A Global Coup

by Guillaume Faye

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  The disproportionate attitude and infantile dream of absolute power that has taken hold of American minds did so long before the 9/11 events, which only served as an accelerator, a catalyst. What accounts for this ‘bout of madness’, this disjunction, so to speak, is actually the fall of the USSR, which plunged America into the sinister illusion of being the ‘sole superpower’, one that can allow itself to do anything it pleases. The US was unfortunate enough to encounter G. W. Bush, a simple-minded man who has swallowed the ‘imperial illusion’ whole.

  The true ideological creator, or a man who is, at the very least, the ‘romantic formulator’ of this imperial dream and someone who channelled an old and repressed American discourse, is Richard Haas, the National Security Council member who, on November the 11th 2000, published an article entitled ‘Imperial America’ (in The Atlanta Times). Displaying utter certainty, he wrote: ‘America must move from the dimension of a nation to that of a global empire’. He explained that ‘imperial’ and ‘imperialist’ were two different notions, for ‘Imperial America must reorganise the world according to what is Good, by adopting the role once attributed to Great Britain and granting it a greater moral dimension’. Allow me to summarise this bravura piece, which I have in front of me in English: the use of America’s new, regenerated power must draw inspiration from the legitimations proposed by John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, the two famous theoreticians of the British Empire. Haas believes that ‘the USA must extend its control over the entire world, even more so than the British Empire’. In his fusionist and unsophisticated mind, he persuades himself that ‘the USA’s interests are those of the rest of the world, and vice versa’. This doctrine is clearly that of a ‘Global Coup’, a utopian worldview that is just as delirious as universal communism was, an impossible parody of the Roman imperium. His is a brilliant, but rather immature mind, which is the case with many American intellectuals (who are as utopian as they are exalted, whereas our intellectuals remain dogmatic and fatigued). Richard Haas thus belongs to those who have influenced the ruling neoconservatives most.

  There is a detail that is bound to shock all advocates of OHAA and anti-American Islamophiles, who claim that the neoconservatives are fanatically Islamophobic: Haas is completely unaware of the Islamic threat and the immigrational invasion burdening the EU, and does not take heed of the demographic and ethnic issues that trouble the West. He restricts himself to an immutable, ahistorical vision of the world, one that is generally very faithful to the 19th century understanding of nations. All that he wants is for the US to claim total hegemony. What he has failed to realize is that we are experiencing another Great Migration, a fact that has also evaded the attention of our French intellectuals.

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  In the intellectual and theoretical debate taking place in the US, the principal opponent of neo-imperial theories is political scientist and philosopher Claes G. Ryn, a professor at the Catholic University of America and the author of numerous literary works. Thanks to his solid arguments and his non-polemical attitude, he has imposed himself as the Bush doctrine’s most formidable adversary, a doctrine which he demolishes in his latest essay entitled ‘America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire’ (Transaction editions, 2003). I shall now develop Ryn’s main arguments and contrast them with those presented by his primary ‘neo-imperialistic’ adversaries.

  According to Ryn, it is under Reagan’s rule that intellectuals first sensed the birth of a New American Imperialism, termed ‘imperial ideology’ and later reformulated by Haas as ‘imperial America’. Strangely enough, shortly before and after his election, G. W. Bush rejected this doctrine and called for the limited use of American power. He stated that America was supposed to display a certain ‘humility’. Then, following the 9/11 attacks, he suddenly underwent a remarkable volte-face and proceeded to espouse the imperial policy, which would henceforth be inappropriately referred to as the ‘Bush doctrine’.

