[Nettime-bold] The Eagle Has Crash Landed by Immanuel Wallerstein

[richard barbrook <richard@hrc.wmin.ac.uk>]

Hiya,

I thought that this article from the great American Marxist-Braudelian
might interest the nettime posse. There is one sentence which is
particularly wonderful:

> Ironically, the hawk reading has largely become the reading of the
>international left, which has been screaming about U.S. policies-mainly
>because
>they fear that the chances of U.S. success are high.

As I suspected, Donald Rumsfeld and Noam Chomsky really are two halves of
the same person...

Later,

Richard

================================


Foreign Policy. The Magazine of Global Politics, Economic, and Ideas

<www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2002/wallerstein.html>

The Eagle Has Crash Landed

Pax Americana is over. Challenges from Vietnam and the Balkans to the
Middle East
and September 11 have revealed the limits of American supremacy. Will the
United
States learn to fade quietly, or will U.S. conservatives resist and thereby
transform a gradual decline into a rapid and dangerous fall?

By Immanuel Wallerstein


The United States in decline? Few people today would believe this
assertion. The
only ones who do are the U.S. hawks, who argue vociferously for policies to
reverse the decline. This belief that the end of U.S. hegemony has already
begun
does not follow from the vulnerability that became apparent to all on September
11, 2001. In fact, the United States has been fading as a global power
since the
1970s, and the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks has merely
accelerated this
decline. To understand why the so-called Pax Americana is on the wane requires
examining the geopolitics of the 20th century, particularly of the
century's final
three decades. This exercise uncovers a simple and inescapable conclusion: The
economic, political, and military factors that contributed to  U.S.
hegemony are
the same factors that will inexorably produce the coming U.S. decline.

Intro to hegemony

The rise of the United States to global hegemony was a long process that
began in
earnest with the world recession of 1873. At that time, the United States and
Germany began to acquire an increasing share of global markets, mainly at the
expense of the steadily receding British economy. Both nations had recently
acquired a stable political base-the United States by successfully
terminating the
Civil War and Germany by achieving unification and defeating France in the
Franco-Prussian War. From 1873 to 1914, the United States and Germany
became the
principal producers in certain leading sectors: steel and later automobiles for
the United States and industrial chemicals for Germany.

The history books record that World War I broke out in 1914 and ended in
1918 and
that World War II lasted from 1939 to 1945. However, it makes more sense to
consider the two as a single, continuous "30 years' war" between the United
States
and Germany, with truces and local conflicts scattered in between. The
competition
for hegemonic succession took an ideological turn in 1933, when the Nazis
came to
power in Germany and began their quest to transcend the global system
altogether,
seeking not hegemony within the current system but rather a form of global
empire.
Recall the Nazi slogan ein tausendjähriges Reich (a thousand-year empire). In
turn, the United States assumed the role of advocate of centrist world
liberalism-recall former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "four freedoms"
(freedom of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear)-and entered into a
strategic alliance with the Soviet Union, making possible the defeat of Germany
and its allies.

World War II resulted in enormous destruction of infrastructure and populations
throughout Eurasia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, with almost no
country left unscathed. The only major industrial power in the world to emerge
intact-and even greatly strengthened from an economic perspective-was the
United
States, which moved swiftly to consolidate its position.

But the aspiring hegemon faced some practical political obstacles. During
the war,
the Allied powers had agreed on the establishment of the United Nations,
composed
primarily of countries that had been in the coalition against the Axis
powers. The
organization's critical feature was the Security Council, the only
structure that
could authorize the use of force. Since the U.N. Charter gave the right of
veto to
five powers-including the United States and the Soviet Union-the council was
rendered largely toothless in practice. So it was not the founding of the
United
Nations in April 1945 that determined the geopolitical constraints of the
second
half of the 20th century but rather the Yalta meeting between Roosevelt,
British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin two months
earlier.

