(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
As the Americans were preparing for the invasion of Iraq, they overlooked one of the probably most important consequences. It was nowhere in the plan that the war would lead to a rapprochement between Iraq and Iran, which, with President George W. Bush, was an important part of the "axis of evil." But this nevertheless became the case. The chaos that spread rapidly in the country after the removal of the dictator Saddam Hussein led to sectarian tensions, and the growing power of Iraqi Shi'a Muslims as a result, at the same time, gave Iranians increased influence on Iraqi development.
According to Paul R. Pillar, the Americans had not seen this coming is not unusual. This kind of diplomatic bombing is a recurring phenomenon, and this gives Pillar, a researcher at Georgetown University, now an explanation for an exceptionally well-written and sharp analysis.
Excessive self-awareness
There are a number of reasons why the United States misunderstands the world in this way, and it starts and begins with the country's geographical location. The whole of Europe's history is characterized by wars and border disputes, while this has always looked different in North America. When the United States was first established as a nation, the conflicts with its two neighbors, Mexico and Canada, were few and innocuous, and the Atlantic has formed a mighty barrier that has kept European conflicts at an effective distance. It has often been claimed that China has lived in a similar seclusion, but that the Chinese had to build their enormous wall against troubled neighbors immediately devalues this comparison.
Ignorance, myths and monolithic beliefs are in many ways the backbone of it
American society.
In addition, a favorable starting point comes from nature's hand. The climate in most places is temperate and pleasant, the soil is bold and fertile, and the subsoil is full of raw materials. It is a rich country where it is a relatively simple matter to become wealthy. Therein lies a large part of the explanation that Americans generally have a much closer relationship with God than others, because the materially favored situation led many early Americans to conclude that they lived in God's Own Land. They were God's specially chosen, and they still are, and it creates a subconscious feeling of being a little better than others, and by the way also infallible.
The Americans' self-awareness is only given an extra nude by the fact that they were quite unbelievably easy to get to their country. It was not human when the first immigrants arrived, but the indigenous population was weak to the firepower of the settlers and was easy to underestimate. In modern American mythology, which is expressed in western films, for example, the redheads are nevertheless portrayed as a deadly enemy, leading to an unconscious underestimation of the strength of enemies in Iraq, Vietnam and elsewhere in the world.
Ignorance
However, the question arises how this can be done in a nation that has some of the world's best universities and does not lack talented analysts. Pillar emphasizes that this academic environment is a shame, but that the influence on policy makers is often low. It is thought of Donald Trump who would rather shoot from the hip, but according to this analysis, he is far from alone. Presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush built their power base on a series of populist views, and when Lyndon B. Johnson decided to step up the situation in Vietnam to a larger war, he believed that Ho Chi Minh participated in a worldwide communist strategy.
The material abundance of the United States, in many respects, creates a self-loathing also a recklessness that pushes the sense of environmental responsibility.
If all this was about a distant banana republic, the global damage effect might have been overlooked. But here we are talking about a nation that never has to worry about not having enough of everything. This material abundance creates a complacency and in many respects also a recklessness that, for example, shifts the environmental sense of responsibility. Why worry about that kind when there is plenty to take off? Equally worrisome is that this mentality has led to minimal interest in the rest of the world among so-called ordinary Americans. Only about a quarter of all Americans can have a conversation in anything other than English, and the fact that there are so many people is related to the large proportion of the population with a Spanish-speaking background. In Europe, a similar proportion of citizens can have a conversation in two foreign languages.
Ignorance, myths and monolithic views are in many ways the backbone of American society, and this obviously has a huge impact on foreign policy. For example, the Americans believed that they could transform Iraq into a multi-ethnic democracy by American example by moving militarily into the country. This reasoning distances the author sharply, pointing out that Americans' perception of their own society as the great ethnic melting pot of happy democratic origin in itself is naive mythic thinking. The United States has never been as homogeneous as Americans themselves think, he writes.
Of course, the United States has had visionary leaders with an understanding of the global issues, and many good initiatives have come from the White House in Washington. But it is often better to understand that the problems are better understood by people living in nations that are less free, less secure, less wealthy – and less big. And in order for the United States to turn out to be the truly great one in this relationship, more leaders are needed who really understand this disparity.
