Frustrated Empire

David Ryan

Description

Examining the broad contexts of US foreign policy and the lingering aftermath of the Vietnam War, David Ryan argues that these events created an opportunistic framing of 9/11, paving the way for the long-held neo-conservative desire for regime change and war in Iraq.



He examines the construction of the cultural framework for war following 9/11, the legitimacy of military force in Afghanistan, the rise of anti-Americanism, within the broader contexts over the struggle over legitimacy, identity and leadership.



Turning the 'clash of civilisations' thesis on its head, Ryan presents a careful analysis of the evolution of US foreign policy and its engagement with Iraq through the 1980s. While 9/11 provided the opportunity, the post-Vietnam context provides a more pertinent framework for this reflection on the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the strategic implications for US foreign policy.
1. Broad Contexts

2. Framing September 11: Rhetorical Device and Photographic Opinion

3. Orientalism and the Anti-American Sentiment

4. War and Just War: Terrorism and Afghanistan

5. The United States and Iraq: ‘One Can do Nothing About the Past’

6. Iraq and Vietnam: The Unbearable Weight of Defeat

7. The Tipping Point: Between Bring ’em on and Going South

8. Imperial Frustrations

Bibliography

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Post-Colonialism
• Political Science
• USA
• United States of America
• Colonialism
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 août 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849642811
• Langue: English

Extrait

Frustrated Empire US Foreign Policy, 9/11 to Iraq

DAVID RYAN

P Pluto Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI

First published 2007 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright © David Ryan 2007

The right of David Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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978 0 7453 2388 6 0 7453 2388 X

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This book in printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

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For Heidi, Daniel, Hannah and Luca

Acknowledgements

Cont

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1 Broad Contexts 2 Framing September 11: Rhetorical Device and Photographic Opinion 3 Orientalism and the antiAmerican Sentiment 4 War and Just War: Terrorism and Afghanistan 5 The United States and Iraq: ‘One Can do Nothing about the Past’ 1983–91 6 Iraq and Vietnam: The Unbearable Weight of Defeat 7 The Tipping Point: Between Bring ’em on and Going South 8 Imperial Frustrations

Notes Bibliography Index

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19 36 53

77 97

115 139

158 185 198

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the support and encouragement of Ziauddin Sardar for the original suggestion to undertake this project and for ongoing discussions. I am also grateful to Scott Lucas and Liam Kennedy for opportunities to present this material and for ongoing support. Lloyd Gardner and Marilyn Young continue to provide encouragement. My sincere thanks to Anne Beech, Judy Nash and Elaine Ross at Pluto Press for their engaged and very helpful assistance on all aspects of the book from its inception to the concluding stages. Their editorial work and suggestions have been invaluable. TheEuropean Journal of American Cultureoriginally published a version of Chapter 2. I am grateful for their permission to reproduce it here. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Department of History, University College Cork, and the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, University College Cork.

viii

1 Broad Contexts

Shortly after 9/11 President George Bush explained to his audience in the National Cathedral, Washington DC, that the conict began on the timing and terms of others. He seemed certain that: It will 1 end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing. He was wrong. He would not control the timing or the geographical scope of the new war on terrorism. In a very short time the action and reaction would arouse forces and sentiments beyond US control and US strategies. The sense of limits to US engagement, deemed so crucial by US strategists after Vietnam, were elusive because US objectives were vague, broad and encompassed issues unrelated to 9/11 and because opponents, and the plural is important, had very different agendas. The dened limits in the US reaction were shunned because the Bush administration pursued a wider agenda. They sought nothing less than a thorough reengagement of US power and the demonstration of its application in war. The strategies that embraced limits haunted and aggravated several people in his administration since the mid 1970s. US military power had been rebuilt after Vietnam. Beginning in the later years of the Carter administration, and accelerating under President Reagan, US military power and its disparity between that of its conventional rivals shaped US policy in distinct ways. With this remilitarisation power gravitated back to the executive branch, despite the lessons and adjustments after Vietnam. Buttressed by 9/11 such concentrations of power facilitated certain myopic and unwise opportunities. The humiliating defeat in Vietnam placed a range of inhibitions on US foreign policy. Some constraints were lifted with the end of the Cold War, others after 9/11. For some of Bushs key principals war was a policy of choice; it could contain the pervasive Vietnam 2 syndrome. For Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, the reaction had to be broad. Bush began to conate US problems and opponents. The rhetorical strategy was echoed in cultural discourse. Lumping disparate opposition was a familiar Cold War strategy. Al Qaeda was conated with the Taliban, terrorism and Islamism, and 3 the infamous phrase of the terrorists and the tyrants led the United

