Wikileaks and the New Global Order: America's Wake-up Call
"Underlying the gossip and analysis sent back to Washington is an awareness
from many US officials stationed abroad of quite how ineffective -- and
often counter-productive -- much US foreign policy is."
by Jonathan Cook
Global Research, November 30, 2010
The Wikileaks disclosure this week of confidential cables from United
States embassies has been debated chiefly in terms either of the damage to
Washington's reputation or of the questions it raises about national
security and freedom of the press.
The headlines aside, most of the information so far revealed from the
250,000 documents is hardly earth-shattering, even if it often runs starkly
counter to the official narrative of the US as the benevolent global
policeman, trying to maintain order amid an often unruly rabble of
underlings.
Is it really surprising that US officials appear to have been trying
to spy on senior United Nations staff, and just about everyone else for that
matter? Or that Israel has been lobbying strenuously for military action to
be taken against Iran? Or even that Saudi Arabia feels threatened by an
Iranian nuclear bomb? All of this was already largely understood; the leaks
have simply provided official confirmation.
The new disclosures, however, do provide a useful insight, captured in
the very ordinariness of the diplomatic correspondence, into Washington's
own sense of the limits on its global role -- an insight that was far less
apparent in the previous Wikileaks revelations on the US army's wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Underlying the gossip and analysis sent back to Washington is an
awareness from many US officials stationed abroad of quite how
ineffective -- and often counter-productive -- much US foreign policy is.
While the most powerful nation on earth is again shown to be more than
capable of throwing its weight around in bullying fashion, a cynical
resignation nonetheless shines through many of the cables, an implicit
recognition that even the top dog has to recognise its limits.
That is most starkly evident in the messages sent by the embassy in
Pakistan, revealing the perception among local US officials that the country
is largely impervious to US machinations and is in danger of falling
entirely out the ambit of Washington's influence.
In the cables sent from Tel Aviv, a similar fatalism reigns. The
possibility that Israel might go it alone and attack Iran is contemplated as
though it were an event Washington has no hope of preventing. US largesse of
billions of dollars in annual aid and military assistance to Israel appears
to confer zero leverage on its ally's policies.
The same sense of US ineffectiveness is highlighted by the Wikileaks
episode in another way. Once, in the pre-digital era, the most a
whistleblower could hope to achieve was the disclosure of secret documents
limited to his or her area of privileged access. Even then the affair could
often be hushed up and make no lasting impact.
Now, however, it seems the contents of almost the entire system of US
official communications is vulnerable to exposure. And anyone with a
computer has a permanent and easily disseminated record of the evidence.
The impression of a world running out of American control has become a
theme touching all our lives over the past decade.
The US invented and exported financial deregulation, promising it to
be the epitome of the new capitalism that was going to offer the world
economic salvation. The result is a banking crisis that now threatens to
topple the very governments in Europe who are Washington's closest allies.
As the contagion of bad debt spreads through the system, we are likely
to see a growing destabilisation of the Washington order across the globe.
At the same time, the US army's invasions in the Middle East are
stretching its financial and military muscle to tearing point, defining for
a modern audience the problem of imperial over-reach. Here too the upheaval
is offering potent possibilities to those who wish to challenge the current
order.
And then there is the biggest crisis facing Washington: of a gradually
unfolding environmental catastrophe that has been caused chiefly by the same
rush for world economic dominance that spawned the banking disaster.
The scale of this problem is overawing most scientists, and starting
to register with the public, even if it is still barely acknowledged beyond
platitudes by US officials.
The repercussions of ecological meltdown will be felt not just by
polar bears and tribes living on islands. It will change the way we live --
and whether we live -- in ways that we cannot hope to foresee.
At work here is a set of global forces that the US, in its hubris,
believed it could tame and dominate in its own cynical interests. By the
early 1990s that arrogance manifested itself in the claim of the "end of
history": the world's problems were about to be solved by US-sponsored
corporate capitalism.
The new Wikileaks disclosures will help to dent those assumptions. If
a small group of activists can embarrass the most powerful nation on earth,
the world's finite resources and its laws of nature promise a much harsher
lesson.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.
His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and
the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing
Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website
is www.jkcook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
***
From: Arbeter Ring
Subject: Celebrating Earl Robinson's Centennial! Sun., Dec. 5, @2 pm
Dec 1, 2010
Happy Khaneke, Everyone!
Celebrating Earl Robinson's Centennial!
with featured soloists KB Solomon and Uncle Ruthie!
Centennial Concert, Sun Dec 5 at 2 pm
At the Arbiter Ring, 1525 S. Robertson Blvd.
1/2 mile S. of Pico Blvd., LA. 310.552.2007
Our Voices of Conscience Chorus and invited soloists will perform an
all-Earl Robinson concert celebrating his Centennial. We'll do classic songs
such as "Joe Hill," "Black and White," "The Quilting Bee," "The House I Live
In," "Spring Song," "Abe Lincoln," and we'll also do the famous "Ballad for
Americans" with the solo role performed by world-class operatic
bass-baritone KB Solomon. An additional treat will be Uncle Ruthie Buell's
one-women rendition of "The Lonesome Train." If this is the kind of music
you identify with, please plan to join us for a wonderful experience of
immersion in Earl's music. Cosponsored by the Jewish Labor Committee and the
Friends of Earl Robinson.
Admission will be $12 at the door. Light refreshments included. Invite
your friends! .
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