Certainly, there are shallow and facile people amongst the “protestors”. But your judgement reveals more about yourself than it does about us.
**asterion **: “But I still predict, given human nature and the way the public generally acts, that only a complete quagmire in Iraq would keep people protesting.”
I agree. But that’s not a very controversial prediction. It’s widely known that people protest to prevent a war; they only protest to stop it if the war goes on and on (a la Vietnam). This war is not likely to be long. Similarly, resistance to the war–esp. from within that majority of Americans who still want to see UN support–will drop markedly once war begins and people begin to worry most about US troops. These are commonsense predictions.
“I fully expect that, assuming a quick victory into the long-haul peacekeeping effort, these protesters will soon go find another “flavor of the month” protest and then we’ll hear for hours on end about that.”
Here is where I think you misunderstand the nature of these protests and this resistance. This is not a “flavor of the month”–by which I think you mean an issue of importance only to a relatively small group of people on the left. Opposition to this war is widespread because what the Bush administration has done is historically unprecedented. Jimmy Carter wrote a powerful editorial in the New York Times. Many prominent Republicans have spoken out against the way this war is being handled. Bush’s own father has expressed concerns. The Pope has called for peace. These are hardly radicals.
Tonight about 600 people in the medium-sized town I live in attended a candlelight vigil in the town center. Relatively few of these people would have attended an anti-WTO protest, or would have protested against the war in Afghanistan. A lot of them were from churches. Many were seniors. Lots (including me) were parents with young kids.
In other words, people are protesting (or just opposing this war) who are not necessarily anti-war as a rule. They oppose this war because they oppose the new premeptive doctrine, with the dangerous precedent it sets for world peace. They oppose the brazen unilateralist role this country has assumed for itself under Bush’s leadership. They oppose the dismissive treatment of longstanding allies, and the contempt for respected institutions such as the UN. They oppose the administration’s embarrassing attempts to connect Iraq and 9/11. They oppose the US’s flouting of world opinion: with the majority of the Spanish and British public opposing the actions of their own governments. They oppose the open attempt to bully and bribe resistant countries: trying to buy off the Turks for $15 billion, and to threatent the Mexicans with reprisals. They oppose the whole absurd notion of warring with Iraq as a way of stopping terrorism when it’s common knowledge–now officially documented by our own intelligence services–that this war is fomenting terrorism and helping to attract young Muslims all over the world to Osama’s cause.
Nothing like this has ever happened in American history.
Re the Azores summit itself: It’s not the event, but it is a foreshadowing of what’s to come.
Aside: just to put French opposition to Anglo-American dominance in perspective, in the twenties, when a gold-exchange standard was put in place to replace the strict gold standard of pre WWI Europe, the French began to object almost immediately. In the pre 1914 gold standard, gold was exchanged between countries to settle their balance of payments. In the structure put in place after WWI, Britain and the U.S. held the gold, and other countries were told they should hold the currencies of these two countries. The French resisted, because of the obvious Anglo-American dominance in such a system. The French have been resisting U.S./British dominance for a long time.
Back to the present. I’m firmly of the belief that this foreshadows a breakdown of U.S. dominance at some point in the next twenty years or so. This crisis will pass eventually, and fences will be mended amongst all parties, but the rift under the surface of all of these Western alliances is now way out in the open.
The U.S., in the meantime, is the largest debtor nation on the planet, and continues to add to this sorry position every day, with a current account deficit running at a truly breathtaking half a trillion dollar rate. (the last quarter’s deficit was 136 billion. Multiply that by 4, and your hair stands on end. Or mine does, anyway.)
It’s extremely poor form to piss off your creditors, but that’s what the U.S. is now in the process of doing. Not a big deal at the moment, as the world is not exactly brimming with investment alternatives to U.S. assets. But that’s not a situation that will last forever.
The U.S. would do well to agree to some proposal like the one Chirac said just today would be acceptable to him: to give the Iraqis a date certain by which to disarm, that date being defined by what the inspectors will be reporting soon. Contrary to what Bush may think, we need the rest of the world very badly. That need increases by the day. One of the perhaps unfortunate realities of globalization.
