After Neoconservatism

By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point.

The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles. The doctrine (elaborated, among other places, in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States) argued that, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, America would have to launch periodic preventive wars to defend itself against rogue states and terrorists with weapons of mass destruction; that it would do this alone, if necessary; and that it would work to democratize the greater Middle East as a long-term solution to the terrorist problem. But successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. It is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the National Security Strategy document.

But it is the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback. Perceived failure in Iraq has restored the authority of foreign policy "realists" in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Already there is a host of books and articles decrying America's naïve Wilsonianism and attacking the notion of trying to democratize the world. The administration's second-term efforts to push for greater Middle Eastern democracy, introduced with the soaring rhetoric of Bush's second Inaugural Address, have borne very problematic fruits. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood made a strong showing in Egypt's parliamentary elections in November and December. While the holding of elections in Iraq this past December was an achievement in itself, the vote led to the ascendance of a Shiite bloc with close ties to Iran (following on the election of the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran in June). But the clincher was the decisive Hamas victory in the Palestinian election last month, which brought to power a movement overtly dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In his second inaugural, Bush said that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," but the charge will be made with increasing frequency that the Bush administration made a big mistake when it stirred the pot, and that the United States would have done better to stick by its traditional authoritarian friends in the Middle East. Indeed, the effort to promote democracy around the world has been attacked as an illegitimate activity both by people on the left like Jeffrey Sachs and by traditional conservatives like Pat Buchanan.

The reaction against democracy promotion and an activist foreign policy may not end there. Those whom Walter Russell Mead labels Jacksonian conservatives — red-state Americans whose sons and daughters are fighting and dying in the Middle East — supported the Iraq war because they believed that their children were fighting to defend the United States against nuclear terrorism, not to promote democracy. They don't want to abandon the president in the middle of a vicious war, but down the road the perceived failure of the Iraq intervention may push them to favor a more isolationist foreign policy, which is a more natural political position for them. A recent Pew poll indicates a swing in public opinion toward isolationism; the percentage of Americans saying that the United States "should mind its own business" has never been higher since the end of the Vietnam War.

More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives both inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratizing Iraq and the broader Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that in the coming months and years will be the most directly threatened. Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends.

The Neoconservative Legacy

How did the neoconservatives end up overreaching to such an extent that they risk undermining their own goals? The Bush administration's first-term foreign policy did not flow ineluctably from the views of earlier generations of people who considered themselves neoconservatives, since those views were themselves complex and subject to differing interpretations. Four common principles or threads ran through much of this thought up through the end of the cold war: a concern with democracy, human rights and, more generally, the internal politics of states; a belief that American power can be used for moral purposes; a skepticism about the ability of international law and institutions to solve serious security problems; and finally, a view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends.

The problem was that two of these principles were in potential collision. The skeptical stance toward ambitious social engineering — which in earlier years had been applied mostly to domestic policies like affirmative action, busing and welfare — suggested a cautious approach toward remaking the world and an awareness that ambitious initiatives always have unanticipated consequences. The belief in the potential moral uses of American power, on the other hand, implied that American activism could reshape the structure of global politics. By the time of the Iraq war, the belief in the transformational uses of power had prevailed over the doubts about social engineering.

In retrospect, things did not have to develop this way. The roots of neoconservatism lie in a remarkable group of largely Jewish intellectuals who attended City College of New York (C.C.N.Y.) in the mid- to late 1930's and early 1940's, a group that included Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer and, a bit later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The story of this group has been told in a number of places, most notably in a documentary film by Joseph Dorman called "Arguing the World." The most important inheritance from the C.C.N.Y. group was an idealistic belief in social progress and the universality of rights, coupled with intense anti-Communism.

It is not an accident that many in the C.C.N.Y. group started out as Trotskyites. Leon Trotsky was, of course, himself a Communist, but his supporters came to understand better than most people the utter cynicism and brutality of the Stalinist regime. The anti-Communist left, in contrast to the traditional American right, sympathized with the social and economic aims of Communism, but in the course of the 1930's and 1940's came to realize that "real existing socialism" had become a monstrosity of unintended consequences that completely undermined the idealistic goals it espoused. While not all of the C.C.N.Y. thinkers became neoconservatives, the danger of good intentions carried to extremes was a theme that would underlie the life work of many members of this group.

If there was a single overarching theme to the domestic social policy critiques issued by those who wrote for the neoconservative journal The Public Interest, founded by Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell in 1965, it was the limits of social engineering. Writers like Glazer, Moynihan and, later, Glenn Loury argued that ambitious efforts to seek social justice often left societies worse off than before because they either required massive state intervention that disrupted pre-existing social relations (for example, forced busing) or else produced unanticipated consequences (like an increase in single-parent families as a result of welfare). A major theme running through James Q. Wilson's extensive writings on crime was the idea that you could not lower crime rates by trying to solve deep underlying problems like poverty and racism; effective policies needed to focus on shorter-term measures that went after symptoms of social distress (like subway graffiti or panhandling) rather than root causes.

How, then, did a group with such a pedigree come to decide that the "root cause" of terrorism lay in the Middle East's lack of democracy, that the United States had both the wisdom and the ability to fix this problem and that democracy would come quickly and painlessly to Iraq? Neoconservatives would not have taken this turn but for the peculiar way that the cold war ended.

Ronald Reagan was ridiculed by sophisticated people on the American left and in Europe for labeling the Soviet Union and its allies an "evil empire" and for challenging Mikhail Gorbachev not just to reform his system but also to "tear down this wall." His assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, Richard Perle, was denounced as the "prince of darkness" for this uncompromising, hard-line position; his proposal for a double-zero in the intermediate-range nuclear arms negotiations (that is, the complete elimination of medium-range missiles) was attacked as hopelessly out of touch by the bien-pensant centrist foreign-policy experts at places like the Council on Foreign Relations and the State Department. That community felt that the Reaganites were dangerously utopian in their hopes for actually winning, as opposed to managing, the cold war.

And yet total victory in the cold war is exactly what happened in 1989-91. Gorbachev accepted not only the double zero but also deep cuts in conventional forces, and then failed to stop the Polish, Hungarian and East German defections from the empire. Communism collapsed within a couple of years because of its internal moral weaknesses and contradictions, and with regime change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact threat to the West evaporated.

The way the cold war ended shaped the thinking of supporters of the Iraq war, including younger neoconservatives like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, in two ways. First, it seems to have created an expectation that all totalitarian regimes were hollow at the core and would crumble with a small push from outside. The model for this was Romania under the Ceausescus: once the wicked witch was dead, the munchkins would rise up and start singing joyously about their liberation. As Kristol and Kagan put it in their 2000 book "Present Dangers": "To many the idea of America using its power to promote changes of regime in nations ruled by dictators rings of utopianism. But in fact, it is eminently realistic. There is something perverse in declaring the impossibility of promoting democratic change abroad in light of the record of the past three decades."

This overoptimism about postwar transitions to democracy helps explain the Bush administration's incomprehensible failure to plan adequately for the insurgency that subsequently emerged in Iraq. The war's supporters seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred, rather than a long-term process of institution-building and reform. While they now assert that they knew all along that the democratic transformation of Iraq would be long and hard, they were clearly taken by surprise. According to George Packer's recent book on Iraq, "The Assassins' Gate," the Pentagon planned a drawdown of American forces to some 25,000 troops by the end of the summer following the invasion.

By the 1990's, neoconservatism had been fed by several other intellectual streams. One came from the students of the German Jewish political theorist Leo Strauss, who, contrary to much of the nonsense written about him by people like Anne Norton and Shadia Drury, was a serious reader of philosophical texts who did not express opinions on contemporary politics or policy issues. Rather, he was concerned with the "crisis of modernity" brought on by the relativism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, as well as the fact that neither the claims of religion nor deeply-held opinions about the nature of the good life could be banished from politics, as the thinkers of the European Enlightenment had hoped. Another stream came from Albert Wohlstetter, a Rand Corporation strategist who was the teacher of Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad (the current American ambassador to Iraq) and Paul Wolfowitz (the former deputy secretary of defense), among other people. Wohlstetter was intensely concerned with the problem of nuclear proliferation and the way that the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty left loopholes, in its support for "peaceful" nuclear energy, large enough for countries like Iraq and Iran to walk through.

