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SPEAKING FREELY
Chicken hawks do have a plan
By Joe Nichols

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

A recent article in Asia Times Online (Chicken hawk groupthink?, May 12) gives evidence that intellectual inbreeding and the comradery of a closed circle of associates has led the in-group in the Bush administration to make some stupid decisions regarding Iraq, such as waging war, despite much reason and qualified opinion against the idea.

This is likened to the attempted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War. Without discounting the probability that any number of very high-level personalities supporting the current campaign are suffering from a number of delusions, I think the insistence to"stay the course" in Iraq by the principle architects is based on a recognition of several"imperatives" that are clearly understood, correct from a certain point of view, but not quite ripe for public articulation, either in the US or abroad.

As a baseline for my judgment, I put forward several propositions: 1) The political class in every nation is a crop of cultivated liars - to be generous, obfuscators. Power has always resided in the hands of a minority in all societies of significant scale, and with the advent of mass politics and its language of egalitarianism, it became necessary to spin yarns to either justify or conceal the disparity; 2) Humanity is entering the condition of critical mass, leading to a level of competition within and between human groups and areas of the world that will amount to cannibalization: the possibilities for either economic growth or cost-free migration are coming to an end. This is true not simply because of the number of people that now exist and are coming to be, but also hinges on aspects of human nature and a set of divisive and irremediable historical developments, as well as environmental limits preset beneath a rising tide of expectations that are unsupportable.

The first proposition about political dishonesty can be applied to the current in-group in Washington to an exceptional degree, in large part because it is made up mostly of a minority within a minority - they are Jewish. A good deal of controversy surrounds this observation already and I have no space or allowance to repeat such here, so I simply point to the fact with another fact in mind. Facts presented here and elsewhere have also raised the issue of"dual loyalty" between Israel and the US by Jewish neo-conservatives, with former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle's affiliations to the Jerusalem Post, the crafting of Israel's regional strategy ("A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm") and the revolving door between the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and US administrators being but a few more notable manifestations. Again, I take it as a simple matter of fact (having much to do with assessing group solidarity among Jews in crisis) that Jews in the US are, in general, committed to Israel. From here one should turn to Israel itself.

Israel in danger
Israel is in dire straits: despite its nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal and conventional arms; despite its per capita gross domestic product; despite its linkages to the last superpower. Israel is in the grips of an environmental, demographic, social and, potentially, an economic disaster and no amount of crafty diplomacy or even economic investment can salvage the huge historical mistake of creating Israel in the first place. One need only look at the problem of water in this sliver of land, couched within an enormously water-stressed region overall.

Israel's coastal aquifers are depleted. At least 60 percent of its fresh water comes from the West Bank and the Golan Heights, both areas where it must either maintain control or become subject to collaborative management arrangements - not realistic in the current climate, and getting worse all the time. In its last attempt to seize control of the Litani River in Lebanon it was routed by Hezbollah, but left only with the incentive of a big compensation package from the US. Now it buys water from Turkey.

With population growth across the region surrounding Israel averaging around 2.5 percent per annum, and even greater growth in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel must concentrate its development and growth within an increasingly stressed and crowded atmosphere or it must continue to expand. Socially, Israel is as contentious and divided as any country on earth, as well as being riddled with crime, corruption and near caste divisions within its populace. In all, both within Israel and in its regional context, something has to give in order for it to carry on.

As an outsider with no immediate stake in the welfare of the Israeli state, I assume that I am less sensitive to these dilemmas than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, Perle, National Security Council Middle East Affairs head Eliot Abrams or Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, so I adopt the easy position that they understand as much about Israel's vulnerabilities and needs as I do. If one goes back to the point of view of Vladimir Jabotinsky, father of the Likud, it becomes also clear that my stream of thought was shrewdly projected even before Israel's foundation: Israel must exist at the expense of Arabs in the region, and the current Israeli historian Benny Morris agrees. In simple terms, Israel is at the edge of its viability as a state unless it either redefines its identity or conquers new territory, beginning with the Golan and the West Bank, but extending necessarily by proxy into at least Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and, because of its specifics, Iraq. Conquering in this sense, with regard to established nations, is tantamount to imposing one's will, and to be effective for practical purposes the will of Israel resides in the US.

Why Iraq?
In a recent interview on public broadcasting in the US with a trio of the typical, dreary pundits one has come to expect, Lieutenant-General William Odom (retired) called for the hasty withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, fully admitting the probability that the country will descend into civil war as a consequence: the subject of discussion was simply whether or not the war could be won. Odom presented three reasons the US went to war - weapons of mass destruction, overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime, and establishing a constitutional democracy"friendly" to the US. In that order, he declared the first irrelevant (didn't exist), the second accomplished, and the third not possible to achieve, at least for several decades. Ergo, let's get the hell out and deal with whoever comes out on top.

