TWO NEOCONS IN THE HAND ARE BETTER THAN ONE IN THE BUSH. posted by Richard Seymour

One of the enduring tragedies of the 20th Century was that the finest people and the worst governments called themselves socialist. Had it been the reverse, we could have called it progress. But as we enter the 21st Century, we instead are greeted with the farce that many of the finest people and the worst governments call themselves "liberators" - or, as they used to be called, "imperialists". Only slightly less naive than the supporters of the glorious Five Year Plan, those principled poetasters of humanism who today proclaim the virtue of neat, surgical humanitarian interventions are prepared to overlook immense brutality for the sake of preserving the Great Idea.

But, as the United States cannot rely upon a few fellow travellers taking their case to the masses, they have need of a new means of legitemising intervention. "'Legitimacy'", Robert Kagan argues in Foreign Policy, "is an intangible factor in foreign policy, but like so many intangibles it can have great practical significance." Not only that section of the globe's population that "does not benefit from American dominance", but even those "European allies" who do, will have to be comforted, cajoled and persuaded. This is not to mention the American public, whose history of isolationism is not entirely forgotten, and whose apparent readiness to go to war is always manufactured and always conditional. "Nor are Americans likely to be comfortable consistently acting in ways that much of the world, and especially other like-minded peoples, deem illegitimate." Kagan observes.

Kagan, a co-founder of the esteemed Project for the New American Century is not inclined to doubt the essential "benevolence" of Empire. He does, however, think it important to persuade the world that America really does pursue the defense of liberal democracy against all comers, rather than just its own narrow interests. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand believes that it is a "failure of diplomacy" of a different character that is leading to a rise in "anti-American" sentiment. (The only other country that has used such a vile shibboleth of a term was Nazi Germany). According to Gingrich, the US is far, far too nice. When the UN voted America off the Human Rights Commission - which he notes with suitable sanctimony is now chaired by Libya - the State Department hadn't a damned thing to say or do about it. Gingrich stops short of blaming the whole thing on "welfare mothers", but doubtless it will be in his next article. He does rail against the French for attempting to halt American foreign policy initiatives, but the thrust of his article is that the State Department is a meddlesomely ineffective bureacracy, one given to opposing the President's war dances and undermining his foreign initiatives.

Gingrich's argumentative procedure is illuminating, if I may speak loosely. He contrasts a speech made by President Bush in which the latter enthuses about the prospects for democracy in Iraq, with a sceptical State Department report suggesting that the neoconservative theory of a 'domino effect' sending ever expanding ripples of democracy across the Middle East might just be a fantasy. Bush tells a group of young Iraqi-Americans: "'I have confidence in the future of a free Iraq. The Iraqi people are fully capable of self-government.' He also told them that 'You are living proof the Iraqi people love freedom and living proof the Iraqi people can flourish in democracy. People who live in Iraq deserve the same freedom that you and I enjoy here in America.'" Meanwhile, the State Department report suggests that "liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve [in Iraq] . . . . Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements." The report apparently maintained that "this idea that you're going to transform the Middle East and fundamentally alter its trajectory is not credible."

This, in Gingrich's view, proves the State Department's perfidy. Maintaining a perfectly realistic world-view is so obviously "out of sync with Bush's views and objectives" that Gingrich is moved to point out the prescience of his comments at the American Enterprise Institute in which he first examined the State Department's mutinous intentions. Only if they recycle the over-heated illiteracies of the President are they truly acting in America's best interests. Gingrich proposes therefore to reform the State Department, with the aim of increasing and improving the US much neglected global communications. Overcoming the propaganda of leftwing non-governmental organisations, elitist academics and some reputable institutions is the name of the game. Gingrich cunningly inserts a second-hand observation: "The British Broadcasting Corporation, according to some observers, was at least as hostile to the United States as Al Jazeera was during the entire Iraqi conflict." The good amphibian might do well to set his goggle-eyes on a report conducted on the BBCs bias during the war published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung found that the Corporation's bias was overwhelmingly pro-war. 2% of its total war coverage was dedicated to dissident views, while Sky had at least 7% of its coverage given to antiwar opinion. Rupert Murdoch does not appear to be in cahoots with Al Jazeera.

But what unites both Kagan and Gingrich is a set of premises and corrollaries. First, that there is a problematic rise in global "anit-American" opinion, second that it has nothing to do with what the United States actually does. The corrollary is that America's communication system mustn't be switched on right, because noone in their right mind could possibly object to such a benign system of hegemony. Kagan, to be fair, does suggest that there is something in the apparent unipolarity, the unbalanced nature of the global geopolitical structure that is causing dissent. The problem is, at least to some extent, located in reality and not just perception. But Kagan, like Gingrich, far from wanting to attenuate US global dominance, wants to advance and safeguard it.

If this is the thinking of America's political and intellectual class (again, to speak somewhat loosely) then we must expect much more subtle manipulation. Jacqueline Rose observed that the CIA had published details of its intention to set up a global disinformation network, which reached the press. It caused such an uproar that the CIA immediately went public and said they no longer planned to do it. "We have", she said, "no way of knowing if that second press release was disinformation or not". It would serve us well, then, to remember that the "coalition" is now sitting on 112,000,000,000 barrels of oil, OPEC is considerably weakened, the US Department of Energy has calculated that by January 2025, the US will consume 75% of the world's oil resources and all estimates suggest that as US oil supplies are running dry, the bulk of any future supply will have to come from the Gulf region and perhaps some of the 'Stans. Remember too that democracy in Afghanistan means the stoning of women, daily battles with competing tribal armies, bomb attacks and no elections in sight. Remember that the Defense Intelligence Agency produced internal reports before the application of sanctions to Iraq describing in pornographic detail the likely effect on the Iraqi population, thus rendering subsequent US policy toward Iraq intentionally genocidal.

Or, if you're a fellow-traveller, forget all that and remember its about liberation.