I have numerous affiliations with the different strands of the neoconservative movement. I was a student of Strauss's protégé Allan Bloom, who wrote the bestseller "The Closing of the American Mind"; worked at Rand and with Wohlstetter on Persian Gulf issues; and worked also on two occasions for Wolfowitz. Many people have also interpreted my book "The End of History and the Last Man" (1992) as a neoconservative tract, one that argued in favor of the view that there is a universal hunger for liberty in all people that will inevitably lead them to liberal democracy, and that we are living in the midst of an accelerating, transnational movement in favor of that liberal democracy. This is a misreading of the argument. "The End of History" is in the end an argument about modernization. What is initially universal is not the desire for liberal democracy but rather the desire to live in a modern — that is, technologically advanced and prosperous — society, which, if satisfied, tends to drive demands for political participation. Liberal democracy is one of the byproducts of this modernization process, something that becomes a universal aspiration only in the course of historical time.

"The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.

The Failure of Benevolent Hegemony

The Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters did not simply underestimate the difficulty of bringing about congenial political outcomes in places like Iraq; they also misunderstood the way the world would react to the use of American power. Of course, the cold war was replete with instances of what the foreign policy analyst Stephen Sestanovich calls American maximalism, wherein Washington acted first and sought legitimacy and support from its allies only after the fact. But in the post-cold-war period, the structural situation of world politics changed in ways that made this kind of exercise of power much more problematic in the eyes of even close allies. After the fall of the Soviet Union, various neoconservative authors like Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol and Robert Kagan suggested that the United States would use its margin of power to exert a kind of "benevolent hegemony" over the rest of the world, fixing problems like rogue states with W.M.D., human rights abuses and terrorist threats as they came up. Writing before the Iraq war, Kristol and Kagan considered whether this posture would provoke resistance from the rest of the world, and concluded, "It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power." (Italics added.)

It is hard to read these lines without irony in the wake of the global reaction to the Iraq war, which succeeded in uniting much of the world in a frenzy of anti-Americanism. The idea that the United States is a hegemon more benevolent than most is not an absurd one, but there were warning signs that things had changed in America's relationship to the world long before the start of the Iraq war. The structural imbalance in global power had grown enormous. America surpassed the rest of the world in every dimension of power by an unprecedented margin, with its defense spending nearly equal to that of the rest of the world combined. Already during the Clinton years, American economic hegemony had generated enormous hostility to an American-dominated process of globalization, frequently on the part of close democratic allies who thought the United States was seeking to impose its antistatist social model on them.

There were other reasons as well why the world did not accept American benevolent hegemony. In the first place, it was premised on American exceptionalism, the idea that America could use its power in instances where others could not because it was more virtuous than other countries. The doctrine of pre-emption against terrorist threats contained in the 2002 National Security Strategy was one that could not safely be generalized through the international system; America would be the first country to object if Russia, China, India or France declared a similar right of unilateral action. The United States was seeking to pass judgment on others while being unwilling to have its own conduct questioned in places like the International Criminal Court.

Another problem with benevolent hegemony was domestic. There are sharp limits to the American people's attention to foreign affairs and willingness to finance projects overseas that do not have clear benefits to American interests. Sept. 11 changed that calculus in many ways, providing popular support for two wars in the Middle East and large increases in defense spending. But the durability of the support is uncertain: although most Americans want to do what is necessary to make the project of rebuilding Iraq succeed, the aftermath of the invasion did not increase the public appetite for further costly interventions. Americans are not, at heart, an imperial people. Even benevolent hegemons sometimes have to act ruthlessly, and they need a staying power that does not come easily to people who are reasonably content with their own lives and society.

Finally, benevolent hegemony presumed that the hegemon was not only well intentioned but competent as well. Much of the criticism of the Iraq intervention from Europeans and others was not based on a normative case that the United States was not getting authorization from the United Nations Security Council, but rather on the belief that it had not made an adequate case for invading Iraq in the first place and didn't know what it was doing in trying to democratize Iraq. In this, the critics were unfortunately quite prescient.

The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism. Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally. The misjudgment was based in part on the massive failure of the American intelligence community to correctly assess the state of Iraq's W.M.D. programs before the war. But the intelligence community never took nearly as alarmist a view of the terrorist/W.M.D. threat as the war's supporters did. Overestimation of this threat was then used to justify the elevation of preventive war to the centerpiece of a new security strategy, as well as a whole series of measures that infringed on civil liberties, from detention policy to domestic eavesdropping.

What to Do

Now that the neoconservative moment appears to have passed, the United States needs to reconceptualize its foreign policy in several fundamental ways. In the first instance, we need to demilitarize what we have been calling the global war on terrorism and shift to other types of policy instruments. We are fighting hot counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and against the international jihadist movement, wars in which we need to prevail. But "war" is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world. As recent events in France and Denmark suggest, Europe will be a central battleground in this fight.

The United States needs to come up with something better than "coalitions of the willing" to legitimate its dealings with other countries. The world today lacks effective international institutions that can confer legitimacy on collective action; creating new organizations that will better balance the dual requirements of legitimacy and effectiveness will be the primary task for the coming generation. As a result of more than 200 years of political evolution, we have a relatively good understanding of how to create institutions that are rulebound, accountable and reasonably effective in the vertical silos we call states. What we do not have are adequate mechanisms of horizontal accountability among states.

The conservative critique of the United Nations is all too cogent: while useful for certain peacekeeping and nation-building operations, the United Nations lacks both democratic legitimacy and effectiveness in dealing with serious security issues. The solution is not to strengthen a single global body, but rather to promote what has been emerging in any event, a "multi-multilateral world" of overlapping and occasionally competing international institutions that are organized on regional or functional lines. Kosovo in 1999 was a model: when the Russian veto prevented the Security Council from acting, the United States and its NATO allies simply shifted the venue to NATO, where the Russians could not block action.

The final area that needs rethinking, and the one that will be the most contested in the coming months and years, is the place of democracy promotion in American foreign policy. The worst legacy that could come from the Iraq war would be an anti-neoconservative backlash that coupled a sharp turn toward isolation with a cynical realist policy aligning the United States with friendly authoritarians. Good governance, which involves not just democracy but also the rule of law and economic development, is critical to a host of outcomes we desire, from alleviating poverty to dealing with pandemics to controlling violent conflicts. A Wilsonian policy that pays attention to how rulers treat their citizens is therefore right, but it needs to be informed by a certain realism that was missing from the thinking of the Bush administration in its first term and of its neoconservative allies.

We need in the first instance to understand that promoting democracy and modernization in the Middle East is not a solution to the problem of jihadist terrorism; in all likelihood it will make the short-term problem worse, as we have seen in the case of the Palestinian election bringing Hamas to power. Radical Islamism is a byproduct of modernization itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. It is no accident that so many recent terrorists, from Sept. 11's Mohamed Atta to the murderer of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh to the London subway bombers, were radicalized in democratic Europe and intimately familiar with all of democracy's blessings. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalization and — yes, unfortunately — terrorism.

But greater political participation by Islamist groups is very likely to occur whatever we do, and it will be the only way that the poison of radical Islamism can ultimately work its way through the body politic of Muslim communities around the world. The age is long since gone when friendly authoritarians could rule over passive populations and produce stability indefinitely. New social actors are mobilizing everywhere, from Bolivia and Venezuela to South Africa and the Persian Gulf. A durable Israeli-Palestinian peace could not be built upon a corrupt, illegitimate Fatah that constantly had to worry about Hamas challenging its authority. Peace might emerge, sometime down the road, from a Palestine run by a formerly radical terrorist group that had been forced to deal with the realities of governing.

If we are serious about the good governance agenda, we have to shift our focus to the reform, reorganization and proper financing of those institutions of the United States government that actually promote democracy, development and the rule of law around the world, organizations like the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National Endowment for Democracy and the like. The United States has played an often decisive role in helping along many recent democratic transitions, including in the Philippines in 1986; South Korea and Taiwan in 1987; Chile in 1988; Poland and Hungary in 1989; Serbia in 2000; Georgia in 2003; and Ukraine in 2004-5. But the overarching lesson that emerges from these cases is that the United States does not get to decide when and where democracy comes about. By definition, outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.

The Bush administration has been walking — indeed, sprinting — away from the legacy of its first term, as evidenced by the cautious multilateral approach it has taken toward the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. Condoleezza Rice gave a serious speech in January about "transformational diplomacy" and has begun an effort to reorganize the nonmilitary side of the foreign-policy establishment, and the National Security Strategy document is being rewritten. All of these are welcome changes, but the legacy of the Bush first-term foreign policy and its neoconservative supporters has been so polarizing that it is going to be hard to have a reasoned debate about how to appropriately balance American ideals and interests in the coming years. The reaction against a flawed policy can be as damaging as the policy itself, and such a reaction is an indulgence we cannot afford, given the critical moment we have arrived at in global politics.

Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about.

Francis Fukuyama teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. This essay is adapted from his book "America at the Crossroads," which will be published this month by Yale University Press.

