External Military Force Cannot Change Any Country Internally

by Professor Ernst Otto Czempiel, Germany

In the following we publish the interview with the peace researcher Professor Ernst Otto Czempiel, co-founder of the Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research (HSFK), which was broadcast on Deutschlandfunk at 7.20 a.m on 19.4.2003. We would like to draw our readers attention to the fact that Deutschlandfunk often broadcasts excellent programmes and interviews. Listening to Deutschlandfunk one gets an impression of how serious information for citizens can be transmitted over the radio. Under public law this is actually the job of the radio, for which citizens pay fees.

Prof. Czempiel: Good morning Mrs. Kramer.

Mrs. Kramer: Mr. Czempiel, let’s get straight to the point:, Was the war in Iraq just the beginning of the big clearing-up operation in the Middle East? What do you think?

Well, Mrs. Kramer, one has to assume so, as this has now also been stated quite officially by the American government, by the American president, that Iraq is the beginning, that Syria as a country that opposes American wishes could be next on the list. Iran is also already on the list. This is being openly discussed.

Could be next, you say. Is it fairly sure that Syria will be attacked?

Mrs. Kramer, naturally one cannot forecast such a thing. Prophesies are not possible in political science. But if you think about it, the aim of the American government from the very beginning was not only to occupy Iraq, but to bring a new political order to the Middle and Near East. If you remember, President Bush said immediately after September 11 that it will not only be about Afghanistan and one or two of the other rogue countries; we have 60 countries on the list, whose regimes we don’t like, and who we must consider as opponents, and into whose countries we reserve the right to march. If you remember how it started with Iraq, namely in precisely the following manner: first accusations, then assumptions, then pressure, then ultimatums, then one must say that the probability is very high.

This would, for example, offer completely new perspectives on the solution to the Palestinian problem. One could now simply bomb Israel’s enemies away.

That is right. A very interesting conference took place. At the beginning of the war against Iraq, a very big victory celebration was organized at the American Enterprise Institute, which is the Bush administration’s ideological Think tank, not because the war had already been won, but because it had been possible to start this war in the first place. This is what this group wanted from the start, and at this celebration it was said, so now we have Iraq, next we have to get Syria and at least Iran, and to this purpose the Israeli Prime Minister also expressed himself to this same issue and said, yes, this has to be done urgently because after Iraq these are the the Sharon government’s biggest enemies, and they are the ones that hinder a solution to the Palestinian problem, according to Sharon’s idea of a solution.

How far will this clearing-up operation go, not using contracts, by convicing people and by avoiding negotiations? Clearing-up using military force, we form the world as we want the world to be.

How far they will get, one cannot tell. My thesis is that they won’t get very far because they already see now in Iraq what they are up against. One can destroy with a huge military superior power the military opposition, but one cannot shoot one’s way, so to speak, into getting the approval of the population. But that will not prevent the Bush administration from initially following this path. That was their foreign political goal from the beginning, before September 11, and this goal is: We will replace the United Nations by the United States. Instead of the world organization and multilateral common interests ordering the world, we will place the will and the power of America, and this is what we see in practice before us.

Something like this one can plan, but there are still a few nations and countries in the world that perhaps do not approve. Who might be able to stop the Americans?

No one! Mrs. Kramer, quite simply. The American military power, its ability to implement force is so huge and under Bush it will further increase, so that no country and no group of countries in the world is capable of opposing it. The Bush administration’s defense budget is bigger than those of the next nine countries put together, and the Bush administration has also clearly said, it is even in writing, that they will prevent any country by force from following them. Therefore, concerning the growing rivalry, the Europeans should be warned because they would be so to speak the first ones capable of attaining something similar to the American military power. So militarily I think no one can actually stop the United States, and unfortunately one must see this as a ‘fact-of-life’. That’s the situation.

You said though before that you don’t believe that this American World domination will function, on a military basis. Why your optimism then if nobody can really stop them?

