-
Lobster Summer 2009William Clark and Tim PendryAn exchange on
New LabourTom EastonThe Jewish Holocaust: held captive byits
remembrance or liberated by itslessons?Anthony FrewinFrost/Nixont
or, a load of old dickTerry HanstockRe: spy history; I-ops; Iraq
fall-out andmore
John McFallMoscow on the Hudson? BrianLanders' Empires
ApartSimon MatthewsOn the Israel lobbyScott NewtonThe meaning of
the BudgetRobin RamsayThe economic crisisThe political
assassinations of theI 960sWhy are we with Uncle Sam?Paul
ToddPre-emptive war, the Israel lobbyand US military doctrine
ISSN Ultr-t-[q3b
ilililffiJillffiUililil|llllll
57(The last hard copy Lobster)
f4.00
-
Lobster 57
Parish Notices
This is the final hard copy of LobsteF.... but notthe final
issue of Lobster. I am merely giving up the labourof producing and
distributing 1000 copies of a 50 pagemagazine. The next issue will
appear
- in precisely which
form I haven't decided: a blog? future issues looking
likethis?
- on the Lobster website, and it will be free. Check
the Lobster website in early December.I will repay outstanding
subscription money as far as I
can; but be patient, this will take a while to do. I will
startby repaying those who are owed the most and work
fromthere.
If there are readers who do not have access to theInternet I can
only apologise and suggest that such access,via public libraries,
is no longer difficult to arrange andfrequently free of charge
these days.
Producing Lobster has dominated my life for a longtime now and I
am just tired of doing it. A couple or threeyears ago I thought
that there was still a big differencebetween hard copy and the
Internet, that the Internet wasn'tserious, with no ultimate legal
requirement to get thingsaccurate. But, in practice, as the
documentation in themagazine shows, we get almost all our
information fromthe Net these days and the distinction between the
twomedia no longer seems so important. We know what areand are not
serious websites. Essentially Lobster has beenovertaken by
technology. When hard copy was all therewas, producing a liule
magazine, an alternative magazine,seemed a reasonable response to
the state of the print mediaat the time. Now it doesn't.
And the supply of original material is declining. Thereis a lot
of me in this issue because I had no other suitablecopy. (But if I
was a young writer would I think of writingfor a magazine with a
circulation of 1000 or would I put iton a website and be read by
many more people?)
Robin Ramsay
Lobster is a member of INK, theIndependent
News Collective, trade association of theUK alternative press.
wvyw.ink.uk.com
Contents
03 Reflections on the 'cult of the offensive': pre-emptive
war,the Israel lobby and US military Doctrine Paul Todd
07 Why are we with Uncle Sam? Robin Ramsay09 America, Israel and
the Israel lobby Simon Matthews12 Frost/Nixon
- or a load of old dick Anthony Frewin
14 The economic crisis Robin Ramsay19 It's all Jacques to me: an
exchange on New Labour
William Clark and Tim Pendry2l Still hazy after all these years:
the assassinations of the
sixties Robin Ramsay22 Moscow on the Hudson? Brian Landers'
Empires Apart
John McFall24 The view from the bridge Robin Ramsay26 The
meaning of the 2009 Budget Scott Newton27 Politics and paranoia
Robin Ramsay29 Re: Terry Hanstock32 Sources Robin Ramsay34 The
Jewish Holocaust: held captive by its remembrance or
liberated by its lessons? Tom Easton36 Books reviewedPhilip
Augar, Chasing Alpha: How Reckless Groy.th and L-ncheckedAmbition
Ruined the City's Golden DecadePaul Todd, Jonathan Bloch, and
Patrick Fitzgerald, Spies, Lies, and theWar On TerrorDavid
Cesarani, Major Farran's Hat; Murder, Scandal and Britain'sWar
Against Jewish Terrorism 1945-1948Beatrix Campbell, Agreement! The
State, Conflict and Change inNorthern lrelandGordon Thomas, Secrets
and Lies: A history of CIA mind control andgerm warfareMichael
Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocqust and the Cold WarPaul Feldman,
Unmasking the State: a rough guide to real democracyWarrick
Funnell, Robert Jupe and Jane Andrew, In Government WeTrust:
marketfoilure and the delusions of privatisationFrancis Beckett and
David Hencke, Marching to the fault line: The1984 miners' strike
and the death of industrial BritainDick Russell, On the Trail of
the JFK AssassinsFrank Cain, Terrorism and Intelligence in
Austrqlia; A history of ASIOand national surveill anceJohn Diamond,
The CIA and the Culture of FailureKen Hollings, Ll/elcome to Mars:
fantasies of science in the Americancentury: 1947-5946
Tittle-tattle Tom Easton
Lobster on-lineAll but the most recent issues of Lobster
areavailable on-line, for a small fee. Access via
CorrectionIn Lobster 56 I described Naomi Kline as an American.
She isCanadian.
Pieces in this issue without an author are by the editor.
Summer 2009
-
Reflections on the 'cult of the offensive':pre-emptive war, the
Israel lobby and US
militarY Doctrine
Paul Todd
In our book, spies, Lies and the war on Terror,l a central
themeis the ascendancy of pre-emptive war doctrine in US
militarystrategy and its impact on public perceptions and the
constructionof po[iical narratirle. A parallel and closely linked
concern is withthe overall current of irrationalism which took hold
aftet 9lll,feeding and complementing the growth of pre-emptive
doctrines.
In $-hat follows here there are four elements: pre-emptionitself
as a constant trope in the history of warfare; the
radicalrecrudescence ofthe concept after the advent ofnuclear
weapons;the rising influence of Israeli concepts of war on US
defencedoctrine; and the aggregation of all of these in the
combination ofpolitical and strategic factors leading the Bush
administration inthe run up to the Iraq war.
The term .war on terror' (woT) has been widely derided asboth
epistemologically illiterate and a transparent catchall fordemagogy
and the pursuit of long-standing agendas for militarismand
crackdowns on civil liberties. There is also, however, a Sensein
which WoT represents a functioning military concept for theUS,
which can be located in the evolution of US strategic doc-trine. In
the early 1980s, the first period of neo-conservativedominance in
US politics, analysts of international relations werestruck by
similarities between the 'new cold war' prosecuted bythe Reagan
administration and the great power stand-off beforeAugust lgtq.r In
both cases scholars noted the influence of a 'cultof the offensive'
on military doctrine, and in pushing argumentsfor pre-emptive war.
For WoT, however construed, pre-emption isclearly a sine qua non.
But the very abstraction of the concept hashelpei advance doctrines
of pre-emption across the board; andthis has been greatly expedited
by a renewed period of neo-conpolitics in thebush administration
and the determined push forihe Israeli strategic model. To be sure,
pre-emption is far fromuncontroversial in Israeli defence doctrine
itself, but for the USneo-cons and their avatars on the Israeli
hard right, a cult of theoffensive has been not only strategic
boilerplate but an activemoral imperative.
The ghost of Marx: warfare, technology and theparadigm of
1914For millennia, warfare has been an established - and indeed,
cele-brated
- institution in the conduct of human affairs. As much
recent scholarship has shown, conflict has been central to
bothtechnological/material advance and social cohesion.3 Progress
wasnot secured without a price, however. writing in the 1850s,
Karl
Mam observed that at certain stages in history, economic
andtechnological factors can outrun the social and political
capabilityto manage and control them. And nowhere was this thesis
moretragically vindicated than in the outbreak of world war
one,when a combination of ill-understood technological advance
andthe entirely rational fear of losing the march - in an era
wheremilitary prowess was a defining feature in national identity -
ledthe European great powers into four years of mass
destruction.The dominance, on all sides, of a 'cult of the
offensive' was amassive contributory factor here and one widely
recognised in theaftermath.+There was a wholesale commitment to
disarmament,new international institutions and a shift to defensive
militarystrategies, such as the (highly successful) UK air defence
systemand the (less successful) French Maginot line'
The defeat of the second wave of offence cultists - NaziGermany,
Imperial Japan - after world war Two brought a newperiod
oiinternational institution-building. But this was put
underimmediate threat by nuclear weapons. with the stakes of
nuclearwar so inconceivably high, the idea that pre-emption was not
onlythe logical, but indeed, the moral choice gained a fresh
culrency'In the US there was intense debate about the possibility
of count-ering the nuclear threat from the Soviet Union by
pre-emptive firststrike on Soviet nuclear facilities, before they
were fully oper-ational. Although subject to highly detailed
planning, however,the protagonists of 'Operation Dropshot' were
restrained by morerational voices in their aim to 'reduce the
Soviet Union to asmouldering, irradiated ruin.'
The 1962 Cuba missile crisis - during which uS
presidentKennedy,s successful efforts to rein in the pre-emptive
argu-ments of airforce chief (and 'Dropshot' author) Curtis
LeMaywere mirrored in the removal of operational missile control
fromlocal field commanders by Soviet leader Khrushchev -
inaugur-ated a new era of nuclear restraint between the
superpowers. Insome ways technology itself had come to the rescue.
The adventof 'survivable' nuclear systems, such as the Polaris
submarine,underwrote the grim logic of Mutually Assured
Destruction. But ifpossession of an assured 'second strike'
capability shelved thelqsor dreams of instant success in
pre-emptive atomic war, thepre-emptive concept itself was taking on
a new life amongst thelesser powers sheltering under the nuclear
umbrella'
The Summer of War - the other 1967The Middle East war of June
1967 is conventionally portrayed asa clear case of justified
pre-emption by Israel. The surroundingArab powers, led by Egyptian
president Nasser, had been
@n Van Evra, 'The Cult of the Offensive and theorigins of the
First world war' in, Miller/Lynn-Jones/van Evra (see note2) Ibid,
pp.59-109.
