Oh To Be As Gods
Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.)
March 18, 2003
"I can never give absolute guarantees. We minimize the risks to the extent possible. . . . I'd like to be there acting as a deterrence, acting as a powerful verification to make sure if we have missed something, if Iraq has changed its mind, we are there. That's really the function of an inspection. We are not gods. We do not provide any certification."
That was Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, speaking one day after he told the UN Security Council categorically that "After three months of intrusive inspection, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indications of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq."
Yet ElBaradei noted, just as Hans Blix, chief of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, had just minutes before at the same Security Council briefing, that the IAEA's monitoring and verification mandate would need to be maintained over the long term to provide "on-going and real-time assurances."
Under more ordinary circumstances, such assurances could well be sufficient for reasonable people. However, through its public rhetoric about the extant and growing threats from the "axis of evil," its call (in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the U.S.) for complete military dominance, and the assertion of an absolute right to engage in "preventive wars" against other countries that the U.S. government deems may be a future threat, the Bush administration has arrogated to itself a divine aura reminiscent of 1st century Roman caesars.
This comparison comes to mind because, in attempting to fathom what drives both the president and his advisors, policy pundits are debating whether the U.S. will be satisfied with anything less -- e.g., mere hegemony -- than empire. It seems not.
One major difference between hegemony and empire has been pointed out by Paul Schroeder, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). In an empire, one political entity exercises complete "final authority...over the vital political decisions of another" that is "separate from and alien to it." Hegemony, by contrast, denotes only "clear, acknowledged leadership and dominant influence by one unit within a community of units not under a single authority."
Contained within this distinction is another, more crucial one. In a hegemonic system, the chief executive of the dominant political unit must listen to and factor into his policies and programs the interests and concerns of the community of other national-units. Under an empire, the person who controls policy and actions has no effective check (and brooks none) from any nation. He (or she) need not listen (or listen seriously). The mere existence of unchecked power becomes its own justification for the exercise of power. Power unused suggests hesitation (or possibly thoughtfulness), which implies less than absolute conviction, which can lead to compromise, a sure sign of sin and weakness that is anathema to gods and empires.
(In this regard, one is reminded of the apocryphal syllogism: "He who thinks, hesitates. He who hesitates, is lost. He who is lost goes to hell. He who goes to hell has sinned. Therefore, to think is to sin.)
Listening to and watching recent Bush speeches, radio addresses, and his March 7 press conference, it is clear that the President stopped listening long ago. As soon as Congress abdicated its responsibility last October to decide on questions of war and peace with regard to Iraq, the White House stopped listening. When the UN Security Council voted in November to give Iraq a final opportunity to comply with resolutions demanding that Baghdad disarm itself of weapons of mass destruction, Washington stopped listening. This quickly became evident by the accelerated deployment of U.S. ground, naval, and air forces to countries and seas adjoining Iraq and the oft repeated assertion that the U.S. is quite prepared to act without UN approval. (That the diplomatic dance at the UN continued until now is due largely to the physical constraints of time-distance and weather to get forces in position.) And when hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens last month protested the march toward war, their heartfelt concerns were denigrated by being compared to government by focus groups.
Administration officials have remarked that the President is convinced that his position vis-à-vis Iraq (and by extension, on terrorism) is right. However, being absolutely convinced of the correctness of one's position does not impart divine sanction or automatically confer moral or even geopolitical leadership. Leadership is the ability to convince the majority, if not the near totality, of co-equal "units" that a policy and the program to implement the policy advances everyone's well-being. Moreover, if this "absolute conviction" rests on a sense of divine righteous, as is the case with opposing evil (or the "axis of evil"), leadership logically becomes part of the evil since, by its very nature, it leaves open the possibilities of choice and compromise. This is the trap of empire, for if the ruler/ruling elite has right on its side, any center that might oppose the ruler is evil and subject to annihilation. And while he did not have mighty armies and navies in the traditional sense, this is the logic behind Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, as implemented on September 11, 2001.
If there are no absolute guarantees or certifications, then those we elect can at best aspire to leadership. They are not divine caesars, nor even assuredly divinely guided in all that they do. But there is this. In the 19th century, German chancellor Otto von Bismark remarked that "God watches out for fools, drunkards, and the United States." One can only trust that, with regard to the United States, his observation will hold true in the 21st.
Daniel Smith, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, is Senior Fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. |
