The rhetoric of oil and the dilemma of war and American hegemony.

• Author: Bina, Cyrus

DESPITE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MANY UNPRECEDENTED and lasting historical transformations, the Twentieth Century may well be remembered for two epoch-making milestones that are now seemingly close to their final stages. They are the rise and fall of Soviet "communism" and the rise and fall of American global hegemony.

As we have seen, the fall of the Soviet Union, unthinkable just a few years ago, is now an established fact. But the fall of U.S. hegemony and the forces that have led to it, especially since the recent Kuwait-Iraq crisis and the "victory" of U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf, have yet to be recognized equally by both the specialist and the lay observer, particularly in the United States. The standard argument within the political discourse runs as follows: As the Soviet Union lost its superpower position, the United States gained unrivaled dominance over the entire globe. Hence, the world has entered into a unipolar, second American century. This assessment is shared by many on both the left and the right of the political spectrum, particularly in the United States.

For instance, it is now common to singularly capitalize on the aftereffects of the vanished Soviet deterrence in order to explain the severity of America's asymmetric hostility against the tiny nation of Iraq, an all out act of aggression that could not have been imagined a few years ago. This line of reasoning seems to rely exclusively on the fall of the Soviet Union, without looking into the internal demise of the postwar international system of nation-states under the Pax Americana. In other words, this view refuses to acknowledge the sweeping changes that have forcefully led to the transnationalization of the world economy and to the undermining of postwar political institutions. Moreover, it neglects to consider that the rise of Japan and the emergence of the European Community are the result of certain fundamental changes that have themselves been caused, to paraphrase John Maynard Keynes, by "little else." The fall of the Soviet Union may be a necessary but not a sufficient cause for the recent U.S. behavior.

If one looks upon the Soviet Union and its former client-states, in addition to Western capitalism, in terms of a particular form of state capitalism, one can systematically account for the entire spectrum of global crises that have befallen the existing international system of nation-states. This view of reality, of course, necessitates the acceptance of a framework that would not necessarily identify the existence of markets with capitalism and the presence of (state) planning with communism on a worldwide basis. My purpose is not to engage in a debate on what is socialism and what is not. The argument that is put forth here pertains to the New World Order and the resultant U.S. hegemonic decline, and as such it should stand on its own. The decline of the present international system also points to the disintegration of its very constituent part: the sub-system of client-state order. This, in part, is due to the development of a world economy that has already superseded the boundaries of nation-states and, in part, is due to the inviability of national frameworks as reliable building blocks in the emerging world order. The immediate result of all this, for the Western half of the equation, is the decline of U.S. global hegemony.

Consequently, both the Soviet disintegration and U.S. hegemonic decline must present themselves as the necessary and sufficient conditions for an adequate understanding of present global upheavals, particularly recent U.S. action in the Persian Gulf. The size of the expedition, the flimsiness of the target, the manner of response, the dubious political objectives, and the lack of concern about the enduring and harmful political consequences against the United States itself are all telling of circumscribed hegemony. After all, this colossal military power was unleashed against a junior partner which was an active participant in U.S. (Persian Gulf) policy for a good number of years. While these days it is fairly easy to be dazzled by the shining armor of U.S. military capability, I wish to argue that obtaining such a military "victory" is a very expensive proposition that has been largely motivated by the United States' dim view of its future role in the New World Order. It is expensive not so much for its direct costs, but for the future repercussions that will be brought to bear on the region as a whole. Beneath this magnificent and unwavering show of force, therefore, is an intensified and accumulating political weakness of clumsily clinging to the status quo.

In what follows, I shall maintain that, given the fall of the Soviet Union as a momentary impetus conducive to the U.S. war option, the principal cause of such a reckless and unjustified act can be found in much deeper levels of incongruity. Neither the rhetoric of oil, nor the purported desire for democracy, can provide adequate answers to the puzzle of recent American misbehavior in the Persian Gulf. In my view, the answer has to do with the dynamics of the emerging New World Order and the concurrent decline of U.S. global hegemony. This commotion, therefore, constitutes a peculiar sign of resistance on the part of the United States against its evident hegemonic decline. Pax Americana is forced to pass the torch, reluctantly, but America is bound to remain as one of the great powers in the multi-polar world-in-the-making.

THE ASCENDANCY OF PAX AMERICANA

To understand the essential feature of the present global transformation, and to conceive of the peculiarities of current U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf region, one cannot escape from the historical context of the inter-war changes (1919--1939), that have supported the ascendancy of the American global position so successfully, and that endowed it with an enduring hegemonic structure, scarcely in need of outright colonial conquest.(1)

What can be learned from this history, among other things, is that the essential mission of the emerging American system, known as the Pax Americana, was to establish an all-encompassing hegemony over the global economy, global polity and the socio-ideological fabric of the world community. This hegemony, of course, has been only indirectly predicated upon the rule of force through overt and/or covert military operations of varying magnitude. Here, the option of gunboat diplomacy was a unique exercise that, in responding to the Soviet challenge (or independent nationalist forces), covertly remained in the background during the ascending decades (1945-1975?) of Pax Americana.

Put in proper context, the origin and nature of the postwar U.S. stance cannot be adequately understood through U.S. military activities alone. For instance, America's military victory over Germany and Japan during World War II and its continued military superiority could not save the United States from its continuous hegemonic descent since the mid-1970s. To be sure, what has given the United States the status of a global hegemon, since 1945, was precisely the strength of its unrivaled economy combined with the dominance of its rising political power and omnipresent international institutions.

Contrary to the neo-conservative vision of "the end of history" and despite the hybrid liberal/radical views that subscribe to the thesis of "unipolar global order," I contend that in the face of today's transnational trend, the United States will continue its global decline.(2) In other words, the U.S.'s hegemonic decline is symptomatic of major global changes of historic proportion that have radically undermined the character of the postwar international system.

Although the international system of nation-states has a history dating back to the Industrial Revolution, the global system under Pax Americana has tended to absorb and internalize the colonial world systematically. U.S. policy makers have tried to reshape the world based on their own image, but they wished to do it by maintaining the status quo. The earliest U.S. military interventions were always supplementary to political and economic objectives, and conincided with America's global ascent. These interventions were conducted out of U.S. strength. In the past, the U.S. had sufficient hegemony to maintain the world. Now, it is striving to maintain that hegemony. Hence, we now see the type of military intervention that neither serves American interests nor substitutes for political weaknesses. Thus, at this historic juncture attempting hegemonic reassertion through aggression proves contradictory and self-limiting, thereby bringing into the open the most critical aspects of U.S. participation in the present global disorder. The present world order is descending, so are its global security arrangements. Thus, the latest search for security by the vanishing order through its ideologues in the academic community, media, etc. is not unlike the demand to put the fox in charge of the chicken coup again. As the saying goes, history tends to recur twice: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. The "American Century" is in trouble.

COLD WAR: AN AMERICAN DOCTRINE

From the standpoint of economic hegemony, the New World Order of post-1945 bestowed upon the U.S. dollar the status of universal currency. Institutionally, the powerful U.S.-dominated global entities, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, came to direct and influence the modus operandi of global development, and paved the way for U.S. domination and hegemonic ascent throughout the world. Hence, for instance, the advent of a newly-devised international monetary arrangement in 1944, known as the Bretton Woods System (1945-1971).(3) This arrangement--coupled with the Marshall Plan for the post-war reconstruction of Europe, and the Agency for International Development (AID) for the Third World--exponentially increased U.S...