U.S. News & World Report
The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities.
- John Foster Dulles
The world is a beautiful place to be born into
if you don't mind people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving some of the time
which isn't half so bad
if it isn't you.
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "The World is a Beautiful Place"
Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
- Aldous Huxley
I'm starting to suspect that it doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot who wins our next presidential election.
That statement, I'm sure, probably flies in the face of conventional wisdom, in the apparent "polarization" of America these days, and for those of you who know me, my personal unwavering loathing of George W. Bush and his administration. But. Doubts are creeping in to my skull.
How different is John Kerry, really?
He's not going to get us out of Iraq. At least not right away. That's a matter of record. He says he wants to rebuild our relationships with the rest of the world, but he says that largely in the context of getting them to help shoulder the Iraqi burden. And since the straw that broke the camel's back was our going into Iraq...well...you see the difficulties arising here. President Kerry will undoubtedly benefit from at least a small surge in global goodwill simply owing to the fact that he is not Bush. But when it becomes clear that he's basically going to modify Bush's course of action, rather than radically alter or reverse it, the honeymoon is going to end. So we'll end up sending more troops into the quagmire, and it is a quagmire, have no doubt about that. Kerry wants to increase the permanent armed forces by something like 40 thousand enlisted. How? By paying them more and making military service more enticing? Doubtful. That would entail a dreaded "tax raise" that no American wants to hear about because we're Americans and everything should be free for us. The easiest way for us to meet the goal of expanding our military - outside of a draft, that is - would be to, subtly of course, help depress the labor market. Make it a little bit harder for young people to get a job. Make it easier for colleges to hike their tuitions and trim the fat off of the college rolls. Maybe nudge a few companies to go overseas. Help push the "middle" out of the lower middle class and make a four year hitch overseas seem not all that bad. Preposterous, you say. Kerry has said he's going to punish corporations that send jobs overseas. Well. He'll want to, and make a public show of excoriating the Republican Congress for ramming through legisation that helps continue the job exodus to India and Asia, all the while begrudgingly admitting that that's precisely what he needs to help bolster our forces in Iraq, forces which will grow increasingly isolated as one by one we lose our token allies and fail to replace them with substantial military support from Russia, Europe, China, or Japan, because they know better than to get involved in this. Let Americans die to help build a stable Iraq, they say. [Not a democratic Iraq, necessarily. Just a stable one.] As soon as we finally leave, Baghdad will be open for business. They're patient. Older societies often tend to look at the long term first.
The neoconservative theory has been labelled by some as a "reverse domino" theory. A viable democracy in Iraq will somehow nudge Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Israel [er...strike that last one, they're Already Democratic, wink wink], basically all of humanity, that much closer towards democracies themselves. Because a free, liberal, tolerant society surrounded on all borders by autocracies is a great idea. They won't require an constant military buildup to fend off Teheran, Riyadh, Damascus, etc. They won't have to whore their economy out to Japan and the West and send us every last drop of crude in order to keep the borders sealed. No, not at all. The reverse domino theory is, if possible, even more flawed and facile than the domino theory, which as you know was utterly prophetic during the Indochinese conflict when our pullout from South Vietnam saw billions of workers rise up and establish a global dictatorship of the proletariat.
[crickets chirping in the silence]
The democratic domino theory won't work. It simply won't. Historically, the two great examples of so-called "imposed democracy," post-World War II Germany and Japan, don't support this. (Italy, of course, liberated itself from within, twice, overthrowing Mussolini first as leader of the Grand Fascist Council, and then as leader of the Manchukuo-like Republic of Salo, the rump Italian fascist state in Northern Italy; arriving American forces were quite irked to learn that the fascists had mostly been interned already when they got there, and the Italians were grateful to us and wished to return the favor by showing us the quickest way _out_ of the country. Which is probably why we rigged Italian general elections in 1948 and stole their democracy back for a while. BUT. That's off track.) Most neocons point to the story of the crushed Axis aggressors rebuilt into stalwart poles of democracy to bolster their flagging logic in Iraq - undoubtedly not intending to leech the glory of the liberators of Buchenwald and Bataan, heck no, just a coincidence. But Germany spent forty years divided and occupied - yes, both halves. Maybe NATO forces in West Germany were respectful of German wishes to an extent and had a genuine desire to protect and defend the German people from Warsaw Pact aggression - but they were also there to keep the Germans from their bad habits of the first two World Wars. West German democracy flourished due to the umbrella of North American and Western European military protection, and they had as a rallying point the monolithic threat of a single, concentrated enemy - the East. Apply the same model to a near-future Iraq. Now you've got an indefinite military commitment by the "Coalition of the Willing," which is us, to protect Iraq. Permanently. On top of that, you don't have a single threat to Iraq. You've got the anti-Western Baathist radicals in Syria. The Islamic Revolutionaries in Iran. The al Qaeda sympathizers, AND the oil barons resentful of Iraq's new cozy relationship with Big Oil companies, in Saudi Arabia. The Turks, who just don't like anyone, frankly. Israel, which actually likes Iran better than Iraq, democracy or no democracy. The landless para-states like Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, etc. In the face of many enemies, or at least, unfriendly rivals, you're not going to marshal nationwide unity. You're going to fragment. Iraq is going to get carved up into pro-Iranians (in the Shia south), pro-Syrians (in the Sunni triangle), pro-....well, none of them will be pro-Turk, I don't think, so they're covered on that angle. But further scrutiny only widens the gulf between the two situations. (No pun intended.)
