by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden -- The American nation appears not only immensely distressed and angry
about the bombings but surprised too. It cannot understand why anyone
should be moved by such hatred against it and, inured from the rest
of us by the isolationism of most of its political representatives
and its media, it has little idea of the currents swirling against it.
An event of this magnitude was not only unimagined, it was
unimaginable. Yet long before George Bush became president with his
forceful in-your-face, take-it-or-leave-it attitude to the world
outside on issues as diverse as global warming and anti-missile
defences, America has been turning in on itself, to the point of
self-destructiveness.
William Pfaff, the astute American commentator, wrote recently that
"America is a dangerous nation while remaining a righteous one" and
America's pre-eminent foreign policy observer, George Kennan,
ambassador to the Soviet Union during Stalin's time, wrote quite a
few years ago, "I do not think that the United States civilization of
these last 40-50 years is a successful civilization. I think this
country is destined to succumb to failures which cannot be other than
tragic and enormous in their scope." And later added that for
Americans "to see ourselves as the centre of political enlightenment
and teachers to a great part of the rest of the world [is]
unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable."
It would be misunderstanding human nature to believe that most
Americans want to hear such thoughts played back to them on their day
of grief, victims of an evil deed that compares with the worst of the
blood-stained twentieth century. Yet they have to know that action
produces reaction and not for nothing is anti-American resentment on
the increase all over the world, not least in Europe where there is
some astonishment at the way the new American administration has
ploughed ahead with its self-interested agenda as if no one else has
a legitimate opinion or could perhaps view the same situation in a
different light.
Foreign observers do not miss the reports that come out of Pentagon
think tanks of America's need to use this special moment after the
defeat of European communism and the break up of the Soviet Union to
make sure that America is militarily superior the world over, and
that no one, not even its closest allies, should be in a position to
tell it what to do.
The U.S. began the new millennium as the most heavily militarised
nation on earth. It is the U.S., which poses the military threat to
others. At the outbreak of the Second World War the U.S. army was
only 174,000 men. Today it has 1.4 million in its "standing army" and
a ready reserve and National Guard numbering 2.5 million. Despite the
end of the Cold War, under President Bill Clinton the U.S. made only
a paltry effort to wind down the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers,
and instead provocatively insisted on expanding Nato close to
Russia's borders. The Bush administration with its declared ambition
to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, solemnly signed by
Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, seems unconcerned that this will
set in motion events that will unwind hard won international norms on
ending nuclear testing and on the non-proliferation of nuclear
weapons, even hinting that it will understand if China has to
increase its nuclear forces or test new nuclear weapons.
I have talked to a range of ordinary Europeans in the last 24 hours
and they all say, in the face of the earnest shoulder-to-shoulder
rhetoric of their leaders, that America has got itself into this hole
by its own disregard for what others think.
The first law of holes, of course, is to stop digging - which, of
course, is what Washington should firmly have told Israel six
presidents ago when it started its foolish and counterproductive
policy of building settlements on what everyone knew was Palestinian
land. Amazingly, the policy continues with apparent understanding
from the Bush administration. While Arab governments ring their
hands, and young Palestinians fight one of the best trained armies in
the world with stones, there are the inevitable few attached to the
Palestinian cause who are moved towards serious violence - the
suicide bombers and, we don't know yet, although it is the most
likely explanation, the destroyers of the World Trade Centre.
In every political movement - whether it be the Palestinians or the
globalisation protestors in Genoa there are fringe elements that
advocate violence. This does not mean the mainstream of that movement
is wrong. It might or might not be. But, right or wrong, there will
always be powerful elements of truth contained within it, or the
passions and purpose would never be ignited.
To meet it eye for eye and tooth for tooth, as Gandhi once said, is
to make everybody blind.
America right now is a repository of exhausted ideas, like dead
stars. The arrogance of power has produced its inevitable reaction.
America is threatened not by nuclear tipped missiles from unknown
rogue nations, but by small groups of angry men who, although
prisoners of their zealotry, know well enough that much of the world
whilst not agreeing with them understands their frustration. To deal
with this effectively requires a new way of looking at the world.
George Kennan, the late Senator William Fulbright, Willam Pfaff and
others have been arguing what this might be for a long time. On this
sad and tragic day one wishes their pens could become mightier than
America's sword.
Copyright © 2001 Jonathon Power
