[Dialogue] Rice on top of the world

[Harry Wainwright]

Rice on top of the world

The US State Department's new drive towards invasive diplomacy only reveals
the continuing arrogance and dangerous recklessness of the current American
administration, writes Gamil Matar*
<http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/print/2006/785/op2.htm#1>  

Condoleezza Rice has had more to say in the past two months than she ever
has before. I'm not just talking quantitatively. She's addressed university
audiences, academic forums and press conferences and has appeared frequently
on television, sometimes twice in a single day. And she has something
interesting to say, which sets her apart from her predecessors in office.
Rice will be credited for adding new and original terms and concepts in the
field of diplomacy. I believe that some of these concepts are already being
put into effect and that she has been priming the world for a new style of
American foreign policy behaviour. The most part of this behaviour is
intended to create the springboard from which Washington will be able to
leap the gap between superpower and imperial capital.

I was particularly struck by Rice's recent lecture at Georgetown University
and her statements on the same subject before the Senate's Foreign Affairs
Committee when inaugurating the notion of "transformational diplomacy". The
last encounter we had with a Washington drive to revamp its image was with
its choice of the so-called "public diplomacy" approach. Many political
analysts at the time felt that in adopting this policy the US had
overstepped that red line in international law that restricted the type of
contacts that foreign diplomats could make with citizens in their host
country. Suddenly, US Embassy officials began to tour the corridors of
government buildings in the countries to which they were posted on grounds
that they had to monitor the progress of irrigation, healthcare and other
development projects sponsored and funded by US aid agencies. Soon we began
to hear rumours of what were tantamount to American directives to local
government agencies on purely sovereign concerns. Then, the next thing you
know, Rice announces this month that "public diplomacy" was only one facet
of America's new "transformational diplomacy".

The new term is the State Department's rubric for a shift in emphasis to
more cities and regions in emerging nations such as China, India, Indonesia,
South Africa and Brazil. Without mentioning names, Rice also speaks of
getting to countries verging on the brink of failure and extremism before
terrorism does, as had occurred in Afghanistan. In other words, the State
Department wants to intensify the presence of its diplomats in parts of the
world commonly referred to as "hardship postings" due to the difficult
material and, sometimes, security conditions in those countries. Rice,
therefore, asked the Senate committee to approve higher compensations for
diplomats who will be specialising in these areas and committing themselves
to learning such languages as Arabic, Urdu, Persian and Chinese. Under this
plan, too, some diplomats will be working "on assignment" outside the
embassies to which they are posted. Much as that old-time favourite of
Western fans, the Lone Ranger, these diplomats will be braving the streets,
mingling with the people whose language they have now acquired and
implementing Washington's instructions without the usual red tape to wade
through. 

The mission of these diplomatic lone rangers will include training people in
democracy building, helping them improve healthcare and educational
services, and promoting American principles. It looks like the State
Department plans to take on the functions of the Peace Corps and that it has
expanded the concept of diplomacy to embrace all the activities undertaken
by American citizens, NGOs and aid agencies abroad. This, in its own right,
is a singular and fundamental conceptual shift in one of the oldest
professions of the world. 

It also appears that the State Department intends to make itself responsible
for a task that had long fallen under the umbrella of the Pentagon, but at
which the Pentagon had dismally failed, certainly in Iraq. According to
Rice, "post-conflict reconstruction and stability bureaus" will be
established in countries that have just emerged from war or internal strife.
The bureaus will be multi-functional. To be staffed by lawyers and judges,
architects and engineers, bankers and economic experts, police and other
security experts, they will be equipped with all the skills necessary for
running an exhausted war-torn country, rebuilding the organisations and
institutions that had been destroyed by war and overhauling those
institutions or organisations whose dismantlement and reconstruction is
regarded to be in the interests of the US or the "international community". 

One cannot help but observe that this transformational diplomacy has at
least certain elements in common with an erstwhile Soviet custom. Now,
apparently, US diplomats will be seconded as political advisors to US
military units operating abroad, rather in the manner of the Communist
Party's erstwhile commissars. It is not difficult to imagine the problems
and confusion that will arise from this; especially in view of the heated
rivalries and turf wars that are taking place today in Washington between
the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department and the FBI.

The "transformational diplomacy" scheme was not the only item on the
secretary of state's agenda these past few weeks. She spoke emphatically on
the "powers" that the Security Council had in order to "force" countries
into cooperating. She said, equally emphatically and not without a touch of
haughtiness, that the only way the Palestinian people would realise a better
life was to stick to the peace process. In this regard, she urged Arab
governments to cut off all forms of assistance to Hamas as long as it
believed it had the right to combine violence with peace diplomacy. The US,
she said in no uncertain terms, would not support a Palestinian government
that did not accept Israel's right to exist and that did not demonstrate its
commitment to this principle by condemning terrorism and disarming the
Palestinian militias. At least, we should give her credit for not
contradicting herself. She never once aimed a single word of criticism or
censure against Israel. She saved all her venom for Hamas and the
Palestinians, and all her tenderness for Israel, "whom Hamas wants to
destroy". This is not exactly the type of impartiality conducive to the
success of her diplomacy in the Middle East and Islamic world. 