The formal accords at Yalta were less important than the informal, unspoken
agreements, which one can only assess by observing the behavior of the United
States and the Soviet Union in the years that followed. When the war ended in
Europe on May 8, 1945, Soviet and Western (that is, U.S., British, and French)
troops were located in particular places-essentially, along a line in the
center
of Europe that came to be called the Oder-Neisse Line. Aside from a few minor
adjustments, they stayed there. In hindsight, Yalta signified the agreement of
both sides that they could stay there and that neither side would use force to
push the other out. This tacit accord applied to Asia as well, as evinced
by U.S.
occupation of Japan and the division of Korea. Politically, therefore,
Yalta was
an agreement on the status quo in which the Soviet Union controlled about one
third of the world and the United States the rest.

Washington also faced more serious military challenges. The Soviet Union
had the
world's largest land forces, while the U.S. government was under domestic
pressure
to downsize its army, particularly by ending the draft. The United States
therefore decided to assert its military strength not via land forces but
through
a monopoly of nuclear weapons (plus an air force capable of deploying
them). This
monopoly soon disappeared: By 1949, the Soviet Union had developed nuclear
weapons
as well. Ever since, the United States has been reduced to trying to
prevent the
acquisition of nuclear weapons (and chemical and biological weapons) by
additional
powers, an effort that, in the 21st century, does not seem terribly successful.

Until 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union coexisted in the "balance of
terror" of the Cold War. This status quo was tested seriously only three times:
the Berlin blockade of 1948-49, the Korean War in 1950-53, and the Cuban
missile
crisis of 1962. The result in each case was restoration of the status quo.
Moreover, note how each time the Soviet Union faced a political crisis
among its
satellite regimes-East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in
1968,
and Poland in 1981-the United States engaged in little more than propaganda
exercises, allowing the Soviet Union to proceed largely as it deemed fit.

Of course, this passivity did not extend to the economic arena. The United
States
capitalized on the Cold War ambiance to launch massive economic reconstruction
efforts, first in Western Europe and then in Japan (as well as in South
Korea and
Taiwan). The rationale was obvious: What was the point of having such
overwhelming
productive superiority if the rest of the world could not muster effective
demand?
Furthermore, economic reconstruction helped create clientelistic obligations on
the part of the nations receiving U.S. aid; this sense of obligation fostered
willingness to enter into military alliances and, even more important, into
political subservience.

Finally, one should not underestimate the ideological and cultural component of
U.S. hegemony. The immediate post-1945 period may have been the historical high
point for the popularity of communist ideology. We easily forget today the
large
votes for Communist parties in free elections in countries such as Belgium,
France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Finland, not to mention the support
Communist
parties gathered in Asia-in Vietnam, India, and Japan-and throughout Latin
America. And that still leaves out areas such as China, Greece, and Iran, where
free elections remained absent or constrained but where Communist parties
enjoyed
widespread appeal. In response, the United States sustained a massive
anticommunist ideological offensive. In retrospect, this initiative appears
largely successful: Washington brandished its role as the leader of the "free
world" at least as effectively as the Soviet Union brandished its position
as the
leader of the "progressive" and "anti-imperialist" camp.

One, Two, Many Vietnams

The United States' success as a hegemonic power in the postwar period
created the
conditions of the nation's hegemonic demise. This process is captured in four
symbols: the war in Vietnam, the revolutions of 1968, the fall of the
Berlin Wall
in 1989, and the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Each symbol built
upon the
prior one, culminating in the situation in which the United States
currently finds
itself-a lone superpower that lacks true power, a world leader nobody
follows and
few respect, and a nation drifting dangerously amidst a global chaos it cannot
control.

