Alain Joxe: Local God's War Without End
I feel that the piece of Empire of Disorder selected as an introductory tool for this Under Fire was not totally adequate because it looks outdated, as written before the beginning of the Iraq war and the final (?) is purely rhetorical. I send to everybody this « additive conclusion » which has been written for l’Empire du Chaos ‘s Pocket Book a Spanish edition, in 2004, to deal with many questions, created in two years by the American military actions in the great Middle East, and especially in Iraq and available in 2006. The first part is in English and the second in French because time is missing for translation.
Additive conclusion to "Empire du chaos" (2004) Iraq War
I accept the idea that a set of non committments, refusals to send any help, from UNO, Germany, France, Turkey, Latin America (except Honduras), the slow committment process of Japan, the fact that Spain, Poland and others contributed only with very modest military troops, as a whole, means probably a sort of slow fading out of American power (this feeling sounds more like a European than a leftist optimism). But instead of predicting yet (like Emmanuel Todd), a « decomposition of American system », I prefer to keep as a tool a hard pessimistic diagnosis, considering the "American" Empire as a long term, extreme right ambition, altogether a coherent and fascistoïd view of the future, even, if it is absurd from the military point of view. This project is capable to cause enormous destructions and damages, before finally crumbling (like Hitler’s one or Stalin's) under the so called dominant laws of Real-ökonomie or real-strategie. Economy is always determinant in the longterm, but not quite in « short time », actions in time of war, when quick destruction, not slow production, is supposed to be the right measure of power. The question is: is it possible to avoid the third ( or fourth) world war ? Afghanistan’s War, Iraq’s War, and even Israel-Palestine War, which is an indirect US intervention and a much older one, are today, forming a new class of wars,and the US are bound to win them together simultaneaously, if they really want to be fully victorious, in the war lauched against islamist « terrorism » — an ennemy depicted as able, just like the US, to menace all the scales of power in the world. There is now three Empire’s Wars in the Middle East and the three are obviously in a dead end, within and because of a militaristic rigid doctrinary posture of war management, excluding any political version of peace. This is true for US world war and for Israel local war, urbanization process and colonial ethical purification. If the definition of this « world war » is actually romantically defined as God’s war, both by an American President by some Islamist leaderships, and by some Israeli’s religious beliefs, it is in fact to avoid any political definition of such a war and, of course, any democratic definition of peace. But democracy (in greek demo-kratia means control taking by the poeple on the economic and religious power of oligarchy). It is also a deep rooted, long term desire of global humanity, (but not necessarily in th definition which is now accepted in the US). Under this set of considerations, the professional observers of strategic problems should normally demonstrate a deep knowledge of Islam and Christian protestant or catholic, and Jewish theological debates, which is not generally the case. It introduces religious creeds in the evaluation of relations of forces, is also a corollary of a growing limitation of political and intelligence capacity, of American or Israeli soldiers, because of their status as occupation troops with no protection duties toward the civil population under their rule military colonial or occupation status is, as such, contrary to political intelligence of local situations. Every old colonial politician knows that. The danger comes when difference between the military and the political understanding of a local war management disappears. This fading out is the root of a philosophical jump into a fascist representation of violence. To make a comparison, without any God’s influence, I feel obliged to add to our middle east class of neo-imperial wars , the Colombian war and central american mexican and carribean tensions, conflicts and fights, clearly localized at the fronteer of world’s developped nucleus, and where no religious identity is at stakes. At least, these wars are totally human or inhumane. No religion war explains the fears and the fortification pattern of ennemity and exclusion. Finally, instead of deciding promptly that European Union or China could as an economical mass, be able to resist a superconsuming indebted Empire, riding a rodeo based on a Disneyland electronics domination, I prefer maintainig a high degree of doubt, mentioning that « we » non-imperial thinkers, class, poeple, nations, lays and clerks, are not yet at the level of a unified strategic and political thinking, able to control in a common debate an extreme right, imperial, American power, driving successfully the world toward new permanent social wars. The global strategic critic of the global american empire is just beginning. It won’t proceed simply with optimism good will and common sense as a californian middle class project.
