Deconstructing nation/states

The current rift between the "old" Europe and the United States along with the "new" Europe of the British government over Iraq is not temporary. It actually reflects a deep difference that emerged two decades ago with the beginning of end of the Socialist camp in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

The rise of "New Labour" in Britain was characterised by the introduction of a new ideological line to auto-fix the capitalist system: the Third Way. This does not mean that economic interests are not at stake, with the French and the Russians' discontent with Anglo-American plans concerning the development of Iraqi resources - mainly oil - which ranks as the third largest in global reserves.

And now, the U.S. is threatening Europeans with depriving them of the vast American markets for their exports if they did not follow suit on Iraq.

The Third Way, laid out for Tony Blair by the renowned scholar Anthony Giddens of the London School of Economics, is best described by the title of another Giddens' book Beyond Left and Right. The ideological debate is ongoing since the late Eighties and came to the fore of international politics with rhetoric about a New World Order in the early Nineties, with the second Gulf war as a lead in shaping it.

What the Europeans, except New Labour Britain, are resisting in the new order of international relations, theoretically based on the Third Way ideology, is the deconstruction of the nation/state through foreign intervention - even militarily. In a single-polarised world, only the Americans will have this privilege of intervening anywhere in the world to protect their interests.

Other industrialised powers have to follow the American path as their interests must be the same as that of the U.S. This is not a problem for the UK, but it is for others. France, Germany and the like are concerned about the sovereignty of their nation/states. This principle established by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, is the main focus of the current rift over Iraq.

The main clue for us here in the region is the principle of intervention by a global power, beyond the border of a sovereign country to impose what that power sees as its interests. As U.S. Secretary of State Collin Powell put it to Congress, one day after his show in the Security Council in early February, invading Iraq aims not only to get rid of weapons of mass destruction, but initiates a reshaping of the region to serve American interests.

What is going to happen in Iraq is a culmination of a trend the Anglo-American axis has been trying to establish for two decades: a devolution of nation/states, redefining sovereignty of states to sovereignty of individuals, focusing on other global divisions like ethnic and sexual, instead of the main divide of rich and poor.

Earlier trials to put this into reality didn't succeed: In Somalia the U.S. intervened under UN cover, but left the country in a state of protracted low intensity conflict. In Kuwait-Iraq (take1) George Bush Sr. couldn't do it as the British thought the world was not ripe yet for the new approach. In Bosnia Europe resisted the complete deconstruction of Yugoslavia, and finally in Afghanistan it was so easy to repeat the Somali example in an already torn country.

Today's Iraq is the perfect stage to establish the new, postmodernist, approach of redefining the sovereignty of nation/states. The weak and humiliated Arab world could be the best venue for Anglo-Saxon experimentation.

With the Muslim world neutralised by the war on terrorism, the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be finally settled according to the new model: Administrative Palestinian entity within a Jewish state.

The sin was committed by the British, guarded by the Americans, almost a century ago by implanting European Jews in Palestine. If what is planned is achieved in Iraq, then it will be easy in Palestine. After that who knows what could happen with North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and others.

The main issue will still be whether the U.S. and UK can really succeed in reshaping the whole world without the need of others' consent? Can other nations like China, Japan and Germany resist? Checking the sovereignty of the nation/state begins in Iraq, but do we know where it'll end? Nobody can predict the endgame, not even Tony Blair or George Bush.

The writer, is a well-known Arab journalist based in Qatar.