\tTom Engelhardt est un finaud. Sur son site TomDispatch.com<\/em>, il nous r\u00e9gale, depuis des ann\u00e9es, d’analyses, de lui, de ses collaborateurs ou de ses invit\u00e9s, fulgurantes d’exp\u00e9rience, de perspicacit\u00e9 et d’intelligence. On peut chercher en vain, en Europe, dans nos pays soumis, des dissidents de cette trempe, calibrant avec autant d’alacrit\u00e9 et de libert\u00e9 d’esprit, et une jolie dose d’ironie t\u00e9moignant d’une joie roborative de travailler dans ce domaine, les tares de leurs propres pays Il faut dire qu’Engelhardt, dont la sp\u00e9cialit\u00e9 est l’\u00e9tude du monstre sans pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent qu’est l’Am\u00e9rique am\u00e9ricaniste, dispose d’un sujet qui ne cesse d’exciter l’esprit.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tIci, c’est une de ses meilleures chroniques, ce 8 octobre 2012<\/a>, effectivement sur TomDispatch.com<\/em>. Le psy est au chevet du monstre gigotant, gargouillant, \u00e9ructant, anath\u00e9mant le reste du monde, le printemps arabe, Dieu et ses voies imp\u00e9n\u00e9trables. Ce qui fascine manifestement Engelhardt, c’est d’abord l’extraordinaire impuissance de la puissance<\/strong> de l’appareil militaire US, sa puissance ph\u00e9nom\u00e9nale par tous les facteurs consid\u00e9r\u00e9es qui fondent d’habitude la puissance, l’impuissance ph\u00e9nom\u00e9nale \u00e0 obtenir le moindre r\u00e9sultat ou effet qui ne soit une erreur, une d\u00e9faite, une maladresse, une d\u00e9route, une contre-production et ainsi de suite. Effectivement, Engelhardt en conclut, en m\u00e9decin de l’\u00e2me et du reste, que le malade monstrueux est absolument incurable, paralys\u00e9, plong\u00e9 dans ses lubies et ses phantasmes, prisonnier de ses r\u00e9flexes et ainsi de suite tout au long de sa chute en cours Voici quelques extraits plantureux. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00ab When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, it all seemed so obvious. Fate had clearly dealt Washington a royal flush. It was victory with a capital V. The United States was, after all, the last standing superpower, after centuries of unceasing great power rivalries on the planet. It had a military beyond compare and no enemy, hardly a rogue state, on the horizon. It was almost unnerving, such clear sailing into a dominant future, but a moment for the ages nonetheless. Within a decade, pundits in Washington were hailing us as the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbAnd here’s the odd thing: in a sense, little has changed since then and yet everything seems different. Think of it as the American imperial paradox: everywhere there are now threats against our well-being which seem to demand action and yet nowhere are there commensurate enemies to go with them. Everywhere the U.S. military still reigns supreme by almost any measure you might care to apply; and yet in case the paradox has escaped you nowhere can it achieve its goals, however modest.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbAt one level, the American situation should simply take your breath away. Never before in modern history had there been an arms race of only one or a great power confrontation of only one. And at least in military terms, just as the neoconservatives imagined in those early years of the twenty-first century, the United States remains the sole superpower or even hyperpower of planet Earth.<\/em> []<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbBy all the usual measuring sticks, the U.S. should be supreme in a historically unprecedented way. And yet it couldn’t be more obvious that it’s not, that despite all the bases, elite forces, private armies, drones, aircraft carriers, wars, conflicts, strikes, interventions, and clandestine operations, despite a labyrinthine intelligence bureaucracy that never seems to stop growing and into which we pour a minimum of $80 billion a year, nothing seems to work out in an imperially satisfying way. It couldn’t be more obvious that this is not a glorious dream, but some kind of ever-expanding imperial nightmare.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThis should, of course, have been self-evident since at least early 2004, less than a year after the Bush administration invaded and occupied Iraq, when the roadside bombs started to explode and the suicide bombings to mount, while the comparisons of the United States to Rome and of a prospective Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East to the Pax Romana vanished like a morning mist on a blazing day. Still, the wars against relatively small, ill-armed sets of insurgents dragged toward their dismally predictable ends. (It says the world that, after almost 11 years of war, the 2,000th U.S. military death in Afghanistan occurred at the hands of an Afghan ally in an insider attack.) In those years, Washington continued to be regularly blindsided by the unintended consequences of its military moves. Surprises none pleasant became the order of the day and victories proved vanishingly rare.