«Now I'm confused»

«Now I'm confused»

23 décembre 2002 — Nous nous référons à un excellent article de Brendon O'Neill, sur le site Spiked, publié le 20 décembre. Nous nous référons aussi à l'article de Matthew Engel, publié dans the Guardian du 17 décembre, cité par O'Neill, par qui nous l'avons découvert : « Ready for battle ». Enfin, nous nous référons à notre récent F&C, citant lui-même un texte de Timothy Garton Ash que O'Neill et Engel mentionnent, F&C que nous avons publié le 13 décembre. Nous ne voulons rien dire de décisif, mais faire progresser cette sensation de plus en plus forte que l'actuelle crise irajienne est d'abord une crise washingtonienne, qu'elle est d'abord une affection considérable de la psychologie washingtonienne, un mélange d'emportement collectif et de création d'une réalité totalement artificielle (ce que nous désignons sous le néologisme de “virtualisme”).

[Note au 28 décembre 2002 : nous venons de publier un texte dans la rubrique “Analyse” sur ce sujet, à partir de la comparaison faite de plus en plus souvent, citée par Engel ci-dessous, que l'actuelle “marche vers la guerre” ressemble à l'enchaînement de 1914. C'est décidément le plus passionnant des sujets, le plus important, et c'est même à notre sens le sujet décisif. Nous sommes de plus en plus persuadés que la crise actuelle est d'abord psychologique et qu'elle affecte la psychologie collective de la direction de la puissance américaine, plus précisément de Washington.]

Citons ici deux paragraphes de l'article de Engel pour fixer dans quel domaine évolue la réflexion :

« The energy behind this enterprise has such power that it has long been difficult to imagine the circumstances in which it wouldn't happen. Behind the Bushies' enthusiasm for war, the political timetable is creating the same sense of inevitability as the railway timetable in 1914. If the US lost the winter window of climatic opportunity and waited another year, it would allow a new post-Gore Democratic frontrun ner (irrelevant whether it's a hawk like Lieberman or a dove like Kerry) to paint Bush as indecisive. Round here, that is the unthinkable.

» The government's relish for war suffuses the whole city, yet I have caught no sign of it anywhere outside Washington. Other observers, like Tim Garton Ash, report the same phenomenon. Living here, one begins to feel, after a while, the way hostages do: the Stockholm syndrome sets in. Deep down, one may know the cause is ludicrous, but it so dominates the whole of one's life that after a while the victim gets sucked in and starts thinking these people have a point (I speak as someone who caught himself using the word “gotten” in conversation the other day, which suggests total brainwashing). »

O'Neill développe sa réflexion à partir de l'amoncellement extraordinaire de déclarations, d'affirmations, de fuites, de plans, et tout cela plus ou moins démenti à mesure par des déclarations de prudence, de réticence, de critique, etc, que nous subissons depuis un nombre respectable de mois déjà. Nous parlons ici de ces préparatifs de guerre qui battent leur plein depuis près d'un an, de ces plans considérables, de ces déplacements d'unités annoncés depuis neuf à dix mois, — et qui n'aboutissent pour l'instant qu'au déploiement de 60.000 hommes dans la région. (Voir le New York Times du 8 décembre, avec cette citation : « About 60,000 soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, as well as about 200 warplanes, are in or near the region. The Army alone has 9,000 soldiers, 24 Apache helicopter gunships and heavy equipment for two armored brigades in Kuwait. Equipment for a third brigade is steadily arriving on ships usually based in the Indian Ocean, and some matériel will be stored at a new $200 million logistics base, Camp Arifjan, south of Kuwait City. » Se rappelle-t-on encore qu'en moins de temps (6 mois), les USA avaient déployé 600.000 hommes en 1990 autour de l'Irak ? Qu'en un an à peu près, en 1943-44, ils avaient déployé un million d'hommes en Angleterre pour le débarquement de Normandie, avec bien moins de moyen de transport et bien plus d'obstacles que l'un ou l'autre régime arabe récalcitrant, — la flotte sous-marine d'Hitler, ce n'était pas rien ?)

Tout cela finit par créer un climat extraordinaire dont O'Neill rend compte dans son article, et qui est bien mesuré par sa phrase d'introduction : « Now I'm confused. » Nous le citons abondamment, car il mérite une lecture attentive. Notre recommandation est moins de le lire en fonction des faits qu'il mentionne, ou plutôt de l'interprétation de faits qu'il avance, qu'en fonction de la conclusion implicite mais très puissante qui se dégage de cet écrit, là aussi. Cette conclusion porte sur le climat de Washington (et Washington seulement, comme le précise de façon très précise Matthew Engel : « ...the whole city, yet I have caught no sign of it anywhere outside Washington »). Cette hypothèse sur l'importance centrale de la psychologie collective washingtonienne, qui serait une création extraordinaire du virtualisme qui domine cette ville, est bouleversante pour l'appréciation de la crise. Elle rend incertain toute analyse prospective sur les événements à venir, d'autant que la situation rend compte chaque jour, de plus en plus précisément, de cette contradiction qui apparaît formidable entre l'emportement belliciste, l'appréciation que tout ce qui n'est pas la guerre comme perspective est « unthinkable », et d'autre part une pusillanimité de plus en plus visible, avec notamment la poursuite des querelles fratricides internes, dans la préparation de cette guerre.

