Recent events in Paris have once again reopened the discussion on the real causes of Jihadist terrorism in Europe and elsewhere. What is missing from the public discussion among progressives regarding the roots of the current crisis is not the extent to which the Iraq war led to where we are now. This is an oft repeated argument and it is perfectly correct. What is missing in the discussion of the current crisis and its roots in the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is its obvious connection to the historic ongoing search by US policy makers for a way to restore the hegemony enjoyed by the US in world affairs until the defeat it suffered in Vietnam. This was something US policy makers openly sought since the late 1970s.
Thus, the whole Iraq misadventure began not with the influence of a nefarious group of policy makers called neocons who allegedly pushed a reluctant Bush Administration toward a policy of war it would have otherwise never adopted. Rather, the war was the logical outcome of a more than century long history of US overseas imperialism and the quest to restore America’s lost global hegemony. The neocons were merely a product of that history. As I’ve stressed before, imperialism is not a policy, it is a stage of capitalist development in the history of a given country. By 1898, American capitalism had fully advanced to its monopoly stage and was ready for overseas expansion as evidenced by the McKinley Administration’s attack on parts of the Spanish Empire in Cuba and the Philippines. At no time since that point had US forces not been actively engaged in either combat overseas or in some sort of military occupation of another country. After WWII, CIA covert operations against foreign governments would be added to the scope of US imperialist actions. Therefore, in the context of this long history, blaming the neocons for the US intervention in and near decade long occupation of Iraq is both facile and naïve!
I will not delve into further arguments and the supporting evidence that the neoconservative episode in US diplomatic history was neither aberrant nor a political tendency that was forced upon the Bush Administration by figures representing Israel. What I will try to do instead is explain why US imperialism became especially prominent and aggressive in the early 1990s immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union leaving the US as the world’s sole superpower. This left the US with a new opportunity to restore its hegemony. Suffice it to say that this new opportunity coincided not just with the end of the cold war but with the intensification of economic globalization which was actually an equally important and related motivation for the sudden intensification of US imperialism, particularly in the oil rich Middle East.
In a brilliant article published on line in the early days of the Iraq War, historian Jerry Harris noted a split in the US ruling elite between what he called the globalists, those in the Clinton Administration who preferred negotiated solutions and a multilateral approach to international security, and hegemonists, which were a group of jingoistic nationalists who were tied to the interests of the old military-industrial complex and who advocated the unilateral use of military force to achieve US global political hegemony. In an online essay entitled The Hegemonist Challenge to Globalism, Harris situates the neocons of the Bush Administration firmly within the “hegemonist" camp explaining their pursuit of a renewed tendency toward military intervention to reshape the world according to US interests.
Rejecting the globalist advocacy of “free market liberalization” and “democratic institution building” in third world countries transitioning from the rigid, oppressive and politically unstable dictatorships of the pre-global era, the hegemonists advocated unilateral military intervention to affect outcomes in US interests the anticipated success of which would rally US allies behind a hegemonic America. Where Clinton advocated building and expanding alliances, which was logic to his attempts to expand NATO into the newly independent countries of eastern Europe, hegemonists rejected such alliances dubbing them encumbering and compromising of US interests. He cites a telling quote from Bush Administration official Richard Perle that goes,
“An alliance today is really not essential…the price you end-up paying for an alliance is collective decision making. That was a disaster in Kosovo…We’re not going to let the discussions…the manner in which we do it (and) the targets we select to be decided by a show of hands from countries whose interests cannot be identical to our own and who haven't suffered what we have suffered.”
Interestingly, Harris relates this rejection of multilateralism to the hegemonists “clash of civilizations” argument and their current opposition to multiculturalism movement in the US to the hegemonists modern version of the old British colonialist “white man's burden" motif which is merely a renewed defense of Euro-centrism which is at the core of hegemonist ideology. Harris explains;
Key to hegemonist ideology is the cultural purity and political independence of the nation/state. Their rejection of multilateralism abroad is tied to their opposition to multiculturalism at home. They fear the deconstruction of an Euro-centric narrative of U.S. history will create a “post-assimilationist society” that will make “American nationhood obsolete.”
