“The Empire on Credit”

from Limes 1/2005

By Lucio Caracciolo

On George W. Bush’s table in the White House, a recent visitor noticed just one book: an anthology of selections from the Bible. Two years ago David Frum, brilliant neoconservative speechwriter, noted that in the presidential circle, the study of the Sacred Scriptures was “if not obligatory, not quite optional.” (see note 1).

The most powerful leader in the world is a man of faith, as profound as it is open.
His evangelical Christianity is not only a dimension of the soul, it is a guide for action.
His favorite political philosopher is Jesus. Before making important decisions, he collects himself in prayer. When asked on what he bases the assurance with which he confronts issues of which he has no special knowledge, he replies: “My instinct” (see note 2).

Of course it is not true, as some of his former collaborators have maligned, that he imagines himself on a mission among humans to do God’s work. But without considering his fervent religiosity, a born again Christian who twenty years ago escaped the curse of the bottle, one cannot understand much of Bush—how he thinks, speaks and operates.

The world does not exactly burn with love for this president. The anti-Americans depict him as a marionette in the hands of capital, occasionally incarnated by his Vice President, Dick Cheney. No one suspects that Bush possesses the trappings of genius. Not even himself, seeing that he often speaks of his own academic performance with irony. He is capable of not knowing or forgetting the names of foreign leaders. He can assert that Sweden does not have a military, safe then to excuse himself. But it is not from these particulars that one judges a president of the United States. Furthermore, that which the world doesn’t like convinces the majority of Americans. For Bush, in the end, this is what counts.

An analysis sine ira et studio of the Bushian trajectory must therefore equally avoid facile irony and ingenuous enthusiasm. This pertains both to the awkward televised address of September 11, 2001, when the president overwhelmed by shock seemed unable to explain to himself and to his people what had happened and how one had to react, and to the proud claim of the “resounding success” of the first Iraqi elections, that shines a new light on the Mesopotamian expedition.

Before perusing Bush’s agenda, another warning. More than any other political figure, the president of the United States lives in a world of his own. In his own way. Bush detests the stile of his predecessor. Clinton had transformed the White House into a sort of campus, where counselors and friends camped out till the morning hours, casually debating how to cure the ills of the planet. The time for Bush’s agenda comes in units of five minutes. There is no space for academic seminars. Nor for oblique, unconventional minds. Explains the president:
“Many say that I’m wrong, I know. I presume I’m right.” (see note 3).

To take the temperature of the Oval Office, it is convenient to listen to the lesson imparted by an influential counselor of Bush’s to the journalist Ron Suskind: “People like you live in what we call the community based on reality”, where one mistakenly believes “that solutions emerge from a careful study of a comprehensible reality. Today the world no longer functions like that. Now we are an empire. And while we act, we create our reality. And while you carefully study that reality, we act again, producing a new reality, that you can study… We are the actors of history. And it remains to you, to all of you, to study it.” (see note 4).

Bush knows where history goes because he makes it. In the inaugural speech for his second term, this trust is expressed in messianic tones: “History has a visible direction, fixed by liberty and by the Author of liberty” (see note 5). To confound the skeptics, critics and adversaries—almost half of America and a great part of world public opinion—he chose a solemn and inspired register, in the purest tradition of American idealism. Leaving aside the rhetoric of the occasion and the narcissism of his speechwriters, Bush is suited to take it seriously because he believes in what he says. The question is how to bring his profession of faith back to earth. How to translate the vision into an agenda.

As far as domestic priorities are concerned—from the radical privatization of social security to further tax cuts, from the reduction of the twin deficits (the budget and balance of payments) to the emphasis on nuclear energy—we can put forth some formal criteria for evaluating their gradual progress or failure. But for the American mission in the world? If the United States pursues “the ultimate aim of eliminating tyranny in our world”, defined as the “work of generations”(see note 6), our grandchildren’s grandchildren will be able to devote themselves to judging Bush.
Richard N. Haass, recently returned to the “community based on reality” after a stint among the “creators of reality” in Powell’s State Department, has observed that “liberty is not a doctrine of foreign policy” (see note 7).