1 Reviewed below.I For a $.ide-ranging discussion of these
themes see Steven E. Miller,Sean \I. Lynn-Jones and Stephen Van
Evra, Military Strateg/ and theOrigins of the First World ll'ar
(Princeton: PUP, 1991')3 See. for example, Robert Gilpin, Ll/'ar
and change in world Politics(Cambridge: CUP, 1981)
Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
pounding a drumbeat of aggressive rhetoric and military
postur-ing. In April, Nasser had closed the Straits of riran,
Israel's soleaccess to the Red Sea, and ordered the uN peacekeeping
conting-ent from its buffer position in the Sinai between Egyptian
andIsraeli forces. However, as Tel Aviv, London and washingtonknew,
neither Egypt
- whose main combat capability was tied
down in a losing war in North yemen -
nor the hapless Syrianswere in any position to pose a credible
threat. lndeed, the uNSinai force had been installed after an
earlier episode of militarypre-emption by Israel
- the Suez crisis of 1956. Then the move by
British, French and Israeli forces to seize the Suez canal,
occupythe Sinai and 'knock Nasser offhis perch' had led to the
threat ofuS economic sanctions by an exasperated president
Eisenhower,with the full support of the United Nations. The aborted
Suezoperation, however, which had seen Israel,s army gaining
easydominance over the poorly-equipped Egyptians, was launchedunder
the governing strategic orthodoxy of Israeli militarydoctrine
- pre-emptive war.
As veteran Israeli politician and diplomat, Shlomo
Ben-Amiexplains:
'Israel's military doctrine, as it was established by
DavidBen-Gurion, has been based on the principle of
offensivedefence...."security" was elevated to the status of a
sacredcow, and the concept of pre-emptive war and the nation inarms
to that of a vital existential philosophy., s
Moreover, as Ben-Ami further points out, many in the
Israelisecurity establishment believed in actively fostering a
state of'armed peace', wherein
'The new nation made up of immigrants from all cornersof the
world had to be galvanised as a people in uniform, afully mobilised
society.... the notion of a nation living on arazor's edge between
war and a precarious truce became acollective state of mind.'6
And no-one held this belief more strongry held than the
principalarchitect of the 1967 wal Defence Minister Moshe Dayan,
wlo,as Ben-Ami observes, 'believed in resistance and permanent
war,not in peace.'1
The fullest expression of Dayan's 'existentialist' approach
tointernational relations came with the Israeli Blitzkreig of June,
51967. while the opening phase
- involving the simultaneous
destruction of Egyptian/Syrian air and armoured capability -
hadbeen meticulously planned in advance, with what
Ben-Amiadmitsas 'Israel's assertion of her military deterrence
[and] frequentlydisproportionate policy of retaliation' stoking the
crisis atmos-phere,s the pattern of conquest on the ground evolved
more exper-imentally, with even Moshe Dayan initially opposed to
occu-pying the Golan Heights. In the event, however, the need for
unityamongst the always fractious Israeli ruling coalition and .an
irres-istible bacchanalia of passions'e ensured the triumph of the
maxi-malist option
- and one underpinned yet more strongly by the
doctrine of pre-emptive war.
The USS LibertyThe utter single-mindedness of this doctrine was
illustrated by the9 June Israeli attack on a NSA/uS Navy sigint
ship, the uSS5 See Shlomo Ben-Ami, scars of war, wounds of
peace
- the Israeli-Arab
trageSt (London: Phoenix, 2006), pp. 362-3.6 lbid. p.72.7 lbid.
p. 1428 lbid. pp.95-7.9 lbid. p. 118.
Liberry. A prominently-flagge d, 455 foot vessel, festooned
withradar and listening antennae, the Liberty was sailing slowly
offthe Gaza coast, some twelve miles outside Israeli
territorialwaters. The two hour-long Israeli assault, involving
torpedo craftand Mirage fighter-bombers, took place after numerou,
..conr-aissance over-flights, on a clear day and with no prior
warning.Although official enquiries in Israel and the US were quick
toclass the incident as 'friendly fire,' the sheer scale of the
Israeliaction, leading to 206 casualties (34 fatal) and the ship,s
totalimmobilisation, suggests a wider agenda.r0
Although even Ben-Ami, a constant critic of Israeli
securitypolicies and pre-emption in particular, condemned
Egyptianclaims of USfuK collaboration in the Israeli war effort as,
,theBig Lie',tl much evidence suggests extensive and active
cooperat-ion on the logistics and intelligence sides; and
encouragement ofthe Israeli pre-emptive programme. Like Nasser in
the North, theUK was also fighting a losing guerrilla war, in South
yemen. Asin 1956, Nasser's revolutionary leadership was viewed as
the rootcause of British travails in the Middle East, and there
could be nomore satisfactory outcome for London than his defeat or
removal.For embattled US President Lyndon Johnson, a
strongly-heldZionism was coupled with the more expedient
consideration thatan Israeli defeat of Nasser
- viewed as a straightforward Soviet
client -
could pave the way to his re-election. If emerging evi-dence
suggests that Israeli hearry-handedness and genuine battle-field
confusion had o'ercome initiar instructions for a light straff-ing
attack by 'unmarked aircraft' 1*'ith hopefully minimalcasualties),
and led to the recall of uS strikes on Egypt and theplan's swift
abortion. the die was clearly cast for future uS-Israelstrategic
intimacy.
The doctrine takes holdFor Israeli strategists, a declared
policy of pre-emptive strike
-backed up by regular exemplar -
was a central component forgrounding the vital cuffency of
deterrence: 'credibility'. In thenuclear realm, credibility was
viewed by strategic theory, held bysuch as influential chicago
analyst Albert wohlstetter, as criticalto setting 'escalation
dominance' in episodes of threat-bargaining.The pre-emptive
doctrine, however, has a fuither utility for policymakers in
alliance management. For a great power it offers thepossibility of
avoiding entangling and expensive force deploy-ments by simply
issuing a pre-emptive guarantee. But for aninfluential ally, there
are also wide 'wag the dog' possibilities
-
with nuclear weapons as the ultimate tail.In US-Israel
relations, the issue came to a head during the
Yom Kippur war of october 1973. As pulitzer-winning NewYorker
columnist and author, Seymour Hersh has established:
'Sometime in this period, the American Intelligencecommunity got
what apparently was its first look, via theKH-11 [surveillance
satellite], at the completed andoperational [Israeli nuclear]
missile launchers hidden inthe side of a hill.... The launchers
\\,ere left in the open,perhaps deliberately, making it much easier
for Americanphoto-interpreters to spot them.' ll
This took place under healy US pressure on Israel to accept a
uS-@ eration Cyanide; Wht,the bombing of the (JSSLiberty nearly
caused Ll/orld War 3 (London: Vision, 2003) pp. lg_42; andalso Paul
Todd, 'Robert Kennedy and the Middle East connection' inLobster 5l
(Summer 2006).l l Hounam ibid. p. ll4.12 See Seymour Hersh, The
Samson Option
- Israel, America and the
bomb (London: Faber, 1991) pp. 226-40lp.23tl.
I
Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
Egyptian sponsored ceasefire and halt plans to destroy
theEgyptian anny completely.
Beleaguered US President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger,sresponse
was to order a US nuclear alert (DEFCON 3), aimedostensibly at the
Soviets (and as many alleged, at Nixon,scongressional critics) but
accepted by Soviet leader Brezhnevwithout demur, as a useful escape
clause from an ungrateful clientand a losing Middle East war. For
Nixon's mounting domesticopposition, however, the coded signal to
Israel
- along with more
straightforward logistics arm-twisting by Henry Kissinger -
cemented a powerful emerging coalition in US politics. For
whatwere beginning to be termed the 'neo-conservatives', it had
beenprecisely Israel's repeated disavowal of pre-emption
- at US
insistence -
during the build-up to Yom Kippur that had causedthe initial
Arab victories. Determined to reverse both the pressureon Israel
and the multilateral diplomacy of Kissinger seen as themain cause.
the neo-cons sought to shelve the existing andproposed arms
treaties with the Soviet Union (the SALT process)and reconfi_sure
US military doctrine toward pre-emptive war.
There *'as. to be sure, much opposition here. US/Soviet
d6tentehad become fairly institutional by this stage, both in the
politico-military establishment and with public opinion in
general.Hon'ever, by 1975 hardline US Defense Secretary (and
Kissingeropponent) James Schlesinger had succeeded in
promoting'counterforce' as the new uS nuclear targeting doctrine.
counter-force involves the precision targeting of enemy weapons
systems,as opposed to cities ('counter-value') and was made
possible byadvances in US warhead technology. To maintain
credibility,though, pre-emptive options have to be present at every
step onthe escalation ladder. Moreover Secretary Schlesinger made
itplain that pre-emption in the conventional realm was still on
thetable. Follou,ing the 'oil shock' of October 7973, and
continuedArab pressure on the \\'estern powers. Schlesinger hinted
at apossible US take-over of the oil fields in the Gulf, declaring
that,'it is indeed feasible to conduct military operations fin the
oilfields] if the necessity should arise'
- a stance enthusiasticaily
applauded by right-wing commentators, the fast-rising
neo-concaucus in Congress and at grassroots level at the US petrol
pump.
If Jimmy Carter's Democratic presidency of November l9l6had
succeeded in seeing off the incumbent Republican GeraldFord and the
conservative bandwagon of Ronald Reagan. thedebate on counterforce
and pre-emption took on increasingmomentum, via the mushrooming
network of neo-con lobbygroups such as the Committee on the Present
Danger. While manydifferences existed in this milieu
- notably between traditional
consen'atives and neo-cons on blanket support for Israel -
therewas clear agreement on ditching the SALT treaties
anddeveloping ballistic missile defence (BMD), which Nixon
hadbargained away in the ABM treaty of 1972. Not widely
noticedoutside the specialist literarure, the preferred location
for a pre-emptive uS missile launch capable of overwhelming
RussianABM systems (due to various technical considerations
concerningthe angle of re-entry) was the Arabian sea.
