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December 29, 2004
We are on the verge of entering new territory in international relations with the US as the only superpower. This cartoon captures the Middle East aspect of the US as an empire:
Emad Hajjaj
Link courtesy of Collective Lounge.
How many observers and experts expected, much less predicted in public, that the United States would invade and occupy Iraq a year before it happened? Few indeed. Now the Bush Administration is talking in terms of a further widening of the war to change regimes in Syria and Iran. How many observers and experts expect that to happen?
In the light of that question a quote from Thomas Powers' article, 'Secret Intelligence and the 'War on Terror' published in the New York Review of Books:
"The toughest challenge for anyone trying to pay attention to the world is to grasp the large shape of events—not the details of warming or cooling relations as routine issues come and go, but the sea change when everything begins to shift. In the world at the moment the big unknown is what America is up to. Following Bush's reelection we must expect the question of American intentions to enter the discussion in the foreign chanceries of the entire world. These intentions are not transparent. The administration first argued that it sought only to disarm Saddam. When that turned out to be unnecessary it was ready with a new argument—replacing Saddam with a free, democratic government would create a beacon of hope and a light unto the nations, persuading terrorists to give up the struggle and changing the political landscape of the Middle East.
Maybe that was the real reason all along, and maybe not. Foreign governments may feel that a better guide would be the President's national security strategy issued in late 2001. There the administration argued for a policy of preemption, and a forward policy projecting American military power into the heart of the Middle East. A forward policy requires client states on the ground. What sort of client states? How big a military presence? To remain how long?"
We have been living through a sea change when everything begins to shift. We know that. We have felt the tectonic plates of international relations shifting under our feet. We also know that we on the verge of entering new territory.
However, I'm not sure that we understand what the seachange of projecting American military power into the heart of the Middle East actually means.
Does anyone? One attempt. I use that scenario as a signpost too. What else have we?
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