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Imperial Bets That Go Awry
Imperial powers hedge their bets. The most striking recent example we have of this is in Egypt. While the Pentagon was pouring money into the Egyptian military (approximately $40 billion since 1979), it turns out -- thank you, WikiLeaks! -- that the U.S. government was shuttling far smaller amounts (millions, not billions) to various “American government-financed organizations” loosely connected with Congress or with the Democratic and Republican parties. Some of that money, in turn, was being invested in “democracy-building campaigns” aimed at teaching young Egyptian activists how to organize a movement against their autocratic ruler, how to make the best use of social networking sites, and so on.
In other words, in Egypt (and elsewhere in the Middle East), Washington was funding both the autocrats and the young activists who opposed them and who, in Egypt, would be crucial players in the Tahrir Square movement that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak. As one of those activists told the New York Times, “While we appreciated the training we received through the NGOs sponsored by the U.S. government, and it did help us in our struggles, we are also aware that the same government also trained the state security investigative service, which was responsible for the harassment and jailing of many of us.”
Meanwhile, thanks to other State Department documents WikiLeaks recently released, we know that, in at least one Middle Eastern country where Washington did not enthusiastically support the local autocrat -- Syria -- the State Department was channeling significant sums of money into “secretly financ[ing]... political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country.“ It was, in other words, preparing a new elite for a “regime change” future.
Think of it as a kind of grim irony that a significant part of the Egyptian military’s high command was in northern Virginia, attending an annual U.S.-Egypt Military Cooperation Committee meeting in late January, when all hell broke loose in Tahrir Square, thanks to those Egyptian activists, some trained with Washington’s money. The creation or support of elites has, as Alfred McCoy and Brett Reilly write in “An Empire of Failed States,” always been crucial to running global empires. And yet client elites are one of those subjects seldom given much thought, even though Great Britain, for instance, ruled its Indian Raj with striking, if oppressive, efficiency for endless decades with surprisingly few personnel from England. How else, after all, could a global empire continue? And yet, as a great power’s strength and influence wane, those bets -- like the one Washington placed in Egypt -- begin to go awry, from an imperial point of view. If McCoy, the author most recently of Policing America’s Empire, and Reilly are right, Washington’s touch, when it comes to keeping local elites in line, may indeed be “on the rocks.”
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050. His other most recent book is The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books). Previous books include: The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
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12 Comments so far
Show AllThe truth hurts doesn't it?
More than that, orchard_keeper, it's an "Infantile troll poster alert!".
Mr. loveitorleaveit, is one of our most persistent, though droll, trolls --- whose major goal as a droll troll is to draw attention away from and thus protect the supposed 'secrecy' of the global Empire for which he drolly trolls and thus collects tolls from his masters for meeting his goals.
Though he hardly ever meets his goals of distracting, dividing, deluding, or otherwise disarming any who keep their eyes on the prize and the real goal of disrobing, denuding, displaying, discussing, debating, and distributing truth about this disguised ruling-elite global corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE, which has taken over control of our former country (along with the UK, France, Israel, et al) by hiding behind the Empire's bought and owned TWO-Party sophisticated modern "Vichy" sham of faux-democratic government, and equally "Vichy" corporatist media shills, all of whom have the same goal as this droll troll --- to divert attention from the global Empire behind the curtain of supposedly sovereign nation-states and supposedly democratic governments.
The entire illusion of this ersatz 'landscape' picture of countries and democracies in our world is merely an "Empire of Illusion" as Christopher Hedges has written --- and the reality of this modernist perverted art of Empire is that of a world controlled by an entirely post-nation-state, and post-democracy global Empire, which goes to great length to avoid ever being tagged or signed by the real artist, or more rightly con-artist; "Sir global Empire".
