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3231Cet ensemble analytique comprend principalement deux textes et s’articulent principalement autour d’un livre.
• Le premier des deux textes est paru le 14 septembre 2002 sur le site Defense and the National Interest, auquel nous avons déjà plusieurs fois fait référence et qui est sans aucun doute un site de grande qualité. L’auteur du texte est notre mystérieux “Dr. Werther”, auteur de plusieurs articles, dont un sur un “Plan Schlieffen nucléaire”. Le texte développe l’hypothèse d’une “panique” et de la probabilité d’une guerre préventives contre l’Irak, entretenues sciemment, après lattaque 9/11, pour permettre l’élargissement de la production d’armement.
• “Werther” se réfère au livre de Frank Kofsky, publié en 1993, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948. (St Martin’s Press et Palgrave Macmillan, 1993 & 1995). Il s’agit effectivement d’un document exceptionnel, qui introduit le deuxième texte.
• Il s’agit d’un texte de la rubrique Analyse de de defensa, Vol11 n°14 du 10 avril 1995, où nous nous attachions à l’analyse du livre de Kofsky autant qu’à l’appréciation de son hypothèse centrale. Nous pensons que ce deuxième texte complète bien celui du “Dr. Werther”.
Notre appréciation générale, à partir de l’hypothèse Werther et du livre de Kofsky, est que l’establishment de 2002-03 est bien plus cynique et bien plus inefficace (limité) que celui de 1948. Quoiqu’il en soit, nous ne pensons pas que “la panique de 2002-03”, qui est bien une mesure effective, ait la même efficacité que celle de 1948, ni même qu’elle soit longtemps contrôlable? C’est ce qu’on nomme sans doute : décadence.
September 14, 2002
Question
There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein is villain tailor-made for central casting: He murders and tortures the citizens of a country he rules despotically; he invaded his neighbors; he used chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds; he wants to build an atomic bomb; he flouts UN Security Council resolutions (but then so does Israel with the tacit approval of the United States - i.e., UNSCRs 242 and 338, which demand an end to the occupation of Palestinian land); and he has successfully thumbed his nose at and embarrassed the United States during the decade following his ''defeat'' in the Persian Gulf War.
But is Saddam enough of a clear and present danger to the United States to justify a unilateral pre-emptive war to remove him from power, if only Israel and perhaps the United Kingdom will support it with enthusiasm, while the rest of the world either opposes it or is muscled into grudgingly accepting it?
The Case for War
In the opening passage of the first chapter of The Art of War, Sun Tzu said, ''Military action is important to the nation - it is the ground of death and life, the path of survival and destruction, so it is imperative to examine it.''
With that statement, Sun Tzu laid out a clear-eyed dispassionate procedure for determining the wisdom of going to war. His method was what we would call a ''net assessment'' -- i.e., a comparison of your own strengths and weaknesses to those of the enemy. Significantly, his point of departure was not technology or strategy, but morality - he began by comparing the degree of harmony of interests among the leaders and the led of each country in terms of humaneness, justice, benevolence and faithfulness because danger breeds mistrust -- within as well as among adversaries.
About the only thing that is clear in the ongoing debate of whether America should go to war with Iraq is that Sun Tzu's sage advice is not being followed. What we see instead is a polemical debate fueled a poisonous mix of 24/7 sound bytes and yellow journalism laced with the smell of hidden agendas.
For almost a year, proponents of a unilateral pre-emptive war against Iraq have been carpet-bombing the op-ed pages and airwaves with claims that Saddam is trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, particularly an atomic bomb. (By the late 1990s, the U.S. Intelligence Community estimated that Israel possessed between 75-130 atomic bombs, according to the Federation of Atomic Scientists.) When Saddam gets these weapons, we are told repeatedly, he will use them or threaten to use them against our interests. The United States must act now, because if we wait, it will be too late. Given this dire possibility, we are told, the United States, as the world's last superpower, has not only the moral right, but an obligation, to remove Saddam from power, unilaterally if necessary.
This argument has been hyped occasionally with dark insinuations that Saddam is somehow connected with and likely to give these weapons to terrorists like Osama bin Ladin or Timothy McVeigh.
Gapology and Fear of the Future
A more sober reflection, however, reveals that the construction of this argument takes the familiar form of an allegation about a future gap. In this case, it is a gap between what Saddam might be capable of doing and our inability to deter or defeat it if he is ready to make his move. Of course, the likelihood that such a gap will eventually materialize is unknowable.
What is known is that no one to date has produced any evidence that Saddam now possesses the capability to launch such a devastating attack on American interests. To be sure, Saddam wants to build an atomic bomb and he has subverted and resisted the UN inspections imposed on him after the Gulf War. Moreover, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal [Ref 1 below], United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq found a workable design for a Hiroshima-sized bomb. But it also said Iraq is years away from having the capability either (1) to manufacture enough highly enriched uranium out of naturally occurring uranium to make the bomb or (2) to design, test, and manufacture a workable weapon delivery system, assuming one Saddam could buy or steal forty pounds weapons grade uranium. The President's September 12 speech to the UN did not contain any factual information to refute this story. [Mr. Bush's speech is Ref 2 below, and the twenty-one page background paper of supporting information is attached separately Adobe Acrobat pdf format].
The question of urgency is crucial to this argument. Lost in the debate is the fact that Saddam is in his mid-sixties and has been reported to be in failing health. He lives in perpetual fear of being murdered. He is afraid to eat without having a taster check his food; he moves unpredictably and almost never sleeps in the same place twice; he has dozens of ''look alikes'' to confuse his movements. Whether he is assassinated or dies of illness or old age, he is not likely to be around much longer. So why must we act now, particularly since a war against Iraq will shift our focus away from the task of neutralizing the threat posed by the al Qaeda terrorists who definitely acted against our interest when they murdered so many Americans on Sept 11, 2001?
Some counter by saying that the time needed to achieve an atomic capability is not even a relevant determinant of immediate action. Simply having the technical knowledge and intention to use it are enough of a threat to justify Saddam's removal in the short term. But look where this ''reasoning'' takes us: The scientific and engineering principles needed to design a simple fission bomb are well known and widely available in open source literature, including university textbooks and on the internet. Saddam's removal will not reduce the availability of this knowledge. So the addition of the ''knowledge argument'' introduces a distinction without a difference and the allegation reduces again to the question of whether we are justified in removing any national leader who wants to build a bomb. That opens the door to a long list of unsavory characters around the world and sets the stage for a foreign policy of perpetual pre-emptive war. Suppose the Cali Cartel wants a nuc -- do we wage a pre-emptive war in Colombia?