Hegemonists reject multilateral “entanglements” and UN treaties and processes as a way of securing American supremacy unhindered by the interests, goals and preferences of other alliance members. The purpose of an alliance, in the hegemonist view is not to secure a community of interests in pursuing foreign policy goals but to secure increased support for US hegemony. Hegemonist ideology is a belligerent form of contemporary nationalism which sees US power and authority as paramount in securing “western values” which are seen as compromised by advocates of diversity, cooperation, peaceful negotiation and international processes and agreements. The hegemonists represent a extreme right wing nationalist tendency amounting to US supremacy whose fight against “liberalism” at home is intimately tied to the expansion of US prerogatives abroad as a means of defending the class interests of the American capitalist class. Harris concludes his explication of hegemonist ideology and foreign policy approach by saying;
“...a U.S. war on Iraq is linked to the battle for class power against globalism. Establishing the unilateral use of force and violence, ignoring international law, attacking immigrant rights, and promoting a renewed patriotic cultural narrative are all key elements in a broad counteroffensive.”
The Bush doctrine of unilateral, preemptive attacks on perceived enemies is thus a means to secure US hegemony. It seeks US global supremacy. This doctrine is evidence of a split in the US capitalist class, according to Harris, and not representative of the whole group. In Gramscian fashion, Harris’s analysis posits the rise of hegemonism as a strategy of the more dominant fraction of US capitalism which sees ultra-nationalism as the best path to secure US interests in a world were economic and political challenges have reduced the ability of the US to project power and maintain economic supremacy since the mid-1970s with the defeat in Vietnam and the loss of key strategic regional allies in the Middle East such as the Shah of Iran. Clearly, hegemonists see rivals where globalists see allies. The hegemonist goal is to restore America to its historic apex of power that it enjoyed in the years immediately following WWII.
Harris seeks to show how this fissure in the US ruling class has an industrial sector basis. The explicit linkages that the hegemonists have to the old military-industrial complex (MIC) shape much of the conflict. Harris points out; “The hegemonist/globalist struggle also has an economic aspect that extends to industrial strategy. The military’s industrial base is international not transnational...” Here Harris stresses the distinction between those international firms whose production base is in the US vs. those transnational firms who productive base is global and comprised of global supply chains. The latter relies on global cooperation and markets whereas the former on nationalist protections such as no bid government contracts and tax payer financing. On this point, Harris is quite explicit;
Defense corporations also rely on state protectionism. For example, in 2001 fully 72% of Lockheed Martin’s sales came from U.S. government procurements. In fact, a whole set of laws prevent sharing technologies or accepting foreign investments in key military industries. While international sales are growing, they are mainly national exports overseen by the Departments of Defense, Commerce and State, all with their own set of rules and restrictions. Furthermore, the Pentagon processes 75% of all U.S. military foreign sales. This means the Department of Defense (DOD) negotiates the terms, collects the funds and disburses them to private U.S. contractors. The main military manufacturer’s organization, The National Defense Industrial Association, has 9,000 corporate affiliates and 26,000 individual members with no foreign membership. Divided up among these contractors is the largest single slice of the federal government’s budget. Current military spending has hit $437 billion with $62 billion for procurement and $51 billion in research and development.
As Harris points out, international corporations access markets through exports, often financed by agencies of the US federal government, whereby transnational corporations access global markets through foreign affiliates and global supply chains. In addition, many of the cross border mergers and acquisitions in the military industries are vehemently opposed by hegemonists who believe that America should never court the possibility that we might eventually “export the means of our future defeat” to allies we can’t trust beyond doubt.