Voici la deuxième partie de l'article de O'Neill, avec la recommandation d'usage (“Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”).

« The US stance against Iraq has demonstrated America's global dominance today, its unchallenged unipolar position in the post-Cold War world. There may be little enthusiasm among some European politicians and Arab states for a war on Iraq, but none has seriously opposed the Bush administration's plans. Even Germany, whose leader Gerhard Schroeder won re-election in September 2002 largely on a ticket of opposing an invasion of Iraq, has capitulated — agreeing to US/UN action against Iraq if necessary, and even offering German troops for the mission.

» But at the same time, the Iraq issue has exposed the US elite's fear of going it alone in international affairs — as reflected in its toing and froing with the UN over Iraq. America may be the unipolar power, but it increasingly sees its power as more of a burden than an opportunity; it holds world power, but it seems uncertain about what to do with it. Ignore the widespread claims about US leaders using Iraq to assert their ambitions for Empire — in truth, there is little appetite for unilateral initiative today, even within the mighty America.

» The contradiction between America's unchallenged power and its fear and uncertainty is best captured in the National Security Strategy document, published at the height of the Iraqi war talk in September 2002. The document declares America's absolute power today, claiming that “the United States possesses unprecedented and unequalled strength and influence in the world”.

» But in the next breath the document says that America is threatened, not by other powers, but by handfuls of isolated and dangerous individuals around the world. “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones”, it says. “We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few.”

» Even as the USA declares its ultimate power it flags up the risks it apparently faces from handfuls of people around the world, from “failing states” like Saddam's. This inverted notion of America vs the “embittered few” reveals far more about the US elite's state of mind than it does about the real balance of power in international relations. It captures the clash between America's unquestioned power and its uncertainty about how to wield that power — a contradiction that has been writ large in Mighty America's dithering over what to do about Failing Iraq.

» The Iraqi stand-off also reveals the gap between the USA's military might and prowess, and its caution about putting that military might to use. In recent weeks, the US has positioned 60,000 troops, 200 planes and 24 Apache helicopters in or around the Gulf, and has launched practice invasions and operations in the Gulf state of Qatar — demonstrating its massive military capability not only to the Middle East, but also to the world.

» But US officials have expressed caution about sending such forces into action. US military leaders worry that “political leaders do not understand the commitment involved in such an invasion”. Gulf War syndrome has reared its ugly head again, with transatlantic debates about whether a new Gulf War will “cause serious illness in a new generation of Western troops”. And then there's the weather. Some military officials claim that an invasion would be impossible during Iraq's biting winter, while others claim it would be difficult to pull off during Iraq's sweltering summer.

» US forces are happy to show off their might in Qatar and in announcements about a 250,000-strong invasion to destroy Saddam's regime, but when it comes to making such threats a reality, other things get in the way. America may have the military means to destroy Iraq, but it seems devoid of the willpower or the convincing case for doing so.

» The Iraq crisis has also exposed the contradiction between US claims of unity and the reality of disunity. US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice claims that “the administration is united on [the question] of Saddam” — but the facts tell a different story. Far from uniting America around a common sense of purpose and mission, the Iraq war talk seems only to have exposed differences and brought deep divisions to the fore.

» According to the UK Telegraph, “With war appearing more likely by the day there are still bitter divisions between uniformed officers and civilian officials in the Pentagon over how it should be waged”. Another report claims that “divisions in the White House are intensifying by the day, as officials disagree profoundly over the Iraqi crisis”.

» Such deep disagreements are often depicted as personality clashes. For the London Times, “Personality clashes…have frustrated the war planning”. No doubt there's a personal element to many of the disagreements, particularly those between dove Colin Powell and hawk Donald Rumsfeld, who are described by one US journalist as the “chalk and cheese” of the administration.

» But there is much more to these clashes than personality. They reflect far bigger disagreements about the meaning of America today: about America's role in the world, whether it should be more interventionist or more isolationist; about what kind of image America should project for itself, whether as old-fashioned conqueror or new-fangled nation-builder; about how America should cultivate relationships with people in the third world, whose apparent hatred of the USA has sent shockwaves through the Bush administration; and about the use of military force, and whether American casualties can justify the overthrow of Saddam.

» Beneath the debates about Iraq are deeper divisions within the post-Culture Wars USA about what kind of nation America is, and how it should assert its power in the modern era — the very disagreements that something like the war talk over Iraq attempted to overcome, by giving the US elite a cohering mission.

» But the fact that the clashes over Iraq have gone so public reflects the American elite's lack of a cohering mission today. As the New York Times points out, US leaders often have private squabbles about foreign ventures, but for such squabbles to go public is “exceptional”: “This dispute is being played out publicly, through official statements and surreptitious leaks — a common practice when it comes to tax policy but extremely rare with military strategy.” When US leaders have little sense of what ties them together, of what values and ideas they all agree on, there is little to stop their deep divisions spilling from inside the White House on to the front page of our morning papers.

» The American elite cannot resolve its internal divisions by trying to look impressive in Iraq — and indeed, domestic uncertainty about America's role only seems to have followed US leaders from Washington to the Gulf. Maybe Bush and co should turn their attention to the real problems besetting the American elite — and leave the Iraqi people alone to resolve theirs. »