The Empire Dialogues: Lessons of History Limits of Power

to further discussion and analysis of US foreign policy the Institute of International Studies with the support of the Dean of International and area Stuart at your studies and Chancellor Robert Burrell is sponsoring a series of public events and the falls and spring semesters and we're calling them the Empire dialogues focusing on us power and world order these forums lectures and panels will examine such questions as the following which is not to say that these questions will be answered necessarily or all of them at each panel the-the-the-the for the questions we propose where the following how can history inform a discussion of US policy what useful comparisons can be made with the experience of other great powers in this context how should u.s. responsibilities be defined how can the u.s. fulfill its role without compromising its traditions and values what are the implications of u.s. choices for world order and international justice so throughout the spring semester we will be bringing people either panels or lectures to address these questions or maybe one question at a particular session the website for these events which is rather important because participants often wind up not being able to come at the last minute the website is globetrotter berkeley.edu no w-w-w just globetrotter . berkeley.edu i that may have political significance but it's actually the way we create our domains on the campus so go to that site and you will find either the change of place or the change of speaker and i should note that that at the last minute daniel ellsberg had to go to washington and he deeply regretted not being able to to be with us but he expressed best wishes and and I do before I even introduce them going I'm gonna thank professor Jerry Saunders of Peace and Conflict Studies for at the last minute agreeing to participate in our program so for future events we have acceptances from Bryan Arquette who was the Under Secretary General of the UN until 11 of the financial times Jessica Stern of Harvard and David Harvey of the City College of New York among others people who will be coming so go to the website and look at the university calendar for future events we're calling today's dialogue the lessons of history the limits of power and we're we're very pleased to welcome three individuals who will speak each for 20 minutes and then we will have a discussion among them and then we will open the floor to questions when we do the questions we you will use these mics but we'll just get two people up at a time and we are going to end this session at 9:00 so if you get to ask a question just make it short because you're cutting into the time of people who are follow our panelists today are Ruth Rosen who is professor emeritus of history at UC Davis and a columnist and editorial writer at the San Francisco Chronicle her publications include the world split open how the modern woman's movement changed America Jerry Saunders is a professor in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies on the campus and his publications include the peddlers of crisis the Committee on the present danger and the politics of containment very relevant history I must say and then finally we're very pleased to welcome from London tariq Ali who flew all day today to be here with us this evening he a distinguished writer broadcaster and filmmaker and a major figure in the European New Left he is an editor of the new left review a prolific author he's written many books and his most recent one is Bush in Babylon the recolonization of Iraq and that will be available actually at the door when you leave cody's will be selling copies and will make time for him to sign them so with that introduction I'll begin our panel and and welcome Ruth to the podium good evening just for the record I'd like to say that the very first new word I learned as a college freshman was hubris think about that for a moment because it's what I want to address tonight every year Sonoma State University which has a project called Project Censored releases a list of the most unreported stories that the media has failed to publicize I don't always agree with their list but for the years 2002 and 2003 Project Censored has chosen the neoconservative plan for global domination as the top underreported story and in this case I couldn't agree more you can't build and sustain an empire unless you impose it and then defend it with superior military power and I want to say that this didn't begin under the bush administration as a historian I feel compelled to remind all of us that a core circle of future members of the Bush administration conceived the ideas of pre-emptive war an American global domination during the 1990s well before they help positions of power now they're called neoconservatives because many of them were initially influenced by trotsky's idea of permanent revolution and then they move to the far right not all of them but a good core of them they include for example Paul Wolfowitz who's the Deputy Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith number three at the Pentagon Louis Libby Cheney's chief of staff james bolton a right-winger assigned to the state department to keep his eye out on Secretary of State Colin Powell and Elliott Abrams who heads the Middle East policy at the National Security Council outside of the government those are the people were in the government outside of the government they include Richard Perle who just resigned his chairmanship of the defense policy advisory body and james Woolsey who's a former CIA adviser and who has repeatedly tried to link both 9/11 and the anthrax letters to Sodom Hussein these neo-cons are real ideologue whose opinions have filled William Crystal's weekly standard for years but it was in the 1990s they came together in a conservative think-tank that's called the project for the new American Century which is run by Krista and they published a series of letters and documents which were readily available on the web and some of you may have heard about this before and what they did is they called for American supremacy for preventive preventive war pre-emptive war and they called the United States to invade and to occupy Iraq and this was well before Bush even imagined he would run for the presidency their luck and Newsweek has had an interesting article about this this week their luck was to have vice chained Vice President Cheney who agreed with their aims and a very inexperienced and we might say thinly educated president who doesn't read newspapers and who depends on others to filter his sense of reality now this story that I've just said about how these neoconservatives created these ideas in this think tank is not new and it's been written about quite a bit in the American press for those of us who read that kind of thing I don't think most of America most America knows this but what I want to talk about tonight is something that's not been so publicized which contributes to the idea of global domination and implements it and that is defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld who bought who brought his own vision of global domination to the bush administration but from a different venue from the venue of the United States Air Force Space Command if you think about his vision you could think as I'm describing it that I'm wacko because with the first time I looked at the United States Space Command website in 2001 I had just left the University of California as a full professor of history I had become an editorial writer and a cop not not quite yet a full-time columnist I went to my editor and I showed him these pictures and I said no you know I'm a serious scholar and he looked at these things and he trusted me these things were on the web because they were proud of them these were American documents describing how global domination would take place what they imagined was space-based weapons orbiting the globe ready to zap or nuke any country that was declared an imminent threat by the United States and to the United States before President Bush even tapped Donald Rumsfeld to head the Pentagon Rumsfeld was chair of a very obscure commission that most Americans did not hear about was called the Commission to assess United States national security management organization he finished the report in December 2002 office he submitted it to the Congress which no journalist bothered to report on January 11th 2011 but one I happened to find out about this report and looked at it the report began by warning that if the United States is to avoid a space Pearl Harbor it needs to take seriously the possibility of an attack on US Space Systems now what did they mean they had an image of space assets which had nuclear tipped laser tipped weapons that were constantly orbiting outer space and these had to be protected from any other country that might dare to gain a foothold in space and zap these these these weapons and this would be a Pearl Harbor the report also called for a number of things recommended the creation of a United States space Corps which would be directly under the president situated in the White House not under the control of the Pentagon and that this space core would defend space-based military capability of the United States in other words while politicians around this country were debating should we have a national missile defense what Rumsfeld was arguing is that the president needed to make space his national security priority that there needed to be a space advisory group that would report directly to the president and that the Air Force would create and these are his words a space core that would that would eventually morph into a military department for space now with these steps the Rumsfeld Commission which again was not publicized and to my knowledge I've never seen it anywhere except in one editorial I wrote in The Chronicle which my wonderful boss let me write with these steps the Rumsfeld Commission felt certain that the United States would gain and these the language the capability to use space as an integral part of its ability to manage crises deter conflict and if deterrence fails to prevail and conflict in short Rumsfeld was arguing we needed a space-based weaponry to protect our assets and space and from which we could dominate the globe now Rumsfeld's report was actually a tamer and quite a toned down version of a much more ominous document which I had found earlier on the United States Space command's website which was located in Colorado this this document was called at the time and this website doesn't exist anymore because it's been subsumed by the command by the command in Nebraska it was called vision for 2020 20 and this is what it showed it was an astonishing vision it showed laser weapons shootin deadly beams down at different parts of the globe zapping targets on earth and beneath this sci-fi image crawled the world the words right underneath they just kept crawling back and over and over again US Space Command dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect us interests and us investments around the globe when I first thought this I thought it was this was a parody of Marxist I couldn't believe that this was actually a federal document called the Department of Defense and asked if I had gotten the right URL vision 2020 accurately predicted that the global economy would widen the gulf between as they called it the haves and the have-nots and by deploying space-based surveillance and weaponry the United States would be able to control these conflicts this is their language to control space and from this high ground and every soldier knows you want to have a high ground when you're in battle to dominate the earth below now candidate Bush