American Reliance on Military Power Is Beginning to Backfire

IHT - International Herald Tribune ^ | FR Post 02-02-02 | William Pfaff

[vannrox]

American Reliance on Military Power Is Beginning to Backfire

William Pfaff

International Herald Tribune

NEW YORK Denials aside, real disagreement exists between Saudi Arabia and the United States over use of the big American Air Force installation in that country and over continuing the U.S. military presence there.


Some in Congress and the Pentagon are indignant that the Saudi government should have barred the United States from raiding Afghanistan from the expensive air operations center recently built at the Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh.


. The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, has said that the Saudi Arabians "act as though somehow or other they're doing us a favor." He and others talk as if U.S. withdrawal would punish Saudi Arabia.


. He doesn't understand that the Saudi leadership doesn't consider itself doing a favor, but as having been forced to accept the U.S. presence, against important political interests of its own. .


The Washington view is that the United States fought the Gulf War to defend Saudi Arabia; is defending it again in the war against terrorism and deserves thanks and cooperation. .


The widely held Saudi view is that the United States fought the Gulf War to defend its own oil interests, put Saudi Arabia in an uncomfortable position by the way it did it and refused to go home when the war was over.


. The Saudis' awkward guests insisted on enlarging their presence from a rotating detachment just after the Gulf War to a force of some 6,000 last year, before Sept. 11. They are seen as interfering in Saudi affairs, and their presence offends Muslim religious sensibilities.


. The tale is a cautionary one of self-inflicted damage, the result of Pentagon expansionism, military ambition and the steadily increased power of neo-conservative hawks in a Washington now convinced that global extension of American power and control is the new Manifest Destiny. U.S. security and leadership is held to depend on worldwide military deployment.


. There is no value in a military deployment, meant to stabilize a region, that actually destabilizes or subverts them, or which strengthens Islamic fundamentalism and wins it recruits. .


This will be a recurring issue as the war against terrorism goes on. There already is trouble in the Philippines, caused by the arrival of U.S. Special Forces to advise the Philippine army's campaign against a Muslim separatist movement. This group until now has mostly been in the kidnapping and ransom business, but is believed to have links to Al Qaeda.


. It now numbers in the hundreds, but separatist sentiment has considerable strength in the southern Philippines. Throughout the country, there has long been popular hostility to American military presence, although President Gloria Macapagal welcomes it.


. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says that the Philippine separatists are part of "a global problem (that) we are addressing globally, not just in Afghanistan."


. The United States displayed efficiency and dispatch in overturning the Taliban government in Afghanistan and breaking up the Qaeda organization there. The efficiency resulted in part from the same unilateralism and the same indifference to the opinion of others that the Bush administration practiced pre-Sept. 11, with respect to global warming, the United Nations, war crimes tribunals, land-mine bans and trade conflicts.


The United States has the power to get almost anything it wants from other governments, but it paid a price for pressing Saudi Arabia to accept a permanent U.S. deployment. The deployment may now be forced out, or be pulled out because of Saudi restrictions on its use.


. The defeat of Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan, and the popular rejoicing that followed, dealt a real blow to the notion that fundamentalism is a powerful movement with a great destiny. It would be a mistake for Washington to underestimate that victory, or permit overconfidence or arrogance to undermine it. .


Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

[vannrox]

---> No surprises. What a bunch of limp wristed slogs. They never was with us or for us. They just want us all killed.

[vannrox]

"...The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, has said that the Saudi Arabians "act as though somehow or other they're doing us a favor." He and others talk as if U.S. withdrawal would punish Saudi Arabia..."

It taks a DEMOCRAT to provide ammo to those whom wish to show division and conflict in the US.

[weikel]

Democrats are only wrong an extremely high % of the time. This is one of the low % times when a dem is right.

[Alas Babylon!]

These are the same wankers who said "American Reliance on Miltary Power" against the Taliban last Fall would fail. Or was it backfire? Either way, they were wrong then and I believe they're wrong now. Also, the Philipines have been terrorized by Islamic fanatics for years now. It didn't "just start" since American Special Forces arrived. There's nothing like a big fat lie to prove your point, huh, you princing, prancing British leftists?

