It's Back to 1775 for Us!

Colonialism in reverse--that's the legacy of the American Enterprise Institute and the Neo-Conservative wank job that is the Project for a New American Century. As pointed out by many a smart pundit over the weekend, the US of A can't hope to remain a "superpower" (much less the "only" superpower) without money to back its world-domination fantasies. And because of George Bush and his competing gods (the need to establish neo-con principles like first strike capabilities vs. the unreasonable accumulation of wealth to himself and his friends), we as a nation are broke.

Enter Dubai Ports Worldwide, which is based in a nation with pockets as deep as its oil wells and which is oh-so-keenly interested in buying American property. Or at least controlling it, which is what the port deal does. As my father has pointed out, this is a property management deal, no more. But it also represents a new direction in American/Middle East cooperation: they are buying into our country more overtly than just a silent stake in multinational corporations. This is explicit, open involvement in a major sector of the economy.

Under neo-con precepts this is good, since it gives those damn dirty Arabs a taste of the glory of property, American-style; something we conflate with "democracy." Building strong partners in the Middle East, the US protects Israel and simultaneously liberalizes the emirates.

Unfortunately, this plan relies on two key factors not in evidence. One is the assumption that the Middle East is some primitive lumpen-culture, desperate--DESPERATE!--for our help and wisdom and friendship. Once we give them "democracy," they'll be so grateful that they'll slob all over our crotches in perpetuity. The other absent factor is that the United States has to be the unquestioned supreme state in the world in order for this to work. While it is plausible, in a rightwing wet dream, to imagine that a place like the UAE has an insatiable desire to be friends with the US, it is less likely to happen if the United States is in reality a weak state tottering on the edge of bankruptcy and wildly unpopular in the desert regions of the globe as well.

So the ominous part of the ports deal is that the preconditions of the neo-con fantasy do not exist. The United States is not the big gun in this deal: the UAE is. George Bush Senior works for the Arabs, not for the AEI. Dubai spends billions each year to bring attention to itslef, from building the world's biggest hotel to hosting golf tournaments at night on world-class, green courses in the motherfucking desert, to paying foreign stars and dignitaries millions of dollars for personal appearances, to a state-run sports program that is built to churn out athletes Soviet-style, but with limitless funding and assistance. In short, Dubai has signalled very clearly for the past decade that it intends to be a world player. In a region that holds the key to civilization--oil--it is unlikely that the UAE intends to play lapdog for the US.

This ain't like the Japanese buying a few office buildings in the 1980's. There are a host of reasons why this deal portends bad things for our future. One is that the state, the church, and international business are all rolled up together in the Middle East; indeed they are often embodied by single rulers. Dubai does not act merely out of good business sense: its way of doing business is part and parcel of its way of treating other cultures, women, infidels, and the like. The UAE has a terrible record on minority and civil rights, and that is no accident. Business is ideologically fueled by a worldview antithetical to that of the United States (or at least, the weltanschauung I think we have)--thus, there can be no getting into bed with these people if you ever want to get back out. This is colonization, but we're the country being sized up for carving.