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America off guard as dominoes begin to tumble once
more
By GERALD WARNER
01/01/06 "Scotsman" -- -- PREDICTING global prospects for 2006 is
far from an exact science; but what are the likely geopolitical hot
spots of the coming year? Iraq is the most obvious bet. That
tormented pseudo-country is likely to be in an even worse state a
year from now. Closely related to that forecast is the theme that
will be the leitmotif of global politics for the foreseeable future:
the erosion of America's influence, despite its vaunted status as
the world's sole superpower.
The invasion of Iraq was a blunder of colossal magnitude that has
not only incited anti-Americanism around the world, but has changed
the global perception of the United States, so that it appears
impotent. Any objective audit of its resources indicates otherwise.
The US has the strongest economy on earth, the most dazzling wealth
in the history of mankind and the most formidable armed forces,
including the nuclear capacity to annihilate the planet. Yet power
is contingent on perception and America, bogged down in Iraq as
formerly in Vietnam, is perceived as a loser.
America's loss of authority could not have come at a worse time: its
old Cold War opponents are reasserting themselves. Both Russia and
China are seeking geopolitical advantage at the expense of western
democracy. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has reverted to Stalinism.
Rogue capitalism, operating within what is still partly a command
economy, is fuelling the kind of adventurism in which Brezhnev once
revelled.
The resignation from the Putin government of Andrei Illarionov, the
last surviving reformer, was a landmark in degeneration. The media
have been brought under Kremlin control; the opposition parties have
been emasculated; the oligarchs have either gone into exile or into
Putin's pocket. The Chechen war has claimed more than 100,000 lives
on both sides.
Although Putin failed to impose his puppet, Viktor Yanukovych, upon
the Ukraine, where the vicious poisoning of anti-Russian
presidential candidate Vladimir Yushchenko was universally
attributed to pro-Moscow agencies, he is still pursuing the ambition
to integrate the Ukraine into a Muscovite empire. Blackmail over
energy supplies (he was threatening to turn off the gas pipeline
supplying the Ukraine at 7am today) and the lease of Sevastopol for
Russia's Black Sea Fleet are further imperialist tactics. Belarus
and Moldova are also targets for Russian integration.
Putin has reintroduced the Soviet anthem and, within the armed
forces, the red flag; and the statue of Felix Dzerzhinski, founder
of the Cheka/NKVD/KGB, pulled down by crowds in 1991, has been
replaced at police headquarters in Moscow. Dzerzhinski executed more
than half a million people, including his own mother: this is
equivalent to erecting a bust of Himmler at police headquarters in
Berlin. Only last April, Putin - himself a KGB officer for 15 years
- described the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the greatest
geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century". Yet today he
assumes the presidency of the G8.
It is not in far-flung geopolitical theatres that America,
distracted by its Iraq adventure, has been most negligent. Major
trouble is brewing in its own backyard, in Latin America. While
intervening ineptly in the Middle East, the US has failed to uphold
the fundamental principle of its foreign policy: the Monroe
Doctrine, reserving South America as its own sphere of influence.
The maverick president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is now threatening
to destabilise the entire sub-continent, as proxy for Fidel Castro.
The Venezuelan intelligence service, the DISIP, is now controlled by
the Cuban secret service, the DGI. Thousands of Cuban advisers have
poured into Venezuela to train 100,000 Chavez-supporting
paramilitaries known as the "Bolivarian Circles". It is a carbon
copy of the subversion of Chile before the Pinochet counter-coup,
the Marxist thugs in that instance being equally quaintly
denominated the "Groups of Personal Friends".
The army has also been purged and neighbouring Colombia is menaced
by Chavez' support for the FARC guerrillas there. Beyond that,
Venezuela has become a hive of state-sponsored terrorism, assisting
militant Islamicists from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Lebanon. Last
Friday, Castro cemented an anti-American alliance with another
Marxist flake - Evo Morales, the Bolivian president committed to the
legalisation of cocaine production. "It appears," said Castro, "that
the map is changing."
He is right: 15 years after the global collapse of Communism the
dominoes are again lining up to be toppled. America's unforgivable
omission was failing to take out Fidel Castro when the Soviet Union
melted down and the régime itself expected to fall. Instead, the
plague bacillus has been left to re-infect the sub-continent,
presenting the United States with the challenge of a resurgence of
socialist primitivism in Latin America.
Other global imponderables include China's intentions towards Taiwan
and its own viability as a communist state: there were 60,000 public
protests in China in 2003 and the Communist Party, now bereft of an
ideology, survives precariously. Then there is the nuclear issue in
Iran, the intractable Palestinian crisis and the stand-off in
Kashmir. It is not a reassuring landscape. If America does not
recover its equilibrium, it may be forced into a post-Vietnam-style
retreat into isolationism that would create even more problems than
its cack-handed, neo-conservative interventionism.
©2006 Scotsman.com
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