"The United States has never been more powerful.. but Americans have never felt less secure" by Scott Burchill The Age 11:11am 17th Sep, 2003   September 17, 2003    The high-water mark for Washington's neo-cons may already have passed, writes Scott Burchill.    If events in Iraq continue on their present trajectory, the window of opportunity that neo-conservatives in Washington seized after the September 11 attacks will soon close.    The two-year window - which enabled Washington and its loyal allies to invade two countries and dispatch both governments (Afghanistan, Iraq), reconfigure US strategic doctrine from deterrence to pre-emption, ratchet up pressure on "rogue states" and "evil" regimes (Iran, North Korea, Syria), and declare war on terrorism - is closing for two reasons.    First, on the ground in occupied Iraq, Washington is slowly realising the limits of its power. For all its technological sophistication and military superiority, the Bush Administration is learning a painful lesson about the historical fate of colonialists in the Middle East.    Second, with opinion polls turning and George Bush putting his mind to the campaign for the presidential election in November next year, it is highly unlikely he will risk opening a new front in the "war against terrorism".    Things have not gone according to plan for the neo-cons and their colleagues.In Afghanistan, the Government of Hamid Karzai struggles to extend its power beyond the fringes of the capital Kabul, while warlords, the Taliban and the poppy growers resume their nefarious activities. Donors who pledged billions for rebuilding the state have reneged or gone missing, Washington has lost interest and been distracted by Iraq, while Karzai himself needs US bodyguards to forestall his assassination by political rivals.    In Iraq, the pretext for the attack by the "coalition of the willing" has collapsed. Washington, London and Canberra claimed and/or implied an Iraq-al-Qaeda link where none existed, but have now apparently created such a link as a consequence of their invasion and occupation: their lies have become a self-fulfilling reality. According to prewar intelligence, the threat from al-Qaeda "would be heightened by military action against Iraq".    The weapons of mass destruction that we were told Saddam had stockpiled, could use against the West at short notice or might pass on to Islamic terrorists, have disappeared. Despite claims by Blair, Bush and Howard, they were almost certainly destroyed by 1997. According to a British parliamentary committee, the risk of a transfer of WMD to al-Qaeda was only likely if the regime suddenly collapsed: precisely what was engineered.    One effect of the war has been to encourage nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, which now understand that only nuclear weapons will deter a US attack. Hardly the desired result.    Few will shed tears about Saddam's demise. However, the invasion of Iraq removed a secular government in the Arab world that had brutally suppressed Islamists, much to the West's delight. Paving the way for a possible future Islamic state in Iraq seems an odd strategy for those who regard themselves as being at war with Islamic extremists.    No one is talking about the democratisation of Iraq with a straight face any more, although Washington remains in denial about the nature of resistance to its occupation. Blaming terrorist infiltrators from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, or Saddamite "dead-enders", for the continuing bombings and attacks is a direct consequence of America's inability to understand why its presence in Iraq is unwelcome.    One of the fringe benefits of the war against Iraq was to be the installation of a pro-Israeli government in a key Arab state. We were also promised that Saddam's removal would help solve the Israel-Palestine dispute.    The former is still possible, but only likely if a Pentagon satrap such as Ahmed Chalabi is installed in power. If anything, the Israel-Palestinian dispute has degenerated since Saddam's removal from power, despite the best efforts of propagandists to conflate Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism with the "war against terrorism".    As the war approached, trans-Atlantic friendships were burned, NATO was sidelined, Turkey refused to be bribed into supporting the war, and Russia, Germany and France were driven closer together by a common opposition to Washington's unilateralism. The US is significantly more unpopular around the world than it was 12 months ago, especially in Pakistan, Indonesia, South Korea and the Arab world.    And the financial cost of its promiscuous intervention? A deficit in 2004 estimated at $US7.3 trillion ($A10.9 trillion).    The neo-cons and their political masters attacked the UN for not following orders, so it became a "behemoth", "meaningless and weak", and without "credibility". Now the same people are asking the same organisation, which they claimed was "irrelevant", to bail them out of trouble in Iraq because no other state is prepared to send in occupying troops under the present arrangements. It's a humiliating U-turn.    Military victories create, rather than solve, political problems. What must have seemed like a gift to the global ambitions of the neo-conservatives in Washington two years ago has now been reduced to a striking paradox: the United States has never been more powerful around the world, but Americans have never felt less secure.    (Scott Burchill lectures in international relations at Deakin University). Visit the related web page
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