Gabriel Kolko : Making sense of a mad world
[Gabriel Kolko is a leading historian of modern warfare. His latest book is The Age of War. ]
These are dismal days for those who attempt to run the affairs of the world. But how should we understand it?
It would be a basic error to look at our present situation as if it were rationally comprehensible. The limits of rational explanations are that they assume rational men and women make decisions and that they will respect the limits of their power and behave realistically. This has rarely been true anywhere historically over the past century, and politics and illusions based on ideology or wishful thinking have often been decisive. This is especially the case with the present bunch in Washington.
We are right to fear anything, particularly a war with Iran, that would immediately reel out of control and have catastrophic consequences not only to the region but globally. We are also correct to see limits to the power of irrational people, for the United States is strategically weak. It loses the big wars, as in Korea, Vietnam, and now Afghanistan and Iraq, even though its tactical victories often prove to be very successful but also ultimately destabilizing and ephemeral. Had the US not overthrown the Mohammed Mossadegh regime in Iran in 1954, it is very likely the mullahs would never have come to power and we would not now be considering a dangerous war there.
Although the whole is far more important than the parts, the details of each part deserve attention. Many of these aspects are known, even predictable, but there are - to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld - the "known unknowns and the unknown unknowns", the "x-factor" that intercedes to surprise everyone. All of these problems are interrelated, are interacting, and potentially aggravate or inhibit each other, perhaps decisively, making our world very difficult both to understand and to run.
Putting them together is a formidable challenge to thinking people outside systems of power. It has always been this way; fascism was in large part the result of economic crisis, and World War II was the outcome. How factors combine is a great mystery and cannot be predicted - not by us or by those ambitious souls who have the great task of making sure there is no chaos. We wish to comprehend it but it is not decisive if we don't; for those who have responsibility to manage it, this myopia will produce the end of their world - and their privileges.
We can rule out the left, that artifact of history. Socialism ceased being a real option long ago, perhaps as early as 1914. Since I have just published an entire book, After Socialism, and detailed its innumerable myopias and faults, I need not say more than that it is no longer a threat to anybody.
The fakirs who lead the parties who still use "socialism" as a justification for their existence have only abolished defeats in the hands of the people from the price capitalism pays for its growing follies. That confidence - the freedom of being challenged by the unruly masses - is very important but it is less and less sufficient to solve its countless remaining dilemmas. The system has become increasingly vulnerable, social stability notwithstanding, since about 1990 and the formal demise of communism. ...
Read entire article at Asia Times
These are dismal days for those who attempt to run the affairs of the world. But how should we understand it?
It would be a basic error to look at our present situation as if it were rationally comprehensible. The limits of rational explanations are that they assume rational men and women make decisions and that they will respect the limits of their power and behave realistically. This has rarely been true anywhere historically over the past century, and politics and illusions based on ideology or wishful thinking have often been decisive. This is especially the case with the present bunch in Washington.
We are right to fear anything, particularly a war with Iran, that would immediately reel out of control and have catastrophic consequences not only to the region but globally. We are also correct to see limits to the power of irrational people, for the United States is strategically weak. It loses the big wars, as in Korea, Vietnam, and now Afghanistan and Iraq, even though its tactical victories often prove to be very successful but also ultimately destabilizing and ephemeral. Had the US not overthrown the Mohammed Mossadegh regime in Iran in 1954, it is very likely the mullahs would never have come to power and we would not now be considering a dangerous war there.
Although the whole is far more important than the parts, the details of each part deserve attention. Many of these aspects are known, even predictable, but there are - to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld - the "known unknowns and the unknown unknowns", the "x-factor" that intercedes to surprise everyone. All of these problems are interrelated, are interacting, and potentially aggravate or inhibit each other, perhaps decisively, making our world very difficult both to understand and to run.
Putting them together is a formidable challenge to thinking people outside systems of power. It has always been this way; fascism was in large part the result of economic crisis, and World War II was the outcome. How factors combine is a great mystery and cannot be predicted - not by us or by those ambitious souls who have the great task of making sure there is no chaos. We wish to comprehend it but it is not decisive if we don't; for those who have responsibility to manage it, this myopia will produce the end of their world - and their privileges.
We can rule out the left, that artifact of history. Socialism ceased being a real option long ago, perhaps as early as 1914. Since I have just published an entire book, After Socialism, and detailed its innumerable myopias and faults, I need not say more than that it is no longer a threat to anybody.
The fakirs who lead the parties who still use "socialism" as a justification for their existence have only abolished defeats in the hands of the people from the price capitalism pays for its growing follies. That confidence - the freedom of being challenged by the unruly masses - is very important but it is less and less sufficient to solve its countless remaining dilemmas. The system has become increasingly vulnerable, social stability notwithstanding, since about 1990 and the formal demise of communism. ...