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June
6, 2003
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear
Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina
Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
of the Day
Evidence in Black and White?
June
4, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Federal Judge Blinks; Rosenthal
Walks
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
The Isaiah Crowd: The Threat of Neo-Christianity
Jason
Leopold
Manufacturing the Iraq War
John Chuckman
Blackmail as Policy
Mazin
Qumsiyeh
Summit: Peace or Pretense?
Issam Nashashibi
Sharon's Sword of Damocles
Steve
Perry
Wolfowitz of Arabia: the VF interview transcript
June
3, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Copycat Killers: Bush, Jakarta and
the Slaughter in Aceh
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Tells All
Elaine
Cassel
We Interrupt Your Normal Show to Bring You an Important Message
from Michael Powell: "Go to Hell, Americans!"
Tom
Crumpacker
The Politics of US Cuba Policy
William
S. Lind
Fourth Generation Warfare in Iraq
Sam
Hamod
The Final Brick in the Wall
Uri
Avnery
The Altalena Affair
Hammond
Guthrie
Stepping into Some Deep DARPA
Steve
Perry
The WashTimes'
al-Qaeda nuke "exclusive"
June
2, 2003
Arundhati
Roy
Day of the Jackals
Norman
Madarasz
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Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom
Alain
Frachon and Daniel Vernet
The Strategist and the Philosopher: Strauss and Wohlstetter
Anthony
Gancarski
Anti-Imperialism, Then & Now
Standard
Schaefer
Wasted at the Pentagon
Jason
Leopold
Rocky's Advice to the Dems
Guthrie
& Albert
HUAC 58 Years Letter
Steve
Perry
The Politics of Terror Alerts
May
31, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
A Whiner Called Horowitz
Gary Leupp
The Frauds of War
Dave
Lindorff
Clinton, Bush, Lies and Impeachment
Tom Stephens
Does It Matter that the Bush Administration Lied?
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Who Is Next?
Joanne
Mariner
Trivializing Terrorism
Wayne
Madsen
Ayatollah Ashcroft's Busy Week
Larry Magnuson
Is a Television a Radio or a Billboard?
Elaine
Cassel
Wake Up, America!
Gila Svirsky
Waiting for the Lament to End
Susan
Davis
Kitchen Dreams
Chris Clarke
Barbra Streisand: Environmental Hypocrite
Chris
Floyd
Bush Locates Source of World Evil: God
Adam Engel
Gravity's End Zone
Poets'
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Reiss, Guthrie, Orloski, Albert
May
30, 2003
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Tripp
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Neve
Gordon
The Bad Fence
Todd
Steiner
Endangered Ocean
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Freeman
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Sean
Carter
Utah Gets Fired Up for Executions
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Bacher
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Ali
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Perry
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May
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Leopold
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Watch
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The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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June
7, 2003
An Opportunity for
the Subalterns
A
Different Theory of Everything
By STEVEN SHERMAN
Give Thomas Friedman credit. He does tackle big
questions. In a column entitled "A theory of everything",
he attempts to explain how it happened that "after 9/11
people wondered, 'Why do they hate us?' speaking of the Muslim
world. After the Iraq war debate, the question has grown into,
'Why does everybody else hate us?'" His theory is worth
considering. According to Friedman, during the 1990s, the United
States became the most powerful country in the world, perhaps
in world history.
As a result, it touched the lives of
people all over the world, sometimes more deeply than their own
governments. Seattle 1999 was the protest of people who wanted
some say in how America was doing the touching. However, countries
didn't organize militarily against the US, because the US is
a 'benign hegemon' and, furthermore, they are all so intertwined
with the US economically that they would hurt themselves through
direct confrontation. Only rogue states and the likes of Osama
Bin Laden would attack the US, mostly to get at the Saudi ruling
family. "Hence, 9/11 suddenly, (the benign hegemon) turns
into Godzilla, a wounded, angry, raging beast." The actions
of this beast against first Afghanistan and then Iraq awakened
the rest of the world to demanding even more strongly a say
in the use of US power. "We said, sorry, you don't pay,
you don't play." Which is why everyone hates us. In a
curious show of humility, Friedman asks his readers for ideas
as to how the US can better manage the situation.
Its an impressive effort to try to offer
a theory of the last fifteen years or so in a 750 word column.
Let us see if we can't offer a slightly different theory, that
may help us to answer Tom's call for help. To do so, we will
have to go back slightly further, to the late seventies. The
US was in crisis-Western Europe (at the time, we talked mostly
about Germany) and Japan had basically rebuilt themselves and
were now competing well against the US economically. Furthermore,
revolutions in numerous countries-most dramatically Iran-indicated
the US had lost control over the periphery and semi-periphery
(to use Immanuel Wallerstein's terms) of the world economy.
