Kurdish separatists
were undertaken in 1988 in northern Iraq where Ali Hassan al-Majid was
accused of ordering the gas attack against civilians that killed about
5,000. It took six years and a change in geopolitical conditions before the
US shed crocodile's tears for the tragedy.

The US legally and illegally helped build Saddam's military into the most
powerful war machine in the Middle East outside of Israel. The US supplied
chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was
using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied intelligence
and battle-planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the
use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The US blocked UN censure of
Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The US continued to supply the materials and
technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it
was known that Saddam was using this technology to kill Kurdish separatists.
The US did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union and later Russia
was the largest weapons supplier, but Britain, France and Germany were also
involved in the shipment of arms and technology. All sold weapons to both
sides of the war.

Iraq searches for identity
Since 1958, when the last persistently pro-West Iraqi government in Baghdad
was overthrown, and diplomatic relations between the US and Iraq formally
broken nine years later, first-hand knowledge of Iraq and of the successive
regimes that had since governed it has been unavailable to senior officials
in Washington, whose fixation on global anti-communism left them with little
interest on subtleties. The US had largely operated in a policy vacuum
without the support of full understanding of Iraq, of its people and most
importantly of the concerns that motivated its leaders. Much of US policy on
Iraq has been based on advice from biased Iraqi exiles, opportunistic
academics and self-serving pro-Israel partisans.

Notwithstanding Washington's penchant to demonize its latest enemies, Iraqi
leaders, at least those not having been imposed by foreign powers, not
unlike independent leaders anywhere else, are motivated and constrained in
their policy deliberation by their perception of popular aspirations which
are shaped by a nation's collective self image, history and cultural
tradition. The self image of the Arabic people is one of a long victimized
people, most recently at the hands of Western imperialism and historically
of Christian bias, persecuted for their Arabic ethnicity and Islamic
heritage. Iraq, like all Middle East nations, aspires to be finally free of
foreign intervention in its domestic affairs, to enjoy a high standard of
living in peace and harmony consistent with its oil riches as God's gift.
These national aspirations have been shaped by a history of wounded national
pride, of betrayal by foreign allies who exploited inter-tribal rivalry, of
evolving nationalism, of ethnic, religious and linguistic tension, and of
demographic pressure from an increasingly youthful and impatient population.
In Iraq, as in many other countries in the region, more than half of the
population of 25 million is under the age of 25 who have not accumulated any
assets that would provide incentive to be politically conservative.

Besides history, Iraqi politics is influenced by its location and geography,
climate and the availability of water, which in many ways is more critical
than oil. The scarcity of water in the Middle East, heightened by rapid
urbanization and industrialization, has placed more importance on Iraq's two
rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Even with the ascendance of oil as a
source of wealth, agriculture relying on renewable water remains the main
source of employment. These factors have influenced settlement patterns,
tribalism, resource utilization and the development of diverse regional
economics. For example, the fact that these two rivers flood between April
and June, too late for winter crops and too early for summer crops, means
that agriculture depends on irrigation, which has been under central
government control since the creation of the Iraq state, implemented with
the cooperation of diverse ethnic, religious and tribal groups. Water was
able to unite the Iraqi population more than oil. Baghdad, located in the
center of the country, lies in the transitional zone between north and south
where the Tigris becomes navigable and large-scale irrigation possible. The
capital city is a historical center of trade and communication.

The present boundaries of Iraq, undefined until 1926, were drawn in the 20th
century by European political and economic interests with little regard for
indigenous demographic patterns. There is a tension between the Iraqi state,
representing the central authority within its borders and the Iraqi nation,
a tribal society divided by religious schism. As Faisal, the first Hashimite
king of Iraq lamented in the early 1930s: "I say in my heart full of sadness
that there is not yet in Iraq an Iraqi people." This is the root argument of
pan-Arabism in Iraqi politics. The history of the Arab Ba'ath Socialist
Party reflects the evolution of modern Middle East politics, in that it has
departed from formal ideology of its original founders to adopt pragmatic
measures to solve real problems within an Arabic/Islamic world view. The war
with Iran, the most costly and bloody conflict not involving a Western power
directly since World War II, and the Iraqi incorporation of Kuwait, were not
mere conflicts over borders, or access to the Shatt al-Arab waterway. The
Iran-Iraq war was a clash between extremist Islamic fundamentalism espoused
by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran and the pan-Arab nationalism of the
Ba'athists, both in and out of Iraq.

