‘Shock and awe’ rains on the US

On March 21, 2003, ITN network’s John Irvine reported from Baghdad the launch of “shock and awe”, the US Pentagon’s encoding for immeasurable death and destruction that rained on Iraq, in the following words: “This is on a completely different scale from what has gone on before. This isn’t just an attack on bricks
and mortar. It is an assault on the human senses …”

Some 22 years later, “shock and awe” has come to the US, a nation so contorted, disordered and misshapen that it will take a while for Americans (and their allies) to figure out what hit them. On the surface, it is the 1.5 leadership of Trump and Musk that is systematically dismantling the US, eroding institutions, upending constitutional guarantees and demolishing the federal apparatus. Musk’s chainsaw-waving to depict the rapid cutting of federal services is as perversely vaudevillian as the 2003 defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s delight when he announced “shock and awe” over Iraq. The latter was said to be in search of what most of the world knew were non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, WMDs, in Iraq, while the chainsaw is said to be in the hunt for corruption and waste in the US bureaucracy that is equally likely to be non-existent. The real purpose of both is different: to exert power and dominance, to control resources, to give more to themselves while snatching more away from those who have less.

It is known that slavery was the original American big business; it becomes clear that some version of slavery remains the main US business to this day. In this assessment, it is possible to defend Trump by arguing that he has only ripped the mask off the face of the US. He has torn away the pseudo-sophistication and shown America like it always has been right till he took over the presidency in his second term, sans filters. The pretence of diversity, equity and inclusiveness or the talk of democracy, freedom and peace or indeed the idea of civil rights, racial equality or fairness was the big US hoax that Trump is calling out now. Forget the globe, we don’t celebrate democracy in the US itself, Trump appears to say, as he indeed went on to tell the Governor of Maine at a televised meeting: “I am the federal law”.

Standard imperial excesses

While sections of the US intelligentsia berate the Trump-Vance government, it might be useful for those indignant now to study the language of power and control as standard US behaviour. Americans have typically either supported it or remained steadfastly oblivious to the deep damage it delivers to “aliens”, the American term for those “others”. The values of dominion and imperialistic control that the US has pushed to game others are the very values that it now sees in play with full force when the game has turned inward. Forget older interventions, wars and coups the US has engineered while spending a reported $10 trillion since the Cold War erupted to stay in charge with “shock and awe”, which in Iraq alone left half a million people dead, according to an academic report. Look only very recently, to those considered among the more “decent” leaders of our times.

What was Joe Biden doing when he went on supplying Israel with all the tools of its genocide in Gaza while staying completely silent on the havoc that has been brought to that land? Last year, while fighting for re-election, Biden denounced the International Criminal Court’s assertion that Israel’s leaders are guilty of war crimes for their campaign in Gaza. “What’s happening is not genocide. We reject that,” he said in a speech at the Rose Garden in
the White House. Anything was okay for votes.

Or consider the Nobel Peace Prize-winning US President Barack Obama. He killed more people in drone strikes across Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere than any other US President. A report from the 100-year-old US Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) notes that Obama ordered a total of 542 drone strikes, killing an estimated 3,797 people, including 324 civilians. That translates to murdering 1.3 people a day for every day of his presidency. And this reported quote from Obama to senior aides in 2011: “Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.” So, who is better – Obama, the erudite, polished, every-word-matters Harvard law graduate, or Trump, the non-sequiturs-mouthing rambler?

We may leave the US to its woes. But the overwhelming reach of US power combined with its recklessness means that what happens there imperils global peace and security. If the world is not to be left to suffer US excesses, leaders must engage more cautiously with an intemperate leadership. Some lessons that shine brighter than ever now.

It is good to be ever wary of a nation and a leadership that is and has historically been all about itself at the cost of others, driving others to misery as it gobbles up resources and pushes the idea of American exceptionalism. Some will argue all foreign policy works that way. But in practice, the US has the means, the willingness and the arrogance to translate its nefarious thinking to action.

It is also good to be wary of a nation that is sold on black-white stereotypes, a nation that elects its leaders based on appearances and limited, overhyped debate events rather than issues of substance. There is a lot right with the US, probably, but today it can be clear that a lot more is wrong within that nation. India needs to note that and etch some of these learnings into Indian foreign policy for now and for the future. This is a time that makes the Tito-Nehru-Nasser vision of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) look like a very bright idea indeed.

(The writer is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR; Syndicate: The Billion Press)