Chirac interview: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/03/16/sprj.irq.amanpour.chirac/index.html
I’ve been curious: when those who said they were not necessarily opposed to war but it should be legitimized through diplomacy, what exactly did you think the word “diplomacy” meant?
Sam, without realising it, you’ve identified something amazingly subtle about the Iraq situation - and about this modern “mass communications” world in which we live nowadays.
Namely, we live in an era where the ultimate currency is no longer gold, or the US Dollar, or any other national currency, but rather… public opinion. It seems to me that nothing in the world nowadays is so openly and blatantly coveted as “favourable public opinion”.
And yet, as you noted in your quote above Sam… public opinion on matters such as this can be astonishingly fickle. Way, WAY too fickle actually. And why is this so?
Well, for starters, we are simply being bombarded with a multitude of information and speculation these days. And worse yet, just like when one major TV network “rips off” another network’s great idea and creates a second, third, and fourth clone of the original, well you just end up with a saturation of similar programming and political analysis overkill.
Is it a good thing? Well, in some respects yes - it means that the will of the people affects the decisions of that people’s government. But it’s also a bad thing too - and here’s why… by far the majority of editorial opinion which the Western World hears is via Television. And Television, by and large, is commercial TV driven by ratings - and nothing sells ratings like BAD NEWS folks. If you’re a News Editor on a TV show, BAD NEWS is GOOD NEWS - you can be guaranteed of increased ratings.
My point is this - public opinion nowadays is way, way too easily manipulated by Commercial TV and it’s love of the convenient 15 second sound-bite. And often, not always, but often enough, public opinion is manipulated in a way which is NOT conducive to decisive action by a government.
In short, it’s wrong that the discovery of WMD within Iraq should determine whether such an invasion is the “right or wrong” thing in the eyes of the public. Such an invasion should be “right or wrong” REGARDLESS of public opinion. Now I appreciate I’m delving into the amorphous world of “ideallism” here, but it’s not a bad thing to remind ourselves of “ideallism” on occasion.
I honestly believe that in Britain, and Spain, and the USA, that there are STILL enough good people to know what the “right and proper thing to do” still means. Sure, some of those people might occasionally make dumb decisions politically, but the ability to know what the “right thing to do” is kinda removed from that.
In short, if, and only if the USA, Britain, and Spain believe that their cause is a truly just one, they should not NEED the approval of France and Germany and Russia in this instance. They should be able to go in and do what they feel they need to do - damn the public opinion. By procrastinating, and worse yet, by ALLOWING France to have a say, President Bush is empowering all the media, and all the political analysts around the world, to have a field day at his expense. In my opinion, President Bush has played a poor hand in the last 2 weeks at a political level.
So my message, President Bush, is this… if you truly, HONESTLY believe your chosen course of action is a just one - just go and fucking do it mate. Just get on with it. The outcome will be the outcome regardless. You’ll either get re-elected or you won’t in 2004… but at least you’ll know you acted… and did so free of public opinion. Coz that’s what leaders do… sometimes wisely… sometimes foolishly…
Whoa there, buddy! Careful how you say that. We are also, by a measure certainly beyond the comprehension of most of these so-called “lender nations”, the largest creditor nation on the planet. Almost all of our foriegn “debt” comes from bailing out a lot of these nations (ona fairly regular basis too), in their own “sorry positions”, and not ever being paid back for it.
I’m sorry, what did France contribute towards WWII? A bugle?
Nearly all of our debt is internal, & not foriegn, as your post would lead many to believe.
I think those are good observations. And it also means that presidents who let their positions shift with public opinion will now be destined to set their administrations aimlessly adrift.
I think the public comes around. Day-to-day, their opinions may shift, but in the end the collective judgement of the public is reasonably sound. And on some things, opinion is hard to move. Take the level of support for the war in Iraq, for example. It has been amazingly steady for over a year now, rarely varying by more than a few percentage points. Last year, it was at 63%. It slowly dropped to 47%, and then began to rise again. Today, it’s right where it was when Bush first outlined the need to disarm Saddam.