The irreconcilability of the two opposing ideologies is based on Iranian
rejection of limiting radical Islamic fundamentalism within one country, and
Ba'athist resistance to a world Islamic revolution, manifesting in Iraq as
resistance to Iranian incitement of the large Shi'ite population in Iraq,
many of whom are of Iranian descent. The incorporation of Kuwait was a
fulfillment of pan-Arab nationalism.

Iraq, situating on the eastern flank of the Arab world, is sandwiched
between two historical formidable non-Arab powers which have survived as the
modern states of Turkey and Iran, with whom Iraq shares ethnic groups.
Propinquity translates into vulnerability. In a speech on November 5, 1980,
Saddam said: "Turkey once imposed on us the Turkish language and culture ...
They used to take turns on Iraq. Turkey goes and Iran comes; Iran goes and
Turkey comes. All this under the guise of Islam. Enough ... We are Iraqis
and are part of the Arab homeland and the Arab nation. Iraq belongs to us."
He was using the term Iraq the way it was used in the Koran, denoting all of
Mesopotamia in a pan-Arab context, not the modern state of Iraq, whose
borders were delineated by British imperialism.

It has been suggested that the US deliberately lured Saddam into Kuwait in
order to attack an increasingly intransigent Iraq. Saddam's meeting with US
ambassador April Glaspie is usually cited as evidence. The records of that
meeting indicate that Glaspie did not discourage Saddam, let alone warn him
about his highly visible massing of troops along the Kuwait border. But the
real purpose was not related to Iraqi aggression or intransigence. It was to
exploit the contradiction between Arab regionalism and pan-Arabism to
strengthen US control of the region. Saddam told the US that he expected
just reward for Iraq's role in helping the US contain a hostile and
extremist Iran, in a war that had cost 60,000 Iraqi lives in one single
battle, a price Saddam claimed the US would be unable to shoulder itself,
given the nature of US society. Iraq was left with a foreign debt of over
$40 billion after the Iraq-Iran War, and needed higher oil prices of around
$40 per barrel to help pay this debt. Kuwait was deliberately keeping oil
prices low to destroy Iraq's economy. Glaspie responded that there were
people from oil states within the US who would also want to see higher oil
prices.

A transcript excerpt of the meeting between Saddam and Glaspie, on July 25,
1990 (eight days before the August 2, 1990 Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait)
released by British journalists, reads as follows:

July 25, 1990 - Presidential Palace - Baghdad.
Ambassador Glaspie: I have direct instructions from President Bush [Sr] to
improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your
quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with
Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your
extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We
understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to
rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive
numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business,
but when this happens in the context of your threats against Kuwait, then it
would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received
an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not confrontation -
regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to
Kuwait's borders?

Saddam Hussein: As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach
a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two
days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance.
(pause) When we [the Iraqis] meet [with the Kuwaitis] and we see there is
hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution,
then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.

Ambassador Glaspie: What solutions would be acceptable?

Saddam Hussein: If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al-Arab - our
strategic goal in our war with Iran - we will make concessions [to the
Kuwaitis]. But if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt
and the whole of Iraq [ie, in Saddam's view, including Kuwait] then we will
give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of
Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States'
opinion on this?

Ambassador Glaspie: We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as
your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of state James] Baker has directed me
to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the
Kuwait issue is not associated with America. (Saddam smiles)
While pledging US neutrality on Arab-Arab conflicts, thus not discouraging
Iraq from moving against Kuwait, the US at the same time gave Kuwait,
through then defense secretary Dick Cheney, assurances that it would defend
it against an attack from Iraq, emboldening Kuwait to refuse to negotiate.

The US goes to war in the Gulf
On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. Four days later, on
August 6, the United Nations imposed heavy sanctions on Iraq, on request
from the US. Simultaneously, after consulting with US secretary of defense
Cheney, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, the head of the Arab regionalist snake,
invited American troops onto Saudi soil. The unhappy fate of Kuwait had led
the Saudi king to seek protection from the US against the march of
pan-Arabism. Iraq's transgression was not so much to repossess Kuwait as an
integral part of Iraq, but that it claimed Kuwait as the first step on the
march toward pan-Arabism. If Iraq were to be allowed to keep Kuwait on the
basis of pan-Arabism, the survival of the Arab regionalist states will be
directly threatened.

