The Will to Power and Its Tragic Consequences for America and the World
Author: by Christopher Schaefer, Ph.D.
Issue: Special Issue - America
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Daily we are faced with grim images of road-side bombings, planned assassinations of Iraqi politicians and the killing of innocent civilians by overwhelming American firepower. How did we get into this mess, and what consequences can we draw from the disturbing pictures we see daily? This brief essay is an effort to look behind events and to chronicle the road to what Richard Falk has called the “Global Domination Project” of the present Administration.(1)
I maintain that the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and indeed the U.S. “war on terror” is the result of a radical long term effort on the part of political and military elites to extend American power abroad, to remake the international political order, while at the same time shaping the domestic political debate according to a neo-conservative agenda. This assertion is of course not new since observers as different as Paul Krugman and Benjamin Barber have come to similar conclusions.(2) I argue that there is a direct line of thinking and action linking the foreign policy goals of the first Bush Administration with the election of 2000, the tragic events of September 11th , and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq under George W. Bush. Furthermore, the costs of increased military expenditures, growing governmental deficits due to massive tax cuts, and the desire to alter Social Security and other entitlement programs constitute the domestic portion of the neo-conservative Republican agenda to remake the present political order. The groups actively supporting this shift in international and domestic politics include the Republican right, neo-conservative think tanks and groups such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for a New American Century, Christian Evangelicals connected to the Council for National Policy and other leaders of the Christian right. The Republicans and Democratic parties have both played into this radical takeover of U.S. politics. Meanwhile, the mainstream press, in particular the liberal press, such as the NY Times and the Washington Post, have been relatively passive observers of a process which to my mind represents the worst elements of the American shadow; aggressive self serving chauvinism dressed up in idealistic, moralistic and religious language. It is time to wake up to the dangers our Republic faces; politically, economically and spiritually for the “war on terror” will increase terrorism, risk bankrupting our nation, and will undermine the cause of democracy at home and abroad.
The Pattern of Events
The largely self willed and guided collapse and transformation of the Soviet Empire fundamentally changed the nature of international politics. From 1945 until 1989-90, the world was seen to be primarily bi-polar, witnessing a struggle for the hearts and minds of humanity between two ideologies: capitalism and communism, and between two Superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union . A growing conventional and nuclear arms race led to a global struggle in which armed conflict occurred frequently, usually fought by proxy states, in developing areas. This ended in 1989-90 with the United States being perceived as the victor due to its superior economic and military power. The shift was so dramatic and unanticipated that many commentators thought that a time of peace was at hand, and even more that the triumph of liberal, democratic capitalist societies heralded the end of history, since the dialectic of competing ideologies had ended.(3)
Of course, nothing was further from the truth, and regional conflicts in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East soon awoke the hopeful public to the continuing reality of “wars of liberation” and “terrorism” in its many forms.
The first Bush administration (1988-92) with Richard Cheney as Secretary of Defense and Colin Powell as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, found itself in the enviable position of being able to project military power without risking opposition from other nuclear states. The implications of this situation were first tested by the United States during the first Iraq War, ‘Desert Storm,' in which the United States and an international military coalition defeated Saddam Hussein's large conventional army after its invasion of Kuwait .
The opportunity for the global projection of American power provided by the demise of the Soviet Union led to the articulation of new defense department planning guidelines during the first Bush Administration. These guidelines, known as Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-1999 Fiscal Years (revised draft) Office of the Secretary of Defense 1992, and Defense Strategy for the 1990's (Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1993) were written for the Secretary of Defense, Richard Cheney, by Paul Wolfowitz, then undersecretary of defense for policy and Colin Powell, previously national security advisor for Ronald Reagan and now head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for Bush. The documents depict a world dominated by the United States , which would project its economic and military power to maintain its super power status at all costs. The U.S. would “prevent the emergence of a new rival,” would use pre-emptive force, if necessary, and would rely more on ad hoc assemblies of allies as opposed to formal alliance structures, because it was essential that America be in position “to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated.”(4)
The final toned-down version of Defense Planning Guidance was released as Defense Strategy for the 1990's, just as the new Clinton Administration took office. It was then to disappear from sight, but not from the minds of Cheney, Wolfowitz and Powell who helped to see it restated by the Project for a New American Century in the late 1990's and then reformulated as Defense Planning Guidance for the 2004-09 Fiscal Years in 2002 by the second Bush administration. What had begun as an aggressive “forward leaning” foreign policy under George Bush, reemerged in the second Bush Administration altered and fueled by the shocking events of 9/11.