1

2 Frustrated Empire: US Foreign Policy, 9/11 to Iraq

States into a myriad of conict that will probably take decades to subdue. In the process all sorts of new forms of resistance were created. By August 2004, George Bush admitted that I dont think you can win it. The Democrats were quick to make political hay during an election year, and the White House hurried in to limit the potential damage and signs of defeatism. But Bush was probably right. The breadth of US objectives lay beyond its capabilities. Just as the Cold War eroded the traditional sense of victory, the ends to these conicts would be elusive. There was no clear line to cross or border to restore. When President Bush Sr decided to end the 1991 Gulf War on conventional terms, stopping short of the march to Baghdad, the Vietnam syndrome was compounded by that decision. Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfelds deputy, felt that frustration acutely. In 2004 Bush was quick to restore the narrative of victory: I think you can create conditions so that the  those who use terror as a 4 tool are less acceptable in parts of the world. Yet the US actions provoked and enhanced the violent responses that the US troops struggled to quell in Iraq since 2003 and again in Afghanistan in 2006. The application of such force was bound to provoke reaction and resistance. US troops were not welcomed as expected; internal resistance, external antipathy and antiAmericanism spread rapidly; political opposition and diplomatic resistance featured throughout 5 the world and at the UN to anticipated US actions. The narrative Bush advanced implied US innocence. They had been attacked out of the blue (a phrase that takes on new meaning after 9/11). That narrative obfuscated and deterred broader and deeper understandings of why 9/11 took place. Though the atrocities cannot be justied, understanding is important. Narratives are important. They create the framework and the stories that help us understand how our world works. Our world is often dened or understood to the extent that people share and assimilate the dominant cultural narratives. Narratives are important because they relate a story; they provide the audience with a framework, a beginning and an end. Narratives keep people together and they set them apart. They justify what we do and undermine and cast doubt on what others say and do. Ultimately, narratives or the cumulative stories we tell ourselves, our culture and our nations, sustain an international order that is often cruel and unjust. The stories of others seem strange and incredible because they do not comport with our understanding and our world.

Broad Contexts 3

LONG-RANGE US POLICY TOWARDS THE NEAR EAST (1958)!

Decades ago in 1959 William Appleman Williams wrote that a part of the tragedy of American diplomacy was that: If the United States cannot accept the existence of such limits without giving up democracy and cannot proceed to enhance and extend democracy within such limits, then the traditional effort to sustain democracy 6 by expansion will lead to the destruction of democracy. If one of the philosophical gambits of US diplomacy rested on James Madisons injunction to extend the sphere to ensure the survival of democracy in his tenth Federalist paper, Williams reections anticipated danger. Americans had to learn to live within limits. Their failure to do so would produce empire as a way of life. US ofcials struggled with the proposition, with their identity, and more importantly for current purposes, with the perception of their identity. As they supplanted European powers in the Middle East, especially in the late 1950s, after Suez, the National Security Council identied a range of interests, issues and concerns. Metaphorical parallels are never as straight as geometric requirements, but there are remarkable parallels nonetheless. Even as Washington assumed the position of the preeminent Western power in the region it worried about its identication with its colonial allies: Since the BritishFrenchIsraeli invasion of Egypt in November 1956, the United States has been the undisputed leader of Free World interests in the area, a National Securtiy Council strategic paper opined. There was tacit recognition of this by European powers. Still, Washington could not separate itself from these Europeans and an identication with the powers which formerly had, and still have, colonial interests in the area. Thus, the Western alliance makes the United States a target for some of the animus which this situation generates. It worried about a range of issues, the US stance and the local perceptions of it. The tragedy in many ways is that those issues, albeit without the Soviets, remain largely on the table, and little has been achieved to ameliorate the tensions across the Middle East, especially after the 1967 war. Given the history and consequences the further tragedy of the Bush admin istrations response to 9/11 is the myopic tendency to fall back into old ways and not to explore readjustments in policy. Old stories were forgotten. In January 1958, just over a year after the Suez crisis, the National Security Council drew up an extensive document on LongRange U.S. Policy toward the Near East. Obviously, it identied that the

