Robert BuddanSINCE THE end of the Cold War there has been three world order visions contending for
dominance.
One has been a vision of a United Nations (UN)-based world order close to what Kofi Anan envisages.
Another has been a vision of a world order of regional blocs such as a European, American, Asian-Pacific, and African bloc, each united around common markets and other institutions.
The third has been a vision of an American-dominated world order with the United States being the only superpower and the world's policeman controlling global processes through the UN's Security Council, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO.
Each of these models would have features of the other but some features would be subsumed under a dominant one. Each represents a different version of globalisation.
The U.S.-led model has been more dominant since the Cold War but it has not established itself fully. The contention between world orders has remained in a stalemate through the 1990s. The Russians, Chinese, Europeans and anti-globalist non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been resisting the U.S. model for different reasons.
The planned U.S. war against Iraq is an attempt to break the stalemate and establish the American world order more fully and completely. It is America's globalisation war. George Bush, Snr. had declared for a New World Order (with the U.S. at the centre) at the start of the 1990s. George W. Bush is carrying out his own version of the same
mission.
WHY WAR?
War is not just a policy of the United States, it is a philosophy of progress that some leaders hold.
There is a certain kind of epoch-making thinking that conflict is a necessary means of shaking up the prevailing status quo to establish a new one. Great wars have grand designs behind them.
Many wars in history have been followed by "new world orders". Wars don't just happen; they are made for a purpose. Wars are a form of forced dialectics. Major conflicts resolve old questions that bottle up a situation.
Wars and other forms of conflict are invented or provoked to reshuffle the cards so that some powers come out holding the ace and others end up with lesser hands.
The war on Iraq is designed to submit the UN, Europe and the world to American leadership. The Americans want to claim the moral right to rewrite the rules of the world order to its prescription on the claim that it has saved the world from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq is the start, but one war won't be enough. There is a grand scale of conflict mapped out along the points that the U.S. has designated as the axis of evil.
The contradictory justifications (or lies) for the war don't matter; it is the consistent motives behind the grand design that do. Britain's justification of the slave trade is preposterous but that doesn't matter to Britain. It was the grand plan that did.
Now, Tony Blair says war is justified to end reliance on economic sanctions which make
people suffer.
This is a mad argument. It is the same argument that the U.S. used to justify dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in Japan instantly.
WHY IRAQ?
The U.S. said this was necessary to save lives that would have been lost from a protracted war. The truth is that the U.S. wanted to test its new atomic bombs, signal its power to the world and write the rules of the post-war 11 world order.
But why is Iraq one of the main targets? Bush's Cabinet declared shortly after he wrested the presidency (a part of the grand design) that Iraq was a threat to oil supplies to the world's markets.
The personal interests of the Bush family in the oil business neatly overlap with the political interests of the President. The vaunted separation of powers doesn't work on the big issues such as these.
The Bush family's political and oil interests in Texas and American oil interest in the world economy combine. America's foreign policy is the same as Bush's family policy. This is why the Bush dynasty is so personally obsessed to fight the war.
But this coincident personal and political interest has to be disguised in anti-terrorism rhetoric. It is not that terrorism isn't a real problem. It is that terrorism is not the real reason.
Just as other wars were sold in the name of freedom of the seas or human rights and democracy, Bush wants to turn his economic war into a moral cause to rally the world behind him.
As for the war against terrorism, one day we'll know the real story behind the September 11 attack. We now know more about the dubious Gulf of Tonkin incident which provoked American bombing in South East Asia during the Vietnam War; and the 'surprise' attack on Pearl Harbour that America used as a pretext to enter the Second World War so that it could claim a moral right to establish the rules of the post-war American world order.
We know, too, that in 1990, Bush Snr had signaled to Saddam that it was okay to invade Kuwait as compensation for Iraq's war against America's bigger enemy then, Iran.
When Iran was stopped Bush turned immediately against America's ally, Iraq. The invitation to invade Kuwait was a set-up. America used it to justify invading Iraq.
The war against Iraq, as everybody but the American media know, is a war for oil.
Technology might be the driving force behind globalisation but energy is the driving force behind technology. When Britain ruled the world, the mantra was that anybody who controlled the seas controlled the world. During the Cold War, anybody who controlled nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction controlled the world.
Now the thinking is that anybody who controls the world's future energy resources controls the world for the 21st Century.
American multinationals control technology. Now, the Government of multinationals in America wants to control energy.
The war against the axis of evil is to ensure that non-Western countries do not have weapons of mass destruction, a monopoly reserved only for Western countries; and at the same time to control energy, a monopoly reserved for the US first and its European allies second. Tony Blair is the strongest supporter of globalisation next to the U.S. The British and American version of globalisation is different from those under the UN model and that based on regional blocs.
BRITAIN AND THE WAR
It is for a globalisation based on Anglo-Saxon superiority. Blair admits that Britain is only a middle power in the global rank order. He wants to climb to the top. For this, he needs America and America's designs on the oil market.
Britain has always put the 'special relationship' with the U.S. above its relations with the Commonwealth and with Europe.
After losing its world power status after the Second World War, Britain's foreign policy elites had always hoped to get it back. The special relationship with the U.S. was designed for this. Blair has decided that the time is right and the best way to get back on top is to ride the back of the Americans on the wave of globalisation.
Blair and Bush are also deeply connected to the industrial, financial and political elite of globalisation represented by the Trilateral Commission and its secret government, the Bilderberg Group.
The Bilderberg Group is a secret society made up of the leading business families of the U.S. and Europe. Blair and Bush represent the Anglo-American wing of this ultra-rich and ultra-powerful group whose financial backing and other hidden manoeuvres have a strong influence on who becomes president and prime minister.
With their help, people like the Bushes and Bill Clinton emerged from obscurity to be U.S. presidents.
Observers of the Bilderberg Group believe that Bush and Blair wanted a war from late last summer or early fall.
However, disagreements with the European Bilderbergs over American protectionism (steel and agriculture), staunch support for Israel (amongst whom Jews are not a European favourite), failure to sign the Kyoto Agreement on Climate Control (leaving the costs to the Europeans), and their fear of the backlash of terrorism in Europe (where there are strong Muslim communities), have apparently delayed the Americans.
The war on Iraq is the way that globalisation, or more specifically, the Anglo-American version of it, is playing itself out.
It is not about terrorism. Americans have always supported terror when it suited them. Globalisation is not just a natural economic evolution. Its twin is military force used to break down the doors that close economic paths.
Just as the war on Cuba is a vestige of the old Cold War order, the war on Iraq is the opening event of the new globalisation world order American and British style.
Robert Buddan is a lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
E-mail: rbuddan@uwimona.edu.jm