Haass’ criticism may seem pertinent. But it is intrinsic to a classic, moderate vision of politics and its aims. It misses the revolutionary heart of Bush’s thought. Perhaps he may not have studied Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, but this president is convinced that the world is to be changed, not studied. America was founded on the idea of the perfectibility of man, on the diffusion of liberty and democracy as precursors to peace. If it abjured this idea, it would cease to be America. Or at least that America which Jefferson assigned the goal of the “Empire of Liberty”. And that for Bush is “an active force for good in the world.” (see note 8).

Not all the leaders of the United States have been married to such a vision, and none have been immune from the temptations and the necessities of pragmatism. Even Bush counts on his “sons of bitches” (Musharraf, Abdallah or Mubarak, in some measure Putin and Hu Jintao) to support the national interests and win the war on terrorism. But when he evokes a world revolution in the name of American values, we should not doubt his sincerity.

And nonetheless, since politics is not measured by intentions but by their consequences, it is worthwhile to shift our attention from the president to the historical environment in which he operates. We will thus attempt to interpret Bush’s vision, bringing it back into time and space. Only in this way will we be able to get an idea of Bush’s geopolitical agenda. And to what degree he will be able to realize it. Lets consider the internal front first.

This is not really Bush’s second, but his third term. The first lasted from January 20, to September 11, 2001. Made president by an election that many of his compatriots considered illegitimate, jeered at by the intelligentsia and the establishment’s media figures.
The second begins with the president in flight in the skies of an America under attack, culminates in the Afghan and Iraq campaigns, and ends with the clear victory over John Kerry in the November 2004 elections. The third, just begun, will determine if Bush will be remembered for verbal gaffes and bellicose adventurism or if instead he will have earned a place in the gallery of great American presidents as the victorious commander-in-chief of the war on terrorism.

But Bush’s last term will be divided in two. In the first half, until the midterm congressional elections, the president will be at the peak of his powers. In the second, however the 2006 vote goes, Bush will be a “lame duck”, above all because the American political arena will be focused on the choice of a successor. To the time restraint factor, one adds the divergence of interests between a president that cannot be reelected and Republican congressmen who certainly wish to be. Already now some in the Senate and the House have distanced themselves from the White House’s projects for social security reform and immigration.

To avoid being stifled by the brief time left to him and by politique politicienne, Bush has restructured his administration according to the principle of homogeneity.
After having faithfully carried out a strategy of which he was never convinced, Colin Powell has left the State Department. In his place Condoleezza Rice, intimate of the president, who in fact will continue to watch over the National Security Council, left to her former assistant, Stephen Hadley. Dick Cheney remains the number one bis, even if he is not the shadow president that many paint him as. As far as the neoconservatives, maximum ideologues of the war on terror as global democratic revolution, are concerned, their influence in the administration will largely depend on the Iraqi experiment. Moreover each neocon is by now on his own. It takes all the anti-American fantasies of the conspiracy theorists to represent those ex-liberals as an omnipotent cabal. Their mentor in the administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, has seen his aspirations for a more relevant task frustrated. The retiring of Powell and the enlargement of the Pentagon’s sphere of influence in the intelligence field, to the detriment of a reorganized CIA, instead enlarge the space to maneuver for Donald Rumsfeld, having miraculously survived the shame of Abu Ghraib.
In sum, Bush’s second government is much more Bushian than the first.

The president’s strategic objective is to render America more independent from the world because the world has been revealed to be terribly dangerous for America. On September 11th, the United States were found to be vulnerable to that Muslim fanaticism that had served to deliver a death blow to the Soviet Union. Bush is convinced that America was attacked because it was too weak towards the jihadists. The war on terrorism is above all an exhibition of force and determination to discourage an enemy that could strike again and with any means, including weapons of mass destruction. It is furthermore intended to reaffirm the global leadership of the United States over a new world, ideally redrawn in its own image and likeness.

The most recent Bush reinterprets the war on terrorism as a war for liberty and democracy. Because he believes it, of course. But above all because only in this way can he win it.
Or at least declare victory. Exalting the Afghan, Palestinian and especially the Iraqi vote.
But also the Ukrainian one, preceded by the “rose revolution” in Georgia. And hoping that soon it will touch Cuba or other “outposts of tyranny”.

