American Conservative Online: THE COST OF EMPIRE

[Martin Eden]

This article in a conservative (not neo-conservative) publication explains why the Bush administration's geopolitical strategy to achieve American hegemony is doomed to failure.

President Bush’s war policy marks the beginning of the end of America’s era of global dominance.

By Christopher Layne

<<snip>>
The real reason the administration went to war had nothing to do with terrorism. Indeed, many of the administration’s architects of illusion—Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, among others—put Iraq squarely in their geopolitical crosshairs while they were out of power during the 1990s. The administration went to war in Iraq to consolidate America’s global hegemony and to extend U.S. dominance to the Middle East by establishing a permanent military stronghold in Iraq for the purposes of controlling the Middle Eastern oil spigot (thereby giving Washington enormous leverage in its relations with Western Europe and China); allowing Washington to distance itself from an increasingly unreliable and unstable Saudi Arabia; and using the shadow of U.S. military power to bring about additional regime changes in Iran and Syria.

It is fashionable to say that 9/11—and the subsequent war with Iraq— “changed everything.” But this is not true. Before Sept. 11 the biggest debate among students of international politics and analysts of U.S. foreign policy was about American hegemony. Re-christened as a debate about the wisdom of American empire, it still is. The big fault line in this debate is over which of two theories—yes, academic theories about international relations really do reflect and influence real-world policy—about how states can best attain security for themselves in the competitive arena of world politics is correct.

“Offensive realism” holds that the best way for a state to gain security is to amass overwhelming power—that is, by becoming a hegemon. In plain English, being a hegemon means being like Leroy Brown—badder than old King Kong and meaner than a junkyard dog. A hegemon can use its power to eliminate rivals—by conquering them, co-opting them, or intimidating them—and seek to create a congenial world order that reflects its own ideology, values, and preferences. Since World War II, offensive realism has undergirded American grand strategy, although the current administration’s policy is offensive realism on steroids. If the Duchess of Windsor had been an administration strategist she would have said that the U.S. can never be too rich, too powerful—or too well-armed or too willing to employ force against its adversaries.
<<snip>>
Traditional realists like Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, and Walter Lippman reject the logic of offensive realism because they believe that when one state becomes too powerful all the others fear for their security. They respond by building up their own military capabilities or by forming alliances with others to act as a counterweight against a hegemon’s power (or both). This is what students of international politics refer to as “balancing.” And, indeed, the historical record pretty conclusively shows that hegemony is a self-defeating grand strategy, not a winning one. Every hegemonic aspirant in modern international history—the Hapsburg Empire under Charles V, Spain under Philip II, France under Louis XIV and Napoleon, and Germany under Hitler—has been defeated by counter-hegemonic balancing.
<<snip>>
for the full article:
http://amconmag.com/10_06_03/cover.html

Christopher Layne writes frequently about U.S. foreign policy and is a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.

[scarletwoman]

1. Very good article, thanks for posting it.

I think it behooves us to work on building bridges with ("real") conservatives and to attempt to forge effective alliances based on what issues and interests we have in common -- the biggest interest, of course, being the defeat and excision of the neocons from our government.

sw

[paradisiac]

2. good article

One of the better pieces on current US foreign policy I've read in a little while.

[PATRICK]

3. bitter lessons more and more quickly

learned. Up against the rapid hurtling change and progress of the twenty-first century, a club of eccentric gentlemen insisted on getting it wrong one more time, ostensibly for the USA! USA!, but more accurately for a clique of renegade special interests representing endangered, obsolete and poisonous industries. Extinction- their fortune's extinction was their chief concern.

Like Kissinger, harkening back to romantic notions of eigtheenth century military theory blasted away in WWI if not actually before, they wanted to "balance" the doom of all they held dear by bold stroke assertion of dominance- except for that nasty drawback of democracy and diversity. Of course, that this strategy gives a lot of loot and resources to the private club is something of a bonus? Conservatives or other coalitions are good suckers. Democrats and other undependable
citizens are bad suckers.

I did post before that no matter how this Iraq beachhead to Empire turned out, the temporal rule of aggressive empires and conquest is that their life expectancy has been geometrically shrinking. I expected this grand illusion would be DOA, and it was, despite the impetus of reflex moves against Iran and Syria on plain inertia and the dismayed desperation of Israel.

Also, chickenhawks and profiteers- and empty headed backwards ideologues like Kristol- make very poor Conquistadore material and even poorer administrators and planners. If a lighthouse depended on their beacon wattage all ships would be on the rocks. The crazies. That name too sticks as the apropriate wallpaper of their asylum. Wolfowitz, darting around like a child protected by a bully, and others have not only blown their version of America, the New Rome(when will that never fulfilled symbol based on a lie ever die?), but have threatened the wiser emulation of the fading British Empire of more benign influence, a Commonwealth, Common democracy, cooperative floating and rising of all ships in goodwill, that Clinton gave us a glimmer of somehow.

The only method that this anti-spin arrogance can take is to hurtle everyone back into a dark age, lowering all so the few will appear more godlike. Unresolved crises in ecology, health and economics will be turned into other horsemen of the Apocalypse as the US shelters under the nuclear hooves of its private knight of War.

And all Wolfowitz can think to use genetic research for(seeming to lack ALL racial memory and sense of foreboding) is to develop gene targeted viruses.

It is not a question of whether Empire can make a "comeback" but how bloody and disastrous things must get before the Beast is defanged, spanked and sent to bed without supper. For the larger failure is not of these would be elitist cowards but the failure of modern man to meet the challenges of leadership and action before the real crises kill us all. The goons responded in fear for one dark cloudy moment of "glory" and crime. Mankind seems to want to hibernate in its own illusion- or hangover- and be a victim of the future just as it has been lately a victim of a cariacature of its bloody past.

I hope no one with real courage or sense will allow these coup squatters more desperate bloody carnage for such dangerous and discredited insanity.

[scarletwoman]

4. Wow, Patrick! That's an amazing post!

"For the larger failure is not of these would be elitist cowards but the failure of modern man to meet the challenges of leadership and action before the real crises kill us all."

I often think that "modern man" is hurtling headlong into extinction -- a largely satisfactory fate, imho. What future there may be for humankind, belongs to those who hold earth, and the connectedness of all life, sacred. Absent that sense of the sacred, there IS no future for the human species.

sw

[bemildred]

5. Indeed, well said.

This is why, if the morons in Washington have any brains
and self-interest left at all, they will impeach and jail
these sons-of-bitches (forgive me ladies):

One thing is certain: unless the call for the United States to exercise
self-imposed grand-strategic restraint is heeded, the rest of the world will act
to impose that constraint on Washington. If that happens, the Bush
administration will not be remembered for conquering Baghdad but rather for a
policy that shattered the pillars of the international security framework that the
United States established after World War II, galvanized both hard and soft
balancing against U.S. hegemony, and marked the beginning of the end of
America's era of global preponderance. For this, it must be held accountable.

He is incorrect, IMHO, in that VietNam was the beginning of the end.
This is very much of a piece with that stupidity, unfinished business
from that time, one might say.