[ENG] UTOPIANISM AND JUST WAR: THE INVASION OF IRAQ IN 2003 // UTOPISMO Y GUERRA JUSTA: LA INVASIÓN DE IRAK EN 2003
Resumo
This article examines one of the major foreign policy disasters of recent times: the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. It explores American policy in terms of the utopian attempt to create a perfect society in Iraq based on the American model. It will locate origins for American policy in Thomas More’s text and argue that, 500 years after the original publication, utopianism plays a vital role in global politics. American neoconservatism originates in two waves of reaction against the authoritarian utopianism of the revolutionary left, the first one in the 1930s and the second one –that founded neoconservatism proper – in the 1960s. Turning to standard American imagery, the neoconservatives concluded that moral renewal was the only way to return to the utopian vision of America’s founding fathers. It was thought that moral renewal within the USA could be encouraged by a strong foreign policy. The paper concludes is that utopias cannot be established through external force.
KEYWORDS: Iraq War, Neoconservatism, Utopia, American Foreign Policy, Neoliberalism
--
Este artículo examina uno de los principales desastres de política exterior de los últimos tiempos: la invasión estadounidense de Irak en 2003. Explora la política estadounidense en términos del intento utópico de crear una sociedad perfecta en Iraq, basada en el modelo estadounidense. Localiza los orígenes de la política americana en el texto de Tomás Moro y argumenta que, 500 años después de la publicación original, el utopismo juega un papel vital en la política global. El neoconservadurismo estadounidense se origina en dos oleadas de reacción contra el utopismo autoritario de la izquierda revolucionaria: el primero en la década de 1930 y el segundo –que fundó el neoconservadurismo propiamente dicho– en los años sesenta. Pasando a la imaginación colectiva norteamericana, concluyeron que la renovación moral era la única forma de regresar a la visión utópica de los padres fundadores de los Estados Unidos. Se pensó que la renovación moral dentro de los EE. UU. podría ser alentada por una política exterior fuerte. La conclusión es que las utopías no se pueden establecer a través de la fuerza externa.
PALABRAS CLAVE: Guerra de Irak, Neoconservadurismo, Utopía, Política exterior Americana, Neoliberalismo
Downloads
Referências
BBC News. “Bush demands Mid-East democracy,” 6 November, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3248119.stm [accessed 25 April 2015].
The Project for the New American Century, archived copy from 9 June, 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20130609154959/http://www.newamericancentury.org/ [accessed 24 July 2014].
New York Times. “Department of Defense release of the February 18, 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance,” 8 March, 1992 http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb245/doc03_extract_nytedit.pdf.[accessed 11 March 2017].
Bell, Daniel, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (New York: The Free Press, 1962).
Campion, Nicholas, The New Age in the Modern West: Counter-Culture, Utopia and Prophecy from the late Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (London: Bloomsbury 2015).
Codner, Michael. “The Two Towers, 2001-13”, in Wars in Peace: British Military Operations since 1991, ed. Adrian L. Johnson (London: Royal United Services Institute, 2014).
Dale, Eric, Hegel, the End of History and the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107477711
Friedman, Thomas, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1999).
Fukuyama, Frances, “The End of History?”, The National Interest 16 (1989): 3-18.
Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1991).
Fukuyama, Francis, After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads (London: Profile Books, 2007).
Harvey, David, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Hegel, G. W. F., The Philosophy of History, translated by J. Sibree (New York: Dover Publications, 1956).
Hersh, Seymour M., “U.S. Secretly Gave Aid to Iraq Early in Its War Against Iran”, New York Times, 26 January 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/26/world/us-secretly-gave-aid-to-iraq-early-in-its-war-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all [accessed 11 March 2017].
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. “This Will Hurt”. In This Will Hurt: The Restoration of Virtue and Civic Order, The Social Affairs Unit, ed. Digby Anderson, ix-xi (London: The Social Affairs Units, 1995).
Jowitt, Kenneth, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
Jowitt, Kenneth, “Rage, Hubris and Regime Change: The Urge to Speed History Along”, Policy Review 118 (2003): 34-8, http://www.hoover.org/research/rage-hubris-and-regime-change [accessed 1 October 2014].
Kampfner, John, Blair’s Wars (London: The Free Press, 2004).
Lagon, Magon, “Memorandum to Opinion Leaders,” The Project for the New American Century, January 7 1999, https://web.archive.org/web/20130609165624/http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqjan0799.htm [accessed 24 July 2014].
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, “What is to be Done?”, in Essential Works of Lenin (no place: bn publishing 2015), 54-175.
Lukes, Steven, “The grand dichotomy of the twentieth century”, in The Cambridge History of Twentieth Century Thought , ed. Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 602-626. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521563543.030
Lyons, Eugene, Assignment in Utopia (London: George C. Harrap, 1938).
Herbert Marcuse, Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics and Utopia (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970).
Meyer, Christopher, “Iraq War: Sir Christopher Meyer: 'I'm with you whatever', Tony Blair told George Bush,” The Daily Telegraph, 9 March 2013,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/9919816/Iraq-War-Sir-Christopher-Meyer-Im-with-you-whatever-Tony-Blair-told-George-Bush.html [accessed 15 March 2017].
Meyer, Christopher, “Our national interest demands the mother of all U-turns,” The Daily Telegraph, 23 August 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11051734/Our-national-interest-demands-the-mother-of-all-U-turns.html [accessed 15 March 2017].
Mitchell, Timothy, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (London: Verso, 2011).
More, Thomas, Utopia (London and New York: Verso, 2016).
Plato, Timaeus, trans. R.G. Bury (Cambridge Mass. - London: Harvard University Press, 1931).
Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations (no place: Shine Classics, 2014).
Steinfels, Peter, The Neoconservatives: The Origins of a Movement (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014).
Stewart, Rory, Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq (London: Picador, 2006).