never hid his enthusiasm for leap frogging over the next generation of weapons in fact in many speeches while he was running he said he wanted to move directly to high-tech space-based weaponry so by choosing Donald Rumsfeld Bush appointed a man whom the Washington Post described as the leading proponent not only of a national missile defense which is what people were debating at the time but also of US efforts to take complete control of outer space some of you will probably remember that in September 2002 it's not that far away the Bush administration released the national security strategy which was a fundamentally new foreign policy that emphasized unilateralism American global supremacy and pre-emptive war yet even as we continue to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan the plan to dominate Spain space continues and accelerates the u.s. US Space Command just released a progress report on how it's doing it's called the strategic master plan for the year 2004 and Beyond in shorts called SMP strategic master plan and what it clearly describes is the United States intention to dominate the world by turning space into the next crucial battlefield in the introduction to this document general Lance W Lord very proudly writes as guardian of the high frontier Air Force Space Command has the vision and the people to ensure the United States achieves space superiority today and in the future a new space Corps will fight in and through space then the document goes on and this is their language space is the ultimate high ground of military operations today control of this high ground means superiority and tomorrow ownership of space may mean instant engagement anywhere in the world our vision calls for prompt Global Strike systems with the capability to directly apply force from or through space against terrestrial targets space superiority is essential to our vision of controlling and fully exploiting space to provide our military with an asymmetric advantage over our adversary's asymmetric advantage over our adversaries the immediate goal of course is to prevent as it describes in this progress report anyone else from having a foothold or any entrance into outer space because to dominate the globe this progress report says the United States has to have complete control of outer space or its weapons would be neutralized Rumsfeld's vision is to me extremely dangerous for starters many of you may not know but the United States initiated and it passed a little-known treaty called the Outer Space Treaty in 1967 which wisely prohibited the militarization of space in 2001 163 countries reaffirmed that treaty three nations abstained and refused to support the resolution can you guess who they were the United States Israel and Micronesia clearly this space-based vision is pretty useless against terrorist attacks in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else in the world where people are sniping or using suicide bombers China is the target and China knows it is the target it believes it is the unnamed enemy who has to be controlled from space last September just a few months ago the United Nations conference on disarmament in Geneva failed to reach an agreement to prevent an arms race in outer space another story that was not reported very much if at all the Bush administration as usual insisted that an international treaty was totally unnecessary China fought fought very hard for this they really wanted to prevent an arms race in space because they're way behind I can only imagine what Donald Rumsfeld felt in his bones the day that giant China sent a man into space and they're very concerned the Chinese government is very concerned about the Bush administration's newly articulated policy of pre-emptive war and permanent global supremacy because ultimately it sees itself as the target of that policy it's also terribly dangerous policy because it threatens to start a completely new arms race this time in space I won't even go into the impact of radiation in space and the health risks involved in that it is also hugely expensive and will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to develop and to deploy new exotic weapons in space and these weapons I'll forbear describing them to you but they are exotic they are laser tip they are nuclear weapons they are meant to be able to pinpoint nuclear tipped and laser weapons within a very small area of space and they some of them would actually land on the earth some of them would operate from from outer space most Americans seem to be unaware that the Department of defense is constantly handing out multimillion-dollar contracts to contract for the research and development of all these exotic space-based weapons when I wrote that first editorial in 2001 I thought oh this is such an incredible story surely other people will pick it up and they'll write about the space-based weapons I called it arming the heavens so I'm still looking up at the heavens and the question I have is do we really want to leave future generations a legacy of space-based warfare we're coming very close to actually imagining and then implementing a true Star Wars if not it seems to me that one thing we should be doing those of us who can vote and who live in the United States is to pressure every single Democratic candidate to address this issue as well as george w bush because we need to keep the heavens free of space-based weapons because to control space is to ensure the domination of an american empire thank you well that was certainly a chilling account oh one of many when we talk about the neocons in Washington in 1971 Daniel Ellsberg was called the most dangerous man in America by none other than Henry Kissinger I cannot claim any anything on my resume even close to that so my apologies for those of you who came to see Dan I suppose my only defense is I'm a friend of his so I'll convey your feelings to him so in thinking about this subject for tonight lessons of history and limits of power it seems to me that the historical record is quite clear on the subject there's a considerable body of research which tells us the strategy of Empires have bitterly self-defeating the problem for hegemonic powers is that they invariably exhaust themselves with ever escalating attempts to maintain their primacy meanwhile new powers arise have see it in their interest to counterbalance against the dominant power this only increases the cost of empire as the hegemon is left to battle alone against the growing resistance to its pretensions finally the Empire collapses under the weight of its own hubris and in the mistaken belief that it somehow is different than those imperial powers who've gone before and gone down to defeat and therefore that they will not suffer the same fate nothing proves further from the truth than the self delusion now despite the writing on the wall each imperial power of course believes it brings its own national vanities to the challenge so it believes that it indeed is the exception to the rule spitting national myths that will somehow provide the magic immunity from history's verdict in the American case for example the current fashion at least the fashion the neoconservative salons in Washington that set the tone for the Bush administration and the Republican Congress is that the United States represents something new in the world that's variously described does benign Empire Democratic imperialism an empire of Liberty and in the neocon world view this the unprecedented power of the United States today unseen since the days of the Roman Empire once it's harnessed to democracy and freedom is an unbeatable combination that will defy the odds that we've seen from empires in the past not only is it's the neoconservative worldview but as Ruth has pointed out as the national security strategy of 2002 it is our national security doctrine now of course anyone with a cursory knowledge of American history will be quick to note the Empire is not exactly new in the American experience and Ruth alluded to that as well William Appleman Williams many years ago chose as his title for his chronicle of US history Empire as a way of life but what is new in this administration is the blatant overt nature of the enterprise a departure from the more covert forms of regime change during the Cold War and from the softer version of Empire insulated by the latticework of international institutions created after 1945 in the name of the international community that's what's new and different here today regime change is not left at the CIA after all they can't be trusted but instead regime chain a regime change arrives in a form of a blitzkrieg of destruction by none other than Rumsfeld and his high-tech weapons while the administration still invokes the international community its quest to bring about its the one single sustainable model for success in every corner of the world which of course is defined as democracy development free markets and free trade if you read the national security document that's the one single model of national success the problem with this is the blatant unilateralism by which the administration conducts itself and the arrogance of its claims invites mockery from both friend and foe consequently I think that because neoconservative ISM is so upfront it in your face about its Imperial posturing it's in danger really of accelerating the normal rate by which empires are undermined by imperial stretch to use Paul Kennedy's popular term for the phenomenon so before getting back to that I want to go back and thread in a bit of the history of the neocons and since Ruth has named names I'm going to talk more about the intellectual history since the journey of the personalities into the Bush administration is well known now what the new cons have done in their formulation of what they call power and principle I argue is that they've taken the two dominant paradigms of international relations today namely realism and liberalism and and they put them together in a combustible mix of pessimism and optimism an odd kind of combination first the pessimism of realpolitik which holds that there cannot be peace and security in the world without global domination by the United States and then the optimistic side in the ability in their ability to convince the rest of the world beginning with Iraq in the Middle East that there's indeed only one single model at least only one that will be tolerated and that furthermore the cost of quelling the resistance will be manageable now this is a departure from traditional realisms caution with regard to overstretch as well as its preoccupation with stability in which words like democracy and freedom are Anathem never to be uttered in any serious foreign policy conversations traditional realists like Henry Kissinger for example were attacked by the first generation of neo cons after Vietnam because of supportive dictatorships by Nixon by the Nixon administration and then and the realist who had gone before the same attacks against the traditional realist were carried out in the first Bush administration by the neo cons against people like Brent Scowcroft James Baker and those who had successfully argued for the containment of Saddam Hussein and not for regime change for fear that toppling Saddam would in fact bring about instability and therefore be counterproductive to US interest which of course is the overwhelming concern of the traditional realist now in Bush's appearance last week before the National Endowment for the cursing and addressed that William Safire dubbed the age of liberty speech his most important speech south are set a very interesting read by the way go to the White House website and take a look at the age of Liberty speech so in it the President forcefully underscored the