Dr. James Petras is professor emeritus in sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of numerous works, including Globaloney: el lenguaje imperial, los intelectuales y la izquierda (2000), Hegemonia dos Estados Unidos no Nova Milênio (2001) and Unmasking Globlization: Imperialism of the Twenty-first Century (2001).
Other essays by Dr. James Petras
14 March 2005
Edited article of Dr. James Petras
Introduction
This paper discusses the social, political, economic, psychological and ideological causes and impacts of war in contemporary history.
There are at least FOUR kinds of war which have (contemporary) global significance.
1. Imperialist wars – such as the US invasion of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, leading to the forced imposition of direct or indirect colonial rule, military bases and appropriation of strategic resources and/or water or overland routes.
2 “Separatist-Ethnic Conflicts” such as the Albanian seizure of Yugoslav Kosovo, or the Kurdish seizure of Northern Iraq. While separatist conflicts are played out within the larger Imperial strategic framework, the local participants bring their own “historical claims” to justify their war on the existing central government.
3. “Colonial-Territorial” Wars,
best exemplified by the Israel expulsion of Palestinians, the arbitrary appropriation of land and resources, their denial of self-government and the settlement of Jews on Palestinian land seized through armed force.
4. “Regional Wars”, found mainly in Africa and Asia, where aggressive regimes invade neighboring countries especially adjoining territory – usually containing precious metals. This is the issue in Southern Africa, where Rwanda has occupied a significant swathe of Eastern Zaire.
The question arises: Are these war linked to the empire building projects of the US, European Union (EU) or other emerging imperial powers?
All these contemporary wars are linked in specific ways with the ongoing empire building of the US and the EU.
- The US has consistently supported separatist ethnic-based movements, like the Kosova Liberation Army or the Chechen terrorists to weaken national-states (Yugoslavia, Russia) which Washington targeted. As a consequence Washington secures a new client regime, major military bases and strategic geopoliticaladvantages while undermining an enemy to its uni-polar pretensions
- The US provides arms and financial aid to Israeli colonial expansion and war against Palestinians and Arab countries. This has both weakened the Arab states opposed to US empire building and provoked greater mass popular resistance. The ideological influence and political and financial power of the pro-Israeli organizations and individuals inside and outside the government have reinforced the most bellicose and militarist wing of the US empire builders, especially in the Middle East, often times at the expense of US multi-national corporations seeking to enter in agreements with local regimes.
US imperialism has a contradictory relationship with the separatists and colonial states:
- on the one hand they undermine anti-imperialist nationalists and
- on the other hand, their territorial claims threaten to undermine imperial ties with client regimes (as in the case of Iraqi Kurdistan and the Republic of Turkey).
The imperial strategy of supporting Islamic nationalists against secular leftists (as in the case of Afghanistan and Yugoslavia) has led to new violent confrontations between the empire and former Islamic ‘allies’, as Washington attempted to use and discard them for more docile neo-liberal puppet regimes.
There are few if any regional, local or separatist wars which are purely local – in their causes or consequences.
II: Driving Force of War: Inter-Imperial Collaboration and Competition
The accelerated pace of empire building over the past decade is (due to) the “open spaces” resulting from the demise of the collectivist states (USSR, Eastern Europe and Asia) and their overseas dependencies and allies in Africa and elsewhere.
Both the US and the EU successfully incorporated these ‘ex-collectivist’ countries into their sphere of domination - militarily, economically and culturally.
- Europe gained control of strategic resources, cheap skilled labor and major industries, incorporating these countries as subordinates within the European Union.
- The US secured similar economic advantages but also established military bases and recruited mercenary military forces for its imperial invasions (in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq) and political supporters in the United Nations.
- Washington backed the illegal seizure of power by Yeltsin and then provided backing for his corrupt, destructive, oligarchic regime that literally destroyed the Russian economy and society. In the course of supporting Yeltsin, the US financial system received hundreds of billions of dollars in illegal transfers by US backed oligarchs. Europe and the US joined in partnership with the oligarchs to plunder Russia’s oil and gas resources.