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbOne thing seems obvious: a superpower military with unparalleled capabilities for one-way destruction no longer has the more basic ability to impose its will anywhere on the planet. Quite the opposite, U.S. military power has been remarkably discredited globally by the most pitiful of forces. From Pakistan to Honduras, just about anywhere it goes in the old colonial or neocolonial world, in those regions known in the contested Cold War era as the Third World, resistance of one unexpected sort or another arises and failure ensues in some often long-drawn-out and spectacular fashion.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbGiven the lack of enemies a few thousand jihadis, a small set of minority insurgencies, a couple of feeble regional powers why this is so, what exactly the force is that prevents Washington’s success, remains mysterious. Certainly, it’s in some way related to the more than half-century of decolonization movements, rebellions, and insurgencies that were a feature of the previous century.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIt also has something to do with the way economic heft has spread beyond the U.S., Europe, and Japan with the rise of the tigers in Asia, the explosion of the Chinese and Indian economies, the advances of Brazil and Turkey, and the movement of the planet toward some kind of genuine economic multipolarity. It may also have something to do with the end of the Cold War, which put an end as well to several centuries of imperial or great power competition and left the sole victor, it now seems clear, heading toward the exits wreathed in self-congratulation.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbExplain it as you will, it’s as if the planet itself, or humanity, had somehow been inoculated against the imposition of imperial power, as if it now rejected it whenever and wherever applied. In the previous century, it took a half-nation, North Korea, backed by Russian supplies and Chinese troops to fight the U.S. to a draw, or a popular insurgent movement backed by a local power, North Vietnam, backed in turn by the Soviet Union and China to defeat American power. Now, small-scale minority insurgencies, largely using roadside bombs and suicide bombers, are fighting American power to a draw (or worse) with no great power behind them at all.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThink of the growing force that resists such military might as the equivalent of the dark matter in the universe. The evidence is in. We now know (or should know) that it’s there, even if we can’t see it.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbAfter the last decade of military failures, stand-offs, and frustrations, you might think that this would be apparent in Washington. After all, the U.S. is now visibly an overextended empire, its sway waning from the Greater Middle East to Latin America, the limits of its power increasingly evident. And yet, here’s the curious thing: two administrations in Washington have drawn none of the obvious conclusions, and no matter how the presidential election turns out, it’s already clear that, in this regard, nothing will change.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbEven as military power has proven itself a bust again and again, our policymakers have come to rely ever more completely on a military-first response to global problems. In other words, we are not just a classically overextended empire, but also an overwrought one operating on some kind of militarized autopilot. Lacking is a learning curve. By all evidence, it’s not just that there isn’t one, but that there can’t be one.<\/em> []<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbSuch situations are increasingly legion across the Greater Middle East and elsewhere. Take one other tiny example: Iraq, from which, after almost a decade-long military disaster, the last U.S. units essentially fled in the middle of the night as 2011 ended. Even in those last moments, the Obama administration and the Pentagon were still trying to keep significant numbers of U.S. troops there (and, in fact, did manage to leave behind possibly several hundred as trainers of elite Iraqi units). Meanwhile, Iraq has been supportive of the embattled Syrian regime and drawn ever closer to Iran, even as its own sectarian strife has ratcheted upward. Having watched this unsettling fallout from its last round in the country, according to the New York Times, the U.S. is now negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbDon’t you just want to speak to those negotiators the way you might to a child: No, don’t do that! The urge to return to the scene of their previous disaster, however, seems unstaunchable. You could offer various explanations for why our policymakers, military and civilian, continue in such a repetitive and even from an imperial point of view self-destructive vein in situations where unpleasant surprises are essentially guaranteed and lack of success a given. Yes, there is the military-industrial complex to be fed. Yes, we are interested in the control of crucial resources, especially energy, and so on.