Access to the Arabian Sea required secure facilities,
preferablynot tied to the vagaries of a local host government. This
had beenlong planned for, with a lease taken on the British-owned
island ofDiego Garcia from 1964. During the numerous Senate
andCongressional hearings on developing Diego Garcia, much
DoDdisa'owal of leaked plans for submarine Launched BalisticMissile
(SLBM) support and B 52 basing had failed to convincestrong Senate
opposition from such as Gary Hart and EdwardKennedy. It had also
signally failed to convince the Russians. A
little publicised but highly significant factor in drawing
Sovietagreement on SALT t had been a de facto moratorium on
bothexpanding the 'austere' island facilities and regular
SLBMdeployment in the Indian Ocean.l3 Many in the US arms
controlcommunity had hoped to formalise these understandings with
atreaty for mutual restraint, if not complete demilitarisation for
theIndian Ocean as a whole, and saw an opening in Carter,s
firstyear. The US/Soviet talks had reached a final stage by 1978,
butfaced mounting opposition from the 'new cold war'bandwagon
inWashington. Finally, congressional hearings in 1979 shelved
theputative Naval Arms Limitation Treaty (NALT) on the grounds
ofSoviet actions in Ethiopia, but mainly on the basis that
'restrictingour ability to deploy Polaris missiles is not in the
strategic interestof the United States.' In Soviet eyes, however,
the US move intothe Indian Ocean represented one more stage on the
road to pre-emption.
The New Cold WarRussian involvement in the 1978-9
Ethiopia/Somalia conflictshad been a gift to Washington
hard-liners, notably NationalSecurity Advisor Zbigniew Bzrezinski,
who was seeking ways tofurther entangle the bankrupt Soviet empire
in protracted regionalwars, notably the gathering Islamist
insurgency in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan became the testbed for the 'Reagan Doctrine,
ofaggressively attacking the Soviet Union's third world allies
andgrew into the CIA's biggest operation. But in parallel
withguerrilla assaults on pro-communist regimes, the doctrine of
pre-emptive nuclear war was also a gathering force. Reagan,s
.StarWars' announcement of 1983, although presented as a
defensivemeasure, was clearly a statement of intent, even if the
actual tech-nology was (and remains) highly fallible. The alliance
betweenpro-Israel neo-cons and more conventional cold warriors
foundexpression in the 1982 'strategic understanding' between
Israeland the LIS. And if hopes for a formal, NATO-style alliance
werestymied by the disastrous Israeli invasion of Lebanon of that
year-
a move explicitly defended by Prime Minister Begin as ,a warof
choice'14
- pre-emption, nuclear and conventional, was becom-
ing mainstream.As Albert Wholstetter
- academic tutor to leading neo-cons
Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and overall movement guru -
was fond of pointing out, a pre-emptive option is the only
rationalresponse to an overall assumption of adversary
irrationalism.However, a stance predicated on deterrent
irrationalism elides,necessarily, into irrationalism per se
- a point recognised by
Henry Kissinger in his famous (or infamous) advocacy of .mad-man
theory' concerning the supposed utility of disproportionatemilitary
threats.
'Remoralising US foreign policy,: irrationalism and therise of
political religionThe power base of the Reagan Republicansrs had
been increasing-ly drawing on christian fundamentalists, whose
grassroots mobil-ising skills were rivalling those of AIPAC, and
where a closealliance of 'Christian Zionism' was being forged. The
price of thissupport was the fundamentalists' agenda of
'remoralising' USforeign policy
- that is a stance of black-and white, zero-sum
ffi Ambassador Paul C. Warnke, Washington, DC,May, 199 I .
Warnke was head of the Arms Control and DisarmamentAgency and led
for the US in talks of 1977-8.14 See Ben-Ami, (see note 5), p.
76.l5 Well captured by US writer Craig Ungar inhis The Fall of the
Houseof Bush (London: Vista, 2008).
Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
policy choices, whose expression was found in Reagan's
ownfrequent recourse to Manichaeanism. Thus, at the close of
theReagan presidency, we can consider the rise of three sources
ofpolitico/religious-inspired irrationalism in the world
system:Christian fundamentalists in the US; Zionist fundamentalist
inIsrael and the US; and Islamist fundamentalists in Afghanistanand
the Middle East, armed and bankrolled by the US to attack the'evil
empire'.
There was also a fourth and more profound, if
routinised,irrationalist wellspring
- market fundamentalism. This was the
moment of the 'End of History', wherein the workings of
themarket were viewed as a source of moral value rather than
asmerely an historically contingent means of organising aspects
ofcollective social needs. But when combined with the
developingdoctrine and technology for pre-emptive war, capitalism's
drivefor 'creative destruction', eulogised by such as Michael
Ledeenand earlier detailed in classic sociological analysis by
MaxWebber and Thorsten Veblen, was to ground an altogether noveland
unpredictable phase in post-cold war politics.
Reagan's administration, as we have discussed in our book,made
extensive preparations for nuclear war-fighting (Star Wars,Pershing
2, etc) and on several occasions in 1983-4, nearly trigg-ered a
Soviet nuclear response. With the former Soviet Unionitself
embracing capitalist 'shock therapy' in the early 1990s, the'moral
imperative' prop for nuclear pre-emption had droppedaway. Left
flourishing, however, was the conception that US coldwar triumph
was part of a natural order
- or at least, should be
made so. Hence, as we have also discussed, the efforts of
PaulWolfowitz and Dick Cheney at the Pentagon to establish the
pre-emptive principle as a part of the US strategic furnirure.
Despite mounting near-unilateral military efforts in Iraq andthe
Balkans, the doctrinal case for pre-emption found few takersin a
decidedly risk-adverse Clinton administration. Steeped in
the'institutionalist' tradition in US foreign policy, Clinton/Gore
wereuninterested in missile defence and had little rapport with
aPentagon still firmly wedded to the 'Powell Doctrine' of
eitheroverwhelming military force in extremis or, in practice,
doingnothing. The neo-cons, however, were marshalling their forces.
ARepublican congress, returned in 1996, had reinstated calls forBMD
and had their demands partially conceded by a nowincreasingly
distracted White House.
History will judge harshly?Throughout the Clinton administration
the neo-cons had beenconstructing a broad-based alliance, drawing
on the grassrootsstructures of Christian fundamentalism, the lobby
skills of pro-(greater) Israel organisations such as AIPAC and
JINSA, massivecorporate finance and media hegemons such as Rupert
Murdoch.The two-term Bush administration and the embrace of
pre-emptive war doctrine as US strategic mainstream was the
result.
George W. Bush's National Security Strategy of the UnitedStates,
of September, 2002 presented an unvarnished picture ofthe now
ascendant world-view:
'Our enemies have openly declared that they are seekingweapons
of mass destruction, and evidence indicates thatthey are doing so
with determination. The United Stateswill not allow these efforts
to succeed.... History willjudge harshly those who saw this coming
danger butfailed to act. In the new world we have entered, the
onlypath to peace and security is the path of action.'
These perspectives were forcefully restated in 2006:
'If necessary, however, under long-standing principles ofself
defense, we do not rule out the use of force beforeattacks occur,
even if uncertainty remains as to the timeand place of the enemy's
attack. When the consequencesof an attack with WMD are potentially
so devastating,we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave
dangersmaterialize. This is the principle and logic of pre-emption.
The place of pre-emption in our notionalsecurity strategl remains
the same.lemphasis added]'
And thus, as many in the conventional 'realist' US
policyestablishment were to deplore, the Iraq war of March
2003became America's own 'war of choice', with fabricated WMDclaims
as the ostensible causus belli.
Reality though, returned to haunt the crippled Bush
admin-istration with a vengeance. And if Bush and Cheney (and
TonyBlair) had remained true to the last in cheerleading Israel's
chaoticreinvasion of Lebanon of August 2006, plans for the
mostambitious Israeli pre-emption yet
- the mooted air assault on Iran
of June 2008 16 -
were quashed as being 'extremely stressful' forUS forces.tz But
it may have been a close-run thing. In December2005 US Strategic
Command (STRA.TCOM) announced that anew Joint Functional Component
Command for Space and GlobalStrike met requirements necessary to
declare an initial operationalcapabiliry. 'Global Strike' assumes
the capabiliw to launch over10,000 precision u'arheads on a giren
target set simultaneously.The requirements $'ere met. rt said..
'ibliou ine a ngorous test ofintegrated planxing and operational
ereculr rrn,-apabilities duringExercise Global Lighming.' As w'as
u'idei1'rept''ned. ' a success-ion of US military build-ups took
place over this penr-rd. against abackground of Israeli manoeuvres
in the Eastern \ledrterranean.
If, in September 2008, the all-too-visible hand of marketrealism
has apparently put paid to the years of magical thinkrnsthat so
transfixed post-9/11 debates on national security, the danceis
clearly not over yet. Ballistic missile defence sites are
springingup in former Warsaw Pact facilities in Poland and the
CzechRepublic, transparently aimed at Moscow. Coup-mongering
con-tinues against US opponents in Latin America. And perhaps
mostblinkered of all, attempts continue to absorb former
Sovietterritories Georgia and Ukraine into the NATO structure,
after theUS-aided'colour revolutions' replaced corrupt
ex-communistswith comrpt pro-western operators. Ukraine, it should
be noted, isa leading player in no-questions-asked arms dealing
- one S.
Hussein was a leading customer -
and in Georgia, Harvard-edu-cated President Shackashvili sprung
a no-brainer, predictableRussian response by launching a
large-scale pre-emptive bom-bardment of breakaway South Ossetia,
apparently in the beliefthat he was already in the club.
We can perhaps leave the last word to London Universityanalyst
Dan Plesch, who has done much to shed light on thestrategic
undergrowth here:
'A "successful" US attack fon Iran], without LN author-isation,
would return the world to the state that eristed inthe period
before the war of 1914-18. but s'ith nuciearweaPons.'te
16 See Jonathan Steele, 'Israel asked US for -rreen light to
bomb nuclear
sites in lran', The Guardian,25 September 2008.l7 Chairman of
Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen. quoted in Dana Milbank,'Not So Quiet
on the Third Front' The ll'ashington Post,3 July 2008.l8 See Dan
Plesch, 'Considering a War u'ith Iran: A discussion paper onWMD in
the Middle East' (School of Onental and African Studies, 28August
2007)19 Plesch, ibid,p.70
Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
Why are we with Uncle Sam?
