Even the megapower needs friends 

Despite its awesome military might, the United States is stretched and vulnerable. That is Tony Blair's opportunity 

Andrew Rawnsley
Sunday January 12, 2003
The Observer 

In the history of our planet, never before has there been a power so apparently massive as the United States. Her stock market is worth more than the rest of the world's bourses put together. Her spending on military force is greater than the combined weight of the next nine largest powers put together. 
Her language - or perhaps I should say her version of our language - is the nearest thing to a global tongue; the dollar is the nearest thing to a global currency. No previous imperium, from the Ancient Greeks to the nineteenth-century British, has been so dominant. 

Whether you be a White House hawk who seeks to impose an American World Order on the planet, whether you be a hater of globalisation protesting against the beast, whether you be a British Prime Minister trying to ride the tiger, omnipotent America is the orthodox way of looking at the United States. That is why she inspires so much awe, envy and loathing among the non-American populations of the planet. 

And yet it is possible and perhaps more accurate to look at the United States in an entirely different way. She is Gulliver bound by the Lilliputians. America is a rather feeble megapower. 

North Korea is a rogue leftover of the Cold War that the United States won more than a decade since. Kim Jong Il's awful regime cannot feed millions of its own people. This is one of the most backward places on earth, except in its frightening potential to manufacture and export weapons of mass destruction. Kim Jong Il was branded part of the 'axis of evil' in George W. Bush's State of the Union address a little over a year ago when the American President warned North Korea that any attempt to restart its nuclear missile programme would be answered with terrible punishment. 

Well, now North Korea is cocking a plutonium snook at Washington by brazenly threatening to do what Saddam Hussein is only suspected of trying to do. Nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea is a clear and present danger, amplified by that unpredictable regime's record of selling missiles to other risk states. And what does George Bush do? He suggests talks. Yes, defy the hyper-power, and they'll ask for a chat. 

There seems to be a paradoxical rule that to be labelled as a Public Enemy Number One by the United States is your best guarantee of longevity. Think Colonel Gadaffi, still ruling Libya all these years since Ronald Reagan tried to bomb him into submission. Think Fidel Castro, still ruling Cuba despite the efforts of President Kennedy and every successive occupant of the White House to quash him. Think, most of all, Osama bin Laden. George Bush demanded that the most expensive intelligence services and the mightiest armed forces on the planet bring him Osama bin Laden 'dead or alive.' He is still waiting for the head of Osama. For all the CIA appears to know, bin Laden could be mashing castor oil beans in a north London flat. 

Worse, the terrorism that he spawned is more virulent than ever. Don't take my word for it. In an extraordinary confession of failure, and possibly a bid for an even bigger budget, the director of the CIA himself says that al-Qaeda is now more of a threat than it was before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. 

Those atrocities were the most vivid illustration of one particular American weakness: the vulnerability of the hippo to the wasp. Armadas of aircraft carriers are not terribly effective against the suicide bomber. 

The very strength of the United States accounts for much of her weakness. Her dependence on the oil that keeps the wheels of that power turning renders her incapable of forcing Saudi Arabia to account for its complicity in the breeding and funding of terrorism. The world's greatest power cannot impose a peace settlement on Israel-Palestine. Washington is suffering from imperial overstretch. The response to North Korea has been so limp because all American attention is presently focussed on Iraq. Even the megapower finds it has the capacity to cope with only one front at a time. 

The protracted and confused progress towards disarming Saddam is itself an illustration that America is far from all-powerful. It is well over a year since George W. Bush dedicated himself to completing his daddy's unfinished business with the Iraqi tyrant. Only now is America's military machine beginning to assemble sufficient forces in the Gulf for the job. I don't have much doubt that the United States is capable of smashing the Iraqi army, assuming that most of them don't desert or surrender first. My hunch is that 2003 will prove to be a bad year for dictators called Saddam. But contrary to expectation and stereotype, the United States has been slow to go about neutralising the butcher of Baghdad. 

Giants tend to become musclebound. American military power is indeed awesome, but its very size acts as a drag on its use. I recently suggested to a British Minister intimately involved with the military preparations that the United States didn't really need the assistance of our forces to attack Saddam. British troops, sailors and pilots would be present in the Gulf for largely symbolic and diplomatic reasons. I was quite wrong, responded the Minister and he offered an example from the campaign to remove the Afghan Taliban. The bombers of the United States Air Force could not be refuelled by the planes of the American navy because - extraordinary, but true - they are not compatible. The Americans relied on British refuelling aircraft to keep their planes in the sky. 

Being the megapower naturally makes her enemies while encouraging a belief in Washington that she does not really need to work at keeping friends: the failure to 'listen back' to the rest of the world identified by Mr Blair last week. Yet even America finds that she cannot operate without allies. Even this right-wing and unilateral-minded administration has made the rude discovery that they cannot rule the world alone. 

Their allies in the Far East all want a diplomatic, not a shooting, solution to the crisis with North Korea. In the Middle East, the Turks are being difficult about allowing their soil to be used for an invasion of Iraq from the north. The second rank powers on the Security Council - Russia, China and France - are staying America's hand by demanding the production of the so far elusive 'smoking gun' before they will consider mandating a war against Saddam. 

Even Washington's most steadfast friend, Tony Blair, insists that the UN inspectors must be given the 'time and space' to carry out their task thoroughly. So even Washington is drawing away from the 27 January deadline which it had previously schemed in as the trigger for beginning the attempt to topple Saddam. 

This is evidently infuriating the hawks in the Bush administration who never wanted to operate through the United Nations. They are spitting about Hans Blix and his inspection team, they are spinning against Colin Powell and the internationalists at the State Department, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they soon start turning on Mr Blair for his part in nudging Dubya into the hands of the UN. 

The frustration of the White House hawks is a further illustration of the curbs on American power. They didn't want to involve the UN, an organisation nowhere more despised than among the American Republican Right. And yet even with one of their own in the White House, the hyperpower has been obliged to pay obeisance to international opinion. 

The only superpower is a lonely superpower. And this, it seems to me, is the important opening for Tony Blair to exploit. As her best and often only friend, Britain is particularly well placed to influence the behaviour of the United States for the good. America's weakness is Britain's opportunity. 

a.rawnsley@observer.co.uk