On the other hand, facts and reason have never been needed for gap-o-logical threat analyses, particularly those that invoke quasi-religious invocations of evil intentions. In fact, it is the absence of hard information about a dangerous unknowable future possibility that is central to its emotive power. One need only look at the recurring threat gaps of the Cold War to see why.
It was a fear of the unknowable future, for example, that set the terms of debate about the existence a Bomber Gap in the 1950s, the Missile Gap in the 1960s, and the Window of Vulnerability in the 1970s. That each of these gaps turned out to be the fantasies or outright falsehoods concocted by fevered imaginations did not matter. That they helped to militarize foreign policy during the Cold War did not matter. The conjuring of gaps in the future served contemporary domestic political agendas: they helped destroy political opponents, they helped to win elections, and they fed the ravenous factions of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) by helping to jack up defense budgets.
But the politics of fear generated by cold war gapology are very different from their new incarnation. During the Cold War, these politics took place within the context of a military doctrine of stable ''war avoidance,'' known as deterrence - or the idea that the enemy would always know that he could never destroy America's ability to annihilate him, even if he mounted a perfectly executed surprise attack. In contrast, the Iraq debate marries a gap-o-logical threat construction to a doctrine of pre-emptive war - a doctrine of war making. This makes for a far more incendiary mixture in the politics of fear.
The argument about the need for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq also differs from earlier gap-o-logical constructions in another equally important albeit supremely ironic respect.
Earlier fears of unknowable future threats were about raising money for the MICC in the context of Cold War domestic politics - and the Soviet Union was a present, if misapprehended danger that could not be ignored. Furthermore, Cold-War gapologies never directly threatened the concept national sovereignty, which is enshrined as the basic legal building of the world order by Charter of the United Nations -- a creation of United the States. In fact, one might argue that these earlier gapologies, for all their smarmy limitations, reinforced the idea of maintaining a stable order. It is indeed ironic, therefore, that while the United States is fighting its first Fourth Generation War a war against a global network of terrorists, who are eating away at the nation-state system like termites from below, the proponents of unilateral pre-emptive war would use the overwhelming military power of the United States like a wrecking ball to reinforce that attack by bashing the nation-state system from the above.
Good Wholesome Fear
Fear of the unknown - or what Hitler reportedly called good wholesome fear -- is one of the oldest, most powerful, and dangerous of polemical devices. Once it sets the terms of a political debate, it becomes incumbent on the other side to rebut it by proving a double negative - namely that something unknowable will not exist - which is logically impossible. Add in a sound-byte addicted pop culture and contemporary 24/7 yellow journalism, and we have the ingredients of a devil's brew that can tempt leaders and people alike into making self-referential moral judgments that result in dangerously misguided foreign policies. This is not the kind of harmony and faithfulness of effort that Sun Tzu had in mind when he admonished his readers to examine dispassionately the supremely important question of war.
We also know also from the history of earlier gaps in the Cold War, not to mention the political history of mankind in general, that an injection of good wholesome fear into a political debate is usually an indicator of hidden agendas often with very different goals - which is the opposite of Sun Tzu's idea of faithfulness.
Given these high stakes and the historical connection between good wholesome fear and hidden agendas, it is incumbent on the citizenry of any constitutional republic to protect their democracy by being skeptical, by probing the allegations being made by the war factions, and by testing both the allegations and the factions themselves for the existence of hidden agendas or unspoken aims.
With this in mind, I asked my good friend, the brilliant Dr. Werther, for his analysis of the ongoing war scare - is it real or are there other factors to consider? Once again, Werther has surprised me with a fascinating hypothesis. He argues below that the War Scare of 2002 is in many ways analogous to the now-forgotten War Scare of 1948, only this time, it is being orchestrated by a predatory elite with an agenda wildly at odds with those of an average American. The Werther Report follows as Part II to this blaster.
Coincidently, Jason Vest, another occasional contributor to the Blaster, published an essay in The Nation that paints a grim portrait of one of the factions in Werther's predatory elite - what Vest calls the Men from JINSA And CSP. Vest describes how the operations and influence of a loose coalition of individuals are unified by (1) the strident advocacy of bigger military budgets—many are consultants or work in think tanks funded by defense contractors), (2) near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control, and (3) zealous championing of a ''Likudnik Israel.'' The Vest Report is reproduced as Part III (with permission) of this blaster (NDLR : Ce qui est nommé “Vest Report” est accessible par ailleurs sur ce site.)
I urge you to read the Werther and Vest Reports very slowly and very carefully. Then judge for yourself whether the American people have a right to demand an extended dispassionate debate over the most monumental question that can face the citizens of a democratic republic. .
By Dr. Werther* [End notes attached]
Introduction
''War fever has gripped the Capitol . . . Generally, people here have come to feel that war is on the way. They're resigned to it . . . The atmosphere in Washington is no longer a postwar atmosphere. It is, to put it bluntly, a prewar atmosphere.''
Does that sound like the mental climate inside the Beltway circa September 2002?
Actually, the above statements are excerpts from newspaper accounts of the war scare of March 1948. This little-remembered incident has been described in detail by Frank Kofsky in his book, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948. (Palgrave Macmillan, February 1995).
This essay will summarize Kosfky's thesis, evaluate its accuracy, and apply any putative lessons to the current ''crisis'' with Iraq in order to determine whether there is an underlying structure in both situations that allows us to reach valid conclusions about how U.S. national security policy really works.
Baking the Scary Soufflé Betty Crocker Style
To simplify, Kofsky sees the following as the ingredients of the war scare of 1948:
1. The aviation industry had plummeted from being the largest U.S. industry in 1945 to 44th in 1947 and was near bankruptcy. Knowing they could neither survive in a commercial market nor be seen accepting a direct government subsidy (much less endure nationalization), aviation executives lobbied relentlessly for increased military procurement contracts. But Congress would only loosen the purse strings if there was a commensurate threat; as Lawrence D. Bell, president of Bell Aircraft remarked in September 1947, ''as soon as there is a war scare, there is a lot of money available.''