What was the Vietnam War? First and foremost, it was the effort of the
Vietnamese
people to end colonial rule and establish their own state. The Vietnamese
fought
the French, the Japanese, and the Americans, and in the end the Vietnamese
won-quite an achievement, actually. Geopolitically, however, the war
represented a
rejection of the Yalta status quo by populations then labeled as Third World.
Vietnam became such a powerful symbol because Washington was foolish enough to
invest its full military might in the struggle, but the United States still
lost.
True, the United States didn't deploy nuclear weapons (a decision certain
myopic
groups on the right have long reproached), but such use would have
shattered the
Yalta accords and might have produced a nuclear holocaust-an outcome the United
States simply could not risk.

But Vietnam was not merely a military defeat or a blight on U.S. prestige.
The war
dealt a major blow to the United States' ability to remain the world's dominant
economic power. The conflict was extremely expensive and more or less used
up the
U.S. gold reserves that had been so plentiful since 1945. Moreover, the United
States incurred these costs just as Western Europe and Japan experienced major
economic upswings. These conditions ended U.S. preeminence in the global
economy.
Since the late 1960s, members of this triad have been nearly economic
equals, each
doing better than the others for certain periods but none moving far ahead.

When the revolutions of 1968 broke out around the world, support for the
Vietnamese became a major rhetorical component. "One, two, many Vietnams"
and "Ho,
Ho, Ho Chi Minh" were chanted in many a street, not least in the United States.
But the 1968ers did not merely condemn U.S. hegemony. They condemned Soviet
collusion with the United States, they condemned Yalta, and they used or
adapted
the language of the Chinese cultural revolutionaries who divided the world into
two camps-the two superpowers and the rest of the world.

The denunciation of Soviet collusion led logically to the denunciation of those
national forces closely allied with the Soviet Union, which meant in most cases
the traditional Communist parties. But the 1968 revolutionaries also lashed out
against other components of the Old Left-national liberation movements in the
Third World, social-democratic movements in Western Europe, and New Deal
Democrats
in the United States-accusing them, too, of collusion with what the
revolutionaries generically termed "U.S. imperialism."

The attack on Soviet collusion with Washington plus the attack on the Old Left
further weakened the legitimacy of the Yalta arrangements on which the United
States had fashioned the world order. It also undermined the position of
centrist
liberalism as the lone, legitimate global ideology. The direct political
consequences of the world revolutions of 1968 were minimal, but the
geopolitical
and intellectual repercussions were enormous and irrevocable. Centrist
liberalism
tumbled from the throne it had occupied since the European revolutions of
1848 and
that had enabled it to co-opt conservatives and radicals alike. These
ideologies
returned and once again represented a real gamut of choices. Conservatives
would
again become conservatives, and radicals, radicals. The centrist liberals
did not
disappear, but they were cut down to size. And in the process, the official
U.S.
ideological position-antifascist, anticommunist, anticolonialist-seemed
thin and
unconvincing to a growing portion of the world's populations.

The Powerless Superpower

The onset of international economic stagnation in the 1970s had two important
consequences for U.S. power. First, stagnation resulted in the collapse of
"developmentalism"-the notion that every nation could catch up economically
if the
state took appropriate action-which was the principal ideological claim of
the Old
Left movements then in power. One after another, these regimes faced internal
disorder, declining standards of living, increasing debt dependency on
international financial institutions, and eroding credibility. What had
seemed in
the 1960s to be the successful navigation of Third World decolonization by the
United States-minimizing disruption and maximizing the smooth transfer of
power to
regimes that were developmentalist but scarcely revolutionary-gave way to
disintegrating order, simmering discontents, and unchanneled radical
temperaments.
When the United States tried to intervene, it failed. In 1983, U.S. President
Ronald Reagan sent troops to Lebanon to restore order. The troops were in
effect
forced out. He compensated by invading Grenada, a country without troops.
President George H.W. Bush invaded Panama, another country without troops. But
after he intervened in Somalia to restore order, the United States was in
effect
forced out, somewhat ignominiously. Since there was little the U.S. government
could actually do to reverse the trend of declining hegemony, it chose
simply to
ignore this trend-a policy that prevailed from the withdrawal from Vietnam
until
September 11, 2001.

