<http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/stories/20070406004500400.htm> Imperial sunset?
AIJAZ AHMAD
For the first time since its rise as a superpower the United States is facing a serious threat to its hegemony across the globe.
<http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/images/20070406004500401.jpg> President George W.Bush. LAWRENCE JACCKSON/AP
IN February this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed a security conference in Munich that had 250 of the world's top leaders and officials in attendance, including such luminaries as the German Chancellor and the U.S. Secretary of State. He said some very rude words about the United States, denouncing its unilateralism and unipolar pretensions, its trampling of international law, its stoking of the arms race, its aggressions across the globe. These, Putin said, were factors that encouraged others to seek their own weapons of mass destruction and even commit terrorist acts.
He went further and warned Europe itself that the continuing eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was "a serious provocative factor" and that the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had been converted into "a vulgar instrument for advancing the foreign policy goals of one country or a group of countries against other countries". The global missile defence system developed by the U.S. would, he said, "give it a free hand to launch not only local, but global conflicts" and the proposed deployment of U.S. missile interceptors in Europe to neutralise Russia's nuclear arsenals would trigger "another round of the inevitable arms race". Calling for a new "global security architecture", Putin reminded the Europeans that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) had among them a larger gross domestic product (GDP) than the European Union. "There is no doubt that in the foreseeable future the economic potential of these new centres of power will inevitably get converted into political clout and will strengthen multipolarity," he said.
That Russia and Iran, the world's supreme energy giants and both countries in the eye of U.S. military designs, would seek military cooperation and an energy alliance - even perhaps an eventual "gas cartel" as no less a personage than Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has suggested - is entirely understandable. The real scandal of the situation is that soon after delivering that speech, Putin went off to seek energy cooperation with, and sell weapon systems to, such U.S. `reliables' as the Saudi, Jordanian and Qatari royals.
The Financial Times, the premier newspaper for global capital, reacted to Putin's sweeping speech with a simple question: Imperial Sunset? [LINK: <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f2b7d52c-bb06-11db-bbf3-0000779e2340.html>] The `decline of U.S. hegemony' has been a favourite theme among many circles of the left since the early 1970s, not as an absolute event but as a relative decline, related to the growing power of its major capitalist competitors. Is that `decline' now becoming a real `sunset'?
A variety of factors have contributed to this question: the military debacle of the U.S. in Iraq and of Israel, its only 100 per cent ally, in Lebanon, which precipitated comprehensive domestic crises of confidence inside both countries; the immensity of U.S. deficits and instability of the dollar as the pre-eminent global currency; the challenges of the famous "pink tide" in Latin America; the resurgence of Russian power and high rates of growth in China and India; "resource wars", that is, the emergence of giant energy producers and consumers on the one hand and, on the other, what Michael Klare calls "energo-fascism" in which, he avers, the Pentagon has increasingly become a "global oil protection service". That is a very tall order, and no one article, or a set of articles as the current issue of Frontline is presenting them, can wholly answer questions of such magnitude. What follows here offers a basic outline, starting with the Achilles' heel, the historically unprecedented and currently unrivalled military power of the U.S., which is proving to be the principal cause of its hubris.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
THE "HIZBOLLAH EFFECT" <http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/images/20070406004500402.jpg> A protest in Sao Paulo against President Bush's visit, on March 8. TENGKU BAHAR/AFP
The decisive event of the past six years may yet turn out to be the 34-day war between Israel, generally considered one of the world's six great military powers (after the U.S., Russia, U.K., France and China), and Hizbollah, a Shia militia that gained valuable experience in guerilla warfare during the 1990s when it participated in the Lebanese Resistance that drove the Israelis out of southern Lebanon, which they had occupied for two decades.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
New questions now arose. If Israel could not defeat even Hizbollah, can it eradicate armed Palestine resistance, which is backed by a population of millions that has been living under a humiliating Israeli occupation for 40 years? Since at least 2003, and with the full backing of the Israeli lobby in the U.S., Israel has been belligerently calling upon the U.S. to invade Iran and threatening to do so itself if the U.S. would not. It accuses Hizbollah of being merely a client of Iran and Syria. Can it successfully hit at Iran when it cannot even subdue the purported "client"? And, if a mere militia can defeat the invincible Israel, can the U.S., already pinned down and bleeding in Iraq, take on Iran, which is ruled by a generation that cut its teeth in the trenches of the war that Saddam Hussein, a friend of the U.S. in those days, had imposed on Iran upon U.S. promptings?
