For
the arrogance of power
America now pays a terrible price
By JONATHAN
POWER
TFF PressInfo
127
September 12, 2001
LONDON - 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 has 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
civilization of these last 40-50 years is a successful
civilization. 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 has 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 U.S. began the new millennium as the most heavily
militarised nation on earth. It is the U.S., which poses
the military threat to others. At the outbreak of the
Second World War the U.S. army was 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 U.S. 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 ring 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 - whether it be the
Palestinians or the globalisation protestors 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,
Willam 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.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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