Democracy Incorporated Part 5

We have to make it clear that we didn't just come [to Iraq]

to get rid of Saddam. We came to get rid of the status quo.

-An official in the Bush administration.

[W]e don't need anyone's permission.

-President George W. Bush.

Superpower is not just a system of aggrandizing power but an attempt at reconst.i.tuting the nation's ident.i.ty. A compact statement of the ideology of Superpower was set out in The National Security Strategy of the United States of September 9, 2002 (hereafter NSS).3 It represented the clearest formulation of the administration's understanding of the mission of Superpower and of its totalizing reach. The doc.u.ment is also the best evidence of the ideology promoting inverted totalitarianism. In the course of its claims one can clearly see the components on which a grandiose conception of power relies and the global ambitions that a Superpower alone could contemplate. In the end it provides a unique example of how hard-nosed realism can combine with utopianism at the expense of reality-among other casualties.

Utopia is usually a.s.sociated with a soft-headed idealism that dreams of a time when the ills afflicting humankind-poverty, disease, strife-will have been eliminated. That understanding seriously underestimates the extent to which utopians have been fascinated by and dependent upon power for the realization of their hopes and dreams.

There have been three recurrent elements or prerequisites in many visions of utopia. One is that the founders of utopia possess some form of knowledge, some unquestionable truth, concerning what the right order of society should be, what should be the proper arrangement of its major inst.i.tutions. The second element is that utopians must imagine it possible to possess the powers capable of establis.h.i.+ng and realizing the utopian order. The third element is the opportunity of bringing utopia into existence and the skill in seizing and exploiting that moment. The NSS doc.u.ment embodies the first element, the blueprint, and suggests the second, the powers that seem to put utopia within reach. The third element, opportunity, was concocted in the preemptive war against Iraq.

II.

Depending on one's taste, the NSS doc.u.ment can be described as either forthright or crude; either way, there is no mistaking its single-minded concern and myth mentality. It begins by positing a conception of an expansive power that goes beyond previous understandings, and justifies it, not by an appeal to legal authority or political principle, but by a Manichaean myth that depicts two formations locked in a death struggle. One is the representative of absolute justice, the other of absolute injustice. On the one side, unprecedented but just power: "Today, the United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence"; on the other, "terrorists of global reach" who employ methods of violence devoid of justification: "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents."4 All of the might of one side is mustered to defend and avenge the innocents; all of the cunning of the other is dedicated to slas.h.i.+ng, again and again, at the world's greatest power by attacking the innocent. Utopia versus Dystopia.

Does innocence mean not being implicated in wrongdoing such as torture of prisoners or the "collateral damage" to hapless civilians? And is it that the citizens are innocent but not their leaders? If that is the case, isn't the system closer to the dictators.h.i.+ps whose horrendous crimes were attributed solely, or overwhelmingly, to the leaders.h.i.+p and not to the followers? Perhaps the answer is somewhere in between the categories of innocence and complicity. A clue is the frequency with which NSS invokes "we" to indicate that Superpower is a collaborative project. As citizens are we collaborationists? To collaborate is to cooperate; to be complicit is to be an accomplice.

III.

War is the state of affairs which deals in earnest with the vanity of temporal goods and concerns.

-G.W.F. Hege.

Because "the struggle against global terrorism" is declared to be "different from any other war in our history," it crowds out all other distinctions, reducing politics to one focal point, a politics fixated upon a single foe, mobilized to combat an enemy unlike any encountered previously, "a new condition of life." Exhilarated by the prospect of a contest between good and evil, as confident of its own rect.i.tude as it is of the unalloyed evil of its foe, NSS offers a.s.surance that our society will emerge invigorated from the contest with terrorists: "We will adjust to it and thrive-in spite of it."6 While declaring terrorism a unique phenomenon, the author(s) of NSS hasten to fill the vacuum left by earlier contests with evil powers.

For most of the twentieth century, the world was divided by a great struggle over ideas: destructive totalitarian visions versus freedom and equality.

