Return of Caesar on the Global Order
Power is an insatiable impulse. The Anglo-American alliance heralds a new imperialistic order. Although this order ironically comes as the professed harbinger of quintessential norms of civilization - modernity, liberal values, democratic governance and so forth - these are only ‘icing’ on the cake - the strategies of deception. The issue is essentially to gain control over the oil resources, which fuel affluence of the western world. It is also to ensure that Israel swells in power and also annexes extra territory to become a power surrogate of USA to control the Middle-East and its rich oil reservoir. All that rhetoric about the ‘war on terror’ was to gain foothold on Afghanistan so that the energy resources of Central Asia also become the monopoly of Anglo-American new founded Empire. The soft power of USA is metamorphosed into hard power and George Bush is the mighty Caesar at the seat of global Empire.
It is an ambition, which has an historical underpinning. 9/11 only facilitated the fulfillment of the aspirations. When Jimmy Carter was elected President in 1976, his advisor Brezezinski, brought Bernard Lewis, former Professor of Islamic Studies, University of London, and later at Princeton University, USA to promote what came to be known as “The Crescent of Crisis Policy”. Subsequently Samuel Huntington joined to complete the trio of “intellectual terrorism,” with his infamous dogma of “Clash of Civilization”. It was essentially a derivative of “Crescent of Crisis”, propounded by Lewis, who was the main architect of balkanization of the Middle East. Infact, “every disastrous American US policy toward the Middle East and Central Asia over the past quarter century can be attributed to Lewis influence”. He was the author of a very controversial book: “The Emergence of Modern Turkey” in which he denounced Mustafa Kamal Ataturk in favour of reviving the Ottoman Empire to be deployed as, British geopolitical battering ram against the Soviet Union along its Islamist South tier”. It was a functional imperative for degrading the then Soviet Union - the arch rival of USA. Now the priority has changed in favour of breaking Muslims into as many splinter groups as possible to be able to reign supreme over them. In 1976 he wrote another book: The Assassins - A Radical Sect in Islam - which promoted the hashish smoking cult of assassins, which was active during the crusades as a legitimate tradition within Islam. Denigrating Muslim societies was a part of image tarnishing policy, deliberately steered to create stereotypes, which could lend justification for any punitive action against them. Henry Kissinger - the geo-political pundit - drew the plan for executing Lebanese civil war in order to keep the whole Middle East in a state of perpetual instability. The latest conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq are not chance happenings. The chaos was planned and implemented to fill the geopolitical gap of the so called ‘Crescent of Crisis” and in the words of Kissinger, to “recapture the geopolitical momentum.”
When Osama bin Laden allegedly declared jihad on February 23, 1998, six months before the attack on US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the very next day Bernard Lewis signed an open letter to President Clinton demanding that the US government throw its full support behind a military campaign to over-throw Saddam Hussein. The letter advocated carpet bombing of Iraq, and a suggestion was made that adequate financial support be given to ‘Contra” - a pseudo gang created by US and British Intelligence agencies to gain control of Iraq. This explains the logic why US-British coalition displayed indecent haste in attacking Iraq in defiance to the Security Council’s resolutions and the collective civilizational verdict, condemning the unjustified war.
Afghanistan and Iraq are captured territories. Which one is the next target among the Muslim countries is the question? Is it Syria, Iran, Pakistan or all of these in quick succession? The looming uncertainty is deliberately manipulated to dilute the ideological glue that binds Muslim nations into a cohesive entity to muster a collective response. The impending threat would atomize them so that they remain selfishly tuned to their own individual security – Country First Syndrome. Iraq’s capture is especially significant as it provides the strategic leverage to exercise imperial control over the entire ‘Crescent of Crisis’, with its enormous oil wealth and Israel free to act as it suits US-Israel strategic objectives.
The well deliberated military action against Iraq, first in 1991 by the father of the present President and repeat of the same by his son in 2003 followed by attack on Afghanistan in 2001, are the fulfillment of the insight implicitly contained in Paul Kennedy’s famous book: “The Rise & Fall of Great powers”. The author has advocated pragmatic policy to retain the global leadership; “In all of the discussions about the erosion of the American leadership it needs to be repeated again and again that the decline referred to is relative not absolute and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious threat to the real interest of US can come from a failure to adjust sensibly to the newer world order. This was only possible if economic power was dove-tailed with military power. In other words, power and profit must not part company to retain the hegemony. Acquisition of the economic wealth - the rich oil reservoir - first in Saudi Arabia, secondly to gain control over Central Asian oil and gas wealth, Afghanistan route was ensured and now the second most oil rich country Iraq has been added to the Empire as a geo-economic force- multiplier. The author very explicitly mentions: “The tests before the US is as it heads towards the 21st-century are certainly daunting, perhaps especially in the economic-sphere: But the national resources remain considerable if they can be properly organized and if there is a judicious recognition of both the limitations and opportunities of American power”. Opportunities have been seized. Power is complete in both the dimensions. The military power with all its technical sophistication, ferocity, precision - propelled killing propensity, has been demonstrated in the Afghan and Iraq wars. This is not only to accentuate dread and awe, but to create a colossal market for the new breed of weapons and ammunition in the global market – a vital obligation of the US government to meet the demands and pressure of their merchants of death – Arms producers. The enormous cost of war will now be borne by Iraq as was the case in 1991 when Saudi Arabia had to reimburse all the expenses besides colossal profit to USA, to the peril of its economy. War is essentially a corporate activity for USA. In the Bismarckian sense, it is well poised to sail over the “Stream of Time.” How long shall this “imperial stretch” sustain itself will be determined by the dynamics of the multipolarity, which is slowly but perceptibly sneaking into the Global Order.