2. The European Recovery Program [ERP aka the ''Marshall Plan''], the centerpiece of Secretary of State George C. Marshall's agenda, had dim chances of passage by a parsimonious Congress. The only prospect for ERP's enactment was if it were seen to be essential for preventing Western Europe from falling under Soviet domination. And that perception, in turn, could only arise if the Soviet Union were seen to be planning to do so either by subversion or outright invasion.
3. The military was remorselessly jockeying for bigger budgets. The Air Force wanted 70 wings of combat aircraft; the Army wanted to expand and was lobbying for reinstatement of a peacetime draft (Secretary Marshall, the erstwhile Army chief of staff, had his own hobbyhorse: Universal Military Training [UMT]). But absent a threat, President Truman's budget experts saw increased military spending as inflationary in a economy just emerging from World War II price controls. And absent a threat, no Congressman aspiring to re-election would vote to draft his constituents.
4. In the election year of 1948 President Truman was unpopular as an economic slowdown loomed. But the President and his advisors were aware of the rally-round-the-flag effect. As White House Counsel Clarke Clifford wrote in late 1947, ''There is considerable political advantage to the Administration in its battle with the Kremlin. The worse matters get . . . the more there is a sense of crisis. In times of crisis, the American citizen tends to back up his President.'' But a crisis would be beneficial in another way: by saving the aviation industry and facilitating passage of ERP (which many economists have argued was really a mammoth export subsidy to American industry), a war scare would also be a jobs stimulus before the Presidential election.
Intelligence Estimates Distorted
Thus the ingredients of the war scare soufflé. But how to make it rise? As Kofsky tells it, key members of the administration used the imposition of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia in early 1948 as the pretext. And this was no mere case of the national security elite taking counsel of their fears: the CIA, the service intelligence agencies, the State Department Policy Planning Staff, and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow were unanimous: the takeover did not portend an armed attack on Western Europe; it was more likely a defensive reaction to the proposed ERP, and if, anything, represented Stalin's attempt to consolidate the sphere of influence he was conceded by Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta and reaffirmed by Truman himself at Potsdam. [1]
Furthermore, U.S. intelligence judged the Soviet Union so devastated by the Second World War as to be too weak and war-weary to undertake a military operation against Western Europe for almost a decade to come. [2]
The Scare Kicks in
But administration officials, while privately conceding the intelligence estimates were correct, devised a plan to convince Congress and the American people that war was imminent.
Secretary of Defense Forrestal, a relentless hawk, induced the military governor of Germany, General Lucius Clay, to write a letter stating, in ominous but vague words, that it was his ''feeling'' that the Soviets were planning war. In a Machiavellian stroke Forrestal made sure the letter, which was worthless as an intelligence estimate, was classified so as to increase its allure. Second-hand summaries of the classified document were soon circulating around Washington, giving birth to the war scare of March 1948.
Secretary Marshall, seeking to induce Congress to pass ERP before the administration's self-imposed April 1 deadline, added his mite to the effort. The normally grave, unflappable Marshall, who unlike Forrestal, did not have a reputation as a superhawk, gave an extensive series of speeches comparing Stalin to Hitler, invoking Munich, and hinting, in elliptical fashion, that war was around the corner. The public could not help but be concerned if the taciturn Marshall, whose reputation was higher than the President's and all but above criticism, began warning of war.
The ''crisis'' reached its apex on March 17 when Truman addressed Congress. Employing much the same rhetoric as Marshall, the President asked for speedy and unamended passage of ERP and prompt passage of both the draft and UMT. Unmentioned, though, was a request for supplemental military spending.
Then the military services roared through the breach opened by Forrestal, Marshal, and Truman with their trademark subtlety.
Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington blithely claimed in Congressional hearings that the Soviet Air Force was superior to that of the U.S.
The Secretary of the Navy lied to Congress when told the whopper that Soviet subs were ''sighted off our coasts'' - a spectacular allegation given the fresh memories of the Germans' U-Boat campaign in 1942, which slaughtered hundreds of vessels literally within sight of the shore. [3]
The Army, for its part, concocted the fantasy that the Red Army could mobilize ''320 line divisions'' in 30 days.
Pulling in the Reins
By the beginning of April, the war scare had gotten out of hand. The public was becoming genuinely frightened. Once the Marshall Plan had been enacted, Truman and Marshall tried to walk the horse back into the barn. The President at one point even declared that the USSR was a ''friendly power.''
But the services continued to beat the war drums, and Congress, then as now not wanting to appear ''weak on defense,'' passed the draft and gave the Pentagon a 30 percent budget increase, with aircraft procurement increasing by 57 percent.
Genesis of the Cold War
Thus the short run goals of the war scare were met: increased defense spending (particularly on aviation), conscription, ERP, and improved political stature for the President.
But in the longer term, the results were baneful: When on May 10 and May 17 the Soviets tendered proposals for negotiating their differences with the United States in Europe, the United States rejected them. Kofsky believes that not only had the administration become locked by events into its anti-Soviet rhetoric, but that rejection of Soviet offers served the Truman-Clifford political strategy of both outmaneuvering Congressional Republicans and whipping dissident Henry Wallace Democrats into line.[4]
After the rejection of its diplomatic overtures and facing U.S. advocacy of a West German state and a North Atlantic military alliance, the Soviets evidently believed they had nothing to lose by adopting a hard line. After having followed an inconsistent policy of announcing inspections of all traffic entering and leaving the Western sectors of Berlin, and then quietly canceling the orders, Stalin moved to blockade Berlin in June 1948.
As Kofsky would have it, the war scare made virtually inevitable a cold war which for four decades bloated the military budget and paralyzed the cerebra of American officials.
But has Kofsky painted a true picture?
The Soviets' reaction to the war scare, it seems to me, is somewhat conjectural, despite the plausible sequence of events: correlation cannot be proved to be causation. The Soviet dictator's moves may have resulted from a different dynamic that remains to be discovered in the Russian State Archive. Likewise, there is no record of explicit decisions having been taken within the U.S. government to initiate a war scare – although it is hardly likely that experienced bureaucratic operators would have set such a policy down on paper.
Yet the preponderance of evidence suggests Kofsky is on to something.