President H W Bush quickly announced that the US would launch a "wholly
defensive" mission to prevent Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia, and US troops
moved into Saudi Arabia on August 7, 1990. Those who thought simplistically
that the US moved troops into Saudi Arabia to protect Saudi oil were missing
the point. At the time, Iraq was selling a higher percentage of its oil to
the US than Saudi Arabia, and there was no reason to expect Iraq to change
its oil export strategy. The Iraqi purpose in repossessing Kuwait oil was to
sell it, not to hoard it. Yet the idea of a war to protect oil supply
enjoyed wide automatic support in US politics, more than obscure
geopolitical calculations, especially when greed and power have been
celebrated in US society as moral positives since the 1970s. Under the cover
of protection of oil supply, the US moved troops into Saudi Arabia to stop
the march of pan-Arabism. It was a fateful development, as the al-Qaeda
pretext for the attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001 11 years later was
centered on demands for the removal of US troops from Saudi Arabia. The
unintended consequences of geopolitical stratagem was being expressed
through the iron law of terrorism of what goes around, comes around, known
generally as the blowback effect, a term coined by the CIA.

On September 25, the UN imposed an interdiction on air traffic to and from
Iraq. On November 29, the US got its UN war resolution. John Pilger reported
in the Guardian that this was achieved through a campaign of bribery,
blackmail and threats. In 1990, Egypt was the most indebted country in
Africa. Secretary of state James Baker bribed president Hosni Mubarak with
$14 billion in "debt forgiveness" in exchange for Egypt withholding
opposition to the pending war on Iraq. Washington gave President Hafez
al-Assad the green light to wipe out all opposition to Syrian rule in
Lebanon, plus a billion dollars' worth of arms. Iran was bribed with a US
promise to drop its opposition to World Bank loans. Bribing the Soviet Union
was especially urgent, as Moscow was close to pulling off a deal that would
allow Saddam to extricate himself from Kuwait peacefully. However, with its
wrecked economy, the Soviet Union was easy prey. Bush sent the Saudi foreign
minister to Moscow to offer a billion dollars before the Russian winter set
in to compensate for Soviet investment in Iraq. Mikhail Gorbachev, with
life-threatening political problems of his own at home, quickly agreed to
the war resolution, and another $3 billion from other Gulf oil states was
wired to the Soviet government to secure outstanding Iraqi debts to the
USSR.

The votes of the non-permanent members of the Security Council were crucial.
Zaire, occupying the rotating chair, was offered undisclosed "debt
forgiveness" and military equipment in return for silencing Security Council
members during the attack. Only Cuba and Yemen held out. Minutes after Yemen
voted against the resolution to attack Iraq, a senior US diplomat
characterized the vote to the Yemeni ambassador as the most expensive "no"
vote he ever cast. Within three days, a US aid program of $70 million to one
of the world's poorest countries was suspended. Yemen suddenly had problems
with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; and 800,000 Yemeni
workers were abruptly expelled from Saudi Arabia.

On January 16, 1991, the US led an international coalition from US bases in
Saudi Arabia to invade occupied Kuwait and Iraq. The US established a
broad-based international coalition to confront Iraq militarily and
diplomatically to defend the international principle of non-aggression. The
coalition consisted of Afghanistan*, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain,
Bangladesh*, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia*, Denmark, Egypt, France,
Germany*, Greece, Hungary, Honduras*, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, the
Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger*, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal,
Qatar, Romania*, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Korea*, Spain, Syria, Turkey,
the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States
(countries marked with * were non-combatants.) The coalition included all
Arab regionalist states, such as Syria, Bahrain, Egypt, the UAE, Morocco,
Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and above all, Saudi Arabia. To crush pan-Arabism by
exploiting its conflict with Arab regionalism was the geopolitical purpose
for the US attack on Iraq. The war was financed by countries which were
unable to send troops. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the rich regionalists, were
the main financial donors. More than $53 billion was pledged and received.

