A declaration of war, even in the non-legalistic form used
by President Bush, clarifies matters. Tony Blair has now
followed President Bush, declaring that Britain is at war...

"Whatever the technical or legal issues about a declaration
of war, the fact is we are at war with terrorism. What
happened on Tuesday was an attack not just on the United
States, but an attack on the civilised world"

Blair said it will be a "systematic war on the whole
machinery of terrorism". The declarations are already  far
more explicit, than the reliance on UN resolutions in the
Gulf War and in Kosovo. The UN texts were at that time
interpreted for the convenience of the US and its allies -
but they still did not declare war. Neither did Saddam
Hussayn or Slobodan Milosevic. This time there is no attempt
by the USA, to create even the fiction of an international
collective-security action. The fog of peace has dispersed,
a fog thicker than any 'fog of war'.

A British declaration of war is a definitive break with
previous policy. Remember that for 30 years successive
British Governments consistently refused to describe the
events in Northern Ireland as a war. Remember that the IRA
always claimed to be fighting a war of national liberation,
and deliberately used military terminology to describe
itself. The British Government however, maintained, that
they were no more than common criminals. For 30 years
stiff-upper-lip British spokesmen kept to that line - until
yesterday. In general, it was also the line of the US government.

At least one US politician, quoted on CNN, doubts the wisdom
of this change. But the mood of the public is clearly that
of the CNN logo: "America's new war". The logical
consequences seem unnoticed.

Paradoxically, the new policy legitimises the attack on the
WTC and the Pentagon. It was considered an 'act of war', and
that was the primary reason to declare war. But if America
is at war, then logically it will be subjected to acts of
war. Wars consist of acts of war.

A declaration of war normalises the situation: it returns
the world to the long-term pattern of inter-state
hostilities. (European nation states inherited the
'declaration of war' from the Mediterranean city-states). It
normalises it even in a legal sense. Suppose there is a
formal declaration of war against the organisation of Osama
bin Laden. I am not sure that the US really sees him as the
'prime suspect': the complexity of the attack indicates
state sponsorship, and Iraq is the prime suspect for that.
But if, during a state of war, bin Laden's followers storm
the Pentagon in a ground assault, then they can not be tried
on criminal charges. They could in all probability claim the
status of prisoner-of-war, and invoke the Red Cross as
protecting power. Soldiers - and that now includes
irregulars - can not be tried purely for military actions.

If the state of war is applied retroactively, then crashing
a plane into the Pentagon is, in itself, acceptable as a
military action. The Pentagon is without any doubt a
military target. although the use of civilians to shield or
implement a military action is a war crime. Certainly an
attack like that on the USS Cole, which involved no
non-combatant civilians, would be considered legitimate even
by western military standards in wartime.

More important than the legalities, is how the war is
perceived. Again: wars consist of acts of war. People get
killed, that is what war means. If America is at war then
the dead are 'casualties', not 'victims'. It is part of the
normality of war; casualties every day, usually many casualties.

The state of war also creates a moral equivalence between
the combatants, which is inconsistent with the continuing
use of the word "terrorist". But in fact, the coming war
will be largely directed at states anyway. Even a hostile
reaction on their part, will reinforce the perception of the
war as a 'normal war'. This is exactly the effect that
British governments feared: it tends to create an
equal-status opponent, The Enemy.

In the case of the IRA, that would have meant recognising
them as a national liberation movement, and negotiating a
settlement. For the second time - because the British
Government recognised the first IRA, and negotiated a peace
treaty with them, in 1922. The present army of the Republic
of Ireland, the soldiers who stand to attention when US
Presidents visit Dublin, that is the direct organisational
continuation of the first IRA. Now what will President Bush
do, if Osama bin Laden offers to negotiate peace? Will one
of his successors inspect a guard of honour of ex-hijackers?

Those considerations are mainly for the United States
itself. But the clarity of war does not stop there. Wars
define relationships. The declaration of war defines the
relationship of enmity, and that is a not a social
construction. This is what I mean about clarifying history:
in fact the United States has been at war for about 100
years, more or less continously, somewhere. Millions of
people already knew the USA, and the American people, as
their enemy. Now it's official.

The United States has now approached its allies, including
the Netherlands, where I live. Article 5 of the NATO
founding treaty has been activated for the first time -
committing the member states to the status of 'war allies'.
Under Article 5., not just the United States, but the whole
Alliance, goes to war,  In turn, that activates the loyalty
demand implicit in all nation states: in wartime the citizen
is subordinate to the interests and survival of the state.
From now on, opposition to the NATO in member states is
treason, legally there is no doubt about that. Suppression
of anti-alliance demonstrations for instance, would be
considered standard and acceptable, for any nation state in
a wartime alliance.