On the other hand, look at what Tony Blair has managed. When he first supported a war in Iraq, he had the support of only 19% of the British public. Now, 40% of Brits support a war even without a U.N. resolution, while a huge 76% support a war with it. Cite. This is a case where a strong leader pulled the public towards his position.
Heh Heh Heh… I nominate, herewith, the “Straight Dope Message Board” Post of the Year! 
I have posted before on the issue before but let me add a couple of things here; yep, there is now the will and the opportunity to form some kind of genuine opposition to the might of the single super power – IMHO, there has to be lese the world will be an almighty mess somewhere down the ‘road map’ (sic).
This makes sense if one is prepared to accept the new reality as seen by the likes of Uncle Dick Cheney (that is, the world is one big free capitalist market place and we, as the big player, can make the market rules up as we go along – in such circumstances, capitalist ideology requires us, amorally, to exploit all opportunities, etc, etc …).
That alternative (political / economic) power base is, inevitably, the EU, and its allies of the moment – the EU (as a general proposition, is as far from Uncle Dick as Karl Marx was from, say, Roosevelt) Unfortunately, it’s both too early and (as it turns out) the wrong issue for the Franco-German nexus to begin flexing muscles.
As I’ve said before, this opposition to US foreign policy and (aspects of US policy in general) appear to have different origins; for the Muslim / Arab world it was Bush 41’s behaviour after the first Gulf War (reneging on promises apropos Palestine – no laughing after yesterday’s announcement by Bush 43 of a new ‘Palestinian road map’) – that grouping has never been so organised in how they face the US.
The Franco-German grouping dates its determination from the Kyoto process and how it was able to use its economic power and political ability to push through a world wide agreement in direct opposition from this US administration.
The non-aligned third-world has experienced US foreign policy for 30 years; one feels fairly sure (Clinton aside, perhaps) it feels no obligation to side with the US for any reason at any time.
The EU provides the economic and diplomatic umbrella under which groups can huddle when the storms come.
One can also see the opposition growing at the various conferences (for example, the World Slavery Conference, Environmental conferences, etc, where the US is booed, jeered and slow hand-capped by delegates, almost as second nature now) and through other means (for example, the appointment of Libya to the Human Rights body). These world meetings provide a forum in which the wider debate (about the US) progresses.
There is a now political and idealistic will – in one sense what I see now reminds me of the pointless empty house occupations in London by protesters against a new road. The houses were pulled down, the road was eventually built and government policy was seen through. There have, however, been no such schemes since – government learned that the opposition was growing and the price too high to try the same thing again. It would have been too damaging to carry on.
I think my final point is that one shouldn’t read too much about new allegiances into this one issue – for example, the UK shares the goals of the EU (a Palestinian State now, more and better work in Africa, Kyoto, etc, etc) Also, that it’s important to note that the EU will forever be hampered in forming proactive (foreign) policies because of the nature of its (individualistic) constituent parts – i.e. it doesn’t have, and nor will it in the foreseeable future, a single, consistent forging policy)
Many will learn much from this whole affair. But, yep, some of the context for this whole France veto thing is rooted in the new sense of a need to oppose the single super power for the (long term good of all - as mentioned, wrong issue, bad timing (IMHO). YMMV.
At what point do these new “opposing powers” to the US “hyperpower” form a military alliance and put their money where their mouth is?
I’d like to schedule a long vacation in the Southern Hemisphere.
Before you go, borrow a Canadian passport.
What, after the new Axis of Islamofascist Europe launches its first strike out of Ontario? Canada will be the front lines. A Canadian passport would probably get me shot.
What it doesn’t mean is the US president threatening the Mexicans with violence against Mexicans at the hands of angry Americans–which is what Bush did.
Diplomacy isn’t always a garden party to be sure and always has involved a certain trading of favors. But Bush and Co. fumble the ball almost every chance they get. You don’t have to believe me. If you prefer just believe instead that the only natural allies of the world’s most wealthy nation are a small handful of nations including Bulgaria.
The word “military” doesn’t seem to be part of the Euro vocab, perhaps for obvious reasons.
Fwiw, I think its interesting. Thus far, they’ve taken the US to the brink of abandoning the UN without doing anything except oppose a second resolution.