Japan similarly fails to live up to this example. Firstly, Japan spent decades as a democracy in name only. The Liberal Democratic Party won every election for about thirty or forty years, and I'm sure that was solely the result of good governance, and not a combination of their cozying up to America without fail, and the steady influx of Yakuza money and influence to keep them on top. Also, we continue to occupy Japan to this day. They're slowly building up their Self-Defense Forces (they can't have an Army, it's in their post-war Constitution; it says nothing about a Self-Defense Force, though) to the point where they won't need us by around the mid-22nd century or so - unless China relocates their country to Antarctica or somewhere. So there's no real drive or incentive to radically democratize the country. Sure, Japanese citizens get in a tiff when our Marines rape 12-year-old Japanese girls. But by and large, compliance with American wishes is an ingrained Japanese habit by this point, regardless of whether the LDP or the latest anti-LDP coalition wins their sham elections. Special relationships transcend any petty ideologies. That's how Tony Blair, who worked for/with Bill Clinton and openly supported Al Gore in 2000, can be such an unswerving apologist for and collaborator with George W. Bush. He doesn't care what Bush stands for, or against, because he himself doesn't stand for much of anything, except the continuance of his own regime.
And to a great extent, it doesn't matter whether or not Bush or Kerry wins. The same people still man the machinery of state. The same memes are still dominant. We want Kerry to change things, to end the war, to roll back the USA PATRIOT Act, to protect Social Security and the environment. Maybe he personally wants these things as well. Or at least, maybe he thinks he does, when he thinks about such things at all. But the tracks of the train of history have long been laid down. Changing conductors doesn't always help. After a certain point, there are only so many ways we can go without derailing.
- John Foster Dulles
The world is a beautiful place to be born into
if you don't mind people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving some of the time
which isn't half so bad
if it isn't you.
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "The World is a Beautiful Place"
Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
- Aldous Huxley
I'm starting to suspect that it doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot who wins our next presidential election.
That statement, I'm sure, probably flies in the face of conventional wisdom, in the apparent "polarization" of America these days, and for those of you who know me, my personal unwavering loathing of George W. Bush and his administration. But. Doubts are creeping in to my skull.
How different is John Kerry, really?
He's not going to get us out of Iraq. At least not right away. That's a matter of record. He says he wants to rebuild our relationships with the rest of the world, but he says that largely in the context of getting them to help shoulder the Iraqi burden. And since the straw that broke the camel's back was our going into Iraq...well...you see the difficulties arising here. President Kerry will undoubtedly benefit from at least a small surge in global goodwill simply owing to the fact that he is not Bush. But when it becomes clear that he's basically going to modify Bush's course of action, rather than radically alter or reverse it, the honeymoon is going to end. So we'll end up sending more troops into the quagmire, and it is a quagmire, have no doubt about that. Kerry wants to increase the permanent armed forces by something like 40 thousand enlisted. How? By paying them more and making military service more enticing? Doubtful. That would entail a dreaded "tax raise" that no American wants to hear about because we're Americans and everything should be free for us. The easiest way for us to meet the goal of expanding our military - outside of a draft, that is - would be to, subtly of course, help depress the labor market. Make it a little bit harder for young people to get a job. Make it easier for colleges to hike their tuitions and trim the fat off of the college rolls. Maybe nudge a few companies to go overseas. Help push the "middle" out of the lower middle class and make a four year hitch overseas seem not all that bad. Preposterous, you say. Kerry has said he's going to punish corporations that send jobs overseas. Well. He'll want to, and make a public show of excoriating the Republican Congress for ramming through legisation that helps continue the job exodus to India and Asia, all the while begrudgingly admitting that that's precisely what he needs to help bolster our forces in Iraq, forces which will grow increasingly isolated as one by one we lose our token allies and fail to replace them with substantial military support from Russia, Europe, China, or Japan, because they know better than to get involved in this. Let Americans die to help build a stable Iraq, they say. [Not a democratic Iraq, necessarily. Just a stable one.] As soon as we finally leave, Baghdad will be open for business. They're patient. Older societies often tend to look at the long term first.