The 2nd Iraq War could probably be tilded as « illegal » because it hasn’t been supported by UNO, but it is certainly « illegitime » , because a significant part of the world’s public opinion considers it as an unjust war, not as supporting in any sense the tyrannic regime of Saddam Hussein, but as condemning years of imposed suffering to the Iraqi civil society. This poeple has been successively, martyrized by Saddam’s dictatorship, impoverished by the US embargo , and now mishandled as a conquered country by US « liberators » and pushed into a horrible « three camps intercommunities war « . It is impossible to admit that Iraq, Colombia, Palestine territories are ruled under some sort of new UN mandate. The UN avoided to sponsor US action in Iraq, and the US constantly acted against any active European intermission in the Colombian and the Palestinian peace process. Both « peace process » were therefore curbed and enforced to fall back to a status of « outlaw wars », without any scandal. May be its definition should be some new type of protectorate ? That was a hybrid form of colonialism, which was aiming at maintaining and protecting (like in Tunisia and more in Morocco) a nucleus of real national state and cultural definition of political identity. The word protectorate comes from Hobbes‘ vocabulary and is related to Levianthan’s primordial state agreed function : protection of the people, only source af legitimacy. Protecting the poeple of internal or external wars by keeping alive the traditional state. Nothing like that is proposed in Iraq. Other hypothesis : the word protection belongs to the vocabulary of prostitution. Protection of the prostituted nation against the police and the rival gangs. Anyway it supposes that colonial intervention is protecting the submitted poeple against violence and war. Imperial rule means then survival or rebirth of some local subordinate peace making state, « Protectorate » formula is born in last century’s expanding colonial empires in a general repartition of territories of Africa and Asia forming big regional coherent subsystems. Openly quite different, an even contrary, is the global program of the US empire under President Bush. He is actively trying all over the world to weaken nation states, as possible source of sovereignty and doesn’t discard the idea of locally provoke or facilitate the type of civil wars, which could help the society to fall back in old tribal religious or racist divisions. Everywhere a type of impending rogue balkanization or libanization, if possible a transborder one, because the objective is building a set of subwars, avoiding all old definitions, i.e. altogether international state wars or transnational class struggle. 1. Definition of Iraq Invasion by the US The second Iraq War has been defined as an asymetric lightning warfare , either a democratic liberation war or a punitive expedition against a project of aggression – that is a preemptive war – or a direct predatory expedition to get a grasp on Iraqui oil. These are three main objectives exposed by the US Governent itself in several declarations. But we must wait for the end of the conflct to decide what is the real definition of this war given by its main mark. Its main success or its main failure. These three definitions in fact are not necessarily compatible, especially in the long term.This paradox imposes a new - or perhaps old - theoretical problem to strategical analysis : can a war without a fixed objective be lost ? is it even possible to terminate it ? Practically speaking it is easy to see that the war is a liberation from the tyranny of Saddam, by total destruction of its state structure, but destruction without reshaping a livable democratic state, transforms the libertador into a military oppressor. Shall the US be able to stay in Iraq by force, and altogether restore or in-store democracy ? Would it be possible for them to re-create prosperity and altogether to keep the main oil profits for themselves ? In any case, this war is surely a turning point in strategical history. It is altogether a traditional punitive expedition but also quite an innovation by its political objectives which remain chaotical or incomprehensible.It is certainly not a traditional archaical colonial war. It is not adequate to condemn it as « retrograde ». Public opinion have to understand better what it is by looking at what type of future it drives. European Union Defense shall at a time be conceived as « Defense of the United Republlcs of Europe » not as « defense of the United Non States » confronting the US Empire of Chaos, and be able to keep the direction of maintaining democratic sovereignty and avoiding a transformation of the world into a transnational set of big private enterprises framing a business oligarchical sovereignty and global electronic security, owned by military private armies. In the mean time, with continuous atrocity, the Israel-Palestine war keeps its momentum, helped by the paradoxical reinforcement of an « entangling alliance » born during the cold war, when arab nationalist states were allied of the soviet block. I would stress the fact that the US-Israel Alliance since the end of th cold war and specifically under George W. Bush’s presidence is in fact a QUASI religious alliance between biblical integrisme of the right protestant sects in the US and a sionist religious integrism. As far as Al-Qaeda also,take the role of a criminal ecumenic religiosity, the national or social dimensions of all local religious comittments are misunderstood. In this confusion the Sharon’s government can keep even in the left some unconditionnal help Under permanent stress and terror of terrorist actions, Bush is building a hegemony through fear using it to terminate all social legislations born in the New Deal period. This processus is looking as the Thatcherian Revolution, in Europe. It aims in France to kill all the social legislation of the Front Populaire and the Liberation. In France it looks like an Américan importation, but in the US it is part of the central history of american empire, where economic liberalism always was legitimate Anyway, for the first time a US presidential election has to be taken into political consideration everywhere in the World as a global event. When a president or a terrorist really belives he is elected by God he must be seriously watched and kept under control by eletoral democracies.