In the now famous confidential memorandum of October 16, 2003, Rumsfeld admitted:
“We don’t have a measure for determining if we are winning or losing the global war on terror” (see note 9). Bush himself, in a moment of distraction, confessed on August 30, 2004 that this war “cannot be won” (see note 10). In a strict sense, it is true: terrorism is a method exercised by homo sapiens since the dawn of mankind, and under every sky. To extirpate the ideology and the practice of terror is utopia. A president that proclaimed victory in the conflict against terrorism would risk being refuted in that same moment by a fanatic’s bomb. But if the emphasis no longer falls on the calculation of terrorists captured or killed, on the Madrassas of anti-Western hate closed or opened, on the fields of training jihadists cleared or replanted—and especially not on the list of fallen Americans—everything changes.

Bush has found the right measure—or rather the golden section that escaped Rumsfeld.
The measure of success or defeat must be the advance or retreat of liberty in the world.
If liberty is the secret plan of history—and the president, like many of his countrymen, is absolutely convinced of it—we can follow its progress and temporary defeats step by step across the planet. Like the work annually produced by Freedom House and baptized, with tasteful British understatement, “Map of Liberty”. Here are mapped out the 88 “free”, 55 “partially free” and 49 “not free” countries of the world, updated in 2003. Ten years earlier, 72 states inhabited “paradise”, 53 “purgatory” and 49 the “inferno”. Bush may hope that in January 2009, when he departs the Oval Office, the banners of liberty on the last edition of the Map will be all the more numerous. If then the “ally” Saudi Arabia still figures among the supervillains, in the company of North Korea, Iran or Syria—patience.

The president has decided that the American sphere of influence is the whole world.
A world to redeem, in the tracks of the great universalist presidents Wilson and Reagan.
Bush things that he has thus distilled the perfect formula, a balanced blend of idealism and pragmatism: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.” (see note 11). Besides, liberty and democracy being relative and always debatable concepts, such a program presents the added advantage of not exposing itself to refutation (Bush must have read his Popper).

If for example in the Greater Middle East—at once the major front of the war against the jihadists and the laboratory of democratization of the Islamic archipelago—the window of opportunity opened by the Iraqi vote were to close, the White House could still point out that in the season of the “war on terror” and the missionary impulse, America remains number one, apparently without rivals. Europe is neither a great resource nor a great problem, and then it is divided, with a vast pro-American periphery that surrounds a skeptical central Hispano-Franco-German nucleus, reluctant but above all sterile. In Russia, the “friend” Putin must learn to behave himself, but he fails each time he attempts to reassert his preeminence over the “near abroad” or even just to halt the advance of Nato (read: America) in the heart of his former empire. China is growing, but its economy is tied tightly to that of America, which harbors spontaneous admiration for its model of development. If its ambitions go too far, it will end up clashing with India, which has just begun the climb to the high levels of power, and with Japan, thus confirming the US in the role as arbitrator of the Asian equilibrium.

As far as international organizations are concerned, they are floundering (UN) or tamed (IMF). America does not recognize the right of veto over its vital interests. It is not sufficiently hypocritical to evoke an international order higher than its own sovereignty, as do the Europeans and the other secondary powers that would like to use it to contain the great strength of the US. The White House imagines, if anything, a “League of Democracies” in place of the obsolete and unreliable United Nations.

From the heavens of grand principles, clear and concrete advantages for the sole superpower descend to earth. This at least is Bush’s firm conviction. But is it really the case? Lets try to probe the foundation of American power, to verify its solidity. And lets hold fast to Rice’s counsel: “To determine if the course is right, I will never forget that the true measure is in its efficacy.” (see note 12).

The three decisive components for evaluating the effectiveness of the White House’s agenda are: the economy, military power and influence (soft power).
The stronger and more autonomous America is in each of these fields, all intimately connected, the greater the hopes of success for the third Bush.