- The US secured world military supremacy and proceeded to construct an “arc of encirclement” around the weakened Russian state via its new client states incorporated into NATO. From the Baltic States through Central-Eastern Europe to the Balkans and across the Caucuses to Central and Southern Asia, Washington has established local armies and military bases under US command.
- Europe, concentrating on economic dominance, penetrated these same regions, relying on aid and financing of their multi-nationals and the corruption of the new capitalist politicians.
The ‘co-operative’ joint conquest by the US and the EU of Eastern Europe, Balkans and Baltic countries was based on “shared decisions and shared division of the spoils of conquest”.
This re-division of the world between the US and the EU however came to an end with the most recent wave of imperial wars, beginning with the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
- Washington decided to act unilaterally in order to monopolize decision-making and the colonial occupation of these countries, relegating Europe to a subordinate role under US command and with few claims on the spoils of conquest.
- The two leading EU powers, France and Germany, conceded US supremacy in Afghanistan but balked over the US monopoly of Iraqi oil wealth.
The US-EU conflict over Iraq illustrates inter-imperialist competition in the re-division of the world’s wealth and neo-colonies.
- The EU imperial states, relying mostly on their economic instruments – banks, multi-national corporations, state-sponsored trade and investment agreements – was challenging US attempts to establish regional and world supremacy and subordination of Europe via a monopoly of energy resources.
- In Iran, Iraq, Libya, Russia, the Caucasus and Latin America, EU multi-national oil and gas companies have secured long-term energy supplies via direct investments or state-to-state agreements.
- The architects of US global power decided to undercut stiff economic competition from the EU by relying on Washington’s “comparative advantage” in military power – to unilaterally launch the Iraq invasion, to monopolize Iraq’s oil wealth and to prepare for future oil wars in the Middle East (Iran and others) and elsewhere (Venezuela).
- Washington’s permanent war doctrine was in strategic opposition to the EU’s doctrine of ‘economic imperialism’ and selective and limited military intervention.
Despite the significant differences in the Middle East, both the EU and the US still find room to co-operate in imposing spheres of joint influence in several countries and regions, namely in Afghanistan, Haiti and in Africa.
Co-operation and conflict between the great imperial powers in re-dividing the world into spheres of colonization, domination and influence are the key to understanding the meaning of war in the late 20th century and into the new millennium.
III. Erosion and “Reversal of Historical Memory
Click here to read the section on "Erosion and “Reversal of Historical Memory"
IV. War and Intellectuals
Click here to read the section of "War and Intellectuals"
V. War and Oil
Conventional wisdom argues that the US invasion of Iraq is driven by US multinational oil companies seeking to control that country’s oil resources.
A more sophisticated version of this hypothesis argues that the war is directed by a strategic policy to monopolize oil as a weapon and hence dominate its imperial rivals in Europe and Asia.
In both cases, the economic and strategic hypothesis, fail to take account of the political loyalties of the specific policymakers who designed the war, propagandized in favor of the war and became its most fanatical and influential executioners.
Few if any, examined the political loyalties of the key militarist policymakers.
The First Hypothesis
- that “oil” and the US petroleum multinationals were the main force behind the Iraq war fails every empirical test.
If we examine the policy statements of the major oil companies and their public spokespeople in the five years leading up to the war we find NO systematic political and propaganda campaign in favor of war. One looks in vain through all the major financial and specialized petroleum journals for evidence of organized pro-war politics.
The reason is that the major oil companies were doing quite well with the status quo:
- profits and prices were reasonably high,
- investments were relatively secure,
- anti-imperialist sentiment was extensive but not intense and,
- most of all, opportunities for important new investments were opening in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya and possibly (via third parties) in Iraq.
The US war in Iraq and Afghanistan reversed the picture creating a very hostile environment, increasing dangers of destructive attacks, insecurity of Western personnel, and augmenting the power of OPEC against the major private US companies.
Only a very few oil-related companies can be said to have benefited from the war – Haliburton, for example –most of which had direct ties to Vice President Cheney. They are the exception that proves the rule.