For six years, Bush has refused to talk directly to Iran, despite entreaties from the E.U. and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and despite pressures from inside the U.S. at the highest levels (including Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski among the Democrats, and people as high up as James Baker among Republicans). Over the past two months, however, there is evidence of a new willingness; a first round of talks has taken place and another one is due in April. Could one say that the "Hizbollah effect" is part of this new-found prudence? Is that "effect" helping bring back a recognition of the fact that Iran helped the U.S. to put together client regimes in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the U.S. again needs Iran's help in extricating itself from the Iraq debacle? Can the U.S. really invade Iran while asking it to help with the mess of the Iraq invasion? Or is this new willingness to talk just a charade and a prelude to actual invasion? We shall have to wait and see.
What can be said with fair certainty is that Israel, America's most reliable ally in West Asia, is in a state of advanced internal crisis. For the first time in its history, more Jews are leaving Israel than are entering it, and those who are leaving are usually among the most skilled and privileged; another debacle, and this Jewish immigration out of Israel shall become a flood, and Israel's worst nightmare - that the Arab citizenry of Israel will begin approaching demographic parity with its Jewish population - shall gain some basis in reality, releasing the genocidal tendencies of Israel which lurk barely under the surface. Meanwhile, popular ratings for its Prime Minister hover at around 10 per cent, the worst in Israeli history and considerably lower than Bush's 25 per cent in the U.S., which too is just about as low as any U.S. President has ever sunk. Haaretz, Israel's most prestigious newspaper, says that the government "lacks both direction and conscience", while another writer for the newspaper concludes that Israel is just "stewing in its own rot". Vardic Zeiler, a retired judge who headed an inquiry into the state's operations, concluded that the Israeli police force resembled that of Sicily and the state was on its way to becoming a mafia-style regime. Gabriel Kolko, an eminent American historian, states baldly that "Israel today is well on its way to becoming a failed state". This internal "rot" is both the cause and the effect of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories over 40 years (the longest such occupation in modern history), its will to treat the inhabitants of those territories like caged animals, and its will to turn Gaza into a vast prison camp, shooting and killing virtually at will. But this is not the place to go into all that.
The U.S.-Israeli axis now has a choice to make. Realism demands that they forgo their grand illusions of free-fire invincibility, their will to cut and chop the region to forge a "New Middle East" to their own specifications, and instead find just solutions to their respective occupations. The alternative is that both keep sinking deeper and deeper into their respective quagmires. All available indications are that as their own crises worsen, the more desperate and warlike the venal leaderships of the two countries are becoming, compounding internal divisions. Numerous high officials in Israel, including its Prime Minister, are now under investigation for one kind of wrongdoing or another; not a day passes without yet another clash surfacing between the U.S. Congress and the U.S. President.
RESOURCE WARS
The wars of the post-Soviet era have tended to be `Resource Wars'. Having bankrupted Iraq in the war with Iran, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait to seize its oil resources. The U.S. retaliated with a war to bring the sheikhs back to their throne so as to re-establish the status quo ante. Thus began its 17-year-old war against Iraq, with military conquest paving the way for the more lasting corporate conquest. Most U.S. soldiers shall leave Iraq sooner or later. Will the corporations also leave and the military bases be dismantled? That is the decisive question in judging whether or not Iraq shall be the graveyard of U.S. ambitions. None of the main players in current Iraqi politics seems keen to say goodbye to the U.S. corporations; all seem intent on seeing an end to the military occupation so that they can cut their own deals with the corporations. Thus it is that the privatisation law is the most basic of all laws promulgated under U.S. stewardship, started with the direct intervention of Bremer & Co, and now continuing through "negotiations" between the occupiers and the client groups, while the killings go on. It is the essence of the new oil law on the table now. The shooting war may end but Iraq may yet emerge as a playground for a rejuvenated "energo-fascism".
Iraq's oil reserves are said to be second only to Saudi Arabia's. Iran's combined oil and gas reserves are said to be quite the equal of Saudi's oil reserves, in total energy terms. The U.S. has waged a cold war against the Islamic Republic of Iran for almost 30 years now, and has threatened a hot war (outright invasion) for a full decade. The occupation of Iraq is designed partly to compensate for the earlier loss incurred when the Shah was overthrown, and partly to regain access to Iranian resources, either by invading it or by imposing upon it a peace on terms favourable to the U.S. in the energy sector. Iran has already served the U.S. well by helping it obtain client regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. An accommodation between the U.S. and Iran in the energy sector is not inconceivable. The Security Council is ready with a draft for tighter sanctions against Iran. The U.S. Navy has assembled a vast armada in the Gulf and positioned all kinds of military forces to surround Iran for "psychological warfare" and also for invasion if necessary. Meanwhile, the two sides, plus Syria, will meet to see if a larger settlement is possible. It is not at all clear where this high-stakes brinksmanship by both sides is going.
