Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus. So says Robert Kagan in Paradise and Power, a meditation on how Europeans have grown soft and idealistic (and feminine) while the Yanks remain tough, booted and aware (like real men) of how brutal a place the world can be. According to Kagan, our outlooks have grown so far apart that it’s time we stopped pretending we even ”occupy the same world”. We are from different planets.
Maybe that explains why so many Europeans are not just on the opposite side from the United States in the debate over war on Iraq, but why we are not even having the same conversation. While we still agonise over whether to go to war, the American conversation has moved on long ago.
The op-ed pages of the US papers have the odd thumb-suck on the rights and wrongs of prising Saddam Hussein out by force, but their more pressing interest is in the task that will face the great US Army of Liberation once its initial work is done.
There is, for example, an argument about personnel. Should the US governor general ruling newly free Iraq be a civilian or a soldier? Surely a man in a suit would smack less of military occupation, and therefore be the more tactful choice? On the other hand, a uniformed viceroy might repeat the magic worked when Douglas MacArthur oversaw Japan.
There are mechanical questions to ponder, too. Which system would work best? If not a formal military occupation, perhaps a Kosovo-style civilian administration? Or an interim government made up, àla Afghanistan, of multiple opposition groups, returned to Iraq after decades of exile? Or would it be more convenient to replace Saddam with a new strongman?
Decisions, decisions. And the US will, barring the most dramatic change of heart by either Saddam or George W Bush, be making them soon. What they will turn on will be more than operational matters of efficiency. They will go instead to the heart of why the US is fighting this war.
For if this conflict’s chief aim is what the new, second UN resolution claims it to be — the simple disarmament of Iraq — then any post-war settlement would be devised around that objective: perhaps a new, compliant dictator would do that job best. If the goal is the one touted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in recent days as the moral case — namely, liberation from tyranny — then only a fresh, democratic start will do.
If, however, the US victors insist on a much more robust level of US control — restructuring Iraq entirely, studding it with countless military bases — then we could start drawing rather different conclusions as to the true motive of this campaign. We might agree with those who detect in the Iraq adventure the opening move of a much grander American design: the establishing of US hegemony for the next 100 years.
This is not just twitchy, anti-war conspiracy talk. An outfit exists on 17th Street in Washington DC, called the Project for the New American Century, explicitly committed to US mastery of the globe for the coming age. Its acolytes speak of ”full spectrum dominance”, meaning US invincibility in every field of warfare and a world in which no two nations’ relationship with each other will be more important than their relationship with the US.
There will be no place on Earth where Washington’s writ does not run supreme. To that end, a ring of US military bases should surround China, with liberation of the People’s Republic considered the ultimate prize. As one enthusiast puts it concisely: ”After Baghdad, Beijing.”
If this sounds like the harmless delusions of an eccentric fringe, think again. The founder members of the project form a roll-call of Bush’s inner circle: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Richard Perle.
The war itself will not reveal these ultras’ true intent, but the post-war occupation will reveal plenty. Then we will know if the hawkish dreamers of the project have indeed taken over US foreign policy. How they remake free Iraq will tell us whether they plan to remake the world.
It’s after victory that the most enduring impact will be felt, whether it be a hated US-led occupation, sparking a fresh round of global terrorism, or the sudden release of Iraq’s lethal, internal tensions kept pent-up for 35 years.
Kurds could fight Turks for their own state in the north; Shias might team up with Iran for control of the south. Iraq will not be like 1940s Japan or Germany, the occupations fondly remembered by the US commentariat. Those were coherent nations; Iraq is an artificial fusion of antagonistic tribes. Victory may be rapid and easy — but that’s when the real trouble could start. — Â