  The latter is characterised by the relinquishment of the notion of American supremacy in favour of the concept of hegemony, or rather that of ‘armed world hegemony’. It thus abandoned the idea of surgical and targeted strikes so as to retaliate against anti-American aggressions and conduct grandiose strategic military operations, as implemented in Central Asia and the Middle-East. The pretexts that this ideology resorts to are the four conceptions of ‘democracy’, ‘liberty’, ‘equality’ and ‘capitalism’. And it is America that has the privilege of ‘supervising the Earth’s remodelling in accordance with these 4 principles’. The USA must therefore divide the world into those endowed with ‘moral clarity’ and ‘virtue’ and the ones that are not.

  From Ryn’s perspective, there is, in this respect, a striking similitude between American imperial neoconservatives and the Jacobin ideologists of the French Revolution. Both strive to impose commercial freedom, equality, the overthrowing of ‘tyrannies’ and the toppling of the ‘old world’, referring to themselves as the ‘virtuous’. The only difference lies in the fact that what French revolutionaries attempted to impose upon Europe through forceful means (such was the great ecumenical church back then), American neo-imperialism longs to impose upon the whole world as part of an impracticable and dangerous utopia that threatens collective security. Ryn has baptised the neoconservatives (or neo-imperialists) ‘the New Jacobins’, because they follow the notion of ‘liberating’ humanity to the letter, a notion proposed by J-J Rousseau in his Social Contract (1762) in harmony with the precept that states: ‘Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains’. They apply Rousseau’s universalistic principle of ‘forcefully liberating those who do not wish to be so’.

  During the Cold War, the legitimation of American supremacist imperialism lay in containing communism and protecting a certain part of the world, meaning the ‘free world’. Now that communism has collapsed, the new Jacobins are moving on to hegemonic imperialism and ‘taking advantage of the idea that it is necessary to create a better world for mankind, which is America’s purpose, thus justifying the continuation and expansion of power’. Ryn views this tendency as being simultaneously sincere and hypocritical.

  As gathered by Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987), this ‘American project’ was already discernible during World War II. It is not merely a matter of undoing a dangerous enemy, but also a question of exporting, for universally humanitarian reasons and the sake of Good, the only morally acceptable social model, which allows for the simultaneous prevalence of global American hegemonic will. The American power is thus indistinguishable from all that is good for mankind, and vice versa. As for the NAI, it has taken this principle to an absurd level. In this regard, Bloom first states: ‘when we Americans talk earnest politics, what we mean to say is that our principles of freedom and equality, as well as the rights which the latter establish, are rational and applicable everywhere’. Any and all political particularisms, regardless of location, are thus illegitimate because of their tyrannical dimension. Indeed, Jacobin reasoning was no different. The author adds: ‘The second world war was a re-educational project conducted in order to compel those who do not accept these principles to abide by them’. The successful ‘conversion’ of both Germany and Japan to ‘democracy’ has, it seems, rendered such principles globally applicable; but what this attitude truly shows is that these people have bitten off more than they can chew and have come up against an ‘impossible’ mission instead of actually ‘accomplishing’ one.

  And yet, these neo-Jacobins label ‘democratic’ all the regimes that they strive to establish to serve their own interests. None but the nations that support the American foreign policy could ever embody a ‘democracy’ — period. This is what Claes G. Ryn has termed ‘democratism’. What is remarkable is that this attitude is strangely reminiscent of Soviet behaviour and its desire to expand its ‘people’s democracies’, which turned out to be fatal in Afghanistan (under Brezhnev). Political scient
ist James David Barber is the true theoretician behind democratism. This is what he has proclaimed:

  America has both the vocation and the duty to take charge of the international democratic movement and globally impose democracy as we know it here. (The Washington Post, 25/01/1990.)

  In other words, the purpose is not merely to dominate the world, but also to Americanise it, which, in Ryn’s view, is but a disastrous notion of an Empire.

  What must also be highlighted is the influence that conservatives William Kristol and David Brooks have had on neo-imperialism. Without flinching, the two stated (in ‘What Ails Conservatism’, The Wall Street Journal, 15/09/1997):

  The USA is founded upon universal principles, and its special moral status has bestowed upon it a grand global mission. In order to pursue its universal task, the American government must be strong and energetic, particularly when it comes to military power […], which presupposes a neo-Reaganian policy of national strength and moral reassurance abroad.