4 Frustrated Empire: US Foreign Policy, 9/11 to Iraq

Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance to the Free World. The area contains the greatest petroleum resources in the world and essential facilities for the transit of military forces and Free World commerce. If the area fell under Soviet inuence, US security would be jeopardised. Moreover, the strategic resources are of such importance to the Free World, particularly Western Europe, that it is in the security interests of the United States to make every effort to insure that these resources will be available and will be used for strengthening the Free World. The geographical position of the Near East makes the area a steppingstone toward the strategic 7 resources of Africa. The National Security Council was aware that their interests did not accord with much aspiration throughout the Middle East. It observed that the current conditions and political trends in the Near East are inimical to Western interests. In the eyes of the majority of Arabs the United States appears to be opposed to the realization of the goals of Arab nationalism. The ArabIsraeli dispute was important and US opposition to Arab aspirations for selfdetermination and unity while there was widespread belief that the United States desires to keep the Arab world disunited and is committed to work with 8 reactionary elements to that end. It is little wonder that after Arab nationalism was largely contained and options for free secular expression were so curtailed that eventually, and especially after 1979, the mosque and Islamic charitable organisations became the only sections of civil society that had not been bought or broken by dictatorial regimes. Toby Dodge concludes, It is hardly surprising  that rising resentment took a religious form, which obviously 9 beneted al Qaeda. The US support for the repressive regimes was clearly recognised in internal memoranda in the 1950s: Communist policestate methods seem no worse than similar methods employed by Near East regimes, including some of those supported by the 10 United States. The public and private narratives were at odds. The National Security Council was aware of its assets in the region. They made reference to the tradition of philanthropic and educational efforts, the respect which is engendered by our military power; our own revolutionary tradition and our identication with the principle of selfdetermination; the abundance of our wealth; the advancement of our science and technology, which all contributed to the positive views of the United States. Still, and perhaps more pertinent they recognised that:

Broad Contexts 5

The tendency in the area is to ascribe the blame for the gap between the present living standard and popular desires with respect to economic progress and development to external factors such as ‘colonialism’, unfair arrangements with the oil-producing companies, and a desire on the part of the West to keep the Arab world relatively undeveloped so that it may ultimately become a source of raw materials and the primary market for Israeli industry.

These words remain extraordinarily pertinent nearly fifty years later. Anticipating trends of our times its suggested policy guidance included: provide Free World leadership and assume, on behalf of the Free World, the major responsibility toward the area; acting with or in consultation with other Free World countries, particularly the United Kingdom, to the greatest extent practicable, but reserving 11 the right to act alone.

IRONIES OF ‘OUR’ TIME

Despite these acute observations we have lived with stories for decades now about the growth and dispersion of liberty, democracy, selfdetermination and the benets of a particular socioeconomic system based around capitalism. One US commentator, a former employee of the US Department of State, went so far as to proclaim the End of History. There was, according to this account, no further possible ideological development. Liberal democratic capitalism 12 represented the highest form of political maturity. Such notions were incorporated into the US National Security Strategy of September 2002, in which the United States was considered to be the sole surviving model of progress. This sense of superiority and orientalist outlook on others from afar and above resonates widely in Western culture and in the more ethnocentric North American political culture. The twentieth century was, to many commentators, following Henry Luce ofLifemagazine, the American Century. It was characterised and sustained by the ideologies advanced in the metanarrative of US history and foreign policy; creating a nation and a world in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. There are huge ironies in three broad themes that characterised the second half of the twentieth century, a period that coincided with the apogee of American power. After 1945 European empires collapsed. The rise of the Third World not only shaped the Cold War but also 13 was devastatingly shaped by it. Often aspirations directly clashed. Indias rst Prime Minister and founding member of the NonAligned