Part 5 (1/2)

We have to make it clear that we didn't just come [to Iraq]

to get rid of Saddam. We came to get rid of the status quo.

-An official in the Bush administration.

[W]e don't need anyone's permission.

-President George W. Bush.

Superpower is not just a system of aggrandizing power but an attempt at reconst.i.tuting the nation's ident.i.ty. A compact statement of the ideology of Superpower was set out in The National Security Strategy of the United States of September 9, 2002 (hereafter NSS).3 It represented the clearest formulation of the administration's understanding of the mission of Superpower and of its totalizing reach. The doc.u.ment is also the best evidence of the ideology promoting inverted totalitarianism. In the course of its claims one can clearly see the components on which a grandiose conception of power relies and the global ambitions that a Superpower alone could contemplate. In the end it provides a unique example of how hard-nosed realism can combine with utopianism at the expense of reality-among other casualties.

Utopia is usually a.s.sociated with a soft-headed idealism that dreams of a time when the ills afflicting humankind-poverty, disease, strife-will have been eliminated. That understanding seriously underestimates the extent to which utopians have been fascinated by and dependent upon power for the realization of their hopes and dreams.

There have been three recurrent elements or prerequisites in many visions of utopia. One is that the founders of utopia possess some form of knowledge, some unquestionable truth, concerning what the right order of society should be, what should be the proper arrangement of its major inst.i.tutions. The second element is that utopians must imagine it possible to possess the powers capable of establis.h.i.+ng and realizing the utopian order. The third element is the opportunity of bringing utopia into existence and the skill in seizing and exploiting that moment. The NSS doc.u.ment embodies the first element, the blueprint, and suggests the second, the powers that seem to put utopia within reach. The third element, opportunity, was concocted in the preemptive war against Iraq.

II.

Depending on one's taste, the NSS doc.u.ment can be described as either forthright or crude; either way, there is no mistaking its single-minded concern and myth mentality. It begins by positing a conception of an expansive power that goes beyond previous understandings, and justifies it, not by an appeal to legal authority or political principle, but by a Manichaean myth that depicts two formations locked in a death struggle. One is the representative of absolute justice, the other of absolute injustice. On the one side, unprecedented but just power: ”Today, the United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence”; on the other, ”terrorists of global reach” who employ methods of violence devoid of justification: ”premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents.”4 All of the might of one side is mustered to defend and avenge the innocents; all of the cunning of the other is dedicated to slas.h.i.+ng, again and again, at the world's greatest power by attacking the innocent. Utopia versus Dystopia.

Does innocence mean not being implicated in wrongdoing such as torture of prisoners or the ”collateral damage” to hapless civilians? And is it that the citizens are innocent but not their leaders? If that is the case, isn't the system closer to the dictators.h.i.+ps whose horrendous crimes were attributed solely, or overwhelmingly, to the leaders.h.i.+p and not to the followers? Perhaps the answer is somewhere in between the categories of innocence and complicity. A clue is the frequency with which NSS invokes ”we” to indicate that Superpower is a collaborative project. As citizens are we collaborationists? To collaborate is to cooperate; to be complicit is to be an accomplice.

III.

War is the state of affairs which deals in earnest with the vanity of temporal goods and concerns.

-G.W.F. Hege.

Because ”the struggle against global terrorism” is declared to be ”different from any other war in our history,” it crowds out all other distinctions, reducing politics to one focal point, a politics fixated upon a single foe, mobilized to combat an enemy unlike any encountered previously, ”a new condition of life.” Exhilarated by the prospect of a contest between good and evil, as confident of its own rect.i.tude as it is of the unalloyed evil of its foe, NSS offers a.s.surance that our society will emerge invigorated from the contest with terrorists: ”We will adjust to it and thrive-in spite of it.”6 While declaring terrorism a unique phenomenon, the author(s) of NSS hasten to fill the vacuum left by earlier contests with evil powers.

For most of the twentieth century, the world was divided by a great struggle over ideas: destructive totalitarian visions versus freedom and equality.

