|
|
|
For the arrogance of power America now pays a terrible price
by Jonathan Power
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 had 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
civilisation of these last 40-50 years is a successful civilisation. 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 had 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 US began the new
millennium as the most heavily militarised nation on earth. It is the US
which poses the military threat to others. At the outbreak of World War
II, the US army had 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 US 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 wring 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 —
be it the Palestinians or the globalisation protesters 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, William 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.
Mr. Jonathan Power is a syndicated
columnist and author. He contributed this article to
the Jordan Times.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2001
Jordan Times & Jonathan Power
by the same author:
|
|
|
