In addition to the factors enumerated by Yoshie affecting the US's imperial reach - military and financial resources, strength of opposing or competing interests, and the quality of its leadership - there is the not insignificant matter of securing a reliable allied constituency, especially within the elite, of the target country - another area where the US has not have much success lately, except perhaps on Russia's borders. The US first tried to contain Saddam, then sought to overthrown him from within, using sanctions as leverage. It has oscillated between trying to contain and overthrow Chavez in Venezuela. In neither case, was it able to break away enough of the military and create enough mass economic distress to overturn the regime, as in Chile, for example, the textbook case. Same in North Korea, in Iran, and Cuba.
The ultimate step is sending in an army of occupation to do the job, a massively more risky and costly enterprise. The early Bush administration ignored the counsel of the military and intelligence establishment who were universally warning it against taking the plunge into Iraq. The hubristic neocons have since been learning that expansion of US imperial power is not simply a matter of being more willing to use US ground forces than the wimpy Democrats who were running foreign policy. It's been an expensive learning curve; not only have they been creating a lot of mayhem and misery in the process, they've weakened the empire rather than strengthened it.
MG ------------------------------
----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>; <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2005 7:11 AM Subject: [lbo-talk] "Stay the Course"
> Chris wrote:
>>>Washington's goal is to pacify Iraq so as to set up a new pro-Washington
>>>Iraqi regime, protected by pro-Washington Iraqi military and police
>>>forces, whose economic and geopolitical interests would more or less
>>>coincide with Washington's and restructure Iraq's politics and economy
>>>accordingly. That's an unattainable goal, but America is run by men and
>>>women who think that Washington could and should have won the Vietnam
>>>War.
>>
>>But you just said that the US is _not_ trying to stabilize Iraq, not that
>>it is incapable of doing so.
>
> What I said is this: "Who said that such a [pro-Washington] regime would
> be viable or that Washington could pacify Iraq? If Washington had wanted
> a stable Iraq, it would have lifted its economic sanctions on it and
> encouraged American investors to compete with French, Russian, and other
> investors for a chance to invest in its oil industry, instead of starving
> and then invading the country"
> (<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050523/010967.html>).
> Washington doesn't want a stable regime if the regime in question is not
> of the sort that it thinks is in its interest, correctly or incorrectly.
> Washington would risk the chaos of war (e.g., Iraq) or subversion (e.g.,
> Venezuela), believing that it can create a new stable regime that is more
> to its liking than the one that it replaces, but it can't always have its
> way. Firstly, Washington's estimation of its own interest may be
> mistaken; secondly, others (guerrillas, Sadrists, France, Turkey, etc.)
> may directly and indirectly sabotage its goal; thirdly, Washington's
> finance is not what it used to be; and fourthly, an all-volunteer military
> is not made for a deadly and protracted counter-insurgency war on a large
> scale.
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/>
> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
> * Calendars of Events in Columbus:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
> <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
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>