Everyone senses that we’ve reached a defining moment in our history, but how to define that moment? In the best of the critical pieces that have, over the last year, been written about America in the world, you can feel writers reaching almost desperately for historical analogies that might orient us: the Roman Empire, the British Empire, prewar Hitlerian Germany, the Spanish-American War, and so on. We’ve been swimming in a sea of analogies. But perhaps we’re settling now on one for this moment of ours. Today, at least, I found two articles, the first from the Christian Science Monitor (via the always useful war in context website) and another from the Guardian, that settle on the analogy of August 1914, that inexorable moment when vast armies slowly mobilized in such a way that there was no turning back from the carnage that was to sweep Europe in two convulsions of ultimate violence over three decades.
Of course, this analogy breaks down because an Iraqi war can’t in any conventional sense become a global August 1914. There is, after all, no other great power or set of great powers mobilizing against us. We are mobilizing alone as if for the ultimate battle, which perhaps is even stranger. And yet we’re in a world where things are balanced so precariously that the equivalent of a global 1914 isn’t beyond imagining. The Washington Post today, for instance, reports that President Musharraf of Pakistan recently told air force veterans that, had Indian troops crossed the border last December in their tense standoff after their own 1914-like mobilization, the Pakistanis would have used nuclear weapons. “…If Indian troops moved a single step [across the disputed frontier] they should not expect a conventional war from Pakistan” is his remarkably chilling statement about his attitude at the time. (“Musharraf Hints He Considered Nuclear Strike”)
Perhaps one analogy so discredited no one’s mentioned it, should be mobilized here. Where, after all, is the domino theory now that we need it? During the Vietnam War, American leaders often spoke of their fear that if we didn’t hold the line in Southeast Asia, the “fall” of South Vietnam (or Laos or Cambodia) would set the global dominos falling, and countries to Africa and beyond would tumble one after another under Communist sway. This was, of course, errant nonsense. But today, it seems that across a vast arc of lands, from Turkey to India (perhaps even to the Koreas), nations and peoples are precariously balanced like so many dominos awaiting a precipitating event. Who knows how our “August 1914” may occur. Tom
For US, few reasons to delay war
By Howard LaFranchi
The Christian Science Monitor
December 30, 2002Even as the Bush administration moves militarily and diplomatically toward war with Iraq, a conflict pitting the world’s superpower against the Middle East’s most notorious despot is not yet inevitable. But the scenarios for avoiding war in the first months of 2003 are shrinking.
Saddam Hussein continues to demonstrate, as with his recent decision to allow Iraqi weapons scientists to be interviewed outside the country, that he can still stretch out the weapons-inspections process and buy time and sympathy with the international community.
Furthermore, events external to the Iraqi confrontation, such as the deepening North Korean nuclear crisis, could also escalate to a point where they nudge aside Iraq from its full dominance of US sights.
Even as the Bush administration moves militarily and diplomatically toward war with Iraq, a conflict pitting the world’s superpower against the Middle East’s most notorious despot is not yet inevitable. But the scenarios for avoiding war in the first months of 2003 are shrinking.
Saddam Hussein continues to demonstrate, as with his recent decision to allow Iraqi weapons scientists to be interviewed outside the country, that he can still stretch out the weapons-inspections process and buy time and sympathy with the international community.
Furthermore, events external to the Iraqi confrontation, such as the deepening North Korean nuclear crisis, could also escalate to a point where they nudge aside Iraq from its full dominance of US sights.
But the US military mobilization, the administration’s tough rhetoric, and the high bar for what would be an acceptable outcome, all have experts finding few scenarios under which war can be put off.
To read more of this Christian Science Monitor piece click here
Pentagon build-up reaches unstoppable momentum
By Julian Borger
December 31, 2002
The GuardianThe Pentagon’s order to deploy large numbers of combat troops, warplanes and a hospital ship in the Gulf have created a near unstoppable momentum towards war with Iraq, US military analysts said yesterday.
Over the year, the US military has conducted low-profile preparations for a conflict, moving headquarters and equipment into the region. But the new deployment orders reported over the weekend represent a serious commitment of manpower and resources from which it will be hard to climb down without ousting Saddam or at least forcing his disarmament.
“There is a bit of 1914 in this in that once mobilisation begins, it’s hard to turn it off. There are financial costs and practical costs,” Ralph Peters, a former army intelligence specialist on the Middle East said.