I was a student here l from 1971-74 doinga social science
degree;but more importantly, between 1976 and I}BZ I was on the
dolemuch of the time and spent most of my days in the library
here,educating myself in post-war history, American history, what
wasavailable then about the intelligence services
- almost nothing
-
and the post-WW2 geopolitical order, centrally the Cold War
andAmerican imperialism. Looking at the reading list for the
intelli-gence and national security component of this course, what
struckme was that almost none of its literature existed when I was
here.I have read a few of the books on the list and none of
theacademic articles. what could I say on a subject of whose
contentI have read so little?
I have done what anybody would do: I looked at the liter-ature
and found a way to use it for something I am interested in
-this country's relationship with the United States. Because
thatrelationship is one of the central features of this course,
althoughit is probably never stated as such. (I may be wrong about
this: Ihave only seen a sketch of the course content.) Britain's
military,intelligence and foreign policy organisations are more or
lessintegrated into and subservient to their American
counterparts.
From the American point of view Britain has been usefulfirst as
being what George orwell called Airstrip one in the1940s, and
Duncan campbell called the unsinkable aircraft carrierin the 1980s,
for the US Air Force. Secondly, after the early1960s when US banks
began moving their money out of Americato avoid taxation and
President Kennedy's attempts to regulatetheir activities. Britain
became the offshore banking centre ofchoice for wall Street. And
thirdly. Britain has been useful asdiplomatic cover for American
po*er. For sixry years Britain has'stood by' its ally, through the
slaughter in Vietnam, half amillion dead Indonesians, mititary
coups all o'er South Americain the 60s and 70s, hundreds of
thousands of deaths in Guate-mala, El Salvador and Nicaragua in the
1980s, right up tosupporting it while it killed somewhere between
half a millionand a million Iraqis. Britain has been a bomber base,
a taxavoidance centre for US banks and a diplomatic fig reaf
of'international support'.
In 1962 Dean Acheson, who had been US Secretary ofState, said
that Britain 'has lost an empire and has not yet found arole.' This
is always quoted as being a greatprofundity. In fact itwas just
nonsense. rn 1945 America became the new school bullyand Britain
became the school bully's best friend. That has beenthis country's
chief international role. Being the bully's friend hasits
upside
-
you don't get hit -
but it is basically a degrading role,characterised by public
grovelling and private bad-mouthing.which is what the British do to
the Americans: they say nothingin public until the Americans
fuck-up and then they mutter in theI This is an edited version of a
talk I was supposed to give at HullUniversity
- but didn't. For reasons unknown the event was cancelled
without telling me why. when discussing by e-mail with the
student whoinvited me what I would talk about, I suggested I write
something andsend it to him. His initial reaction to reading it was
'Terrific, but thencommunication ceased. My guess is that someone
in his department
- he
said he was studying war and Security Studies, and such courses
arenever a million miles from the Ministry of Defence, even if they
aren,tfunded by it
- took offence at my proposed text. But who knows?
corner about the dumb, incompetent, cowboy yanks, as they
didmost recently over the debacle in Iraq.
You may be thinking that I am anti-American. Not so: but Iam
anti-American foreign policy. My parents were in the Comm-unist
Party until the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956; and Igrew up in
a climate in which the instinctive reaction to anyforeign policy
issue was: the Soviets are right and the Americansare wrong. It
took me until I was well into my twenties to shedthat instinctive
pro-Soviet reaction. But the other half of thereaction, the
anti-American one, I have not shed. Because it iscorrect: the
Americans were usually in the wrong. In part this isaxiomatic:
imperialism is always wrong. In my view good imper-ialism is a
contradiction in terms. The historical truth is that sinceWW2, when
America became the world,s dominant power, apartfrom the famine in
china in the late 1950s, most of the corpses inthis period have
been created by America, its allies, its proxies, oras a result of
America's meddling in the politics of other societies.Difficult
thought this is to grasp for those of us living in this
littleisland, after 1945 the US set out to monitor, surveil and,
wherenecessary, regulate the entire non-communist world.
Because the UK and the US are allies, these simple histor_ical
facts are excluded from this society's public understanding ofthe
world, its public discourse, if you like. And, I would guess, itis
excluded from courses such as this one. A module titled 'BriGish
defence and security policy's role in supporting globalslaughter,
subversion and terror'
- which is what US foreign
policy has largely been about since WW2 -
is not a module youwill find in many British universities.
people who talk like this donot often get invited onto Newsnight.
To talk as I am doing is tobe 'an extremist'. All of which raises
the obvious question: whyhave this country's political, media,
military and intelligenceelites supported the path of subservience,
of being America'sflunkeys?
The factorsA number of factors are visible, though how you would
carculatetheir relative weight I don't know.
First, there is the mutual history. Less than a hundred yearsago
the American foreign policy establishment and the Britishforeign
policy establishment were interlinked through a set ofnetworks
created after wwl: the British end was the elaboratedRound Table
network, the American end the council on ForeignRelations. This is
the origins of the so-called 'special relation-ship'. while these
networks declined in significance in the 1930s,the Anglo-American
link was renewed during ww2 and carriedon into the cold war years
and the creation of NATo under USleadership.
Second, as the British armed forces have not been powerfulenough
since the end of the Second world war to defend theinternational
capitalist order in which British overseas invest-ments are
located, the British state tagged along with the Amer-icans who did
have the muscle to police the non-communistworld.
Third, as the US developed global electronic surveillancesystems
which the British state could not match, our secret
Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
servants came to rely on US-generated intelligence.The fourth
reason is that a large part of the City of London
is now owned by American banks, banks which British
politicianshave been afraid to regulate lest they unplug their
computers andtake them elsewhere.
And fifthly, and this may now be the most important factorof
all, British state personnel and politicians individually
benefitfrom the link with the Americans.
Here is the late Hugo Young's notes on a conversation withthe
late Robin Cook, when Cook was foreign secretary in the firstBlair
administration. 2 Young asked Cook why the British govern-ment
supports the US so slavishly.
'Because of the Ministry of Defence's fonaticaldetermination to
keep close to the Pentagon. Theywill never do anything that puts
that relationship outof line. The truth is that it is the pivot of
all militarycareers and a great deal of decision-making.
Anymilitary fficer who has ambitions, has to keep closeto the
Pentagon, because he needs to serve in NATO.The U,S ond the UK have
dominated seriousappointments in NATO for years, for this reason.
his the driving priority of the MOD to keep it thatway. They do not
think in terms of national interest,but of both MOD interest and
the American interest.'
And talking about the bombing during the war after the
break-upYugoslavia, Young comments:
'Cook ....always had to be asked for torget
approval for each new bombing raid. Sometimes hetried to say no.
Each time the MOD pleaded theterrible consequence of displeasing
the USA. Fromthe USA's point of view, we gove them cover. Theycould
always say we were doing it too.'
The striking thing to me is how banal this is. There is no
theory ofthe world here. If you are a British general, diplomat,
politician,by virtue of being America's gopher, you get to hang
around thetop table and play with the big boys in a way that
- say
- their
Italian equivalents never do.
The threatYou may have noticed that the stick the Americans wave
atBritish politicians who look like they might disobey US
instruct-ions or create embarrassment is the threat of cutting the
Brits offfrom the US intelligence feed. Now, what the British state
canactually do with this intelligence, we don't know. Given the
toy-town nature of our armed forces these days my guess would
be,not very much. The British armed forces today could not,
forexample, re-fight the 1982 war with Argentine: there are
notenough British-flagged ships left to transport the troops
andmaterial to the South Atlantic
To my knowledge since Suez in 1956 the British state hasrefused
only twice to do what the Americans wanted. In 1965-66Harold Wilson
refused to send British troops to Vietnam, despiteheavy pressure
from President Johnson and threats to halt USsupport for sterling.
Wilson refused for two reasons that I amaware of, The most pressing
was that had he sent UK troops toVietnam there would have been
massive problems with the left-wing of the Labour Party in and
outside parliament. And in thosedays this mattered. The second
reason was suggested by theformer SIS officer Anthony Cavendish,
who told me twenty years
2 This is the only interesting section I noticed in a quick skim
throughThe Hugo Young Papers (London: Allen Lane, 2008)
ago that Maurice Oldfield, when deputy chief of SIS, had
warnedWilson not get embroiled in Vietnam. Oldfield had served as
anSIS regional head in the Far East in the middle 1950s when
theFrench were driven out of Vietnam and seems to have acquired
amore rational appreciation of the situation there than
theAmericans did.
After 1966 the counter-intelligence section of the CIA,headed by
the loony James Angleton, came to believe that PrimeMinister Harold
Wilson was a Soviet agent; and CIA counter-intelligence was the
ultimate source of much of the disinfor-mation and smears about him
and those around him in the middle1970s. This may have been
pay-back for Wilson's temerity inrefusing to bend.
It is said, by Professor Richard Aldrich amongst others,that in
1973 Prime Minister Edward Heath refused to allow theAmericans to
use British bases in Cyprus for intelligencegathering during the
Yom Kippur war between Israel and some ofits Arab neighbours; and
that this resulted in a temporary halt inthe US signals
intelligence flow to the UK. Heath was defeatedtwo years later in a
leadership contest by Margaret Thatcher,whom the Americans had been
cultir.ating and promoting since1967 as a potential leader of the
Consen'ative Party. This mayhave been pay-back for Heath daring to
de[,'the Americans.
An American colonl'?Is Britain then just an Amencan colonr.'\ot
in anv conventionalsense of colonl'. At anv rate. if u'e har e been
ct-rlonised, we havedone it to ourselves. But if u'e ask horr much
independence doesthe UK soverunent have? The answer has to be. u e
don't know.The British state apparently gets most of its
intelligence tiom theUS, and most of its weapons systems, notably
its nuclear \\'eap-ons, which are also controlled by the US.