Meanwhile, true conservatives began to assume control of key states and
interstate
institutions. The neoliberal offensive of the 1980s was marked by the
Thatcher and
Reagan regimes and the emergence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
as a key
actor on the world scene. Where once (for more than a century) conservative
forces
had attempted to portray themselves as wiser liberals, now centrist
liberals were
compelled to argue that they were more effective conservatives. The
conservative programs were clear. Domestically, conservatives tried to enact
policies that would reduce the cost of labor, minimize environmental
constraints
on producers, and cut back on state welfare benefits. Actual successes were
modest, so conservatives then moved vigorously into the international
arena. The
gatherings of the World Economic Forum in Davos provided a meeting ground for
elites and the media. The IMF provided a club for finance ministers and central
bankers. And the United States pushed for the creation of the World Trade
Organization to enforce free commercial flows across the world's frontiers.

While the United States wasn't watching, the Soviet Union was collapsing. Yes,
Ronald Reagan had dubbed the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and had used the
rhetorical bombast of calling for the destruction of the Berlin Wall, but the
United States didn't really mean it and certainly was not responsible for the
Soviet Union's downfall. In truth, the Soviet Union and its East European
imperial
zone collapsed because of popular disillusionment with the Old Left in
combination
with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to save his regime by
liquidating
Yalta and instituting internal liberalization (perestroika plus glasnost).
Gorbachev succeeded in liquidating Yalta but not in saving the Soviet Union
(although he almost did, be it said).

The United States was stunned and puzzled by the sudden collapse, uncertain
how to
handle the consequences. The collapse of communism in effect signified the
collapse of liberalism, removing the only ideological justification behind U.S.
hegemony, a justification tacitly supported by liberalism's ostensible
ideological
opponent. This loss of legitimacy led directly to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait,
which Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would never have dared had the Yalta
arrangements remained in place. In retrospect, U.S. efforts in the Gulf War
accomplished a truce at basically the same line of departure. But can a
hegemonic
power be satisfied with a tie in a war with a middling regional power? Saddam
demonstrated that one could pick a fight with the United States and get
away with
it. Even more than the defeat in Vietnam, Saddam's brash challenge has eaten at
the innards of the U.S. right, in particular those known as the hawks, which
explains the fervor of their current desire to invade Iraq and destroy its
regime.

Between the Gulf War and September 11, 2001, the two major arenas of world
conflict were the Balkans and the Middle East. The United States has played a
major diplomatic role in both regions. Looking back, how different would the
results have been had the United States assumed a completely isolationist
position? In the Balkans, an economically successful multinational state
(Yugoslavia) broke down, essentially into its component parts. Over 10
years, most
of the resulting states have engaged in a process of ethnification,
experiencing
fairly brutal violence, widespread human rights violations, and outright wars.
Outside intervention-in which the United States figured most
prominently-brought
about a truce and ended the most egregious violence, but this intervention
in no
way reversed the ethnification, which is now consolidated and somewhat
legitimated. Would these conflicts have ended differently without U.S.
involvement? The violence might have continued longer, but the basic
results would
probably not have been too different. The picture is even grimmer in the Middle
East, where, if anything, U.S. engagement has been deeper and its failures more
spectacular. In the Balkans and the Middle East alike, the United States has
failed to exert its hegemonic clout effectively, not for want of will or effort
but for want of real power.

The Hawks Undone

Then came September 11-the shock and the reaction. Under fire from U.S.
legislators, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) now claims it had warned the
Bush administration of possible threats. But despite the CIA's focus on al
Qaeda
and the agency's intelligence expertise, it could not foresee (and therefore,
prevent) the execution of the terrorist strikes. Or so would argue CIA Director
George Tenet. This testimony can hardly comfort the U.S. government or the
American people. Whatever else historians may decide, the attacks of
September 11,
2001, posed a major challenge to U.S. power. The persons responsible did not
represent a major military power. They were members of a nonstate force, with a
high degree of determination, some money, a band of dedicated followers, and a
strong base in one weak state. In short, militarily, they were nothing. Yet
they
succeeded in a bold attack on U.S. soil.