I imagine President George W Bush, his deputy Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pearl and Wolfowitz sitting in a room listening to this drivel and reacting, with Bush fuming about god and freedom until he goes for a jog with the secret service - the others listen on and nod. After the president leaves, the party in power gets out the cognac and heaves a collective sigh:"Why do they put such people on TV in the first place?" any one of them might ask rhetorically. Odom is either intellectually conditioned or obedient enough to keep the discussion about the causes for the war within the narrow lines the establishment wants, but for whatever reason he draws the wrong conclusion. The Bush cabal didn't go to Iraq for any of Odum's reasons as Odom understands them, and so they are all irrelevant to the decision on whether or not to get out.

While Bush is rubbing his crotch with talcum powder and putting on his sneakers, our quartet of idealists turn to discussing real issues, such as oil, the prospects for privatizing the region, derailing any possibilities for a common currency among Arab nations, the position of the dollar in petroleum markets and for the central reserves in Asia, and the balance of trade between the US and the nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

All agree that as the price of crude oil goes through the roof, the last thing they want is to continue to give all that money and leverage to states governed by a bunch of vulnerable autocrats continually threatened by their own population's demands for reform, a population that is rapidly growing, getting poorer and, throughout the Middle East, running out of water - think Iran in 1979 times X: We'll have no more willy-nilly Mr Jimmy Carters at the helm, thank you. All also agree that the information age is making global public relations a good bit trickier, even on the home front, despite a largely obedient media and an ignorant and distracted citizenry. During Rumsfeld's testimony on prisoner abuse before the US Congress, his most impassioned remarks were directed at the appalling availability of digital cameras and the Internet: a few pictures and blamo, he's scratching ass and his face is hanging out. The retail handling of dictatorships for the benefit of capital and the Old/New World Order is flying apart. The situation, on the whole, is just becoming unmanageable and big change is needed.

Again, our quartet agrees: We have to bring democracy to the Middle East! And funnily enough, they somewhat mean it. Here I sense the influence of Wolfowitz, a reasonably good mockup of Leo Strauss. Democracy on the scale of nation states is a pretty flexible institution and one needn't (shouldn't) take its egalitarian language too seriously. In the US, for example, the disparity of wealth is impressive, the agenda is managed at the top and as long as things are going reasonably well half the population is completely politically asleep - they just don't participate; even before the law, wealth and status get unequal representation, and if things go wrong it's Fed-Med rather than hard lockup.

Indeed, the US has always preferred to establish a system of rules and privileges similar to its own in the countries that it has tortured and helped to ruin, and despite a few burps along the way the Philippines might be one of the best examples of what the US regards a success - huge disparity in wealth, investment privilege, debt service, military cooperation and ideological agreement. The essential thing has been that US"interests" are given a special place in the system so that US capital can be extended into new territory and inequality across nations can be maintained. If the local population has other ideas and can represent these effectively, the managers in Washington will co-opt the worst class of savages imaginable to put them in their place - often a prison or a grave.

But why the sea change in rhetoric over the Middle East now? The promotion of"democracy" in Iraq conforms to past US policy and rhetoric in the sense that we are actually invading the country, and such pronouncements have always been necessary to justify US aggression; but Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Syria (we can send a few folks there for"interrogation" but still demand an open society), still want back the Golan Heights (which Israel can never allow, mainly for its watershed) and complicates Lebanon for Israel (at least up to the Litani River) - so yes, democracy for Syria. Iran: an important threat to Israel after 1979 (Iraq, under the umbrella of the US until Gulf War I, not a threat to Israel except to far-seeing Israeli xenophobes), a broker of its own oil and in the Caspian Basin and imposing hugely over the future disposition of oil in Iraq - yes, democracy for Iran. Egypt: decades of marshal law and the second biggest recipient of US cash (mostly to support the police state), booming population with its own water woes (possibly to trigger wars in the future all up the Nile), home of the Muslim Brotherhood and with a change of direction, Israel's worst nightmare - yes, democracy for Egypt, but enormously complicated to pull off temporarily with even modest success, largely for economic and environmental reasons, so a relatively subdued call for reform.

