On Sat, 14 Sep 2002, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Sat, 14 Sep 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > >Awesome. This excerpt constitutes a 2553-word definition of "hubris."
> > >I believe the nation's current state of dementia exceeds that of any
> > >other time in US history, which is saying something.
> >
> > Really? Worse than the Cold War? Worse than when Herman Kahn was
> > thinking the unthinkable? Worse than the Reagan years, when they talked
> > openly about winnable nuclear wars?
>
> Very good comparison. Equally logical and equally mad.
>
> What strikes me about this reasoning is that it rests on an enormous
> sleight of hand. The justification for it all is that there might someday
> be super-terrorists "who have no return address." That supposedly is why
> deterrence no longer works and sovereignty must be trampled on. But the
> new system, as laid out here, is entirely conceived of in terms of nation
> states. As far as terrorism is concerned, it presumes exactly the
> opposite -- that they do have return addresses.
>
> If you take seriously the original premise, that terrorism is important
> and has no return address, it becomes clear what's wrong with this.
> Through history, fighting terrorism with a wide network of strong
> sympathizers has been like fighting guerrilla wars. If we leave aside for
> the moment those guerilla wars that have been defeated by genocide,
> success has always involved a political component, an effort at inclusion.
> Military action without it has always spurred it on.
>
> So a system designed to outrage the national amour-propre of the entire
> world hardly seems like a great way to stamp out terrorism. It seems
> rather like a great way to stimulate it. Especially when it is coupled
> with no pretense of any accompanying material gain for this political
> concession -- no even empty words about bettering the lot of people in
> these countries of "conditional soveriegnty" that are meant now to
> consciously and permanently bend their knee to the United States.
>
> The only way this system can work is in fact if terrorism does have a
> return address, and all WMD are impossible to build without the resources
> of a country behind it. But if it does, then the basis for deterrence
> continues to exist, and the justification for this entire system is a lie.
>
> On the other hand, if we see terrorism as an excuse for a system that
> really is about nation states -- but about making all nation states
> subordinate to this one, and preemptively crushing rivals or even problems
> before they can arise -- then it's a diabolically lovely one, since a
> steady stream of terrorist events, so long as they are sufficiently spaced
> out, will continually legitimate this endless war, in the same way that
> the assasination policy in Israel was supported by the terrorist attacks
> it fostered.
>
> Of course, if one decides that terrorism, despite that one terrible lucky
> hit, really isn't a world changing event -- that the number of people who
> will die of it annually will be considerably less than die of many other
> side-effects of modernization -- then one would come to the opposite
> conclusion: that is mainly a matter of policing and security and above all
> cooperation, not only with other nation-states, but also with the
> communities of people that live within them. Which would indicate an
> opposite approach designed to make people your friends, not your enemies.
>
> It also indicates an opposite approach to the question of WMD. The way to
> keep them from proliferating is to strengthen the international
> conventions that police them *and* to produce a world in which countries
> felt no need for them because they felt under no fear of attack. And in
> which countries that had them had strong incentives not to share them.
> And in which nuclear power was phased out as more dangerous than it's
> worth. (Outlaw reactors and you've outlawed bomb development.) And
> finally to rely on the same deterrence to keep countries from using them,
> knowing full well that they would get obliterated if they did.
>
> This approach, on the other hand, which makes every country fear complete
> overthrow at every moment seems perfectly designed to stimulate all of
> them to seek them; to use them if they have them; and to disincline
> enabler countries from cooperating with the US in limiting their spread.
> Especially since that would mean foregoing income and influence on their
> part with no offsetting gain.
>
> China and Russia are big problems for this scheme. Which, I'm afraid,
> will soon bring us full circle back to the idea of winnable nuclear wars.
> If in fact people like Cheney and Rumsfeld ever left it.
>
> What, for example, are these neoimperialists thinking of doing to keep
> Russia from carrying out its recent agreement to build 5 nuclear reactors
> in Iran, I wonder. Offering it a reasonable place of prominence in a
> trustably multilateral world?
>
> Michael
>