Jimmy Carter tried to deal with the crisis first by acting
nicer-showing some remorse for Vietnam and talking about human
rights-but this only seemed to make matters worse, and by the
time he left office, he had turned the US government in a new
direction. Carter did two things-appointed Paul Volcker as head
of the Federal Reserve, and increased militarism (aiding the
Afghan rebels, the Salvadoran death squads, as well as increasing
US military spending)-that foreshadowed the Reagan years . The
impact of the escalation of militarism is more obvious-the revolutionary
wave was halted, and, eventually, the Soviets were not only evicted
from Afghanistan, but were pushed into a bankruptcy-inducing
arms race. The appointment of Volcker, while less dramatic, may
have been more significant. Volcker restricted the money supply,
leading to higher interest rates and a strong US dollar, which
had crucial ramifications for the US and the world. Basically,
it led to the flow of capital into the US, simultaneously a boom
for US consumers and investors, and a nightmare for the poorer
countries who watched the money flow away. Furthermore, this
trend was coordinated with IMF policies which stripped third
world states to the bone, and forced open their markets to multinationals.
In the course of the eighties, the US discovered the virtues
of third world democracy-lawyers and economists replacing military
dictators were more than happy to sell off the state industries
that were often the military's economic base. Furthermore, becoming
the new political class tended to split the democratic leadership
from the radical social movement base that they had aligned with
under dictators like Marcos and Pinochet. Everything seemed
rosy for the US by 1990.
If US capitalists had been allowed to
elect a leader to maintain their power in the world, they couldn't
have done better than Bill Clinton (on the other hand, American
left-liberals who were hoping for a renewal of reformist politics
were thoroughly disappointed). Clinton had an easy touch with
foreign leaders, and was always a hit at the World Economic Forum.
He was willing to go against his electoral base to push through
acts like NAFTA and the Mexican bailout. But Clinton had seriously
difficulties ruling at home-recall that he was the first president
impeached in well over a hundred years. Most obviously, this
was a cultural battle-basically, if you cared who he was getting
blow jobs from, you wanted him out, while if you didn't, you
didn't. Perhaps-it will take future historians some years to
sift through the evidence-it was also a covert economic war,
waged by smaller capitalists not thrilled about the multinational
direction the US was settling into. In any case, the unruliness
of the Republican party, and their unwillingness to cut the center-right
Clinton administration any slack, provides an interesting foreshadowing
of later developments.
Abroad, Clinton was adept at delaying
challenges to US power. In the context of the globalized world,
liberals (centered in Europe) intensified a campaign to develop
global norms around the environment, human rights, the international
criminal court, etc. Whatever the merits of these measures,
Clinton knew they wouldn't fly domestically in the US. The US
congress has a long standing hatred for any treaties that smack
of constraining the activities of the US. He basically hemmed
and hawed, and did manage to take up one of the European liberals
pet causes-the expulsion of the Serbs from Kosovo. The use of
the US military practically anywhere, once the domestic propaganda
machine is set in motion, is not as hard a sell domestically
as an internationally negotiated environmental treaty .
A second challenge to US power posed
greater difficulties, but Clinton handled the global justice
movement reasonably well, too. Protests against global US economic
policy had been going on for years, as a result of its impoverishing
effects worldwide-IMF riots, Zapatistas, GATT protests in India--but
in Seattle, at the meeting of the WTO, the protestors managed
to get directly in front of the cameras of the world media,
and seriously embarrassed the US government. The notion that
neoliberal policies should simply march forward without serious
debate was forever shattered. In these trying circumstances,
Clinton rushed out to make a few statements that managed to thoroughly
confuse some of the American liberals protesting . Clinton had
done a good job of managing the challenges the US faced to its
leadership, although, clearly, the prospect by the end of the
decade of everyone simply falling in line behind the US was nowhere
near as great as it seemed in 1990.
This was roughly where things stood when
the Republicans stole the presidential election of 2000 through
a mixture of racist voter disenfranchisement, orchestrated mob
riots to intimidate vote counters, fraud involving military absentee
voters, and, finally, the Supreme court's judicial coup. Bush
quickly made it clear that he was not going to replicate the
balancing act Clinton had performed. He let the European liberal
community know that the US would not be partaking in any treaties
around the environment or other issues of concern. By appointing
an idiot , Paul O'Neill, in charge of treasury, he affirmed that
the US would no longer attempt to lead the world economically
through institutions like the IMF. Instead, the US would simply
do whatever it wanted, basing foreign economic policy on the
short-term political concerns of Bush, and not even bother trying
to bail out the capitalists of countries like Argentina.
