> Marvin Gandall wrote:
>>
>> This is an interesting article, IMO, for the following reasons:
>>
>>
>> 2. It proposes that the US ruling class and its allies are afflicted by
>> "strategic confusion" about how to deal with challenges to their hegemony
>> from Russia, China, and the Islamic world.
>
> _Limits_ to their "hegemony." They're still in pretty good shape.
>
> U.S. forces are _permanently_ established in Iraq, and there is no
> longer any significant resistance to that permanent establishment.
========================================
Carrol sees Iraq as a strategic victory for US imperialism. Most opinion,
including within US ruling circles, sees it as a strategic defeat. So do I.
The current maneuvering is about how to turn the defeat into the appearance
of victory - the real purpose of the "surge" - rather than to "permanently"
maintain a large military presence in the country.
It was never, in fact, the US intent to pemanently occupy Iraq. The invasion was meant to accomplish swift regime change and an early exit, with a minimum loss of blood and treasure, and the successful installation of a bourgeois puppet government under Ahmed Chalabi, which would proceed to sign a peace treaty with Israel, broker a Palestinian surrender, and break the OPEC monopoly on Mideast oil. The US, after having provided such a shocking and awesome display of military power, would give troublesome regimes like those in Iran, North Korea, and Cuba the same ultimatum to quickly surrender or die as it gave Saddam.
As we know, the New American Century did not turn out as planned. Thirty thousand US dead and wounded and nearly a trillion dollars later, the US is stuck with unreliable Shia "partners" in Iraq with close ties to Iran. Iran's influence in the region has grown under a more conservative Islamist regime, as have that of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. Rather than sparking regime change, the invasion discredited Iranian and Arab liberals better disposed to the West who were expected to reach an accomodation with Israel. Israel is more internally divided and vulnerable than it was before the invasion.
While the US empire is "still in pretty good shape" and reports of its impending demise may be greatly exaggerated, there's no question it was in much better military, political, and economic shape five years ago, and that it's global influence has waned. I suspect Carrol's equanimity about the current state of the empire is not shared even by the now wholly discredited Bush administration.