The Clinton years, in which U.S. foreign policy shifted from global domination to globalism, were followed by the election of 2000, in which George W. Bush lost the popular vote by over 500,000 votes. In looking at this election, it is important to note a number of anomalies. These included that the election was decided by the Supreme Court which blocked a re-count along strictly partisan lines which most observers predicted would have led to a substantial Gore victory because of faulty ballots and voting machines. Secondly, 50,000 African American voters had been disenfranchised by the Administration of Governor Jeb Bush, G.W. Bush's brother, and thirdly quite remarkably, the U.S. Senate with Al Gore in the Chair as Vice President, insisted on ratifying the vote of the Electoral College, despite numerous signed Congressional petitions from African American Congressmen and women from Florida and elsewhere, alleging voting fraud and corruption.
The election result not only assured the victory of GW Bush, but also of the defense and foreign policy priorities formulated by Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell on behalf of George Bush, and his Secretary of Defense, Richard Cheney, as the architects of these policies moved into positions of power in the new Administration.
The shocking events of 9/11 allowed the second Bush Administration to proceed with the aggressive defense and foreign policies previously articulated by the first Bush administration. It fulfilled a hope of the Project for a New American Century, of which Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were signatories, that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime and the stationing of US troops in Central Asia would be possible if “a new Pearl Harbor ” were to take place. Indeed the many unanswered questions about 9/11 have led many observers to wonder whether elements of the Administration and the military allowed 9/11 to happen as a justification for previously planned military adventures.(5)
The U.S. military declared war on the Taliban on October 7, 2001 largely using the troops of the Northern Alliance . After many months of preparation, including the unsubstantiated linking of Saddam Hussein's regime to Al Quaeda and 9/11, and the false claim of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction, President Bush declared war on Iraq in April of 2003, without the support of the U.N. or of the international community. The wars in both Afghanistan and in Iraq are going badly, at a growing cost of military and civilian lives, and a growing governmental deficit.
The recent election of 2004 in which John Kerry and the Democratic Party chose not to attack the record of G.W. Bush with consistency and vigor, allowed the Republicans to use the issues of fear, continuity in a time of crisis, and moral values to increase their majorities in both the House and the Senate thereby assuring the further pursuit of existing policies.
The Strange Marriage of Machiavellian Ideas and Apocalyptic Beliefs
To understand how we have moved so quickly from being an admired nation to being feared as a threat to world peace by a large portion of humanity, it is essential to understand the ideas and beliefs which have made the Republican right so dominant.
In the area of international politics these include the ideas of Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, three of our most respected thinkers in the field of foreign policy. Each of them has contributed significantly, to shaping governmental priorities in the field of foreign affairs.
Kissinger has been the champion of the game of great power politics. In his writing and teaching he has formulated six essential principles of international politics, principles adopted by both Republican and Democratic Administrations since the time of Richard Nixon and practiced by European powers in the 19th century.
1) A great power must have a grand, long term global foreign policy which maximizes its interests in the world.
2) In the pursuit of such a policy, it must maintain sufficient economic and military power to defeat at least two of its rivals at any one time.
3) A great power must promote regional rivalries and conflicts thereby always maintaining a key balancing role globally (Think China - Taiwan , India-Pakistan , Israel - Palestine)
4) Democracies are not effective at the conduct of foreign policy, therefore information must be managed and true strategic interests hidden.
5) A great power must occasionally use its power overtly otherwise the threat of force is not credible. The U.S. involvement in military campaigns since WWII is legion; Korea, Vietnam , Guatemala , Chile , Panama , Nicaragua , Haiti , Yugoslavia and Lebanon to name a few.
6) War needs to be seen not only as a natural extension of state power, but as an activity essential to the survival of the state, as articulated by the Report from Iron Mountain in the late 1960's.(6)
Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor of President Carter, while critical of the Iraqi War, added to Kissinger's principles of great power politics the geo-strategic objectives pursued by the United States. In the Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives , published in 1997, he describes the Eurasian land mass as the key to world power and control of Central Asia 's oil reserves as the means to such control.(7)
Samuel Huntington, the director of the John Olin Institute of Strategic Studies, wrote a seminal article in Foreign Affairs in 1993 in which he characterized the emerging international order, following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989, as consisting of a “clash of civilizations,” based on cultural and religious differences. He in particular identified Islamic cultures and the Sinic or Confucian cultures of China , Korea and Japan as well as Russia as threats to the hegemony of western cultural principles.(8)
If Kissinger described the principles of great power politics and Brzezinski the geo-political imperatives for the United States than Huntington provided a conceptual archetype or imagination for the emerging international order. The ideas of all three men constitute an intellectual framework and justification for the foreign policy of the United State in the new millennium, and when combined with neo-conservative values and the apocalyptic beliefs of the Christian right, a powerful ideology for American domination.
