SoL columnist Alper Birdal wrote about what is happening to the long-time US interventionism in the current state of international relations, policies about Syria and economic crisis followed by a crisis of governing.
The article was written just before the U.S. President Donald Trump announced the military action in Syria from the White House over the alleged Syrian chemical weapons attack. Birdal discusses the US interventionism by having possible future attacks of the US in mind as it can be seen below.
Mike Pompeo, still the director of CIA, recently testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who will consider his nomination to replace Tillerson. Before answering the questions in front of the committee, some headlines from his speech were infiltrated the press. According to the sources, the secretary of state nominee would say that it was now the end of US’ “détente policies” towards Russia. And he said so. He argued that Russia is responsible from the current state of affairs between Russia and the US, the sanctions imposed upon Russia are already late, and Putin is still not getting the message.
This message has given one day after the US Department of Treasury announced its new sanction decision towards Russia and the US President uttered his threat saying that “our missiles will be coming, get ready Russia!”
At first sight, it can be said that although Pompeo has not yet got the seat, his thoughts are reflected in US foreign policy. But this hypothesis will simply be wrong. Because today, it will be nothing but empty talk to say that the centre of the imperialist system has, on way or another, a consistent thought or a complete policy.
But can’t we say that US policy towards Russia and China has increasingly been more rigid? Isn’t that a kind of consistency?
It is not questionable that the US has taken a more offensive stance against these two countries. But it is not possible to make a healthy analysis on what is happening today or to make predictions about what is going to happen tomorrow based on this information only. Moreover, Donald Trump is not the reason for this situation; Trump is just an outcome of this picture which has been around for a long time. He is just a radical and ugly outcome. And his only contribution to the existing picture is that he is speeding it up. His impact can be named as “the Trump multiplier”.
THE TRUMP MULTIPLIER
An article in Foreign Affairs, the important journal of US’s foreign affairs environments, one year after Trump elected president, wrote the following: “… the world’s most powerful state has begun to sabotage the order it created. A hostile revisionist power has indeed arrived on the scene, but it sits in the Oval Office, the beating heart of the free world.” (G. John Ikenberry, “The Plot Against American Foreign Policy. Can the Liberal World Order Survive?”, Foreign Affairs, volume: 96, number: 3, May-June 2017, p. 2-9)
This sentence includes one true and one untrue statement at the same time. What is true is that the US “has begun to sabotage the order it created”. What is untrue is that this process has started with Trump.
Those who are sitting in the Oval Office has been sabotaging the order they created for a long time, but they do not have the power to replace it with a new one. In the 1990s, they tried this to some extent when they were shining the ideology of “globalization”. But the “new order” argument quickly hit into the objective realities of capitalism. Even in academia, the globalization tales are no longer credited. But does Trump have no impact at all on the US’ destabilizing and disruptive interventions?
“The Trump multiplier” shows itself especially by speeding up the US government’s or the administrative mechanisms’ dissolving process. This, for instance, had existed in the past in the form of a competition between Pentagon and the State Department or between the US’ intelligence organizations. But, since Trump, this situation started to become a state of disintegration and uncertainty by transcending the borders of a competition. This is an uncertainty by which the US government itself is affected. The institutions and cadres within the US administrative mechanism have no clear ideas about what is going to happen in near future. This is what we mean by disintegration.
A few weeks ago, a long article that was trying to give the message that there may be some rational people in Trump administration was published in The New York Times Magazine. The “rational” advertised in the article was Jim Mattis, who was retired early from his duty as commander of Central Command because he wanted to attack Iran and the secretary of defense nicknamed “Mad Dog”.