The great struggle is over. The militant visions of cla.s.s, nation, and race which promised utopia and delivered misery have been defeated and discredited.7 In fact, the totalitarian systems of Hitler and Mussolini, far from promising utopia, had demanded endless heroic sacrifices from their populaces. Utopianism, far from being discredited, reemerges in those who wield America's power. Its manifesto is in the opening sentence of the NSS doc.u.ment: "The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom-and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."8 That "single sustainable model" embodies the new utopianism and has its own breathless version of totalizing power: "the United States will use this moment of opportunity to extend the benefits of freedom across the globe. We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world."9 As the vision unfolds, it reveals, if unwittingly, how "democracy, development, free markets, and free trade" will converge to further their opposites and the ambitions of Superpower.

The n.a.z.is and Fascists exalted strength and domination and were contemptuous of weakness; the new utopians are proud of their unparalleled strength but, paradoxically, feel threatened by weakness in others: "The events of September 11, 2001, taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states. . . . [P]overty, weak inst.i.tutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders." The power that will come to the aid of weak states is identified with the particular "freedoms" which the new utopians are eager to promote: "Free trade and free markets have proven their ability to lift whole societies out of poverty."

The freedoms being dangled before the unfree are, in reality, disguised power. Free trade and free markets in the hands of the already powerful are not symmetrical with free trade and markets in the hands of "weak" societies. Instead, the effect upon the poor nations of opting for them invariably turns simple weakness into dependence on those nations whose economies have made them dominant powers and who, accordingly, have the right to declare a state weak and call its performance to account. "For freedom to thrive, accountability must be expected and required."10 Thus when the NSS doc.u.ment presents the "free market" as one of the three const.i.tuent elements of the ideal political system, the market is a surrogate, a stand-in for globalization/empire.

Thus freedom is granted conditionally and performance is accountable to the power that makes freedom possible. What began as the challenge posed by terrorism becomes conflated into "a great mission" that comprehends virtually all of the world's ills and, in the process, inflates national power into global power: Throughout history, freedom has been threatened by war and terror; it has been challenged by the clas.h.i.+ng wills of powerful states and the evil designs of tyrants and it has been tested by widespread poverty and disease. Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom's triumph over all these foes. The United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission.11 The new utopians, while proclaiming that the United States must exercise power commensurate with the demands of its campaign against terrorism and the global mission of reconst.i.tuting the world's economies, insist that Superpower will be devoted to reducing the power of the state universally. "The lessons of history are clear: market economies, not command-and-control economies with the heavy hand of government, are the best way to promote prosperity and reduce poverty. Policies that further strengthen market incentives and market inst.i.tutions are relevant for all economies-industrialized countries, emerging markets, and the developing world."12 Taken at face value, the p.r.o.nouncement devaluing the state seems at cross-purposes with the utopian aim of reconstructing societies in "every corner of the world." What kind of power is it that, in effect, can reconstruct the world without employing "the heavy hand of government," and what kind of power is being contemplated that is both effective and nongovernmental? The questions become unsettling in light of the original goal of combating, without necessarily eradicating, global terrorism. "Modern life," we are warned, is particularly "vulnerable," and that "vulnerability" "will persist long after we bring to justice those responsible for the September eleventh attacks."13 Terrorism, then, is the kind of problem which can be viewed in two ways that are not mutually exclusive: where there is not even a promise of light at the end of the tunnel or where there is endless opportunity for investment.

Light-handed government in regard to economic policy-a conception that might be termed "antipolitical economy"-and heavy-handed state power to fight terrorism: the two represent a unique power combination. In the economies of contemporary capitalist societies relations.h.i.+ps reek of unequal power, but dominant powers differ from those of the government or state. Great corporations attribute their immense resources to the fact that they are able to operate free from state interference. One might, of course, cite endless examples of government favors and subsidies ("corporate welfare"); moreover, the global power that, for a domestic audience, decries state intervention into the economy has not hesitated countless times to lift its heavy hand abroad and to intervene, even to covertly subvert, when some free society's elected representatives have opted for elements of socialism, such as government owners.h.i.+p and operation of a nation's extensive petroleum resources: vide Guatemala (1964), Chile (1971), Nicaragua (1980s), or Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia (2003). Perhaps, then, free trade and free markets, while meant to restrain government intervention in foreign countries, actually extend the global power of the United States, although not the power of the U.S. government as such. "Free trade" and "free markets" expose weaker, less economically developed societies to the highly advanced forms of economic power wielded by corporations and tacitly backed by American political and military power. Against superior economic might native governments are largely defenseless.