George W. Bush came to power very critical of the Clinton administration's
handling of world affairs. Bush and his advisors did not admit-but were
undoubtedly aware-that Clinton's path had been the path of every U.S. president
since Gerald Ford, including that of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. It had
even been the path of the current Bush administration before September 11. One
only needs to look at how Bush handled the downing of the U.S. plane off
China in
April 2001 to see that prudence had been the name of the game.

Following the terrorist attacks, Bush changed course, declaring war on
terrorism,
assuring the American people that "the outcome is certain" and informing
the world
that "you are either with us or against us." Long frustrated by even the most
conservative U.S. administrations, the hawks finally came to dominate American
policy. Their position is clear: The United States wields overwhelming military
power, and even though countless foreign leaders consider it unwise for
Washington
to flex its military muscles, these same leaders cannot and will not do
anything
if the United States simply imposes its will on the rest. The hawks believe the
United States should act as an imperial power for two reasons: First, the
United
States can get away with it. And second, if Washington doesn't exert its force,
the United States will become increasingly marginalized.

Today, this hawkish position has three expressions: the military assault in
Afghanistan, the de facto support for the Israeli attempt to liquidate the
Palestinian Authority, and the invasion of Iraq, which is reportedly in the
military preparation stage. Less than one year after the September 2001
terrorist
attacks, it is perhaps too early to assess what such strategies will
accomplish.
Thus far, these schemes have led to the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan
(without the complete dismantling of al Qaeda or the capture of its top
leadership); enormous destruction in Palestine (without rendering Palestinian
leader Yasir Arafat "irrelevant," as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
said he
is); and heavy opposition from U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East to
plans
for an invasion of Iraq.

The hawks' reading of recent events emphasizes that opposition to U.S. actions,
while serious, has remained largely verbal. Neither Western Europe nor
Russia nor
China nor Saudi Arabia has seemed ready to break ties in serious ways with the
United States. In other words, hawks believe, Washington has indeed gotten away
with it. The hawks assume a similar outcome will occur when the U.S. military
actually invades Iraq and after that, when the United States exercises its
authority elsewhere in the world, be it in Iran, North Korea, Colombia, or
perhaps
Indonesia. Ironically, the hawk reading has largely become the reading of the
international left, which has been screaming about U.S. policies-mainly because
they fear that the chances of U.S. success are high.

But hawk interpretations are wrong and will only contribute to the United
States'
decline, transforming a gradual descent into a much more rapid and
turbulent fall.
Specifically, hawk approaches will fail for military, economic, and ideological
reasons.

Undoubtedly, the military remains the United States' strongest card; in
fact, it
is the only card. Today, the United States wields the most formidable military
apparatus in the world. And if claims of new, unmatched military
technologies are
to be believed, the U.S. military edge over the rest of the world is
considerably
greater today than it was just a decade ago. But does that mean, then, that the
United States can invade Iraq, conquer it rapidly, and install a friendly and
stable regime? Unlikely. Bear in mind that of the three serious wars the U.S.
military has fought since 1945 (Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War), one ended in
defeat and two in draws-not exactly a glorious record.

Saddam Hussein's army is not that of the Taliban, and his internal military
control is far more coherent. A U.S. invasion would necessarily involve a
serious
land force, one that would have to fight its way to Baghdad and would likely
suffer significant casualties. Such a force would also need staging
grounds, and
Saudi Arabia has made clear that it will not serve in this capacity. Would
Kuwait
or Turkey help out? Perhaps, if Washington calls in all its chips. Meanwhile,
Saddam can be expected to deploy all weapons at his disposal, and it is
precisely
the U.S. government that keeps fretting over how nasty those weapons might
be. The
United States may twist the arms of regimes in the region, but popular
sentiment
clearly views the whole affair as reflecting a deep anti-Arab bias in the
United
States. Can such a conflict be won? The British General Staff has apparently
already informed Prime Minister Tony Blair that it does not believe so.

