Senator Byrd has very eloquently summarized the most stark result of this week’s events:
“Today I weep for my country,” said West Virginia Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd. “No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. … Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.
“We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance,” Byrd said, adding: “After war has ended the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America’s image around the globe.”
It is powerful rhetorical skill like this which is going to be needed in bucket loads to make the US understand domestically that beyond the lights and explosions on CNN, the US has sacrificed the last shreds of moral legitimacy that it commanded in the international community.
This is not like Afghanistan, not like Iraq ’91, or like Kosovo or even the most controversial of cold war conflicts. These certainly had their rational detractors but each had the backing of our allies (at the least) on both the political and usually the mass level or the backing of the international community via the UN.
This time, the US is making the rules up by itself. It is over, the end, finished. The post-cold war euphoria about a new age of cooperation has breathed its last. The world unambiguously realizes now that the fall of Communism is not enough. The fall of American power is a necessary condition to further progress towards the building of international institutions with real preventative legitimacy. This will be hardest for Americans themselves to accept but the only way for us (dual citizen and rabid anti-nationalist though I am, I bear responsibilities as an American citizen) to reconcile our stated national ideology with the state of the world.
Historians will probably mark Monday (Sayaka’s birthday) as the beginning of the end of American hegemony. The fall may take ten years, or it may take a hundred. Politicians like Byrd, who deeply love their country, now will have to work full time to emphasize how incredibly huge these consequences are. The war has started and will hopefully be over soon. No more time to moan and groan about it, now efforts need to be focused on two things:
1) Convince the US people that it is now a very very lonely Superpower. Even among the “coalition of bribed, coerced, and desperately unwilling” overwhelming majorities oppose the war. When I heard Japan’s prime minister finally declare his policy Monday, there was a look of twisted disgust on his face (OK, granted, his face has a similar look by default so I may be reading too much into this) when he uttered the words, “With regard to the US military action towards Iraq, I declare………Japan’s………support” Japan is behind the US because it has NO OTHER strategic option. The US government realizes this full well, but the American people do not know this simple fact:
America no longer has ANY friends in the world –
only strategic collaborators.
2) Just as the US has declared, and as security scholars have said for years, the UN is in a very real crisis. Additionally, worldwide mass protests against the war have failed. Scholarly opposition to the war either from liberal and radical historical and social arguments but even from the mainstream neo-realist arguments of national interests have failed.
In other words, there is currently NO effective focus of resistance, either in the international arena (UN, allies, competitor states) or domestically (intellectuals, media (which barely tried), and mass protests) Failure must be admitted before it can be overcome. It is not acceptable to simply declare US power overwhelming, cower under it, or retreat into the ivory tower. There must now be a concerted effort over the next decade or two to study and develop truly effective means of resistance. Violence is not an option, it will be crushed by US military supremacy and feed the rhetoric of the “threat”. Also, the other methods of the 60s and its voices are gone or no longer relevant and would not be helpful even if they returned. Failure must be followed by innovation.
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