Nor, in the NSS formulation, is U.S. power abroad to be restricted to military or economic matters. Unilaterally, the United States declares it is justified in reconstructing the infrastructure of other societies. "As humanitarian relief requirements are better understood, we must also be able to help build police forces, court systems and legal codes, local and provincial governmental inst.i.tutions, and electoral systems."14 Iraq proved this to be no idle boast. That country was fated to be selected as a testing ground for the ambitious forces a.s.sembled under Superpower. The test took the form of a catch-22. First the display of the awesome destructive power, the "shock and awe" and "bunker busters" made possible by science and technology. Then, having employed weapons of ma.s.s destruction to smash and disrupt the economy and society of Iraq in order to prevent Saddam from using his nonexistent weapons of ma.s.s destruction, Superpower attempted to close the circle by applying the power of the free market to the reconstruction of the infrastructure it had shattered. The most redoubtable corporate powers-Bechtel, Halliburton, the Carlyle Group-entered the newly established "free" market from which Russian, French, and Canadian business firms were initially excluded because of their opposition to the preemptive war.15 Presumably Micronesia, which had joined "the coalition of the willing," was free to compete.

In order to fulfill the role envisaged by NSS the political power of the United States has to be conceived in imperial rather than const.i.tutional terms. Accordingly, "It is essential to reaffirm the essential role of American military strength." This requires "defenses beyond challenge" and "dissuad[ing] future military compet.i.tion"-"compet.i.tion" signifying the integration of the military as a permanent part of the market economy and the expansion of the market to accommodate "corporate warriors" and a thriving private security industry.16 Security for securities . . .

An unchallengeable military power, not a merely preeminent one, means that "the United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access for the long-distance deployment of U.S. forces." The power needed must defend not only "critical U.S. infrastructure" but also "a.s.sets in outer s.p.a.ce."17 Like Tocqueville's benevolent despot, the United States rea.s.sures the world that it will act "with a spirit of humility."18

IV.

There is one master theme whose frequent recurrence supplies the overall context for the several concerns and proposals in the NSS doc.u.ment. The "dangerous technologies" acquired by terrorists demand that "America . . . act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed."

While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country. . . . The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction-and the more compelling the case for taking antic.i.p.atory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. . . . We will be prepared to act apart (from friends and partners) when our interests and unique responsibilities require.19 In order to act preemptively and to call attention to its might, Superpower exempts itself from the constraints of treaties, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Although the United States often turns over war criminals of other nations to international tribunals, its own officials or agents "are not [to be] impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept."20 Since state and corporate power have become increasingly intertwined, that composite ident.i.ty requires that the renunciation of restraints is also extended to treaties, such as the Kyoto Accords intended to control global warming, the rationale being that they impose an unacceptable burden on American economic enterprises.21 The unspoken a.s.sumption is that a burden on American enterprise detracts from American power.

The totalizing impulses underlying the drive to be rid of restraints are not limited to the projection of power abroad. For, while terrorists have their networks based outside the borders of the United States, their targets are inside the country. Accordingly, state power must pursue them by projecting power internally, the power that, in keeping with Hobbesian logic, casts off external restraints whenever and wherever the necessity arises. The justification for increased domestic powers is that "the distinction between domestic and foreign affairs is diminis.h.i.+ng." "In a globalized world" we are affected by events outside our borders; more important, because "our society must be open to people, ideas, and goods from across the globe," we are inherently vulnerable to terrorist attacks.22 The vanis.h.i.+ng line between foreign and domestic is crucial because of the contention that constraints on power in domestic matters ought not to carry over to foreign affairs, especially when military action is involved.23 This claim might seem to be an appeal to the old doctrine of "reason of state," which a.s.serted that when issues of war and diplomacy were at stake, those who were responsible for the safety of the nation should be allowed a freer hand, greater discretionary power, to meet external threats without being hampered by the uncertainty attending the c.u.mbersome and time-consuming legitimating processes of legislatures or courts.