The actual, but well disguised, global Empire loves the term "Globalization", despite that bit of ugliness in Seattle a few years back, because if the truth were ever known --- that 'globalization' is just a facade for the real "global Empire" --- then the people of the world, who think they live in countries, and many think they live in democracies, would make the 'Battle in Seattle' look like a Sunday School Picnic, and that's the ONLY thing that absolutely scares the shit out of this GD hidden cancerous tumor of global Empire; the fear that the "Multitude" of people might realize that the soft, polite, vague, and seemingly non-controversial term "globalization" actually means the hard, nasty, violent, totalitarian terror of "Global Empire"!
The global Empire wants to keep that secret very submerged, very disguised, and very out of peoples' minds, at least until the Empire has to unleash its weapons and overtly "thrust the tip of the empire's spear in the face" of not just the subjects in the oil territories, but of the subjects in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, London, Paris, etc.
Until then, the global Empire is very willing to pay even droll trolls to distract peoples' attention away from any such fast approaching reality.
Which is why, orchard_keeper, that a more careful consideration of our CD "Infantile poster" or droll troll is of concern to everyone here --- and everyone else that is among the families, loved ones, and of concern to everyone here.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy over violent empire -- People's Party 2012
I agree with you entirely, orchard_keeper, and I generally make far quicker note of trolls and quickly move on with my own project.
But the opportunity here was not to keel-haul the droll troll, but to elucidate the crucial topic of exposing and educating people to the seminal and causal cancer of the hidden Empire --- for which the troll is merely a point to expand on what I would always address, namely, the global Empire.
Best to you and yours, orchard,
Alan
And yet the American Power Elite are always astounded when the exploding chickens come home to roost...
Africom and China (the other quiet player in Africa)
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/2011422131911465794.html
Janis Rose, thanks greatly for the link to that revealing article by Pepe Escobar --- I hadn't seen it and it is both fantastic and fits with a seminal issue that I'm trying to get greater exposure of.
The following is the comment that I just made on this article --- with hopes that Escobar will incorporate the related topics into his great investigative reporting and writing:
"This excellent and revealing article by the always insightful Pepe Escobar, is amazing in its own right --- but would really 'connect the dots' if Escobar expanded on the connection with the global Empire's war plans contained in Thomas Barnett's 2004 Naval War College strategy and book, "The Pentagon's New Map"; which draws a devastating picture of the "Old Core" (US, UK, Euro, Japan, Israel 'global Empire') taking over the entire 5000 mile swath of "Gap" (territories/countries) from Mauritania to the very boarders of India and China --- and doing so preemptively relative to the "New Core" (read BRIC).
This un-debated hidden factor is whether the ruling-elite global corporate/financial/militarist Empire which now has ‘captured’ and almost fully controls our former government, by hiding behind the facade of its bought and owned TWO-Party “Vichy” sham of faux-democratic government and equally “Vichy” corporatist media, is actually planning and executing its military intervention in Libya, Yemen, Syria, as well as all Africa as a ‘kick-off’ element of the global war planning strategy contained in Thomas Barnett’s 2004 Naval War College (and ‘hot read’ national security state) book, “The Pentagon’s New Map” —- which outlines the use of “Leviathan” military influence to cut a 5000 mile swath across the entire N. African, Middle Eastern, and SW Asian countries of the “Crescent of Unrest” from Mauritania to the Afpak’s boarder with India.
This nasty possibility seems to comport very significantly with the ‘hint’ of intelligence information that no less than CIA connected ‘journalist’ Bob Woodward mentioned a few weeks ago on “Meet the Press” when he said:
MR. WOODWARD: “I’m not sure whether it’s unrest, an upheaval, whether these are revolutions. But in a 5,000 mile area from Mauritania to Afghanistan, you have to kind of put all this together. The president has a mammoth management problem. There is deep unhappiness, as there should be, about do we know what’s going on in these countries? And the intelligence agencies are scrambling because they cover the leaders and not the people who are the revolutionaries or the rebels or the people involved in this upheaval.”