administration's departure from quote 60 years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East which has done nothing to make us safe because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of Liberty well these aren't toxic 18 words to hold a good deal of truth but then you sober up very quickly when you look at who it is that saying them and why it is that he's saying what he's saying as one of the neocon luminaries Michael Adeem put it America's historic mission is not stability but radical change our our middle name is chaos in the service of freedom this is Michael Levine they also have very similar sentiments coming from max boot writing in The Wall Street Journal in the editorial pages he says who says you can't export democracy through the barrel of a gun classic neoconservative thinking boot again he says America should not be afraid to fight the savage Wars of peace if necessary to enlarge the Empire of Liberty the savage Wars of peace the pessimistic side in order to enlarge the Empire of Liberty the optimism now if realism had to be taken out of the hands of the overly cautious such as Scowcroft and Baker who do not recognize the golden opportunity presented by the collapse of the Soviet Union then democracy also had to be seized from the Liberals and the Democrats who were seen as too willing to accept a state and institutional role whether nationally or internationally as a cornerstone for the achievement of democracy instead the neocons used the collapse of communism as an opportunity to attack social democracy and the state generally it was now time for them to make neoliberal market-based democracy the only game in town or at least the only sustainable model the first generation of neo-cons used the same same set of tactics in their Odyssey from the Democratic to the Republican Party that's what makes them neo as opposed to just cons that they were moving from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in the period after the after Vietnam when they became conservative supporters of the messianic Ronald Reagan who of course thought the concept of democracy was indeed an American invention and it was our manifest destiny to bring it to the rest of the world now the current generation of neo cons are even worse because they believe it's a really Reagan's personal gift to the world the last word on the subject and the end of history if you will now we all know that the neo cons were out of power from 1992 to 2000 and so during this time though they zealously promoted the ideas through the eight Clinton years noting ruefully in one document in the year 2000 by the project of American Century in September of 2000 they said that their agenda would be hard to sell to the American public short of another Pearl Harbor the opportunity arrived one year later September 11th 2001 the tragic event which indeed enabled them to frame their imperial ambitions as a response to global terrorism now in the interim as Ruth points out with an unexpected stroke of luck Dick Cheney was appointed to head the transition team where he was able to bring Paul Wolfowitz in and the whole network of neo cons were there after that point soon honeycomb throughout the administration in defense national security the State Department and the executive branch all waiting for their opportunity to implement their decade old vision of empire so on to Iraq it was decided shortly after 9/11 actually I said it was decided ten years ago his question was a pretext needed pretext to go back to Iraq I don't anyone Excel this on CNN but james Woolsey came out two hours later and I was astonished by his ability to find the the the the imprint of Iraq on what had taken place two hours later this was an under unrelenting theme throughout that : pow actually had to beat back in order to be able to go to Afghanistan first you know look we have to do Afghanistan first from the very beginning the neo-cons wanted to go directly to arrived so the decision was that Iraq would serve as the showcase for the Bush Doctrine the first step in this ambitious project to reshape the Middle East in America's oh excuse me excuse me did neo-cons image let's not call it in America's image hopefully now I want to argue that ironically in this very first outing what we're seeing are the signs of Imperial overstretch in the very first outing of this ambitious project now normally you'd expect Imperial overstretch to be a long-term event but first of all we see that resistance is growing nationalist resistance and also apparently foreign resistance and yet we're told that these increasing attacks are a sign of progress we've now got them where we want them Rumsfeld actually said that we're fighting them and we're fighting terrorism and Baghdad so we don't have to fight it in st. Louis but is attacking an occupation force terrorism answer no and doesn't really follow that those dedicated to terrorist acts in the United States will now be satisfied to take it out on American soldiers well maybe for a while but the answer ultimately is no so the logic is quite the opposite second the other aspect of Imperial overstretch in addition to the resistance from those who are subject to regime change is the phenomenon of counterbalance by other great powers other world powers so when we look at the issue of counterbalancing behavior even at this early juncture what we see is that European and Asian powers are indeed beginning to carve out independent postures of their own given their lack of confidence in where this administration has headed and the unilateralism by which it carries out its policies even as its speaking in the name of the international community good start of course with the resistance to the war last spring and now of course the refusal to take the bait and to bail out the United States without a genuine shift in authority another case in point is if you consider what happened to the other members of the axis of evil very interesting those two other members of the axis of evil in the case of Iran Iran was gloating last week that they'd halted an American conspiracy in its tracks because they'd agreed to International Atomic Energy Commission mediated inspections of its laboratories basically as a result of the intervention of European powers against the US charges that Iraq was engaged in a nuclear arms program so we have an inspection regime going into into Iran next Iran excuse me over and against the wishes of the Bush administration precisely because European powers asserted themselves similarly China has taken an assertive role in working with South Korea to bring the United States to a diplomatic solution in the standoff with North Korea over its proclaimed its proclaim proliferation of nuclear weapons or interest in North Korea unlike everyone else is a no we're not doing anything like that North Korea says yeah we are that's right even if they're not as a deterrent I mean the other is they're saying yes they are and North Korea is it now they're not North Korea says no we really are has their own deterrent strategy now why would they do that they're because they're included in this axis of evil as a result of all this the Bush administration has been reduced to targeting Syria you know as its latest candidate for the you know savage Wars of peace that are going to expand the Empire of Liberty okay so the other part of this when we look at Imperial overstretch is the impact it has at home and to degree to which you then get a backlash and a resistance on the part of the hegemonic power itself now it's very interesting because when we look at the address President Bush made requesting the 87 billion supplemental increase to continue its strategy in Iraq this really served as a fairly is a sobering experience for Congress and many others who previously been tuned out essentially resulting in this growing debate about the cost of empire when coupled with the tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations and what all this pretends in terms of further assault on what's left of the social contract at home it's very interesting the Army Times had a headline story entitled an act of betrayal and what they were pointing out was how this administration is cutting back the health care benefits of families in addition to add insult to injury they're also lowering the amount of the death gratuity so the New York Times prefaced its coverage of Bush's speech that night asking for the 87 billion by saying it's a good thing that kids were already in bed because it's the kids in bed and their children who will be saddled with the growing debt burden for generations now so in response to all these setbacks and contradictions the administration has become somewhat of a caricature of itself actually I believe in danger is satirist very very difficult where do you go for satire when the administered ministration has self satirizing there are days now even when if you look at Doonesbury Gary Trudeau all he can do is faithfully document the words of chaining bush and Rumsfeld and supply some accompanying illustrations I mean what more can you do I mean think of this recall a few weeks back Bush went to the Philippines and he called it a model of democracy for Iraq in the Middle East yeah never you know never mind the bloody war the long long occupation the puppet regimes after the occupation ended and then the support for the dictator Marcos by none other than Ronald Reagan before the Philippines actually actually achieved democracy well sort of they didn't exactly achieve democracy as Bush's limousine traveled from the airport into Manila he was greeted by billboards extolling neoliberal progress that had been put up where before a few days earlier there it stood vast shanty towns of poor people whose homes were bulldozed for the six hour visit of the President so this Iraq's future is this a future for others around the world if this is the single model of success I'm the data in the Liberty speech was given the Bay Area public in the Chronicle I was treated to this interesting image perhaps many of you saw this with your cereal in the morning Bush calls on Middle East to open arms to democracy Hussein's fall a watershed for the world and so much became a prize for this by the way whoever placed this photo here because we have the photo of a American soldier standing watch over a Iraqi with a hood over his head in this humiliated position now one of the things we always hear about what drives resistance nationalist resistance as well as terrorists is the word humiliation so here we have humiliation being presented on the road to democracy also a day after the speech I found this which said that the United States military was now going to remind the town from which the one at one particular attack had come that we have teeth and claws and we will use them now this is less than 24 hours after the president is telling us and attempting to exhort the Iraqis to accept american-style democracy so what did they do it was an onslaught of rockets and a 500-pound bombs u.s. warplanes and tanks battered suspected guerrilla hideouts huh what does this look like on the ground one grandmother said the sky was red with explosions and my grandchildren were screaming so if this were not enough the neoconservative minions in Congress have taken upon themselves to oversee International Studies programs in higher education have you heard about the International Studies programs in higher education all this has come after congressional testimony by Hoover Institution neocon Stanley Kurtz who labeled International Studies programs especially Middle East Studies as hotbeds of anti-americanism so Congress in its alarm after this testimony passed the International Studies Higher Education Act which will appoint and oversight the