Now I have no loyalty to the NATO, or the United States, or
even the Netherlands - which I do not consider a legitimate
state. Like all the NATO member states, it is an obstacle to
a unified European state. The sooner it disappears, the
better. Its territory should be incorporated in a single
European state, under new administrative boundaries. Parts
of the country should clearly be administered from 'foreign'
cities such as Aachen. I mention this detail because it is
treasonable. This is the Dutch legal definition of treason:
'attempts to place the kingdom under foreign rule'. It used
to carry the death penalty. But mass treason to the nation
states, is a necessary precondition for a unified Europe.
Now this treason will be suppressed, and loyalty to the
nation will be enforced. In the European context, that
national loyalty has an inevitable anti-European component.
The Netherlands Justice minister has called for the
re-imposition of border controls, in the Schengen zone. Many
border posts has already been demolished: now the clock will
be turned back.

The inevitable repression associated with the war, the
turning back of the clock, is the direct result of the
American declaration of war. That declaration was made on
beahlf of, and with the overwhelming support of, the
American people. They are at war, I am not on their side, I
oppose them, their nation, their nation state, their allies,
their European alliance, their model of a Europe of the
nation states, their war, and their values. In a war that
will not be tolerated. Such attitudes will be subject to
repression in some form. Therefore the American people are
to me, as enemy to enemy. This categorisation is inevitable
in any war, there are no wars without enemies. So please,
Americans, don't complain to me that I regard you as an
enemy, complain to your President: he declared war in your name.

The logic is simple. The declaration of war confirms the
enmity. There are two enemies, as in all wars. One of them
is the American people, that is certain. Every individual
who belongs to the American people - and that certainly
includes any US citizen who self-identifies as American - is
now in a relationship of enmity. Individual Americans can
not logically say that they have no enemies: they have
enemies by virtue of being Americans.

There is nothing remarkable about this, no-one had any
difficulty in accepting it during World War II. I see no
sign that individual Americans dissent from 'the American
people', from their nation at war. US citizens can renounce
their citizenship - but I see no rush to do that. They can
renounce their own identity, they can 'leave the American
people', simply by ceasing to self-identify as American. How
many Americans have done that, in the last few days?

The American people wants war: that is not just rhetoric.
The present war fever can compete with any historical
example. This is no second Vietnam, there is no divided
nation, no anti-war demonstrators being shot, there are so
far no reported anti-war demonstrations at all. There is no
party-political opposition, no opposition in the
legislature, nothing that will make any dent in the war
preparations, almost 90% support for the war. That's
certainly sufficient for the military, remember that nations
usually go to war with a heavy heart.

The war is real, although military actions will take time to
build up. Therefore the enmity must therefore be real. This
war existed before bin Laden was born, it is the war
inherent in the United States itself - a nation founded on
the absolute belief, that its own national values are
universal. "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." says
the Declaration of Independence. So crusades begin, and the
United States is a crusader nation. Other people hold
different truths to be self-evident, or to be revealed by
God. So wars begin.

The war declarations therefore clarify the nature of the
United States. I realise there is also isolationism in the
United States, but long-term it has extended its
geopolitical interests over the whole world. I realise that
the values of democracy and freedom are not exclusively
American either: they are part of the European tradition.
The deep long-term relationship between the United States
and Europe is that of civil war. To simplify to an extreme
degree: the European right emigrated to the United States
and established a base there. From that base they are
engaged in an ideological war of global conquest. That is
the underlying geopolitical pattern. The American people, in
other words, are the European right, and the Mayflower was
the proto-NATO.

The war clarifies this geopolitics and geo-philosophy. The
war also clarifies the nature of democracy: it is not about
elections, it is a crusade. The war clarifies the nature of
the nation state, and of the nation. The nation is a unit,
the people are a unit. The essentialist model is the
accurate model of a nation in wartime: one single
flag-waving mass. The images of American unity show the
fallacy of recent theory about the fragmentation of society,
and of claims that the nation had become irrelevant. Not
"all minorities now", but one unified nation, one American
people under the flag.

Francis Fukuyama was right about the triumph of liberal
market democracy. That is indeed the end of history, or more
correctly it will be when it comes. It is the goal toward
which the liberal market democracies are advancing, led by
the crusader nation of America. However, they are not there
yet, and the only way to get there is by making more
'history' - in this context meaning war. The liberal
paradise of eternal peace and prosperity - the end of
history - lies on the other side of an ocean of blood.



--
Paul Treanor