The following assessment in the article implying that the real secretary of state of the US is Mattis is important to understand the Trump multiplier:
“The root of the problem is not a lack of sophistication or experience in Trump’s national security team. It is more basic than that: No one, from Mattis on down, could say what terms the United States would accept in any of these negotiations. And that is because not a single person in the government can confidently say what Trump will say or do tomorrow. This unpredictability came up again and again in my conversations with foreign diplomats. Several of them said it has profoundly rattled governments that have long looked to the United States – whatever their differences with it – to abide by its commitments and thereby undergird a wider sense of global order.” (Robert F. Worth, “Can Jim Mattis Hold the Line in Trump’s War Cabinet?” The New York Times Magazine, March 26, 2018)
It is clear that the word “unpredictability” refers to a kind of instability, inconsistency and disintegration. Trump embodies all of these in himself.
Yet, the root of the problems is not Trump; it is the order that also created him.
That the liberal ideologues are trying to reduce this crisis to the foolishness of a freak is totally absurd. This absurdity can also make them searching for a rescuer of the liberal order in “Mad Dog” Mattis. However, the one dying tragicomically is the US interventionism itself.
THE US' RIGID POLICY PROBLEMATIC
The fact that the US-centered imperialist hierarchy and, along with it, the administrative mechanisms are falling apart does not mean that the dominant imperialist power cannot put the world in trouble. The problem is what the US can do is only this. It cannot build anything; but it can only damage, demolish and ruin. But this process also leads to the US’ ability of damaging, demolishing, ruining and putting in trouble to get depreciated.
A recent example is its threat of attack against Syria. Such an attack can show one thing other than shedding blood and it is that the US has a rigidity problem.
It has been expected that a militarily more extensive attack would be organized than the last year’s attack on Khan Shaykhun. That means the US would intensify the level of violence. But, even the western press has written that a military intervention in Syria would not change anything in practice. There is only one move that will change the balances and it is an overall attack against the Syrian government which will necessarily end in occupying the country. But everyone is aware of the fact that the US is not going to “prefer” this. Because, occupying Syria would mean a regional war at best and the US has no chance of winning this war. The problem is not about insufficient military power; it is that the chaos that will be created by such a war is highly likely to expand to a level that the existing imperialist hierarchy will totally collapse.
The US is the dominant power in this hierarchy that damages, demolishes and ruins. But this position of the US is eventually dependent on the survival of this very hierarchy. If this hierarchy falls off, the US interventionism ends. The root of the US’ rigidity problem is based on this difficult position. And this difficult position feeds a kind of vicious circle. To exit from this circle, the US should be more rigid and use more force. The impact of other instruments used before has died out. More interventionism means for the existing hierarchy to move faster towards collapsing. And this eventually means the collapse of the grounds of the US interventionism.
WHEN PRAGMATISM GETS OUT OF CONTROL
It is nonsense that the liberals have argued that the imperialist hierarchy that the United States stands at the top is a rule-based, multilateral order. The United States has been pragmatic since it made it to the top of the imperialist system. In any case, it would not have been possible to maintain its position within this corrupt system. Throughout the years when this international order was not in crisis, "American pragmatism" was presented as a virtue to other elements of the hierarchy. This vileness was named as American entrepreneurship, being practical or efficient, etc.
When the US-centered imperialist regime fell into crisis, the US’ presentation of its own interests as all capitalist countries’ interests has faced with boundaries. This situation has created management problems for the US and it has intensified the competition within the system. This led the US to follow more pragmatic policies.
All these are the reasons why the US government talks about “the return of the Great Power competition” by referring to Russia and China and calls these two countries “revisionist powers” that try to change the existing international order. Russia and China has shined out as two important power affecting the game of the existing imperialist hierarchy. But these two powers are not the only sources that led to the US’ pragmatism to increase excessively. Moreover, the addressees of the Trump administration in its pragmatism expressed by the motto “America first” are, first and foremost, the powers in the US’ established alliance system. The examples like requesting from NATO countries to increase their defense expenditures or requesting money from the Saudis in return of their stay in Syria can be regarded as the contemporary reflections of this uncontrolled pragmatism.