Harris believes that though the electoral victory of George W. Bush in 2000 signaled the dominance of the hegemonist faction of US capital, he still believes that it represents overall a minority of the US capitalist class and that their hold on power will prove to be tenuous. Harris’s essay was written just before the actual US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and so his views of the extent of long term neocon influence is speculative though his analysis of the split in the US capitalist class and its political manifestations was not. In other words when neocons policy makers conflicted with big capital big capital won. An example is the successful resistance by big oil to the neocon proposal to immediately privatize Iraqi oil in order to control Middle Eastern production and break OPEC. Not only would this harm our Saudi Allies but create uncertainty in world oil prices. It is no wonder that immediately following the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, oil prices quadrupled and over the next ten years, the big four-Shell, Exxon-Mobil, BP and Chevron-all together earned over a trillion in profits alone! As former Shell/USA CEO Phil Carroll said in answer to the neocon claim that privatizing Iraqi oil immediately is a no brainer, "I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain."
Carroll gave his reasoning in an interview on the BBC segment Newsnight in the following statement;"Many neo conservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this, that and the other. International oil companies, without exception, are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology."
There was also the concern that privatization would invite insurgent attacks on oil pipelines and well (which occurred anyhow). Clearly, the interests of big capital were the ones that were truly operative during the entire war, as evidenced by the billions racked in by defense and reconstruction contractors as well as big oil. The neocons may have been on tap but they were not on top. Their leadership was accepted only in so far as it reliably served key sectors of American big business.
The rise of the neocons in the aftermath of the election of Bush was the long standing desire among conservatives to restore American power to its former glory days before the 1970s. Much had changed in the three decades just after WWII. Unchallenged US hegemony declined. US export surpluses suddenly turned to widening deficits in the mid-1970s. In the early 1950s, more than three quarters of all large multinational corporations were American; by the start of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, only about a fifth were among the top one hundred. Finally, the end of the cold war eliminated the perceived need among America’s European allies for a protective military presence against overwhelming Soviet ground forces in a possible invasion scenario. This left NATO allies free to pursue their own global interests and oppose US foreign policy objectives when it didn’t suit them. This was seen as the biggest threat to US hegemony; it was a portend of the rise of global multi-polarity.
What then was the immediate origins of the neocons political rise in recent history? The answer is that it is far less tied up with Israeli security (or expansion) than with the restoration of US hegemony after years of decline. It was revealed by General Wesley Clark in his recounting of a discussion he had with Paul Wolfowitz, Bush’s undersecretary of state and architect of neocon regime change doctrine, in 1991. Here is Clark’s version of the conversation;
And I said, “Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm.”
And he said: “Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn’t … But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes –Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”
It is clear that Wolfowitz believed that the sudden emergence of the US as the world’s sole superpower was a unique opportunity for the US to regain its lost hegemonic influence in world affairs unimpeded by a rival, nuclear armed superpower. Thus, he evolved the doctrine of unilateral attacks on any regime deemed a long term threat to US interests. The Middle East was chosen less on the basis of Israeli security (which was actually harmed by the US invasion and occupation) than for the regions oil as well as the perceived need to open the societies and economies of the region to US corporate interests. Part of the neocon strategy was to remove regional impediments to the expansion of US corporate capitalism in places like the Middle East. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (as well as Assad’s Syria and Gaddafi’s Libya) were seen as the last bastions of moribund Arab nationalism (along with economic autarchy) in the region. US global corporate interests meant that these regimes had to be replaced by more cooperative client states whose economies, formerly dominated by state control, could be privatized by western corporate interests.
There is no question about the neocon goal to make of Iraq a corporate dominated free market showcase for the Middle East. The one hundred Bremer Orders privatizing Iraq’s various state owned enterprises (except for the oil) and allowing foreign capital the right to full profit repatriation, “national treatment" of foreign firms, and tax holidays for foreign corporate investors despite Iraq’s ruinous public finances all show the importance to US policy makers of globalizing and liberalizing formerly state run economies. This was impossible under the old nationalist regimes whose popular base was an urban middle class tied directly and indirectly to the state.
