Imperial overstretch and what it means

A very nice piece on imperial overstretch by Martin Jacques in the Grauniad.

It is clear that the US occupation of Iraq has been
a disaster from almost every angle one can think of, most of all for the Iraqi
people, not least for American foreign policy. The unpicking of the imperial
logic that led to it has already commenced: Hyde's speech is an example, and so
is Francis Fukuyama's new book After the Neocons, a merciless critique of Bush's
foreign policy and the school of thought that lay behind it. The war was a
delayed product of the end of the cold war and the triumphalist mentality that
imbued the neocons and eventually seduced the US. But triumphalism is a
dangerous brew, more suited to intoxication than hard-headed analysis. And so it
has proved. The US still has to reap the whirlwind for its stunning feat of
imperial overreach.
In becoming so catastrophically engaged in the Middle
East, making the region its overwhelming global priority, it downgraded the
importance of everywhere else, taking its eye off the ball in a crucial region
such as east Asia, which in the long run will be far more important to the US's
strategic interests than the Middle East. As such, the Iraqi adventure
represented a major misreading of global trends and how they are likely to
impact on the US. Hyde is clearly thinking in these terms: "We are well advanced
into an unformed era in which new and unfamiliar enemies are gathering forces,
where a phalanx of aspiring competitors must inevitably constrain and focus
options. In a world where the ratios of strength narrow, the consequences of
miscalculation will become progressively more debilitating. The costs of golden
theories [by which he means the worldwide promotion of democracy] will be paid
for in the base coin of our interests."
The promotion of the idea of the war
against terror as the central priority of US policy had little to do with the
actual threat posed by al-Qaida, which was always hugely exaggerated by the Bush
administration, as events over the last four and a half years have shown.
Al-Qaida never posed a threat to the US except in terms of the odd terrorist
outrage. Making it the central thrust of US foreign policy, in other words, had
nothing to do with the al-Qaida threat and everything to do with the Bush
administration seeking to mobilise US public opinion behind a neoconservative
foreign policy. There followed the tenuous - in reality nonexistent - link with
Saddam, which provided in large measure the justification for the invasion of
Iraq, an act which now threatens to unravel the bizarre adventurism, personified
by Donald Rumsfeld, which has been the hallmark of Bush foreign policy since
9/11. The latter has come unstuck in the killing fields of Iraq in the most
profound way imaginable.