He has painstakingly documented a deliberate ratcheting up of war scare rhetoric that is too abrupt to be happenstance, to convenient to be innocent, and conducted in defiance of intelligence estimates which officials were both cognizant of and agreed with. Finally, while superhawks like Forrestal were always crying wolf, the contemporary statements of players like Marshall and Clifford are so inconsistent with their professed views before and after the event that there is a powerful circumstantial case that the war scare was fabricated for political gain.
The Myth of the Wise Statesmen
Intentionally or not, one of the greatest services Kofsky performs in his granular search of the record of March 1948 is to debunk the myth of George C. Marshall. Two generations of gilding and varnishing by hagiographers have elevated Marshall to virtual godhood. But behind the pained expression and noble bearing, Marshall comes across - in his own words - as a duplicitous manipulator and cutthroat political operative. Since Marshall and his early postwar colleagues like Lucius Clay and Robert Lovett have been elevated to American secular sainthood second only to that of the generation of the Founders, his all-too human propensity for peddling snake oil suggests the historical record is in need of revision.
Likewise, the myth surrounding Give 'Em Hell Harry, the feisty regular guy who told it like it was. This comforting fairy tale must recede before a more definitive narrative: of an opportunist who denounced his Republican opponents (who were in general opposed to increased military spending and the draft) as ''fascists,'' and who smeared those in his own party who favored a negotiated settlement in Europe as Communist sympathizers. The run-up to the election of 1948, which has loomed so large in political lore, must yield to a more prosaic explanation: Truman and his advisors deliberately stirred up a war scare to improve their election chances. Those who believe that statement to be libelous should re-read Clark Clifford's statement quoted above. [5]
The Iraq Obsession and the Crony Capitalists
Let us now apply the templates of favoritism towards business lobbies, falsified intelligence, and political manipulation to the crise du jour: the public relations campaign against Iraq.
At first blush, the similarities are tenuous: unlike the aviation and other military industries at the close of World War II, the ''defense'' sector is a trivial proportion of the overall economy (just as all manufacturing has declined in importance). Likewise, ''big oil,'' often cited as a factor in U.S. policy, is not preponderant in economic terms. Why shouldn't health care, real estate, or retail sales wield far greater political clout, as their respective proportions of the economy would dictate?
Kofsky's thesis that the cold war created a ''permanent war economy'' in the United States is slightly askew. While by every measure (proportion of GDP, workers employed, etc.) the war sector has been declining for decades, the significant fact that Kofsky understates is that the early cold war created political linkages between munitions makers and government that generate disproportionate influence.
One who doubts this should observe the political infighting over a weapon system that involves only a small fraction of the jobs of, say, an automobile model subject to Federal regulation, or the putative effect of an economic policy on retail employment. The salient fact is that the ''defense'' sector is a complete dependency of Federal largesse, and has therefore honed its political lobbying skills to the point where it is hard to distinguish government officials from industry executives (they move seamlessly from one sector to the other).
The same applies to big oil. From Wilson's 1914 Mexican intervention to FDR's 1945 promise to defend Saudi Arabia in perpetuity to the appointment by President Bush (Harkin Oil) and Vice President Cheney (Halliburton) of Zalmay Khalilzad (Unocal) as special emissary to Afghanistan, the oil interest has always lurked at periscope depth beneath the surface of America's ''humanitarian'' foreign policy.
Like the arms manufacturers, oil relies on a one-sided bargain: privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Just as the sole-source cost-plus contract keeps the defense contractors safe from the gales of competition, so does American muscle protect pipelines in Colombia, oil fields in Kuwait, and the dreams of investors in Central Asia.
Does this tail wag the dog of U.S. government policy? The evidence is anecdotal, but the piling-up of recent examples is so extensive that it cannot be ignored. As nervous investors hope the stock market can arrest its long, erratic slide since March 2000, one would expect a governing elite that is as politically responsive to economic conditions as, say, Truman was in 1948, to follow policies that would benefit the general economy and the overall world economic climate. But unlike the World War II period, when America was overwhelmingly a manufacturing economy and the military sector was a large subset, the present-day United States as a whole does not benefit from high military spending and an atmosphere of ''pre-war crisis.''
Stock Meltdown: Your 401(k) at the Mercy of the War Party
Observers now overwhelmingly say the sliding of stock markets worldwide and the poor economic outlook are being exacerbated by the incessant drumbeat of war talk from the U.S. government. [6] Yet the administration not only blithely continues to rachet up the war scare (the volume of noise was higher in August than it was in May, and we can be sure it will be at a fever pitch in October, prior to the election).
The Washington Post reported on August 6 that factions within the government (particularly on the Defense Policy Board) are advocating a military take-over of the Saudi oil fields, which must inevitably bring with it the U.S. occupation and administration of the Arabian peninsula of one million square miles, to include the holy sites of Mecca and Medinah. A strategy better calculated to ignite popular uprisings from Morocco to the Sunda Straight, flood Al Qaeda with recruits, and collapse the world economy can hardly be imagined. Predictably, the following day, the Post reported that the Bush Administration disavowed this war aim.
But I must re-emphasize, it is not necessary that the governing elite's war policy benefit the overall economy (and with it the average citizen and taxpayer); it is merely required that the policy benefit those narrow sectors that prop up the elite. After all, imperialism was always a losing proposition for Britain - or at least the majority of British subjects, as attested by this passage which sounds eerily like the global operations of Halliburton:
''Overseas railways often did not pay those who invested money in them, but they paid those who built them and those who peddled their shares. The Boer War cost the British taxpayer a great deal of money, but South Africa also produced many millionaires. Clearly, imperialism brought economic gain to some people, if not to the imaginary national community, and the lucky few could hire journalists to bamboozle the many.''[7]
Threat Inflation and the Climate of Fear
Just as the war scares of 1948 and 2002 are both predicated on economic gain - albeit the present case is based on narrow sectors who paradoxically benefit as the rest of the economy weakens – the present Iraq crisis is based on systematic falsification of evidence by government officials and their operatives in and out of government: as was the bomber gap in the 1950s, the missile gap in the 1960s, and the window of vulnerability in the 1970s.
