The first sentence of his 1949 report, titled The Situation in Asia stated that, "Asia is out of control. From Suez to the western Pacific we face one problem after another, in one country after another, which we cannot settle either by an American decision or by joint action with countries that we consider our allies." It was not feasible, Lattimore advised, for the West in general, and the United States in particular to continue to pursue policies of Third World domination. These would only produce more and more competent forms of resistance, and potentially retaliation. What was required, now, was negotiation.
In the late 1970s Zbigniew Brzesinski, top security advisor to Jimmy Carter, reaffirmed Lattimore's analysis and expressed the need for effective strategizing to deal with its implications. He foresaw in The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy and It's Geostrategic Imperative, that "... an Islamic revival - already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia....is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms ..."
Brzezinski's Harvard colleague, Samuel Huntington, molded The Grand Chessboard into ruling class ideology. In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, which appeared first in 1993 as an article in Foreign Affairs and then as a book in 1996, Huntington claimed that with the Iron Curtain's collapse, the world now divided itself into a plethora of uncontrollable tribal-ethnic regions, armed to the teeth and bent on conflict.
The West in general and the United States in particular, he said, must assert dominance over Asia, Africa and all other non-Western geographies. Failure to do so would result in "... a world in anarchy. ... the breakdown of governmental authority; the breakup of states; the intensification of tribal, ethnic, and religious conflict; the emergence of international criminal mafia ..." Furthermore, Huntington asserted, "Whatever economic connections may exist between them, the fundamental cultural gap between Asian and American societies precludes their joining together in a common home."
In the context of Huntington's paradigm, The Grand Chessboard became a form of Social Darwinist ideology, promoting Western world domination not merely as a nationalistic goal, but as necessary for the salvation of humankind's very evolutionary process. The current regime's religio-ethnic stance fits well within the Clash of Civilizations paradigm, gaining from it a fa??ade of cultural superiority and a patina of pseudo-intellectual legitimacy.
If Huntington's paradigm relied little upon historical evidence for its support, Eminent Historian Eric Hobsbawm's view of the modern world rested upon a mountain of it. In The Age of Extremes, the final of his four volume political/economic history of the world since the Industrial Revolution, he described a world in which The Clash of Civilizatons made no sense. "Though capitalism was certainly not in the best of shape at the end of the Short Twentieth Century [1914-1999], Soviet-type communism was unquestionably dead, and quite unlikely to revive." One after another of the Third World nations sought not to dismantle Western Capitalism, but to join it.
Hobsbawm acknowledged that international conflict was likely, but the West had no choice but to deal with it through negotiation, not repression. Fortunately, global capitalism had matured to the point where it might be able to include once-disenfranchised have-nots at the foot of the Capitalist table without causing drastic lifestyle reductions for the Western elite whom their virtual slavery had once enhanced.
Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz came to similar conclusions in Globalization and its Discontents, published in 2002: "The problem is not with globalization, but with how it has been managed.-- U.S. controlled organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank "all too often, have served the interests of the more advanced countries -- and particular interests within those countries --rather than those of the developing world." Stiglitz cited example after example of these organizations acting to repress rather than enhance the independent development of Third World countries.
According to these analysts, U.S. foreign policy appears to have distanced this nation from the realities illuminated by Lattimore. Like an enraged bull unable to shift its gaze from the illusion of threat to real causal forces, the current regime seems pathologically addicted to control strategies that no longer work, if they ever worked in the first place. Chalmers Johnson, an ex-U.S. Naval officer and esteemed political scientist described some of the most flagrant of these failures in his best selling 2000 book, Blowback: the Costs and Consequences of American Empire. Concerning South Korea he wrote, "The rule of Syngman Rhee and the U.S.-backed generals was merely the first instance in East Aisa of the American sponsorship of dictators. The list is long, but it deserves reiterations simply because many in the United States fail to remember (if they ever knew) what East Asians cannot help but regard as a major part of our postwar legacy."
