>Brian:
>>And I'm still unclear on why this "hyperpower" business is supposed
>>to mean. For one thing, how did the U.S. become a "hyperpower" when
>>it was previously a "superpower?" And exactly how has this status
>>changed war? Apart from some relatively minor technological tweaks,
>>there doesn't seem to be much difference at all (I mean, beyond the
>>collapse of the Saddam regime within a month and a half). I see no
>>need to work up this neologism of "hyperpowers" unless one is a
>>Jean Baudrillard fan. If war isn't awful enough to get people
>>motivated, then dressing it up with cutesy words ain't going to
>>help much.
>---
>I agree. The idea that the US is a godlike "hyperpower" is part of
>the collective delusion that got the Bushies into the whole Iraq
>mess. The US is good at bombing defenseless countries but that's
>about it.
The idea is that the US used to be one superpower whose greatest geopolitical ambitions were checked by another superpower and vice versa. With the Soviet Union no more, there is no superpower that can check the US. France is no substitute for the USSR. Hence the US's transformation into a "hyperpower," a term that was reportedly coined by former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine.
It was the Gulf War that signaled the beginning of change from two superpowers to one hyperpower:
***** The Gulf War: Moscow's role Saddam Hussein Supporters of Saddam Hussein parade a picture of the Iraqi leader January 17, 2001 Web posted at: 5:52 AM EST (1052 GMT) By CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- The Gulf War of 1991 had ramifications far beyond the Middle East.
One of the most significant of these involved the role of the Soviet Union, which was in decline as a world superpower.
The U.S.S.R. had long been a close ally of Baghdad. It had a treaty of friendship and co-operation with Saddam Hussein's regime, and for two decades it had trained the Iraqi military, supplying it with billions of dollars worth of weaponry and equipment.
When the chips were down, Moscow could have sided with Iraq against the U.S.-led alliance -- albeit risking a dangerous return to the Cold War.
Instead, the Soviet Union of January 1991 -- economically weakened and politically unstable -- adopted the role of middleman, condemning Baghdad's aggression against Kuwait while working feverishly to avert allied military action against Iraq. . . .
"A lot of people sitting in Moscow would say ... this was the first time that the United States started to act as a global policeman, that there was no counterweight to the great might of the United States," says Dmitri Trenin, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Centre. . . .
<http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/01/16/russia.iraq/> *****
And the US occupation of Iraq today is a consequence of the transformation of the US into a hyperpower brought about by the Soviet decline and collapse.
>By the way the Soviet Army took control of Afghanistan in less than
>a month and with fewer casualties than the US did in taking Iraq.
An initial "victory" is easy, be it Iraq or Afghanistan -- the question is if a foreign army could hold it.
***** THE RUSSIA JOURNAL || Articles Afghans find uneasy peace in Moscow Christopher Kenneth
Fleeing from a country long devastated by war, despotism, religious extremism and poverty, thousands of Afghans have abandoned their homes over the past three decades to find a better and safer life in the Soviet Union and Russia.
There are more than 150,000 Afghans in Russia, with about a third in Moscow alone, estimates say. The composition of the Moscow diaspora is extremely diverse, with about 100 former ministers and governor-generals, 200 army generals, 100 professional journalists, 400 Ph.D.-holders in different fields and several thousands of other minor specialists, according to Afghan diaspora statistics. . . .
<http://www.therussiajournal.com/index.htm?cat=1&type=3&obj=5332> *****
Those 400 Afghan Ph.D's could have contributed a lot to the development of Afghanistan. . . . -- Yoshie
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