Economy.
The United States grows at, for us, enviable rates (4.4% in 2004). But the boom is the child of public spending to the stars, also in the cause of a war that costs more than presupposed (200 billion dollars for Afghanistan and Iraq, according to official estimates surely to fall).
The growth requires robust injections of foreign resources, to sustain the internal demand.
From here the colossal foreign debt—projected to break the ceiling of 8 trillion dollars, with a loss of balance of payments that last year superseded 650 billion dollars—that parallels the public deficit (413 billion). American depends therefore on credit supplied by the rest of the planet, especially Asia. Approximately 58% of American public bonds is in Asian hands, particularly Japanese and Chinese, attracted by the American consumer market and by protection (Japan) or US strategic threat (China). But this unbalanced interdependence, aided by a policy of weakening the American currency to secure the dollar standard, triggers a latent crisis for the US development model that neither Bush nor Greenspan can manage by themselves. For example, the implosion of the Chinese banking system and/or the necessity for Japan to confront the consequences of its aging population by bringing home the capital currently flowing towards the US are two not immediate but impending probabilities.

In the energy field as well, America is discovering that it is no more able to determine its own destiny. In less than ten years the United States have passed from the rank of principle oil producer in front of Russia and Saudi Arabia, to having the primary negative balance as largest importer (in the future for gas as well). The logic of the great companies, sustained by the government, remains to procure abroad that which is not profitable to produce at home or that cannot be found there. But in recent years, while fishing for energy in the world sheltered by the vast American security network, the major corporations run into new and seasoned rivals. From China to India to the Russia under a supposedly tamed Putin, the competition knows neither certain rules nor secure friends. Besides, owing to the speculation and geopolitical instability that America has contributed to, energy prices are growing beyond the threshold of international market control. In a similar vein the contractual power of the United States, identified with its companies, appears redefined.

Armed Forces.
American arms serve to protect the security of the nation and to perpetuate the flow of external resources. Thus a kind of “empire on credit” founded on extraordinary military power and the hegemony of the dollar. One sustains the other. Contrary to classical empires, American is not inclined to territorial expansion because such is not the root of its power (see note 13).

But how much is the American war machine really worth? Before the coming of Bush, the picture was not encouraging. In the eyes of the jihadists, rather, Washington appeared quite irresolute in the use of the force—from the retreat of US troops from Beirut called by Reagan after the bombing of the embassy (1983) to the less decorous flight from Somalia undertaken by Clinton ten years ago, followed by pinpricks in response to jihadist attacks in Africa and the Middle East, among which the attack on the U.S.S. Cole (October 12, 2000). Not to speak of the incomplete missions in the Balkans that have left Europe with several jihadist cells still entrenched in Bosnia (and not only there).

What use are the armed forces if they cannot win wars? Afghanistan and Iraq would have had to overturn such perceptions. In the first case, Bush has achieved a moderate success:
the Taliban regime was knocked down and Osama’s bases destroyed.
But it was a sledgehammer blow to a nest of wasps. Some are holed up in Pakistan, in Iran or elsewhere; others fight US soldiers in Iraq. Meanwhile Karzai, however legitimated by the vote, remains the mayor of Kabul. In Iraq, as we will see later on, we are still wading through, despite the relative success of the elections of January 30th.

If before the Iraq campaign had 752 bases installed in 130 countries (see note 14), the attrition of the war and imperial overextension forces the United States to recruit new troops.
Thus confirming that even the US armed forces need partners. As the analyst George Friedman observed: “The United States don’t fight alone. They fight with coalition partners, which are either indigenous forces or nation-states. The reason is demographic. The US is always overwhelmed when it fights on the Eurasian continental mass. Technology alone is not enough to make up the difference (see note 15). ”Now the “indigenous forces” (mujahadeen in Bosnia, KLA guerillas in Kosovo, Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, Kurdish peshmerga in Iraq) are joined by private soldiers, trained by retired Pentagon officials.
State partners, indigenous troops, or private warriors are useful to limit losses and prevent the costs of the campaign from falling entirely on the Americans shoulders.

Influence.
In general, those who don’t have too much hard power—as is the case with us Italians—tend to like soft power. It is a rather mysterious object. For Joseph Nye, one of its American theorists, it approaches the Gramscian concept of hegemony. In plain words: “If I am able to find a way to make you want what I want, then I don’t have to force you” to do something (see note 16). Saving time, effort and money.