Pepe, I strongly believe that both your position and that of Professor Juan Cole would be more complete and balanced if the sleeping issue of Barnett’s strategy for the “Gap” being subsumed into the “Old Core” (his more polite term for the US centered Western global Empire) were to be seriously considered in any debate about the supposedly progressive, but more reactionary intervention in Libya, Yemen, the greater Middle East AND all of Africa."
Thanks again, Janis.
Sincerely,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy over violent empire -- People's Party 2012
Interesting also how proud and boastful the US had been about its contribution to the democracy movements while at the same time, as Engelhardt points out, hedging its bets. I missed the full irony when I read the news item about "our" contributions to their freedom and appreciate having my attention drawn to this.
However, I would hold the praise for the simplistic and derivative opinions of prof., pundit, and expert, Alfred McCoy. His pieces are loaded with über-American generalizations and unawareness of the outside world, its history, and its issues.
ryski, I don't mean to tee-up an issue from your post, and I don't understand the history of your concerns with McCoy, but it turns out that your very valid concerns with faux-democracy movements, your sensitivity about "uber-Americanism", and this article's combination of Engelhardt, McCoy, and "imperial power hedging bets" ALL create a confluence of issues that very directly bear on a key break-through that I believe needs to be discussed and debated about how Empire has quietly evolved and morphed itself in the last decade. So please bear with me, since I'm just now putting the pieces together in my own mind.
First, I should admit that, while I may not understand the background of McCoy that you allude to, I found a link on Tomgram to McCoy's "Empires in transition" site to comport very closely with my own most recent thoughts about unwinding the shape-shifting that global Empire has cynically employed in just the last decade to be very revealing (and possibly supportive of understanding the new structure of 21st century, truly global Empire).
My issue in a nutshell is that the era of nation-state based Empire succumbing and being taken over by another nation-state based empire, as was the case in the mid to late 20th century, is over. Needless to say this hypothesis also assumes that any serious concept of national sovereignty is over too.
Therefore, I am very interested in McCoy's "Empires in transition project", particularly (and perhaps only) if his project addresses my crucial concern; which is not of the small canvass 'one empire at a time transition', but of the macro issue of the concept of Empire transitioning from the a nation-state structure of Empire itself to the current era of empire being a global structure.
It seems to me in this respect that analyses of Empire, such as the approximately decade old "American Empire Project" connected with Tom Engelhardt himself, and having spawned books such as Chalmers Johnson's "Blowback" triology, Chomsky's, Bacevich's, etc, presumed that the latest (and last standing) Empire was merely an American Empire, in the traditional model of all 20th century, (and, indeed, all empires of the last millennium) as being nation-state centered --- even when aspiring to global in reach, like the Spanish and British Empires.
However, since the next to the last several seriously expansionary empire of the 20th century (German/Nazi , Japanese, and Soviet Empires) aspired to be truly global, and had militarily challenged the US nation-state, it seems not unreasonable that ruling-elite empire-thinkers in the US (and particularly those sensing the transnational potential of global corporations) might well be mindful of the advantages of "Empire transition" of an entirely more grand and survivable structure; toward the first post-nation-state, and post sovereign-state model of global Empire.
While Engelhardt's "American Empire Project" and the many leading books that it spawned brought much attention to the issue of there being an American Empire, and also brought significant public awareness here to the question of whether their country should, or should not, be an Empire, what seems to have been missed (and thus, "off-the -radar") as a more fundamental issue for Americans was the issue of whether the somewhat more comforting (and even patriotic) sense that America might be becoming an Empire, was actually hiding the vastly more uncomfortable (even traumatic) issue of whether the fast evolving global Empire would be American in any real sense. And the even more unsettling issue of whether a truly post-nation-state form of global empire would turn on its own nominal headquarters territory --- like any other territory to be exploited and tyrannized.
As Hannah Arendt presciently warned after feeling the painful impact of the Nazi Empire's wannabe global goals, and after a lifetime of studying all 20th century empires:
"Empire abroad entails tyranny at home".
And for the world's first truly global, and post-nation-state, Empire --- there might be no such concept as "at home" anyway.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy over violent empire -- People's Party 2012