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Future: Tense: The Coming World Order?

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Gwynne Dyer is an excellent example of a person with tremendous experience of international relations and an uncommon grasp of the broad sweep of history. When he turns his sights on events in Iraq his clear and clean non-ideological logic sees some pretty harrowing things:

1) The war on terror was never part of the agenda in Iraq. It was all about a small clique of neo-conservatives ideologues in the Bush administration that, for the first time had the ability to inflict their vision on universial American dominance on the world, irrespective of the needs and analysis of other countries and contrary to the norms of international law developed since WWI.

2) The Bush administation played directly into the hands of Al Queada by invading a sovereign nation that was no direct threat to the US (iraq), making America the bogeyman of international politics and the perceived oppressors of the Arabs.

3) That Americans have little ability to see that their place in the world has changed: it is no longer the dominant economy and it is no longer the shining beacon of freedom. New countries Russia, and Indonesia and even China are finding the path to a rough democracy. They all are doing it by themselves, they have had no help from America, nor do they require it -- why is Iraq different.

4) That unilateral action of the US undermines the norms of international order build up since WWI and central to any notion of stability in the new century. It is this future stability that is directly threatened by the actions of the US in Iraq.

Since the US economy cannot support a war of Pax Americana for a long duration and the US electorate can only tolerate small casualties, the US will inevitably be forced from this unilateral stance in the long run to either isolation and withdrawal from international institutions.

The only real question Dyer admits is how much damage will the US and its quest for Pax Americana do to the system of international laws before they are forced to either be isolated or allow themselves to be taken more within the international order of nation states supporting the UN and the rule of law? Sooner is better than later -- hence American needs to lose this war in Iraq.

Dyer says that it is in the interests of the world that the US lose the war in Iraq sooner rather than later. It is up to the world to help bring the US back into the international order by offering her a way out of Iraq with inducements and an expanded role for the UN in Iraq, and other hot spots around the world.

Dyer is really spot-on much of his analysis, but there is a really troubling point about this book: his cold lucid, non-ideological analysis is something that the rest of the democratic world considers a norm, but it is a style that is absent from the name calling, paranoid world of US Political Culture (if you disagree with me you must be a liberal of a conservative. This is a society where these two honourable terms have been turned into profane names by the polular media --- remember that there are people such as Rush Limbaugh & Anne Coulter, Fox News, etc. whom people actually listen to in the US! -- just across the border in Canada one would be laughed at if one were to cite one of these people or media outlets as an authorative source on just about anything). But this culture of ideology, bad manners, selfishness and paranoia is what passes for debate in the press and the airwaves of the US. That culture excludes the kind of analysis that Dyer brings!

Dyer accurately points out that the ability to constrain the neo-conservatives was bi-partisan. Reagan, Bush and Clinton all repressed an urge to implement Pax Americana on the world. Bush Sr. specifically after Gulf War I. But 9/11 was the trigger that allow the neo-conservatives to seize foreign policy. Terrorism was a means towards an ideological end and they were ready to stoke the ever burning fires of US paranoia to further their agenda of Pax Americana.

In this sense both the terrorists and the neoconservatives served each others' ends... it seems ironic --- Pax Americana was extended, and Al Queada got the "Great Satan" to be in Iraq as a symbol of US oppression over Arabs -- both furthered their ends with 9/11.

The task now is for the rest of the world to help the US out of Iraq before it runs roughshod over what is left of international order. We must save the US from themselves or at least hope some sane international leadership comes to the for within the Bush Administration. The longer the logic of Pax Americana rules, the worse off the whole world.....

Ever since 9/11, I've been wondering what went wrong. Obviously, we did something to really anger somebody. Shows how naive I was, I guess. I subscribed to a few American leftist magazines, hoping for an insight, but I have to say the answers I was looking for are all right here in this book. Why did we attack Iraq? Why were the World Trade Center and Pentagon (and nearby me here in Pennsylvania) attacked? Who did it, and why? Is it really just about oil?

Screeds by the likes of Michael Moore are funny and fun to read, but they don't answer the bigger questions. We know Bushco is doing terrible things to our economy, the environment, he's working hard to roll back every inch of the New Deal...but what's he up to in Iraq? The answer is in this book.

I'm very grateful to the author for publishing this insightful analysis. Note, however, that when I ordered this book, Amazon told me it would be weeks before it shipped. After a month went by, they said it would be a while, was I still interested? At this point I cancelled the order, and ordered it from Amazon.ca (Canada). It seems that, as of a few months ago, this book was VERY hard to come by in the US. Published by a Canadian publishing house only, this book should be on everybody's reading list. I don't know why it's not a bestseller, quite frankly. But it is in the top 200. Quite an achievement for a book that you can't order!

