25 juin 2003 — Il est bon de signaler une floraison d’articles, commentaires, etc, qu’il faut placer dans la droite ligne des r\u00e9actions qui se font jour apr\u00e8s l’aventure irakienne, et notamment deux points :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
• Les conditions de la guerre, c’est-\u00e0-dire une victoire pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e comme \u00e9tourdissante et sans exemple dans l’histoire militaire, qui s’av\u00e8re douteuse lorsqu’on en connaît les d\u00e9tails de la r\u00e9alisation, qui s’abîme d\u00e9sormais dans un apr\u00e8s-guerre anarchique, où rien n’a \u00e9t\u00e9 pr\u00e9vu et où l’opposition tourne \u00e0 la gu\u00e9rilla organis\u00e9e.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
• La com\u00e9die des WMD (armes de destruction massive) pr\u00e9sent\u00e9es comme la premi\u00e8re cause de l’attaque et qu’on ne trouve nulle part a contribu\u00e9 \u00e0 exacerber les m\u00e9contentements et ouvrir la voie aux critiques. Il faut dire que cela constitue un exemple unique de chercher la cause de la guerre apr\u00e8s que la guerre ait \u00e9t\u00e9 faite.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
D\u00e9sormais, ces critiques vont beaucoup plus loin que les seules circonstances qu’on mentionne ici, et c’est l’int\u00e9r\u00eat du ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne signal\u00e9 ici. Ces avatars extraordinaires d’une puissance si compl\u00e8tement dominatrice et qui parvient pourtant \u00e0 s’enferrer dans diverses situations tr\u00e8s limit\u00e9es et absurdes, sont pour beaucoup dans l’\u00e9largissement de la r\u00e9flexion. Cette situation extraordinaire ne peut plus se contenter de r\u00e9ponses ordinaires.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Les critiques concernent les conceptions g\u00e9n\u00e9rales de l’administration GW et, notamment, la pr\u00e9tention de faire jouer \u00e0 l’Am\u00e9rique un r\u00f4le d'\u00a0\u00bbempire\u00a0\u00bb. Des textes int\u00e9ressants sont publi\u00e9s. On donnera comme exemples celui de Anatol Lieven dans The Nation du 7 juillet<\/a> et celui de Georgie Anne Geyer, dans le Boston Globe du 21 juin<\/a>. L’int\u00e9r\u00eat de ces deux textes, — l’un est tr\u00e8s long et tr\u00e8s fouill\u00e9, l’autre beaucoup plus court et non moins int\u00e9ressant, — est sans aucun doute le radicalisme de la critique de la pr\u00e9tention am\u00e9ricaine \u00e0 vouloir figurer comme un empire.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Il faut lire \u00e9galement l’article de Jim Lobe du 24 juin sur atimes.com<\/a>, parce qu’il r\u00e9sume bien la situation catastrophique où s’enfonce la politique \u00e9trang\u00e8re am\u00e9ricaine. En m\u00eame temps, Lobe \u00e9met des hypoth\u00e8ses int\u00e9ressantes sur certains aspects de l’organisation du pouvoir \u00e0 Washington, qui rejoignent certaines observations que nous privil\u00e9gions. Il faut lire encore un \u00e9ditorial du Boston Globe du 22 juin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ces publications nous sugg\u00e8rent un changement d’\u00e9tat d’esprit en cours aux États-Unis devant le d\u00e9sastre que continue \u00e0 d\u00e9velopper l’administration GW Bush. Ce qui apparaît \u00e0 l’occasion du fiasco de l’Irak, c’est la gravit\u00e9 et la profondeur de l’impasse où s’est engag\u00e9e la politique ext\u00e9rieure de l’administration. Puisque cette situation catastrophique s’est d\u00e9velopp\u00e9e \u00e0 partir d’une situation de force et de domination sans exemple, et alors que cet \u00e9tat de faits persiste, on en vient \u00e0 s’interroger \u00e9videmment sur la nature d’un syst\u00e8me qui parvient de fa\u00e7on si efficace \u00e0 entraver sa propre action et \u00e0 devenir l’ennemi le plus dangereux de lui-m\u00eame.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Parmi les nombreux points qu’il faut retenir de ces articles, nous proposons ceux-ci :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n • Lobe analyse la politique am\u00e9ricaine au Moyen-Orient et se heurte \u00e0 cette question : mais comment en sont-ils arriv\u00e9s l\u00e0?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n « The question that comes to mind is, what is going on? Until now, most foreign policy analysts in the US — if not the regional specialists — have been inclined to give Washington’s hawks the benefit of the doubt about whether their basic assumptions about Iraq corresponded to any tangible reality on the ground. After all, no one has ever accused Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz or Woolsey of being stupid.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n » So how could they have gotten the nation into this position? One probability is that they, like many policymakers, tend to believe the own propaganda which they and their supporters have been spouting since even before the dust of the World Trade Center towers settled over Lower Manhattan. The degree to which they themselves helped twist the intelligence about Iraq has become increasingly clear over the past few weeks as angry intelligence professionals have taken their complaints to the press.<\/em> »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n • Le Boston Globe<\/em> propose cette analyse de l’action am\u00e9ricaine et de ses effets :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n « This contrast between US rhetoric and US action is a theme of a book recently published by Clyde Prestowitz, a Commerce Department official under President Reagan. Prestowitz mentions the plight of African cotton farmers, who are actually lower-cost growers than their highly mechanized US counterparts, in \u00a0\u00bbRogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n » To the question \u00ab\u00a0Why do they hate us?\u00a0\u00bb Prestowitz has an interesting answer. It isn’t our freedom they hate, he writes; it is our failure to live up to our own preachments. Prestowitz cites other examples of how the United States loads the dice in world trade. Under the NAFTA accord, for example, Mexico is soon going to have to open its borders to highly subsidized US corn, which will hurt many Mexican farmers.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n » Many of them, Prestowitz writes, could be driven \u00ab\u00a0into the dangerously hot trucks of the smugglers who ship immigrants across the US border.