Ideology of the New Right collapses after failure in Iraq
From Le Monde (subscription required)
“The future of the Bush administration’s imperial project hangs on the results of the 2004 elections. If the Democrats win, we may see, in the words of Anthony Blinken, Democratic staff director of the Senate foreign relations committee, a “grand bargain, a return to cooperation and a renewal of the transatlantic relationship” – a more consensual and realistic attitude to international relations. It will not mean a return to the ways things were before, but it may make it possible to prevent the crisis from spreading.
The alternative scenario, a Republican victory, would likely lead to uncontrolled escalation of the crisis and the realisation of the US right’s self- fulfilling prophecy: a conflict of civilisations between Islam and the West. Such a situation would place unbearable strain on the international system.
The US is poised between a reassertion of sanity and a long regression into authoritarianism. While the imperialist urge has been weakened, it has not gone away.”