In Bush’s first four years America has demonstrated a dramatic and surprising lack of soft power. Didn’t the critics of globalization—supposing that this term means anything—explain that such a presumed universal law of our time was only the Trojan Horse of Americanization? And that the internet is its instrument of occult persuasion? And yet the “globalized” world has not become more American. If anything America is each day becoming more global to the point of provoking the alarm of those who fear the decomposition of the national fabric, corroded by ethnic diversification (see note 17).

More than foreign restraints on economic growth and limits on its military power, America should fear its declining appeal. As all the surveys reveal, the superpower’s popularity is somewhat low abroad. The concrete fallout is very serious both in terms of “made in the USA”—American brands suffer in hostile cultures—and especially regarding the power of coalition for the only superpower.

Bush may shrug his shoulders and make light of it, convinced that “America is America”.
But if there is even a grain of truth in the analysis of the growing dependence of the “indispensable nation” (Madeleine Albright); if the prosperity, security and power of the United States are largely in other people’s hands; and if these hands are less and less friendly, then this is something to be concerned about. The empire without hegemony will not function for long.

The immutable premise of the world revolution foretold by Bush is that the peoples of the planet listen to the voice of America. In many cases, this is not so. Thus why Bush’s (and Rice’s) new agenda highlights the significance of public diplomacy. Synonymous with dear old propaganda—or at times with the dezinformacija at which the USSR was the master.
The thesis is that if others knew Americans as they believe themselves to be, they would love them. The problem is not the message but the inability to broadcast it in an agreeable way to the world’s ears. This has yet to be demonstrated. Together with the emphasis on the use of force, the faith in propaganda and the propaganda of faith signals a curious American tendency to reproduce Soviet schemes (see note 18). Hence losing ones.

If America’s sphere of influence is the whole world, no one else has a right to a sphere of influence. Consequently, from the American point of view the allies should take some of the burden of the war upon themselves without contributing to directing it or trying to maneuver for geopolitical advantage . Or else get out of the way. The was Bush’s disposition immediately after the jihadist attack on the TwinTowers and the Pentagon: “To a certain point [of the war, ed.] we could remain alone. For me it’s not a problem. We’re America” (see note 19).
We do not know if the president has changed his mind. Of course the facts would imply that not even Washington can go it alone. And publicly the president appears more ecumenical, less stingy with recognition (perhaps ironical) towards the Europeans. But if the “friends and allies”—however one wishes to interpret this slogan—hope that Bush goes beyond the diplomacy of the smile and pat on the shoulder, they risk deluding themselves.

When supporting players and walk-ons feel backed into a corner by the lead performer and they know they lack the power to challenge him, they have three choices:
a) to take time to build up their strength, pooling together their respective resources as much as possible;
b) gain leverage over the giant to utilize its force to their own advantage;
c) both strategies at once.
The perception of an imperial America is evoking old and new geopolitical counterforces. History teaches that each absolute dominion provokes other poles of power to rise in reaction. But the challenge is covered over by the war on terrorism, that everyone is free to interpret according to their own interests. In fact, the war has an real and a metaphorical dimension.
In the second case it acts as a by now torn shroud, that allows flashes of the crucial competition to seep through. That will determine if in the near future the United States will remain the only superpower or something less.

In the decades to come, only two actors appear capable of challenging the American colossus: China and Europe. The first hypothesis is rather concrete, the second quite theoretical, though still studied by geopolitically misguided analysts inside and outside the Bush administration.

Beijing has established a collaborative rapport with Moscow, from which it acquires weapons able to strike the American Pacific fleet. Nor is the financing of 6 billion dollars with which Chinese banks helped Putin incorporate the best morsels of Yukos, just snatched from the
pro-American Khodorkovskij, into the state-owned oil company Rosneft’ particularly agreeable for Washington. Moreover, China is designing a vast Asian sphere of influence, at least up to where it does not encounter the realm of Indian (Nepal, Myanmar) or Japanese (Taiwan, Eastern Chinese Sea, Korean peninsula and the Sea of Japan) power. With Delhi and Tokyo the Chinese could moreover contract provisional marriages of interest. Of course the gestation of the free trade zone ASEAN+3, conceived by the Southeast Asian nations together with China, Japan and South Korea, does not gladden the hearts of Americans. Prospectively, the result could be the largest commercial bloc on the planet, bigger than the European Union and Nafta.