Source

The Events of the Democratic Congo (former Zaire)

Mobuto Sese Seko has been, ever since the start of his political career and up until his removal from power, a British agent. He started his political career in the wake of the Congo's independence on 30th June 1960, as defence minister in Patrice Lumumba's coalition government. Lumumba for his part was an American agent, and it was down to his efforts and the efforts of his movement "The National Congolese Movement" that the Congo managed to gain independence from Belgium. However, his movement failed to gain an absolute majority in the elections and he was forced to form a coalition government. Less than three months into independence, Mobuto conspired with the republic's president Joseph Kasavubu and Britain's infamous agent, Katanga's Prime Minister Moise Kapenda Tshombe, against Lumumba. Mobuto staged a military coup, arrested Lumumba and handed him to Tshombe, who killed him in January 1961 and threw his body in the jungle. France's relationship with Mobuto was merely cultural, because the Congo is a francophone country. France has virtually no investments in the Congo and trade between the two countries is limited. America's relationship with Mobuto remained hostile since he ousted her agent Lumumba. America was biding her time in order to either oust him or to flare up a fresh rebellion against him. Lumumba's comrades assumed during the first six years after independence a host of rebellions or attempts at rebellion. However, Mobuto managed to crush all these attempts and the rebels disbanded and dispersed in the jungle. Mobuto continued to resist the American influence, not only in the Congo, but also in the neighbouring countries. He sided with the apartheid regime of South Africa alongside Unita, the British organisation, against the pro American regime in Angola. He also backed the rebels against Yoweri Museveni in Uganda. When the Tutsi rebels, backed by America, seized power in Rwanda in 1994, Mobuto sided with the Hutus. He set about training and arming the Hutus living in the Congo and inciting them to attack Rwanda. Last autumn, the governor of the Kivo province of the Congo ordered the deportation of more than 300 to 400 thousand Tutsi from the Congo, despite the fact that they had settled in East Zaire in the 18th century. This action sparked the rebellion which in the space of seven months, brought Kabila to power and deposed Mobuto. So who is Laurent Kabila? And what are the circumstances surrounding his rise to power? Laurent Kabila is not a Tutsi, he is from the Katanga province which was a Belgian colony. He studied philosophy in France and returned to the Congo just before independence, i.e. when the revolution for independence was at its highest. On his return, Kabila joined an organisation in Katanga known as "The North Katanga Council". This organisation was known to be supportive of Lumumba; however it was not part of his organisation which was known as the "National Congolese Movement". When Lumumba was assassinated in January 1961, Kabila started to build bridges with Britain's agent, the separatist Moise Kapenda Tshombe, who at the time declared the secession of Katanga. In 1963, Lumumba's two comrades, Pierre Molili and Antoine Gizenga resumed the revolution. They established the National Assembly for the Liberation of Congo, so Kabila returned and pledged his support for them. At the beginning of 1964, Kabila and his friend Jastum Somalio, declared a revolution in south Congo, known as the Simba revolution (i.e. the lion). The activity of this revolution was separate or parallel to the activity of the National Assembly. In 1969 the celebrated revolutionary Che Guevara came from Cuba in order to make the Congo a springboard of a revolution to engulf the whole of Africa. He visited the camps of the Simba fighters, and he was impressed by Kabila's statement that the main enemy was the American imperialism. However, after a series of meetings between him and Kabila and his party, Che Guevara realised that these people were not fit for armed struggle, for Kabila never established a real revolution, nor did he establish the possibility of launching real revolutions. In his memoirs, Guevara mentioned that no one ever saw Kabila in the battlefield and that he used to spend his time womanising and drinking, and not leading a revolutionary war. He described Kabila's men as being nothing but parasites who had no idea whatsoever about firearms, and that most of them carried rare diseases. Guevara realised that his stay was not welcomed by Kabila, to the point where Kabila used to hate Guevara's visits to the battlefront. Guevara left the Congo for good in November 1965, i.e. six months later due to his frustration. In November 1967, Kabila established with his friend Homalio the Revolutionary party in the Katanga province, after they had visited China seeking assistance. This party undertook a token resistance merely to please China, who demanded some action in return for the money she was paying. The people of Katanga have no good word to say about this party, because it sided with Moise Tshombe against his rival, the popular leader Jason Sandoi. Since 1967, Kabila disappeared from the Congo to wander around the European capitals, especially Paris, where he had built a villa during the years of the revolution, while the followers of Lumumba were fighting. From this review of Kabila's life history, we find that he managed to register his name in the revolutionaries list and to wear their uniform, but he did not perform any of the real revolutionary work against Mobuto, to the point where he was trying to prevent Che Guevara from fighting, and when things became serious, he used to side with Tshombe. In order to justify his lagging behind when it came to fighting, he was quoted as saying that the educated person who gambles with his life and dies in the battlefields is either insane or a dreaming romantic; hence, the mission of the educated person is to persuade others to die for the sake of his dreams. He was known to be busy making money, stealing and smuggling, and setting up companies to finance his pleasures and desires. Therefore, if this were his revolutionary life when the Congo was riding the revolutionary wave, his conduct in the present revolution which deposed Mobuto is contrary to that. He started this revolution as an eloquent speaker and showed some brilliant organisational skills. This contrast confirms the fact that in the sixties, Kabila was not serious about his revolutionary work against Mobuto and that he was hired by the British to plot against Lumumbists. If that is the case of Kabila, how did he manage to ride the current revolution to seize power in the Congo, though America was behind it? By reviewing the events of the current revolution, we find that it started last October when the Tutsi who had emigrated to East Congo 200 years ago initiated a rebellion in defence of their rights of settlement. Rwanda saw in this rebellion a golden opportunity to get rid of the Hutu crisis, thus she started supplying the rebels with weapons and personnel and inciting them to attack the Hutu camps in the Congo in order to force them deep into the jungle and away from the Rwandan border, so that they no longer posed a threat to her. Suddenly Kabila appeared on the scene to lead the rebellion and turn it into a revolution. What helped Kabila to ride the revolution was the participation of the rally between the People's Revolutionary Party and the Tutsi in this revolution, because Kabila was the founder of this party back in 1967, and the Tutsis in the east and the south of the Congo were allies of Kabila in the sixties. Kabila started his journey as a spokesman for the alliance, then later as its president. Although the revolution started to spread to the east and the south of the Congo, Mobuto remained in France and his government failed to undertake any effective measures to curb it or to work towards removing its causes, by giving the Tutsis their rights. It became clear that Mobuto's illness was serious and that he was on the brink of death. Supplies started to flow towards the rebels from America and her agents, the Congo's neighbouring countries, Rwanda, Angola, and Uganda. They did so in spite of Mobuto and in revenge for his hostile stands towards them. What also motivated these countries was the loyalty of some leaders of the revolution to America, such as Kisasi Negandu who belonged to Lumumba's tribe. Andre Kisasi defied Kabila's leaders, so his fate was liquidation and he was killed in strange circumstances. America is also hoping that the Rwandan Tutsi leaders will be able to buy the loyalty of the Congolese Tutsi America and South Africa competed with each other to intervene and settle the crisis. Hence, America sent her U.N. envoy Bill Richardson, while Nelson Mandela and his deputy Tabombili, started a series of shuttle diplomacy. Before the fall of Kinshasa, Mandela succeeded in bringing together Mobuto and Kabila aboard a warship in South Africa, and agreement was reached stipulating that Mandela would draft a ten point agreement to be signed at a second meeting. The agreement stipulated that once Mobuto relinquishes power, he would remain in the Congo, and that he would enjoy all the mandates of a former president, with all the perks and privileges and the due respect. Mandela drafted the agreement and waited with Mobuto at the agreed time but Kabila refused to attend. Nevertheless, Mandela succeeded in facilitating the entry of the rebels to the capital without any bloodshed in the wake of Mobuto's departure. By scrutinising the events and the circumstances surrounding the revolution, one realises that Mobuto acted as if the revolution did not concern him. He did not negotiate with the rebels, nor did he fight them properly. One also realises that the revolution started as a rebellion and developed into a revolution to liberate East Congo, then into a revolution to rid the Congo of Mobuto's regime. This development of events coincided with the confirmation that Mobuto's illness was critical and that his chances of recovery were very slim. This raised the issue of his succession. The rule of Mobuto was autocratic and dictatorial. He did not allow the rise of any politicians or leader in the Congo; hence, the sudden departure of Mobuto was set to generate a political vacuum that no other person from his staff could have filled especially as the Congo was plunged into ethnic and tribal strife. The only prominent politician is Etienne Tshisekedi, who is an American agent, he is a shrewd politician and one of Lumumba's followers since the sixties. However, Kabila never contemplated handing him the reins of power in the Congo though America was seeking this. Although Kabila gave the impression that he was pro-American, he in fact was since the start of his revolutionary career a British agent. The French cooperation minister denied the statement that France has lost and that America had won, and that Mobuto was a French agent while Kabila was an American agent.