unanimous leader which will point an oversight committee in Congress over curriculum over who teaches in area studies and international studies fair looking for fairness and balance of course and it's going to be housed in Homeland Security this really is a it's the follow on this is not an anomaly this is the follow-on to Daniel Pipes much maligned and much ridiculed campus watch blacklist a few years back by the way Terrell Lee's name was on that as one of those dangerous people that appears on reading list along with Arundhati Roy I remember those that were there for sure so in conclusion if this keeps up the neocons may well supersede the record of Empires that have preceded them but not in the way that they might choose that is not by establishing a record for longevity to which they the one which they aspire but instead for the alacrity by which they bring about their demise but I realized that that may sound a bit optimistic even Pollyannish and I was reminded of it this morning over my cereal with my latest Chronicle here which gives us some cautionary cautionary ideas here that we must consider it says in a date book section I start in the back and work forward because I really have to have some coffee before I can get to the front Americans have a love affair with audacity why we embrace liars and cheats so despite the contradictions it's not a foregone conclusion that the imperial overstretch is going to be accelerated I think it's certainly worth our discussion thank you for many years and in fact for many decades of debate use to go on in this country and outside it as to whether the United States was an empire at all the neocons as the previous because have pointed out of ended the debate by saying very clearly yeah we are an empire and what you don't do about it on one level it's straight talk and I think the responses are coming from different parts of the world in different shapes and forms and different tactics but the fact that the United States has been a major power for a long long time is indisputable it has never been forced to act alone till recently that's what makes it quite interesting in novel situation even during the days of the Monroe Doctrine the Monroe Doctrine could not have been implemented in South America without the British Navy which was determined to keep the other European powers out of South America so was quite happy to see the United States playing the role of the local cop and policing South America so America was the United States was always dependent on support from elsewhere in the early days and the early decades of the empire then you had the Cold War period during the Cold War period US leadership of the capitalist world was accepted by the capitalist world but even in that period it's quite interesting though all the defeated countries which had now been rebuilt reconstructed had become major powers in their own right Japan Germany France which had been completely wrecked Britain was in a pretty bad state had to be rebuilt etc etc with us help and as a result of this American leadership was accepted in Europe in the far east elsewhere and the reason it was accepted was because these people thought they were under a massive threat from a new revolutionary wave the Chinese Revolution had taken place the Korean peninsula was divided Vietnam was divided etc etc I don't need to go through the whole picture and so American leadership was accepted to defend capitalism against the threat of revolutions and anti-capitalist movements but even at that time it was impossible for the United States to find a single of its Western European allies to go and fight in Vietnam not a single Western European country including Britain agreed to go and fight in Vietnam the only countries who did were the Australians and the South Koreans apart from them none of the u.s. allies at a time when its leadership was not challenged or questioned wanted to go and do that and the reason for that was that despite the fact that sides had been taken in the Cold War the very existence of the Soviet Union China etc etc provided space for countries who weren't in either camp to disagree and for countries who were in one camp to use the existence of that block not to go to the - - along with the United States on everything the big difference now is that there is no countervailing force on the level of state power anywhere in the world that's the big difference and add to that that this is the first time as I constantly stress that we have a single big power Empire whatever you want to call it without challenge on a global scale the u.s. the size of the US military budget alone the increase in the US military budget last year alone is the total size of the Chinese military budget so there's no question that militarily this country is unchallengeable and everyone knows that and it's precisely this situation which makes the world an extremely dangerous place at the moment because of the way in which the Bush administration has tried to use this power and muscle to get its way as they said as condi rice said after 9/11 let's use this to get our way wherever we want to hence they discussed taking out Iraq before even just Afghanistan no one else anywhere in the world believes that saddam hussein had any links with al-qaeda except in the united states because that's what the media and the intelligence organizations have been saying even in britain which is quite a tame country and linked into this country and on many levels no one believes that so what is the situation as as we find it now we have a giant country very dominant economically feeling feeling economically threatened and determined to use its military power never to allow itself to be challenged economically i think if you want to express the situation in a nutshell that is it and that's what the national strategy doctrine says more or less we will never allow our dominance to be challenged by anyone else and if necessary we shall use force to do so classic imperial statement made by a big empire historically you have similar statements made by the british at the height of their empire the big difference between the British and the American empires that the British wanted to have direct control so they went in occupied countries and stayed then the balance sheet I say this for those fashionable colonialists today will think this was a good thing that the balance sheet of the British rule in India was a total disaster when they left India after 200 years 85 percent of that country was predominantly rural and mass illiteracy stood at 94 percent so the notion that these empires do some modernisations is not the case with the largest country to be occupied by a European Empire not the case they educated the elite and they built an effective public transport system to transport stuff from the ports into the interior and they built a strong army in an Administrative Service that was the extent of their legacy if they had wanted they could have educated the entire population but of course the danger is if you do that you'll be chucked out sooner than you're prepared to be chucked out so you don't do it and that is why the question of Iraq becomes very important again and that is why I find it utterly despicable that a whole gang of liberals and former leftists are going round defending this as somehow we haven't seen this before I mean the British took the whole the bulk of Africa saying that they were going to do it to wipe out slavery and bring freedom a country which had grown rich on slavery so when we come to Iraq we see a three-pronged operation what is this the first the real aim of the war in Iraq the principal aim was as I have said not principally oil though that's always in the background but a display of imperial power a display of the new national strategic doctrine a display of what this administration was capable of doing the Philip Bobbitt in his book the shield of Achilles argues very strongly that Clinton had already started this process in the Balkans that the bush people did it more aggressively he's very proud of that Bobbitt because he was an advisor to Clinton in the White House and now is totally backing bortion says that wet people see discontinuity there is continuity and there is an element of truth in that Clinton of course did things differently but nonetheless they were done and on that one point added a sort of a footnote occurs what the war in Iraq have been justifiable if it had been carried out with the support of the United Nations Security Council and if there had been French and German troops fighting alongside Americans and British ha's for me the answers obviously no absolutely not why would that make the war on Iraq morally justifiable if the Security Council had supported it it wouldn't have I mean these people made it easier for going in in any event though the French ambassador you will recall shouted at : pal and said we you had authorization from the very first resolution we passed but you wanted to trust the second resolution down our throats and the reason they wanted the second resolution was cause Blair insisted on it because he felt he wouldn't survive a parliamentary vote in the House of Commons unless he had a second resolution so the notion somehow that it would have been fine if it had been backed by the Security Council is laughable absolutely laughable so instead of I mean they they didn't get that and they went and took Iraq and they thought this was the big mistake they made they thought because of what they were told by Iraqis already on their payroll that it would be roses I'm not kidding you read the stuff they said we you will be greeted with flowers and sweets the Iraqi Quisling stole them in Washington that's what will happen said Cain and machia when he was given an audience in the White House invade people are ready waiting to be liberated or what happened even in the strongest centers of anti Saddam and anti both his sentiment people were angry and this is an elementary such an elementary mistake that it's staggering to think that a serious government composed of people thinking strategically Kim didn't understand that of course curiously enough sections of the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon here and in Britain understood this much much more than the politicians they said look this occupying a country is a massive problem not because the occupation itself is going to be difficult we can do that with our power what do you do afterwards and they had no idea and so what had to happen happen I mean people like me predicted before the war that within six months you'd have a very strong and functioning resistance I was pessimistic I have to say that the resistance started within two weeks of the occupation and the CIA report which has just been handed to Bush now says that the resistance is quite a large size and I've noticed that they've stopped saying these are just remnants of the old regime which is the argument they put further because the information we're getting out of Iraq is there 44 different resistance organizations large and small composed of different political currents and active in most parts of the country and if you look essentially in what they're trying to do is make it impossible for the American occupation authorities to govern the country classics forged earth tactics are being carried out you won't let us rule well you're not going to be able to rule it and they're shaken and this resistance has even on this level which is a fairly classical first stage guerrilla resistance to occupation you can see it if you study what happened in Algeria when they started getting the fighting to get rid of the French you can see it if you compare it to what happened in Vietnam the early stages not the late stages it