Is Saddam Hussein a threat who cannot be contained? The Joint Chiefs of Staff appear to believe containment will work, but the successors of Forrestal, Clifford et al. consistently twist the evidence and prey on the restricted access to classified information, uncertainty, and fear to maneuver opponents into proving an oversimplified negative: that there is no bomber gap, no missile gap, no window of vulnerability (all now known to have been fictions) - or in the current war scare, that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction, has no development program, and is not contemplating any.
Likewise, at the height of the Anthrax scare last October, some civilian officials such as Richard Perle began fingering Saddam Hussein as the source of the attacks - despite emerging evidence that the ultimate source of the anthrax may have been the U.S. government itself. [8] In similar fashion, no matter how often the intelligence agencies or the Czechs themselves beat down the story of the Mohammed Atta rendezvous in Prague, Forrestal's spiritual descendants continue to revive the canard. [9]
But today's operatives have carried the pathology of falsification and manipulation well beyond the bounds that Forrestal or Marshall would have contemplated. For the past month, the world has witnessed a soap opera of Pentagon civilian operatives [most of whom never served in uniform] routinely leaking what purport to be U.S. war plans in cavalier disregard for the lives of their fellow citizens who wear military uniforms.
Like the war scare of 1948, the war scare of 2002 may have worked too well: people are becoming ''genuinely frightened,'' and resistance to the elite's war plans is increasing. [10] Congress and the public are starting to demand hard evidence of Saddam's alleged arsenal. No doubt the coming months will see the administration produce superficially convincing ''proof'' that will persuade many, especially on Capitol Hill. But will this ''proof'' be any more genuine than the Soviet subs of 1948 or the bomber gap, especially as the classified intelligence on which it is supposedly based will be subject to dispassionate scrutiny only years from now? The reader can draw his own conclusion.
Conclusion: A Predatory Elite
Frank Kofsky has performed a useful service by stripping away the accretion of myth that has veiled the opening stage of the cold war. But the pathologies he found in embryo have metastasized.
The crony capitalists who back the current war policy have economic interests wildly at odds with those of the average American citizen. Their operatives in the government no longer bluff about war and pull back from the brink but deliberately plot aggressive war and delight in the attention and power their leaks give them. They have become a reckless, predatory elite.
''Imperialism is a depraved choice of national life, imposed by self-seeking interests which appeal to the lusts of quantitative acquisition and of forceful domination surviving in a nation from early centuries of animal struggle for existence . . . It is the besetting sin of all successful States, and the penalty is unalterable in the order of nature.'' [11]
The author of that passage, J.A. Hobson, consistent with the views of Gibbon, Spengler, and Toynbee, believed imperialism automatically begets its own penalty, one that is ''unalterable in the order of nature.'' Our elites, who worship something called ''American exceptionalism,'' believe otherwise.
These predatory elites are now rolling dice in a game that risks other people's money and spills other people's blood.
* Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.
[1] The postwar alibi of Churchill acolytes that the ''appeasement'' of Yalta was all FDR's fault is not convincing: already in October 1944, Churchill flew to Moscow to work out a spheres-of-influence deal with Stalin that largely mirrored Yalta - without Roosevelt being present.
[2] The catastrophic human and material losses were underplayed by the Soviet government for decades. Some recent estimates state that the Soviet Union lost as many as 27 million dead [Richard Overy, Russia's War].
[3] The Office of Naval intelligence could offer no evidence of such sub sightings. Its own estimates said that the Soviet Navy would be unable to mount continuing, overseas operations until 1957.
[4] Truman's later exasperation with Senator Joseph McCarthy notwithstanding, it was the President himself who uncorked the ''Communist subversion'' genie in his denunciation of Henry Wallace's followers during the war scare - two years before McCarthy's Wheeling speech.
[5] A corrective to David McCullough's hagiographic portrayal of Truman is a balanced and thoroughly researched biography by Alonzo L. Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman.
[6] The exception is MSNBC economics correspondent Lawrence Kudlow, who believes an attack on Iraq will add 2000 points to the Dow. As a card-carrying neoconservative, Kudlow's views on most subjects are sufficiently demented as to give further weight to those who believe an attack on Iraq would have adverse economic consequences, such as the Tenon accounting group in Britain, who forecast that an Iraq war would depress world economic output by almost one trillion dollars.
[7] A.J.P. Taylor, Essays in English History.
[8] ''Iraq 'behind US anthrax outbreaks:' Pentagon hardliners press for strikes on Saddam,'' Observer [UK] October 14, 2001.
[9] ''White House says Sept. 11 skyjacker had met Iraqi agent,'' Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2002.
[10) An ABC News poll conducted on August 29 showed public support for an attack on Iraq down 13 points in only two weeks. Support drops further to a 39 percent minority if U.S. allies oppose it. Earlier last month it was a 54 percent majority.
[11] J.A. Hobson, Imperialism.
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Reprise du texte Analysis, de la lettre d'analyse dedefensa & eurostratégie du 10 avril 1995.
On l'a déjà écrit (1), la vision historique américaine de la Guerre Froide est dans une phase de révision fondamentale. Les ambitions, la profondeur et les effets de ce mouvement devraient reléguer au second plan les entreprises révisionnistes déjà lancées sur cette époque, dans d'autres périodes (leur but était essentiellement de type idéologique, destiné à faire prévaloir une thèse politique générale ; si elles apportaient des précisions intéressantes, elles n'en constituaient pas moins des appréciations limitées). Comme pour la plupart des mouvements importants aux États-Unis, les Européens, en général plus attachés aux liens formels de sujétion (type atlantistes) et fort peu à la compréhension de l'évolution du phénomène américain, mettront un certain temps à découvrir l'ampleur du phénomène.
Pour notre part, nous ajoutons ce qui nous paraît un jalon important dans ce mouvement général, avec le livre Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948, A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation, de Frank Kofsky, un professeur d'histoire de l'université de Californie (2). Nous ne cacherons pas avoir été victime en partie du même phénomène que nous suggérons plus haut : the War Scare of 1948 a été publié en 1993 et nous n'en parlons qu'en 1995. Deux ans, à notre époque de communications intensives, c'est beaucoup.