In fact, the NSS doctrine goes beyond the old reason of state. It places reason of state in the context of terrorism, that is, in a context which, by the administration's definition of terrorism, knows no boundaries, spatial or temporal. The reason-of-state argument for discretionary power had a.s.sumed a demarcation between matters of war and diplomacy, where state actors would have a comparatively freer hand, and matters of internal governance, where they would be subject to ordinary constraints.24 The war on terrorism, with its accompanying emphasis upon "homeland security," presumes that state power, now inflated by doctrines of preemptive war and released from treaty obligations and the potential constraints of international judicial bodies, can turn inwards, confident that in its domestic pursuit of terrorists the powers it claimed, like the powers it had projected abroad, would be measured, not by ordinary const.i.tutional standards, but by the shadowy and ubiquitous character of terrorism as officially defined. The Hobbesian line between the state of nature and civil society begins to waver.

V.

It is not only the line between foreign and domestic matters that is being blurred but the distinction between economic and political power. Once upon a time it was believed that in a democracy the power of the government was derived from a citizenry who, by the political duty of partic.i.p.ating in politics and exercising their political rights, transmitted a distinctively political character to governmental authority that served to justify its exercise of power. Now, however, the power of government is not an emanation of the political power of the citizens. Rather government appears as autonomous, distanced from the citizens because the power of the citizenry is given a sharply different focus: not as political power expressive of the will of engaged citizens but as "political and economic freedom" which ensures that the nation "will be able to unleash the potential of their people and a.s.sure their future prosperity." Political involvement is reduced to minimal, anodyne terms: "People everywhere want to say what they think; choose who will govern them; wors.h.i.+p as they please; educate their children-male and female; own property; and enjoy the benefits of their labor."25 Quietly, economic mobilization is accompanied by a de-emphasis on politics, by a political demobilization. That unthreatening ideal inspires the peroration to NSS, where economy supersedes the political and is designated the real basis of national security: Ultimately, the foundation of American strength is at home. It is in the skills of our people, the dynamism of our economy, and the resilience of our inst.i.tutions. A diverse, modern society has inherent, ambitious, entrepreneurial energy. Our strength comes from what we do with that energy. That is where our national security begins.26 This statement represents the clear admission that the American economy is acknowledged to be more than a system of providing goods and services. It is, in its own right, a system of power that deserves to be considered as much a part of the "foundation" of political society as the inst.i.tutions prescribed by the Const.i.tution. The consecration of economy means that in the trinity of "freedom, democracy, and free enterprise" the three elements are not of equal standing. Freedom and democracy are clearly subservient to free enterprise, a relations.h.i.+p that, by providing "cover" for the political incorporation of the corporation, a.s.sumes great significance in light of the fact that the economic structures defining free enterprise are inherently autocratic, hierarchical, and primed for expansion. When the claims and needs of the economy trump the political, and bring in their wake strikingly unequal rewards and huge disparities in wealth and power, inequality trumps democratic egalitarianism.

The later transformation of the market, from one of small-scale producers into one dominated by large corporations and monopolies and near monopolies, lent a new meaning to market "forces." The market was now the site of great powers: powers that determined prices, wages, patterns of consumption, the well-being or poverty of individuals, the fate of entire neighborhoods, cities, states, and nations. Several of the larger corporations possess wealth rivaling or exceeding that of many of the smaller nations of the world. The power of great corporations underwent further change toward the end of the twentieth century when corporate power conjoined with state power. The "market" ceased to be an ent.i.ty distinct from, and contrasting with, state power, becoming its extension-and vice versa, becoming the "hidden hand" in "public" policies.

Once the hybrid or dual nature of contemporary state action is understood, it is possible to put in their true light the coupling in NSS of "freedom" and "democracy" with "free enterprise." The porous character that freedom and democracy create in society-"our society must be open," as NSS noted, "to people, ideas, and goods from across the globe"-provides the conditions that enable the economic power generated in the market to easily penetrate and control politics. Freedom and democracy, far from posing a threat to "free enterprise," become its instrument and its justification. And rather than serving as the means for furthering the political project of democratization, the state helps to inter it.

VI.

It is one of the consequences of aggression that it hardens the conscience, as the only means of quieting it.

-James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer.

The test case of the NSS doctrine is Iraq, its utopian opportunity. There all the might of Superpower was mobilized in defiance of world opinion; there the great corporate giants of the American economy were poised to reconstruct the Iraqi economy according to the principles of the free market; and there the corporate warriors, well-paid and armed with the latest weaponry, were gearing up to join forces with the American military largely composed of young men and women from working-cla.s.s and recent immigrant backgrounds who had enlisted, not to fight a war, but to improve their economic status or finance a college education otherwise unattainable.

