Part 5 (2/2)

The test case of the NSS doctrine is Iraq, its utopian opportunity. There all the might of Superpower was mobilized in defiance of world opinion; there the great corporate giants of the American economy were poised to reconstruct the Iraqi economy according to the principles of the free market; and there the corporate warriors, well-paid and armed with the latest weaponry, were gearing up to join forces with the American military largely composed of young men and women from working-cla.s.s and recent immigrant backgrounds who had enlisted, not to fight a war, but to improve their economic status or finance a college education otherwise unattainable.

And, despite the blueprint for a new democratic Middle East, the power of modern technology and corporate resources straining to exploit Iraq, and the pretext that was supposed to provide the opportunity, Superpower failed. Instead of achieving conquest, it provoked an insurgency that left Iraq virtually ungovernable and close to being uninhabitable; instead of dealing terrorism a damaging blow, it exacerbated the problem and multiplied the ranks of the enemy; instead of seeing the world cowering before its might, Superpower faced a world where many governments and their peoples found common ground in opposing the United States.

In Iraq Superpower succeeded only in providing the answer to the plaintive question of 9/11, ”Why do they hate us?”

VII.

In attempting to explain the debacle of Iraq several commentators have pointed to the highly ideological group of ”neoconservatives” who, it is alleged, had long been dreaming of a new order in the Middle East and were only waiting for an opportune moment. Although the neocon factor matters, there is a far more significant and ominous source encouraging the hubris of Superpower. The Superpower revealed in Iraq was quintessentially power without legitimacy, as was demonstrated by every claim that Saddam was linked to al Qaeda and that he possessed weapons of ma.s.s destruction. The shabby and unverifiable arguments, especially those before the UN, were unconvincing precisely because everyone was aware that Superpower had long since made up its mind. Superpower made no secret that its preparations for invasion were under way and that no amount of argument would persuade the American leaders to abandon or significantly postpone their plans. Superpower's operatives no more needed the consent of the UN than they needed an accurate counting of ballots in the presidential election of 2000. The moment when the breaking of limits and the subsequent a.s.sertion of expansive powers suddenly became possible was that moment when political and const.i.tutional legitimacy was cynically discarded and George II was crowned. Much became possible that previously was unthinkable or, if thinkable, then done surrept.i.tiously: cla.s.s-based tax cuts,28 the undermining of decades of environmental safeguards, the crude collusion with corporate power, the decimation of social programs benefiting the poor, the steady dismantling of the ”wall” separating church and state, the nomination of highly ideological candidates for judicial appointment. In short, Iraq had its origins in Florida: there power without legitimacy was first envisioned. That was when power brokers found that, if sufficiently determined, they could overcome the inhibitions of democratic const.i.tutionalism.

CHAPTER SIX.

The Dynamics of Transformation.

I.

A decent society will not go to war except for a just cause.

But what it will do during a war will depend to a certain

extent on what the enemy-possibly an absolutely

unscrupulous and savage one-forces it to do. There are

no limits which can be defined in advance, there are no

a.s.signable limits to what might become just reprisals. . . .

But societies are not only threatened from without.

Considerations which might apply to foreign enemies

may well apply to subversive elements within society.

-Leo Strauss.

One of the oldest political plat.i.tudes teaches that political systems can experience changes of such magnitude and velocity that their ident.i.ty is altered, literally trans-formed. The city-states of ancient Greece underwent frequent and often dizzying transformations, from cities governed by aristocracies to ones run by those characterized as democrats; Athenian democracy transformed itself into an empire and the Roman republic did the same; eventually both Athenian democracy and the Roman republic disappeared, eviscerated by their own expansionism. Seventeenth-century England went full cycle in little more than two decades, from monarchy to rule by Parliament to the dictators.h.i.+p of Cromwell to the restoration of the monarchy. For France, beginning in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, it is difficult to count the number of different political ident.i.ties following the Revolution of 1789 and continuing throughout the nineteenth century into the twentieth. There were periods of dictators.h.i.+p, a first empire under Napoleon, restoration of a monarchy combined with a parliament, a second empire and dictators.h.i.+p under Louis Napoleon, then a series of republics interrupted in the twentieth century by the Vichy dictators.h.i.+p (194044) sponsored by and beholden to the n.a.z.is.