Exhaustive remote-controlled precision bombings were followed by blitzkrieg
movements of ground troops. Tens of thousands of Iraqis troops were killed
by smart-bomb air strikes, never having even come within sight of the enemy,
and most of the military infrastructure was destroyed together with much of
the civilian infrastructure. On March 3, a ceasefire was reached between
US-led coalition forces and Iraq. By April, Iraq suppressed rebellions in
the south by Shi'ites, and in the north by Kurds. Millions of Kurds fled to
Turkey and Iran. US, British and French troops moved into northern Iraq to
set up refugee camps and to protect the Kurds. In May, Iraq was presented
with an international claim for compensation of $100 billion, which dwarfed
the $23 billion reparation imposed on Germany after World War I that was
considered incredibly excessive and as contributing to the rise of Nazism in
the defeated nation. But the government of Saddam survived, while the Iraqi
population suffered a decade of sanctions that caused the death of 2 million
people, 800,000 of whom were children. While pan-Arabism was dealt a
setback, the suffering of the Arab people in Iraq boosted Arab solidarity in
the region.

Bush Snr and his national security advisor explained their decision on "Why
We Didn't Remove Saddam" in an interview with Time (March 2, 1998):

While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the
US nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi
state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of
the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an
occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing
objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep", and would have
incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was
probably impossible. We had been unable to find [Manuel] Noriega in Panama,
which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and,
in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the
Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under
those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set
a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and
occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the UN's mandate, would have
destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to
establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the US could conceivably still be
an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a
dramatically different - and perhaps barren - outcome."
Essentially the same argument was repeated in their book, A World
Transformed.

And off to war again ...
Yet a decade later, in response to terrorist attacks of September 11, the
second Bush administration launched a regime-changing invasion of Iraq, on a
number of drummed-up pretexts that in hindsight proved to be
unsubstantiated, ranging from preemptive strike against weapons of mass
destruction to spread of democracy, to humanitarian intervention. It is a
misnomer to characterize current US policy as preemptive defense. It is more
accurate to call it presumptive defense. A legitimate government far away
from the US with no credible threat capability against the US was toppled by
military force not because it actually possessed weapons of mass destruction
that could be used against the US, but that it was presumed to have
possessed or at least would seek to possess them in character with its
alleged evil constitution as defined by US short-term geopolitical
consideration.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, the administration dove who spoke of
"regime change" in Iraq for at least 18 months prior to actual beginning of
the second war on Iraq, said as the war drew near that the US might not seek
to remove Saddam if he would abandoned his weapons of mass destruction. It
was the latest in a series of comments by Powell that seemed to back away
from the White House goal of deposing the Iraqi president, which remained as
steadfast Bush administration policy. "We think the Iraqi people would be a
lot better off with a different leader, a different regime," Powell told the
UN Security Council. "But the principal offence here is weapons of mass
destruction, and that's what this resolution is working on. The major issue
before us is disarmament. All we are interested in is getting rid of those
weapons of mass destruction." But George W Bush said on October 7 that he
was "not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein".
Earlier he had told the public: "This man tried to kill my daddy!"

The record shows that Powell, the good cop as opposed to Rumsfeld the bad
cop, was also an early proponent of the regime-change policy. He told the
House International Relations Committee on March 7, 2001 that the
administration was considering such a policy. In February, he told the same
committee that "regime change" was policy, and the US "might have to do it
alone". He began backing away in an October 2 interview with USA Today's
editorial board. Should Iraq be fully disarmed, he said, "Then, in effect,
you have a different kind of regime no matter who's in Baghdad." On ABC,
Powell put it this way: "Either Iraq cooperates, and we get this disarmament
done through peaceful means; or they do not cooperate, and we will use other
means to get the job done."

The US asserted that Iraq had biological and chemical weapons and could be
close to making nuclear arms. Congress had given Bush authority to use
military force, after coordinating with the UN to see whether inspections
could be made to work. The Security Council maneuver that the US had
expected to be smooth sailing turned into a five-week round-robin of talks
and a pitched battle of wills with France. The fracas gave rise to criticism
by many countries that the US had pressed its case against Iraq too hard,
not only straining international law but also causing anxiety about how
Washington would play its role as the lone superpower, now faced with the
new threat of global terrorism.

President Jacques Chirac of France, traveling in the Middle East, demanded
postponing authorizing war against Iraq until after UN weapons inspectors
had completed their work. The US was not eager to compromise, but both
Washington and Paris recognized that a rift between them could be very
damaging and that there were important advantages to widening support for
any American action taken against Iraq.