The oil industry as an investor, producer and seller have not really benefited from the war.
- Even after the colonial occupation of Iraq, (and even after the illegal privatization of Iraq’s state oil companies) the predominant sentiment among oil companies is at best ambivalent: while future opportunities may have increased so have the present threats to supply and transport.
- The war has created greater volatility, favoring speculators over long-term oil investors.
- Moreover, rising prices prejudice the overall performance of the imperialist economies, adding costs, increasing trade imbalances and making the oil companies conspicuous targets of public ire.
- Moreover the unconditional support for Israel within the Bush Administration in the context of the Iraq war, has created a difficult climate for high level negotiations between the petroleum CEO’s and the oil-rich Arab leaders.
In summary, there is NO empirical evidence that the major oil companies drove US war policy either before or after the colonial occupation.
The Second Hypothesis
- that the war was part of a strategic policy to monopolize oil supply toward establishing the US as the undisputed world power, and subordinating Europe and Asia to its command.
A corollary to this argument is that in the recent past, US political and military triumphs had been accompanied by a policy of sharing the spoils of imperial victories with their European and Japanese allies.
The new US military doctrine of unilateral offensive wars (euphemistically referred to as “preventive wars”) was designed to seize strategic advantage and claim exclusive control over the spoils of war: petroleum, military bases and trade routes.
Imperialist strategic planners miscalculated, presuming an easy military victory over “the Arabs” and a rapid seizure and privatization of public enterprises and unhindered exploitation of oil wealth.
This hypothesis has a lot of merit in explaining some of the motivations – especially by focusing on the importance of the political decision-makers within the imperial state apparatus.
However there are several important weaknesses in this hypothesis.
- For one, there was and is sharp differences between different power centers in the imperial state apparatus and even within each “center”. For example, many of the top professional military commanders were opposed to the war, as were members of the State Department. CIA analysts did NOT share the assumptions that the colonized people would welcome the imperial armies.
- Numerous former high military, CIA officials, and United Nations weapons inspectors challenged the pretext put forth by the pro-war sectors of the US imperial state, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to the United States.
If the imperial state itself was divided and some sectors were not convinced of the need to go to war, which group was able to overcome that resistance, by-pass established intelligence channels (and create its own circuit), fabricate its own “intelligence and successfully lead the US to war?
If war was NOT promoted by and in the interests of the US oil companies, and contrary to military doctrine of fighting two wars simultaneously, in whose geo-political interests was the war?
VI. The War and the Israel-Zionist Hypothesis
The hypothesis which most fits the data is the Israel Hypothesis.
– specifically that the principal architects and theoreticians of US world supremacy and the principal promoters of sequential wars, particularly in the Middle East, were influential Zionists in the top echelons of the Pentagon, National Security Council and in well-connected research centers “advising” the government while acting on behalf of the expansionist interests of the State of Israel.
The key author of the strategic doctrine of undisputed US world power was Wolfowitz, back in the first Bush Administration (1991).
He joined with other influential Zionists like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and a host of pro-Israel extremists to prepare a strategy paper for the Israeli state (1996) in which the Palestinians were to be physically driven from all of Palestine and Israel would become the regional power in the Middle East.
Both Feith and Wolfowitz, early in their public careers were accused and chastised for turning US government documents over to the Israeli government.
For at least twenty years they have been actively collaborating over Israeli policy and, in and out of government, they have worked intimately with Israeli officials in the United States and Israel.
The Zionist influentials, even before securing high positions in the Pentagon and State Department, were strong proponents of US military attacks against Israel’s Middle East adversaries, which included Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and, of course, Iraq.
Their militarist advocacy was independent of how such wars would affect US oil interests, regional stability, relations with Europe, the Muslim countries or the rest of the world.
The Pentagon Zionists were among the first to link Iraq with the events of 9/11 in an attempt to manipulate US public anger against the secular Iraqi state.
They were responsible for fabricating the story that Iraq was importing uranium from Niger for the purposes of developing nuclear weapons.