Nor is American experience an exception. The thirteen colonies were originally part of the British Empire; the colonial system was overthrown by a confederation of the former colonies; it was succeeded by a new federal system and national government that would be challenged in the next century by a secessionist movement that culminated in a civil war and two systems of government. Throughout the nineteenth century the structure, even the form, of the American system, including its politics, was continually changing as new states from the Midwest, Southwest, and West, some with cultures strikingly different from that of the eastern states, were admitted-and all this against the background of Indian ”wars,” the first chapter in the national commitment to eradicating terrorists while extending the reach of its government.

Perhaps Americans tend to accept, even welcome, change while resisting the idea of transformation. Change suggests a modification that retains a prior ”deeper” ident.i.ty. Transformation implies supersession, or submergence, of an old ident.i.ty and the acquisition of a new one. Between the two poles of change and transformation there is a third possibility in which transformation occurs yet the older form is preserved. Thus throughout most of its history England (and later the United Kingdom) preserved the trappings of monarchy after having long since hollowed out its substance.

Change is the rule rather than the exception: that plat.i.tude is easy for Americans to acknowledge when applied, say, to the economy or to ”lifestyles.” Americans, accustomed to, even insistent upon, continuous progress in scientific knowledge and innovative technology, a.s.sume that their main political inst.i.tutions, the Const.i.tution, and the protections of citizens.h.i.+p are firmly established and admirably difficult to amend. They believe, perhaps with a trace of desperation, that their fundamentalist view of the Const.i.tution is vindicated because the United States is ”the world's oldest continuous democracy.” Although Americans recognize that their politics is changing, as the presence and influence of television continually reminds them, they shy away from transformation when ”basic” political forms are involved for fear of rendering ident.i.ties problematic, the nation's as well as their own. And, equally important, they have become blindly accepting of the notion that whatever is p.r.o.nounced ”outdated” or relegated to the ”past” is no longer recoverable. There is no going back: an ident.i.ty, such as ”democracy,” once lost is gone forever.

When terms like ”American superpower,” ”American empire,” or ”the greatest power in history” acquire a certain notoriety, as they did during the controversy over the invasion of Iraq, the sheer dissonance produced by the effort to comprehend oxymorons such as ”superpower democracy” or ”imperial const.i.tution” raises the possibility that a different type of political system is evolving within the familiar framework. Instead of a system in which governmental powers are measured by a const.i.tution of enumerated powers, there appears to be an expansive conception of power and a triumphalist ideology alien to the Const.i.tution. Despite its ”exceptionalism,” or perhaps because of it, the United States may be undergoing a political transformation that includes not only significantly different political and civic ident.i.ties but also a different kind of politics. The distance between Superpower's claims of global hegemony and democracy's ideal of self-government has been bridged by the concept of ”managed democracy,” which acquired some currency in connection with the reconstruction of Iraq. Superpower and managed democracy might comfortably coexist. It is, as a pastorly president might put it, a match made in heaven.

Before we consider the changes that promote Superpower's managed democracy, it is worth bearing in mind that, from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century, when political theorists referred to const.i.tutional transformations they were not primarily concerned with alterations in the ”basic” laws except as these registered s.h.i.+fts in the distribution of power. That focus led to attempts at identifying the sources of political reconfigurations, some of which might have originated within the system of power (e.g., the legislature reduces kings.h.i.+p to a ceremonial figurehead), but, more often, transformations were attributed to developments originating ”outside” the formal system (e.g., the rise of a merchant or industrial cla.s.s that challenged the ruling landed aristocracy and demanded representation in the councils of governance; or conquest by a foreign power and the imposition of a new system, as in j.a.pan after World War II). In general, while a const.i.tution may ”const.i.tute” power by creating inst.i.tutional authorities virtually de novo-as in the invention of the presidency and the Supreme Court-more often it demonstrates flexibility by recognizing and investing de facto power with authority-as when, in 1933, the Weimar Reichstag declared Hitler to be chancellor (or prime minister) but only after changing the law that had declared Austrians ineligible for the office.

A const.i.tution, or rather its authoritative interpretation, may be made to legitimate powers originating elsewhere: in the changing character of cla.s.s relations, economic structures, social mores, ideological and theological doctrines, or the emergence of powerful social movements (e.g., opposition to abortion rights). A const.i.tution may also serve as the means of deflecting external powers: for example, a supreme court may zealously turn back ”attacks” on property rights and business interests from the regulatory powers of state legislatures, as happened from roughly 1871 to 1914 in the United States. To cite another example: challenges to racial segregation were resisted by all branches of government and the two major political parties until the mid-twentieth century. Here transformation was resisted in favor of tactical acquiescence in change that, while acknowledging the emergence of new forces, signals adaptation to, not necessarily reconst.i.tution of, the dominant powers.