If you can get your hands on it, please read it. It will clear up a lot of confusion and misinformation for you. At least, it did for me.

I'd love to hear this book read by the author, one of my great heroes http://mindprod.com/heroes.html#DYER When I read it, I relish imagining his dry delivery. This would be great book to issue on cassette. It is a frustrating book if you want to use it for debating others, since it has no index and no footnotes to back up what he says. It is an overview of how the Iraq war fits into history, past and future. It gives a convincing argument why Bush invaded Iraq. It explains why Bush's jihad against the U.N. is so dangerous for us all. It also explains why the USA is overreacting to the threat of terrorism.

Taking the time to base his arguments in historical context, laying out his logic carefully, Dyer outlines the threat of a new world order that closely resemble Orwell's "1984". He offers a simple prescription to avoid an escalation of unilateralism and the demise of the UN: the USA must leave Iraq now. I have often defended the actions of the Bush administration to my Canadian friends but this book has convinced me that I have to reconsider my position. Those wishing to have an informed opinion on US foreign policy will find this book useful.

A longtime expert in military and international affairs sketches a plausible and unhappy prognosis for international relations in the 21st century.

As a Canadian, I was in the minority among people I knew in supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I was influenced by reading "The Economist", which endorsed the invasion on the grounds that Saddam had flouted numerous UN resolutions and had attacked three or four neighboring countries, and by reading Khidhir Hamza's "Saddam's Bombmaker", an account of Iraq's nuclear-weapons program by the man responsible for running it. I fully expected the invaders to find "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq.

None has been. Nor was there ever any plausible connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Those of us who thought the invasion made sense have been made to look increasingly foolish. Our only excuse is ignorance--but what is the excuse of the U.S. and British administrations, whose military intelligence must surely have been better than mine?

Gwynne Dyer, Canadian-born soldier and military analyst, explains why, in his view, the U.S. is in Iraq, and more importantly, what the implications of that invasion are for the future of global peace and security. His previous book, "Ignorant Armies", was a clear, brief account of how the Iraq war unfolded, but left me unsatisfied as to its true motivation. Here Dyer addresses that question, and has pretty much succeeded in persuading me that he has found the answer.

I never bought the "oil" argument, much less the "revenge on behalf of dad" argument--and neither does Dyer. But in some ways I found Dyer's argument even harder to swallow: that the U.S. invaded as a pure expression of readiness to use military power to subdue those who defy it, to send a signal to national governments that the world is now effectively under a Pax Americana, enforced by the military might of its sole surviving superpower. The days of multilateralism and international law, mediated through the United Nations, are over. There's a new sheriff in town, and you'd better not get him riled.

Dyer, with his knowledge of military history and his background in exploring the causes of the world wars (he created highly respected radio and TV documentary series on these in Canada), makes the case that the invasion of Iraq is not simply one more illegal military action in a long series that the UN has been unable to prevent, but a decisive moment of paradigm-shift in international relations. He spends time explaining how the rise of multilateralism, through its agencies the League of Nations and later the UN, in response to the unprecedented horrors of World Wars 1 and 2, was a unique and precious advance by humanity in reining in nations' militarism in the face of progress in the technology of killing. After World War 2, world leaders understood clearly that a nuclear-armed World War 3 must be avoided at almost any cost. Therefore even the mighty U.S. submitted to multilateral checks and balances and the authority of international law, however imperfect.

According to Dyer, with the invasion of Iraq--a project hatched and planned by American "neoconservative" ideologues in the 1990s--the U.S. administration is seeking to push the UN and international law into irrelevance, and take over the roles of world cop, judge, and jury. In Dyer's view, the failure of this project is inevitable, as indeed is the U.S.'s defeat in Iraq, where it will be beaten as it was in Vietnam and as the USSR was in Afghanistan--and for the same reasons: no invading occupying army has ever beaten a homegrown guerrilla force on its own soil.

But in the meantime, irreparable harm can and will be done to the international multilateral order. Countries, frightened of the "new sheriff" who no longer acknowledges the authority of the UN, will band together in bilateral alliances--exactly as they did in the years before World War 1 and , after the demise of the League of Nations, World War 2. Dyer has long held that these systems of bilateral alliances were the direct cause of the world wars. With a new system of bilateral alliances in place, the tinder for World War 3 will be set. And of course, the technology for killing has advanced tremendously since 1945--advanced and also spread.

The book's authority is eroded a bit by the lack of footnotes, index, and bibliography. We must rely on Dyer's personal authority, which, to be sure, is considerable. Also, no doubt due to the dark tone of his prognosis, Dyer's characteristic low-key wit and irreverence are less in evidence here than they are in his personal interviews and columns.