Wolfowitz admitted that he promoted the false pretext that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction to create a “consensus” to go to war – and every major Zionist writer and ‘expert’ pushed the same line.
The principal pro-Israeli lobby in the US, AIPAC, worked intensely and closely with the State of Israel, and the key Zionists in the Pentagon and their advisory groups in pushing for the US invasion of Iraq.
Major Jewish organizations and influential propagandists in the mass media promoted the war, demonizing Iraq and fabricating stories of imminent threats.
The only major beneficiary of the US war in Iraq is the State of Israel: The war destroyed a major supporter of the Palestinian Intifada and Israel got a free hand in its terror and territorial colonization Palestinian land.
The US, isolated from almost all the major European powers and Islamic countries, because of its pro-Israel agenda, took on the pariah status of the Israeli clerical colonial regime.
All the predictions and assumptions of the pro-war, anti-Arab Zionists were proven false.
- the Iraqi Arabs did NOT submit to the US occupation – they formed a potent resistance which engages the US in an increasingly prolonged war of attrition.
- The US intervention did NOT secure an oil monopoly; it has jeopardized its supply of oil in the Middle East by intensifying instability in Saudi Arabia.
- The war has soured US oil dealings in the Caucuses and resulted in speculative oil price increases, increasing the US trade deficit.
- Equally significant while the US is immersed in the Iraq War, China, India and Japan secure strategic oil and gas contracts in Asia and Latin America.
The Zionists were wrong in envisioning that the US would proceed to a series of successful wars with Israel’s other enemies in the Middle East – Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
The Iraq invasion has tied down the vast majority of US active ground troops in a losing war with high casualties, thus at least, temporarily limiting its capacity to start new wars on behalf of the Empire or Israel.
This has NOT prevented the Pentagon Zionists and their AIPAC allies from pushing for a new military attack on Iran and Syria.
Apart from England, Israel has been the major supporter and ally in the US conquest of Iraq for good reason: They are the principle beneficiaries.
- The Pentagon Zionists and their zealous ideological allies have weakened the US economy by widening the trade deficit (via higher oil prices) and increasing the budget deficit (because of war spending).
- Israel has NOT suffered at all -- on the contrary military sales to the US increased as well as revenues from the Pentagon for military advisory and training, missions to Iraq and elsewhere.
The US war in Iraq has several particularities as well as common characteristics with other wars.
- In the first place it demonstrates how a highly organized, ideologically coherent, financially powerful minority with highly placed co-thinkers in the top policy-making institutions of the imperial state can twist policy to suit the needs of a foreign power over and against established economic interests.
- Secondly the decisions about imperialist wars, though they usually serve the long-term interests of the dominant sectors of the capitalist class, are “made” by politicians, who have their own agendas, ideological and political loyalties which may or may not benefit (or prejudice) the ruling class.
The war in Iraq is a clear case in which the loyalties of the key architects of the war were distinct from those of the ruling class, who were barely taken into account, let alone consulted.
The ruling ideology of the architects of war was ‘Israel First, Last and Always’.
To cover the Israel-centered war plans, the Zionists fabricated a series of “threats” to US interests which were made to parallel those faced by Israel: threats of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and Muslim fundamentalism.
Anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate literature circulated in the mass media, in influential journals and talk shows as an army of Zionists ideologues went into an ideological frenzy – infecting the US body politic – and setting off a secondary wave of vituperative froth from fundamentalist Christians, neo-conservative allies and liberal congress-people.
The generalized attack by the Zionists against Arab states and people was directed toward the strategic goal of extending Israeli domination beyond Palestine (“Greater Israel”) not through direct colonization but via a series of client regimes beholden to the US – a US whose major foreign policy institutions would be subject to Zionist influence.
The ideological formulae adopted to promote US-Israel dominance in the Arab world was “A Middle East Common Market” based on a campaign to “democratize the region”. Both formulae served as the ideological basis for permanent war in the Middle East, the installment of dual purpose puppet regimes willing to serve both US energy interests and Israel’s market penetration.