Bush administration officials characterized the protracted talks as an
example of UN vacillation. Bush raised question on the UN's relevance.
Powell told NBC that he expected the UN Security Council to enact a
resolution setting strong guidelines for inspection teams to be sent back
into Iraq. But, he added, "The issue right now is not even how tough an
inspection regime is or isn't. The question is will Saddam and the Iraqi
regime cooperate - really, really cooperate - and let the inspections do
their job. All we are interested in is getting rid of those weapons of mass
destruction." Rumsfeld began talking about the "New Europe" of former Soviet
satellites as against the irrelevant "Old Europe" of France and Germany in
the new world order.

On February 5, 2003, Powell presented "proof" to the United Nations Security
Council that Iraq still produced and held weapons for mass destruction.
Western non-affiliated inspectors to Iraq later declared Powell's proof on
mass destruction to be a "lie", while the US officially attributed the
untruths to intelligence failure.

Investigative journalist Bob Woodward of Watergate fame provided in his
sensational book, Plan of Attack, the first detailed, behind-the-scenes
account of how and why the president decided to wage war in Iraq based on
conversations with 75 of the key decision-makers, including Bush himself.
The president permitted Woodward to quote him directly. Others spoke on the
condition that Woodward not identify them as sources. Woodward reports that
just five days after September 11, Bush indicated to National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice that while he had to do Afghanistan first, he was
also determined to do something about Saddam. "There's some pressure to go
after Saddam Hussein," Woodward quoted Rumsfeld as hearing the president
saying: "This is an opportunity to take out Saddam Hussein, perhaps. We
should consider it." And Woodward quoted the president saying to Condi Rice
head-to-head: "We won't do Iraq now. But it is a question we're gonna have
to return to."

Woodward wrote that "there's this low boil on Iraq until the day before
Thanksgiving, November 21, 2001. This is 72 days after 9/11." This is part
of this secret history. Bush, after a National Security Council meeting,
took Rumsfeld aside, "collared him physically, and took him into a little
cubbyhole room and closed the door and said: 'What have you got in terms of
plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it.
I want you to keep it secret'." Woodward wrote immediately after that,
Rumsfeld told General Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and
remove Saddam - and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check. Woodward
detailed when and how the decision to invade Iraq was made, but he shed no
light on why.

Now what's the plan?
The Bush administration went into Iraq with enormous illusions about how
easy the post-war situation would be: it thought the reconstruction would be
self-financing, that US forces could draw on a lasting well of gratitude for
liberating Iraq from tyranny, and that the US could occupy the country with
a small force structure and even draw US forces down significantly within a
few months. This illusion is reflected in US policy on force structure.
After the Cold War, because of defense budget reduction and popular
opposition in the host countries, the US was forced to gradually reduce its
troops stationed overseas. US troops abroad had shrunk to 247,000 people
before the second Iraq War in April 2002. In 1968, during the height of the
Vietnam War, army strength reached 1,570,000; navy 723,600; Marine 307,300
and air force 904,900. In 2002, army strength had dropped to 486,500, navy
385,000, Marine 173,700 and air force 368,300. The air force, together with
navy carrier-based planes, has become the dominant arm of the US military.

At the conclusion of offensive military operations in Iraq, the US Army
announced its plan to set up four military bases in occupied territory. Up
to now it still has more than 140,000 troops stationed in Iraq and it is
expected to keep a considerable scale of forces there for a long time to
come. The US occupation authority repeatedly singled out inadequate troop
numbers as the main difficulty in carrying out its mission. The US force
structure is designed to win short limited wars with smart weapons, but is
clearly inadequate for extended occupation of the long list of countries in
which US foreign policy aims to effectuate regime changes.

Bush has adopted the "transformationalist" agenda embraced by Rice, who in
August 2003 set out US ambitions to remake the Middle East along
neo-conservative lines by using US military power to impose democracy and
free markets on an Islamic tribal culture. It is a policy for political
transformation of Arab countries deemed vital to victory in the "war on
terrorism". Yet this policy is at odds with the force structure of the US
military, which has been designed to prevail in short intense conflicts, not
long drawn-out occupations.

Since the events of September 11, the US has looked on Islamic terrorism and
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as the greatest threats to
its national security, thinking the main threat to be coming from the
"unstable arc-shaped region" encompassing the coastal areas of the Caribbean
Sea, Africa, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia and the
Korean Peninsula. The US Defense Department has drastically adjusted the
disposition of its overseas troops around this "unstable arc-shaped region"
in an attempt to cope effectively with a global "preventive" war.