But if you're looking for a brief, penetrating, authoritative look at the global implications of the current U.S. occupation of Iraq, written from outside the Punch-and-Judy arena of American domestic political debate, this is your book.

Dr. Dyer's book is thoughtful and well argued. I found it to be a plausible predictor of the future. I have not always agreed with Dr. Dyer's arguments but, with regards to this book, I found myself falling in line with his conclusions more often than disagreeing with them. It is worth a read and anyone interested in international history or international relations would find it enjoyable and at times, alarming.

This is a thought-provoking analysis of the current world political situation in which the US has decided to go their own way and claim that the UN is slipping into "irrelevance". Even if you don't believe or agree with all the ideas in this book, it is very effective at opening one's mind to the possibilities.

Unfortunately, the conclusions are rather frightening and depressing and I don't see much hope coming from the present US government or popular opinion. But this book helps explain what is happening now with historical context that you simply won't find in the mass media.

Highly recommended.

I have always been a fan of Dyer's columns in our newspaper that we get on the weekend (our little town doesn't even carry decent columnists, so we have to get our "real" news from a bigger newspaper from a bigger town an hour away from us). I have been reading Dyer since I was a young girl. My dad and husband are fans of his writings too. In fact, my dad lent us this book and throughout this entire book, I kept telling my husband that he really really needs to read this.

Just recently, Bush announces his intentions in keeping a military base in Iraq. Dyer mentioned this in this book written three years ago. Just recently, there are a series of actions and speeches that was "predicted" in this book three years ago. It is eerie to read something that resonates in today's series of events and realize that Dyer had foreseen some of this years ago. I am not making Dyer out to be a prophet or anything like that ~~ but he seems to be the most clear-sighted journalist out there right now (especially more so since Molly Ivins have passed on). When I read this book, there was a lot of "a ha!" moments that I very rarely get while reading about current affairs. Usually, I end up feeling more confused than I did when I first read a book. Not this time.

Dyer explains a lot in this little book that is just chock-full of information, quotes, instances and ideologies. First, he explains what Islamist is and how similar it is to the Fundamentalists in Christianity ~~ except Muslims don't have the same word for Fundamentalists that we have in our language. He then explains the Islamist viewpoint (which most Muslims do not share). He explains bin Laden's goals. He explains the neo-conservatives' goals. He goes over the history of the world in the last 60 years. He explains briefly the history of civilization of the last 6,000+ years and how it changed the course of the world.

Like a lot of the reviewers, I had a hard time buying the neoconservatives' explanations for attacking Iraq. I thought at first maybe it was for the oil, but it just didn't jive with everything else. I knew it wasn't going after Saddam because of "what he said about my daddy" ~~ it was too juvenile. (Then again, anything can go nowadays, I guess.) When Dyer explains the Reagan administration, the first Bush administration and the current administration ~~ it all started to make sense. Combine that with the history of the previous world wars and the United Nations formation ~~ it is all starting to make sense.

I am not sure why this book isn't touted more in the public view. Dyer isn't writing like a madman spouting off things ~~ in fact, his book is very reasonable. He writes with precision and with a world view that not necessarily is anti-American, but just with a much different perspective and a much clearer foresight than we Americans are getting from our own media and government. I didn't get the impression that the world thinks we're dumb Americans ~~ there is just a perplexed viewpoint of why we're heading down this path and why the rest of us aren't seeing it. It's also a dangerous path we're on and finally, after four years, other people are starting to raise the alarm.

Just don't forget, Dyer was one of the first ones to sound the alarm when he wrote this book.

6-10-07

The first 100 pages or so of Dyer's book discusses, briefly, a variety of explanations why the U.S> invaded Iraq. These include oil (unlikely in Dyer's veiw), the neo-conservative desire to crush an important enemy of Israel (Sniegoski in his "The Transparant Cabal" provides a much more detailed analysis of this hypothesis), the need to attack a state in order to show the world that the U.S. in on top of the world, to "eliminate" a terrorist threat (Dyer considers this preposterous) and the desire to "establish" democracy in the middle east (another ridiculous expalanation in Dyer's view), amongst others. The book is not particularly strong here.

Where the book is strong, however, is the remaining 80 or so pages. Here Dyer makes the argument that the U.S. , by invading Iraq unilateally, has set a preecedent that undermines the underpinnings of international relations since the end of the second world war. That is, a nation only has the right to fight another (attack another nation) in self-defense within the framework of the U.N. Dyer argues that the U.S., by setting this precedent, may have established a justification for a pattern of behavior that legitimizes unilateral military action and hence forces upon the worl the need for a multi-polar set of alliances that increase the odds of a major war in the future. Only by acting quickly to reverse this precedent , Dyer believes , can the legitimization of unilateral military action and the alliance system it will lead to be stopped.