The day I wrote some of this a former British
intelligenceofficer, Crispin Black, wrote in the Independent on
Sunday of the'special relationship syndrome' :
'The Joint Intelligence Committee, the military, theintelligence
services, the mechanisms that control our"independent" nuclear
deteruent are all heavily"penetrated" by American influence. It is
almostimpossible for a British minister to make o decisionon a
range of national security and foreign policysubjects without the
US being involved at every level.The UK's national security
infrastructure runs on USsoftware which we have happily
installed.'
The UK's economic independence is constrained by its member-ship
of the World Trade Organisation and IMF, both controlled bythe
Americans, and by the demands of the City of London, nowlargely
owned by American banks. Most of our popular culture isimported
from America, along with the central economic andcultural concepts
which are in our politicians' heads: no biggerfans of all things
American have there been than messieurs Brownand Blair following in
the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher. r
Since Suez in 1956 no UK government ha5 ever tried tofind out
how much real independence u'e have. The curious thingto me is how
little political interest there is in this. In this
societyinfluence can often be measured by the amount of media
noisebeing created. But it can also be measured by the silence
aroundcertain subjects. By that standard, subservience to America
is oneofour society's great no-go areas.
3 Brown and Blair, like Thatcher, enjoyed several freebie trips
to the USfrom the US State Department while they were rising
politicians.
Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
America, Israel and the Israel lobby
Simon Matthews
The Israel LobbyJohn J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
London: Allen Lane, 2007, f25
This account of the relationship between the 'Israel lobby' in
theUS. the US state and Israel should be required reading for
anyonewith an interest
- personal, professional or political
- in the
troubled affairs of the Middle East. The authors, both of whom
areacademics, and both of whom support the right of Israel to
exist,har-e produced an extremely interesting, detailed and
carefullyresearched work. The publication of this book, and, one
trusts, theeffect of its content seeping into the consciousness of
policymakers, strategists and politicians of all types, may
increase ourability to have a rational discussion about Israel
- its existence,
policies and relationship with the rest of the world -
without beingimmediately met with a counter barrage of
accusations of anti-semitism and Holocaust denial from
pro-Zionists.
Much of the value of the book consists of a catalogue of
factspresented by the authors. Among these are the following:*
Between 1949 and 1965 the USA gave Israel an average of$63m per
annum in food aid and economic aid.x Between 1955 and 2005 the USA
provided Israel with directmilitary and economic aid
- in grants not loans
- worth f 154 bill-
ion in 2005 prices.t This is equal to almost the entire Israeli
spend-ing on defence during this period.* In addition the US
military gives Israel considerable amounts ofmodern military
equipment.* Because of this financial and military assistance
Israel is todayranked as the 29th richest country in the world
rather than consid-erably further down down the list, as would be
the case if it reliedon its own natural resources.* In December
1962 President Kennedy referred to Israel ashaving a 'special
relationship' with the US of the same type thatthe US had with
Britain.* In the early stages of the 1973 Yom Kippur war
- marked by
some initial Israeli reverses -
the US promptly flew in hugeamounts of military aid to Israel
and also supplied $2.2 billion ofadditional credits. As it
transpired this did not have an immediateimpact, but had
circumstances deteriorated the US aid would havebeen critical.* Six
Israeli Leaders have addressed Congress
- more than any
other country.
I The Israeli armed forces are astonishing. The Israeli army,
for instance,has 3,400 armoured fighting vehicles (tanks, armoured
cars etc). On a pro-rata basis this would be equivalent to the
British army having 34,000
-
enough for 68 armoured divisions. If this were the case the
British armywould be the greatest military force ever assembled.
Israel is probably perhead of population the most heavily armed
country in the world.
* The Israelis (correctly) regard their relationship with the US
asbeing without precedent in history.
None of the above are matters of opinion: all are
facts,documented and sourced. The neutral reader may well wonderwhy
more of this information is not in the public domain and why,for
instance, the media do not use details like this as a preamblewhen
routinely interviewing Israeli and US figures. Althoughthere are
explanations advanced to explain the extraordinary con-duct shown
toward Israel by successive US governments since1948, the authors
examine these arguments and find themwanting.
But what do we make of this? If there is a criticism to bemade
of the book it would be that it concentrates almost exclus-ively on
the Israel-US relationship in the last 15 years. Had alonger
perspective been taken, the material provided by theauthors would
be seen as being less of a recent aberration andmore consistent
instead with policies and objectives that havebeen systematically
pursued over a much longer period of time.The authors argue that
Israel benefits so closely from US foreignpolicy, and that US
foreign policy is often so closely aligned tomeeting Israeli
requirements, that it is far from clear in many casesif the US
govemment is actually pursuing its own legitimateinterests.
What the authors mean by 'the Israel Lobby' (and its
modusoperandi) can be traced back to the initial deliberations of
theWorld Zionist Congress at Basle in 1897 and its adoption,
follow-ing the many appalling pogroms inflicted on the Jews in
TsaristRussia, of the explicit policy of founding a state of Israel
in theMiddle East.2 Pre-1918 this entailed working with the
OttomanEmpire to facilitate Jewish settlement in Palestine. The
JewishColonial Trust was duly created in 1899 to fund this. As a
result ofthese endeavours the Jewish population of Palestine rose
signifi-cantly, from a small number of long resident indigenous
Jews(perhaps 10,000 at most) to as many as 100,000 by 1910.:
Simultaneously with these efforts the World ZionistCongress
sought to influence other nations and to create a climate
2 The World Zionist Congress effectively functioned as a
government-in-exile for the Jewish people prior to the
establishment of Israel. Itsfunctions are now discharged by the
World Jewish Congress. 3 During this period, and for many years
afterwards, the largest Jewishcommunity in the Middle East was
actually in Baghdad. The smallindigenous Jewish population of
Palestine is often overlooked. They werenot Zionist and do not
feature significantly in the Israeli story. Somecaution is needed
when interpreting Ottoman empire census data.
Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
of opinion in favour of Jewish settrers. These were often
portrayedas 'dynamic and European' in comparison to the rather
indolentArabs. As early as 1908, winston Churchill Mp came out
insupport of this and promoted the idea of a Jewish
administeredarea in Palestine under the protection of the British
Empire.During the First world war, the Zionist movement, unable
todetermine, particularly in 1916-191g, which of the
adversariesmight win, and being traditionally hostile to Russia and
somewhatmore friendly to Germany, actively discussed the
possibility of a'Jewish Homeland' with both sides. After l9lg, and
the demise ofthe ottoman Empire, palestine was awarded to Britain
as aLeague of Nations Mandated Territory. The Jewish Agency
-
established by the world Zionist congress -
volunteered toadminister a great deal of the palestine Mandate
on behalf of theBritish, thus, helpfully, keeping the costs of
running the area to anacceptably low level for the UK tax-payer. By
the 1930s theBritish had come to realise that the best solution for
the future inPalestine was not a l00vo Jewish Homeland but two
smaller selfgoverning areas, one Jewish and one Arab; with,
perhaps, Jerus_alem being a neutral zone guaranteed by the
internationalcommunity. when this view was put forward by the peel
comm-ission (1937) it was rejected by the world Zionist congress
whichbecame markedly anti-British from this point onward.
Post warAfter 1945 various Zionist and pro-Israel settler groups
in the USand Eastern Europe fought against the British, .uurirg the
coll-apse of the Mandate. + They also fought successfully against
theefforts of the united Nations to implement another version of
thePeel Commission findings
- Arab state + Jewish state * neutral
Jerusalem -
murdering the I-rN Envoy in parestine, count Bema-dotte in
September 1948 while he attempted to broker this.s onceIsrael was
formally established in 1949 (the first Ben Guriongovernment being
composed of the membership of the JewishAgency Board) it kept on
good terms with both the UK andFrance, both nations being seen at
that point as having morepower and influence in the Middle East
than any other. AfterSuez, Israeli foreign policy recognised
instead the predominanceof the US, with whom it had in any event
continued to maintainclose and cordial relations. Hence the
exceptionally close relation-ship remarked upon today by
Mearsheimer and Walt.o
All of which proves what? Firstly, Israel and its
Zionistsupporters have always worked with and sought the backing
ofwhichever nations were most powerful at any giu"n point in timeto
ensure that their overriding goal, a Jewish state of Israel,
isachieved. In other words, Israel pursues its own interests at
ailtimes. Secondly, and not fully spelt out by the authors, the
.lobby,system is an endemic feature of US domestic politics. As
well asthe 'Israel lobby' today there is, and has been since the
lg50s, an'Irish lobby', after World War Two a .China lobby,, and,
of4 The b"Gf taioa when Israel enjoyed supporr from both the uS and
theSoviet power blocs was due in part to a number of the early
Zionist leadersalso having good connections with the leadership of
eastem European leftand communist parties. Much earry military
assistance for Israel, in the1940s, came from Czechoslovakia.5 The
murder of Bernadotte was organised by a small group that
includedYitzhak Shamir, later prime Minister of Israel l9g3-19g4
and 19g6-1992.It took place during a critical period in the us
presidential election cycreand when it was known that the incumbent
president Truman was infavour of Bemadotte's proposals.6 And the
Jewish popuration in the US exceeds the Jewish popuration
inIsrael.
course, there is also the 'Cuba lobby,.zAn early example of US
foreign policy being largely
determined by expatriate and politically active migrants-came
inl9l7-1918 when substantial communities of Slovaks and ukrain-ians
in the US lobbied for an independent 'czecho-Slovakia,, anobjective
subsequently adopted by the Lansing Decraration onMay 1918. The US
recognised the Masaryk gor,.--.rt on 3September 1918, when it
controlled no territory, had not beenelected, and Austria-Hungary
still very much existed as a legiti-1nate, internationally
recognised and legally constituted body.sIn the 1950s George
Kennan, who disapproved of the close USrelationship with Israel,
commenting on the role played by the'captive Nations' (Eastern
European dmigrds. ofien-of a rightwing or neo-fascist type),
described
' . . ..compact voting groups in large cities. . . .able
to bring to bear on individual legislators....aninfluence far
greater than an equivalent group ofreactive citizens are able to
exert....,
To understand, then, the framework within which the
US-Israel'special relationship' operates it is necessary to grasp
that much ofuS foreign policy has always been determineJ, oi at
least veryheavily influenced, by domestic interesr
-qroups ('lobbies') puttingpressure on politicians. In this
context the Rolls Royce of .lobbies,are clearly the 80 pro-Israel
groups in the uS, of which theAmerican Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIpAC)is the biggestand best organised. This is not a
conspiracr. (rt doesn.t have to beunder the US constitution) and is
openl' int'luential. AIpAC andits allies allocate campaign funding
for candidates at all le'els ofpublic office, provided that they
support Israeri policies. Theymobilise the Jewish vote to swing
close electiom urd in a countrywhere most uS citizens know littre
to nothing about either Israelor the Middle East, they
(successfully) put into the public domaina version of reality that
is highly partisan and often incorrect.