According to a report by the US Department of Commerce International Trade Administration, an agreement was hammered out between the Iraq government and the US while US troops still occupied Iraq. The report states;
On November 27, 2008, the United States finalized a long-term cooperative agreement with Iraq on future joint economic, legal, and security relations. The Strategic Framework Agreement outlines how Iraq and the United States can cooperate to revitalize Iraq’s private sector and create a vibrant free market economy in Iraq.
And according to a 2013 US Department of State report;
In 2011, foreign firms and investors reported over $55 billion in investments, service contracts, and other commercial activities across Iraq, according to private consultants. This activity amounted to an increase of 80.4 percent over 2010, while total deal value increased by 40.3 percent. The International Trade Centre (ITC) – a joint venture of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization...estimated that Iraq attracted over $1.6 billion of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in 2011 (the most recent statistics available), representing an increase of approximately 52 percent since 2007.
The 2013 State Department report is quite exhaustive and specifies the success of Iraq’s National Investment Law (2006) provided the basis for long term stable foreign investment and foreign business ownership in the country. It also reveals how the federation of the country in three distinct regions, specifically with the autonomy of Kurdistan, has benefited foreign capital. The report states;
Investors in the IKR face many of the same challenges as investors elsewhere in Iraq, including corruption, red tape, and inefficiency, but a business-friendly investor law and generally stable security situation continue to attract foreign businesses. Foreign and domestic investment in the IKR has been rising annually for the last six years, with over 500 major projects valued at almost $25 billion awarded under the KRIL since 2006 and $6 billion in investment projects awarded in 2012 alone. The KRIL applies only to non-oil and gas projects.
Separating Kurdistan from Baghdad made exploiting the oil rich area more profitable and accessible to foreign capital by relieving the need to deal with the Iraqi central government. The opening of Iraq’s economy to foreign capital has been more of a boon to corporations than to the average Iraqi with poverty and unemployment at high levels.
So what of the neocon episode? It was clearly a disaster as the wars in the Middle East have brought the current chaos and instability, cost the US tax payers trillions over time and have resulted in massive loss of life. But as this essay shows, transnational corporate capital has benefited. The neocon legacy seems to have remained to some extent albeit in a highly qualified form in the current Obama Administration. Obama pursued regime change in Libya and Syria and used drone strikes to destroy jihadist targets in numerous places with significant loss of civilian life. He has done little to reign in Israeli aggression against the Palestinians. He also took a hard line against Putin’s intervention in the Ukraine. He has pursued a treaty with Iran mostly out of sheer necessity and with the support of most of the world community (and US military) despite neocon opposition.
Yet the disastrous policy impact of neocon doctrine will ultimately doom it to obscurity. It has not restored US hegemony and only created future risks and dangers as the current situation shows. It has cost countless lives and untold billions. Worst of all, the current crisis of terrorism and aggression by the Islamic State both in the Middle East and Europe is the direct outcome of neocon policies. These policies must be rejected completely. The current situation is proof enough of that necessity. According to an analysis by one historian, "What we have seen is a significant shift in U.S. strategy, from full-scale invasion and occupation—which proved too costly, too unpopular, and positively counter-productive—to going back to more traditional methods of intervention.” These include support of proxy armies, drone strikes and other use of airpower, and the use of small teams of special forces for limited objectives such as the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The failure of neocon warmongering to restore US hegemony should surprise no one. It is doubtful that anything will. ISIS must be dealt with but in a multilateral manner that uses none US, local forces more than anything else and is also combined with humanitarian aid and development assistance to turn people away from ISIS recruitment appeals. The neocons’ real endgame was restoring US hegemony, not Israeli security, and the massive and deeply invasive scope of that effort created the chaos in the Middle East that we are seeing today. Hegemony seeking, was the main motive of the neocons and those who supported them despite this strategy’s ultimate and catastrophic failure. Only by acknowledging this fact can we learn the lessons of history and avoid repeating it.