Reliable French media sources commented that France does not have the influence that people had imagined over Mobuto, for the Congo is no more than a francophone country, and that America does not have the influence that people had imagined over Kabila. In its issue dated 12th May 1997, the U.S. magazine Newsweek wrote: "Kabila will not be the permanent successor to Mobuto, for after one year of interim rule, elections will take place to select the new Congolese leader, then Kabila will yield the reins of power to assume most probably the defence portfolio, while the former Congolese Prime Minister, Etienne Tshisekedi, the most popular political figure in the Congo, will become the leader of the Congo. Newsweek described him as the U.S?s favourite choice. As for America, no sooner had the rebels entered the capital of Kinshasa, than she started pressing them to allow the opposition to share power and appoint Tshisekedi as Prime Minister and hold democratic elections. The U.S. State Department's spokesman, Nicholas Burns, was quoted as saying that the U.S. ambassador to Kinshasa, Daniel Simpson, has started extensive talks with Kabila's chief advisors Diofrasia Bovira and Paul Kayungo, urging them to pave the way and establish contact with Tshisekedi. President Clinton for his part issue a sort of warning to Kabila when he said: "The position of the United States is clear. We are seeking a transitional rule which will lead to a real democracy in Zaire." As for the Secretary of State, Madelaine Albright, used a press conference to expose the new regime by stating after she expressed the U.S. desire to see Kabila's government include personalities from outside his own alliance, thus she confirmed that Washington was very concerned about the situation in the democratic republic of the Congo. She added that the new regime that succeeded the Mobuto regime should undertake the necessary steps towards holding democratic elections and encouraging reconciliation in the country. She also highlighted the serious breaches which Kabila's men were accused of committing. A U.S. official described the relationship between America and Kabila by saying: " We have stated that if he wanted our support, he should take our concern into consideration?but it seems like he wants to act like the great man and he is eventually going to do what he wishes." Despite all the comments of the U.S. administration, Kabila refused to even meet with Tshisekedi and he rushed into forming a presidential government akin to the American system, i.e. without a Prime Minister, thus snubbing Tshisekedi. Kabila stressed that he would not be holding any elections before two years. His government answered the criticism directed at it for discarding Tshisekedi and not holding early elections by stating that it reserved the right to determine the future, because they won the war. The secretary of the alliance, Diograsiasi Bovira, who became the minister of planning, explained that the political culturing and the power of the peasant take priority over the elections. In the face of this snub and total disregard, Tshisekedi instructed his supporters to hold demonstrations as a show of force and to pressurise the new regime; the regime used force to disperse them and prevent them from demonstrating.

29th Muharram 1418 hijri - 5th June 1997

The Return of the Axes to the Region

When the Zionist movement laid down its preconceptions and its plans to establish an entity for the Jews in Palestine, those preconceptions and plans included the conditions for a peaceful existence which guarantees a lasting existence and survival in the region and when the project of the Israeli state was raised, her character, type of existence and relationships in the region were pondered over at an international level. America has taken it upon herself to maintain the security of that state and secure her survival; and when America established her influence in the region, she decided to curtail Israel so that she could not share that influence with her. Hence, the curtailment of Israel and the maintaining of her security became one of America’s vital interests in the region. So, she set about supplying her with the most sophisticated weapons and arms of mass destruction. The Israeli state has planned for her survival through relying on her own military, economic and political resources, as by being superior in these domains, she would generate for herself the favourable circumstances for her survival.
As for Britain, she deemed that Israel should be her active partner in the region, and one of the prerequisites of this role was for Israel to integrate in the region so as not to appear as an alien body. Hence, Britain decided to establish an umbrella for Israel that would enable her to play her role naturally in the region as a state like any other within the region. The umbrella that Britain opted for was to establish in Palestine a joint democratic and secular state, akin to Lebanon, then this state would join the Arab League once it has entered into a confederation with Jordan; thus becoming part of the region. Once the tendency started to shift locally, regionally and internationally towards the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state in Palestine, Britain placed the idea of a democratic state on the shelf and modified the format of the umbrella; she started thinking of Israel becoming a state within a wider community, encompassing the states of the Middle East i.e. a Middle Eastern community. This Middle Eastern community would achieve two objective:

1 - Marketing Israel in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

2 - Make the relationships between the states of the region built on a regional basis, hence, influence would belong to the strongest state.

The call for a Middle Eastern community came out in the open when the peace agreements between Israel on the one hand and the Palestinians and Jordanians on the other hand in the years 1993 and 1994. Shimon Perez appointed himself as the propagator and the marketer of this idea when he started calling for a new Middle East. Perez expressed the true nature of he had been harbouring in his mind in terms of objectives when he declared in a swaggering and defiant manner during the Casablanca economic summit in 1994: "The Arabs have tried the leadership of Egypt for four decades, and it brought them nothing but destruction and calamities; it is high time they tried the leadership of Israel." The politicians and the media in Egypt and Syria reacted fiercely against the call for a Middle Eastern community, and so did Ismat Abdul-Majid , the Secretary General of the Arab League, for they viewed this call as being destructive to the Arab League and its role, as well as the role of the influential Arab states within the League. Amidst these speculative and media preludes, the military and economic agreements between Turkey and Israel came into being. The two countries stunned the other states of the region by announcing in February 1996 the signing of a military agreement. Though the two states had said that the agreement would lead to the opening of the airspace of each country for the other country’s aviation for training and manoeuvring purposes, and that it would also lead to the exchange of military information and the modernisation of the Turkish fighter planes, they however kept the details of the agreement secret. Then the two states moved a step further towards a strategic agreement by declaring in May that they had just signed a naval agreement leading to the performing of joint manoeuvres. These agreements caused a convulsion in Egypt, Syria and Iran. These states viewed these agreements as an alliance or as a prelude to an alliance that could threaten their security and give the two countries the upper hand and the leading role in the region.

After a series of media skirmishes, president Hosni Mubarak visited Turkey in June 1996 to explore the truth of the matter; president Dimiril did his best to reassure Mubarak that the bilateral cooperation did not constitute an axis and that it was not targeted at any third party. However, he did not disclose to him the nature of these agreements.

Since the turn of the year, the pattern of the meetings and the exchange of visits between Turkish and Israeli officials quickened and the announcements which shed light on the substance and the importance of these agreements increased. Last February, the Turkish Chief of Staff visited Israel and at the beginning of April, David Levy, the Israeli foreign minister, visited Ankara. Then at the end of April, the Turkish defence minister visited Israel. He said to the Israeli radio: " Turkey shall not retract from her military agreement with Israel, which would allow the Israeli fighter planes to fly over Turkey for aerial training purposes." He added: "The Israeli training sorties over the Turkish airspace will continue." In a press conference held just before his talks with his Israeli counterpart, the Turkish minister stressed that the cooperation between Turkey and Israel was "not targeted at any other party." He also said: "Turkey attach a great importance to her cooperation with Israel, and I believe that this cooperation between us will contribute to the stability in the region and will further the peace process."

As for Mordachai, the Israeli defence minister, he pledge Israel’s commitment to help Turkey in her fight against terrorism. In his welcoming speech of the Turkish minister, he said that his country "will do her utmost to consolidate the security and the economic ties with Turkey." He added: "Both our countries are free, democratic and they champion peace. Cooperation between us is necessary to achieve stability in the Middle East." Mordachai added: "We think that the military cooperation between Israel and Turkey could act as a deterrent against any attack that countries such as Iraq, Iran and Syria could contemplate launching against Israel." He also added: "It is imperative for the two democratic countries, Israel and Turkey, to combine their efforts for the sake of stability within the two countries." Netanyahu confirmed what the two officials had declared when he announced that "the cooperation between Israel and Turkey should be strengthened in order to face the terrorists threat and secure the stability of the whole region." On his return from Israel, the Turkish defence minister expressed the following day his country’s concern towards Syria and Iran’s endeavours to modernise their chemical warfare and ballistic missiles capabilities. He said in an explicit threatening manner: "Such countries’ acquisition of arms of mass destruction raises the concern of not just our countries, i.e. Turkey and Israel, but also that of Nato." The Turkish press quoted him as saying: "Syria is acting as the headquarters of the terrorism targeting both Turkey and Israel, and Iran is accessory to this terrorism." On 5th May, the deputy Chief of Staff, General Shafiq Bir, described as the strong man of the military institution, visited Israel at the head of a delegation that included 26 officers and civil servants. He reiterated during his visit what the Turkish defence minister had said; i.e. that the purpose of his country’s cooperation with Israel was to put an end to the terrorism perpetrated by the Islamists in Lebanon and the separatists in Turkey. He added: "It is every country’s duty to cooperate against terrorism." He also said: "I have reviewed a host of proposals pertaining the modernising of fighter planes and the joint production of field tanks." The two sides reiterated in their statements expressions such as "achieving security and stability in the region.", "prevent terrorism", "prevent Syria from launching a strike against Israel" and "fighting terrorism."