The Zionist ideologues’ manipulation of “free market” and “democratic” rhetoric resonated widely among liberal and conservative imperialists, even as the US imperial state and Israel was denying Iraqi and Palestinians their elementary democratic rights and domestic markets.
The tactics of the influential Zionists and their extensive networks in the US were directed at fusing Israeli expansionist interests with US imperialist goals, in order to legitimate their pursuit of Israeli state policies – a position echoed by President-elect Bush.
In the real world however, as the US continued to suffer heavy casualties in Iraq and the war debt grew by billions of dollars a day, and as its ‘coalition partners’ abandoned the war, the Zionist influentials inside and outside of the government intensified their pressure on the US to escalate its troop commitments in Iraq and to engage in new Middle East wars.
The acid test of Zionist loyalties to Israeli interests is found in the fact that they pursued the war policy even as it weakened the US strategic global position, heightened discontent in the military and in elite civilian circles and increased the probability of an economic crisis resulting from the war deficits and weakening dollar.
The Zionists in power are so embedded in the Israeli matrix, that they are totally impervious to the effects which their policies have on the US Empire, domestic economy or civil society.
In effect the US imperial attack of Iraq can be understood as a surrogate war for a regional power, designed and executed by influential policy-makers whose primary allegiance is to defend the interests of the regional power.
The Zionist zealots have incorporated the same pathological style of mass paranoid politics prevalent in Israel to the US:
- the politics of permanent terrorist threats,
- of pervasive fear,
- of a hostile world,
- of unreliable allies…
The Zionist zealots have led the ideological charge poisoning relations with France and other European countries which fail to respond favorable to the bloody repression of occupied peoples.
No policy group has done more to weaken the sustainability of the US Empire than the Zionist zealots in government and the massive well-financed pro-Israel networks through the US.
The Congress, the Executive branch, state and local governments, and national and local media have all come under the influence of the Jewish “lobby’s” pro-Israel agenda to the point that none or few dare to criticize Israel or its US representatives.
The overweening power of the pro-Israel power configuration has inevitable provoked opposition – mainly from non-elected officials.
- The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) is preparing to indict several high official from AIPAC, the most powerful representative of Israel’s interests in the US, for spying on the US for Israel. Almost all the major Jewish organizations are preparing to defend AIPAC and its practice of twisting US policy toward the “Israel First” agenda. By early 2005, it was clear that the Zionist power structure had paralyzed the investigation.
- Numerous retired military and CIA officials have denounced Zionist power in designing and promoting the interests of Israel over US imperial interests. Meantime the Zionists along with the neo-conservatives successfully purged or “neutralized” independent analysts in the CIA, Defense and State Department who questioned the doctrine of sequential wars against Israel’s adversaries in the Middle East.
The Second Bush administration is completely controlled by the neo-conservative-Zionist extremists.
The conventional wisdom which perceives world imperial powers dictating policy to lesser regional powers clearly fails to deal with the US Middle East Wars.
The reason why this common sense notion is inadequate is because it fails to deal with a series of unique (at least in modern history) phenomena affecting the policy-making structure of the US Empire – the active role of a privileged and influential minority deeply embedded in the decision-making structure and whose primary loyalty is to another state.
It is as if the State of Israel has ‘colonized’ the main spheres of political power in the imperial state.
These ‘colons’ however are not exactly transplants or emigrants from their “mother country”.
- Rather they have mostly grown up and have been educated in the imperial center, they have pursued lucrative careers in the US and have, in most instances, been strong supporters of US imperial expansion and militarism.
- They have risen to and influenced the highest spheres of political power.
- They have not been discriminated against, nor have they suffered any economic, social or political exclusion. They have not been marginalized - they are integrated in the centers of power.
- Yet they have set themselves apart from the rest of the US citizens and conceive of themselves as having a special mission -- of being first Jews who unconditionally support the State of Israel and all of its international projections of power.
How can we explain this irrational embrace of a militarist state by a set of individuals who only vicariously share its life and destiny?