Several more shocks awaited the US.
First, the high-tech bubble finally burst. The inflow of money
to the US had mostly been a trick of high interest rates; the
fact that there wasn't as much to the high tech boom as the US
claimed had to become clear sooner or later. The fact that US
culture engulfed the world during the nineties has nothing much
to do with economic strength-after the Italian city states faded
economically (by the middle of the sixteenth century) Italian
culture became more important in Europe for another hundred years
at least . The real growth story of the nineties was China.
But obviously, the key shock to US power
was the attacks of September 11. A band of terrorists with a
chunk of change (the figure I usually hear is $500,000) that
wouldn't impress Dr. Evil and no conventional weapons to speak
of committed a devastating attack on centers (or at least symbols)
of American financial and military power, killing thousands.
With a shaken public willing to rally behind him, Bush unveiled
his positive strategy for the US-having jettisoned diplomatic
and economic strategies, Bush would employ military might that
would intimidate everyone-'rogue' states, terrorists, Europeans,
global justice protesters. The hope is to demonstrate to Europe
and Japan that the US is vital to take out 'bad guys', while
at the same time expanding military presence in a region crucial
in a dozen respects-geographically, natural resource wise, etc.
That military presence can intimidate all sorts of rivals and
control the flow of oil, to the detriment of potential European
or Russian power. While his approval figures are high, he'd push
for a series of tax cuts that will basically bankrupt the US'
ability to fund anything besides its military. Although the capitalists
of the WEF -as well as Warren Buffett and Stephen Roach of Morgan
Stanley -have made it clear that they think this is insanity,
so far they've been utterly unable to affect public debate (if
that is the right word) in the US.
Meanwhile more troubles lie ahead. Its
no secret that the other shoe of the US economy-the dollar-is
going to fall in value sooner than later, and although William
Safire is sanguine about this prospect , this decline is likely
to hit American consumers, addicted to cheap imported goods,
hard.
Far from Friedman's depiction of an incredibly
powerful US, we have tried to show that US power is declining.
Global public opinion has actually had its center of gravity
in Western Europe since it became more prominent in the nineties.
A more radical global justice movement has crystallized since
Seattle. The weakness of the US economically was brought to public
attention-but by no means created-by the bursting of the stock
market bubble and the dramatic bankruptcies of Enron, Worldcom,
etc. It is in this context that the US has decided, under the
leadership of far right fanatics, to try to dispense with diplomacy
and economic leadership and exclusively play the military card.
This will accelerate its decline-as each military 'victory'
emboldens all of the US' opponents to more speedily adapt effective
strategies.
I suspect that Thomas Friedman and I
have different people in mind when we say 'everyone' hates us.
Friedman worries about European leaders, and the global neoliberal
community. US standing among these elites has indeed fallen
precipitously lately. If he wants to restore US prestige (although
it will never again be as great as it was), Friedman would be
well advised to openly oppose Bush's policies, rather than trying
to add a figleaf of rationality to them. Pretending that the
policy of pre-emptive strikes sort of makes sense isn't fooling
anyone. Lashing out at France, rather than paying serious attention
to their opinions, won't help either.
On the other hand, the world opinion
I am concerned about is less elite, and I suspect it has changed
less dramatically over the last few years. Workers, peasants,
indigeneous groups, and all sorts of 'subalterns' have known
for years that the policies advocated by the US, the IMF/World
Bank/WTO, and multinational corporations have been screwing them
over. The abandonment of world leadership by the US presents
an opportunity to these groups, as well as a threat. The opportunity
is to play the two poles of world power against each other, to
find more room for policies that can address their urgent needs.
The European Union isn't likely to become a trustworthy ally
of these groups, but there is a fragment of the European political
class-the groups who attend the WSF-who are considerably more
open to listening to what these groups have to say than anyone
with much power in the US. Their hand is likely to be strengthened
if the split with the US intensifies and Europe seeks allies
elsewhere. The danger is that heightened opposition to the US
will take the form of crude anti-Americanism, rather than movements
aimed at producing more just global policies. It is perhaps
in this last respect that we have some room to intervene.
Steven Sherman
is a sociologist whose latest article, "The
attacks of September 11 in Three Temporalities", can
be read online. He can be reached at threehegemons@aol.com.
Today's
Features
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
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