While it is difficult to do justice to the complexity of Leo Strauss's political philosophy in a short essay, key tenets of his ideas have found their way into neo-conservative beliefs for example in the writings of Irving and William Kristol, and have been used to mobilize the faithful of the Christian right. As Hugh Urban makes clear in his excellent article on “Religion and Secrecy in the Bush Administration,” four tenets of Staussian philosophy have found their way into the canon of neo-conservative thought: 1) the Western world and in particular the United States is in an intense moral crisis due to the weakness of liberal democracy; 2) the mass public cannot understand and be expected to help guide the state therefore government and the moral elite must shield their undertakings through secrecy; 3) religion is necessary for the coherence and stability of society: 4) rulership and government must be in the hands of gentlemen politicians “who embody the ideals of religious faith and virtue” and “who serve as a liaison between wise men and the common populace.”(9)
Straussian ideas and the neo-conservative movement provide a kind of intellectual bridge between the more Machiavellian and secular perspectives of Kissinger, Brzezinski and Huntington and the apocalyptic visions of the Christian right. It was after all William Kristol, Irving's son, who founded the Project for a New American Century in 1997 and Paul Wolfowitz, the Undersecretary of Defense who was an ardent and committed student of Strauss's at the University of Chicago. Another bridging figure between the Christian right, neo-conservative thought and American foreign policy is Michael Ledeen, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a favorite speaker at gatherings of the Christian right, such as Pat Robertson's 700 Club, and the author of Machiavelli on Modern Leadership.(10)
The centrality of religion in the life of George W. Bush is well known. It became more explicit once he decided to run for President. As he remarked to James Robinson, “I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me.”(11) He began meeting frequently with evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jesse Helms, Ralph Reed, Tom Delay and Tim Le Haye. Once elected in 2000 he was seen as the effective leader of the evangelical Christian movement as well as the hope of the neo-conservative Republican right.
One third of the American public believes that the Bible is literally true and many millions subscribe to the millennial interpretation of the Apocalypse described by Lahaye and Jenkins in the best selling “Left Behind” series. In this picture of coming events, after Israel has re-conquered the Holy Lands, the forces of the Anti-Christ will be defeated by Christ and his saints in a final battle at Armageddon. This victory will then usher in a new era of peace and prosperity under the direct rulership of Christ in which true Christians will be saved. 12 The time of the Apocalypse is now and George W. Bush, as the Prodigal Son and the leader of the Christian world is seen as preparing the way for this second coming of Christ by confronting the forces of the Anti-Christ in the Middle East.
This powerful brew of Machiavellian Real Politik, neo-Conservative critiques of liberalism and millennial beliefs of an approaching Apocalypse, was given legitimacy and force by the attacks of 9/11. September 11th also made possible the Republican majority in 2004 and the continued push for global empire.
Unintended Consequences
I believe the biblical proverb of “what you sow, you shall reap” applies to the foreign and domestic policies of the present administration. You cannot impose democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan through the barrel of a gun and you cannot defeat terrorism primarily through the exercise of state violence. We will not be successful in Iraq because too many Iraqis support the insurgents, and like in Vietnam we will be forced to withdraw. Rather than decreasing terrorism, the War in Iraq , is increasing the power of militant Islam with the result that other Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia are also being destabilized. Rather than securing future oil reserves in the Middle East , such reserves will become more uncertain. Rather than increasing our influence in the world, our aggression, hypocrisy and failure will lead to a decrease in our influence and power and make us more vulnerable to attack.
If we turn to domestic policies and in particular the combination of economic and social policy, the same phenomena is visible. With a trade deficit of over $400 billion and a governmental deficit of over $500 billion for this fiscal year, not counting the $200 billion that the occupation of Iraq has cost us to date we are mortgaging our future and borrowing heavily from foreigners and future generations. The Europeans, Japanese and Chinese have increasing power over us because they should no longer be willing to hold our Treasury bills and bond the U.S. and international financial markets would crash. And none of this takes into account the growing financial obligations that the U.S. government has to seniors through the recently approved drug benefit programs or the entitlement programs for an aging baby boom population.(13) Politically and economically we are increasingly vulnerable. Indeed it seems evident that we are promoting a clash of civilizations domestically and internationally while at the same time creating levels of violence, fear and instability that have an apocalyptic character. We are engaged in creating a self fulfilling prophesy in which our policies are creating the very conditions which the Administration claims to be fighting.