The neoconservative theory has been labelled by some as a "reverse domino" theory. A viable democracy in Iraq will somehow nudge Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Israel [er...strike that last one, they're Already Democratic, wink wink], basically all of humanity, that much closer towards democracies themselves. Because a free, liberal, tolerant society surrounded on all borders by autocracies is a great idea. They won't require an constant military buildup to fend off Teheran, Riyadh, Damascus, etc. They won't have to whore their economy out to Japan and the West and send us every last drop of crude in order to keep the borders sealed. No, not at all. The reverse domino theory is, if possible, even more flawed and facile than the domino theory, which as you know was utterly prophetic during the Indochinese conflict when our pullout from South Vietnam saw billions of workers rise up and establish a global dictatorship of the proletariat.
[crickets chirping in the silence]
The democratic domino theory won't work. It simply won't. Historically, the two great examples of so-called "imposed democracy," post-World War II Germany and Japan, don't support this. (Italy, of course, liberated itself from within, twice, overthrowing Mussolini first as leader of the Grand Fascist Council, and then as leader of the Manchukuo-like Republic of Salo, the rump Italian fascist state in Northern Italy; arriving American forces were quite irked to learn that the fascists had mostly been interned already when they got there, and the Italians were grateful to us and wished to return the favor by showing us the quickest way _out_ of the country. Which is probably why we rigged Italian general elections in 1948 and stole their democracy back for a while. BUT. That's off track.) Most neocons point to the story of the crushed Axis aggressors rebuilt into stalwart poles of democracy to bolster their flagging logic in Iraq - undoubtedly not intending to leech the glory of the liberators of Buchenwald and Bataan, heck no, just a coincidence. But Germany spent forty years divided and occupied - yes, both halves. Maybe NATO forces in West Germany were respectful of German wishes to an extent and had a genuine desire to protect and defend the German people from Warsaw Pact aggression - but they were also there to keep the Germans from their bad habits of the first two World Wars. West German democracy flourished due to the umbrella of North American and Western European military protection, and they had as a rallying point the monolithic threat of a single, concentrated enemy - the East. Apply the same model to a near-future Iraq. Now you've got an indefinite military commitment by the "Coalition of the Willing," which is us, to protect Iraq. Permanently. On top of that, you don't have a single threat to Iraq. You've got the anti-Western Baathist radicals in Syria. The Islamic Revolutionaries in Iran. The al Qaeda sympathizers, AND the oil barons resentful of Iraq's new cozy relationship with Big Oil companies, in Saudi Arabia. The Turks, who just don't like anyone, frankly. Israel, which actually likes Iran better than Iraq, democracy or no democracy. The landless para-states like Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, etc. In the face of many enemies, or at least, unfriendly rivals, you're not going to marshal nationwide unity. You're going to fragment. Iraq is going to get carved up into pro-Iranians (in the Shia south), pro-Syrians (in the Sunni triangle), pro-....well, none of them will be pro-Turk, I don't think, so they're covered on that angle. But further scrutiny only widens the gulf between the two situations. (No pun intended.)
Japan similarly fails to live up to this example. Firstly, Japan spent decades as a democracy in name only. The Liberal Democratic Party won every election for about thirty or forty years, and I'm sure that was solely the result of good governance, and not a combination of their cozying up to America without fail, and the steady influx of Yakuza money and influence to keep them on top. Also, we continue to occupy Japan to this day. They're slowly building up their Self-Defense Forces (they can't have an Army, it's in their post-war Constitution; it says nothing about a Self-Defense Force, though) to the point where they won't need us by around the mid-22nd century or so - unless China relocates their country to Antarctica or somewhere. So there's no real drive or incentive to radically democratize the country. Sure, Japanese citizens get in a tiff when our Marines rape 12-year-old Japanese girls. But by and large, compliance with American wishes is an ingrained Japanese habit by this point, regardless of whether the LDP or the latest anti-LDP coalition wins their sham elections. Special relationships transcend any petty ideologies. That's how Tony Blair, who worked for/with Bill Clinton and openly supported Al Gore in 2000, can be such an unswerving apologist for and collaborator with George W. Bush. He doesn't care what Bush stands for, or against, because he himself doesn't stand for much of anything, except the continuance of his own regime.
And to a great extent, it doesn't matter whether or not Bush or Kerry wins. The same people still man the machinery of state. The same memes are still dominant. We want Kerry to change things, to end the war, to roll back the USA PATRIOT Act, to protect Social Security and the environment. Maybe he personally wants these things as well. Or at least, maybe he thinks he does, when he thinks about such things at all. But the tracks of the train of history have long been laid down. Changing conductors doesn't always help. After a certain point, there are only so many ways we can go without derailing.
posted by Patrick at 10:44 PM
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