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FALSE
ROMIS
Ifyou wantto understand
why
theBushadministration
invadedIraq,read
Freud's
Interpretation of Dreams, nottheNationalSecurityStrategy of
the UnitedStates.Onlythetwistedlogicof dreamscaneiplainwhytheUnited
Statesthinksthattheaggressive
pursuitof contradictory
goals-promoting
democracy,affirmingU.S. hegemony,andensuringstableenergysupplies-will
producesuccess.I By Slavoj Zizek
o illustrate
theweird
logicofdreams,of inconsistentarguments,of course, confirmspre-
SigmundFreudused to evoke a story cisely what it endeavors to deny: that you, in fact,
about a borrowed kettle: When a did borrow and break the kettle.
friendaccusesyou of returninga bor- A similarstring of inconsistenciescharacterized
rowed kettle broken, your reply is, first, that you the Bushadministration's publicjustificationsfor the
neverborrowedthe kettle;second,that you returned U.S. attackon Iraqin early2003. First,the adminis-
o,,
it unbroken;and third, that the kettle was already tration claimed that Saddam Hussein possessed
Ic brokenwhen you borrowedit. Suchan enumeration weapons of mass destruction(WMD),which posed a
0Z
m
"realand presentdanger"to his neighbors,to Israel,
,,
Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher and senior researcher at the and to all democraticWesternstates. So far,no such
U)l Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana,Slovenia. His books, weaponshavebeenfound (aftermorethan 1,000 U.S.
z
UI) most recently Organs Without Bodies: Deleuze and Conse- specialistshavespentmonthslookingfor them).Then,
D-
--
quences (New York: Routledge, 2003), have been translat- the administrationarguedthatevenif Saddamdoesnot
ed into more than 20 languages. have any WMD,he was involvedwith al Qaedain the
JANUARY FEBRUARY 2004 43
s rtI t
~ [1~ F
8 0 5
Iraq's False Promises
JANURY IFEBRUARY
2004 45
Iraq's False Promises
Regarding the third reason for launching an sacrosanct advice to developing countries to open
attack,it would be simplisticto assumethat the Unit- themselves to the global market.
ed States intended to take over Iraq's oil industry Another stunningexample of U.S. double-think
lock, stock, and barrel. But in a country that, as was the two-sidedpressureit exertedon Serbiain the
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz put it, summer of 2003. U.S. officials demandedthat Ser-
"floats on a sea of oil," the installation of a U.S.- bia deliver suspected war criminalsto the Interna-
blessed governmentthat is committedto permitting tional CriminalTribunalfor the FormerYugoslavia
foreign (read:U.S.) investmentin its oil industryand in The Hague (in accordance with the logic of the
that enjoys an influentialperch at the Organization global empire,which demandstransnationaljudicial
of Petroleum Exporting Countries was surely an institutions);but they also simultaneouslypressured
important consideration for U.S. policymakers. Serbia to sign a bilateral treaty obliging it not to
Indeed,to ignorethat considerationwould have been deliver to the new International Criminal Court
a case of strategicmalpracticeon a grand scale. (also in The Hague) any U.S. citizens suspected of
war crimes or other crimes against humanity (in
accordance with the logic of the nation-state).No
AMERICA'S EMPIRE BURLESQUE wonder the Serbreactionwas one of perplexedfury.
Of these three reasons, the key factor is the second And does the same inconsistency not hold for
one: using Iraq as a pretext or exemplary case to how the United States is waging the "war on ter-
establish the parametersof the new world order,to ror"? The exemplary economic strategy of today's
assert the right of the United States to launch pre- capitalism is outsourcing-handing over the
ventivestrikesand thus to cementits statusas the sole "dirty" process of material production (but also
global policing power. The message behind the U.S. publicity,design, accounting, etc.) to anothercom-
attack was not primarilyaddressedto the Iraqipeo- pany. Production takes place in, say, Indonesia,
ple but to all of us witnessingthe war-we were the where environmental and labor standards are
true ideological and political targets. much lower than in the West, and the Western
At this point, one should ask the naive question: company that owns the logo can claim that it is not
the United States as global policeman-why not? responsible for violations by its contractors.
After all, the post-Cold-War world effectively Now, something homologous is taking place
with the interrogationof terrorsus-
pects, with torture "outsourced"to
Third World allies (those same
Theproblem withtoday'sUnited Statesis not countriescriticizedin the U.S. State
Department's annual Country
thatit is a newglobalempire, butthat,while Reports on Human Rights Prac-
tices) who can coerce confessions
pretending to beanempire, it continuestoactas without worryingabout legalprob-
lems or public protest. "We can't
a nation-state, ruthlessly
pursuing itsinterests. legalize torture; it's contrary to
American values," sniffed colum-
nist Jonathan Alter in Newsweek,
begged for some global power to fill in the void. while nonetheless concluding that "we'll have to
Ah, but there's the rub: The problem with today's think about transferringsome suspects to our less
United States is not that it is a new global empire, squeamishallies, even if that'shypocritical.Nobody
but that it is not, i.e., that, while pretending to be said this was going to be pretty."And so it goes with
an empire, it continues to act as a nation-state, FirstWorlddemocracies,which outsourcemoreand
ruthlessly pursuing its interests. Indeed, in a per- more of their dirty undersides,whether telemarket-
verse reversal of the old ecological slogan, the ing or torture, to other countries.