VI. War in the 21st Century: Atavistic Behavior
Schumpeter in his book, Imperialism and Social Class, written shortly after the First World War, attempted to square his argument that capitalism is opposed to war by citing the re-emergence of residual “atavistic” traits, embedded in previous feudal warrior societies, as the cause of war.
While I do not share Schumpeter’s view of the peaceful evolution of capitalism, his concept of atavistic behavior is useful in explaining the irrational embrace of Israel by otherwise affluent, educated and highly influential Jews.
Their embrace of Israel is certainly not for reasons of monetary remuneration, though Israel financially rewarded American-Jewish spies like Jonathan Pollard.
What causes a modern or post-modern elite group to exhibit patterns of fanatical loyalty to a foreign militarist colonial power engaged in ethnic cleansing?
The Jewish-led and financed Zionist movement and its influential and wealthy supporters and leaders are a highly cohesive and disciplined group which exhibits zero tolerance against any Jewish dissidents or other critics of the warrior state or of their supporters anywhere in the world.
What accounts for the apparent anomaly of highly educated professors, doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, media moguls and billionaire real estate tycoons giving unconditional support to a State engaged in primitive vindictive acts, of mass torture of prisoners, of collective punishment and guilt (destroying family homes of guerrilla suspects, taking family members hostage), systematically destroying farmland and uprooting hundreds of thousands of farmers, communities for almost six decades?
They embrace ancient land claims and the vindictive and gratuitous humiliation of subjugated people based on mythological religious beliefs. The primitive belief in a “superior” or special people used to justify blood crimes harks back to the ritual barbarities of ancient tribal justice.
This atavistic behavior is, however, tied to the most modern military technology in the hands of highly trained technical experts.
The combination of tribal cohesion, religious mythology, high-tech weaponry and an overweening desire to exercise power on behalf of a military state based on ‘racial-religious’ exclusivity, is a potent concoction for US Zionists to inhale.
Yet there are immense psychological satisfactions from:
- being part of a powerful closed in-group, with a vision or fantasy of the revival of a lost ‘kingdom’,
- a sense of being part of superior people,
- members of a survivalist culture which has endured a unique suffering, and
- therefore possesses the righteousness to commit violence and use power to strike down adversaries anywhere and not to be bound by conventional international laws which only serve to limit the prerogatives of a ‘righteous people’.
Tribal loyalties have tight rules of conduct for all who are considered members, whether they are active practitioners of Zionist politics or even critics of the State of Israel – home of the chosen people.
Tribal rules are interpreted in different ways by different segments of the Jewish Diaspora.
For the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations and their functionaries there are Five Commandments:
(1) ‘thou shalt not criticize any action by any Israeli leader at any time, no matter how heinous the crime, nor how often it is repeated, irregardless of how vast or
intense world opprobrium’,
(2) ‘Thou shall not allow any others to criticize or act contrary to Jewish State interests or to organizations which embrace the Zionist ideal,’
(3)‘Every weapon, financial, physical, psychological, ideological and economic can be legitimately wielded to weaken, isolate, discredit or stigmatize critics of the Tribal Homeland or any of the overseas Tribal Organizations,’
(4)‘Thou shall raise funds from all sources (legal or illegal), public, social or private to finance the military machine of the Tribal leaders – tribute secured from lesser “others” must enhance the security and living standards of the chosen people’ and
(5)‘Thou shall declare loyalty first and foremost to the tribal identity, then to the powers which support “our tribe” and lastly to “universal values”’.
Despite sharp criticism from a minority of dissident Jews, both in Israel, the US and elsewhere, there are certain unstated codes which are observed even by the most critical commentators.
- One is to never criticize or identify the power of the Jewish organizations in the US and their influence in the government. Jewish progressives de facto denial of Jewish power in shaping US war policy in the Middle East severely restricts the effectiveness of the anti-war movement by exonerating one of the key ideological props of the imperial war machine.
