[Dialogue] {Disarmed} A cogent analysis of today's Iraq and the world

Tue Jul 31 19:28:02 EDT 2007

Forwarded by Dick Kroeger

Published on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 by _The Guardian/UK_ 
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2138134,00.html)  
The Death of This Crackpot Creed Is Nothing To Mourn
The Wider Conflict Now Engulfing Iraq Lays Bare The Absurdity of Liberal  
Interventionism - and The Decline of US Power
by John Gray 

The era of liberal interventionism in international affairs is over. Invading 
 Iraq was always in part an oil grab. A strategic objective of the Bush  
administration was control of Iraqi oil, which forms a key portion of the Gulf  
reserves that are the lifeblood of global capitalism. Yet success in this  
exercise in geopolitics depended on stability after Saddam was gone, and here  
American thinking was befogged by illusions. Both the neoconservatives who  
launched the war and the many liberals who endorsed it in the US and Britain  took 
it for granted that Iraq would remain intact. 
As could be foreseen by anyone with a smattering of history, things have not  
turned out that way. The dissolution of Iraq is an unalterable fact, all too  
clear to those who have to cope on the ground, that is denied only in the 
White  House and the fantasy world of the Green Zone. American-led regime change 
has  created a failed state that no one has the power to rebuild. Yesterday’s 
Oxfam  report revealed that nearly one in three Iraqis is in need of emergency 
aid, and  yet the anarchy that prevails prevents any such assistance. 
Iraq now belongs in the history books, and Mesopotamia - the ancient region  
between the Tigris and Euphrates that includes parts of Turkey, Iran and Syria 
 as well as the country that has been destroyed - is the site of an 
intensifying  resource war. The Baghdad government is a battleground of sectarian 
forces while  the Kurdish zone is independent in all but name. Utopian schemes for 
a federal  state have been overtaken by an internal resource war fought out 
along sectarian  lines. 
Anarchy of this kind is a hideous condition in which to live, but its  
destructive impact reaches beyond the millions of Iraqis whose lives are already  
ruined. The surrounding states are being irresistibly drawn into the country’s  
conflicts. Both Iran and Turkey have an interest in Iraq’s oil wealth - Iran 
by  virtue of having expanded its power and influence over the Shia majority, 
Turkey  from fear that control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk will pass into 
the hands  of the Kurds. Such states can hardly avoid intervening and will not 
be deterred  from acting to safeguard what they see as their vital national 
interests by  threats from the Bush administration. Iraq is at risk of becoming 
the centre of  a wider war, which the US can do very little to prevent - which 
shows up the  lack of proportion in comparing the present conflict with 
Vietnam. 
America was able to walk away from Vietnam because that country was  
peripheral in the world economy and the knock-on effects of US withdrawal were  
comparatively slight; Iraq, by contrast, is a key factor in global oil supplies,  
and if the US pulls out its ability to protect its allies in the region will be  
called into question. Another crucial difference is that Vietnam had an  
effective government in the north that could take over when the US exited. No  
such entity exists in Iraq. The feared domino effect in south-east Asia did not  
occur, but Iraq could be the scene of a domino effect in reverse in which the  
country’s warring neighbours fall into the void left by the Americans’  
departure. By any standard, defeat in Iraq would be a more devastating blow to  US 
power than Vietnam. 
The most important - as well as most often neglected - feature of the  
conflict shaping up around Iraq is that the US no longer has the ability to  mould 
events. Whatever it does, there will be decades of bloodshed in the  region. 
Another large blunder - such as bombing Iran, as Dick Cheney seems to  want, or 
launching military operations against Pakistan, as some in Washington  appear 
to propose - would make matters even worse. 
The chaos that has engulfed Iraq is only the start of a longer and larger  
upheaval, but it would be useful if we learned a few lessons from it. There is a 
 stupefying cliche which says regime change went wrong because there was not  
enough thought about what to do after the invasion. The truth is that if 
there  had been sufficient forethought the invasion would not have been launched. 
After  the overthrow of Saddam - a secular despot in a European tradition that 
includes  Lenin and Stalin - there was never any prospect of imposing a 
western type of  government. Grotesque errors were made such as the disbanding of 
the Iraqi army,  but they only accelerated a process of fragmentation that 
would have happened  anyway. Forcible democratisation undid not only the regime 
but also the  state. 
Liberal interventionists who supported regime change as part of a global  
crusade for human rights overlooked the fact that the result of toppling tyranny  
in divided countries is usually civil war and ethnic cleansing. Equally they  
failed to perceive the rapidly dwindling leverage on events of the western  
powers that led the crusade. If anyone stands to gain long term it is Russia 
and  China, which have stood patiently aside and now watch the upheaval with 
quiet  satisfaction. Neoconservatives spurned stability in international 
relations and  preached the virtues of creative destruction. Liberal internationalists 
declared  history had entered a new stage in which pre-emptive war would be 
used to  construct a new world order where democracy and peace thrived. The 
result of  these delusions is what we see today: a world of rising authoritarian 
regimes  and collapsed states no one knows how to govern. 
Many will caution against throwing out the baby of humanitarian military  
intervention together with the neocon bathwater. No doubt the idea that western  
states can project their values by force of arms gives a sense of importance 
to  those who believe it. It tells them they are still the chief actors on the 
world  stage, the vanguard of human progress that embodies the meaning of 
history. But  this liberal creed is a dangerous conceit if applied to today’s 
intractable  conflicts, where resource wars are entwined with wars of religion and 
western  power is in retreat. 
The liberal interventionism that took root in the aftermath of the cold war  
was never much more than a combination of post-imperial nostalgia with 
crackpot  geopolitics. It was an absurd and repugnant mixture, and one whose passing 
there  is no reason to regret. What the world needs from western governments 
is not  another nonsensical crusade. It is a dose of realism and a little 
humility. 
John Gray is professor of European thought at the London School of  Economics 
and the author of _Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0374105987?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&link
Code=as1&creativeASIN=0374105987&adid=1X3CE4Q1Q1QZ45SYTFXC&)   
_j.gray at lse.ac.uk_ (mailto:j.gray at lse.ac.uk) 

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