The so-called "Shia crescent," which has been so much in the news lately, has less to do with religion or sect and much more to do with oil. Iran is predominantly Shia, and Shias are certainly in the majority among the Arab inhabitants of Iraq. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are predominantly Sunni, but Shias are in the majority in those regions of the two countries where oil resources are mostly concentrated. These are the four major oil-producing countries of the region,and having exacerbated the Shia-Sunni sectarian rivalries to the point of armed conflict among respective militias in Iraq, the U.S. fears (and Iran threatens) that an attack on Iran would rouse and unify Shia populations across the region, not only against the U.S. but also against its clients in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and elsewhere across the Muslim world. If prudence prevails in Washington, the U.S. shall concede Iran's security concerns in lieu of a normalisation of relations, get concessions in the energy sector and, in turn, learn to live with Iran's own interests in "multipolar" relations with the Euro-American bloc on the one hand and Russia and China on the other.
If the "Shia crescent" is about energy, so is "multipolarity" in a substantial degree. As neighbours and as global giants in gas and oil reserves, Russia and Iran are natural allies; they are also bound in a relationship of competitive collaboration in the Caspian region, itself rich in the same energy resources and extending up to China. At the other end of the Asian landmass, both Russia and China are geographically proximate to Japan and other centres of East Asian capitalism, all of them dependent on imported fossil fuels. As the financial power of Asian capitalism grows, it is bound to build its own energy supply systems independent of its European and U.S. rivals. East Asian countries are already pegging their currencies to the Chinese yuan; South Korea is drawing closer to China, and investments in China have helped Japan cope with its stagnating growth. The surest way for Russia and China to weaken Japan's historic dependence on the U.S. is to offer it a terminus for energy pipeline grids starting in Iran, Russia, and the Caspian Basin and running across the vast territories of Russia and China, as an alternative to the precarious sea lanes that run through the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Straits. It is good to recall that the first privatisations of Iraqi oil came not after the U.S. invasion but during the period of sanctions from Saddam Hussein, who gave concessions to Russia and China. The successor regime, put in place by the U.S., may take that particular leaf out of Saddam's book. That is why the U.S. shall not dismantle its vast military bases in Iraq. The methods are different but Russia too supplies advanced weapons systems to Iran with an energy partnership in mind.
Much else could be said. Suffice it to conclude that if the "multipolarity" that is now emerging in the world capitalist system as we now have it - with Russia and China emerging not as socialist powers but as capitalist giants - ever develops into full-fledged inter-imperialist rivalry between the old capitalist centres and the new ones, energy resources, currencies and debts shall be central to it.
LATIN AMERICA
I have published half a dozen pieces on Latin America in Frontline. Here I offer just a few generalisations, starting with the proposition that if the U.S. may potentially lose its wars in West Asia, it may lose the peace in Latin America as well. The only country that made a successful revolution against imperialism in the precise sense of the word (the "highest stage of capitalism", as Lenin called it), and which tried to build an alternative to it, was Cuba. The ongoing revolutionary process in Venezuela is an attempt to radically shift the nature of the relationships between the metropolitan countries, principally the U.S. and Venezuela and, by extension, between South (Latin) and North (Anglo-) America, but within the confines of the capitalist system. What Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calls the `socialism of the 21st century' looks, strictly speaking, a lot like `capitalism with a human face'. Within these limits, Chavez has launched an immense, open-ended process of fundamental transformations within Venezuela and speeded it up since his recent re-election. He has also launched a many-sided and increasingly influential continental project of Latin American unity, ranging from proposed multilateral pacts such as ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America) to the projected Banco del Sur (Bank of the South), with the ambition of defeating U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Agreements and throwing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank out of Latin America.
Chavez has lent $2.5 billion to Argentina and has offered $1.5 billion to Bolivia and $500 million to Ecuador, while IMF lending in Latin America has plummeted to a mere 1 per cent of its global portfolio; if IMF does not lend, it cannot influence policy. Banco del Sur is designed to supplant international lenders altogether and thus make the World Bank irrelevant, and also offer a credible alternative to North American and European private banks. His loan helped Argentina pull out of its IMF dependence, resolve its financial crisis and regain impressive growth rates. Venezuelan financial backing is indispensable to the success of President Evo Morales in poverty-stricken Bolivia. Rafael Correa, the newly elected leader of Ecuador, threatens to repudiate his country's $10 billion debt, primarily because he expects Chavez to bail him out of the consequent crisis. Chavez has given oil at subsidised prices to the Caribbean countries (not to speak of the barter arrangement of `cows for oil' with Argentina) and promises to finance a large number of ambitious projects (cross-continental highways and so on) with Brazilian and Argentine technological resources.