always is like this and it's no different in terms of gates from what was being targeted by the Algerian FNL or the Vietnamese National Liberation Front unfortunately because it's occupations are ugly and horrible the resistance hat does use tactics which are equally hugly and horrible but you have to decide who you want to win in that particular conflict that's the problem and so what they've been targeting from their point of view has been effective the UN headquarters being attacked was not a surprise to any Iraqis because of the role the UN is played in Iraq over the last 15 years first is administrators of the killer' sanctions that wrecked the country and destroyed its social infrastructure and secondly is authorizing an weekly anglo-american bombing raids on on Iraq for 12 years so people know into the eve some of the journalists there reported it said people on the streets were not at all said why is the UN here after all given what they've done to us so it's a total mess that's the reality a total and complete mess for the US administration and for the population of Iraq they shouldn't have gone in there having gone in there they were unable to do anything god knows what they thought they were going to do very few people in the country wants them there and they now have a very limited choice in my opinion what is this choice the choice is because it's a choice which affects domestic politics in the United States is to pull out as many American troops as possible and replace them either with the Eastern European satellites who can't fight you know there's a big story a few weeks ago in Najaf where there was a street right in the Bulgarian sand Ukrainians wouldn't come out of their barracks I don't blame them why should they the question is what the hell are they doing in the barracks in Najaf and karbala anyway I mean they were pretty useless even when they were Russian satellites and they're equally useless as Americans that light so they are not going to be effective the British are playing a very low key role incidentally if you've observed they tend to use rubber bullets they try not to kill they're an experienced colonial army and they won't want to be left there alone to take the hits the choice is Turkey but if you bring the Turkish army in which the United States has been discussing with the Turkish military they don't want to come in to take the hits instead of you what they want to come and do is occupy the Kurdish areas and get hold of the Turkish Kurds who've been taking refuge there against the repression by the Turkish army over the last 25 years and control that region if that is permitted and it would be so crazy to do that I can't see even this administration doing it if that were to be permitted the one area in Iraq which they've paid off in which is supporting them the Kurdish area not all of it but they'd main tribal organizations word erupted so you would then have the whole country against the occupation and that would be the beginning of the end so that is not going to work the Arab states will not get involved in this as you've seen for obvious reasons it would be crazy to bring in Israel to occupy Iraq I'm sure the torch will occur to someone but I think they'll resist it and I think there would be a probably even inside the Israeli establishment a total revolt if anyone cry if Chiron tries or offered that we could go and run a route for you so that's not going to happen so sooner or later they will have to withdraw and that is a thing which the Bush administration must be having nightmares about they were warned by their some people on their own side don't do it and they've done it and every single day the casualties go up and people are noticing that here I mean you know okay you can stop having body bags photographed but that doesn't mean they're not it's not happening and so that the only other serious alternative which you know they might go in for if they decide that politically it's impossible to pull out because it would be you know we went in to try and say that we've sorted out the Vietnam syndrome so if we pull out people will say oh god you haven't you still can't run occupy and run a country so what do you do if they decide to stay in semi-permanently they will have to reintroduce the draft in the United States of America it becomes virtually impossible then to carry on recruiting poor volunteers from the Latino and afro-american populations to keep an occupation going you have to reintroduce the draft in reintroducing the draft in the United States today would be politically suicidal so let's hope they do it meanwhile meanwhile this resistance in Iraq low-intensity first-stage classic guerrilla resistance in Iraq is beginning to change the picture globally that's the interesting thing first in the united states itself a lot of Democrats who've lost their tongues after 9/11 because of the resistance are beginning to speak up congressman I think 10 or 15 Democratic congressmen demanded that Rumsfeld was sacked which is only repeating what lots of soldiers US soldiers have said in the field in Baghdad anyway but the resist if just imagine if there had been no resistance just imagine if there had been no resistance in Iraq every single supporter of the war and this administration would have claimed it is a massive triumph imagine it would have depressed a whole Arab world in the whole world if nothing happens a big triumphalist chorus would have gone up we told you we were right they can't say that now so it's having an effect on US politics without any doubt and we'll carry on having it not on the same scale as Vietnam which had an effect after all after 10 years but in this case the effect will be quicker it's almost as if history's being telescoped in the what's going on in Iraq at the present time secondly all this talk about checking out Syria and Iran well the Syrians and Iranians are saying you given what you're facing in Iraq do you really want to try it on if so come come who are you going to send to occupy Syria in Iraq these readies can go and bomb the Iranian nuclear reactor but that's you know air raids occupying these countries is going to be a very difficult operation they're not going to be able to do it so all that talk has gone out of the window because of the resistance in Iraq now the third big issue in the Middle East is of course the continuing occupation of Palestine the day after above that fell Ariel Sharon said publicly to the Palestinians now I hope you will come to your senses because your great big protector is gone as if the whole Palestinian question was dependent on Saddam Hussein it's a real colonial way of thinking that the Arabs are people who need a head man a village can't function without its head man the British used to do that and no one clearly studied the history of Iraqi resistance to the British Empire which is for that alone the heads of the American intelligence agencies should be fired they should have read the reports written by British intelligence in the 40s and 50s when they were occupying Iraq what did they write in these reports they were actually incredibly brilliant reports and very accurate British intelligence head of the British intelligence team who visited Iraq in the early 50s or late 40s I can totally remember sent a big report back saying the situation is disastrous all that we have succeeded in doing in Iraq is creating an oligarchy of racketeers to which the British Foreign Office replied this is going a bit far they are not all racketeers but at least they were Iraqi racketeers what the bush gang is doing is sending in Bechtel and Halliburton so you won't even have an oligarchy of Iraqi racketeers you'll have an oligarchy of American racketeers going in and running the country with companies being privatized with American companies been given the franchise with privatized mercenaries being sent to defend the oil pipeline just think about it it isn't going to work there is no way out of this mess and democracy will you saw the photograph you who you were shown that is just one even where the occupation isn't resisted militarily where you have protectorates like in Bosnia and in Kosovo if you go and study what's going on there they hate the colonial type occupation they find it horrible that a large bulk of their women have to become prostitutes to service the foreign armies which are stationed there they don't like it but that's different in a country like Iraq where you have armed resistance to the occupation the only colonial model now on offer is a mixture of Gaza and Guantanamo that's the only model they have to offer you've seen photographs I don't know whether they've appeared in the US press just tragic photograph it's an afro-american soldier going into an Iraqi house and trying hands of three little girls and then putting these arms behind their backs this is what colonial occupations do they have a logic whether you want to do it or not so all this talk about we're bringing democracy to the Middle East if people laugh at it in that part of the world and not just there in most parts of the world and I returned therefore to what happens here being crucial people ask me and I speak in the United States do you think Bush being defeated in the elections would be positive well I say obviously it would be positive how could it be negative it would also be a slap in the face publicly for all those who backed this absurd adventure regardless of who the Democrat is the only Democrat who can succeed both whoever it is I don't even care one doesn't have any illusions about them but a defeat for Bush would be a positive thing because it would be seen as a defeat for these policies which have been implemented in Afghanistan Iraq etc that's what's important and that's why dissent has to be preserved and protected I mean it is shocking that any US citizen can be lifted off the streets and locked up for weeks without trial or even without a trial being considered in that is according to the latest laws that can be done and is being done even Al Gore felt obliged to attack it quite sharply a few days ago and that is why in particular I think given that dissent is under attack what is studied in the Academy is under attack the Academy has a responsibility to defend and nurture dissent and I very much hope that in this university Berkeley which has a long tradition where the Free Speech Movement was born that the three students still under suspension for what they did in February against the war that this is that this suspension itself is suspended and they are allowed back in with full rights it's not the way to proceed by victimizing not the way to build what even a Republican president once called Eisen hi referred to who said the democracy in the United States is under threat in his famous speech on the military industrial complex taking over this country and he said the only way we can defend democracy in the United States is by having a vigilant and alert citizenry a vigilant and alert citizenry nurtured by Fox TV nurtured by the networks as they report the news today nurtured by a bulk of the print media I don't think so so who is going to nurture it it has to be nurtured in different ways within the labor movement within the Academy within alternative institutions since the institution's very close to the state especially the media which has become a vital player now in politics all over the globe aren't going to do it and they don't do it they trivialize politics there is less reporting of what's going on in the world in this so-called epoch of globalization then there was 25 30 years ago when you had more reports on what was happening in Africa in Latin America in in in the Middle East etc that's what makes a citizenry vigilant and alert and I'll tell you something and