Advance disposition is a deployment concept of positioning in advance a
considerable amount of weapons, equipment and supplies in overseas bases,
doing the defense and garrison work with very small forces. When a sudden
crisis erupts, US forces will be sent by quick transport to the crisis
region and, by relying on the advance installed weapons, equipment and
supply, quickly generate combat effectiveness in the crisis region and carry
out technologically intensive operational tasks. Currently, US forces have
deployed equipment and materials for two army divisions in Europe and four
Marine expeditionary brigades each in Norway, Guam, Diego Garcia and the
Atlantic. In addition, US forces have 12 mobile advance-storage ships in the
Mediterranean and Indian Ocean regions. This strategy does not take into
account the massive troop requirement for pacification of occupied lands
after an externally imposed regime change. In imposing this new Pax
Americana by widespread regime changes, the US will need to maintain a
3-million-man army. What the neo-conservative hawks at the Bush White House
fail to realize is that the very "rogue nations" on which they aim to impose
regime changes, have been acting as ironic proxies for the US, albeit unruly
in US eyes, in maintaining the rat-tat world order the US has won from
winning the Cold War. The dismantling of this world order, however imperfect
in US eyes, will threaten the world's sole remaining superpower more than
any rogue nation does.

Bush has repeatedly drawn comparisons between the occupation of Iraq to that
of post-World War II Germany and Japan, drawing comfort from the alleged
success of democratization of these two former enemies. The post-World War
II occupation of Germany was a huge and diverse undertaking spanning almost
11 years, conducted in conjunction with three other members of the wartime
alliance and involving in various degrees a good number of US governmental
departments and agencies. The occupation was for the US Army a mission
second only in scope and significance to the war itself.

On V-E Day, General Dwight D Eisenhower had 61 US divisions, 1,622,000 men,
in Germany, and a total Allied force in Europe numbering 3,077,000. When the
shooting ended, the divisions in the field became occupation troops, charged
with maintaining law and order and establishing the Allied military presence
in the Western occupied part of the defeated nation. This was a military
occupation, the object of which was to control the population and stifle
resistance by putting troops into every part of the occupied nation.
Divisions were spread out across the countryside, sometimes over great
stretches of territory. The 78th Infantry Division, for instance, for a time
after V-E day, was responsible for an area of 3,600 square miles, almost
twice the size of the state of Delaware, and the 70th Infantry Division for
2,500 square miles. Battalions were deployed separately, and the company was
widely viewed as the ideal unit for independent deployment because billets
were easy to find and the hauls from the billets to guard posts and
checkpoints would not be excessively long. Frequently single platoons and
squads were deployed at substantial distances from their company
headquarters. There is no indication that the US Defense Department has any
such plans or intentions for the occupation of rogue states facing regime
change. Iraq with an area of 437,072 square kilometers (168,800 square
miles) will take more than 100 divisions to carry out the type of occupation
the US devised for Germany. Some 70,000 US troops are assigned to Germany,
although the army's First Infantry Division and First Armored Division are
currently in Iraq, leaving about 40,000 US Army troops, the equivalent of
two divisions, in Germany.

The Allied occupation of Germany is approaching its sixth decades, and in
the eyes of many Germans it has not yet ended. Foreign armies are still
based on German soil and Europe's largest and most prosperous "democracy"
still does not have a constitution and a peace treaty putting a formal end
to World War II. If the German model is applied to Iraq, there may never be
a formal end to the war in Iraq. Because there is no formal peace treaty
between Germany and the Allies headed by the US, German sovereignty is
compromised. On October 20, 1985, John Kornblum of the US State Department
told Germany's provisional Reichskanzler Wolfgang Gerhard Geunter Ebel:
"Until we have a peace treaty, Germany is a colony of the United States."
Ebel headed the provisional government that claims to be the legal successor
to the Second German Reich, which was replaced by Adolf Hitler's illegal
Third Reich (1933-45).