As far as we are concerned, we confess that we can’t imagine that one might see in the European Union a new geopolitical actor hostile to the US, based around a Franco-German axis aligned with a Russia increasingly similar to a little USSR. Such a likelihood could only derive from the anti-European paranoia of some Americans, blinded by contempt for “Old Europe”. Moreover Bush seems decided to prevent the transatlantic fracture from ending up translating European frustrations into a challenge to America.

So today, in the world that matters the United States have just two declared and dangerous enemies: Iran, most importantly, and then North Korea, associated by Rice with Cuba, Myanmar, Byelorussia and Zimbabwe as “outposts of tyranny”. The North Koreans are already in possession, so it would seem, of a small nuclear arsenal, while the Persians are a few years away from the finish line (assuming that they haven’t reached it already). If Bush aims to contain Pyongyang’s paleocommunists with the arms of politics, he has not excluded the politics of arms against Tehran. Seen from Washington, the Ayatollahs’ regime is almost evil incarnate: the worse enemy that threatens to annihilate the best friend—Israel—with the atomic bomb. Unable to invade Iran, it is not left to the US to bet on a coup d’etat or an air strike against atomic sites, provided that the Israelis think to do it first. To imagine that they could thus liquidate Iranian ambitions to acquire the Bomb seems risky. Tehran’s regimes come and go, occasionally with the Americans’ help; the desire for nukes remains, because it is the symbol that affirms Iran as the greatest Middle Eastern power.

Here emerges a specific contradiction of Bush’s agenda. Among the motives that pushed him to attack Afghanistan and Iraq, one of the most important was the assumption that among the possible targets, these occupied first and second place in order of weakness. If Saddam had already possessed nuclear devices, perhaps the Americans would not have attacked him, or they would have done it differently. The message is clear: we can and will march against all tyrannies that threaten us, save those endowed with the Bomb. Ergo, any self-respecting rogue state attempts to secretly enter the atomic club, understood as a vaccine against a US-led preemptive war. A vicious circle that enhances the threat of defeat. And narrows the choice to surrender or war. In the first case Washington should resign itself to living in a very dangerous world. In the second it should prepare itself for a series of preemptive conflicts probably greater than the available resources.

For the United States the problem is not the possession of the Bomb in itself—otherwise it should concern itself with its best friends, Israel included—but the risk that it will fall into enemy hands. So Bush concedes to Brazil a program of Uranium enrichment which it denies to Iran, convinced that the first will make a civilian use out of it and the second will treat it as a nuclear deterrent. Probably. But who can swear on the type of regime that will rule Brazil or Iran within twenty years?

The effects of overexposure are witnessed even on the Iraqi front. Only the myopia of professional anti-Americans can devalue the meaning of the elections. It was felt loud and clear throughout the Greater Middle East, and it still resounds. And Bush has availed himself of the opportunity to admonish the Saudi and Egyptian “friends” to open themselves up to democracy. Meanwhile assuring the Middle Eastern peoples that “the United States do have not the right nor the desire nor the intention of imposing our form of government on anyone else” (see note 20).

It’s a long way to realize his desires, by which Iraq would be by now set on the tracks of democracy, a beacon of liberty in the darkness of Middle Eastern regimes (almost all as tyrannical as they are more or less tied to Washington).

