Afterword: Europe and the political geography of global confrontation. A world system perspective on Behind the War on Terror (N. Mosaddeq Ahmed)

Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq by: Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Manufacturer: Clairview Books Release Date: 23 June, 2003 Media: Paperback Sales Rank: 3,781 This afterword to this brilliant book starts from the assumption that both Europe and the Arab world are facing the same tendency of a basic and underlying shift in global economic activity away from the West of the Euro/Asian/African landmass towards the countries of the Pacific, and that the United States Government’s main interest today is in preserving and intensifying the US Government global hegemony after the end of the Cold War, and to maximize access to global wealth and energy resources in a world that looks more and more like the late 19th Century. The conditions of this political economy of the 21st Century were spelled out by the world system theory school of thought in the social sciences, pioneered by such scholars as Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Volker Bornschier, Christopher K. Chase-Dunn, Andre Gunder Frank, and Immanuel Wallerstein (Professor Wallerstein’s work is actually referred to in the book). Chances to arrive at an alternative world order – one that is based on strengthened United Nations, on global cooperation, and global civilizational dialogue, were lost in the decade after the end of the Cold War. The positioning in the global power game, and nothing else, was the reason for this Iraq war, and forget all about the fight against “WMD” (weapons of mass destruction) and all the other “holy” principles. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is to be specially praised for his well-balanced conclusions and analysis of the foreign policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, based on dissenting, but very senior and well-informed Israeli sources. Yes to Medinat Israel – the secular State of Israel in the framework of the encompassing peace process (Medinat Israel being the Hebrew usage by Israeli politicians from David Ben Gurion to Yitzhak Rabin, referring to a democratic, secular Jewish state), but political disagreement with a concept of an Eretz Israel, in Likud usage also a Hebrew word for “State of Israel”, but referring to the biblical concept of a much larger and non-secular entity. America’s long term agenda under Bush, the argument runs, is not just interested in establishing its vision in the Near East (something that the present book brilliantly shows), but in the end is interested in blocking European peaceful ascent to global leadership – as envisioned by the European Union’s Lisbon agenda until 2000 – at the same time. As it is well-known, at the Lisbon European Council (March 2000), the European Union set itself a new strategic goal for the next decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. The rift between Europe and America – especially between France, Germany and Russia on the one hand and the US on the other hand, has a very basic political economic background – the growing hegemonic rivalry between the world’s leading capitalist blocs, that characterize world capitalism since 1450. An EU comprising up to 40 nations of the third and fourth enlargement wave indeed would be a major change in the structure of the international system and could be driven by America’s power play, but also by its own internal deficient dynamics, characterized by low innovation and high government spending, into such a position. A large, wider Europe, driven into hegemonic rivalry by the present hyperpower play by the United States - is a somber scenario, it enjoys a high kind of probability, and it has dire world political consequences.