I don’t think militay power is entirely relevant to the kind of economic / diplomatic power the EU is seeking to engineer - to think otherwise is a little 19th - 20th century, IMHO; different kinds of empire in this capitalist era, different ways to build and maintain yer good old fashoined ‘spheres of influence’, also.
I’ll second your nomination.
The importance of this summit is overblown. Yes, we all knew about U.S.A and U.K. special relationship… well, in fact General Galtieri didn’t know hence that unfortunate conflict in the south atlantic in 1982. Nothing new here.
Moving to Spain… there is not a chance in hell that they will break with France and Germany and therefore with the EU, for an alliance with the U.S. First because they very confortable where they are and second because America is not known for paying it’s debts ex post facto (that is why the turks wanted their bribe before the war). One man, as many said before me, does not change the policy of one country unless he is a dictator or he uses a tragedy to do so. Aznar is not that man and unless I am mistaken he won’t be president for long (The debate in the Spanish Congress, regarding Irak was priceless).
Blair and Aznar and all of Bush pals went to Azores to give POTUS a nice blowjob, now bush is satisfied and he can launch his war.
I would not use the language of military containment, sling around terms like “hyperpower,” and expect everyone to interpret it as economic brinksmanship.
There have been plenty of rumblings about the new military realities in the world already. It seems to be approaching new levels of hyperbole. For the “mighty imperial hyperpower” to wait 12 years to enforce its cease fire resolutions, staying its hand in 1998, is hardly something that suggests containment is necessary.
I understand why the world community wants to have some control over US military power. Why Iraq seems to be the sticking point, I’m not clear. I think there are some nations that don’t want Iraqi records made public (the US included).
Is France really offering a fixed deadline, with implied use of force at the end? Or is this just more of the same?
More of the same. How could France so misperceive the situation, that ‘disarmament’ is linked completely to a credible threat (UN Sec. Co. / US military force)? Self-interest is the only answer I’ve been able to come up with.
Um… Vietnam? A different situation in some respects, but it was certainly aggressive warmongering in a manner unsupported by the great majority of America’s allies, in defiance of international law on a dozen or more points, in defiance of the UN, succeeded in getting a great many people killed for no good reason, and did not do wonders for America’s reputation abroad. It also evoked massive protests by the public.
Rick, it’s an interesting question and there are, to be sure, many similarities. But the differences are important too. The fact that we’re no longer in a balance of power situation and in the midst of a Cold War makes this a very different hand of cards; the fact of the preemptive doctrine itself. The fact that we are in a post-Vietnam era and the US public has watched the lead-up to this war and has made its desire for UN sanction clear. And didn’t the French start Vietnam? 
By North Vietnam.
I don’t understand this; the entire US empire has been built on economic domination ; from the Marshall Plan onwards that’s been the game plan, it’s the first empire of the capitalist era … Military power in this capitalist era is not the engine of empire, it’s the lubrication. Past empires relied on military conquest, this one, at this time, relies on economic leverage.
Yep, agree. It’s always self-interest on one of, normally, three levels.
Just for the purposes of clarification, this isn’t exactly about ‘France’, IMHO. More precisely it’s about an idea shared by Chirac and successive German leaders about the future of the EU, about the Franco-German axis expanding from being at the heart of Europe (the driving force, the EU economic and political engine) onto he world stage as a diplomatic force for ‘good’.
Much of that potential power, in the present configuration, is reliant on the French having permanent (veto) status on the Security Council. That’s the big banana. Thus far.
Anyway, what’s been lacking on the world stage is political will, Blair’s always been up for it, now a US president (at least for the moment) sees capital to be made so the Saddam is back on the agenda …
I wonder if that’s where Chirac misjudged his game; how badly did he underestimated this * unprecedented * political will (forget diplomacy, look at the swing arounds in public opinion they’ve somehow begun to engineer) as demonstrated the Bush / Cheney / Rumsfeld / Blair team and how badly is that Gallic pride hurt ? The French and Germans chose the wrong issue, against the wrong team. The US and UK underestimated the extent of the belief and investment the French and Germans were prepared to make in this stand.
Pretty amazing times. The empire gets it first bruising from the young upstarts. They’ll be back.