In theory a const.i.tution prescribes a distinctive organization of power (e.g., a const.i.tutional monarchy or a republic) and identifies the purposes for which power can be used legitimately. A const.i.tutional form lends power shape, definition, and a genealogy (”We, the People . . . do ordain and establish this Const.i.tution”). The portent of transformation is a lack of fit between power and authority. Authority sanctions, authorizes, the use of power (”The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes”) and sets limits (”but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States” (art. I, sec. 8, cl. 1). Yet, while Congress alone has the authority to declare war (art. I, sec. 8, cl. 11), that power was, in effect, preempted by the president in the war on Iraq, and Congress meekly capitulated.

The technology of power, however, evolves more or less independently of const.i.tutional conceptions of authority. In a society that strongly encourages technological innovation, definitions of const.i.tutional authority tend to lag well behind the actual means of power and their capabilities. For example, the so-called war powers authorized by the American Const.i.tution are invoked to justify the use of ”weapons of ma.s.s destruction” capable of inflicting death and misery upon thousands of noncombatants, among them the populations of Dresden and Hiros.h.i.+ma. A war power may be authorized by a const.i.tution drawn up more than two centuries ago, but ”advances in weaponry” have altered dramatically the meaning of warfare without formally rewriting the authorization to use them.

What does it mean to be ”victorious” in the age of ”shock and awe,” nuclear weapons, and global terrorism, or to ”defend the nation” when it has become an empire? It is possible that the powers available to twenty-first-century rulers and to their terrorist foes are such as to outstrip the ability of fallible mortals to control their effects-and that may be what the jargon of ”collateral damage” serves to obscure. When a const.i.tutionally limited government utilizes weapons of horrendous destructive power, subsidizes their development, and becomes the world's largest arms dealer, the Const.i.tution is conscripted to serve as power's apprentice rather than its conscience.

Such considerations expose an underlying a.s.sumption of our Const.i.tution. At the time of its formulation, the authors, as well as those who ratified the final doc.u.ment, naturally a.s.sumed that in the future the weapons of destruction would not be radically different from existing ones. But while it is in Superpower's interest that the Const.i.tution should appear unchanging, the technology of war has been revolutionized. The likely consequence of that imbalance is suggested in the summary remarks by the authors of a mainstream textbook in const.i.tutional law: The circ.u.mstances of nuclear warfare would, not improbably, bring about the total supplantation for an indefinite period of the forms of const.i.tutional government by the drastic procedures of military government.2 Accordingly, we need to broaden our definition of Superpower: power unantic.i.p.ated by a const.i.tutional mandate and exceeding the political abilities and moral sensibilities of those who employ it. Superpower does not automatically guarantee super(wo)men, only outsized temptations and ambitions.

The formlessness of ”Superpower” and ”empire” that accompanies concentrated power of indefinite limits is subversive of the idea of const.i.tutional democracy. Although, strictly speaking, traditional accounts of political forms do not antic.i.p.ate superpower, some writers, notably Niccol Machiavelli (14691527) and James Harrington (161177), proposed a distinction between a political system content to preserve itself rather than expand and a political system, such as that of ancient Rome, eager to ”increase” its power and domain.3 Applying that distinction, we might say that the United States combines both. In the view of those who venerate the ”original Const.i.tution,” the Founders had established a government of limited powers and modest ambitions. The const.i.tution of Superpower, in contrast, is meant for ”increase.”4 It is based not on the intentions of the framers but on the unlimited dynamic embodied in the system whereby capital, technology, and science furnish the sources of power. Accordingly, when certain reformers, such as environmental activists and anticloning advocates, seek to use const.i.tutional authority to control the powers a.s.sociated with the ”const.i.tution for increase” (e.g., regulating nuclear power plants or cloning labs) they find their efforts blocked by those who invoke the conception of a const.i.tution as one of limited authority. But typically when representatives of the ”const.i.tution for increase” press for favors from those who man the ”const.i.tution for preservation,” they get their way. While Superpower's const.i.tution is shaped toward ever-increasing power, but has no inherent political authority, the const.i.tution for preservation has limited authority while its actual power is dependent upon those who operate the const.i.tution for increase. The two const.i.tutions-one for expansion, the other for containment-form the two sides of inverted totalitarianism.

II.

Only who has the bigger pot, who controls more money than the

other. There are no values in this election. There are no principles.

It's only who gets power. Nothing more. It's a shame.

-A Nigerian pro-democracy activist commenting on

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