As for the inducement of the peace process, this meant applying pressure on Syria, once she has been surrounded, in order to make her soften her stance and push her towards making a host of concessions to Israel. All of this indicates that the two countries are heading towards establishing a joint military axis, that is if they had not already reached this. It is worth mentioning some of the regional and international reactions: Egypt, Syria and Iran condemned the Israeli-Turkish axis. Amr Moussa, the Egyptian foreign minister, said: "the Israeli-Turkish axis serves the interests of one party at the expense of another, and any action of this type will be met with a corresponding and equally strong response."

As for Jordan, she holds a different stance, for King Hussein visited Ankara in May 1996, accompanied by his Chief of Staff. He said on his return: "The Jordanian-Turkish ties are stronger than the axes and the alliances. The ties between Jordan and Turkey are firmly established and Inshallah they will be strengthened in all aspects and domains." On 21st November 1996, the Turkish defence minister declared in a press conference that: "Jordan and Turkey would soon be signing an agreement of defence." He also outlined that negotiations pertaining such agreements were at present being conducted, and that once these are concluded, a cooperation bringing benefits to both sides will be established." Few days later, the semi-official Jordanian newspaper "Al-Rai" confirmed the news. This means that Jordan is on its way to joining the axis; however, it would be difficult for Jordan to join the axis under such circumstances, as long as the peace process is facing a stumbling block.

As for America, she denied having any involvement in the Israeli-Turkish agreements. On 7th May 1997, the U.S. defence ministry spokesman denied the involvement of American officers in the strategic talks taking place between Israel and Turkey. He said: "These talks are not trilateral and the U.S. has no connection with them." He then added: "Some middle ranking officers are now in Israel taking part in the talks with Israel and Turkey pertaining future manoeuvres, but this has no connection whatsoever with the strategic talks between the Turks and the Israelis." The Turkish deputy Chief of Staff denied for his part during his visit to Israel the participation of U.S. officials in the talks." The U.S.-Turkish relations are going to be strained for several reasons, namely because of America’s refusal to hand over to Turkey weapons which she had earlier purchased for America; these include three frigates, purchased to strengthen the Turkish fleet in the Aegean Sea, and three Super Cobra helicopters, which Turkey plans to use against the Turkish Kurd rebels. The Turkish defence minister has asked Israel to mediate on Turkey’s behalf for the U.S. to release the arms purchases. America’s position towards the bilateral talks is fitting with her stance towards Israel, which deems her curtailment and isolation from the region.

Britain did not voice her opinion directly, but the British Foreign Secretary revealed Britain’s policy and designs on 4th November 1996, when he called, during his tour of the region, for the establishment of a Middle Eastern Cooperation Community, akin to the European Security and Cooperation Organisation. He explained that he had sought the opinion of the countries in the region and he found that the majority of the countries welcomed such an idea. Amr Moussa dismissed the idea instantly, before he even looked at the official wording of the statement. Ismat Abdul-Majid for his part, summoned the British ambassador to Cairo and expressed his surprise at such a proposal. He added: "We cannot imagine a regional cooperation in the Middle East while Israel continues to occupy Arab lands and while Iran continues to occupy in the Gulf islands belonging to the United Arab Emirates. If Rifkind mentioned that the call for a Middle Eastern community has expanded beyond the region itself, it would be because he undoubtedly realised that the diverse loyalties in the region prevent the establishment of this community and that all it could yield would be the establishment of axes, and this is what is effectively taking place. The Egyptian foreign minister, Amr Moussa, said for his part that the Israeli-Turkish axis will be met with a corresponding and equally strong response, and the foundation of a corresponding axis already exists in the shape of Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia; however, since this axis would not able to face up to the Israeli-Turkish axis, it is necessary to invite another country to join it, and Iran is the prime candidate. This is so because the Israeli-Turkish axis threatens Iran directly; also, because Syria, the main injured party of the Israeli-Turkish axis, enjoys a warm relation with Iran, and she started to use this friendship to break the ice between Iran and Egypt.

As a result of the Syrian mediation, Ali Akbar Valiyati, the Iranian foreign minister, visited Egypt under the pretext of handing to president Mubarak an invitation to attend the Islamic Summit to be held next December. The Egyptian president met him for two hours, during which they discussed the various bilateral and regional issues. Valiyati and Moussa outlined in their press conference that "the resumption of diplomatic ties between the two countries was not improbable." Valiyati said during the press conference: "When the contacts between the two countries increase, it will become easy to generate the favourable atmosphere for the resumption of the diplomatic relations." This is also what Amr Moussa hinted at by saying: "It is imperative to have a shared willingness to resume the ties, and any steps undertaken towards this initiative will be undertaken at the moment determined by both of us." The issues which had led to the freezing of the relations between the two countries are not critical, for Iran does not genuinely oppose the peace process; her opposition is merely an outbidding of stances, and the present strain in the relations between Egypt and Israel could be used by Iran as a pretext to vindicate her rapprochement with Egypt, and the display of a willingness to undertake a joint action to save Al-Quds could serve as an even stronger vindication. Valiyati was quoted as saying in the press conference: "The Islamic countries should work towards solving this issue." He also explained that the Egyptian and Iranian viewpoints are identical."

As for the terrorism which Egypt claims that Iran is sponsoring against Egypt, Iran in fact does not work against Egypt, nor does she work towards exporting the Iranian revolution to Egypt; the rulers of Egypt are aware of the Iranian position and nevertheless the Egyptian rulers will be content with a declaration from the Iranian officials stating that Iran does not work against Egypt, or that they will not do so.

The struggle over the roles in the Gulf constitutes the fundamental difference between the two countries. Since Egypt has always been acting as the mother state, or the big brother of the Arab countries, she therefore finds herself face to face with Iran who seeks to spread her hegemony over the Gulf region. This is why Egypt has strived and is still striving to activate the Damascus Declaration. However, the conflict of interests between the two countries in the Gulf region should not hinder the restoration of ties between them and the coordination in other matters. Amr Moussa outlined in the press conference that the Gulf states should not be angered in case the relations between Egypt and Iran are resumed because "all the Gulf states have diplomatic ties with Iran." Amr Moussa has used the press conference to send a message to Turkey and Israel by saying: "The manoeuvres which are about to take place between Turkey raises concerns. He outlined that : "If this happened, there would be a reaction and we shall look into the matter; also, there will be a consultation about the causes and the intentions of such action." If Amr Moussa’s statement that every action would be met with a corresponding reaction equal in power does not foretell Egypt’s present moves, it then foretells her future moves towards establishing a parallel axis, equal to the Israeli/Turkish axis by including Iran in the Egyptian/Syrian/Saudi axis.

17th Muharram 1418 / 24th May 1997

NATO

Preamble

The international situation fluctuates on the basis of changes in the situation of nations from positions of strength to positions of weakness, or positions of weakness to positions of strength, or changes in their international relationships with one another. The Islamic State is an ideological state whose prime role is to convey the da’wa to the world. As a consequence of this objective, she would be required to develop an international standing and an ability to influence the international situation. The politician, whether in the Islamic state or a party which seeks the return of such a state, works with the intention of taking care of the affairs of the world. The knowledge of the political idea upon which nations base their policies and the political method which is followed to implement them is a basic necessity for understanding the international situation. The diligent observation of the political plans and means would be a postulate for the one who seeks to understand the international situation, and inshallah influence the international situation in the future.

The Islamic State is a state that seeks influence on world politics, and this would be achieved by threatening the interests of the leading nation, changing the international political climate to a favourable one, attracting nations to its side and undermining the relationships between the leading nation, and the other major powers who vie with it for global supremacy. It would therefore be incumbent upon us to comprehend the political actions which occur throughout the world, in order to evaluate their potential future implications for the Islamic state, from the angle of the protection and propagation of the Islamic ideology.