the till it's a to the great thinker president whose wants to bring democracy to the Middle East why not start by strengthening democracy in the United States itself and why not aid those who are doing that and why not look at what's happening just below you in the whole continent of Latin America where there is a revolt in every single country against neoliberal economics now every single country is up in arms against it in some way or another and one country which has had the most democratic constitution voted on by two-thirds of its population and a president who Gusev is elected six different times by his people you try and topple one year before you invade Iraq and your yen you want the Arabs to believe you're defending democracy it just doesn't wash any of this Gulf no one believes it it's designed essentially I don't know for what for domestic consumption possibly but it's it's it's not working and when you have now an international system in place in which one leg is the Washington Consensus the International Monetary Fund in the World Bank and the other leg is American military power a resistance will mount and resistance will develop in different parts of the globe and that's as it should be okay let me ask one question which is how how do you deal with the problem of democracy in the Middle East obviously this administration's strategy does not work and obviously there are particular problems in the Middle East that at some point have to be resolved for example the Palestine Israel conflict but that aside what is a viable strategy for moving that part of the world toward democracy and Republic ISM to wreak in his new book talks about the failure of democracy to take hold in Iraq I would say that I mean I'm certainly very strongly in favor of democratic accountability and democratic institutions in all these countries you can never impose them from the outside that's the key to understand it will only happen when a bulk of the people there wanted to happen like has happened in large parts of Latin America but there's an added problem in that region which we haven't talked about which is so obvious we all know about it which is oil and historically Western imperial powers have never appreciated democracy in oil-producing countries starting from Iran in the 50s right up till now you see what's happening in Venezuela another oil-producing country and the reason is that once you permit democracy in an oil-producing country as has happened when you've had popular revolutions one of the first things they want to do is control their own oil and that will happen in Iraq if you have a Constituent Assembly elected in Iraq two things they will say one all foreign troops out to Iraqi control of Iraqi oil the third problem which is developed is that the fear of Islamism is gone so deep that they are frightened that if democratic elections take place in Egypt etc the Islamists will win well look you can't have it both ways democracy doesn't mean that you it's democracy is only permitted when people you like are going to win I mean we'd never have it anywhere in bad places so so I think incidentally that even if an Islamist party wins it's better to have it than not as G Rhea is the case away it was interrupted halfway and the result has been one of the ugliest and most unpleasant civil wars in the region not much discussed or talked about but horrendous I think the the vision of democracy is fundamentally flawed in this idea of the incremental spread outward conte may have been right about that in 1795 but we live in a different type of world today I think that the only way to think about democracy within countries is to create the kind of international system which indeed nourishes and promotes the basis by which countries can in fact move toward toward democracy without having it cloaked in particular interest of superpowers and you know getting it all involved with the issue of US interest and Empire the kiss of death for people working for human rights and for democracy all over the world but particularly the Middle East is to have the sank had to have Washington's associated with it we've got it completely turned around that is we're really sincere about promoting democracy we have to take it out of that realpolitik and place it into an international context that indeed supports the democratization process none of you touched upon was the opposition important sectors in the military to this conflict I can think of ziddy generals any as one who was very outspoken and it was very clear and and this actually raised another point there seem to have been more opposition from the military than there was from the democratic party because the military was at least on the record or saying well if you're gonna do this you need so many troops how do you account for this do I think military in general when someone's fought in a war they know what war is like they know this they knew this would not be a cakewalk most military understood that and we're seeing resistance in areas that we didn't see so quickly in Vietnam or other Wars and that is the families of the soldiers there are large organizations now of military families who are speaking out very seriously against the war Tirico a historian last year you use the word telescope a historian last year talked about Iraq is Vietnam on speed and it is in certain ways I mean there many differences in important differences in the analogy doesn't go all the way but there's no question that what we saw in Vietnam is happening at such some things the resistance now the Iraq ization ine min and I expect helicopters to be leaving from some building but when will that happen sooner or later we will be withdrawing and the military is already involved in a resistance there are veterans from Vietnam who are sending open letters to troops in Iraq the soldiers in Iraq have been writing they've been publishing letters in American press which is astonishing because the things that they're saying and the kinds of statements they're making would be really very dangerous to themselves and yet they're signing them so yes I think we're seeing a military resistance at the at the bottom level but as well as at the top and I think Wesley Clark probably will be able to take advantage of that troubling in this and that is that this resistance is indeed coming from National Guard people with jobs with wives and children as well as husbands and clearly there's a lot of resistance to that because of that particular demographic now the issue of whether a draft might be put into place because of this I don't think can be entirely discounted right now my diligent students in peace and Conflict Studies have found in terms of their research that the draft boards are currently being reconstituted letters are going out to communities asking them to serve on draft boards so the difference in Vietnam and in this war is that most of the people dying in Vietnam there were under 21 years old they were not daughters they were not mothers many other weren't fathers or husbands 19 20 year old men from the margins so if this administration continues I don't see a change in its course and then we have to face the issue of what the Democrats do and the problem I lack a lot of confidence is the Democrats in the sense of this idea that we must support the troops you know that old canard we have to support the troops we've already there therefore it was it was it was a terrible policy but now we're in it our credibility is at stake we have to support the troops and so what I worry about here is the potential of the Democrats being able to internationalize this conflict to to put it under UN auspices and and as Democrats will do Democrats are known much more than Republicans Republicans are Rumsfeld types they like space they like high-tech Democrats historically have been arming people putting troops on the ground much more readily than Republicans so we're far from out of the woods on this issue of military resistance I think and actually I'd like to ask tarik what do you see what do you think the prospects would be of bringing along you know many of the large players that would have to be part of any kind of international community backing for this to actually maybe some some some semblance of authority transition that would allow them to do this and get the u.s. off the hook I think it's on that question first yeah I think it's very different difficult for them to achieve that precisely because of resistance the Iraqi resistance organizations have said even if you come wearing blue helmets wheedled we are not going to stop we just want you all out of there everyone knows that and the killing be the the death of 14 Italian soldiers two days ago has shaken that country and just there's been a massive upsurge in the anti-war movement saying we told you we don't want our kids being killed pulled them out that's the big demand on Berlusconi so I think the Democrats would be more effective at managing that but even with them I don't think it's going to work I really don't but to come to Harry's question this division existed also in Britain and Britain this may surprise you is a much more secretive country than the United States where you know you have Dan Ellsberg some people coming out there they really do keep things under control so I was quite stunned when after the fall of Baghdad this is even after the war in Iraq but supposedly it come to an end a senior figure in the intelligence community who was head of the Joint Intelligence Committee for three crucial years Blair's National Security Advisor at number 10 Downing Street Sir Roderick Braithwaite wrote an open letter to the Financial Times in which he denounced the war in which he said that the people of the country had been hoodwinked and misled and scared and he pointed out three things the government had done which were totally fake and then he he sort of reserved his scorn for Blair he said it's amazing phrase for a hip senior figure to use he said fishmonger selfish war monger cell wall I think our Prime Minister oversold his ways but now and you know this reflected it was obvious even before the war and during it that sections of the intelligence were leaking stuff like Matt to the press just leaking stuff to try and bring Blair down they didn't succeed but his credibility is now completely at an end and Bush going there will be very helpful to our section how do you account for the failure of the democratic process and I don't mean the democratic party here to have a reasoned debate in the United States over the war before the war because the fact of the matter is one has the sense that in fact there was a consensus it was really a disagreement about how to do it the the Senate did pass and the President Clinton did sign the Iraqi whatever it was called regime change act so so the the fact of the matter is that both sides can always claim that the other side was there with them even if they deny that after the fact so what what is the reason for this failure of the democratic process in foreign policy in the United States anybody that because I think that I think we have to remember that 9/11 really did create fear and this administration manipulated that fear with a series of huge lies and the American people were lied to in very serious ways you tell people that there's weapons of mass destruction you tell people that al-qaeda is in Iraq you tell people that Saddam Hussein is responsible for 9/11 and you suddenly have this blurring and the conflation of 9/11 and Sodom Hussein has to has to go I mean what is astonishing is the is the big lie and sometimes the big lie works and I think when fear is manipulated as it has been people will be more passive particularly after 9/11 to me as to others here it was astonishing