[monkeywrench]

If we moved out, is this another spot that china would quickly fill the void?

[sam_paine]

Good gawd!!! Please quit posting this guy Pfaff!!! That's two articles from him in 5 minutes!!!

I'm .....getting....queazy...........blech!

[vannrox]

We represent writers, artists, publications and online services, selling to customers in more than 100 countries.

William Pfaff
Political Commentary

Paris-based William Pfaff is impossible to pigeonhole politically.

He is an acerbic, erudite writer who eschews orthodoxies, trendiness and party lines. His twice-weekly columns, which usually focus on European affairs from an American perspective, are fearlessly original and thought-provoking. Pfaff takes his readers beyond the chaotic clamor of the day's headlines and helps make sense of the world by examining the likely outcomes of long-term policies. He offers an idiosyncratic brand of commentary that can be found nowhere else.

Representatives of publishers or Web sites may receive samples and purchasing information by calling 1-800-LATIMES, ext. 77987 or e-mailing latsinfo@lats.com.

[vannrox]

William Pfaff is an American writer on contemporary history and politics. He writes a twice-weekly editorial column for The International Herald Tribune in Paris, internationally syndicated by The Los Angeles Times. Between 1971 and 1992 he regularly contributed political essays, published as "Reflections," to the The New Yorker magazine. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, Commentaire, The New York Review of Books, etc.

His most recent book is The Wrath of Nations, Civilization and the Furies of Nationalism, an examination of nationalism’s origins an implications, published by Simon & Schuster in New York and London in 1993. It has since been published in German and Spanish translations (Die Furien des Nationalismus, Eichborn Verlag; La Ira de las Naciones, Editorial Andres Bello), and an Italian translationis in preparation.

His Barbarian Sentiments: How the American Century Ends, published in New York in 1989 and in Paris, Frankfurt, and Lisbon, was a finalist for the U.S. National Book Award European prize for a political work in French, the City of Geneva’s Prix Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

He is author or co-author of four other books on contermporary history or American foreign relations, including two influential 1960s critiques of U.S. foreign policy, The New Politics and Power and Impotence. The Politics of Hysteria, The Sources of 20th Century Conflict (1964) dealt with the impact of the modern west on the non-western civilizations. (Like the two foreign-policy works, it was a collaboration with the late Edmund Stillman.) His Condemned to Freedom (1971) was an examination of the internal crisis of liberal society. His autobiographical essay, "The Lay Intellectual," was included in Best American Essays 1987.

He was, in 1961, one of the earliest members of the American policy research group The Hudson Institute, and from 1971 to 1978 was Deputy Director of its European Affiliate, Hudson Research Europe, Ltd. Before that he was an executive of the Free Europe Committee, parent-organization of Radio Free Europe and the Free Europe Press, and in the early 1950s he was an editor of Commonwealth.

He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, and has lectured there and at Yale, Johns Hopkins (SAIS), and has been Regents’ Lecturer and the University of California/San Diego.

He is married to the former Carolyn Cleary of Sydney, Australia, also a writer. They have two grown children, and make their home in Paris.

[headsonpikes]

One word to the Saudis.

Hashemites.

[okie01]

Two words for Pfaff:

Liberal nincompoopism.

[CyberAnt]

This is weird, the Saudi Prince said relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were just fine. I know there are factions within Saudi Arabia who are not happy with the U.S. being there, but I don't believe the Saudis will demand we leave. Besides, what is the alternative - Bush said, you are either for us or against us - I guess the Saudi's have to make a choice - which way do they want it? An airbase by the U.S., or bombs??

[Thebaddog]

Pfaff is a Phoosey. This loser is trying to disply superior IQ and that is a lost cause.

[counterrevolutionary]

Paris-based William Pfaff is impossible to pigeonhole politically.

I am not too familiar with Mr. Pfaff's work, but based on this statement I'll bet he's either a drearily predictable liberal or a so-called "fiscal conservative" (in other words, a cheap liberal).