Let us yet assume the best scenario: by the beginning of 2006 a united Iraq, having approved the constitution by referendum, will have legitimated with a new vote a government of a more or less Shiite character. It would allow Bush (and us) to bring the troops home. On the ground the Americans would leave the necessary garrisons to manage a few strategic bases, which the White House considers the spoils of war. Is all well in the best of all possible Iraqs? Maybe.
A weak, predominantly Shiite Iraq is however Iran’s geopolitical priority. The Persian area of influence in the Gulf would certainlybe reinforced by it. Of course, the Iraqi Shiites are not assimilable to the Iranians; the quietist hawza of Najaf is not the militant one of Qom.But the pro-Iranian network in Shiite Iraq could incline Baghdad’s choices towards Tehran’s interests. It would perhaps result in a domino effect not desired by the Americans. The Iraqi example could threaten to inflame the Shiite communities of the region, beginning with the Saudi-Arab ones, which lie on Riyadh’s richest oil reserves—a risk Bush would prefer not to run, in times of energy prices outside his control.

While Bush could rightfully show pride for the Iraq vote—or rather, for the Kurdish and Shiite vote in the Iraqi territories more or less controlled by the coalition—from which Tehran hopes to pick the fruits, the ayatollahs did all they could to widen their range of anti-Washington countermeasures. The terminals of the Persian network by now reach Russia (weapons, nuclear technology, energy pipelines), China and India (oil and gas), the France-Germany-Great Britain European triangle (whose mediation in the Iran-America atomic querelle is obviously not free of charge), to the point of entering the garden of the United States’ house, on the Southern costs of the Caribbean Sea. Here one witnesses a significant China-Venzuela-Iran energy triangulation. The United States’ greatest strategic competitor together with Castro’s neo-Bolivarist friend and the most hardened power of the “axis of evil”: a truly lethal cocktail. Beijing puts down money and agrees to a joint venture with Caracas to furnish it with crude oil, but also for research and development of the Venezuelan oilfields which Chavez made the major American companies vacate; Tehran offers the technologies in which it is rich, in order to facilitate the ambition Chavist projects of boosting oil production. The Iran-Venezuela agreement could delineate an anti-American front in OPEC, intent on buying up energy in the garden of the American house. Poor President Monroe is already rolling in his grave.

We don’t know where Bush keeps his agenda. However, we are certain that many of its pages will be written by the rest of the world.


  1. D. FRUM, The Right Man, New York 2003, Random House, p. 3.
  2. R. SUSKIND, “Without a Doubt”, The New York Times, 10/17/2004.
  3. J. D. MCKINNON, CH. COOPER, “Bush Will “Lead” Drive for Changes to Social Security”, The Wall Street Journal, 1/11/2005.
  4. R. SUSKIND, op. cit.
  5. Cfr. the text of Bush’s inaugural speech for his second term at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/01/20050120-1.html
  6. Ibid.
  7. R. N. HAASS, “Freedom Is Not a Doctrine”, The Washington Post, 24/1/2005.
  8. Thus in his “State of the Union Address”, Washington, 2/2/2005, in http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/20050202-11.html
  9. Cfr. the internal letter on the“Global War on Terrorism” addressed 10/16/2003 from the Secretary of Defense to his closest civilian and military colleagues (Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith and Generals Dick Myers and Pete Pace), then leaked to the press.
  10. Cfr. B. KNOWLTON, “Conventions Opens in Shadow of 9/11”, International Herald Tribune, 8/31/2004.
  11. Cfr. Bush’s second inaugural speech, 1/20/2005, cit.
  12. Cfr. R. COHEN, “Bush’s Smiles Meet Some Frowns in Europe”, The New York Times, 1/22/2005.
  13. Cfr. the volume of Limes, “L’impero senza impero”, n. 2/2004.
  14. N. FERGUSON, Colossus. The Fall and Rise of the American Empire, London 2004, Allen Lane, p. 16.
  15. G. FRIEDMAN, The Secret War, New York 2004, Doubleday, pp. 85-86.
  16. J.S. NYE jr., The Paradox of American Power, Oxford 2002, OxfordUniversity Press, p. 9.
  17. Cfr. S. HUNTINGTON, Who Are We?, America’s Great Debate, London 2004, Free Press, p. 251.
  18. Cfr. M. LIND, “How the US became the world’s dispensable nation”, Financial Times, 1/24/2005.
  19. B. WOODWARD, Bush at War, New York 2002, Simon & Schuster, p. 81.
  20. Cfr. the “State of the Union Address”, cit.