that people could believe what was being said and yet the American people had a very high sense of support for the war before it began there was debate of course was a huge anti-war movement all around the world but in a sense that you're talking about the Democrats really were silent yeah I'm just saying that certainly the fear factor within editions there's the flattery factor as well Ronald Reagan mastered the to George Bush Styles himself not after his father but after Ronald Reagan as the kind of plane to the narcissism of the nation that we indeed have this historic mission to the world that's a big part of it if you look at the national security strategy in 20 2002 it's not only realpolitik it's this it's this odd neocon vision of the continuing of manifest destiny into the 21st century which is a you know resonates deep in American history and American political culture and in addition that just one more thing I think you know it just pedestrian point but in terms of the political cycle and weak legislatures simply nobody wants to get tagged with losses that might if the administration is triumphant nobody wants to be seen as standing in their way and so they vote and then they vote in such a way that they can always say that they also did it with great reluctance so it's that the that kind of weak legislature problem and a strong executive power I think as well I agree with both those comments I think 9/11 played a very big part in pushing this down the throats of the American population I think people were pretty traumatized by those attacks and the regime utilized them especially the propaganda in an absolutely horrendous way it's interesting that in Britain Blair found it very difficult to win over the population for this war which is why they went in for these lies we could be attacked within 45 minutes that was the lie we were told in Britain which we challenged on the spot and said it said lie it's proved it where's your evidence you know we said this on television and the interesting thing is that the size of the anti-war mobilizations in Britain which were not proportionately that different from the United States incidentally did have one big impact that they showed labor members of parliament that they had this would be one step too far and so you had the biggest rebellion in the British Parliament against a sitting Prime Minister from his own party and that's when they upped the lies it's now has become clear that they carried on the lies to win over the crucial 20 labour members of parliament without whom Blair would have become totally dependent on conservative votes to survive so I think the problem the big problem is is in the United States and the total total capitulation of the Democratic politicians to the Republican agenda means that it's very difficult for them to win the next election incidentally unless you know the things completely could collapse in in or out that's that that's what they've done for themselves to people at each mic and we are planning to end at night so make your question short this is a question for anybody on the panel I'm just trying to understand somehow a little more clearly the mindset of the people who are governing us today and I'm asking the question specifically sorry will you you keep so describing a certain kind of rationality to our leaders in the sense that well they're gonna they won't go into Syria or Iran because you know look we're in a situation where you know who's going to go in there or we're not going to they're not going to eliminate the Kurds because after all then we won't have any friends there at all now I just heard a report of two days ago I think that they attack some Kurdish resistance group the PKK so I just I'd like to understand what's driving this little thang well look if we totally say if we reach a position we say that there is absolutely no rational basis at all not on our basis but their basis that's what we're talking about in in in this country then the situation is are extremely frightening but I don't believe that I think they did you know deep of course Iraq was not rational from our point of view but from their point of view trying to establish us AG M&E on a global scale they thought they could do it as you know after all they've done it before to show the world who the power is they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki it's the similar type of thing which was intended you know shot across the bars of the Far East and the Europeans etc so from their point of view horrible though it is that it did have an neocon rationalism behind it but for now given the scale of resistance in Iraq where the CIA is saying that there at least 55,000 guerrilla fighters which is a hell of a lot by the way I it's you know whether it's true I don't know Iraqis claimed a hundred thousand but whatever it's a very large force with the American army stretched and forced to depend on these subsidiaries for them to send in the troops to overthrow a regime in Syria and Iran if they want it's not just a question of rationality it's a question now of logistics they don't have the troops to do it basically it's as simple as that next question here please yeah I I want to first articulate my concurrence with everybody on the panel's notion that the venture into Iraq was an unmitigated disaster for all sides concerned but I do have a question for mr. Ali the first two speakers examine the neocon impact with some of the complexity that I think is appropriate and it's important before the combat list in the future that we look at the complexity mr. Ali however reduced it to the old neo Marxian post-colonial rationalisations trying to draw an analogy between the Algerian Freedom Fighters and the National Liberation Front and the largely batha stand I defy you to tell me otherwise because it's totally unfounded the largely Baathists ProHealth autumn hussein resistance in Iraq there's no correspondence with that it's similar to Noam Chomsky when he in 1977 drew the analogy between the Khmer Rouge and French for french liberation fighters during the Second World War so the question mr. Ali is how can you possibly you can trot out numbers like 44 different groups but how can you possibly say that the vast majority of the resistance isn't pro Sodom Hussein well I don't know about neo Marxian in post-colonial studies have not been involved in either hope you haven't been reading too many neocon websites but as far as your question is concerned the information we get is the information we get from air our key sources and these Iraqi sources are obviously opposition sources but they're not Baathists look obviously some both hiss and Baathist elements because it was a large political force are fighting in that country just as you know like a number of both his remnants are collaborating with the occupation quite a few of them including senior officials from the former Defense Ministry are trying to uncover what this resistance is for mr. Bremer and it's very very similar you know being historical in trying to place things in a historical perspective mean if that's what Marx is amazed and I'm very happy to be one but it's when you occupy a country there is a certain logic to how you occupy it how you deal with it and the resistance also then develops a certain logic in how to fight the occupation whoever the occupier is that's why there are similarities not total analogies between Iraq and Vietnam and Algeria in it's not the same situation the people leading the resist so different though in the case of Algeria not so different incidentally with the Vietnamese they are that was a communist led resistance in Algeria it was a nationalist led resistance in Iraq today it is a nationalist LED resistance whether you like it or not and you have to decide whether these people have the right to chuck the card people who've occupied their country out of that country or not whether we like them or agree with them is something else people in the room have seen the movie Bowling for Columbine and Michael Moore did us a great service by showing those of people who saw it that this is truly a nation of fear and I think most of us would agree that without 9/11 w would go down is just an inept person instead of the worst president we've ever seen now my my fear is that they will pull something maybe May June July August next year in order to scare people and bring out that fear as a tactic to win the election now my question is given what you said and given how thinly we have placed troops and how unable we will be to have more massive occupations do you think that's something like that is realistic that that that will happen October event that what they used to call an event yeah some contrived event it could be it could be on either side it used to be that people voted their pocketbooks my fear is now because we are so afraid that they won't vote their pocketbooks they'll vote their fears and that to me seems of a real possibility that they will do something like that and I'd like to hear your your reactions you know I've been arguing for the last since 9/11 with people in this country and elsewhere that it wasn't a conspiracy carried out by the US administration mean however much one dislikes the Bush administration one has to be very clear about that they didn't organize eleven they might have wanted to and they've used it but they didn't do it we know the people who did it they've admitted they've done it so what can they do I mean they could mean invade another country well it depends if the situation in Iraq is like it is it's going to be extremely difficult for them to do that manufacture another crisis yeah I think even people in the United States are beginning to see through this to a certain extent precisely because of the mess in Iraq so I don't think we should exaggerate the strength of the Republican administration it plays it very big but I think there is an underlying weakness there and if there were skillful politicians on the other side to exploit this weakness they could achieve quite a lot which would make any foolish maneuvers or propaganda gimmicks counterproductive what I worry about is not the Bush administration creating such a crisis but terrorists in fact responding in such a way that we are reach remote eyes Dazz nation and I can imagine I've had the scenario in my mind for quite a while all you need is five suicide bombers to attack five different malls in five different major cities in the United States and you could bring the American economy to a halt and you could also have a very traumatized nation and that fear could be incredibly manipulated I mean there are terrorists who would definitely want to attack this country I'm much more concerned about that happening and that being used by the next election than I am about the Republicans doing it gentlemen might you come up and then we've got two on each and these will be all the questions yes you sir very short please brief if I were a conservative neocon today a desperate neocon I would say democracy be damned I would go to the British experience in India and come to the political science historians and say how did they manage it for 200 and we could do this with the oil and stop the horrible balance of payments we have to today manage it totally successfully as I pointed out and there were you know rebellions I mean there's an interesting statistic which is worth pondering for students of Empire that every single day the British Empire lasted every single day there was an act of rebellion and resistance some way or the other in some colony India was a different enterprise but the only way the British could govern India for so many years was better at the maximum they were outside the second world war do you know that the maximum number of