Another curious and completely legal feature of US arrange-ments
that is remarked upon by Mearsheimer and walt. is theextent to
which many US Jews, including many in positions ofeither public
office or influence, have a ,dual ioyalty, _ i.e. asjoint US-Israel
citizens they place as much reliance on their r.ie*.sas expatriate
Israelis as they do on their position as uS residents.It is far
from clear when considering as issue such as the \liddieEast
whether the US dog is wagging the Israeli tail or'ice r ersa.
Equally alarmingly, at least to those on this side of
theAtlantic, are the alliances that the various Jewish lobbr
groupshave built with a dismal array of neo-conservatir.e
organisationswho regard Israel as a key and significant parrner.
This ttature,also known as American Jewish conservatism. ertends to
thechristian Zionists, the End Timers and the chnsrran Right.
Atypical outfit encapsulating this world vieu' are chnrrrans
unitedfor Israel (motto: 'For Zion's Sake I will \ot Keep Silent'r.
ri.hilethe most prominent christian Zionist. the Rer erend Jern
Fals.ellhas proclaimed
'We are on the verge of a u'ar. . ..ri hrch u ill sen e asa
prelude or forerunner to the turure Banle ofArmageddon and the
glonous rerum erl Jesus
7 There are also vocal US lobbies ibr Taiu an and Srrurh
Ke-rre&.8 This event, an early example possiblr tri uS rnspired
'resime change,,rapidly led to the disintegration of
{ustria-Hunsan'. the most significantproblem of European
diploma*'in the r91g-19,r9 penod. Robert Lansingwas the uncle of
John Foster Dulles and
-{llen Dulles. It is not at all clearhow much either Lansins or
\\'oodro* \\'ilson knew about central andeastern Europe' The
Lansing Declaration was made during the uS mid-term Congressional E
Iections.
l0 Summer 2009
-
Christ....'The logic here appears to be: (1) All truly patriotic
US citizens arealso Christians; (2) Christians should believe in
the literal truth ofthe Bible; (3) Israel was given by God to the
Jews; and (4) TheBible says Armageddon will take place in Israel,
presumably inour lifetime. Some of the Christian Right take this
further to (5):in order to bring about (4) and the glorious
salvation of all Christ-ians, Israel should undertake pre-emptive
nuclear strikes againstnon-Christian nations.e
As a US voting bloc the Christian Right plus the Israellobby are
formidable. The authors point out that the strength ofthis grouping
is such that it enables Israel to deff US policy on thenot
particularly frequent occasions that a US president tries
toadvocate a contrary view. Thus, for instance, attempts to
resolvethe occupation of the Golan Heights are invariably
ignored,delayed or wrecked.
IraqPerhaps the most interesting chapter in the book deals with
the2003 inr asion of Iraq which, the authors argue, was triggered
byintense Israeli lobbying of the US and the provision by Israel
ofmisleading intelligence to back up the view that an invasion
and\\'ar \\'as urgently required. It is conclusively demonstrated
byMearsheimer and Walt that neither oil companies nor US
militaryaggrandisement generally caused the 2003 war. Rather,
withouthaving to fight itself, it was Israel achieving its long
term goal ofthe removal of Saddam Hussein and the cessation thereby
of Iraqifunding for various troublesome Palestinian groups. The
remain-ing target now for Israel is Iran and it is known that an
Israelistrike on Iranian nuclear facilities as well as the
selective assass-ination of key Iranian personalities are being
considered.r0
What is the alternative scenario? Mearsheimer and Waltconclude
that the current cost of US policy and the danger that itposes to
the US itself is counter-productive in the extreme andmust change.
Their view is that in an ideal world the US wouldtreat Israel like
any other country. US politicians and strategistswould also define
and publicly enunciate actual US interests in theMiddle East rather
than allow the agenda on these to be largely setby the Israel lobby
and the Christian Right. It is worth consideringhow skewed US
policy over Israel has been in the recent past. Theofficial US view
on Israel after 1949, for instance, was that it wasa 'major asset'
in the Cold War. With Egypt and Syria dallyingwith the Soviet bloc
during this period this might have had somevalidity. However Israel
did not join or participate in any way inCENTO, the Middle East
version of NATO, between 1955 and1979, the period of that
organisation's existence. In any event itcould also be considered
that part of the reason for Egypt andSyria having good relations
with the USSR for much of this timewas in itself due to US support
for Israel. Today it is claimed thatIsrael is 'a major partner in
the fight against terrorisrn'. But if thiswere the case the absence
of the well equipped (and US taxpayerffiaclysm favoured by the End
rimers the Jews areincinerated whilst the Christian elect ascend to
Heaven.10 Supposed Israeli intentions toward Iran currently feature
regularly inthe press. See Daily Telegraph 17 February 2009 for
instance, ,Israel incovert war on Iran's nuclear plans', which
states 'recent deaths ofprominent figures in the procurement and
enrichment process in Iran andEurope have been the result ofIsraeli
"hits"....'
In 1990 Dr Gerard Bull, who had designed a 'super gun' for Iraq,
andwho had also sold long range artillery shells to Israel in the
1970s, waskilled in Brussels. It is considered that either Israel
or, possibly, Iran wereresponsible.
funded) Israeli army in both Afghanistan and Iraq is notable.rr
Inshort, Israel is not a particularly useful asset. Ironically this
con-clusion can only be reinforced when one remembers that
thecontemporary debate about the Middle East and the 'road
map'toward a solution to the conflict in the area still looks
suspiciouslylike the BernadotteAJN proposals kicked into the long
grass by theIsraelis in 1948: a'fwo state' solution, one Jewish,
one Arab, withinternational guarantees for Jerusalem. If anything
like this evercomes to fruition, opinion in the US may well reflect
that theircountry's true role has been to pay Israel an awful lot
of moneyfor a very long time to delay something first recommended
by thePeel Commission in 1937.
And as for Britain? Very little mention is made of the UKhaving
any role of influence on either US or Israeli-US policy.The authors
positively discount Tony Blair playing any significantpart one way
or the other in either Middle East events or the Iraqiwar. They do
state, though, that Israel gets access on a muchlarger and better
basis to US military equipment and intelligencethan the UK. The
reader may also consider that the comments ofPresident Kennedy in
December 1962
- that Israel had a .special
relationship' with the US similar to that which the US had with
theUK
- are not accurate. There is no expatriate British voting
bloc
similar to the Jewish lobby in the US and as a result Britain
has nodiscernible influence on US foreign policy. Also the US does
not'give' the UK military equipment
- it sells or leases it. Most
significantly of all, the UK borrows its nuclear deterrent from
theUS, where Israel has been careful to maintain its own
independentcapability.tz Despite this. and unlike Israel, British
armed forcesregularly follow those of the US into conflicts and are
frequentlyplaced under US command. It is hard to see why the
US-UKrelationship is described as being particularly 'special'
- though it
is certainly unusual -
and the true role of the UK seems to be thatof a doormat.
It seems unlikely that very much will change very quicklyin the
Middle East. It may be that the election of President Obamawill
bring a different approach. All reasonable people would hopeso. The
results of the last Israeli general election, though, do
notindicate that it is a country considering a new approach to
themany problems it faces. In the last resort Israel has been
soheavily armed over the last 50 years by the US and has such
asignificant arsenal of military materiel that any unwilling
orintransigent Israeli government could sit tight knowing it
wasrelatively secure until the term of office of any well meaning
orliberal US President expires. It would retain the option
duringsuch a difficult period of agitating
- via the Israel lobby
- within
US domestic politics, to convert elements of public opinion to
itspoint of view whilst also seeking to demonstrate at all times
that itwas part of 'the West' and a valiant first line of defence
in the newwar against international Islamic terrorism.
This is a marvellous book but it could be business as usualfor
many years to come in the Middle East.
I I Perhaps this is just as well: if the Israeli army moved into
Afghanistanwhat chance would any moderate Muslim leadership in
Pakistan,Uzbekistan or Iran have?12 Israel acquired its own nuclear
weapons in the late 1960s
- initial work
on this project took place under French auspices. There is some
evidencethat Israel assisted South Africa in developing a small
number of nuclearbombs in the 1980s and even that a joint
Israeli-South African nuclear testtook place in the South Atlantic
in 1979. Nuclear disarmament in theMiddle East does not seem likely
unless Israel agrees to divest itself of itsown weapons in exchange
for other countries abandoning theirs.
i1 Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
Lobster goes to the movies !
FrostNixonOr, a load of old dick
Anthony Frewin
When Frost/Nixon ftst appeared at the Donmar Warehousetheatre in
London back in 2006I wondered why on earth anyonewould want to
stage, to re-create, what was, essentially, a non-event. Why
indeed? One can imagine mere actors relishing theopportunity to
'interpret' Frost and Nixon but who else would beinterested? This
does rather tend to underscore Gore Vidal'sobservation that the
only people who really enjoy themselves inthe theatre are those on
the stage. Perhaps theatre is just for thebenefit of the actors and
directors? It certainly seemed like it withthis one.