[Mentionnons cet autre phénomène en passant : certes, deux ans c'est beaucoup si nous pensons que ce livre apporte une contribution essentielle à la mise à nue d'une époque si importante. Pourtant, il n'a guère eu d'écho aux États-Unis également, où nous n'avons relevé aucune publication (critique, recension, etc.) à son propos. Pourquoi ? Une première hypothèse est qu'il transgresse une règle très importante de notre époque : il décloisonne les spécialités. Le sujet concerne l'industrie aéronautique américaine, le Pentagone, le complexe militaro-industriel. En même temps, il concerne la politique occidentale, la sécurité européenne, notre analyse de la Guerre Froide, les fondements étranges de nos liens avec les États-Unis, et ainsi de suite. Une seconde hypothèse est que les thèses de Kofsky sont trop radicales pour n'avoir pas suscité un barrage de l'establishment. Dans ce cas, la meilleure arme est le silence. Sans doute les deux causes s'additionnent-elles.]
Que s'est-il passé réellement en février-avril 1948 à Washington ?, interroge Kofsky. « Dans un espace remarquablement court de deux mois, écrit-il, l'administration réussit à augmenter les dépenses programmées pour les commandes d'avions militaires de 57%, alors que le total alloué au Pentagone augmentait de 30%. Aucun président depuis — y compris Ronald Reagan à son époque de plus grande influence — n'a approché un tel bond spectaculaire dans les dépenses militaires en temps de paix »
Avant de lire ce qu'en dit Kofsky, on se référera à la chronique du temps. Fin février 1948 se déroula cet événement connu sous le nom de “coup de Prague” (prise du pouvoir par les communistes en Tchécoslovaquie). L'événement était, dans notre compréhension du temps, tout à fait considérable. Il marqua, peut-être plus sûrement que le blocus de Berlin (juin 1948) et le pont aérien qui suivit, la racine de cet état d'esprit qui engendra et accompagna le réarmement occidental dans la période désormais nommée Guerre Froide. Pour l'estimation historique généralement acceptée, le “coup de Prague” illustre de façon dramatique la politique expansionniste et subversive de l'Union Soviétique et du communisme, dans toute sa brutalité, dans cet immédiat après-guerre où Staline vieilli et malade régnait encore.
En Europe, sans aucun doute le “coup de Prague” fut le point d'orgue de la montée d'une crainte se transformant en panique (Scare en anglais) de la politique soviétique. La position de la France conditionnait l'évolution de la situation en Europe occidentale. La France était déjà un pays essentiel à cette époque, à cause de sa position stratégique centrale certes, mais aussi des hésitations qui avaient marqué sa politique étrangère depuis 1945 entre une position médiane entre URSS et USA (doctrine inspiré par les années de pouvoir de De Gaulle entre 1944 et 1946) et l'alignement sur les USA qui suivit. L'historien Irwing Wall remarque à propos de cette période : « Cet événement, (le “coup de Prague”) plus que tout autre, provoqua à Paris une véritable panique. Le message envoyé par Bidault (ministre français des affaires étrangères) au secrétaire d État américain le 4 mars exprime éloquemment les inquiétudes françaises et marque une date importante de la guerre froide ... » (3). C'est encore moins un hasard à cette lumière, si le traité de Bruxelles, fondateur de l'Union de l'Europe Occidentale et réduit alors à la France, au Royaume-Uni et aux pays du Benelux, fut signé le 18 mars 1948, moins d'un mois après le “coup de Prague”.
Aux États-Unis, que se passait-il ? L'administration Truman avait lancé ce qu'on nommera plus tard la “doctrine Truman”, mais les retombées sur sa politique étrangère restaient encore mineures. La réorganisation de l'appareil de sécurité nationale par le National Security Act de 1947 était d'abord un acte de portée intérieure, — et ce qu'écrit Kofsky doit grandement nous le confirmer. II s'agissait de réorganiser, du côté du gouvernement, une structure militaro-industrielle qui avait été tournée vers la guerre totale. Le 24 mars 1948, donc près d'un mois après le “coup de Prague”, Truman répondait à son secrétaire à la défense Forrestal et aux chefs d'état-major venus lui présenter des recommandations d'augmentation draconienne du budget du Pentagone: « I want a peace program, not a war program ». La préoccupation américaine était donc tout à fait intérieure encore à cette époque : que fallait-il faire à l'égard des structures industrielles héritées de la guerre, et toute entière orientées vers la guerre ?
Ce débat plutôt de type industriel allait conditionner les événements décrits par Kofsky, et nullement les questions extérieures. A l'époque, les Américains envisageaient à peine la création de l'OTAN, et encore dans une forme très atténuée. Selon Wall : « La paternité de l'OTAN revient sans doute à Ernest Bevin (Premier ministre britannique). Après l'échec de la Conférence des ministres des Affaires étrangères (d'Europe occidentale) réunie à Londres en décembre 1947, c'est lui qui, avec l'accord de Bidault, proposa à Georges Marshall la création d'une alliance militaire entre les États-Unis et l'Europe occidentale pour résister à une agression soviétique. En un premier temps, le secrétaire d État se montra réticent... ». Avec le coup de tonnerre du “coup de Prague”, on comprend qu'on en vienne aussitôt à la signature du traité de Bruxelles n'incluant que les Européens, le 18 mars. A cette époque, les États-Unis étaient bien plus absents de l'Europe que ce que l'on a admis depuis, et cette période apparaît justement comme un pivot dans le débat réorientant les USA du néo-isolationnisme où ils étaient retournés vers un internationalisme anticommuniste. C'est toute la thèse de Kofsky, qui plaide implicitement toujours cette même idée que les raisons de cette évolution furent beaucoup plus intérieures qu'extérieures.
Il y a d'abord un aspect général, que Kofsky note sans le développer mais qu'on retrouve d'une manière récurrente dans l'analyse du comportement historique des États-Unis : la crainte que le pays ne retombe, après l'hyper-expansion industrielle de la guerre, dans la Grande Dépression. « La dépression des années 30 ? s'exclamait Norman Mailer en 1967. Nous ne l'avons pas réglée. Nous sommes entrés en guerre et c'est la guerre qui a fourni la solution ».