The Spiritual Dynamics of Fear's Empire:
Benjamin Barber wrote a prescient book in 1997 called Jihad vs. McWorld in which he discussed the mutually supporting dynamic of a technologically driven materialistic global economy and a conservative, fundamentalist search for identity and meaning by those who could not or would not participate in a secular international economic order.(14) It is strange to reflect that the Republican Majority has managed to bring about a marriage of these normally hostile forces through tax cuts to the wealthy and highly sophisticated political and military campaigns combined with an appeal to moral values and Christian fundamentalism.
Discernment and Hope:
I would ask how we discern the integrity and authenticity of Christian prophets who seek to speak on behalf of their people as President Bush has repeatedly done. This is a man who felt called by God to political office, who has branded some nations as an Axis of Evil, who laces his speeches with a multitude of Scriptural references and who feels called upon to bring freedom as a gift from God to the Middle East.
If it is true that by their deeds you shall know them, then how do we understand a seemingly sincere man and a morally focused Administration which promotes:
1) A culture of secrecy: (the first act of the Bush Administration on coming to office was to seal official records of both the Texas Governor's office and major portions of the Federal government.)
2) A culture of lies: (known falsehoods were used as a rationale for declaring war on Iraq .)
3) A culture of illusion: (A President who does not read and is not interested in other points of view.)
4) A culture of power without compassion: (Shock and Awe, the largest short-term bombing campaign in military history on Baghdad , the worst environmental record of recent administrations and the torture of prisoners.)
5) A culture of belief without questions (global warming is a myth, those who disagree with the U.S. are abetting the enemy)
6) A culture of fear: (in the presidential campaign, the axis of evil, the war on terror as a global commitment, orange alerts and other actions.)
7) A culture of militarism: (a General as Secretary of State, declaring victory over Iraq in a flight uniform, promoting a defense budget larger than that of all other states combined.)
These to me are the signs of a false prophet, the characteristics of an incipient fascism, and the qualities associated with the unrighteous Prince of this world.
My hope lies in the arrogance and short-sightedness of power, in the fact that a sense for truth is a birthright of the human soul, and in the decency, integrity and common sense of the American people.
Christopher Schaefer
Christopher Schaefer, Ph.D., is a faculty member and program director at Sunbridge College in Spring Valley , New York . He has taught American Foreign Policy and International Politics at Tufts and M.I.T. He is an international speaker and organization development advisor and the co-author of Vision in Action: Working with Soul and Spirit in Small Organizations . This essay is an extract from the Will to Power: Reflections on American Foreign Policy and the Future of Democracy to be published in 2005.
Notes:
1. Richard Falk, The Great Terror War , Olive Branch Press, Northampton, MA 2002, p. xxvii.
2. See Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling-Losing our Way in the New Century , W.W. Norton, New York, 2003, pp 3-20; Benjamin Barber, Fear's Empire-War, Terrorism and Democracy , W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2003, pp 16-29.
3. Frances Fukyjama, The End of History .
4. David Armstrong, “Dick Cheney's Song of America,” Harper Magazine , October 2002, pp. 76-83, provides a complete description of the connection between the Defense Department Planning documents of the first and second Bush Administration.
5. David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 , Olive Branch Press, Northampton , MA , 2004.
6. As taught by Henry Kissinger in the National Security Seminar at Harvard in 1966 and in Diplomacy , Simon and Schuster, New York, 1994, pp. 17-28, 703-836.
7. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives , Basic Books, New York , 1997, pp. XII-XV, 195-205.
8. See Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order , Simon and Schuster , New York , 2003. In particular pp. 125-174, 207-238.
9. Hugh Urban, “Religion and Secrecy in the Bush Administration: The Gentlemen, the Prince and Simulacum,” in Esoterica , and available on the internet under Hugh Urban, pp. 6-7, pp. 14-15, 17-22.
10. Michael Ledeen, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules are as Timely Today as Five Centuries Ago , St. Martin's Press, New York, 1999.
11. Quoted in Urban, op.cit, p. 4.
12. See Tim La Haye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Glorious Appearing, the End of Days , Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton , IL , 2004.
13. See Krugman, op. Cit, XV-XXIX, and 3-26.
14. Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld-Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy, Random House New York, 1995.