Now let's jump cut three years to 2009. Frost/Nixon hasbecome a
movie land it's getting more plaudits and praise than thelast Big
Thing (whatever that was). Here's what the film's websitehas to
say:
'More than 45 million viewers hungry for a glimpseinto the mind
of their disgraced former commander inchief, and anxious for him to
acknowledge the abuses ofpower that led to his resignation, sat
transfixed as Nixonand Frost sparred in a riveting verbal boxing
match overthe course of four evenings. Two men with everythingto
prove knew only one could come out a winner.
Their legendary confrontation would revolutionize theart of the
confessional interview, change the face ofpolitics and capture an
admission from the former presi-dent that startled people all over
the world, possiblyeven including Nixon himself.'2
Huh? This is not how I remember the original television
broadcastback in 1977 and it was widely regarded as an over-hyped
wasteof time that delivered little or nothing (as can be seen in
manycontemporary reviews). Where were the big questions on
Nixon'sMcCarthy years? Alger Hiss? The campaign against Adlai
Steven-son? Bugging the DNC? The 18 minute gap on the tapes? None
ofthese questions were put by Frost.
What actually did Frost get from the disgraced president?Nixon
recognised 'errors' but denied any crimes, obfuscated
orrationalised anything inconvenient, only 'admitted' to what
hadalready been established, and capped it all with a bid for
sympa-thy. This orchestration was ladled with Tricky Dick's
Hallmark-style phraseology, things like his mistakes 'were mistakes
of theheart rather than the head' and so on.
The movie's tag line is: 400 million people were waiting
for,:::*,, Well, they didn't get it then and they're not getting
it
I Frost/Nixora: directed by Ron Howard, screenplay by Peter
Morganbased upon his stage play. Cinematography by Salvatore
Totino. Music byHans Zimmer. With Frank Langella, Michael Sheen,
Sam Rockwell,Kevin Bacon, Toby Jones. Running time: 122
minutes.2
Frost and Nixon had, essentially, entered into a business
part-nership. Nixon got $600,000 up front with 20Yo of the
subsequentsales to television stations around the world, a prettv
unusualalrangement. The film mentions the $600,000 but not the
20o/o.Nixon hoped to re-establish his reputation with the
inten'iews(and make a fast buck or two in the process). while Frost
primar-ily was out to rescue his career from the skids (he was then
host-ing a raree-style show on Australian TVI). : And thus it was.
Theidea, promoted by the film, that this was some sort of clash of
theTitans where there could be only one u.inner is nonsense.
Herewere two guys on the make, shor.r'-biz st1'le. The claim that
Frost'nailed' Nixon is a lie also and Peter \lorean. the s'riter of
thestage play and the film adaptation. bears the responsibiliry'for
this.The film has Nixon admitting that he 'u as rnvolr ed in a
"cover-up" as you call it.' Nixon's actual words \\'ere. '\'ou're
u'antingme to say that I participated in an illegal cover-up. No!'
Does thetruth matter to this u'riter? Apparently not. I guess he's
got adramaturge's 'Get out ofjail free' card.
The film is quite watchable if you approach it as some
throw-away fictional entertainment which, I suspect, may be hard to
do(not for Philip French however, see below). Frank Langella is
afine actor but his Nixon sometimes displays a humour and
cuddli-ness that the original certainly didn't have. Mind you, it's
headand shoulders above the ever emollient Anthony Hopkins inOliver
Stone's film who plays Nixon like a paedophile on heavymedication.
The only screen portrayal of Nixon that has evercome near to
capturing that strange combination of resentment,bitterness,
loneliness and, yes, wlnerability, was Jason Robards'in Washington
Behind Closed Doors.q
How did Nixon view himself film-wise? In his more palmydays when
he envisaged Hollywood making The Richartl -\norStory he thought
only one actor could do himself justice
- Jack
Lemon (!)sLangella's performance throws into relief \1i,"'hael
Sheen's as
Frost. Sheen's reliance on perkiness and breeziness as a
substitutefor more mature stagecraft is irritating and
supert-rcial, but thenFrost himself was always rather superficial.
In tact. Frost himself,come to think of it, is a bad actor.
\\-hener er he sot animated andshowed some emotion you alrn'ay's
felt he \\'as c7.ril?g.that emotion.
3 Frost was wittily and famously' descnbed bl Kiqt' \luggeridge
as 'theman who rose without trace.'4 A TV mini-series from 1977
drrected bv Gan'\elson. Robards'character is actually named
President Rrchard \lonckron. but it's Nixon allright. The series
was based on the roman-a-clef b1'ex-\ixon White Housestaffer John
Ehrlichman. The Companr (1976). Surprisingly, a series
neverreleased on video or DVD.5 In line u'ith this is N{ort Sahl's
joke about a typical evening at homewith the Nixons: 'Pat is
knitting a flag while Dick is on the sofa readingthe
Constitution.'
t2 Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
That it wasn't the real thing.Matthew Macfadyen does a wonderful
burlesque of the unct-
uous John Birt, 6 and there are good performances too from
KevinBacon and Sam Rockwall.
The movie is quite enlightening on the comings and goings ofthe
negotiations that lead up to the interviews, yet we have to takeits
veracity on trust and the 'special Thanks' given to Sir (no
less)David Frost in the film's end credits make one wonder whether
alittle reality massaging didn't go on. I guess we'll never
know.Not that we care.
Putting together the script for this wouldn't have strainedeven
the most mediocre of writers. A real challenge for a realwriter who
really wanted to try and understand Nixon would havebeen to have
invented one of those imaginary conversations thatwere so popular
at one time.z How about H L Mencken confront-ing Nixon?
This is certainly a movie you can afford to miss. It's for
therubes who don't know their history and think they're getting
someinside track.
The danger with this film is that younger audiences
mightactuall1,' believe the hype, that this was an important
politicalevent. something on a level with say, the Army-McCarthy
hear-in_gs.: It wasn't.
One would also hope that the more responsible film criticsn'ould
draw attention to just what is wrong with a film like this.But do
they? None that I've read. Take the esteemed PhilipFrench (born
1933), the film critic of the London Observer.s Hisreview runs to a
little under 800 words. The first paragraph is aonce-over of
Nixon's career (HUAC, the Checkers speech,debates with Kennedy) and
then we get this:
'In 1977 he fNixon] was finally sunk when David Frost....led him
into saying on Watergate that 'when the Presidentdoes it, that
means it is not illegal'....'
Oh, so it wasn't unttl then that Nixon wasfinally sunk, andby
thisplucky little Britisher, Dave Frost. no less. And he hadn't
been'sunk' before then? I grress resigning as the President in
7974,three years earlier, was merely some administrative detail of
littleor no consequence?
Further on we have this gem of aparagraph:'FrostA.{ixon is a
riveting film, sharper, more intense thanthe play. It brings to
mind such forensic triumphs ofdramatic literature as Portia
bringing down Shylock with
6 Or Lord Birt as he now is, the famous Armani-clad 'blue skies
thinking'ex-head of the BBC renowned for his unfathomable
managerialgobbledygook (regularly reproduced in the pages of
Private Eye). Hisennoblement by the Revd. Blair is widely seen as a
result of his friendshipwith Peter Mandelson, a former colleague at
London Weekend Television.
Here's a bit of Birt biog that may be overlooked by future
writers. I wasambling through the British Film & Television
Year Book 1972-3 when Icame across a full page ad for Ernst
Finster, 'The Finnish Pole Vaulter',huh? At the bottom it says,
'All enquiries c/o John Birt, London WeekendTelevision.'7 It didn't
end with Walter Savage Landor. Try Robert Baldick's Dinnerat Magny
s (London: Gollancz, 1971). Imaginary conversations
betweenFlaubert, Turgenev, the Goncourt brothers, Sainte-Beuve,
etc. Riveting.8 Captured in Emile de Antonio's famous documentary
fiIm, Point ofOrder! (1964).9 The review appeared in the 25 January
2009 issue and is available on-line at complete with a photo of
said critic in oracular mode. The Obsert er, aonce great liberal
newspaper, is now in terminal decline with news beingelbowed out by
lifestyle and entertainment featurettes and some prettyropey
columnists, though I'd except Nick Cohn and Henry Porter fromthis
description.
guile and subtlety in The Merchant of Venice, BameyGreenwald
reducing Commander Queeg to a gibberingmess in The Caine Mutiny and
the gentle liberal HenryFonda destroying Lee J Cobb to get his
"not-guilty" votein l2 Angry Men.'
I doubt if the publicity machine behind Frost/Nixon could
haveput it better. Here we have the interviews elevated to
these'forensic triumphs of dramatic literature'!As my late good
friendDavid Seabrook would have said with some irony, 'No
mereentertainment this!' Unfortunately a lot of French's
readershipwon't know any better and will swallow this guff.
The remaining five prolix paragraphs amble betweenoutlining the
story and comments on the actors and so on, withoutever once
confronting the accuracy or legitimacy of the movie.Prolix? Yes.
Take this:
'Nixon, full of confidence, seeks to undermine Frost,using what
Zelnick refers to as "mind games", though Idoubt if the term was
used in those prelaptop andcellphone, long-hair and sideburns,
broad-lapel, bell-bottom days.'
He could have just said 'I doubt if the term was used in
1977',which would have been simpler, and dispensed with the
inventory(the 'pre' applies to the laptop and cellphone and all the
otheritems. What he meant to say was 'in those long-hair and
side-burns, broad lapel, bell-bottom, pre-laptop and cellphone
days.'Wasn't there a sub to pick this up?) But why mention this at
all?Just to let us know he was paying attention to everything?
('Boy,that French guy! Nothing escapes him!')
Now let's get to why I actually quoted this sentence.
Forgetabout prolixity. Here's the real reason: French cannot be
botheredto investigate and discuss the truth or accuracy of the
movie, itsbasic premise that is, but here he is drawing our
attention to asuspected anachronism in the dialogue! Is this what
matters?Apparently so. And from this jive he makes a living (to
para-phrase a line of dialogue in Stardust Memories)?