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbBut it’s probably more reasonable to say that a deeply militarized mindset and the global maneuvers that go with it are by now just part of the way of life of a Washington eternally at war. They are the tics of a great power with the equivalent of Tourette’s Syndrome. They happen because they can’t help but happen, because they are engraved in the policy DNA of our national security complex, and can evidently no longer be altered. In other words, they can’t help themselves.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThat’s the only logical conclusion in a world where it has become ever less imaginable to do the obvious, which is far less or nothing at all. (Northern Chad? When did it become crucial to our well being?) Downsizing the mission? Inconceivable. Thinking the unthinkable? Don’t even give it a thought!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbWhat remains is, of course, a self-evident formula for disaster on autopilot. But don’t tell Washington. It won’t matter. Its denizens can’t take it in.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLa description du cas pathologique est excellente, bien enlev\u00e9e, remarquablement inform\u00e9e, irr\u00e9futable. Il est assur\u00e9 que nous avons affaire \u00e0 des comportements qui rel\u00e8vent de l’automatisme, du tic, soit effectivement de la maladie de Gilles de la Tourette<\/a>, ce qui donne une allure bien fran\u00e7aise au monstre washingtonien. L’automatisme militariste, en d\u00e9pit de toutes les catastrophes directement induites, des effets secondaires catastrophiques sur tous les domaines adjacents, persiste sans aucune amorce d’esquisse de mise en cause. Il est \u00e9vident que nous sommes bien au-del\u00e0 du complot, du lobbying, de la corruption, de l’ambition de conqu\u00eate, etc., m\u00eame si tout cela trouve sa place dans le sch\u00e9ma g\u00e9n\u00e9ral. L’aspect fondamental est de l’ordre de la pathologie et concerne le domaine de la psychologie, avec une pathologie activ\u00e9e par un syst\u00e8me de la communication exacerb\u00e9 aux USA (l’empire de la communication<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tNous divergeons pourtant sur un point, par rapport \u00e0 l’analyse que propose Engelhardt, et l’on verra que cela renforce la d\u00e9marche psychanalytique et psychiatrique implicite du commentateur. Engelhardt situe l’origine du ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne \u00e0 la chute de l’URSS per\u00e7ue comme une victoire absolue, entra\u00eenant cette affirmation obsessionnelle de puissance militaire, d’hubris<\/em> sans retenue Ce n’est pas pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment de cette fa\u00e7on que les choses se pass\u00e8rent, selon notre souvenir et notre exp\u00e9rience. L’effondrement de l’URSS ne fut pas vraiment v\u00e9cue comme une victoire, mais comme une \u00e9norme surprise, et bient\u00f4t une sorte de choc d\u00e9pressif, caract\u00e9ris\u00e9 d’ailleurs par la phrase fameuse d’Arbatov en mai 1988, dans une interview de Newsweek<\/em>, alors qu’il s’adressait au journaliste comme s’il se f\u00fbt adress\u00e9 aux USA : \u00abNous allons vous faire une chose terrible, nous allons vous priver d’ennemi<\/em>\u00bb Dans les textes r\u00e9f\u00e9renc\u00e9s (le 23 janvier 2010<\/a> et le 4 f\u00e9vrier 2010<\/a>), o\u00f9 l’on vaticine notamment \u00e0 propos du mot d’Arbatov, il est rapport\u00e9 \u00e9galement dans quel d\u00e9sarroi extraordinaire se trouv\u00e8rent l’OTAN et les USA \u00e0 la fin de la guerre froide, dans une atmosph\u00e8re o\u00f9 c’est presque Gorbatchev qui paraissait le vainqueur, comme si lui nous avait d\u00e9barrass\u00e9s tous<\/strong> d’un carcan de menaces r\u00e9ciproques qui nous servait de prison commune. M\u00eame la guerre du Golfe (janvier-f\u00e9vrier 1991) ne r\u00e9ussit pas \u00e0 maintenir tr\u00e8s longtemps aux USA un enthousiasme momentan\u00e9e, qui eut l’allure d’une bulle de champagne ou de l’\u00e9cume des jours. En r\u00e9alit\u00e9, les USA \u00e9taient entr\u00e9s dans une d\u00e9pression psychologique profonde qui montrait combien la guerre froide \u00e9tait d’abord n\u00e9cessaire pour la tension d’affrontement qu’elle imposait, notamment pour maintenir \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s stable la psychologie ontologiquement malade des USA. Cette d\u00e9pression psychologique perceptible d\u00e8s 1989-1990 accompagnait certes une r\u00e9cession \u00e9conomique, mais elle la d\u00e9passa tr\u00e8s largement<\/strong>, montrant son importance et son existence sp\u00e9cifique fondamentale (la r\u00e9cession \u00e9conomique dura jusqu’au printemps 1992, la d\u00e9pression psychologique jusqu’\u00e0 l’\u00e9t\u00e9 1996). A cette \u00e9poque, m\u00eame si Wolfowitz faisait des plans de conqu\u00eate du monde au Pentagone, les militaires am\u00e9ricanistes \u00e9taient plut\u00f4t largement favorables aux restrictions, \u00e0 la prudence, au repli, voire pire encore (pire du point de vue des amateurs de l’offensive). C’\u00e9tait l’\u00e9poque o\u00f9 Madeleine Albright, ambassadeur US \u00e0 l’ONU, reprochait au g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Colin Powell, pr\u00e9sident du JCS, sa pusillanimit\u00e9 dans l’emploi de la force (\u00abWhat’s the point of you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can’t use it?<\/em>\u00bb).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n