bumper sticker for the Bush administration'sfor- The opportunity to bring the war on terror
eign policy could well be "act globally, think local- within the scope of an internationallegal orderhas
ly." Look, for example, at the U.S. decision to been squandered. Why? To borrow the words of
impose steel tariffs,ruled illegal by the WorldTrade Muhammad Said al-Sahaf,the colorful Iraqiinfor-
Organization and certainly in violation of its own mation minister who, in one of his last press con-
46 FOREIGN POLICY
ferences during the war, reportedly denied that unknown unknowns-the ones we don't know we
Americans controlled parts of Baghdad: "[The don't know." For Rumsfeld, these "unknown
Americans] are not in control of anything-they unknowns" representthe greatestthreats facing the
don't even control themselves!" Simply put, U.S. United States.But Rumsfeldforgot to add the crucial
policymakers lack the self-awareness to recognize, fourth term:the unknown knowns, things we don't
let alone reconcile, the contradictions between and know that we know-which is preciselythe Freudi-
among their intentions and their actions. an unconscious,the "knowledgewhich doesn'tknow
In February2002, U.S. Defense SecretaryDon- itself," as the French psychoanalystJacques Lacan
ald Rumsfeld engaged in a bit of amateur philoso- used to say. In many ways, these unknown knowns,
phizing about the relationshipbetween the known the disavowed beliefs and suppositions we are not
and the unknown: "Thereare known knowns; there even aware of adheringto, may pose an even greater
are things we know we know. We also know there threat. That is indeed the case with the reasons for
are known unknowns;that is to say we know there this war. What is "unknown" (disavowed, ignored)
are some things we do not know. But there are also is not primarilythe problematicnatureof those rea-
sons as such (say,the fact that in spreadingdemoc- the United States, they must remain undemocratic,
racy,the UnitedStatesis imposingits own versionof since it is a safe bet that democratic elections in
democracy), but, rather,the inconsistency among Saudi Arabia or Iraq would produce an Islamist,
those reasons.The United Statesis pursuinga series nationalistregimeridingon anti-Americanattitudes.
of goals (spreadingdemocracy,asserting its hege- "Sixtyyearsof Westernnationsexcusingand accom-
mony,securingoil supplies)that areultimatelyincom- modatingthe lack of freedomin the Middle East did
patible. Consider countries like Saudi Arabia and nothing to make us safe," declaredBushin Novem-
Kuwait, conservative monarchies, but economic ber 2003 [See sidebar on page 47]. But it did give
allies, deeply integrated into Western capitalism. Westerncountries relativelystable energy supplies,
Here,the UnitedStateshas a verypreciseinterest:For something that the United States is unlikelyto sac-
these nations to provide dependableoil reservesfor rifice overnighton the altar of freedom.
48 FOREIGN POLICY
Moreover, despite Bush's talk of a "forward Iraq alreadywas a secular state, the likely result of
strategy of freedom in the Middle East," we know democratic elections would be the privileging of
now what bringing democracy means: The United Islam! One unnamed senior U.S. figure even stated,
Statesand its "willing partners"ultimatelydecide if accordingto the BritishnewspaperThe Independent,
a country is ripe for democracyand what form that "the first foreignpolicy gestureof a democraticIraq
democracy should take. Witness Rumsfeld's com- would be to recognize Israel."
ment in April 2003 that Iraq should not become a Instead,what is likely to emergeas a resultof the
theocracy,but a tolerantsecularcountryin which all U.S. occupation in Iraqis preciselya fundamentalist
religionsand ethnic groups enjoyedthe same rights. Muslim anti-Americanmovement,directlylinkedto
U.S. officials have reacted with barely muted dis- such movementsin other Arabcountriesor countries
comfort to the possibility that a new Iraqiconstitu- with a Muslimpresence.It is as if, in a contemporary
tion might give Islam a privileged position. The display of the "cunning of reason," some invisible
irony here is twofold: Not only would it be nice if hand of destinyrepeatedlyensuresthat the U.S. inter-
the United States were to demand the same from vention only makes more likely the outcomes the
Israel with regard to Judaism, but while Saddam's United Statessought most to avoid. 1W
Rebecca Mead's profile of Slavoj Zizek, "The Marx Brother" (The New Yorker,May 5, 2003),
describes Zizek as a "masterof the counterintuitive observation." Three of Zizek's recent books
provide insight into his geopolitical views: Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on
11 September and Related Dates (New York: Verso, 2002) examines the war on terrorism;Did
Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (New York: Verso, 2001) highlights the weaknesses of liberal-
democratic ideologies; and The Puppet and the Dwarf: The PerverseCore of Christianity (Cam-
bridge: MITPress, 2003) provides a political reading of Christianity.
Visit the Web site of the White House for the full text of the Bush administration's"National
SecurityStrategyof the United States of America,"issued in September2002, as well U.S. President
George W. Bush'sspeech "PresidentBush Discusses Freedomin Iraq and the Middle East" (Wash-
ington, November 6, 2003). For a guide to the challenges facing the United States in postwar Iraq,
consult the CarnegieEndowmentSpecialReport "FromVictoryto Success:AfterwarPolicy in Iraq"
(FOREIGNPOLICY,July/August 2003). Lawrence E Kaplan and William Kristol lay out a neo-
conservativevision for the U.S. role in the world in TheWarover Iraq:Saddam'sTyrannyand Amer-
ica's Mission (San Francisco:EncounterBooks, 2003).
A trio of U.S. films offers provocative perspectiveson U.S. ideology. See Martin Scorsese'sTaxi
Driver (Columbia Pictures, 1976) for its portrait of the aggressive outburst of a disillusioned
redeemer; Phillip Noyce's The Quiet American (Miramax, 2002) for its portrayal of the cata-
strophic U.S. effort to democratize Vietnam (based on the Graham Greene novel of the same
name); and David Fincher'sFight Club (TwentiethCenturyFox, 1999) for insights on some of the
more troubling forms of resistanceto global capitalism.
))For links to relevantWeb sites, access to the FP Archive, and a comprehensiveindex of related
FOREIGN POLICYarticles,go to www.foreignpolicy.com.