Well, it is not optimism, to put it honestly it is a kind of enlightened pessimism. I base this insight on the fact that so far nobody has succeeded anywhere to change the inner structures of a state from outside using military force. Look at Vietnam, it did not work there, Somalia was not a success, the Soviets failed in Afghanistan, the Americans cannot manage it in Afghanistan, and even NATO has not managed in the Balkans, although a certain rapprochement can be discerned there, but it is not succeeding, it won’t work. And it cannot function either because society today is so highly developed, so emancipated and so self-confident that no regime can be forced upon it from the outside using military power. Even if, as can be seen in Iraq, many Iraqis were against Saddam’s regime, this in no way means they are in favour of Rumsfeld’s regime or of American occupation. And this will be the case too in states like Syria and Iran, which are even more developed than Iraq. The same will be throughout the world, and the Americans will get to realize this. The effort of suppressing any opposition by military force, producing coercive consent by destroying any opposition, is an effort which America also cannot afford economically, militarily and ideologically. This is because it so completely contradicts the American tradition that resistance against it will also arise from within USA itself.

But the impression one gets is that they do not seem to care what the peoples under their military control think about them, as long as they can exercise power and everybody does what they want done in those places.

That is true of the Bush administration, but does not apply to the USA as a whole. We have a new opinion poll from the United States which shows once more that half of the US population is simply against such a policy of direct world domination. And there is more obvious resistance in the world – for instance look at the demonstrations which we already experienced and which we will be seeing in the future. Yesterday the Arab foreign affairs ministers met to condemn this war. Resistance is growing and more and more Americans are realizing that Washington and the Bush administration are pursuing a foreign policy which America with its conviction of what correct foreign policy is has always fought and condemned. For instance, think of their criticism of the Soviet Union and of Russian policy in Chechnya. I am convinced that if people become aware of this resistance in America will become stronger than it is now.

What do the Europeans have on their agenda? Do the Europeans at least have the possibility of putting the USA under pressure economically, even if they cannot agree on their foreign policy, something which doesn’t look like being resolved in the near future? Would they be able to assert themselves?

They can put them under pressure economically. That is perhaps a little exaggerated, but they could use their economic power of course. Look, the war against Iraq has already cost 60 billion dollars, and the question of how much it will all cost in the end is still not clear. America cannot continue to pay for the whole thing alone, probably not even the Iraq war, and the US Secretary of State is now travelling around trying to get the Europeans to contribute the money in order to relieve America financially as they did with the first Gulf War. If the European Union said - and it has already suggested as much via its Commissioner for Foreign Affairs Chris Patten - we will not pay, because it is an illegal war, contrary to international law and not approved by the United Nations; if the Europeans were to speak with one voice as the European Union and say we will not pay, then they would have a huge pawn in their hands with which they could have an immense effect on Washington. That is the first thing they could do. And the second thing they could do is not to accept politically what they cannot change militarily. And if they were to raise their voice and speak with one voice, but if the European Union is not yet able to do so because it still lacks a constitution, then at least Europe’s core group could speak with one voice and condemn US politics, and by doing so it would have exercised an important power, the power of definition and judgement.

Mr. Czempiel, just very briefly to finish off: some people say Bush and his imperial lust are an isolated phenomenon in American history and presidential history. Do you agree?

Yes, I do. In my opinion Bush and Ronald Reagan are two exceptions in the past history of the USA. However, in the meantime I would add that the level of approval which the Bush administration enjoys in Congress shows that the political structure of the USA has shifted somewhat during the last 15 years. Orientations of a radical right-wing kind, which manifest themselves in the Bush administration, are present among many Congress members, which would mean, Mrs. Kramer, that the USA of today is not any more the one we knew at the starting point of the east-west conflict. We will have to wait and see to what extent the Bush administration with this imperial, and as you rightly say, illegal policy in the USA meets with approval or not.

Mrs. Kramer (interrupts him): Mr. Czempiel, it is time for the news programme, we must say good-bye. Mr. Czempiel, thank you for the discussion.

Source: Deutschlandfunk radio, 19 April 2003