Existential Threat?
George F. Will writes this morning that the present moment is "one of the most dangerous [to the United States] since World War II." This is patently absurd. Since the end of WWII, the United States has been in a shooting war with Soviet MiGs in the Korean War, and a full-fledged shooting war with the Red Chinese in Korea. The danger of escalation from "police action" to wider war was always present, and the initial U.N. commander, MacArthur, was a bit of a loon. There was the Berlin Crisis, which threatened from time to time to throw Europe into a total war. Speaking of total war, there's the issue of an all-out nuclear exchange between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. There was, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis, perhaps the closest the world has ever come to nuclear armeggedon. But don't forget the Yom Kippur War, 1973, when the United States escalated from Def Con 4 to Def Con 3 in response to Soviet sabre rattling in defense of Egypt and Syria. (Making this even a more dangerous moment, Nixon was consumed by the Watergate scandal and frackin' Al Haig was calling the shots.) I'm sure that there were points in the Reagan years when the danger of a nuclear "exchange" was heightened for one reason or another.
Terrorism, on the other hand, simply does not pose an existential threat to the United States.
North Korea simply does not pose an existential threat to the United States. Neither does a nuclear armed Iran.
Terrorists, North Korea, and Iran can cause a lot of mischief. Armed with a few nuclear weapons, they might even be able to destroy one or three American cities. (And I don't take this threat that lightly, since I live in one of the prime targets for such an attack. I'm not out there in the hinterlands, folks.) That's a danger, although how great a danger, I'm never sure.
But no matter how great, that is not an existential threat to the United States. (A nuclear attack on the United States is, on the other hand, an existential threat to the country that undertakes it against the United States. It seems to me that the political pressure after such an attack would be overwhelming to respond with devastating impact. That would not be one of the U.S.'s finest moments, but I think it's pretty predictable.)
posted by Number Three @ 7:53 AM
2 Comments:
Nice deflation of Will's hyperbole. I almost felt like I was reading Will himself, writing one of his many columns trying to deflate liberal alarm about racism, or economic inequality, or some such problem. Surely you can argue that this is a juncture of some import for the US without invoking "existential threat." So why does he jump that shark? Especially when it is generally anti-Bush administration fear mongering?
Maybe the GOP's hacks, even second-guessing ones like Will, have so internalized the post-9/11 state of trumped-up alarmism that they can no longer speak in other terms. Or maybe the perception of historical import is the one thin reed they have left to clutch: after all, if Bush failed monstrously at something lacking great historical weight, he fades even more by history than if his failure came only after having recognized the great turning point for what it was. This is, after all, the one thing that the GOP has to separate its stance on Iraq positively from that of the Dems.
Or maybe Will is right in a roundabout way. But the "existential threat" is not really to our practical existence but to the American myth, at least the one maintained by many on the right: that we are a hegemony of virtue, an unchallenged world leader whose physical might stems from our superior culture, our less fettered capitalism, and our more manly and less apologetic military. If the Cold War did not, in retrospect, threaten our ascendent power (and in fact bolstered it), Iraq may do the opposite. Will may be sensing the tipping point when America ceased to be "America! (Fuck yeah!)"
Heidegger would agree with Emery that our existentialism isn't in trouble, after all there's no sign of rational thought in the world... All kidding aside, the full op-ed by Will is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/17/AR2006031701795.html
This might be pedantic hairsplitting, but nowhere in the piece does Will hyperbolically claim that the US's existence is in danger, does he? The full quote is "At this moment, one of the most dangerous since World War II, America's perils are exacerbated by the travails of a president indiscriminately despised by Democrats and increasingly disregarded by Republicans."
I actually think that Will is right -- this is a very dangerous period, but I disagree why. Tmcd hit the nail on the head concerning the real danger -- a debasing of our moral currency in the world. Nations do not lose power and influence primarily because of an external threat, but as a result of internal policies and choices that animate external threats, giving them traction. On that model, one could say that Will was too cautious, that is the US is in more danger of losing influence than at any other point in our history because we're turning off the world with our imperialism. And we're doing that at the same time that we're borrowing a bunch of money to fight a "Long War" that cannot be won the way it is being waged. As Nikias, the eponymous statesman of the Peace of Nikias, said, "Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most." Colin Powell actually had this quote on his desk, and this is what he tried to argue with Bush inc. but they ignored him. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: "a lack of restraint impresses [influences to your side] men least." I think it fair to say that the neocon policies that Bush follows cannot be defined by the word restraint. Thus Will is wrong -- the despising of Bush and his neocon policies will be our best hope of salvation.
Note on a new sound-byte making the rounds:
Anyone else notice the new metric/talking point for success in Iraq bandied about by the Bushies and even general Casey this morning on the news shows that claims that "By the end of the summer, Iraqi units will be controlling 75% of the battle space"? What could they mean by "battle space" other than the entire territory of Iraq? It just so happens that I saw an archaeological lecture last week and the speaker gave a recent satellite photo taken at night of the Middle East and on it one could plainly see how the population centers were huddled around major cities. In Iraq, there were three large population centers lit up: that of Basra (south), Baghdad and its immediate suburbs (center) and some other city in north (probably Kirkuk?). I would generously say these 3 patches took up a maximum of 10% of the territory but contained at least 85% of the population as measured by light -- the rest was little more than black desert occassionally punctuated by extremely small points of light (could these be the long-lost 1000 points of light"?). So, this new sentiment is almost certainly another deceptive rhetorical ploy (unless it turns out the Iraqi units will control the 10% of the "battle space" where 85% of the population resides -- this I doubt). At a minimum it means that Iraqi units won't even be able to control a lot of the empty desert – pretty pathetic.
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