The future role of NATO in Europe is an area of discussion that has unveiled a potential conflict between the United States and the European countries as well as accentuating internal European rivalries. The identification of such potential conflict and rivalry would be the basis for future exploitation at the hands of the Islamic Khilafah, by weakening the link between the United States and Europe and hence threatening the interests of the leading nation.
Since the second world war the United States has been the leading nation in the world, since joining the allied alliance with Britain, France and Russia to defeat the German nation. Britain, who had been in the past the leading nation, left the war in a state of exhaustion and powerlessness, while the United States emerged as the leading nation, and the international situation became dependent upon it. In the atmosphere of triumph, the United States decided to strip all other nations of any influence they held in the international political arena. She worked towards acquiring influence in the European countries, which all but destroyed each other in the two world wars. America pursued the major powers such as Britain and France in order to liquidate their influence in the world, and created a public opinion against colonialism achieved by physical occupation of land. This further weakened the position of Britain and France, and allowed the United States to explore alternative means of colonialism. It was Eisenhower who said “To meet the challenge of our time, destiny has laid upon our country the responsibility of the free world’s leadership. So it is proper that we assure our friends once again that, in the discharge of this responsibility, we Americans know and we observe the difference between world leadership and imperialism”.

At the wake of the Second World War, Europe was poor and under threat from the eastern communist bloc, under the leadership of Russia, which presented a formidable ideological and military challenge. Faced with such a stark reality the Europeans threw themselves at the beck and call of the United States, hoping that she could rescue her from the turbulent times she was experiencing. The United States was prompt to proffer assistance on the basis of the Marshall plan, which was detailed by George Marshall, the United States Secretary of State, in a speech on June 5, 1947. American economic aid, arms, and experts were injected into Europe, and the United States entered as a major partner in the European economic programmes and companies. The tangible result of the Marshall Plan was the linking of the European economies with that of the United States, and the increased influence enjoyed by the United States in the Western Hemisphere. The American plan was illustrated by the comments of Clayton, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, who said “Let us admit right off that our objective has as its background the needs and interests of the people of the United States. We need markets-big markets-in which to buy and sell”.

Background

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed at Washington on 4 April 1949, and can be considered to be a logical evolution of the American-European relationship. It was signed by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It may be falsely held by some that the formation of NATO was in fact as a result of an all-encompassing global vision by the Europeans, and the British in particular, in order to share power in a “global commonwealth” as America’s partner. Such a view would be a fallacy of the greatest kind since America was and is the leading nation and undertakes actions based upon a pure colonialist policy that views the whole world as a big farm which belongs to them, and views the great powers as undeserving of the influence that they enjoy. She therefore does not undertake pious or charitable acts, but rather works to cement her influence and interests in all spheres.

NATO is essentially a collective security organisation that guarantees that an attack on one party to the agreement will be considered to be an attack on all other parties, and hence warrant collective concerted action. It can be considered to have been erected as a counter force against the eastern bloc, in order to protect Europe from the clutches of communism, and therefore secure the interests of capitalists in the area, and in particular the interests of the Americans. America views Europe as a potential area of conflict, since it has been the site of two world wars and the ignition point of a Cold War, and therefore the role of NATO for her was geared towards ensuring European security and United States interests in Europe.
From its induction NATO served primarily United States interests by preventing communist expansion by the Warsaw Pact countries, improving the American market share and influence in the European economy, and ensuring that no single nation or nations emerge to rival American influence in the region. In particular the United States was able to use NATO to control the influence of Germany in Europe and upon the international situation by developing her economy on an economic basis rather than a military basis. The tangible results of the American plan on Germany can still be seen 50 years later as it still struggles to emerge as an independent country from the shadows of American foreign policy. The fact that NATO was more than just a combined military effort against the Soviet Union is exemplified by its continued existence after the Kruschev-Kennedy meeting of 1961 in which both the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to define respective spheres of influence, and by its continued existence after the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact and the demise of communism.
Early in this decade the collapse of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the communist ideology was seen. Since the abandonment of the communist ideology by the Eastern bloc, the ideology of capitalism prevails as the sole hegemon over the world. No nation exists that carries an ideology other than capitalism and consequently capitalism controls the international situation, and America, as the leader of the capitalist nations and the leading state, declared the birth of a “New World Order”. The Western Hemisphere which is host to the leading state America and the other major powers such as Britain, Germany and France is plagued by internal rivalries and divisions. Since these nations adopt the ideology of capitalism they vie with one another for power and influence in the international arena and the resulting division and enmity is visible to the assiduous observer.

The main issues

It was the European Christian States that initially formulated the international society and the concept of international law in order to stand against the Ottoman State. The two world wars this century were instigated to resist Germany and redress the changes in the balance of power that were occurring. The issue of Europe has therefore been crucial for the existence of the major powers and in determining the balance of power within the world and it is for this reason that it preoccupies the minds of analysts, politicians, economists and the military alike. The issue of Europe and therefore of NATO must therefore be considered in detail in order to comprehend the international situation and aspire towards changing it. In particular it would be necessary to understand the view of the leading nation, and the other powerful countries in the world, towards NATO and the relationships they share with one another.

The United States

The United States is the leading state in the world and has succeeded in making the capitalist ideology the foundation of international relationships and traditions. She now perseveres to make capitalism the chosen ideology for all nations and peoples of the globe. The United States views the issue of Europe as one of the top issues in politics, and therefore undertakes much effort in order to secure her interests in this area. The United States via the Marshall Plan and NATO was able to control the European countries so that no single power became supreme over the continent and also in order to prevent the eruption of internal problems which could escalate and threaten America’s position as the leading nation. It was also able to secure its economic interests in the major Western markets, while ensuring that European industry developed on an incorrect basis under the shackles of American capital and companies.

It has been no accident that the United States has spent considerable energy to ensure that a transition to a post-communism world would preserve NATO. Since the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact certain voices, particularly from Europe, have been heard which question whether or not NATO has now outlived its usefulness. Since the United States’s interests lie in controlling Europe by controlling NATO, they have had to provide reasons for keeping the treaty alive. The former American Secretary of State Warren Christopher highlighted the American position on NATO when he said that “the NATO alliance will remain the anchor of American engagement in Europe and the linchpin of transatlantic secuirty. That is why we must keep it strong, vital, and relevant. For the United States and its allies, NATO has always been far more than a transitory response to a temporary threat. It has been a guarantor of European democracy and a force for European stability. That is why its mission endures even though the Cold War has receded into the past”.

The United States seeks to gain certain benefits from maintaining, supporting and expanding the North Atlantic Treaty. These can be considered to be the following;

Firstly, NATO allows the presence of the American military within Europe, and ties the European economies to American capital, thus preventing the emergence of a nation which may threaten her position as the leading state. Also, NATO expansion creates a financial burden upon NATO, and in particular on the Western European countries, and hence strengthens the hand of America relative to Europe.

Secondly, by expanding into the eastern bloc NATO will protect European and American interests in the area by preventing the re-emergence of a Russian threat under a nationalist guise.

Thirdly, the maintenance and expansion of NATO will act as the “Marshall Plan for the 21st century” by creating an improved environment for trade, investment and economic growth in Europe. The European markets are undoubtedly the most important in the world and by controlling them by injecting American capital, the United States wishes to cement her position as the leading nation.

Fourthly, the maintenance and expansion of NATO prevents and impedes the establishment of independent European security and political structures such as the European Union. It also enlarges the influence of NATO upon the international situation, and could pave the way for the replacement of the United Nations by NATO, hence restricting the power of countries such as China on the United Nations.

President Clinton said that “NATO can do for Europe’s East what it did for Europe’s West: prevent a return to local rivalries, strengthen democracy against future threats and create the conditions for prosperity to flourish.”

The Americans are therefore committed to the expansion of NATO into the countries of the former Warsaw Pact. The declarations made at the Madrid Summit held on the 8th of July 1997 laid the basis for the beginning of accession talks between NATO, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. The American position on NATO expansion was aired by Christopher who said in early 1995 that “expanding the alliance will promote our interests by reducing the chance of conflict in Europe’s eastern half-where two world wars and the Cold War began. It will help to ensure that no part of Europe will revert to a zone of great power competition or a sphere of influence”.

If the United States is to succeed with its plans for NATO and Europe then she must create an environment where the necessity for the presence of NATO is felt by all her allies. In order to achieve this atmosphere the United States must produce an environment in which the nations of Europe harbour certain fears and anxieties, so that these become the focus of their thoughts. The threats that the United States will produce may be real or perceived, but their effect is similar, in that they concentrate the minds of nations upon threats to their own security and the acquisition of solutions to these problems, which on the whole are illusions or exaggerations by the Americans. The fears and anxieties of the European countries will then be allayed by the successful resolution of conflicts by NATO. The continual creation of an atmosphere of fear and anxiety is desirable for the Americans since it produces a consensus upon the usefulness of NATO, and hence is the arbiter for American influence in the region. The remedial measures undertaken by NATO will then serve to create in these nations a conviction in the ability of NATO to quell internal rivalries and problems within Europe.