The immovable crisis of peak oil
The failure of successive administrations to heed the advice of their own experts to develop foreign policies of negotiation rather than suppression enhanced the rise of increasingly competent competitors -- not discontent but manageable client states -- in Asia and elsewhere, well before the end of the twentieth century. As early as the 1950s, though not well publicized until two decades later, an impending global crisis began to provide additional motivation for America's new enemies to mobilize.
In 1979 a National Research Council report titled Science and Technology: A Five Year Outlook, predicted a world poised on the brink of a narrow chasm of great depth: too many people, most rapidly modernizing, and not enough energy to sustain them. Beginning in a few decades and lasting for a period of probably half a century, or a little more, the report said, no technology would be capable of filling the gap left by diminishing fossil fuel energy.
This prognosis remains intact today. As reported in the current World Watch Magazine, and similarly among other publications, "The peak in global oil production marks a fundamental change in supply....No alternative fuel now being researched generates a greater surplus or can be used more efficiently than oil."
Until the transition from fossil fuel to solar and/or nuclear fusion energy, scientists agree, multitudes will experience great hardship in the near future. In this light, Huntington's warnings and prescriptions take on new meaning. Stripped of fa??ade, they assert that the experience of energy deprivation must be unequally distributed. The West, i.e. "Our Tribe," - or in more modern terms, "Our Gang" -- must suffer less. Those scheduled to suffer most surely possess more than an inkling of this fact.
Though barely hinted at by journalists of the right or the left, the U.S. public probably perceives this scenario as well. Citizens may sense that the current regime plans, by whatever means necessary -- overt and covert, legal and illegal -- to carry out Huntington's advice to the fullest extent possible. The President's designation of an Axis of Evil, his demonization of adversaries, rather than viewing them as rational people, capable of negotiating, embodies the dangerous us-against-them mentality of the Clash of Civilizations paradigm. Huntington insists that "The futures of the United States and the West depend upon Americans reaffirming their commitment to Western civilization. Domestically this means rejecting the divisive siren calls of multiculturalism."
It may be that HAW's call upon citizens to act to minimize the likely effects of the current regime's policies on millions of people will have profound effect. It is also possible that when it comes right down to it most citizens care mainly for their own well being. It may be that only if evidence suggests that their inaction jeopardizes their well being, will they act.
In the late 1970s Zbigniew Brzesinski, top security advisor to Jimmy Carter, reaffirmed Lattimore's analysis and expressed the need for effective strategizing to deal with its implications. He foresaw in The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy and It's Geostrategic Imperative, that "... an Islamic revival - already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia....is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms ..."
Brzezinski's Harvard colleague, Samuel Huntington, molded The Grand Chessboard into ruling class ideology. In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, which appeared first in 1993 as an article in Foreign Affairs and then as a book in 1996, Huntington claimed that with the Iron Curtain's collapse, the world now divided itself into a plethora of uncontrollable tribal-ethnic regions, armed to the teeth and bent on conflict.
The West in general and the United States in particular, he said, must assert dominance over Asia, Africa and all other non-Western geographies. Failure to do so would result in "... a world in anarchy. ... the breakdown of governmental authority; the breakup of states; the intensification of tribal, ethnic, and religious conflict; the emergence of international criminal mafia ..." Furthermore, Huntington asserted, "Whatever economic connections may exist between them, the fundamental cultural gap between Asian and American societies precludes their joining together in a common home."
If Huntington's paradigm relied little upon historical evidence for its support, Eminent Historian Eric Hobsbawm's view of the modern world rested upon a mountain of it. In The Age of Extremes, the final of his four volume political/economic history of the world since the Industrial Revolution, he described a world in which The Clash of Civilizatons made no sense. "Though capitalism was certainly not in the best of shape at the end of the Short Twentieth Century [1914-1999], Soviet-type communism was unquestionably dead, and quite unlikely to revive." One after another of the Third World nations sought not to dismantle Western Capitalism, but to join it.