The main problem, however, is that his domestic and continental projects are highly capital-intensive and presume high and growing petrodollar incomes. Venezuela's oil exports amounted to $58.4 billion last year, with reserves now amounting to $34 billion - enormous for a small and largely poor country, but a pittance by global standards. His way of utilising oil incomes certainly holds up a mirror to the oil-rich countries of West Asia. But the question remains: how long shall this petrodollar-driven `socialism of the 21st century' last in case international oil prices plummet? Venezuelan currency is the worst performing currency on the global black markets and the country's budget deficit rose 20 times last year to $3.8 billion - still a tenth of the reserves. What happens to these deficits and the domestic currency, and his projected domestic and continental spendings, if his oil earnings fall precipitously and continue to fall for a few years? And what will happen to the solidarity of the bloc he is trying to lead at present?
Aside from these economic realities, three facts stand out. Chavez has made a revolution, now he has to make revolutionaries: cadres, organisations, institutions. He has made exhilarating advances but his is a race against time and he learns as he goes along. Meanwhile, the second fact is that aside from Cuba and Venezuela, Bolivia is the only other country where a revolution-minded leadership is in charge. The other major countries of Latin America are dominated by either the extreme right-wing (Colombia and Mexico), flamboyant mavericks (Peru), and moderate social democrats (Chile, Argentina, Brazil) who are playing along with Chavez while the going is good. Finally, the true revolts of Latin America, which involve millions upon millions of people and which reject neoliberalism and all other trappings of Yankee imperialism, are to be found not in state systems but among the masses. Fire is in the hills and the mountains, not in presidential palaces of even the so-called `pink tide'.
IMPERIAL PRECIPICE
<http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/images/20070406004500403.jpg> Challenging a unipolar order: (Clockwise from top left) Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, King Abullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, President Hu Jintao of China, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. PICTURES:AP/AFP/REUTERS
We should be cautious in predicting imperial sunsets. The heart of imperialism is its economy. The U.S. economy survived the defeat in Vietnam quite handsomely, all things considered, and went on to gain for itself a unipolar global empire. The U.S. can survive a defeat in Iraq just as well, and, even under the best of circumstances, the new Iraqi bourgeoisie will still have to reconstruct the country over the next two decades and for that it will have to sell oil on the global market.
The U.S. helped post-War Europe and Japan rebuild themselves and learned to live very well with their growing economic power. It supported European integration and supported the Japanese export-based miracle by running trade deficits with it for decades. Europe has never materially opposed any of the U.S. military adventures and supported most of them, while many Japanese scholars still think of their country as a U.S. dependency. Today, the U.S. similarly supports the Chinese export-based miracle by providing a huge market for its products and absorbing much of Chinese money surpluses into its own deficits. The nightmare in Beijing is that the U.S. economy may enter a serious recession, even a mild depression, so that Chinese exports, along with Chinese growth rates, would just collapse. There is no major country in the world today that does not have a major stake in the health and stability of the U.S. economy.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Iraq and Lebanon wars have shown up the limits of the latest in military technology. Relatively small militias, armed with rudimentary weapons, fought the U.S. and Israeli armies to a standstill; one withdrew hastily, the other doesn't even know how to retreat or even avoid slow attrition. This imposes severe limits on U.S. capabilities and projects for seeking military solutions to political problems. If the U.S. repeats in Iran the folly it committed in Iraq, the myth of its military prowess shall be in full ruin. Stiglitz calculates the cumulative costs of the Iraq war at $3 trillion or more. Hence the brewing revolt against the very idea within the U.S. itself.
On the other side of the globe are the mass movements of Latin America. They are neither "terrorists", nor "rogue states"; hence not even fictitious targets for invasions. Not even a spectre of communism. Just millions of the poor on the march for equality, justice, and redistribution of wealth. Not a cauldron of religious millenarianism, sectarian strife and ethnic divisions, as in so much of the Muslim world. But a direct revolt against neoliberalism and imperialism as such.
The mass movements of Latin America show us, one hopes, our own future.
-- Yoshie