And there is always the matter of "second fronts." Following the Gulf War, U.S.
armed forces sought to prepare for the possibility of two simultaneous regional
wars. After a while, the Pentagon quietly abandoned the idea as impractical and
costly. But who can be sure that no potential U.S. enemies would strike
when the
United States appears bogged down in Iraq?

Consider, too, the question of U.S. popular tolerance of nonvictories.
Americans
hover between a patriotic fervor that lends support to all wartime
presidents and
a deep isolationist urge. Since 1945, patriotism has hit a wall whenever
the death
toll has risen. Why should today's reaction differ? And even if the hawks
(who are
almost all civilians) feel impervious to public opinion, U.S. Army
generals, burnt
by Vietnam, do not.

And what about the economic front? In the 1980s, countless American analysts
became hysterical over the Japanese economic miracle. They calmed down in the
1990s, given Japan's well-publicized financial difficulties. Yet after
overstating
how quickly Japan was moving forward, U.S. authorities now seem to be
complacent,
confident that Japan lags far behind. These days, Washington seems more
inclined
to lecture Japanese policymakers about what they are doing wrong.

Such triumphalism hardly appears warranted. Consider the following April
20, 2002,
New York Times report: "A Japanese laboratory has built the world's fastest
computer, a machine so powerful that it matches the raw processing power of
the 20
fastest American computers combined and far outstrips the previous leader, an
I.B.M.-built machine. The achievement ... is evidence that a technology
race that
most American engineers thought they were winning handily is far from
over." The
analysis goes on to note that there are "contrasting scientific and
technological
priorities" in the two countries. The Japanese machine is built to analyze
climatic change, but U.S. machines are designed to simulate weapons. This
contrast
embodies the oldest story in the history of hegemonic powers. The dominant
power
concentrates (to its detriment) on the military; the candidate for successor
concentrates on the economy. The latter has always paid off, handsomely. It did
for the United States. Why should it not pay off for Japan as well, perhaps in
alliance with China?

Finally, there is the ideological sphere. Right now, the U.S. economy seems
relatively weak, even more so considering the exorbitant military expenses
associated with hawk strategies. Moreover, Washington remains politically
isolated; virtually no one (save Israel) thinks the hawk position makes
sense or
is worth encouraging. Other nations are afraid or unwilling to stand up to
Washington directly, but even their foot-dragging is hurting the United States.

Yet the U.S. response amounts to little more than arrogant arm-twisting.
Arrogance
has its own negatives. Calling in chips means leaving fewer chips for next
time,
and surly acquiescence breeds increasing resentment. Over the last 200
years, the
United States acquired a considerable amount of ideological credit. But these
days, the United States is running through this credit even faster than it ran
through its gold surplus in the 1960s.

The United States faces two possibilities during the next 10 years: It can
follow
the hawks' path, with negative consequences for all but especially for
itself. Or
it can realize that the negatives are too great. Simon Tisdall of the Guardian
recently argued that even disregarding international public opinion, "the
U.S. is
not able to fight a successful Iraqi war by itself without incurring immense
damage, not least in terms of its economic interests and its energy supply. Mr.
Bush is reduced to talking tough and looking ineffectual." And if the United
States still invades Iraq and is then forced to withdraw, it will look even
more
ineffectual.

President Bush's options appear extremely limited, and there is little
doubt that
the United States will continue to decline as a decisive force in world affairs
over the next decade. The real question is not whether U.S. hegemony is
waning but
whether the United States can devise a way to descend gracefully, with minimum
damage to the world, and to itself.

Immanuel Wallerstein is a senior research scholar at Yale University and author
of, most recently, The End of the World As We Know It: Social Science for the
Twenty-First Century (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).


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