I've been a big fan of Mr. Dyer since his documentary days on CBC, so this book is pretty self-recommending. The only question is, why did it take me so long to get around to it? Perhaps it has something to do with no American publisher having the brains, or the guts, to bring it out over here?

At this point there's nothing I can add to the reviews below about why you should read this book, so let me enter a few caveats.

I was most struck by Mr. Dyer's bizarre handling of the whole "9/11 conspiracy" issue, or rather his rather revealing non-handling. Dyer believes that "neo-conservatives in the administration deliberately and consciously hijack[ed] the national panic over the 9/11 attacks in order to impose their own quire different agenda on US foreign policy, starting with the invasion of Iraq." [p. 169] He then sees that he has to distance himself from two more radical views, that "the neo-conservatives who dominated the Bush administration ...must have either (a) planned it or (b) deliberately ignored prior knowledge about it." [ibid].

These are what others have called MIHOP (make it happen on purpose) and LIHOP (let it happen on purpose). Mr. Dyer's entire response to MIHOP is: Muslims believe it, so it must be false, and it is "frequently buttressed by the outright lie...that Jews working in the Twin Towers were warned not to go to work" [and therefore, must be some kind of anti-Semitic slur]. That's it, quite literally: two, completely irrelevant sentences! Read it yourself: last paragraph of page 169.

LIHOP is then dealt with for two page, 170-71, and initially dismissed as "a myth [like] the conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination," by which I assume he does not mean, "will eventually be endorsed by the Congressional committee investigating it decades from now," as the "Kennedy conspiracy" was. After some more blather, his argument is given, again in two sentences, on page 171: the odds are "approximately zero" that a conspiracy so vast could keep quiet, and the odds that any senior office would risk the death penalty for treason are "absolutely zero." Case closed.

Mr. Dyer is so concerned to prevent any association with these kooks that he even turns his back on his Canadian heritage, and endorses the death penalty! Apparently, the threat of a death sentence makes the risk of a crime being committed "absolutely zero"! And what a ringing endorsement of our American government officials, no one of whom could possibly commit treason!

Mr. Dyer's case is so weak that even he can't keep it up: on page 213, he blithely asserts that "the United States went to the trouble of manufacturing a fake North Vietnamese naval attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin before starting the bombing of North Vietnam." Well, I guess that one did get out, but where are the treason trials? After all, this fake attack resulted in far more American deaths than 9/11 and Iraq combined.

This is not the place to argue the case for either MIHOP or LIHOP, so I would refer you to any number of books with a rather more nuanced idea of how things happen in the world of moles, patsies, dupes, such as Webster Tarpley's 9/11 Synthetic Terror or David Griffin's Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, which does an especially good job exploding the myths that government conspiracies don`t exist, or not in America, or at least not against our own people.
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One thing you will notice, however, is that both books are just filled with references and notes, like most books on 9/11. Mr. Dyer, however, has given us a book with no notes, no index and no bibliography. Apparently we are to just take everything on his say-so. Ask yourself, which kind of book is more likely to be myth, and which scholarship?

The whole thing is so shoddily done, that one can only assume that Mr. Dyer is simply trying to keep on the good side of the establishment. Perhaps he is worried about what happens to those who let on in public what they know?

Again, Mr. Dyer is eager to maintain his establishment credentials by distinguishing the "good" intervention in Bosnia from the "bad" intervention in Iraq. So he presents the myth of Milosevic, the "vicious sponsor of ethnic cleansing and mass murder," [p. 225] although in the next paragraph he is already backtracking, where Milosevic give only "tacit approval" (eliminating that pesky need to actually prove evidence of intent). Unfortunately, Mr. Dyer's record of lying about Bosnia is preserved on the web for all to see: http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m051503.html

On page 153, Mr. Dyer, after appropriating material, in that non-footnoting way of his, from Rise of the Vulcans, perpetuates the myth that the Vulcans pressed Cheney on Bush. Actually, Mr. Cheney nominated himself, unaided, as documented by John Nicols essential book, Dick.

Finally, Mr. Dyer likes to cozy up to America, or at least hedge his bets for the future, by making a show of acknowledging that America, after all, did "invent" democracy [p. 151 and elsewhere]. The idea that America was, or was even intended to be, a democracy is an absurd and outdated myth needs to be put to rest, perhaps by a reading of Daniel Lazare's Velvet Revolution, which though dealing with the Bush Coup, gives along the way a concise version of his earlier book, The Frozen Republic.

Despite these flaws, Mr. Dyer's book is probably the best one out there for getting an understanding of the mess we're in today, and where we're likely to go (hint: it's not pretty).