British soldiers in India were 34,000 they never had more than them dead yeah but in order to do that they had to win over the consent of the native ruling classes rulers owners of property etc which they did quite successfully for some time but which didn't you know finally it came to an end Iraq doesn't offer that possibility the British tried it in Iraq by making all the tribal chiefs into landlords and it didn't work because it didn't stop rebellions from below you know also when the British went into India which was 1757 and whether we like it not the world has moved on a bit so it's not possible to completely mimic that experience one might also say that each day the incident was not reported on the news which it is today which must also have an effect yes Australia for coming I wanted to ask if you could give us some insight on Saudi Arabia and what role that's playing in this scenario especially with the bombings that took place Saudi Arabia is actually the monarchy is in a very nervous state because they are fearful they know that the there is a very large base in that country for some bin Laden and his supporters is no doubt about that this is the country where they have the biggest support and this is also the country which has been most closely allied first to the British Empire and subsequently to the United States and no one calls for democracy in Saudi Arabia and I wonder why because they are fearful that if they call for it the wrong people might be elected and I say but the only way to defeat people like that is through open discussion and debate so Saudi Arabia remains what it has been for the last 50 years a kleptocracy run by one family not unlike mafia franchises which used to be awarded and first it was given that award by the british subsequently by the united states at the same time there is a lot of ferment and unrest because of hostility to this monarchy and because of the way it's governed this is largely a religious opposition because no secular opposition has been permitted well believe it or not there's some traffic on websites of the neo cons and discussion takes place about the idea of dismantling the House of Saud which after all was an imperial creation of the British and to slice off the eastern half which holds the major oil fields and essentially to support a Shiite rebellion in those areas against the Sunni dominated monarchy as bizarre as that sounds and I would say that if Syria can't be done then clearly that should be off the table but just a report that it is discussed and it's in writing I have two quick questions the first has to do with descent on campus I'm one of the three students who's facing charges by the University for non violently protesting the war in Iraq and April and I appreciate all of your support by writing to this University about how a university that claims to stand the tradition of Mario Savio would go after protesters now and try to get them suspended in kicked off campus is a pure hypocrisy but what I wanted to ask about dissent on campuses about things like House Resolution 3071 which is the House Resolution that just got passed which basically allows monitoring of all area studies programs a forum like this probably next year will not be unmonitored by you know agencies like the Homeland Security office and and things like Daniel Pipes is attempt to get a you know major position in the in the Bush administration what are the avenues for real dissent on campus and what can we do to help organize that the second thing has to do with whether or not the the dangers that they or the problems that the US government is facing are necessarily lead to an overreach that they can't get out of I actually think that the US government is quite committed to the project in Iraq in fact if the resistance were to win it would be a me sure just really quickly if they were to win if they if the resistance were to win be a major defeat for the US ruling classes it would us capitalism would be in a major crisis the question I have I am sure just I've swear to goodness 30 seconds swear to goodness is I don't think that it happens automatically and I think that the other factor in u.s. overreach abroad is dissent at home and it will not just be a question of whether or not the military logistics work out but actually I mean we can imagine any number of scenarios where they are able to continue an occupation but the sense at home makes the political cost and economic costs that much harder and I'd like to hear your strategies about making that more possible these four tisane and also strategies for dealing whatever threats are posed to the university as part of that process I think Festival's sums it up anybody well III it Sam I'll just say one thing there is a modest hope you know for events like this I mean very modest and not you know but but it is the fact that this campus is supporting this dialogue it will be televised on UC TV but that's just a drop in the you know in the ocean I understand that I'd like to add to that Harry and one is that I know that faculty and students all over the country are very aware of the monitoring of area studies and are organizing to protest against this chilling of academic curriculum a second thing that's happening on the web which is interesting and just you might want to think about this is that because so many people really do believe that a draft will be necessary if the United States wants to continue this project there aren't enough troops there won't be enough troops there's a quite a large debate already on the web should young women also register for the draft and should women women be part of the draft that debate has already begun so I think we have to recognize that there are two narratives in American history unfortunately right now one of them seems more like an undercurrent as it often does in times like these but when you look at an American tradition there is after all a great resistance to Imperial presidencies and concentrated power in the executive as there are with any patience to long drawn-out Wars American history does not show great stomach for long drawn-out Wars I think that's and certainly and the other the other factor here is the degree to which everything is going to be decimated and it's certainly a large coalition as possible from all the program cuts that will clearly come are already happening as a result of pursuing the simultaneous strategy of tax cuts and Empire the other thing that's new here I think is in a post Vietnam period in more recent history the emergence of the peace and justice movements in the United States connected to the global movements the New York Times reported last year and they protest in the run-up to the Iraq war public opinion is called the new superpower based upon those simultaneous demonstrations that were held around the world because of the the use of the new technologies of information communication that have created the globalization from below that we saw it's Seattle that that actually resists the neoliberal side of the sounds confusing of the neoconservative doctrine but and and every time the international financial institutions meet anywhere in the world there's a large contingent of people including Americans so I think this is quite important and that we have to keep in mind here recognizing the dialectic between these two narratives yes this will be the final question brief please quick yeah I'll hold it you can pay the bill by the way just a quick point there's now one of these neoconservative groups going after Labor Studies and Institute for labor relations here at Cal and the student for labor and employment they actually specifically mentioned them so that's something to be apprised of when someone said about well there's likelihood of something happening before the election besides the the the the horrible possibility of a terrorist attack the other thing is Bush you know if he's not winning there why not raise the stakes and encourage sharone to go after the Syrians or the us and the Israelis go after the Syrians and and sort of in the shadow of that cherone could raise havoc you know in the West Bank and Gaza okay so I want if that is a it how much how if somebody thinks that's a possibility and then the second yeah all right okay so the question really is how far can the relationship between the Bush administration and children go and and actually achieve either Israel's goals or the United States's I mean how can it go much beyond what it is now it's difficult to imagine but I think it'd be crazy to use the Israelis or even encourage them to invade an Arab country that would just make the whole situation explosive I mean if anything was determined to increase terror attacks that single event act would do it so I don't think they're necessarily going to go down that particular route and the other thing which has to be understood is that there is now a new wave of opposition inside Israel itself that Avraham Bork former chairman of the Knesset one of the founding fathers of Israel made a very strong statement which I don't think was published in the United States but it'll certainly publish in every European newspaper in which he appealed to the leaders of Israel and said come to your senses what we are doing to the Palestinians is something impermissible and unforgivable and he went even beyond that and said when you produce them to living in such conditions as they do why are you surprised when they come and attack us in other words what he was saying is that when the difference between life and death is not so important because your everyday life is awful people are prepared to sacrifice themselves now this was an incredibly important statement from a senior Israeli and of course he was denounced in the Israeli press and in the United States even on some radio stations for saying that but the fact that he said it is a very important indication of the growing nervousness within Israel itself and some secret negotiations have begun between Israeli oppositionists and Palestinians to try and have a serious two-state solution whether they come to anything we will see but you know one has to see the picture as a whole and in this situation given the crisis in Palestine for Israel to be encouraged to do something else else when the Arab world would be crazy it really would be crazy there's no other way to describe it there is something called the Geneva Accords which was negotiated just in the last well oh it's been over a long period of negotiation which is has been announced or will be announced side-by signed by Palestinian and Israeli delegations not affiliated with their governments and attached to a petition campaign which is now circulating on the Internet to support that Accord for a two-state solution on the one hand but also for the UN in the United States to provide funds for the settlers to return to Israel so it's a cotton you know the settlers should go home to Israel and get out of the the settlements so that initiative is taking place well I think we've had a very you know informative and useful exchange I want to thank our panelists I want to again remind you to go to Globetrotter dot berkeley.edu you know after January and we'll be announcing other events then finally I want to say that books the new book by tariq Ali which really gives a very sophisticated history of Iraq in the context of its relations with the West is on sale out there and he will sign the books between 9:00 and 9:30 so if you want a book you can go out there and get it and he'll be out there

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 13,120

Rating: 4.7303371 out of 5

Keywords: history, US, policy, justice

Id: kbEs3YMCwFc

Length: 116min 35sec (6995 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 29 2008