Here's her outlook on the world today: "we are living in an unusual time,
when centuries of experience have been turned head over heels. We are living
in a time in which there are no wars or conflicts between international
powers." This is also a time -- she adds -- in which the greatest threats
come from conflicts within nations rather than between nations. The US has
been driven to a state of war by this new phenomenon, a phenomenon whereby
the domestic conditions within certain countries have come to threaten
American peace and security. For this reason, it is in America's interest to
work together with its partners, as well as "to use our diplomatic strength
and our economic aid" to build well-governed countries, to help the people
in those countries better their standards of living, secure their borders,
cooperate with friendly nations towards building a better future and "hunt
down scientist outlaws and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]
black-marketeers." 

Rice leaves us in no doubt about what America's diplomatic restructuring is
all about: America's forthcoming wars will not be against foreign
governments but against what it regards as hostile forces inside foreign
countries.

Rice's plans and those of Rumsfeld in the Pentagon have much in common, to
the extent that they can be seen as complimentary. Both are grounded in the
exigencies brought into being by 11 September and that have ostensibly
propelled the US into a state of war. They anticipate that this will be a
protracted war, in which the US will have to rely on individuals or small
military or diplomatic task teams, operating in various hotspots around the
world covertly or overtly and with other governments' approval or not. Both
agree that military action alone does not produce lasting victory; that
post-conflict diplomatic and civilian efforts are required for
reconstruction and the restoration of stability. It further appears that
America's future wars will increasingly tend towards short-term, petty wars.
"Little wars will prevent the proliferation of big wars," goes the theory,
which is being put into practice at the moment in unpublicised military
operations going on south of the Sahara.

Rice and Rumsfeld also agree that although the US will not be able to create
peace for generations to come, "it can create a more democratic world in
which there are no more malfunctioning governments." There are two ways
towards this end, they say. One is through calm and patient cooperation and
the promotion, through persuasion or pressure -- whichever is quicker and
more effective -- of various forms of alliance. The other is to create
"proxies", as Rice put it, in countries and regions around the world and to
enhance the power and influence of these proxies. It is not difficult to
imagine the Pentagon and the State Department working together very closely
on this score.

I cannot interpret the substance of Rice's speech of 18 January 2006, later
reiterated before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on 15 February, in
her meeting with Arab-American journalists on 17 February, in her interview
with CBS's Bob Schafer on 12 February, in her interview with LBC's Marcel
Ghanem on 14 February, in her remarks before the Senate Budget Committee on
16 February and in her joint press conference with the Israeli minister of
foreign affairs on 8 February, as anything but an affirmation that the US is
going to unleash a drive of "peaceful coercion" against the governments and
peoples of the Islamic world in particular. The US is going to besiege these
countries with the type of pressures that make them buckle, blockades that
can't be breached, media campaigns that cannot be countered, and other types
of "peaceful" means that can sometimes be more destructive than war. This is
the type of "peace" that Israel and a large segment of US policy-makers
believe will succeed with the Arabs where war has failed. Perhaps this is a
sign of Rice's -- and other US think- tank members' -- cunning, What I
cannot understand is why they and others (including Bush) are so determined
to portray Islam as a religion of extremists and terrorists.

Where is the US fighting now? Who is it pressuring? Against what countries
is it pushing for economic sanctions? The answer to these questions is
sufficient to identify "the other" against which Washington is mobilising
all its diplomatic and military energies and hunkering down for a protracted
war. It's in Afghanistan and Iraq and perhaps in the eastern and western
coasts of Africa. It is campaigning furiously against Iran and Hamas, and it
is threatening to inflame domestic problems in Arab and Islamic countries
that refuse to lend a hand in isolating Hamas as well as yielding to Tel
Aviv's other demands. 

I believe, along with Daniel Benjamin and Stephen Simon, co-authors of The
Next Attack, that the Bush administration's failure in its war against
terrorism is primarily due to the application of the philosophy, "we've got
to fight them over there before we end up having to fight them over here."
The US is still "fighting over there" with more than 130,000 forces in Iraq
and thousands more in other countries. Indeed, Rice and Rumsfeld are still
talking about expanding and intensifying the realm of US interventionism. 

Sadly, I can only agree with Francis Fukuyama who, in The New York Times
Magazine of 19 February, predicted that the levels of both peaceful and
military violence that will be brought to bear in the implementation of
Washington's "transformational diplomacy" must inevitably climb. The reason
is patently obvious: American violence will beget ever more destructive and
widespread terrorism on the other side.

* The writer is director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic
Research. 

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