The speech of Willy Claes, the former secretary-general of NATO, in Germany in 1995 is an example of the creation of a perceived threat to Europe in order to illustrate the necessity for the continuance of NATO. The statement that Islamic fundamentalists are the only threat to the West after the demise of communism is an inconceivable exaggeration, since the threat to the West would only come from an Islamic State, which is an ideological state and not at the hands of Muslim militia and guerrillas waging civil war in Algeria. The United States also contrived the creation of a perceived threat from the former Eastern bloc in the form of the Balkans crisis, which is by no means over. The Economist reported on 20 April 1985 that “trouble in the Balkans has a habit of causing trouble elsewhere” and indeed this is an idea that the Americans seek to implant in Europe. The potential for further conflicts in the Balkans, whether these erupt naturally or are created by the Americans, is large and represents a major problem to Western Europe who have already taken the toll of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Similarly, the United States uses the threat of Russian resurgence and the Southern flank of NATO, in order to subjugate the European powers to the United States.

Russia

After the destruction of the Soviet Union its peoples have abandoned the communist ideology and although Russia still possesses a large military machine, it no longer presents an ideological threat to capitalism. Indeed its peoples, and the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, have adopted capitalism as a way of life.

Russia, in view of its large military machine, is still a potential military threat to Europe, although this alone would not be sufficient for it to influence the international situation. The fear of the Americans and her NATO partners is that if Russia was to see a resurgence of Russian nationalism such military power would have the potential to undermine the “New World Order”. The United States uses the potential power of Russia to instil fear in the other European states while granting certain concessions to the Russians in order to weaken the hand of the Russian nationalist movements.

Russia, as a political power, is a weak nation that has little ability to influence the international situation. Her leaders work for Russian interests and pursue different means to achieve these. The weakness of the Russians can be comprehended from their inability to defeat the Chechen people, even though the United States assisted them in this venture by providing economic assistance to a poorly resourced army. The United States continues to portray Russia as a major power on the world arena, by convening conferences with her, manufacturing alliances with her military, and considering her political actions carefully. By undertaking these actions the United States creates a powerful image for the Russian state which produces fear in the former Western bloc, as well as appeasing those nationalists within Russia.

Her leaders are not the slaves of the Americans since they persevere for Russian interests. Since Russia views the expansion of NATO into the former Eastern bloc as a threat to her integrity, it was necessary for the United States to accommodate certain Russian demands. Yeltsin was rewarded for his agreement to the entry of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland into NATO with a position in the “G8 Alliance”. However, Yeltsin showed his political astuteness by flying to Ukraine and signing a long term military and naval accord, which suggests his unwillingness to depend upon NATO and the Americans entirely.

The future of Russia in Europe and NATO is dependent upon her development as a democratic state. If she were to continue as a democratic state out of the clutches of the nationalists then she would continue to dwindle. However if the nationalists were to take control of Russia then this could lead to the threatening of NATO, and by extension, American interests within the area.

The European Powers

Britain, France and Germany are the three main powers that have influence in Europe and have in the past competed with each other for supremacy.

The elucidation of the respective positions of the European countries with regard to the issue of the North Atlantic Treaty and its expansion is by no means simple, with many factors to be considered. Having dominated the international situation for so long, the European powers nearly destroyed each other during this century’s two world wars. Subsequent to this the United States emerged as the leading state in the world, challenged by the Soviet Union. Since the Second World War, European nations were compelled to put aside old rivalries and to forge a new unity in order to exert some influence on the international situation. Historically, Europe is a collection of warring tribes and nations, with a whole host of differing national interests. The European countries therefore incline towards the formation of alliances in order to exert influence on the world arena.

The struggle to maintain European security has been adopted by the main European nations and can be seen as a “war of institutions”. NATO, the Western European Union and the Franco-German Eurocorps are the main three security structures, and are used as tools in the hands of their proponents, so as to seek and maintain their interests in the region.

Germany

Germany is a capitalist state, and its people are characterised by militaristic and expansionist tendencies. Since the Second World War she has revived her industry on an economic basis, and has become an economic success of the twentieth century. Her economy is tightly controlled by the Americans due to the abundance of American capital and companies within Germany. For her to be able to influence the international situation in the manner she did prior to the Second World War it would be necessary for her to distance herself from the American companies and their capital, and to develop herself on a political rather than an economic basis.

On two occasions this century the major powers of the world gathered to limit German strength and resist her efforts for expansion. Its perceived responsibility for igniting two world wars, and the Jewish Holocaust, has concentrated German minds upon the idea of pleasing all parties in the domain of foreign policy. It is for this reason that a dichotomy of thought can be seen between the approach of Germany towards the issue of NATO expansion and the approach of Germany towards the issue of WEU expansion, favoured by the French. Germany has moved to voice support for the eastward expansion of NATO, as well as a larger role for the EU in a military sense. However she now seems to have inclined towards the American position of NATO expansion and this is allied to the continuing presence of large amounts of American capital within the German economy, and the American promise of a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Volker Ruhe, the German defence minister, laid out German policy towards NATO in a speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Spring 1993, when he urged that the first East-Central European countries should become full NATO members by the new millennium. The main interest that Germany may be seeking from such an expansion is to address the security challenges that lie to the east, since many Germans perceive themselves as living on the edge of a volcano waiting to erupt.

The idea of looking to the perceptions of other nations regarding one’s own nation is a dangerous one in international politics if it is the basis of the political thoughts rather than the subject of the thoughts. If Germany is to become a leading state in the world then it would be necessary for her to stop straddling the fence of foreign policy since this jeopardises her interests. The results of such policies are unpredictable and dangerous for the very existence of a nation.

France

The French are the standard-bearers of freedom, equality and justice and feel superior to the other nations of Europe, on account of this fact. They resent the influence of foreign powers over the continent of Europe and the French state. The French pride, which is common amongst her people, has been damaged by her fall from the international situation, and by the development of American control over Europe and Africa. She seeks to diminish the influence of America within the region, and therefore works to counter the policies that the Americans employ to achieve domination. In addition to this she works tirelessly to re-assert her own supremacy over Europe and hence once again influence the international situation. In the face of American domination over the world, and an internal power struggle within Europe, France has become a weak nation that exerts little control over her former colonies. Indeed, in attempts to salvage her own pride, she promotes the French language and culture amongst her former colonies.
France does not favour a continued European role for NATO or NATO expansion into the eastern bloc, as it sees these as a threat to its interests. She therefore favours a strong European security organisation such as the Western European Union, under which Britain despatched troops for the second Gulf War, in order to diminish American control in the area, secure the Mediterrenean area to her own liking and limit the influence of Germany. France has been absent from the integrated command structure of NATO since 1966, and under the presidency of Chirac shows signs of wishing to re-enter with a greater role, especially concerning the sixth fleet of NATO and the southern flank. The United States strengthened the role of Germany in Europe as that of France weakened, and France exploited this to use Germany as an arbitrator between often-differing American and French positions. In the early 1990s the French and the Germans collaborated on the formation of a Franco-German Eurocorps, and Alain Juppe, the former French prime minister, called for a “European army numbering 350,000, independent of United States control and answering to the European Union”. Such moves obviously caused discontent amongst the Americans who feared that the development of the European Union as a military organisation would undermine their plans for a Europe under NATO.

The relationship between France and Germany seems to have soured in recent times as illustrated by the comments of Prime Minister Jospin subsequent to the G7 Denver Summit where he accused Germany of being a party to the establishment of American hegemony over Europe. The likely reason for such a slump in Franco-German relationships is the frustration felt by France towards Germany’s position vis-a-vis NATO expansion and the role of the Franco-German EuroCorps.

The southern flank of NATO remains the main focus of French policy towards NATO, since she regards the Mediterranean and North African region as presenting the greatest threat to French national security in the form of “Islamic radicalism”. Military and political crises in Algeria, Turkey and the Balkans have ensured that the French continue to view developments in the southern flank with pessimism. France therefore targets control of NATO’s southern flank, however this seems unlikely when one considers the strength of the United States within the North Atlantic Treaty. If she is unable to gain control of the southern flank, she may consider the addition of Turkey, Tunisia and Morocco to the European Union.

Britain

The seeking of interests and the striking of alliances forms a major part of British foreign policy, and this has particularly been the case since her fall from the position of the leading state to the position she occupies today. In particular the role of Britain within NATO has been tantamount to providing her with a means of maintaining global and regional influence inspite of diminished resources.