> Alain Joxe
Additive conclusion to "Empire du chaos" (2004) Iraq War
I accept the idea that a set of non committments, refusals to send any help, from UNO, Germany, France, Turkey, Latin America (except Honduras), the slow committment process of Japan, the fact that Spain, Poland and others contributed only with very modest military troops, as a whole, means probably a sort of slow fading out of American power (this feeling sounds more like a European than a leftist optimism). But instead of predicting yet (like Emmanuel Todd), a « decomposition of American system », I prefer to keep as a tool a hard pessimistic diagnosis, considering the "American" Empire as a long term, extreme right ambition, altogether a coherent and fascistoïd view of the future, even, if it is absurd from the military point of view. This project is capable to cause enormous destructions and damages, before finally crumbling (like Hitler’s one or Stalin's) under the so called dominant laws of Real-ökonomie or real-strategie. Economy is always determinant in the longterm, but not quite in « short time », actions in time of war, when quick destruction, not slow production, is supposed to be the right measure of power. The question is: is it possible to avoid the third ( or fourth) world war ? Afghanistan’s War, Iraq’s War, and even Israel-Palestine War, which is an indirect US intervention and a much older one, are today, forming a new class of wars,and the US are bound to win them together simultaneaously, if they really want to be fully victorious, in the war lauched against islamist « terrorism » — an ennemy depicted as able, just like the US, to menace all the scales of power in the world. There is now three Empire’s Wars in the Middle East and the three are obviously in a dead end, within and because of a militaristic rigid doctrinary posture of war management, excluding any political version of peace. This is true for US world war and for Israel local war, urbanization process and colonial ethical purification. If the definition of this « world war » is actually romantically defined as God’s war, both by an American President by some Islamist leaderships, and by some Israeli’s religious beliefs, it is in fact to avoid any political definition of such a war and, of course, any democratic definition of peace. But democracy (in greek demo-kratia means control taking by the poeple on the economic and religious power of oligarchy). It is also a deep rooted, long term desire of global humanity, (but not necessarily in th definition which is now accepted in the US). Under this set of considerations, the professional observers of strategic problems should normally demonstrate a deep knowledge of Islam and Christian protestant or catholic, and Jewish theological debates, which is not generally the case. It introduces religious creeds in the evaluation of relations of forces, is also a corollary of a growing limitation of political and intelligence capacity, of American or Israeli soldiers, because of their status as occupation troops with no protection duties toward the civil population under their rule military colonial or occupation status is, as such, contrary to political intelligence of local situations. Every old colonial politician knows that. The danger comes when difference between the military and the political understanding of a local war management disappears. This fading out is the root of a philosophical jump into a fascist representation of violence. To make a comparison, without any God’s influence, I feel obliged to add to our middle east class of neo-imperial wars , the Colombian war and central american mexican and carribean tensions, conflicts and fights, clearly localized at the fronteer of world’s developped nucleus, and where no religious identity is at stakes. At least, these wars are totally human or inhumane. No religion war explains the fears and the fortification pattern of ennemity and exclusion. Finally, instead of deciding promptly that European Union or China could as an economical mass, be able to resist a superconsuming indebted Empire, riding a rodeo based on a Disneyland electronics domination, I prefer maintainig a high degree of doubt, mentioning that « we » non-imperial thinkers, class, poeple, nations, lays and clerks, are not yet at the level of a unified strategic and political thinking, able to control in a common debate an extreme right, imperial, American power, driving successfully the world toward new permanent social wars. The global strategic critic of the global american empire is just beginning. It won’t proceed simply with optimism good will and common sense as a californian middle class project.