Kofsky estime que le mouvement puissant qui naquit à la fin de 1947 pour sauver une industrie aéronautique au bord de l'effondrement avait notamment pour cause la crainte qu'un tel événement catastrophique puisse à nouveau précipiter une dépression : « Avec le souvenir de la pire dépression encore vivace dans l'esprit du public, il existait une crainte constante et très forte qu'un effondrement économique puisse à nouveau intervenir ». Cette même crainte se trouvait, sous-jacente, de façon plus générale derrière toute entreprise économique considérée à cette époque. Ainsi, le “plan Marshall” (ou ERP pour European Recovey Programm) était-il destiné à rétablir un marché occidental (transatlantique) vital pour l'économie américaine, tout autant et même davantage que d'ériger une barrière contre l'expansion du communisme (il est bien évident que les deux objectifs se confondent : ce que nous tentons de déterminer est leur chronologie, donc lequel est la “cause première”). Dans les faits, les choses ne se présentaient pas aussi simplement. L'administration, particulièrement le secrétaire d'État Marshall, se heurtait au Congrès sur toutes ces questions. A la fin de l'hiver, Marshall n'était en rien assuré que l'ERP serait approuvé et recevrait les fonds nécessaires, et même on pourrait admettre qu'il avait la conviction du contraire. Kofsky montre aisément qu'à côté de cette préoccupation, le “coup de Prague” fut à cette époque perçue comme une péripétie par le Secrétaire d'État. II cite des analyses américaines suggérant que cette action modifiait peu l'équilibre des forces en Tchécoslovaquie, déjà favorable aux communistes et à Staline.
Puis, Marshall changea brusquement d'avis sur la tactique à suivre. Certains indices l'y conduisirent (dont le fameux “télégramme de Clay”, du nom du général Clay qui commandait la zone d'occupation en Allemagne, et qui livra une analyse particulièrement alarmiste sur les possibilités d'attaque-surprise des communistes dans les semaines à venir). Entre temps et sous l'impulsion de son secrétaire James Forrestal, le département de la défense avait entrepris de présenter au public et au Congrès l'image d'une situation brusquement dégradée, menaçant de mener les uns et les autres au bord du gouffre. Marshall s'était convaincu que cette rhétorique serait un argument déterminant pour convaincre les élus de voter l'ERP (qui refuserait cette aide aux pays qui risquaient de devenir l'avant-garde du front de l'Amérique ?).
Comme on voit, cette évolution d'une Amérique soudain sur le pied de guerre face à une menace supposée de guerre-surprise ressemble à un “montage” intérieur où le ministre de la défense a une place principale. Tout le monde n'en était pas averti (ce qui renforce l'hypothèse du montage). Le 25 mars 1948, alors que Forrestal exhortait la Commission sénatoriale des Forces Armées à voter des crédits supplémentaires pour le Pentagone face à « l'agression » et à la menace d'attaque-surprise de l'URSS, le président Truman décrivait ce même pays, dans une conférence de presse, comme « une nation amicale ». Il s'agissait de justifier des ventes de matériels divers à l'URSS, — dont quarante-six moteurs neufs de bombardiers B-24 de la guerre! — et en général de justifier le commerce avec l'URSS. Tout cela donnait, selon les explications de Truman, un excellent moyen de lutte contre la stagnation économique. Là aussi, on note la perception prioritaire du point de vue intérieur (comme dans les cas de Marshall et de Forrestal).
La situation était grave, mais il ne s'agissait pas de la Tchécoslovaquie. Ce qui avait amené Forrestal à se faire l'avocat ardent d'une relance des commandes d'armement, et par conséquent et au deuxième degré, de peindre les rapports avec l'URSS sous la couleur d'une brutale tension qui devait convaincre le Congrès de le suivre sur cette voie, c'était la situation de l'industrie de l'aéronautique.
Dans ce cas, Kofsky apporte des éléments inédits, et à notre sens, décisifs pour bien des appréciations : les délibérations du Air Coordination Counmittee (ACC), dont les archives n'ont pas été faciles à consulter (« Finalement, il m'a fallu deux voyages à Washington D.C. pour convaincre les ''National Archives ''de déclassifier et mettre à ma disposition les documents de l ACC que je voulais consulter »). La tâche de l'ACC, mise en place au début de 1947 et dissoute au début des années cinquante, était de coordonner les politiques des différents ministères et agences en matière aéronautique, et de présenter des recommandations pour une politique générale.
Dans quel état se trouvait l'industrie aéronautique lorsque l'ACC se pencha sur son sort ?
• D'abord ceci : plus qu'aucun autre industrie, elle avait tiré d'extraordinaires profits et le moyen d'une formidable expansion de la production de guerre. Les six plus importantes firmes (Boeing, Curtiss, Douglas, Lockheed, Martin, United Aircraft) virent leurs ventes combinées augmenter de plus de 60 fois entre 1939 et 1944, de 250 millions USD à 16,7 milliards USD, et leurs profits combinés augmenter de 244% pendant cette période. Prenant le cas de Boeing, Kofsky calcule qu'entre 1941 et 1945, ses investissements totalisèrent 15,9 millions USD et ses profits dépassèrent 60 millions USD. Les investissements furent essentiellement assurés par l'état, à hauteur de 92% pour toute l'industrie (3,428 milliards USD sur 3,721).
• L'effondrement des commandes et de l'activité fut radical en 1945. Sous la pression du public en août-septembre 1945, le Congrès ordonna une démobilisation accélérée (« Ce n'est pas une démobilisation, c'est une désintégration », commenta en décembre 1945 George Marshall, alors chef d'état-major de l'U.S. Army). L'industrie aéronautique, qui attendait effectivement un ralentissement radical de la production, ne le prévoyait pas si extrême. De plus, elle attendait une expansion maximale du transport civil et se tenait prête à y répondre (Douglas avait le DC-4 et le DC6, Martin le 02 et le 03, Boeing le Stratocruiser, Lockheed le Constellation, etc.). Les prévisions s'avérèrent erronées. Par exemple, le trafic aérien pour 1947 fut en général à peine supérieur (de 4 à 5%) à celui de 1946, et pour certaines compagnies, inférieur, alors qu'on prévoyait en 1946 une augmentation de 25 à 35%.
• L'industrie aéronautique avait investi puissamment dans le secteur civil et se retrouvait rapidement dans une situation proche de la banqueroute. En 1947 (année terminée le 30 novembre), Douglas enregistra une perte de 14,78 millions USD. C'était une situation typique de l'époque, après une année difficile (1945) et une première année de pertes (1946). « Le cas de Douglas a confirmé un point de vue déjà répandu. (...) Sans l'intervention du gouvernement pour régler la facture, la plupart des compagnies commerciales sont incapables d'opérer d'une manière rentable avec le seul secteur civil » (selon Aviation Week, décembre 1947).