\u00a0\u00bb Instead of being reassured by America’s mythic appeal to desperate immigrants, Americans should be more aware of the US role in creating the desperation.<\/em> »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n • Un domaine g\u00e9n\u00e9ral commence \u00e0 \u00eatre mis en question apr\u00e8s la \u00ab\u00a0victoire\u00a0\u00bb irakienne, qui est paradoxalement celui des capacit\u00e9s militaires am\u00e9ricaines.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Geyer : « Retired General Barry McCaffrey, speaking at this week’s meeting, pointed out that \u00ab\u00a0Of 10 US Army divisions, eight are deployed around the world and only two are standing by — we have the smallest army since 1939.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em> »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n (…)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Lieven : « The second weakness is lack of military resources. This may sound absurd, given the fact that America is now spending nearly as much on the military as the rest of the world put together. If one looks at the actual numbers of US troops, however, a rather different picture begins to emerge. For if the United States spends much more than anyone else on its troops, its troops are also much more expensive to maintain than those of most other countries, and more costly than the \u00ab\u00a0scum of the earth\u00a0\u00bb who staffed the colonial armies of the nineteenth century. It does not have very many of them, and a very high proportion of them are now tied down for the foreseeable future patrolling Iraq. It may be, therefore, as many US officials say in private, that the Bush Doctrine was a \u00ab\u00a0doctrine for one case only\u00a0\u00bb —namely Iraq; and that a planned war to invade and occupy Iran or North Korea is inconceivable. That doesn’t necessarily mean that such wars won’t happen, but that they will be the accidental rather than the deliberate results of Bush Administration policies.<\/em> »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n • Georgie Anne Geyer soul\u00e8ve un point tr\u00e8s int\u00e9ressant, qui est rarement mis en cause par les Am\u00e9ricains eux-m\u00eames, quand il est seulement r\u00e9alis\u00e9 : il s’agit de l’absence de grand dessein (disons un \u00ab\u00a0dessein imp\u00e9rial\u00a0\u00bb) de l’Am\u00e9rique. (Avec, en passant, une int\u00e9ressante d\u00e9finition de la d\u00e9mocratie : « democracy is a vehicle for resolving disputes<\/em> ».)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n « If we consider empires we have known across history — from the Ottoman to the Austro-Hungarian to the communist — all had some great cultural idea behind them that they wanted to spread to others. We do not.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n » Oh, the Paul Wolfowitzes and the Bill Kristols say it’s democracy — but democracy is a vehicle for resolving disputes. It is not an ideology like communism or Islamic fundamentalism, and therefore will not likely take their place easily.<\/em> »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n • Lieven soul\u00e8ve le point tr\u00e8s int\u00e9ressant de la contradiction inh\u00e9rente \u00e0 l’action de l’administration GW Bush : partir \u00e0 la conqu\u00eate de ce que l’Am\u00e9rique poss\u00e8de d\u00e9j\u00e0. Le r\u00e9sultat est \u00e9videmment \u00e9galement contradictoire, il est de mettre en cause ces conqu\u00eates et ces possessions. Lieven met en \u00e9vidence le comportement obsessionnel des r\u00e9publicains, qui est la cause de cette contradiction : leur haine de certains d\u00e9mocrates qui, pourtant, ont objectivement servi \u00e0 la perfection les ambitions am\u00e9ricaines. C’est le cas de Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) et de Clinton. Ces sentiments tr\u00e8s forts et tr\u00e8s obsessionnels sont pour beaucoup dans cette politique contradictoire qui est ici mise en \u00e9vidence. Ces circonstances sugg\u00e8rent \u00e0 Lieven la comparaison entre les USA d’aujourd’hui et la situation de l’empire allemand sous Guillaume II, qui est une comparaison qui nous est particuli\u00e8rement ch\u00e8re<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n « This is indeed likely to be seen by future historians as the central tragic irony of the Bush Administration’s world policy: that the United States, which of all states today should feel like a satisfied power, is instead behaving like a revolutionary one, kicking to pieces the hill of which it is king.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n (…)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n » For just as US imperialism, emboldened by a strong shot of nationalism, is busy undermining the world political order of which the United States is hegemon, so dominant sections of the US capitalist elite are suicidally gobbling up the fiscal foundations of American economic stability and the American capitalist system. Their pathological hatred of FDR, who did more than any other man in the twentieth century to preserve and extend American capitalism, has been echoed in our own day by their visceral, hysterical loathing of Clinton, who, objectively speaking, also served them very well. This is a truly strange and awful sight, and — pace Niall Ferguson — one that bears little resemblance to the behavior of the old British imperial elites, at least once their empire had been achieved. In their criminal arrogance, these contemporary American projects and attitudes are much more reminiscent of Wilhelmine Germany, and we must hope that they do not receive a condign punishment. For in the words of Arnold Toynbee, \u00ab\u00a0great empires do not die by murder, but suicide.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em> »<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Un doute fondamental sur l’empire 25 juin 2003 — Il est bon de signaler une floraison d’articles, commentaires, etc, qu’il faut placer dans la droite ligne des r\u00e9actions qui se font jour apr\u00e8s l’aventure irakienne, et notamment deux points : • Les conditions de la guerre, c’est-\u00e0-dire une victoire pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e comme \u00e9tourdissante et sans exemple… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2899,708,4048,4050,4049,1094],"class_list":["post-65653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-declin","tag-empire","tag-ferguson","tag-geyer","tag-lieven","tag-lobe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}