  Kristol and Brooks have coined an expression to designate their doctrine: ‘national-greatness conservatism’. G. W. Bush’s team has obviously been greatly influenced by these virile words.

  Furthermore, renowned foreign policy expert Robert Kagan has also contributed to the neo-imperialistic ideology established by the neocons, thus confirming Ryn’s claims that they consider themselves the successors of both Jacobinism and Rousseauism:

  As good children of the Enlightenment, Americans believe in human perfectibility. But Americans also believe that global security and liberal order depend on the United States — that ‘indispensable nation’ — wielding power.

  According to Ryn, these intellectual authorities have thus sanctioned ‘our country’s international adventurism’ through ‘ideological and moral passion’. In his opinion, this represents a ‘new nationalism’, because America no longer takes on real enemies, as was the case during the Cold War; instead, it struggles against virtual foes that are falsely depicted as a menace.

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  Nevertheless, Ryn shares Buchanan’s belief that this ‘new nationalism’ is a fake one, since it does not defend America, but is, instead, both harmful and costly to the US, in addition to arousing hatred for it, just like France during the revolutionary and Napoleonian wars:

  Our missionary zeal bears a striking resemblance to that of revolutionary France. […] Like revolutionary France, neo-Jacobin America casts itself as a Savior-Nation. Ideological and national zeal become indistinguishable;

  which may well shatter the American identity, just as it eventually destroyed the French one. As for Kristol and Brooks, they see things differently, of course. ‘Our nationalism’, they write, ‘is that of an exceptional nation founded on a universal principle, on what Lincoln called “an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times”’. Their position embodies pure homogenising cosmopolitanism.

  The American Right that opposes this new imperialism thus believes that both American and French nationalism, inherited not only from Jacobinism, but also from the two sibling-Revolutions, are highly similar. The French-American polemics, therefore, lie at the heart of the same ideology. This is not at all the case with US-China rivalry, which is far more serious and fundamental.

  The following idea has also been developed: Washington’s neo-imperialism and neo-nationalism pay little heed to the American nation, because, just like the French nationalism that we have inherited from our own Revolution, what they actually defend is more of an ideology than a nation, which renders them ‘anti-patriotic’. The Bush administration is not interested in the issue of illegal Mexican immigration and cares little for America’s profound European roots. The notion of America that Ryn promotes is hardly ‘American’ at all, since it completely distances itself from Abraham Lincoln’s and George Washington’s vision of things, which the author castigates for identifying the USA with a ‘pure idea’, one that is both theologically moral and commercial:

  American neo-Jacobinism despises patriotism in the ancient sense of the word; it is not characterised by devotion to America’s concrete historical identity with its origins in Greek, Roman, Christian, European and British civilization. Neo-Jacobins are attached in the end to ahistorical, supranational principles that ought to replace the traditions of particular societies. […] They equally despise true American traditions and have no respect for the values and customs of foreign countries which do not share their “democratic” prejudice.

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  This kind of opinion is rather commonplace within the American Right and obviously contradicts America’s founding 18th-century principles, allowing us to measure the American contradiction between specific ethnic belonging (which, in America’s case, is originally rooted in Europe) and universalist principles. Neither Ryn nor Buchanan have been able to extricate themselves from this. The very same contradiction is encountered in France: is our country a ‘universalist’ idea or a ‘concrete people’ in the ethnic sense? French and American patriotism are both subject to the same tensions.

  Ever since the beginning, the USA has longed to become the Verus Israel, meaning the land whose duty it is to bestow and impose biblical values upon the entire world, an endeavour that the Bush administration has been implementing on unheard-of levels. Hence the fool’s bargain tying America to the Israelis and the Jewish lobby, since Judaism is essentially ethnic in nature and only defends the people of Israel, unlike America, which remains universalistic and utopian.