L'évolution générale de cette industrie marque donc cette situation explosive : en 1939, le secteur aéronautique à ses débuts était le 43e de l'industrie américaine ; en 1943, il atteignait la première place, dans une industrie au sommet de sa production ; au début de 1948, il était retombée à la 44e place ... Dès juillet 1946, on retrouve dans les notes personnelles de Robert Gross, patron de Lockheed, l'idée que les 14 grosses compagnies aéronautiques US devront être réduites à 3 ou 4 en fonction du travail disponible.
Ainsi, dès 1947-48, s'était imposée aux industriels de l'aéronautique autant qu'aux officiels de l'administration Truman concernés par leur problème si considérable, cette réalité qui a finalement moins évolué qu'on pourrait croire : l'industrie aéronautique américaine, dans la forme structurelle qu'elle avait, n'était viable qu'au travers d'une intervention massive des pouvoirs publics. En Europe, une telle situation eût naturellement mené à une nationalisation technique (ce fut d'ailleurs souvent le cas). Aux États-Unis, il n'en était pas question. Pour Forrestal, banquier de Wall Street venu à la fonction publique au début de la guerre, la nationalisation c'était le socialisme, voire le communisme. En 1943, il allait jusqu'à exprimer l'idée que c'était à « l'industrie privée, [par son existence et son activité] de nous éviter un coup d'état marxiste ».
D'autre part, il fallait sauver l'industrie aéronautique. On l'a vu, il y avait la cause fondamentale de la crainte que l'effondrement de cette industrie amenât une réaction de panique en chaîne semblable à celle de 1929, et précipitât à nouveau l'Amérique dans la Dépression. Là encore, on retrouve, au travers de cette préoccupation purement intérieure, le signe que la Dépression constitue, bien plus que la Deuxième Guerre mondiale qui en fut principalement la cure comme le dit Mailer, l'événement fondamental pour l'Amérique au XXe siècle. Dans ce cas de l'aéronautique, il joua effectivement un rôle essentiel, alors que des concepts tels que la nécessité de maintenir la base industrielle aéronautique des États-Unis n'eurent qu'une place réduite.
Un autre point, plus particulier et encore plus délicat, concerne le rôle de la Chase Manhattan Bank de la famille Rockefeller, alors la première institution financière du monde. La Chase Manhattan avait investi massivement dans l'industrie aéronautique : en 1944, les avances et prêts qu'elle lui consentait atteignaient 276 millions USD en prêts industriels, 320,4 millions USD en prêts à court terme, 852 millions USD en prêts partiellement garantis par l'état, etc. Bien entendu, la Chase Manhattan ressentit l'effondrement de la fin de la guerre d'août 1945 à août 1947, les dépôts des compagnies aéronautiques à la banque passèrent de 85,4 millions USD à 16 millions. Avec la perspective de l'effondrement de l'industrie aéronautique, l'équilibre même de ta banque était en question.
La Chase Bank joua un rôle fondamental dans la relance de l'industrie aéronautique par le biais des commandes de l'état. Elle le put par l'influence énorme qu'elle avait sur le monde politique (tous les candidats républicains à la présidence avaient leurs campagnes payées par la Chase Manhattan, et les démocrates recevaient également des fonds). Forrestal, ancien banquier, était un ami intime de Winthrop Aldrich, beau-frère de John D. Rockefeller et directeur général de la Chase Manhattan. Au début 1948, une lettre du secrétaire à l'Air Force Stuart Symington à Aldrich indiquait que l'opération était lancée : « Le problème est de savoir comment faire avec l'argent pour obtenir ce que nous voulons ». La réponse vint en mars-avril 1948 : la War Scare du printemps 1948 amena le Congrès et Truman à accepter une augmentation de 57% des commandes militaires aéronautiques. Et ce n'était qu'un début. L'industrie aéronautique américaine était sauvée. Jusqu'à aujourd'hui, elle a vécu sur ce régime qui dispense tous les avantages de la nationalisation sans imposer aucune de ses obligations.
Un ami du ministre Forrestal, Ferdinand Eberstadt, disait en 1947 à un de ses assistants : « Le pays a toujours été conduit par des crises, [et] s'il n’y en a pas une évidente à un moment donné, on doit en susciter pour pouvoir avancer ». Cette remarque anodine pourrait bien constituer la clé d'un des phénomènes essentiels du second demi-siècle : l'installation au coeur de la puissance américaine de ce qu'on nomma plus tard le “Complexe militaro-industriel”. Celui-ci pesa d'un poids tout particulier sur la détermination de la politique américaine et sur l'évolution de la Guerre Froide, par l'état de crise qu'il perpétua. II contribua à peser sur l'économie américaine par les pressions continuelles exercée sur les finances publiques. II fut un des instruments favoris de diverses déstabilisations dont nous mesurons aujourd'hui les conséquences : le poids des militaires dans la bureaucratie de Washington, l'influence militaire américaine sur des régions entières du globe, etc.
Le livre de Kofsky n'est pas inutile, et l'on peut attribuer à quelque attitude d'inquiétude ou de pusillanimité le silence qui a accueilli sa diffusion. Son travail est en effet étayé par tant de documents, dont un grand nombre sont exploités publiquement pour la première fois, qu'il est bien difficile de réduire sa thèse à quelque chose' de négligeable. Reste alors le silence, pour éviter de faire connaître une appréciation qui doit conduire, en même temps que d'autres, à des démarches révisionnistes fondamentales sur la Guerre Froide, sur le rôle de l'Amérique dans celle-ci, sur la mécanique du pouvoir américain, etc., et quelques autres domaines de cet acabit. Enfin, ce livre constitue certainement un outil précieux pour ceux qui, aujourd'hui, ont à analyser la situation et les perspectives de l'industrie aéronautique américaine.
(1) Voir ''dd&e'' Vo19, n°11, notre texte Analyse.
(2) Paru chez St-Martin Press, à New York.
(3) ''L'Influence américaine sur la politique française, 1945-1954''; lrwin M. Wall, Balland, Paris 1989.
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