And, despite the blueprint for a new democratic Middle East, the power of modern technology and corporate resources straining to exploit Iraq, and the pretext that was supposed to provide the opportunity, Superpower failed. Instead of achieving conquest, it provoked an insurgency that left Iraq virtually ungovernable and close to being uninhabitable; instead of dealing terrorism a damaging blow, it exacerbated the problem and multiplied the ranks of the enemy; instead of seeing the world cowering before its might, Superpower faced a world where many governments and their peoples found common ground in opposing the United States.

In Iraq Superpower succeeded only in providing the answer to the plaintive question of 9/11, "Why do they hate us?"

VII.

In attempting to explain the debacle of Iraq several commentators have pointed to the highly ideological group of "neoconservatives" who, it is alleged, had long been dreaming of a new order in the Middle East and were only waiting for an opportune moment. Although the neocon factor matters, there is a far more significant and ominous source encouraging the hubris of Superpower. The Superpower revealed in Iraq was quintessentially power without legitimacy, as was demonstrated by every claim that Saddam was linked to al Qaeda and that he possessed weapons of ma.s.s destruction. The shabby and unverifiable arguments, especially those before the UN, were unconvincing precisely because everyone was aware that Superpower had long since made up its mind. Superpower made no secret that its preparations for invasion were under way and that no amount of argument would persuade the American leaders to abandon or significantly postpone their plans. Superpower's operatives no more needed the consent of the UN than they needed an accurate counting of ballots in the presidential election of 2000. The moment when the breaking of limits and the subsequent a.s.sertion of expansive powers suddenly became possible was that moment when political and const.i.tutional legitimacy was cynically discarded and George II was crowned. Much became possible that previously was unthinkable or, if thinkable, then done surrept.i.tiously: cla.s.s-based tax cuts,28 the undermining of decades of environmental safeguards, the crude collusion with corporate power, the decimation of social programs benefiting the poor, the steady dismantling of the "wall" separating church and state, the nomination of highly ideological candidates for judicial appointment. In short, Iraq had its origins in Florida: there power without legitimacy was first envisioned. That was when power brokers found that, if sufficiently determined, they could overcome the inhibitions of democratic const.i.tutionalism.

CHAPTER SIX.

The Dynamics of Transformation.

I.

A decent society will not go to war except for a just cause.

But what it will do during a war will depend to a certain

extent on what the enemy-possibly an absolutely

unscrupulous and savage one-forces it to do. There are

no limits which can be defined in advance, there are no

a.s.signable limits to what might become just reprisals. . . .

But societies are not only threatened from without.

Considerations which might apply to foreign enemies

may well apply to subversive elements within society.

-Leo Strauss.

One of the oldest political plat.i.tudes teaches that political systems can experience changes of such magnitude and velocity that their ident.i.ty is altered, literally trans-formed. The city-states of ancient Greece underwent frequent and often dizzying transformations, from cities governed by aristocracies to ones run by those characterized as democrats; Athenian democracy transformed itself into an empire and the Roman republic did the same; eventually both Athenian democracy and the Roman republic disappeared, eviscerated by their own expansionism. Seventeenth-century England went full cycle in little more than two decades, from monarchy to rule by Parliament to the dictators.h.i.+p of Cromwell to the restoration of the monarchy. For France, beginning in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, it is difficult to count the number of different political ident.i.ties following the Revolution of 1789 and continuing throughout the nineteenth century into the twentieth. There were periods of dictators.h.i.+p, a first empire under Napoleon, restoration of a monarchy combined with a parliament, a second empire and dictators.h.i.+p under Louis Napoleon, then a series of republics interrupted in the twentieth century by the Vichy dictators.h.i.+p (194044) sponsored by and beholden to the n.a.z.is.

Nor is American experience an exception. The thirteen colonies were originally part of the British Empire; the colonial system was overthrown by a confederation of the former colonies; it was succeeded by a new federal system and national government that would be challenged in the next century by a secessionist movement that culminated in a civil war and two systems of government. Throughout the nineteenth century the structure, even the form, of the American system, including its politics, was continually changing as new states from the Midwest, Southwest, and West, some with cultures strikingly different from that of the eastern states, were admitted-and all this against the background of Indian "wars," the first chapter in the national commitment to eradicating terrorists while extending the reach of its government.