And why was Saddam set up to invade Kuwait in the first place (his motivations"slant drilling into Iraqi oil, demands for the repayment of debt after the Iran-Iraq war, from which an ungrateful Sunni elite in Kuwait was relieved of the specter of a resurgent Shi'ite majority in the south of Iraq" could have been dispelled by US pressure), if not to isolate and undermine his regime. Why do this to a good fella like Saddam? He had been there for the US and could still be managed, given a little leg up in his time of need. The strategic decision to get rid of Saddam preceded his invasion of Kuwait.

Combinations of factors have brought about the shift in policy in the Middle East.

1.) The collapse of the Soviet Union - opening the floodgates for neo-liberal aggression and leading immediately to a huge wave of privatizations of national assets throughout the world. But with oil being the most strategic, coveted, controversial and thus best protected of such assets, the privatization of oil has been delayed. The circumstances for artificial elites in control of the major reserves of oil in less-developed nations, from Saudi Arabia and Iraq to Nigeria, from Indonesia or Angola to Venezuela, have changed: the near universal adoption of capitalism by national elites has radicalized the arena in which negotiation, leverage, alliance or self-determination occur.

2.) Human critical mass and globalization - as indicated above, too many people in highly unequal conditions demanding too much from a finite, over-attended pie. The old claim that a rising tide lifts all boats is horribly mismatched across the seven seas. India's population, for example, is scheduled to peg out at above 1.6 billion by 2050, and the 150 million there currently feasting at the consumer's table will not assure a place for the 700 million literally without a pot to piss in. The Philippines is another excellent example, as the country approaches biological collapse. Nigeria, at 130+ million, is about to go bonkers. This bears on democratization across the Middle East not only because it is basically in the same boat as these other nations, but also because oil is increasingly assuming the character of a global asset, and with fully half of it in and around the Persian Gulf, the relevant resource rich but weak nations' efforts to defend the concept of their sovereignty will be pitted against a general atmosphere of desperation, a philosophy of macroeconomic functionalism, and a belief that all resources must be integrated into a global economy without either prejudice or undue advantage. Democracy/free trade is the mantra for this process, to be dictated by the industrialized world.

3.) The Judaization of the American elite - Jews are the most prosperous subset of the elite in the US, the biggest political campaign contributors, the principle managers of US media, and have dominated the last two presidential administrations. For better or for worse, informed observers must concede that Jews in the US have reached a pinnacle of wealth and influence fantastically beyond their numbers. Nevertheless, Jewish influence on US Middle East policy has historically been offset by broader American strategic interests in Persian Gulf oil, much to the frustration of the rising Jewish elite. This helps to explain much of what appears lumpen and confused about US policy in the region. After the Jewish invasion into the Levant, Israel's initially defensive wars and its chronic abuse of the local Arab population, as well as its encroachments on its hostile neighbors, have in fact been constrained - first by its essential weakness, and increasingly (as it has accrued real power after 1973) by US national interests in managing Middle East oil. But with the global strategic scenario being radically altered by the collapse of the Soviet Union, population growth in the region and underdevelopment with its discontents have been linked with an overall increase in competition for resources to emerge - in the hands of realists among the Jewish intelligentsia involved in geopolitical strategizing - to become more credible indicators of an entrenched regional instability that threatens America's access to and control over the same oil. Muslim militants conducting terrorist operations against US interests in the region are understood as simply the vanguard of a more general uprising to come.

In sum, the world has changed since 1990. A bipolar struggle went poof, and quickly evolved beyond the presumptions of the survivor into an undefined multi-polar, up-for-grabs environment in which rhetoric is chasing after an emerging reality. The shrewdest (the Jews) and the most cynical (the capitalists) respondents to this situation overlap, and they have seized the moment for the time being, focusing their energies on the precise point that most satisfies their mutual aims - the Persian Gulf, as the greatest material prize in world history and the strategic lever for Arab influence.

Such a perspective suggests to me that Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle agree that long term, joint US/Israeli interests are centered on establishing control over the Persian Gulf. Democratization of the Middle East is not about human rights per se, but it is about updating the means by which Gulf oil is made available on a predictable basis to US control and integrated into a globalizing economy to the advantage of the US. The Jewish Diaspora community has put most of its eggs in the US basket, which is increasingly at economic risk - with the decline of the one also goes the other.

What I wonder about most deeply is whether this quartet must divide itself to speak frankly about what should be done if the Iraq campaign fundamentally fails. My concern would be that their planned response to such an eventuality would be like their hidden rationale for the current war: a consequence of a desperation to maintain their interests, clearly thought out, and too frightful for public discussion. Either now or then, however, I believe they know exactly what they are doing.

(Copyright Joe Nichols.)

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