In Japan, the US did not engage in any regime change after the war, but
built on the existing political culture and regime, including the retaining
of the imperial house. Japan has been a successful economy, at least up to
the end of the Cold War, but not a particularly successful democracy, with a
one-party political system not much different than any communist government.
It has also not been a responsible regional citizen, betraying attitudes and
policies, especially in respect to its past brutal subjugation of its Asian
neighbors that are shameful and geopolitically destabilizing. John Dower
argues in his Pulitzer Prize winning Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of
World War II that the origins of these shortcomings can be traced to US
occupation policy. US occupation arrived in 1945 full of New Deal statist
zeal and determined to transform Japanese politics and society in its
liberal image. Cold War geopolitics quickly curbed this reform zeal. The
occupation did purge the military and effectively removed militarists from
the Japanese political establishment. But military dictatorships that lose
wars tend to lose their innate legitimacy, credibility and power, as
Napoleon III found out after the Franco-Prussian war and the Argentine
military junta discovered after the Falkland War of 1982 with Britain.
Otherwise, Japanese leaders of the prewar and wartime political, business
and bureaucratic establishment who had initially been purged and imprisoned
were quickly rehabilitated by the US occupation. Leftists and trade union
leaders that the US occupation had initially liberated from jail were
returned to jail. On the other end of the political spectrum, some of those
implicated in Japan's wartime government later served in high positions in
post-war governments. Nobusuke Kishi, a prominent member of General Hideki
Tojo's wartime cabinet, after a brief jail sentence, became Japan's prime
minister a mere decade after the war. Some 100,000 US troops are still in
East Asia, including 46,000 in Japan and 37,000 in South Korea.

The Iraqi invasion has caused a split within the US political right between
the conservatives and neo-conservatives. Conservatives have become
increasingly vocal against the decision to invade once the initial Pavlovian
conditioning reflex of rallying around the flag in times of war subsided.
Neo-conservative hawks continue to insist that the invasion decision was
right even if it had been based on the wrong reasons and flawed
intelligence. Francis Fukuyama, famed conservative author of the End of
History, in an essay entitled "Shattered Illusions" that first appeared in
The Australian - June 29, 2004, and since repeated in greater length in The
National Interest, a US conservative publication, questioned "the confidence
[of neo-conservatives] that the US could transform Iraq into a Western-style
democracy and go on from there to democratize the broader Middle East". He
put forth the argument that "these same neo-conservatives had spent much of
the past generation warning about the dangers of ambitious social
engineering and how social planners could never control behavior or deal
with unanticipated consequences. If the US cannot eliminate poverty or raise
test scores in Washington, DC, how in the world does it expect to bring
democracy to a part of the world that has stubbornly resisted it and is
virulently anti-American to boot?"

Fukuyama disputes Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer, who
has noted how wrong people were after World War II in asserting that Japan
could not democratize, echoing an argument made by Middle East scholar
Bernard Lewis, who has at several junctures suggested that pessimism about
the prospects for a democratic Iraq betrays lack of respect for Arabs.
Fukuyama expresses his disbelief that "democracies can be created anywhere
and everywhere through simple political will". He pointed out that the
overall record of US involvement in approximately 18 nation-building
projects between its conquest of the Philippines in 1899 and the current
occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq is not a pretty one. The cases of
unambiguous success - Germany, Japan and South Korea - were all cases where
US forces came and then stayed indefinitely. According to Fukuyama, in
Germany and Japan, the US was not nation-building at all, but only
re-legitimating societies that had very powerful states. In all of the other
cases, the US either left nothing behind in terms of self-sustaining
institutions, or else made things worse by creating a modern army and police
but no lasting rule of law. Fukuyama asserts that "US dominance is clear cut
only along two dimensions of national power, the cultural realm and the
ability to fight and win intensive conventional wars. Americans have no
particular taste or facility for nation-building; we want exit strategies
rather than empires." Fukuyama's insightful observation about the absence of
US will for global nation-building is supported by recent reforms of US
force structure.

Building an economic empire
US force structure is now designed to support an economic empire, not a
political empire. The venue for building this economic empire is neo-liberal
globalized trade, not military occupation. A geopolitical system has been
quietly fashioned out of market fundamentalism to protect this economic
empire, with the deceptive slogan of a crusade for democracy, the same way
Winston Churchill tried to protect the British economic empire with bogus
democracy and market capitalism after having sucked up all the capital from
the colonies. The British Empire evolved during the age of waning monarchal
absolutism. It was launched to enhance the authority of the Crown by
shipping off political dissidents, such as the unruly separatist Scots, to
build an empire for the Crown. It was a political empire that transformed
into an economic empire only after the Industrial Revolution. The debates in
parliament over colonialism were peppered with arguments that the colonies
were fruits of monarchal chimera and bottomless pits of economic loss to be
shouldered by the aristocracy to prevent them from challenging royal
dominance. An economic empire is governed by civilian financial
institutions, not military occupation. This explains why US overseas
military engagement must be accompanied by quick, workable exit strategies.
Wall Street support for the occupation of Iraq is near non-existent. The
unexpectedly endless occupation, euphemistically referred to as
"catastrophic success" has been Bush's gravest tactic error.

