Rene — Sassen — Post-war targets: Syria and Europe
Topic(s): Iraq | Comments Off on Rene — Sassen — Post-war targets: Syria and EuropePost-war targets: Syria and Europe
March 26, 2003, Tages-Anzeiger, Zurich, Switzerland
The present day is filled with information about this thing called war. I can hardly use the word “war” because in the United States there is a military entertainment complex that acts as if war is a computer simulation. And it seems to me that people really believe it, but that’s over as of today. The first American and British soldiers have died. That makes leaders in the USA uneasy, but should it only be the others who die in a war? When you hear the statements by Rumsfeld and Bush in the news, you actually get the impression it’s not that way any more. Suddenly it’s no longer something from the military entertainment complex. There is a real war being waged.
No empire, with the possible exception of the Catholic Church, lasts forever. Sooner or later, the decline of the American empire will come about. Today we see an extraordinarily powerful empire abuse its power, thereby contributing to its own demise. By the American empire, I don’t mean the totality of the American people, but the structures of the political-economical power that form the foundation of the empire. Many Americans are more or less willing participants. Some are politically aware, some are not, but that’s a different story. This empire has political-economic structures that form it, grant it power, produce stories to ligitimize its power, and so forth.
In the last three months, the USA has lost a portion of the legitimization that it had gained in the context of globalization. Governments everywhere have used more or less independent pieces to build the legal framework for liberalization and privatization that is necessary to establish the global system. This legitimization is not granted by the people, but by governments. It amounts to a process of uniformity, or standardization. I’m not talking about McDonalds, but of the criteria for proper business transactions.
Deep Rift
The discussion about the war has now polarized the world in such a way that the conflict won’t immediately disappear once the war is over. We’re standing at the beginning of a bipolar world that is a little bit reminiscent of the Cold War – but it’s something else. Between the USA on one side, and France, Germany, Russia and Chine on the other side, a deep trench is opening up. The language being used these days, mainly in the USA, but also in France, Germany and Russia, has to be taken seriously. My first question is whether the most powerful nation in the world has abused its power so far as to create the conditions for its collapse. The second question is, are we ready for this potential collapse in the post-war period?
I would like to cite a few statements that recently appeared in the Financial Times. They come from a leading American think tank, the Bush adminstration’ right-hand man, so to speak. It’s about “regime change in Iraq and Syria” — Syria’s also on the list! “Radical reform of the UN.” The United Nations will be stripped of anything having to do with questions of the military or of security politics. All that will remain are food assistance and human rights.
Battle Cry against Europe
Then there is a “containment of France and Germany.” The word “containment”, which was used in the Cold War, means the fight against communist regimes. And further, once again, “France and Germany insist on shoring up tyrannical regimes,” and “splitting Germany away from France would be intelligent American diplomacy.” But perhaps that would be too much to expect from the State Department. And finally, “We Americans are not vindictive,” but they hoped the United States would be in the case of France. The interesting thing here is the language, which has changed noticeably over the past six months. And in this sense, the political fluctuations and repudiations in the context of the Iraq war are important. It is more than just a transient shift, it’s a giant rift that’s appearing.
Today, you can talk about two old geographies and two new geographies. In doing so, I’d like to make it clear that the old is not absolutely bad and the new is not absolutely good. The old geography is the one of political leaders — Blair versus Chirac, Chirac vs. Bush, Chirac on Schroeder’s side, Blair vs. Schroeder. It is an old geography. The political leader is nether a hero nor a villain. The second old geography is the American concept of war. The Americans haven’t found the terrorist network, so they’ve oriented themselves toward the nation-state. Naturally, the first one they come up with is Iraq. Those are two old political-economic geographies.
Then there are the two new geographies. One is the terrorist network. The other consists of the democracy-based groups, which includes the anti-globalization movement. I recall only the mass demonstrations that occurred February 15th in 160 cities around the world. The French are not simply standing behind Chirac, they are also communicating with the Germans and with the English. That is another new geography by which citizens circumvent their political representatives. The practices of these citizen groups is a new phenomenon, and informal, political world. People don’t cling to a party or to state institutions. They don’t have unconditional power. They nevertheless signal that they are not powerless. After all, there are several aspects of powerlessness that perhaps contain the seed of new political structures which will sooner or later sprout up and alter the situation.
adapted from a presentation given by Saskia Sassen