Perhaps Americans tend to accept, even welcome, change while resisting the idea of transformation. Change suggests a modification that retains a prior "deeper" ident.i.ty. Transformation implies supersession, or submergence, of an old ident.i.ty and the acquisition of a new one. Between the two poles of change and transformation there is a third possibility in which transformation occurs yet the older form is preserved. Thus throughout most of its history England (and later the United Kingdom) preserved the trappings of monarchy after having long since hollowed out its substance.

Change is the rule rather than the exception: that plat.i.tude is easy for Americans to acknowledge when applied, say, to the economy or to "lifestyles." Americans, accustomed to, even insistent upon, continuous progress in scientific knowledge and innovative technology, a.s.sume that their main political inst.i.tutions, the Const.i.tution, and the protections of citizens.h.i.+p are firmly established and admirably difficult to amend. They believe, perhaps with a trace of desperation, that their fundamentalist view of the Const.i.tution is vindicated because the United States is "the world's oldest continuous democracy." Although Americans recognize that their politics is changing, as the presence and influence of television continually reminds them, they shy away from transformation when "basic" political forms are involved for fear of rendering ident.i.ties problematic, the nation's as well as their own. And, equally important, they have become blindly accepting of the notion that whatever is p.r.o.nounced "outdated" or relegated to the "past" is no longer recoverable. There is no going back: an ident.i.ty, such as "democracy," once lost is gone forever.

When terms like "American superpower," "American empire," or "the greatest power in history" acquire a certain notoriety, as they did during the controversy over the invasion of Iraq, the sheer dissonance produced by the effort to comprehend oxymorons such as "superpower democracy" or "imperial const.i.tution" raises the possibility that a different type of political system is evolving within the familiar framework. Instead of a system in which governmental powers are measured by a const.i.tution of enumerated powers, there appears to be an expansive conception of power and a triumphalist ideology alien to the Const.i.tution. Despite its "exceptionalism," or perhaps because of it, the United States may be undergoing a political transformation that includes not only significantly different political and civic ident.i.ties but also a different kind of politics. The distance between Superpower's claims of global hegemony and democracy's ideal of self-government has been bridged by the concept of "managed democracy," which acquired some currency in connection with the reconstruction of Iraq. Superpower and managed democracy might comfortably coexist. It is, as a pastorly president might put it, a match made in heaven.

Before we consider the changes that promote Superpower's managed democracy, it is worth bearing in mind that, from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century, when political theorists referred to const.i.tutional transformations they were not primarily concerned with alterations in the "basic" laws except as these registered s.h.i.+fts in the distribution of power. That focus led to attempts at identifying the sources of political reconfigurations, some of which might have originated within the system of power (e.g., the legislature reduces kings.h.i.+p to a ceremonial figurehead), but, more often, transformations were attributed to developments originating "outside" the formal system (e.g., the rise of a merchant or industrial cla.s.s that challenged the ruling landed aristocracy and demanded representation in the councils of governance; or conquest by a foreign power and the imposition of a new system, as in j.a.pan after World War II). In general, while a const.i.tution may "const.i.tute" power by creating inst.i.tutional authorities virtually de novo-as in the invention of the presidency and the Supreme Court-more often it demonstrates flexibility by recognizing and investing de facto power with authority-as when, in 1933, the Weimar Reichstag declared Hitler to be chancellor (or prime minister) but only after changing the law that had declared Austrians ineligible for the office.

A const.i.tution, or rather its authoritative interpretation, may be made to legitimate powers originating elsewhere: in the changing character of cla.s.s relations, economic structures, social mores, ideological and theological doctrines, or the emergence of powerful social movements (e.g., opposition to abortion rights). A const.i.tution may also serve as the means of deflecting external powers: for example, a supreme court may zealously turn back "attacks" on property rights and business interests from the regulatory powers of state legislatures, as happened from roughly 1871 to 1914 in the United States. To cite another example: challenges to racial segregation were resisted by all branches of government and the two major political parties until the mid-twentieth century. Here transformation was resisted in favor of tactical acquiescence in change that, while acknowledging the emergence of new forces, signals adaptation to, not necessarily reconst.i.tution of, the dominant powers.