  In actual fact, America’s expansionistic ideology merges with Christianity (both with Catholicism, which means ‘universality’ in Greek, and Protestantism) in a straightforwardly religious form. French universalism, on the other hand, is related to the American kind and thus represents its direct rival, striving to spread a secularised and atheistic form of Christianity (i.e. ‘Human Rights’). The difference between the two is both thin and blatant. Let us, however, conclude this topic and return to the description of America’s ideological polemic between the anti-NAI camp and those who support it.

  Ryn accuses his country’s current policy of embodying a ‘new universalism’ that began under Reagan. In his view, universalism had previously been solely concerned with fostering global cultural exchange or perhaps imposing the American culture through seductive means. America’s new universalism, by contrast, has the same ambitions as former Soviet communism, but surpasses the latter in terms of means and skill, attempting to impose, both domestically and internationally, a specific ideological and cultural worldview using straightforward coercion, intimidation and corruption. The author thus thinks that this cultural imperialism goes too far and ends up diverting the world’s population away from the ‘American model’. By spreading across the planet, authentic American culture peters out. American traditionalists say that it is always preferable to respect others than to spread out, lose one’s identity and create a ‘neo-universal’ culture whose quality is bound to be mediocre.

  Their adversaries claim that, on the contrary, the American culture (an anti-pleonasm) must impose itself upon the whole world through virtually forceful means. In its theories, the cultural scope of American neo-imperialism goes far beyond what was once practiced by Hollywood and the producers of television series. The purpose is now to control and Americanise everything, including the Internet, video games, advertisements and information. America’s return to the UNESCO is a step in this direction.

  In the economic field (which should be understood in the broad sense of the word), the doctrinal initiator of American neo-imperialism is Ben Wattenberg, the famous press and television editorialist who published (in the Washington Times, 01/02/1988) a true manifesto of cultural hegemony evocatively titled A Chance to Champion Freedom, which has since been, of course, a source of inspiration for American governments, especially when callously interfering in the drafting of the European Constitution so as to eliminate any notion of ‘cultural exception’ from it. Funny how this ’freedom’ is always used to gene
rate servitude… ‘The time is ripe’, says Wattenberg, ‘to export American values everywhere. Never before has the culture of a single nation been so capable of conquering all, so omnipotent. There is ultimately only one global language — the American one’. Unfortunately for those who express such wishes, American or even Anglo-Saxon productions have been experiencing a severe global decline since reaching their historical peak in the 1960s-1980s period; this devolution has, for instance, impacted the pop music genre. Let us, however, resume our reading of Wattenberg’s manifesto:

  It is absolutely clear that what the international community needs is a globally dominant and all-powerful police force. Someone has to take charge of this task, and we are the only ones that can.

  Merging the concepts of political and cultural imperialism, Wattenberg makes the following specification: ‘There is a visionary idea — that of spreading democratic and American values [AN: which are of course one and the same] across the whole world’. He then earnestly adds: ‘Our aim in this planetary game is not to conquer the world, but only to influence it so that it ends up embracing our values’. In another noteworthy article bearing the Americano-biblical title ‘Peddling Son of Manifest Destiny’ (in The Washington Times, 21/03/1990), ideologist Ben Wattenberg wrote something that has now become a neoconservative creed: ‘Remember this American resolution: a unipolar world is an excellent thing, as long as America acts as its pole’. What must be noted here is that, in truth, the word ‘unipolar’ surfaced before the actual collapse of the USSR (1990), at a time when the Americans already anticipated it, which confirms the fact that Bush merely jumped onto the NAI’s moving train, without having set the latter into motion.

  As evidence, I shall quote the words of another neo-imperialistic ideologist, Charles Krauthammer. This statement dates all the way back to 1991, when this political TV and press journalist (the American equivalent of Patrice Duhamel) made the following plea: