TARİHSEL SOSYOLOJİ ARAŞTIRMALARI

TARİHSEL SOSYOLOJİ ARAŞTIRMALARI

MAKALELER

Commentary No. 99, Oct. 15, 2002

"The U.S.-Iraqi War, Seen from the longue durée"

What can be said about a U.S.-Iraqi war, seen from the longue durée? Three things principally. The first has to do with the reasons for which the United States is taking the position it is taking at the moment. We have to think of the United States as a hegemonic power in the world-system, in the beginning phase of its decline. Its rise began approximately in 1873, when the U.S. positioned itself as one of two possible successor powers (the other being Germany) to the United Kingdom, which had passed its peak and was beginning its decline as the hegemonic power.

The long ascent of the United States went from 1873-1945, and required defeating Germany in a long "thirty years' war" that went from 1914-1945. This was followed by the brief moment of true hegemony, from 1945-1970. During this period, the United States was by far the most efficient producer on the world economic scene. It dominated the world politically, via a status quo accord with its only military rival, the U.S.S.R. (to which we refer metaphorically as the Yalta arrangements), and a series of politico-military alliances (NATO, the U.S.-Japan Defense Treaty, ANZAC), which guaranteed to the U.S. the automatic military and political support of a series of major industrial powers. This hegemony was sustained by a U.S. military machine based on air power and nuclear weapons (combined with a "balance of terror" with the Soviet Union).

These halcyon conditions were disturbed by two things primarily. The first was the economic rise of western Europe and Japan in the 1960s, which ended the overwhelming economic superiority of the United States, and transformed the world-system into a roughly equal triadic economic structure. The second was the unwillingness of certain countries of the Third World to accept the implications of the U.S.-Soviet Union status quo agreements - especially China, Vietnam, and Cuba.

The combination of the beginning of a Kondratieff B-phase (largely the consequence of the economic rise of western Europe and Japan, and therefore of declining monopolistic profits), the war in Vietnam (which also led to delinking the U.S. dollar from gold, and which ended in defeat), and the world revolution of 1968 (which among other things undermined the legitimacy of the Yalta arrangements) marked the beginning of the end of the ability of the United States to enforce its version of world order in the geopolitical arena.

The story of the United States from 1970 to today is the story of a battle to slow down geopolitical decline amidst a worldwide economic stagnation: the Trilateral Commission and the G-7 (as ways of inducing western Europe and Japan not to move away from U.S. control too fast), the Washington Consensus and neo-liberalism (as ways to hold back the surge forward of the South), anti-proliferation as a doctrine (as ways to push off inevitable military decline). If one wishes to take the measure of all of these efforts, one would have to say that they were at best partially successful. They did reduce the speed of the decline but did not stop it from occurring, with the United States all the while denying that it was occurring.

Enter the hawks! The hawks in the United States were never in political power from 1941-2001. They chafed. After 9/11, they finally seized the reins of power in Washington. Their view of the world was that decline was real, but that the cause of the decline was the weak will and misguided policies of the U.S. government (all U.S. governments from Roosevelt to the present President before 9/11). They believe that U.S. potential power is unbeatable provided only that it is exercised. They are not unilateralists by default, but unilateralists by preference. They believe that unilateralism is itself a demonstration of power and a reinforcement of power.

The second thing that is going on is the North-South struggle, which will be a major focus of world conflict in the next 25-50 years. From the point of view of the South, there are several different ways of conducting this struggle. One mode is military-confrontational. That is the path that Saddam Hussein has chosen. The reasoning that lies behind this position is Bismarckian. Only if the South achieves greater political unity and greater real military strength will it be able to get its fair share of the world's resources. Its geopolitical strategy should be built around these premises. Hence, Saddam Hussein has always pushed for greater Arab unification (around him as leader, to be sure) and for obtaining so-called weapons of mass destruction. Ergo, everything the hawks say about him is true, except for one thing: that he is reckless, and likely to use such weapons readily. Quite the contrary. He has shown himself to be a relatively prudent, careful chess player, but one willing to make bold moves (and then retreat, if they prove to be mistakes or get him into a blocked position).

Personally, I find him an extremely terrible dictator, and I do not trust his virtue. But I see no reason to believe that he would use weapons of mass destruction more readily or recklessly than the United States or Israel (or any other power that has them, for that matter). I certainly do not believe that proliferation is stoppable in the middle run. And I am not at all sure that the world would be more peaceful were it to be stopped. The fact that the Soviet Union had the hydrogen bomb was a major explanation of why the Cold War was cold. We have gone from one to eight known possessors of nuclear weapons between 1945 and today, and there will be 20 more in the next 25 years. Iraq will be one of them, with or without Saddam Hussein.

The third structural trend to take into account in evaluating the present situation is the economic rise and geopolitical hesitations of western Europe and Japan. No longer economically dependent on the United States, increasingly chafing at U.S. unilateralism, uncomfortable about U.S. cultural arrogance, western Europe and Japan remain hesitant to engage in actions that would deeply offend the United States. So their role on the world scene now is one of considerable timidity - on almost all issues. This is partly the heritage of Cold War gratitudes, partly the result of sharing some geopolitical interests as part of the North, partly a generational issue (the younger are less timid). This hesitancy will not last. By 2010, it will have disappeared completely. But for the moment, it still operates and explains current positions.

Putting together these three realities - the fact that the hawks are not open to persuasion, the fact that the South is indeed seeking to strengthen itself militarily, and the fact that western Europe and Japan are not willing yet to be full actors on the scene - will enable anyone to analyze and even predict the immediately likely (and increasingly unpleasant) occurrences on the current world scene.

Immanuel Wallerstein