In theory a const.i.tution prescribes a distinctive organization of power (e.g., a const.i.tutional monarchy or a republic) and identifies the purposes for which power can be used legitimately. A const.i.tutional form lends power shape, definition, and a genealogy ("We, the People . . . do ordain and establish this Const.i.tution"). The portent of transformation is a lack of fit between power and authority. Authority sanctions, authorizes, the use of power ("The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes") and sets limits ("but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States" (art. I, sec. 8, cl. 1). Yet, while Congress alone has the authority to declare war (art. I, sec. 8, cl. 11), that power was, in effect, preempted by the president in the war on Iraq, and Congress meekly capitulated.

The technology of power, however, evolves more or less independently of const.i.tutional conceptions of authority. In a society that strongly encourages technological innovation, definitions of const.i.tutional authority tend to lag well behind the actual means of power and their capabilities. For example, the so-called war powers authorized by the American Const.i.tution are invoked to justify the use of "weapons of ma.s.s destruction" capable of inflicting death and misery upon thousands of noncombatants, among them the populations of Dresden and Hiros.h.i.+ma. A war power may be authorized by a const.i.tution drawn up more than two centuries ago, but "advances in weaponry" have altered dramatically the meaning of warfare without formally rewriting the authorization to use them.

What does it mean to be "victorious" in the age of "shock and awe," nuclear weapons, and global terrorism, or to "defend the nation" when it has become an empire? It is possible that the powers available to twenty-first-century rulers and to their terrorist foes are such as to outstrip the ability of fallible mortals to control their effects-and that may be what the jargon of "collateral damage" serves to obscure. When a const.i.tutionally limited government utilizes weapons of horrendous destructive power, subsidizes their development, and becomes the world's largest arms dealer, the Const.i.tution is conscripted to serve as power's apprentice rather than its conscience.

Such considerations expose an underlying a.s.sumption of our Const.i.tution. At the time of its formulation, the authors, as well as those who ratified the final doc.u.ment, naturally a.s.sumed that in the future the weapons of destruction would not be radically different from existing ones. But while it is in Superpower's interest that the Const.i.tution should appear unchanging, the technology of war has been revolutionized. The likely consequence of that imbalance is suggested in the summary remarks by the authors of a mainstream textbook in const.i.tutional law: The circ.u.mstances of nuclear warfare would, not improbably, bring about the total supplantation for an indefinite period of the forms of const.i.tutional government by the drastic procedures of military government.2 Accordingly, we need to broaden our definition of Superpower: power unantic.i.p.ated by a const.i.tutional mandate and exceeding the political abilities and moral sensibilities of those who employ it. Superpower does not automatically guarantee super(wo)men, only outsized temptations and ambitions.

The formlessness of "Superpower" and "empire" that accompanies concentrated power of indefinite limits is subversive of the idea of const.i.tutional democracy. Although, strictly speaking, traditional accounts of political forms do not antic.i.p.ate superpower, some writers, notably Niccol Machiavelli (14691527) and James Harrington (161177), proposed a distinction between a political system content to preserve itself rather than expand and a political system, such as that of ancient Rome, eager to "increase" its power and domain.3 Applying that distinction, we might say that the United States combines both. In the view of those who venerate the "original Const.i.tution," the Founders had established a government of limited powers and modest ambitions. The const.i.tution of Superpower, in contrast, is meant for "increase."4 It is based not on the intentions of the framers but on the unlimited dynamic embodied in the system whereby capital, technology, and science furnish the sources of power. Accordingly, when certain reformers, such as environmental activists and anticloning advocates, seek to use const.i.tutional authority to control the powers a.s.sociated with the "const.i.tution for increase" (e.g., regulating nuclear power plants or cloning labs) they find their efforts blocked by those who invoke the conception of a const.i.tution as one of limited authority. But typically when representatives of the "const.i.tution for increase" press for favors from those who man the "const.i.tution for preservation," they get their way. While Superpower's const.i.tution is shaped toward ever-increasing power, but has no inherent political authority, the const.i.tution for preservation has limited authority while its actual power is dependent upon those who operate the const.i.tution for increase. The two const.i.tutions-one for expansion, the other for containment-form the two sides of inverted totalitarianism.

II.

Only who has the bigger pot, who controls more money than the

other. There are no values in this election. There are no principles.

It's only who gets power. Nothing more. It's a shame.

-A Nigerian pro-democracy activist commenting on