Let's take a detour while we're here. The term 'mind games'was
avery popular term in the 1960s as anyone who can remem-ber that
decade will recall. I think it grew out of the drug culturein the
States. The Merriom-Webster on-line dictionary gives a
firstoccuffence in 1963,t0 and in 1910 it was the title of a
best-sellingpopular psychology book by Robert Masters and Jean
Houston.rt
French couldn't even be bothered to get offhis ass and checkit
out.
Finally, it should be noted that The Observer, not contentwith
French's piece, produced an eight page 'advertorial' supple-ment on
the movie. The small print on page fwo gives the gameaway:
'Produced by the Observer, to a brief agreed with
UniversalPictures. Paid for by Universal Pictures.' Let's just hope
if JasonStatham ever gets around to Hamlet the advertising
budgetextends this far.
The much mourned Peter Cook said that the one big regret hehad
in life was saving David Frost from drowning back in the1960s. Had
he left Frostie in the swimming pool we wouldn'thave to put up with
this travesty of history. Sic transit!
Anthony Frewin was an assistant to Stanley Kubrickfor
overtwenty-five yeors and is the author of several books.
Herecently wrote the screenplay for the John Molkovich film,Colour
Me Kubrick.
1 0 ll Mind Games: The Guide to Inner lpace (New York: Dell,
1970).
l3 Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
The crisis
In Parish Notices in the last issue I wrote'there isn't much in
thisissue about the economic situation because there really isn,t
muchto say that hasn't already been said, for example by Larry
Eiliotin The Guardian every week.' wett, I changed my mind ablout
thatand here are the bits Ifound most interesting or useful.
OnIy one warning light on the UK economy: inflationThe Bank of
England's Sir John Grieve stood down in Marchfrom his role in
charge of financial stability at the Bank ofEngland. In an
interview with the BBC,s Robert peston he tried toexplain how and
why the Bank of England got it wrong:
'We didn't think it was going to be anything like assevere as
it's turned out to be... Why didn,t we see thatit was so serious? I
think that,s because....we hadn,t keptpace with the extent of
globalisation. So the upswinghere didn't involve the big increases
in earnings andconsumption and activity which we saw in
previousbooms. We saw the credit, we saw the house prices, butwe
did see afairly stable pattern of earnings, prices andoutput.'
(emphasis added)
This is the heart of it on this side of the Atlantic. Economic
policythinking between the years between 1979 and 1997, when
NewLabour took office, had been dominated by the fear of
inflationgetting out of control as it did between 1972 and l976.How
manytimes did Gordon Brown boast of stability (meaning
pricestability, of course) during his time as chanceilor? Twenty
fiveyears after the events of the mid 1970s Brown still felt it
necess_ary to demonstrate over and over again that Labour would not
bethe party of inflation. (As if Labour had caused the inflation in
the1970s!) The Monetary policy committee under New Labour hadbeen
tasked to worry chiefly about inflation. All the other
indi-cators
- the creation of debt, the external trade deficit, for
example -
were secondary. In the system in which Gordon Brown(and Grieve)
thought they were operating, they didn,t matter. Itwas assumed that
a rising money supply would produce inflation:too much money
chasing too few goods, pushes up prices; and sowould a rising
external trade deficit as the international varue ofsterling falls
and pushes up the price of imports. So the inflationwarning light
would come on in response to a wide range offactors. But neither
the rising deficit nor the expansion of creditproduced the expected
inflation The ever-growing trade deficitdid not push down the value
of sterling becaui the foreigncurrency traders didn't care about
the deficit, only about the rela_tive earnings on money deposited
in sterling.r The ever_increasingmoney supply, or debt formation,
didn't cause inflation becausethe Chinese and Indian economies were
producing very cheap _increasingly cheap
- goods which didn't push ,p In" retail price
index. So the system trundled on, increasing credit formation
anda growing trade deficit producing little inflation, except in
theprice of houses, and that wasn't included in the inflation
index. Asfar as the official system was concerned, all was
apparently well
-Grieve's 'a fairly stable pattern of earnings, p.ices and
ouput.,ffiick Cheney who famously said that deficitsdidn't matter
any more.
As Grieve says, the Bank had identified the global bubble. one
ofits own committees warning of the dangers of alr this
creditexpansion in2006. commenting on this the Telegraplt noted
atthe time:
'The City could face a financial meltdorn,n if the debtbubble
bursts, with over a year,s worth of bank profits-
f.40 bn -
potentially being wiped off balance sheets,the Bank of England
warns today. The Bank is issuinga stark warning about the potential
damage a creditcrunch and a collapse in asset prices could cause to
theeconomy and financial system......ln a worse_case scen_ario, a
sharp fall in credit conditions *'orld-wide wouldhave devastating
consequences for Bntain, the Bankwarns. It could cause a l.5oh
contraction of the UKeconomy, a25oh fall in house prices and a
359/o drop incommercial property prices over three \.ears.
accordingto the scenarios mapped out bv the Banl. Other
maloicountries would suffer similar effects. ir savs..:
Revisiting this more than2 years later. the same \\-nter.
EdrnundConway, commented that a good dear of the brame has ro rie
withthe Bank's Governor, Menyn Kin_s. *ho .succumbed to thereceived
wisdom spouted in the Cit1,' that secunrisarion
- the sale
of mortgage debt onto other in'estt.s -
had. reduced the nsk inthe banking system.....'3
Even so, why didn't King. Grier e and ,--t-r. raise interest
ratesto attempt to stem the growth in lendrns and rhe rise in the
priceofhouses and other assets?
Robert Peston gave one ans\\,er in his pier-e.'As others at the
Bank of England har.e told me, theBank's Monetary policl cermminee
berie'ed mistakenlythat the lending bin_se and asset-pne-e SUrg
were semi_independent from actir in. in the real economy, and
thatthey would er.entuallr. moderate without wreakingdevastating
damage ro prrrspects for households andbusinesses.'
At one level I find this in,-'redible: ho*. could a monetaty
policycommittee think thar a rendins bin-se (of all things) *u,
ire-i-independent from the real ecLlnom\"? But the nroni*y,s
inJlationwarning light had not c()me on.....
Grieve gave peston the rest of the answer:'If we'd used interest
rates to try and address this asset-price credit gro\\1h.: *.e *
ould have been holding downthe level of acti'in'else*'here in the
economy, in manu-facturing. in other sen'ices. hording down the
level ofemployment at a time u-hen consumer price inflation
andearnings u'ere stable and reasonably loli.. And peoplewould ha'e
said, you knou'. "this is a w'ilful reduciion inthe prosperiry, of
the country".' :
2 Edmund Conu'ay City faces meltdown if debt crisis hits,,
DailyTelegraph,12 luly 2006.3 He changed his mind
- see Tom Easton's book review below
- but too
late.4 He means borrowing against rising house prices.5 Robert
Peston
L4 Summer 2009
-
Lobster 57
In the first half of the quotation Grieve shows why the idea
of'controlling' a system as complex as the economy using
onlyinterest rates
- what Edward Heath derided in the 1980s as 'one
club golf ' -
doesn't work. In the second half he shows whyattempts to
'control' the economy using only interest rates ispolitically
difficult: it causes unemployment. ln 1973, under theCompetition
and Credit Control legislation, interest rates weresupposed to rise
in response to rising inflation. But the economicconsequences are
so severe
- what Grieve ponderously describes
as 'a wilful reduction in the prosperity of the country' -
that, likePrime Minister Heath in 1973, when push comes to shove
mostpoliticians won't wear it.6
Further, as I reported in Lobster 53 (p. l2), the formerGovernor
of the Bank, Eddie George, admitted that the Bank hadalso been
active in creating the credit bubble:
'In the environment of global economic weakness atthe beginning
of this decade.....external demand wasdeclinin_e and related to
that business investment wasdeclining. We only had two alternative
ways of sus-tainin,s demand and keeping the economy movingtbnvard:
one was public spending and the other wasconsumption..... But we
knew that we were having tostimulate consumer spending; we knew we
had pushedit up to levels which couldn't possibly be sustained
intothe medium and long term. But for the time being, ifwe had not
done that the UK economy would havegone into recession just as had
the United States. Thatpushed up house prices, it increased
household debt.'7
The blame gameThe new chairman of the Financial Services
Authority (FSA),Lord Adair Turner, has said its failure to spot the
banking crisis inadvance was partly due to the style of regulation
wanted by thepoliticians 'which suggested the key priority was to
keep it lightrather than to ask more questions.'s This line was
echoed the nextday by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn
King:
'Mr King also claimed that financial regulators wereunable to
stop City banks taking huge risks because theydid not get support
from the Government and MPs.......Regulators who had criticised
banks lending in 2006 or07 would have had "a massively difficult
task" persuad-ing politicians to back them. "They would have been
seento be arguing against success," said Mr King. Suggestingthat
politicians were in thrall to powerful banks, Mr Kingsaid any
regulator who challenged the banks would havebeen left isolated and
"lonely".'e
6 Only Mrs Thatcher, with North Sea Oil revenues at their peak,
couldafford to ignore this.7 As for what should be done, Grieve
stated the obvious: 'Maybe we needto develop something which
bridges that gap and directly addresses thefinancial cycle and
prevents the financial cycle and the credit cycle gettingout of
hand... I think we need to complement interest rates........
withsomething which is more financial-sector specific.'
This was echoed in remarks made by the Bank of England's
CharlesBean, deputy governor for monetary policy on 16 February
2009 to foundat and by Lord Adair Turner, the new chair of the FSA,
in The Economist'sInaugural City Lecture ,21 Jaruary 2009 at 8 2 5
Mar ch 20099 James Kirkup, 'Mervyn King, the Govemor of the Bank of
England, hassaid it is "impossible to say" how much capital will be
required to shoreup the British banking system', The Doily
Telegraph 26February 2009.
Don't blame the regulators, blame the politicians.....But
thisreally won't wash because there is no evidence that the
regulatorsever appealed to the politicians for support. No doubt
King isright about the kind of reception regulators would have
receivedfrom the politician