The 2nd Iraq War could probably be tilded as « illegal » because it hasn’t been supported by UNO, but it is certainly « illegitime » , because a significant part of the world’s public opinion considers it as an unjust war, not as supporting in any sense the tyrannic regime of Saddam Hussein, but as condemning years of imposed suffering to the Iraqi civil society. This poeple has been successively, martyrized by Saddam’s dictatorship, impoverished by the US embargo , and now mishandled as a conquered country by US « liberators » and pushed into a horrible « three camps intercommunities war « . It is impossible to admit that Iraq, Colombia, Palestine territories are ruled under some sort of new UN mandate. The UN avoided to sponsor US action in Iraq, and the US constantly acted against any active European intermission in the Colombian and the Palestinian peace process. Both « peace process » were therefore curbed and enforced to fall back to a status of « outlaw wars », without any scandal. May be its definition should be some new type of protectorate ? That was a hybrid form of colonialism, which was aiming at maintaining and protecting (like in Tunisia and more in Morocco) a nucleus of real national state and cultural definition of political identity. The word protectorate comes from Hobbes‘ vocabulary and is related to Levianthan’s primordial state agreed function : protection of the people, only source af legitimacy. Protecting the poeple of internal or external wars by keeping alive the traditional state. Nothing like that is proposed in Iraq. Other hypothesis : the word protection belongs to the vocabulary of prostitution. Protection of the prostituted nation against the police and the rival gangs. Anyway it supposes that colonial intervention is protecting the submitted poeple against violence and war. Imperial rule means then survival or rebirth of some local subordinate peace making state, « Protectorate » formula is born in last century’s expanding colonial empires in a general repartition of territories of Africa and Asia forming big regional coherent subsystems. Openly quite different, an even contrary, is the global program of the US empire under President Bush. He is actively trying all over the world to weaken nation states, as possible source of sovereignty and doesn’t discard the idea of locally provoke or facilitate the type of civil wars, which could help the society to fall back in old tribal religious or racist divisions. Everywhere a type of impending rogue balkanization or libanization, if possible a transborder one, because the objective is building a set of subwars, avoiding all old definitions, i.e. altogether international state wars or transnational class struggle. 1. Definition of Iraq Invasion by the US The second Iraq War has been defined as an asymetric lightning warfare , either a democratic liberation war or a punitive expedition against a project of aggression – that is a preemptive war – or a direct predatory expedition to get a grasp on Iraqui oil. These are three main objectives exposed by the US Governent itself in several declarations. But we must wait for the end of the conflct to decide what is the real definition of this war given by its main mark. Its main success or its main failure. These three definitions in fact are not necessarily compatible, especially in the long term.This paradox imposes a new - or perhaps old - theoretical problem to strategical analysis : can a war without a fixed objective be lost ? is it even possible to terminate it ? Practically speaking it is easy to see that the war is a liberation from the tyranny of Saddam, by total destruction of its state structure, but destruction without reshaping a livable democratic state, transforms the libertador into a military oppressor. Shall the US be able to stay in Iraq by force, and altogether restore or in-store democracy ? Would it be possible for them to re-create prosperity and altogether to keep the main oil profits for themselves ? In any case, this war is surely a turning point in strategical history. It is altogether a traditional punitive expedition but also quite an innovation by its political objectives which remain chaotical or incomprehensible.It is certainly not a traditional archaical colonial war. It is not adequate to condemn it as « retrograde ». Public opinion have to understand better what it is by looking at what type of future it drives. European Union Defense shall at a time be conceived as « Defense of the United Republlcs of Europe » not as « defense of the United Non States » confronting the US Empire of Chaos, and be able to keep the direction of maintaining democratic sovereignty and avoiding a transformation of the world into a transnational set of big private enterprises framing a business oligarchical sovereignty and global electronic security, owned by military private armies. In the mean time, with continuous atrocity, the Israel-Palestine war keeps its momentum, helped by the paradoxical reinforcement of an « entangling alliance » born during the cold war, when arab nationalist states were allied of the soviet block. I would stress the fact that the US-Israel Alliance since the end of th cold war and specifically under George W. Bush’s presidence is in fact a QUASI religious alliance between biblical integrisme of the right protestant sects in the US and a sionist religious integrism. As far as Al-Qaeda also,take the role of a criminal ecumenic religiosity, the national or social dimensions of all local religious comittments are misunderstood. In this confusion the Sharon’s government can keep even in the left some unconditionnal help Under permanent stress and terror of terrorist actions, Bush is building a hegemony through fear using it to terminate all social legislations born in the New Deal period. This processus is looking as the Thatcherian Revolution, in Europe. It aims in France to kill all the social legislation of the Front Populaire and the Liberation. In France it looks like an Américan importation, but in the US it is part of the central history of american empire, where economic liberalism always was legitimate Anyway, for the first time a US presidential election has to be taken into political consideration everywhere in the World as a global event. When a president or a terrorist really belives he is elected by God he must be seriously watched and kept under control by eletoral democracies.
> Alain Joxe