Strategically, Bush also failed to recognize that the invasion and
occupation of Iraq as a long-range policy to oppose pan-Arabism will incur
the near term price of massive escalation of terrorism. A war against
pan-Arabism is a war for terrorism, not on terrorism. Although few in
Washington understand this, or are willing to say it if they understood, the
invasion of Iraq unwittingly launched a war on pan-Arabism, which would
bring about many battles with terrorism. The US may win some battles with
terrorism, but the odds of it winning its "war on terrorism" have been
reduced with its war on pan-Arabism. Even accepting Bush's declaration that
the US after the invasion of Iraq is safer, though still not safe, the price
for this controversial claim is a US certainly not freer domestically.

Just as the Arab-Israel War of 1973 restructured the world economy by
lifting the market price of oil to $30 a barrel, the invasion of Iraq has
ushered in an era of oil above $50, changing the economic calculations of
all participants in the global economy. With the US essentially owning most
if not all of the world's oil as long as oil is mainly denominated in
dollars, a fiat currency the US can print at will with no immediate penalty
that has assumed the status of the main reserve currency for trade based on
geopolitical factors, a monetary phenomenon known as dollar hegemony, the
impact of higher oil prices translates into a sudden expansion of the
economy in dollar terms. The same amount of oil now is worth more dollars.
Oil inflation, unlike wage inflation, is not a growth stimulant, draining
consumer demand from the overcapacity that technological progress has
presented to the economy. Oil profits stagnate for lack of investment
opportunities because of low consumer demand. It is an inflation that drains
money from consumers to the owners of oil who cannot recycle the money
through consumption. It produces a shift of economic power from the oil
consuming economies to the oil producing and ultimately to the dollar
economy. Within the dollar economy (which extends beyond the political
borders of the US) higher oil prices produce a shift of economic power from
consumer to those who own oil reserves. It leads to a further step toward
the top-heavy inverse pyramid structure of wealth distribution in the US
economic empire. Unfortunately, inverse pyramids are inherently unstable.

Since September 11, it has been reported that Bush views himself as doing
God's work. So did Osama bin Laden after the quartering of US troops in
Saudi Arabia, so did Khomeini in overthrowing the Shah. Where was it written
that God approved of the global spread of democracy by US invasions? Was the
moral authority of the Ten Commandments derived from popular vote? The fact
is, God, assuming he exists, is on everyone's side. Bush must know he is
paying a high price globally for his unilateral policies and his
administration's hounding tone. Judging from overseas reports, Bush may now
be the most unpopular US leader ever around the world. Anti-US sentiment has
grown so intense that few foreign leaders can cooperate with Bush, on Iraq
or any other issue, without taking a severe hit domestically in their own
popularity.

The leader of the sole superpower in a world order of sovereign nations is
by default also the leader of the world, who cannot lead without the support
of all the people of the world. But if Bush should win a second term due to
inept Democrat campaigning, or the absence of a clear alternative vision
from the challenger, his mandate will be not merely to lead the US out of a
false-start quagmire, but to lead the world out of a destructive path of
geopolitical insanity, and join the ranks of great statesmen in history.
There are those who unrealistically reject the US because they despair over
the prospect of the US ever acting progressively as portrayed by its own
high-minded self-image. The cruel reality is that the narrow national
interests of the US often collide with the ideals of that image. There is
much complaint, justified repeatedly by solid evidence, about the government
lying to the public. Yet the reality is that US policies basically reflect
US public opinion and at times unwittingly at the expense of US long-range
national interests.

If US policies are frequently aggressively reactionary, it is because such
disposition is part of the American character. Bush's popularity with
Americans rests on his authentic American character. Yet there are two sides
to that character, made visible by the screen persona of John Wayne: the
tough big guy who champions the defenseless little guys. The US has evolved
into a superpower in the course of two world wars and will remain one for
the foreseeable future. As such it has earned the privileges associated with
the instinctive prerogative of a tough big guy. But the complete American
character requires the US to champion the defenseless little guys of the
world. The US has a rendezvous with destiny as the forward-looking leader of
the world rather the backward-wishing occupier of the world.