The great struggle is over. The militant visions of cla.s.s, nation, and race which promised utopia and delivered misery have been defeated and discredited.7 In fact, the totalitarian systems of Hitler and Mussolini, far from promising utopia, had demanded endless heroic sacrifices from their populaces. Utopianism, far from being discredited, reemerges in those who wield America's power. Its manifesto is in the opening sentence of the NSS doc.u.ment: ”The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom-and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.”8 That ”single sustainable model” embodies the new utopianism and has its own breathless version of totalizing power: ”the United States will use this moment of opportunity to extend the benefits of freedom across the globe. We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world.”9 As the vision unfolds, it reveals, if unwittingly, how ”democracy, development, free markets, and free trade” will converge to further their opposites and the ambitions of Superpower.

The n.a.z.is and Fascists exalted strength and domination and were contemptuous of weakness; the new utopians are proud of their unparalleled strength but, paradoxically, feel threatened by weakness in others: ”The events of September 11, 2001, taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states. . . . [P]overty, weak inst.i.tutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders.” The power that will come to the aid of weak states is identified with the particular ”freedoms” which the new utopians are eager to promote: ”Free trade and free markets have proven their ability to lift whole societies out of poverty.”

The freedoms being dangled before the unfree are, in reality, disguised power. Free trade and free markets in the hands of the already powerful are not symmetrical with free trade and markets in the hands of ”weak” societies. Instead, the effect upon the poor nations of opting for them invariably turns simple weakness into dependence on those nations whose economies have made them dominant powers and who, accordingly, have the right to declare a state weak and call its performance to account. ”For freedom to thrive, accountability must be expected and required.”10 Thus when the NSS doc.u.ment presents the ”free market” as one of the three const.i.tuent elements of the ideal political system, the market is a surrogate, a stand-in for globalization/empire.

Thus freedom is granted conditionally and performance is accountable to the power that makes freedom possible. What began as the challenge posed by terrorism becomes conflated into ”a great mission” that comprehends virtually all of the world's ills and, in the process, inflates national power into global power: Throughout history, freedom has been threatened by war and terror; it has been challenged by the clas.h.i.+ng wills of powerful states and the evil designs of tyrants and it has been tested by widespread poverty and disease. Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom's triumph over all these foes. The United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission.11 The new utopians, while proclaiming that the United States must exercise power commensurate with the demands of its campaign against terrorism and the global mission of reconst.i.tuting the world's economies, insist that Superpower will be devoted to reducing the power of the state universally. ”The lessons of history are clear: market economies, not command-and-control economies with the heavy hand of government, are the best way to promote prosperity and reduce poverty. Policies that further strengthen market incentives and market inst.i.tutions are relevant for all economies-industrialized countries, emerging markets, and the developing world.”12 Taken at face value, the p.r.o.nouncement devaluing the state seems at cross-purposes with the utopian aim of reconstructing societies in ”every corner of the world.” What kind of power is it that, in effect, can reconstruct the world without employing ”the heavy hand of government,” and what kind of power is being contemplated that is both effective and nongovernmental? The questions become unsettling in light of the original goal of combating, without necessarily eradicating, global terrorism. ”Modern life,” we are warned, is particularly ”vulnerable,” and that ”vulnerability” ”will persist long after we bring to justice those responsible for the September eleventh attacks.”13 Terrorism, then, is the kind of problem which can be viewed in two ways that are not mutually exclusive: where there is not even a promise of light at the end of the tunnel or where there is endless opportunity for investment.

Light-handed government in regard to economic policy-a conception that might be termed ”antipolitical economy”-and heavy-handed state power to fight terrorism: the two represent a unique power combination. In the economies of contemporary capitalist societies relations.h.i.+ps reek of unequal power, but dominant powers differ from those of the government or state. Great corporations attribute their immense resources to the fact that they are able to operate free from state interference. One might, of course, cite endless examples of government favors and subsidies (”corporate welfare”); moreover, the global power that, for a domestic audience, decries state intervention into the economy has not hesitated countless times to lift its heavy hand abroad and to intervene, even to covertly subvert, when some free society's elected representatives have opted for elements of socialism, such as government owners.h.i.+p and operation of a nation's extensive petroleum resources: vide Guatemala (1964), Chile (1971), Nicaragua (1980s), or Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia (2003). Perhaps, then, free trade and free markets, while meant to restrain government intervention in foreign countries, actually extend the global power of the United States, although not the power of the U.S. government as such. ”Free trade” and ”free markets” expose weaker, less economically developed societies to the highly advanced forms of economic power wielded by corporations and tacitly backed by American political and military power. Against superior economic might native governments are largely defenseless.