- The second unstated code followed by the “observant” progressive Jewish intellectuals is a denial that Israel has an important influence on US Middle East and global policy via its tribal loyalists in the US. Jewish progressives deliberately and systematically exclude any mention of Jewish power and influence in shaping US policy in the Middle East by focusing exclusively on “oil interests” or “neo-conservative ideologues” (who just coincidently are mostly tribespeople and their camp-followers). In deference to or more precisely because they share a deep underlying identity with the tribe – they refuse to include any systematic study of the very obvious and blatant exercise of power in every branch of government, electoral processes and media reports.
- Likewise with the Middle East, Israel is considered by progressive Jews as an “instrument” of US imperialism even as the instrument cuts both ways – as Israel uses the US to savage its adversaries, to build up its military machine and to manufacture its commercial weapons systems to sell even to US competitors (i.e. China).
The emergence of atavistic behavior and its extension among the Zionist elite is a relatively recent development (over the past two decades) and goes contrary to the universalistic, secular and socialist values and practices as well as the traditional religious and communal practices and beliefs of many Jewish communities during previous centuries.
The embrace of imperial power, the turn from religious communitarian values toward the embrace of the militaristic state of Israel, the shift from internationalism and socialism toward an unconditional embrace of a narrow exclusivist ideology has activated the latent atavistic behavior associated with vengeful killing of adversaries and blind singular loyalty to the idea of Israeli supremacy in the Middle East.
Translated into the US context, it means virulent pro-war propaganda, advocacy of concentration camps for Islamic believers (as proposed by Daniel Pipes and others) and collaboration with Mossad agents in promoting Israel’s strategic military, economic and political goals; by utilizing all the instruments of power within the US and with its overseas clients (Kurdish regions of Iraq, for example).
Atavistic behavior secures its goals through the shrewd manipulation and artificial inflation of “fears” emanating from Israel’s enemies.
The purpose is to create mass support in the US for wars on Israel’s behalf.
US Zionist ideologues, drawing heavily on the self-induced political isolation which the Israeli State has brought upon itself through its savage destruction of Arab Palestine, have elaborated and preached a paranoid view of the world, in which all international organizations (the UN, the World Court etc.) and forums, international opinions surveys, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa are accused of “anti-Semitism” because they recognize and condemn Israel’s violation of Palestinian political and human rights.
The greater the “justifiable” violence of Israel, the wider the condemnation of its behavior, the more hysterical and strident the vituperation emanating from the major Zionist centers, the greater the concerted efforts to discredit the international bodies and to heighten US support.
Just as an imaginary Neanderthal might bellow loudly and grab a heavy club when others protest his trespass of territory, so too do the Zionists reach for the club of US military power to pummel those who challenge Israel’s transgressions.
“Atavistic behavior” is not confined to affluent Zionists, it is found among civilian militarists, Christian Zionists and other religious fundamentalists, who are defenders and practitioners of unrestrained violence and permanent imperial wars.
Under the veneer of civilized discourse and moderate tonalities, is the barely restrained lust for unlimited power, total warfare and uncompromising savage torture.
Atavistic behavior increasingly threatens to overwhelm the rational basis of economic calculation. The civilian militarist who may have originally been seen by many capitalists as one tool among others for conquering markets and seizing strategic resources have gradually taken a life of their own, subordinating capitalist interests to their raging quest for unlimited power.
Atavistic behavior is both the apogee of US imperial power and its ultimate regress to the dark ages.
Click HERE to read sections VII, VIII, IX:
VII. Privatization and War ;
VIII Colonial Wars in the 21st Century;
IX. The Mind of the Civilian Militarists
X. Conclusion
War, specifically US imperialist war, doctrine is made up of several sub-tests and key concepts such as a “unipolar world”, offensive, permanent wars and extra-territorial jurisdiction. The doctrine is based on the belief of imperial invincibility – based on mass media imagery of successful US warriors-supermen representing a righteous superpower.
The key to understanding the source and practitioners of these doctrines is found in the ascendancy of a “new class “ of civilian militarists (CM) and their think-tank auxiliaries and civil society supporters who have triggered catastrophic events to facilitate their dominant position in the imperial state. The ascent of the CM has not gone uncontested both from inside the imperial state and from without, especially from former traditional military and intelligence leaders.
In the new millennium a combination of circumstance and timing as well as calculated long-term positioning, has enabled a specific group of civilian militarists to achieve strategic positions in the imperil state – namely Zionist ideologues intimately involved in long-term relations with the state of Israel.
These ideologues and their civilian militarists cohort have pushed to the limit their psychological warfare designed to terrorize the mass of the population to follow their extremist doctrine and make the financial and human sacrifices for on-going wars.
This paper demonstrates that the decisions to launch imperial wars today are not simply the result of the economic interests of US multi-nationals (petroleum or otherwise).
In the case of the Middle East, many of the decision-makers did not consult nor were they influenced by oil or other economic interests – most of the multinationals had on-going, lucrative and stable working relations with conservative oil producing Arab elites. At most some oil companies were promised future benefits via privatization of public oil facilities.
Imperial war was designed and driven by a set of policymakers with little interest in or no notion of the economic costs of war. The driving force for the war is found among civilian militarists who facilitated and capitalized on a catastrophic event (9/11) which allowed them to bypass traditional military and intelligence hierarchies.
Internal consent for extremist militarism was induced through massive, intense and continuous fear propaganda fomented by the civilian militarists to consolidate their power. The psychological-ideological campaign allowed for vast expenditures of resources and civilian militarist monopoly over imperial policy. War took on a special meaning for the Zionist component of the civilian militarists – serving as a prop for enhancing Israel’s regional power.
While the ideological dominance and psychological control exercised by the civilian militarists over the masses is formidable it is profoundly vulnerable. The constant and irreversible defeats suffered by the US colonial army in Iraq have demonstrated that the US imperial army is not invincible.
The incapacity for the US to move on to new ground wars has temporarily challenged the doctrine of permanent offensive wars. The mass discontent within the colonial army has undercut and exposed the irrationality of the civilian militarists. Their proposals for increasing troop levels in Iraq, augmenting the recruitment of soldiers, that is, deepening US involvement in an un-winnable war is leading to greater casualties, deeper discontent at home and greater resistance in Iraq, and severely straining the crisis-ridden US economy.
Escalation of war to Iran based on irrational voluntarism will bring the civilian militarists into greater conflict with traditional economic and military power centers. Capitalist rationality, based on cost-benefit calculations, is likely to challenge the atavistic behavior of the civilian warlords, leading to greater internal divisions within the empire and without.
Inter-elite conflicts may serve to activate sectors of the ‘rational’ middle class concerned with the long-term, large-scale interests of empire against the civilian-militarists and their associated power worshipers. “Living space” security doctrines will continue to be played out but in more select locations and within the boundaries of imperial capacity to recruit clients and imperial allies.
Wars, which endanger the military status of the imperial state, will be recast in terms of spheres of influence – in which big powers interests will marginalize the exaggerated and inflated role of Israel in world and regional politics.
Today the future of the US Empire and particularly the future of its civilian militarists depend on how decisively the empire is defeated in the Middle East. As goes the war in the Middle East, so go the future methods of imperial expansion.
The total military debacle of the civilian militarists and their Zionist core in the Middle East will probably result in a rethinking of the meaning, purposes and goals of imperial wars. Most likely, the economic costs and benefits of imperial wars will return to the center of elite debate, without the bias of third countries interests. These elite debates will attempt to forge a new more limited and ‘rational’ model of world empire.
The issue of turning from empire toward a more ‘republican’ style of politics can only be taken up in another venue, within mass-based anti-imperialist movements which will begin among the colonial subjects of imperial centers but may include the excluded and exploited within the imperial capitals.
January 2005
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Mohsen Abdul-Hamid is a Sunni Kurd. He is widely considered a moderate and played a leading role in bringing Sunni Arabs who boycotted January's elections back into the political process.
Mahathir Mohamad, modern Malaysia's founding father and moderate Islam's self-styled champion, 