But the fact that this pragmatism has turned into a crucial determinant creates a heavy cost when it combines with the fall of US imperialism’s management mechanisms. An example of this can be seen in the article referred above in New York Times Magazine:
“In mid-September, Tillerson and Mattis briefly thought they had won a breakthrough on the continuing Qatar-Gulf crisis when Trump said he would be willing to host a meeting with the leaders of all the countries involved. Tillerson called the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, to issue the invitation. What happened next was a grim landmark in the State Department’s eroding stature. Thirty years ago, a direct call from the United States secretary of state, offering an invitation to meet the President, would have been treated with the utmost deference. Jubeir did not respond that way. According to an Arab diplomat I spoke with, Jubeir replied, “Please don’t do this because we don’t show up”. Tillerson, shocked and angry, said, “You would refuse to show up for a meeting with the President of the United States?” and warned of consequences. Jubeir backpedaled a bit, but held firm. Tillerson then called the Emirati foreign minister and got a similar response, the diplomat told me. Apparently, the Saudis and Emiratis felt they had a hold on Trump –and his son-in-law- and could safely treat the secretary of state as irrelevant”.
It would be highly unsatisfying to think that these examples arise from Trump’s and his circle’s ignorance, stupidity, ambitions, etc. This exact situation arises from the inability to draw the boundaries of the interests of the US and its pragmatism. This, in turn, make it possible for other states to bet on different elements of the disintegrated US government or, like Erdoğan did, to make alliances that push the limits of the existing hierarchy. An uncontrolled pragmatism brings about more pragmatism in return.
That is why it is not surprising when an actor who can be very courageous one day can behave like he/she is out of everything another day. For instance, the following statements were made by Nurettin Canikli, Turkey’s minister of defense, who ordered a march to be composed for Afrin and who reminds the US of its role in Syria in any occasion: “There are too many actors in Syria. Too many powers who have conflicting interests. It is a small area and any kind of conflict can be triggering. Rationality disappears from a certain point in international relations. Logic disappears in a point and a war breaks out. When the forces supported by Russia or the US start attacking, the others should respond. If they don’t respond, they lose their powers. Serious conflicts may emerge because of this. This threat has been existing for a long time and it continues to exist. A sparkle may cause a conflict that will destroy the whole region. So Turkey is calling the sides to be temperate and to give up their support to the regime, terrorist organizations”.
BEING UNPRINCIPLED IS CONTAGIOUS
Being unprincipled is contagious like pragmatism. Syria, which was analyzed by Canikli as a fifth-grade think-tank analyst, is a grave of unprincipled alliances and closed agreements whose start or end is unknown for each side.
There is no use, at this point, to discuss who is more unprincipled or pragmatic.
Andrew Korybko, who has an interesting analysis of recent developments in Syria, asks a question that is hardly anyone's interest but a very good one: Why is the fake flag operation now staged once again under the name of a chemical attack? This operation could have been done before presidential elections were held in Russia and before the Syrian army had completely cleared East Ghouta from jihadists. Korybko argues that the only logical answer to this question is that something that breaks the tacit agreement between the US and Russia has happened in the previous week, and continues:
“While it can never be known for sure (…) the question was posed of whether or not everything is happening because of President Assad’s reported refusal to attend last week’s Tripartite meeting in Ankara. After all, that’s the only possible event that could have been the “deal-breaker” that got the US and its allies to change their mind this weekend by pulling out of whatever “gentlemen’s agreement” they could have had with Russia and stage the latest provocation at the last possible moment that they were realistically able to while they still had their assets in place.” (Andrew Korybko, “The Suspicious Timing of the Latest Provocations in Syria. The U.S. is Planning a Major Strike”, Eurasia Future, April 10, 2018)
There is no need to go into more detail and speculate on this analysis. In the last example, however, it seems plausible to point out that there is some kind of tacit agreement and that agreement is terminated for one reason or another.
It is totally meaningless to question which imperialist power makes moves in accordance with which principles, and to try to make a prediction based on this. The most realistic argument that can be posited by looking at the current state of affairs in the world is that this table can only be changed by the liberation of mankind from capitalism.