Nor, in the NSS formulation, is U.S. power abroad to be restricted to military or economic matters. Unilaterally, the United States declares it is justified in reconstructing the infrastructure of other societies. ”As humanitarian relief requirements are better understood, we must also be able to help build police forces, court systems and legal codes, local and provincial governmental inst.i.tutions, and electoral systems.”14 Iraq proved this to be no idle boast. That country was fated to be selected as a testing ground for the ambitious forces a.s.sembled under Superpower. The test took the form of a catch-22. First the display of the awesome destructive power, the ”shock and awe” and ”bunker busters” made possible by science and technology. Then, having employed weapons of ma.s.s destruction to smash and disrupt the economy and society of Iraq in order to prevent Saddam from using his nonexistent weapons of ma.s.s destruction, Superpower attempted to close the circle by applying the power of the free market to the reconstruction of the infrastructure it had shattered. The most redoubtable corporate powers-Bechtel, Halliburton, the Carlyle Group-entered the newly established ”free” market from which Russian, French, and Canadian business firms were initially excluded because of their opposition to the preemptive war.15 Presumably Micronesia, which had joined ”the coalition of the willing,” was free to compete.

In order to fulfill the role envisaged by NSS the political power of the United States has to be conceived in imperial rather than const.i.tutional terms. Accordingly, ”It is essential to reaffirm the essential role of American military strength.” This requires ”defenses beyond challenge” and ”dissuad[ing] future military compet.i.tion”-”compet.i.tion” signifying the integration of the military as a permanent part of the market economy and the expansion of the market to accommodate ”corporate warriors” and a thriving private security industry.16 Security for securities . . .

An unchallengeable military power, not a merely preeminent one, means that ”the United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access for the long-distance deployment of U.S. forces.” The power needed must defend not only ”critical U.S. infrastructure” but also ”a.s.sets in outer s.p.a.ce.”17 Like Tocqueville's benevolent despot, the United States rea.s.sures the world that it will act ”with a spirit of humility.”18

IV.

There is one master theme whose frequent recurrence supplies the overall context for the several concerns and proposals in the NSS doc.u.ment. The ”dangerous technologies” acquired by terrorists demand that ”America . . . act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.”

While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country. . . . The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction-and the more compelling the case for taking antic.i.p.atory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. . . . We will be prepared to act apart (from friends and partners) when our interests and unique responsibilities require.19 In order to act preemptively and to call attention to its might, Superpower exempts itself from the constraints of treaties, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Although the United States often turns over war criminals of other nations to international tribunals, its own officials or agents ”are not [to be] impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept.”20 Since state and corporate power have become increasingly intertwined, that composite ident.i.ty requires that the renunciation of restraints is also extended to treaties, such as the Kyoto Accords intended to control global warming, the rationale being that they impose an unacceptable burden on American economic enterprises.21 The unspoken a.s.sumption is that a burden on American enterprise detracts from American power.

The totalizing impulses underlying the drive to be rid of restraints are not limited to the projection of power abroad. For, while terrorists have their networks based outside the borders of the United States, their targets are inside the country. Accordingly, state power must pursue them by projecting power internally, the power that, in keeping with Hobbesian logic, casts off external restraints whenever and wherever the necessity arises. The justification for increased domestic powers is that ”the distinction between domestic and foreign affairs is diminis.h.i.+ng.” ”In a globalized world” we are affected by events outside our borders; more important, because ”our society must be open to people, ideas, and goods from across the globe,” we are inherently vulnerable to terrorist attacks.22 The vanis.h.i.+ng line between foreign and domestic is crucial because of the contention that constraints on power in domestic matters ought not to carry over to foreign affairs, especially when military action is involved.23 This claim might seem to be an appeal to the old doctrine of ”reason of state,” which a.s.serted that when issues of war and diplomacy were at stake, those who were responsible for the safety of the nation should be allowed a freer hand, greater discretionary power, to meet external threats without being hampered by the uncertainty attending the c.u.mbersome and time-consuming legitimating processes of legislatures or courts.

