DEBATING THE DEBATE: OBAMA, THE NEOCONS, AND AMERICAN EMPIRE

The following exchange took place recently between myself and a close collaborator at the Center for Empire Studies, who on 9/27/08 posted

out-Hawking the Hawks:

Mr. Congeniality chooses to cede all foreign policy arguments to his rival. But you can't really blame him, the decision to take the Iraq War off the table, and make the election a referendum on economic issues worked brilliantly for John Kerry...

Why Obama continues to embrace discredited neo-conservative interpretations of political developments in places like Georgia and the Middle East is beyond me. He seems to accept the notion that the American electorate is so stupid that it has no tolerance for nuance on issues such as "Israel's right to defend it self against an Iranian nuclear holocaust," or the "threat of Russian aggression." (though in Obama's defense, there is a theory out there that argues that if you treat someone like they are stupid for long enough, they may indeed become stupid. As PT Barnum observed: "you'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." I don't suppose that we should let the fact that Mr. Barnum died in debt overshadow the simple elegance of his formula...)

Obama may get lucky and be able to ride bad economic headlines into the White House, but when it comes to the more fundamental problem of coming to terms with American Empire, apparently we are not the ones we have been waiting for. Apparently they will come along some time later. Perhaps they will be able to reframe foreign policy issues in more realistic, less militaristic and ideological terms than "we" are currently able to.

I wonder how they will manage to do that.
Posted by Brandon at 12:02 PM

TO WHICH I REPLIED:

I offer this response in the interest of solidarity:

Unfortunately, the blindly pro-Israel and now "pro-Georgian" foreign policy position shared by Obama and McCain is reflective of the larger framework within which American Empire has operated since the end of WWII, and is by no means solely a "neocon" ideology. Of course, the now infamous neoconservatives (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, etc.) have played a major role in perpetuating US imperialism first through the anti-communist "cold war" framework," and now through a "war on terror" against "radical Islam (Islamofascism)." McCain, with his vast resume as a militant American nationalist, has had ties to the neocons for several decades stretching back to their ascension during the "Reagan Revolution" and the beginning of a new "special relationship" between Israel and the United States. McCain's top foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, for instance, is a participant in the neocons' Project for a New American Century and Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, while also being a paid lobbyist to the president of...Georgia!

So the neocons, who rose to prominence in the 1980s through advocating the unilateral imposition of American power, teamed-up with partners on the far Right in Israel and allies in Washington to refocus the "Free World's" post-cold war attention on a "terrorist" enemy lurking in the Middle East. Having peaked after 9/11 and the fulfillment of longstanding plans to re-invade Iraq, this imperial structure built on an anti-terrorist foundation has weakened to the point of near collapse. Thus by working through a proxy regime in Georgia, what's left of Bush's "coalition of the willing" in Washington and Tel Aviv is prodding Russia into joining the fray (which could eventually include Moscow defending Iran against a US/Israeli attack) thereby reigniting/reconfiguring their "Long War" into a more familiar struggle among "Great Powers." McCain is 150% behind this plan that would heighten global tensions dramatically through a new articulation of Bush's zero-sum "you're either with us, or with the terrorists" formula.

For his part, Obama appears to be more of an internationalist who nonetheless seeks to protect and extend American global leadership. An Obama foreign policy in this manner has the promise of being similar to that of the Carter administration, as in fact Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski is now advising Obama. Of course, Carter was at the last minute denied a speaking role at this year's DNC probably because of his recently outspoken defense of Palestinian rights. For his part, Brzezinski has also earned opposition from neocons and others affiliated with the "Israel Lobby" (to the point of being labeled anti-Semitic) for his advocacy of a more "evenhanded" approach to the Middle East. The Obama campaign is clearly distancing itself in public from the Carter Middle East strategy, yet it is still unclear exactly how an Obama administration would or would not revise its stance on Israel/Palestine once in office.

Ironically, Eastern Europe and Russia are considered more within the purview of Brzezinski (who is of Polish descent); some in fact consider Obama to be aligned with a Brzezinski-led faction in the Democratic Party--also associated with billionaire Hungarian emigre financier George Soros--that would engage in a "realist" approach to projecting US power while shifting attention away from the Middle East and towards Eastern Europe/Russia. By this account, Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton in the primary election was a victory for the Brzezinski/Soros faction in cahoots with Howard Dean's DNC, which is opposed to "neocon fellow-travelers" such as Evan Bayh affiliated with the Clintons' Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

To whatever extent Obama may be connected to such a "realist" anti-Clinton/anti-neocon axis within the Democratic Party, it would be fully resonant with his campaign's foreign policy proposals centered on shifting focus and resources away from Iraq towards "winning the war" in Afghanistan. In addition to the stated goal of "rooting out al Qaeda and the Taliban," this strategy has the obvious effect of placing Central Asia and Eastern Europe/Russia at the center of US geopolitical interest. This would certainly make sense as far as Brzezinski is concerned, given how he bragged in his book "The Grand Chessboard" that he personally helped bait the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan--what he calls the "Afghan Trap." Indeed, while it escalated dramatically under Reagan and his neocon advisers, CIA sponsorship of the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen began under Carter and Brzezinski. So beyond the rhetoric of fighting terrorism, Obama's focus on Afghanistan amounts to a 21st century version of the "Great Game" for control over the strategically vital borderlands between Europe and Asia.