Hobsbawm acknowledged that international conflict was likely, but the West had no choice but to deal with it through negotiation, not repression. Fortunately, global capitalism had matured to the point where it might be able to include once-disenfranchised have-nots at the foot of the Capitalist table without causing drastic lifestyle reductions for the Western elite whom their virtual slavery had once enhanced.
Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz came to similar conclusions in Globalization and its Discontents, published in 2002: "The problem is not with globalization, but with how it has been managed.-- U.S. controlled organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank "all too often, have served the interests of the more advanced countries -- and particular interests within those countries --rather than those of the developing world." Stiglitz cited example after example of these organizations acting to repress rather than enhance the independent development of Third World countries.
According to these analysts, U.S. foreign policy appears to have distanced this nation from the realities illuminated by Lattimore. Like an enraged bull unable to shift its gaze from the illusion of threat to real causal forces, the current regime seems pathologically addicted to control strategies that no longer work, if they ever worked in the first place. Chalmers Johnson, an ex-U.S. Naval officer and esteemed political scientist described some of the most flagrant of these failures in his best selling 2000 book, Blowback: the Costs and Consequences of American Empire. Concerning South Korea he wrote, "The rule of Syngman Rhee and the U.S.-backed generals was merely the first instance in East Aisa of the American sponsorship of dictators. The list is long, but it deserves reiterations simply because many in the United States fail to remember (if they ever knew) what East Asians cannot help but regard as a major part of our postwar legacy."
The immovable crisis of peak oil
The failure of successive administrations to heed the advice of their own experts to develop foreign policies of negotiation rather than suppression enhanced the rise of increasingly competent competitors -- not discontent but manageable client states -- in Asia and elsewhere, well before the end of the twentieth century. As early as the 1950s, though not well publicized until two decades later, an impending global crisis began to provide additional motivation for America's new enemies to mobilize.
In 1979 a National Research Council report titled Science and Technology: A Five Year Outlook, predicted a world poised on the brink of a narrow chasm of great depth: too many people, most rapidly modernizing, and not enough energy to sustain them. Beginning in a few decades and lasting for a period of probably half a century, or a little more, the report said, no technology would be capable of filling the gap left by diminishing fossil fuel energy.
This prognosis remains intact today. As reported in the current World Watch Magazine, and similarly among other publications, "The peak in global oil production marks a fundamental change in supply....No alternative fuel now being researched generates a greater surplus or can be used more efficiently than oil."
Until the transition from fossil fuel to solar and/or nuclear fusion energy, scientists agree, multitudes will experience great hardship in the near future. In this light, Huntington's warnings and prescriptions take on new meaning. Stripped of fa??ade, they assert that the experience of energy deprivation must be unequally distributed. The West, i.e. "Our Tribe," - or in more modern terms, "Our Gang" -- must suffer less. Those scheduled to suffer most surely possess more than an inkling of this fact.
Though barely hinted at by journalists of the right or the left, the U.S. public probably perceives this scenario as well. Citizens may sense that the current regime plans, by whatever means necessary -- overt and covert, legal and illegal -- to carry out Huntington's advice to the fullest extent possible. The President's designation of an Axis of Evil, his demonization of adversaries, rather than viewing them as rational people, capable of negotiating, embodies the dangerous us-against-them mentality of the Clash of Civilizations paradigm. Huntington insists that "The futures of the United States and the West depend upon Americans reaffirming their commitment to Western civilization. Domestically this means rejecting the divisive siren calls of multiculturalism."
It may be that HAW's call upon citizens to act to minimize the likely effects of the current regime's policies on millions of people will have profound effect. It is also possible that when it comes right down to it most citizens care mainly for their own well being. It may be that only if evidence suggests that their inaction jeopardizes their well being, will they act.
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