In fact, the NSS doctrine goes beyond the old reason of state. It places reason of state in the context of terrorism, that is, in a context which, by the administration's definition of terrorism, knows no boundaries, spatial or temporal. The reason-of-state argument for discretionary power had a.s.sumed a demarcation between matters of war and diplomacy, where state actors would have a comparatively freer hand, and matters of internal governance, where they would be subject to ordinary constraints.24 The war on terrorism, with its accompanying emphasis upon ”homeland security,” presumes that state power, now inflated by doctrines of preemptive war and released from treaty obligations and the potential constraints of international judicial bodies, can turn inwards, confident that in its domestic pursuit of terrorists the powers it claimed, like the powers it had projected abroad, would be measured, not by ordinary const.i.tutional standards, but by the shadowy and ubiquitous character of terrorism as officially defined. The Hobbesian line between the state of nature and civil society begins to waver.

V.

It is not only the line between foreign and domestic matters that is being blurred but the distinction between economic and political power. Once upon a time it was believed that in a democracy the power of the government was derived from a citizenry who, by the political duty of partic.i.p.ating in politics and exercising their political rights, transmitted a distinctively political character to governmental authority that served to justify its exercise of power. Now, however, the power of government is not an emanation of the political power of the citizens. Rather government appears as autonomous, distanced from the citizens because the power of the citizenry is given a sharply different focus: not as political power expressive of the will of engaged citizens but as ”political and economic freedom” which ensures that the nation ”will be able to unleash the potential of their people and a.s.sure their future prosperity.” Political involvement is reduced to minimal, anodyne terms: ”People everywhere want to say what they think; choose who will govern them; wors.h.i.+p as they please; educate their children-male and female; own property; and enjoy the benefits of their labor.”25 Quietly, economic mobilization is accompanied by a de-emphasis on politics, by a political demobilization. That unthreatening ideal inspires the peroration to NSS, where economy supersedes the political and is designated the real basis of national security: Ultimately, the foundation of American strength is at home. It is in the skills of our people, the dynamism of our economy, and the resilience of our inst.i.tutions. A diverse, modern society has inherent, ambitious, entrepreneurial energy. Our strength comes from what we do with that energy. That is where our national security begins.26 This statement represents the clear admission that the American economy is acknowledged to be more than a system of providing goods and services. It is, in its own right, a system of power that deserves to be considered as much a part of the ”foundation” of political society as the inst.i.tutions prescribed by the Const.i.tution. The consecration of economy means that in the trinity of ”freedom, democracy, and free enterprise” the three elements are not of equal standing. Freedom and democracy are clearly subservient to free enterprise, a relations.h.i.+p that, by providing ”cover” for the political incorporation of the corporation, a.s.sumes great significance in light of the fact that the economic structures defining free enterprise are inherently autocratic, hierarchical, and primed for expansion. When the claims and needs of the economy trump the political, and bring in their wake strikingly unequal rewards and huge disparities in wealth and power, inequality trumps democratic egalitarianism.

The later transformation of the market, from one of small-scale producers into one dominated by large corporations and monopolies and near monopolies, lent a new meaning to market ”forces.” The market was now the site of great powers: powers that determined prices, wages, patterns of consumption, the well-being or poverty of individuals, the fate of entire neighborhoods, cities, states, and nations. Several of the larger corporations possess wealth rivaling or exceeding that of many of the smaller nations of the world. The power of great corporations underwent further change toward the end of the twentieth century when corporate power conjoined with state power. The ”market” ceased to be an ent.i.ty distinct from, and contrasting with, state power, becoming its extension-and vice versa, becoming the ”hidden hand” in ”public” policies.

Once the hybrid or dual nature of contemporary state action is understood, it is possible to put in their true light the coupling in NSS of ”freedom” and ”democracy” with ”free enterprise.” The porous character that freedom and democracy create in society-”our society must be open,” as NSS noted, ”to people, ideas, and goods from across the globe”-provides the conditions that enable the economic power generated in the market to easily penetrate and control politics. Freedom and democracy, far from posing a threat to ”free enterprise,” become its instrument and its justification. And rather than serving as the means for furthering the political project of democratization, the state helps to inter it.

VI.

It is one of the consequences of aggression that it hardens the conscience, as the only means of quieting it.

-James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer.