Blog 9 Defending Democracy with All Deliberate Haste

Alex Clute
March 26, 2011
1030 EST

Okay, so I was looking for news concerning water reserves in the Middle East and I found this great article entitled The Middle East Crisis has just Begun by Robert Kaplan in the Wall Street Journal. In the article Kaplan is pretty open about US intentions in the Middle East and it just goes to support Noam Chomsky's point about how media sources like the Wall Street Journal are excellent sources of news precisely because they inform the people who are controlling the government and economy and thus cannot afford to inject all the feel good rhetoric and propaganda of media outlets like Fox or CNN. This is because those who are in charge must have a clear, or at least clearer, picture of what is happening than those who are to be lead. That being said, one can see in an article like Kaplan's the tacit assumptions of those who would rule.

In the first paragraph Kaplan sets the tone by making the remark,

"American policy-makers have been spoiled by events in Tunisia and Egypt, both of which boast relatively sturdy institutions, civil society associations and middle classes, as well as being age-old clusters of civilization where states of one form or another have existed since antiquity."

The implication of this statement is that the people of these countries are uncivilized and in the second paragraph Kaplan is basically asking the question, who are these people and do they have US interests in their hearts? In addition, he uses the word "illiberal", a word which means against free market capitalism. Could these people be against good old American capital? Maybe, so you should be afraid. There is also an the interesting statement, "The United States may be a democracy, but it is also a status quo power, whose position in the world depends on the world staying as it is." Kaplan reaffirms US democracy, saying in a roundabout way that the US is good, but we want things just the way they are, after all, the US has worked very hard to keep them this way. In fact, in Kaplan's own words,

"Because outside of Iran, and with the arguable exceptions of Syria and Libya itself, there is no short-term benefit for the U.S. in democratic revolts in the region. In fact, they could be quite destructive to our interests, even as they prove to be unstoppable."

Further along in paragraphs ten and eleven Kaplan once again invokes US democracy, remember that means the US is inherently good, but we must save ourselves for future wars, saying:

"Democracy is part of America's very identity, and thus we benefit in a world of more democracies. But this is no reason to delude ourselves about grand historical schemes or to forget our wider interests. Precisely because so much of the Middle East is in upheaval, we must avoid entanglements and stay out of the domestic affairs of the region. We must keep our powder dry for crises ahead that might matter much more than those of today." (emphasis added)

So why must we "keep are powder dry?" Well, China off course. China is doing all these things like building up their navy, extracting resources in our imperial holdings of Iraq and Afghanistan, and creating economic ties in Asia and the Pacific. What Kaplan is saying is that China has encroached on the US Empire while we have been trying with all our might to maintain it and we will probably have to go to war with China someday. This future war with China is a neo-conservative fantasy that has been discussed by right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and its ilk for some time now. Do not worry though, this talk of war with China is likely just a perception management tool that is being used in the context of the uprising in the Middle East as an excuse to do as little as possible. Consider this: if we attacked China, where would we get all our cheap consumer junk from? There is also the matter of all the US debt held by China, if we were to attack China who would lend us the money to do it? Conversely, from China's perspective why attack its biggest costumer? Now a day may come when China's internal market is large enough to absorb all the goods that are generated within China as the Chinese middle class grows, but how would war with the US be to China's benefit? Once again, China has invested a massive amount of money in the US.

What is really being said in Kaplan's thinly veiled article shilling for US Empire is that the US government is looking for excuses to not get involved in the push for democracy in the Middle East. The Chinese "threat" is just a pretext to sit on the sidelines and let the oppressive governments of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, etcetera, to crush the uprisings in their countries. However, since the US is supposedly a paragon of freedom and democracy, it must be seen to be doing something, or else the people out in TV land might start asking questions. Well, when one is given lemons make lemonade, so the US should use the democratic uprisings in the Middle East to further its own agenda where possible, thus, the US can take out Qaddafi, since it never liked him anyway, and it can militate against Iran. And this is done in our names.