His promise to escalate the war in Afghanistan is therefore the most troubling aspect of Obama's foreign policy, particularly since it legitimizes the concept of "war on terror" and accepts the narrative framed by his neocon/American nationalist rivals. By how fully it either embraces or rejects the notion of building a foreign policy platform around retaliating against bin Laden and other "terrorists" for 9/11, the next administration will determine whether or not the neocon-inspired "war on terror/long war" has any chance of congealing into an all-encompassing framework reminiscent of the Cold War. Sadly, Obama's position regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan cedes too much ground to the neocon, i.e. Bush/McCain agenda by proclaiming to end a "failed strategy" in Iraq only to pursue a similar strategy in Central Asia. The same may be said of Obama's current positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as recent fighting between Russia and Georgia.

Yet, there are important nuances and crucial differences between the McCain and Obama foreign policies. The militant nationalist Bush/McCain vision promises to reinvigorate the war on terror paradigm by folding the familiar Russian enemy into a new bellicose framework in which "radical Islamic terrorists" and allied states such as Syria and Iran pose the "transcendent threat" of our generation. The Obama-Brzezinski realist/internationalist vision, however, avoids such dubious rhetoric while proclaiming that terrorism is one of many challenges facing the international community including climate change, nuclear proliferation, genocide, hunger, and disease.

To be sure, Team Obama is not promising to dismantle the American Empire. But, they are pledging to engage in a more tempered use of military power in which multilateral decision-making is a means of balancing the perceived "national (material) interest" with imperatives of global stability. A stark contrast therefore arose during the September 26 presidential debate with respect to McCain and Obama's assessments of how the current economic crisis (and $700 billion bail-out plan) might affect their respective agendas. McCain, showing his true militant nature, proposed a government "spending freeze" for everything but the military and veterans' benefits. Obama, on the other hand, answered the question by stating which programs he would remain committed to funding: energy independence, infrastructure redevelopment, affordable education and health care. Thus while still affirming his commitment to a "troop surge" in Afghanistan, Obama did not repeat during the debate his previous statements about increasing overall military spending. Moreover, he appeared to leave a door to demilitarization open by not mentioning defense spending at all among his top priorities within the context of a severely constrained budget. In fact, he went one step further in this direction on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer (9/28) by suggesting that he might cut "foreign aid" in order to divert money towards a Wall Street recovery while not sacrificing the main tenets of his agenda.

What does all of this mean? Perhaps nothing. Maybe Obama is just another Democratic "wolf in sheep's clothing" who poses no dramatic departure from the miserably corrupt status-quo. Perhaps he should come out and declare that he wishes to end America's role as the preeminent military power by closing down its far-flung "empire of bases" (to use Chalmers Johnson's phrase). That Obama doesn't choose to take this stand could in theory make him ultimately no better than Bush or McCain.

Yet in light of economic circumstances, an internationalist Obama foreign policy would by nature provide breathing-room for the Left to enact serious pressure towards demilitarization. Team Obama has already produced ambitious goals in terms of creating a New Deal-type economic recovery based on renewable energy production. Such a "Green Revolution" has only become more viable and indeed more necessary now that the nation is in the midst of a financial meltdown threatening to rival (or even surpass) that which produced the Great Depression.

Ultimately when it comes to articulating and implementing a vision for how the world ought to be, "we are the ones we've been waiting for." Barack Obama is simply a politician and at best also the flawed figurehead of a political movement far larger than him or any individual. Unfolding economic collapse may now provide the opponents of imperialism with an opportunity to make the case that money should be spent on healing/rebuilding the nation rather than housing troops in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Germany, Djibouti, Diego Garcia, Colombia, Guantanamo Bay, etc. At this critical juncture in which a number of factors and forces are converging, our generation is faced with perhaps its best and last chance to hoist a leader up and carry him on our shoulders as we march progressively into the future. With a President Obama ensconced in the White House, we just may have an opportunity to write a new, positive page in American history. Under a McCain-Palin administration, we'll be singing "bomb, bomb, bomb," from Moscow to Tehran.

Drastic times are beginning to call for drastic measures; as America and the world appear to be at a 1930s-like crossroads, two candidates offer drastically different possibilities for the fate of the United States. Indeed, the Obama option is not perfect from the perspective of the Left. But how picky should we really be at a time like this?