The basis upon which the British view the various European security alliances is their wish to retain sovereignty over foreign policy, and hence their influence on the international situation. As a consequence of this, Britain is unwilling to surrender her sovereignty to the European Union by entering into an integrated European political and military alliance. Conversely, Britain’s role within NATO does not limit her sovereignty within the domain of foreign policy, so she is not opposed in principle to the continued presence of NATO within Europe, however she works to curtail the influence of other major powers within the region.

Britain has expressed a desire to expand NATO as mentioned by Malcolm Rifkind, former Defence Secretary, in a speech in Brussels in January 1995 when he said “There is of course a momentum at work now. We have launched an examination in NATO to determine how the alliance will enlarge. We must ensure that the alliance controls its future direction rather than merely responding to pressure from outside. But that does not mean that we should be reserved about the principle of enlargement, which I believe unreservedly would be beneficial to us”.
It seems as if Britain may be forced to pragmatically accept the principle of NATO enlargement in order to prevent the ceding of influence in East-Central Europe to Germany, who may be inclined to fill the Eastern “strategic vacuum” in the absence of NATO enlargement.

Conclusion

Almost 50 years after the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, the nature, role and relevance of the alliance are still issues of vital global importance. Today’s leading nation, the United States, is seeking to spread her wings over the four corners of the globe so that she can seek and maintain her interests globally. The issues that surround NATO illustrate the rivalry that exists amongst the capitalist states as a result of the capitalist political method of colonialism.
As the world approaches a new millennium, America stands almost unchallenged at the pinnacle of global leadership. The leading state of tomorrow is the Islamic Khilafah State, which is an ideological state, whose primary aim is to convey the da’wa to the world. It is incumbent upon those who shoulder the responsibilities of this noblest of tasks, to acquaint themselves with the international situation and events so that they can perceive the vision which they have for this glorious Ummah. The subject of NATO is one that has profound implications for an Islamic State established in the Islamic lands. The politician would be the one who considers the conflict between French and American policy, and whether the hurt pride of the French at the hands of the Americans is less or more important to them than their hate for Islam. He would also be the one who considers the proximity in the relationship between America and Germany, and whether this would be a matter of greater importance to the German nation compared with their recent history of ‘tolerance’.

The conflict between the United States and certain European powers is by no means over. Indeed the leadership in both Britain and France is in the hands of individuals who have already shown their readiness to disagree with American policies and be recognised on the world arena as international statesmen. With the imminent return of the ruling with what Allah revealed, the nature of this conflict and others will be considered in detail by the policy makers and strategists of this Ummah, in order to once again lead humanity with the haq.

27/7/1997

Analysis: Big winner from EU expansion: Washington

The European Union's coming enlargement to 25 members, including many former Soviet bloc countries now entering NATO, seems sure to increase the United States' overall influence in Europe and within the EU — while putting aside for the time being the idea of an emergent Germany leading the continent from Berlin.

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The entry of these essentially pro-American countries of Central and Eastern Europe into the EU, according to a German official, also signifies the end of any attempts within the EU to define itself and its evolving foreign and security policy as aligned against the United States.

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"You can no longer muster a majority for that," said Karsten Voight, the German Foreign Ministry's coordinator for German-American relations.

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These orientations, previously a subject of wary articulation in public, are now being openly acknowledged by EU policymakers as they prepare for a summit meeting in Copenhagen on Thursday and Friday that will open the community further eastward and address Turkey's possible membership.

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For policymakers in several European countries, the new members-to-be from the old Soviet world, after a decade's transition from subjugation, remain existentially concerned with maintaining their national independence and identity. This means that the new EU members continue to see the United States, rather than any European neighbor or the EU itself, as the principal guarantor of their young democracies, and the essential political reference point in creating a future that is secure and prosperous.

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As far as the controversial candidacy of Turkey goes, the United States, at virtually no cost and at high profit in its relations with Ankara, has been the single, unequivocal backer of its entry into the EU for decades. Until recently, much of Europe appeared to be satisfied with making long-term assurances to Turkey on eventual membership that some EU leaders clearly hoped they would never have to fulfill.

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With Turkey's future in the EU still vague, the increase in American influence in the EU is channeled through the former Soviet satellites.

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"What they want to join is the euro-Atlantic community," said Denis MacShane, Britain's minister for Europe, using a phrase heard with frequency these days that reflects the newcomers' mindset blending the EU and NATO increasingly together. "They want the Atlantic to be the same width as the Oder or Dneipr rivers."

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Although the United States through James Baker 3d, when he was secretary of state, specifically talked as the Berlin Wall came down of forging a more "organic" relationship with the EU — perhaps with less conviction than opportunism — it has obviously no interest now in speaking officially about a development that is to its advantage, but enormously sensitive in relation to European self-esteem.

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President Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland caught that note recently in insisting, "To say that we're a Trojan horse of the United States" in the EU "is unjust." But he also asserted that "there would be no Europe without American democracy," and that the EU's stringent conditions for entry meant risking "what there is left of enthusiasm" for joining the organization.

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German leaders were reported struck by the bluntly pro-American tone of a recent initiative of the so-called Vilnius Group, 10 former Soviet bloc countries, presenting themselves as part of a potential coalition committed with the United States to the disarming of Iraq.

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A declaration by the group, virtually all EU candidates, coinciding with the NATO summit meeting in Prague in November, showed them to be ahead in terms of support for the Americans than many of the EU's senior member states. In describing their ultimate goals in being participants in both the EU and NATO, the countries spoke of their commitment to peace and stability throughout the "euro-Atlantic community."

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All the same, America's increased insertion in the process of European unification is not what history might have expected.

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In the early 1990s, following Germany's reunification and the fall of the Soviet Union, it was widely assumed that Germany would be the dominant beneficiary of Europe's opening to the East. Besides the economic advantages of Berlin's proximity, it was often thought that Germany would provide political leadership for the countries of the old Soviet orbit and in the process emerge as the essential political force, East and West, in all of Europe.

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As discussions about shifts in Europe's political center of gravity to Berlin became commonplace, countries like France or the Netherlands guardedly expressed concern about German predominance in a reorganized and revitalized Europe.

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But reality worked in other ways. In Germany, the last decade has been one of economic stagnation, with a vast drain of resources going toward absorbing the debris of East German Communist rule. In the process, the old West German type of high-cost, low-risk capitalism virtually disappeared as a model for development.

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While the German economy has remained predominant in commerce with Eastern Europe, its power diminished overall in European and international terms. At the same time, neither Germany's political reach nor Germany's comfort in acting as an initiator or defender of democracy palpably increased.

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In the end, Germany was seen less as a prime mover in opening up NATO membership to the former satellite states, than as a hard, largely self-interested bargainer laying down tough economic and social conditions for the individual applicants' entry into the EU. In the process, what 10 years ago was once the notion of Eastern Europe (or Turkey) lining up in grateful allegiance behind Germany on a unified Continent, disintegrated.

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Voigt, the Social Democrat who serves as the German Foreign Ministry's coordinator for American relations, put the situation this way: "The Germans are needed, but they have to think more generally. There is a problem, and it involves the view of a Germany acting provincially."

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More important, with the addition of the former Soviet bloc countries to the EU, Voigt said: "Any concept attempting to define the EU as an organization that is basically against the United States is no longer able to muster a majority. That temptation is finished. As an enlarged Europe comes into being and defines itself, that view of (an antagonistic) Europe, or that American analysis of what the EU means, is overtaken."

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This interpretation or perception appears to have reached some of France's most sophisticated European planners, a number of whom have been the most prone to regard an expanded EU as creating a global force to counter-balance for the United States.

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Jacques Delors, the former president of the European Commission, now talks, for example, of a Europe whose ambition is to be "influential." This contrasts with the French notion of "Europe puissance" — or roughly, Europe as a competitor for world political power — that has had extensive appeal in Paris.

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But interpretations of the significance of the growth of American influence through the enlargement processes, and at a time the EU is trying a more unified foreign policy and security approach, is not characterized only as one of advantage to the United States.

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Poland, for example, has been describing itself as a bridge to understanding between the United States and Europe.

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Friedbert Pflueger, the foreign policy spokesman of the Christian Democrat grouping in the German Bundestag, said flatly that the "influence of the United States will be fostered by the Central and East European countries which look more to the U.S. than to Europe."

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But he analyzed the circumstances as essentially positive ones, especially in a situation where opinion polls and politicians in Europe, as well as the substantially higher economic growth rates projected for the United States than for the EU in 2003, have recently emphasized their conflicts and differences.

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"This double enlargement by Central and East European countries," Pflueger said, "is a great chance. The idea that these new countries could serve as a bridge has real importance to both sides of the Atlantic, which are growing apart."

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