George W. Bush has given much of the world occasion to reflect on what it means to be irrelevant. The power-grab by which he seized office already raised suspicion that the will of the US voting public had become inconsequential. But this was only the beginning. In its single-minded pursuit of global dominance, his administration has threatened to reduce the most established powers to historical artifacts with no bearing on the direction of world events. Our traditional allies in Europe will not support our war? Then they are irrelevant. The United Nations will not bow to our will? Then they are irrelevant. The map of who matters is being dramatically and explicitly redrawn. In the “post–9/11 world,” the threat of irrelevance has emerged as the most potent diplomatic weapon of the United States.

While the administration attempts to frame the question of relevance in terms of one’s willingness to “keep up with the times” and meet the unique challenges of a “new kind of war,” it is not difficult to see through the smokescreen. The condition of political relevance has nothing to do with one’s versatility in the face of new problems, but rather with how quickly and quietly one is willing to subordinate oneself to the dictates of the US. This requirement of absolute submission is the benchmark against which the relevance of policies, treaties, international laws, nation states and perhaps even whole continents will be measured. When the Bush administration makes proclamations about the relevance of this or that they are simply talking about whether it forwards, without thought or hesitation, the Bush agenda.

What I’m saying here is nothing new. It’s been displayed on the surface of things and is apparent to anyone who’s been following unfolding events. The charade at the UN brought everything into view in a particularly striking manner. Here it became clear that the status, not only of international law, but also of the idea of evidence itself, was called into question by the Bush relevance doctrine. Blix’s team of trained experts uncovered no hard evidence of viable chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs in Iraq. This lack of discovery, however, was not relevant because it conflicted with the stated goals of the US war machine, which, incidentally, had its own intelligence. As we all recall, it was soon revealed that this intelligence was culled from of a few hastily conducted internet searches and a plagiarized research paper. But this potentially humiliating fact did not slow the Bush administration’s drive toward war. Such revelations were irrelevant because, in point of fact, evidence did not matter – this much, at least, was evident to everyone.

What I want to suggest is that the Bush relevance doctrine is tantamount to a kind of geopolitical insanity that may very well define the emergence of what contemporary commentators have been calling “Empire.” The administration’s crass unilateralism and its disrespect for international convention and law – in short, the collapse of the relevance of all juridical and evidential categories – may be more than a mere consolidation of power. Or, even more, that the consolidation of power has here passed beyond a certain tipping point where it has become the symptom of a deep-seated political delusion. In putting things this way, I don’t mean to imply a psychological perspective. The deep-seated delusion is not a malady confined to the heads of Bush and his partners-in-crime. It’s just that one can speak of the health and sickness of political ntities, just as one can speak of the sickness and health of individuals. Of course, the former case requires a different form of diagnosis, and, as is well known, a different kind of medicine.
Why is Empire synonymous with delusion, and just what kind of delusion is it? A good friend once remarked to me how absurd it is that historians constantly wonder why it was that this or that Empire fell. He didn’t mean that we shouldn’t seek historical explanations for things. What struck him as disturbing was that one senses in these questions the presumption that the Empire shouldn’t have fallen, as if some avoidable mistake must have been committed that toppled an otherwise permanent arrangement. Empires presume that their reign will be eternal. But how can an arrangement that is by definition historical and political, which means that it exists in the passage of time and amidst competing powers, make such an outrageous presumption? If we look a bit more closely we will see that to become an Empire is to fall prey to a kind of geopolitical solipsism, and that it is on the basis of this unfortunate condition that we can make sense of the symptoms we have been describing.

Solipsism is the belief that one is alone in the world, the conviction, that is, that other people do not really exist. This is different than thinking that, as a matter of fact, the others have all disappeared, been murdered, or annihilated in some holocaust. Such a belief, under certain extraordinary circumstances, might actually make sense. Solipsism is a far more fundamental delusion. It is the belief, not that the others who used to exist are no longer around, but that others cannot really exist because the world itself is a product of my will, imagination, or knowledge. To be a solipsist is to believe that only I am real. It is, in a sense, to declare oneself sovereign over the world. The difference between this sort of belief and the more benign thought that, in fact, one is the last person, is that solipsism, properly understood, involves a delusional relationship, not only to the possibility of others, but also to the world, the things in it, and, ultimately, to oneself.

Geopolitically, where self and other are not defined in terms of individual minds and bodies, but in terms of sovereign world powers, solipsism entails the belief that no other world powers really exist. Naturally, this doesn’t mean that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz are unaware that across the ocean exist Germany, France, China and Russia. It means that none of these countries are accorded a status commensurate with their existence as geopolitical others. In the most basic terms, a geopolitical other is either an ally or an enemy, or else something in between. With such others, one has peaceful or tense relations, coexists or goes to war, forms coalitions or enters into dispute. The Bush administration still occasionally uses language that refers to this kind of arrangement. We never stop hearing about the impressive size of our “coalition,” Iraq was certainly referred to as “the enemy,” and Bush himself takes great pride in the warm relations we maintain with our friends Britain and Israel.

But, despite this rhetoric, it is plain to see that the categories “ally” and “enemy,” and even those of “coalition” and “war,” have been emptied of their real content. An enemy is a defiant other whose potential force constrains my action and forces me into a diplomatic wrangle called negotiation. In this respect, Iraq was no enemy, and the horror to which we subjected the Iraqi people can hardly be called a war. The United States refuses to enter into direct talks with North Korea. Why can it not do so? Because such a decision would be to recognize an enemy, a defiant geopolitical other with whom it would be forced to negotiate. As for our allies and our much-vaunted coalition, the situation here is similar. An ally is an independently existing geopolitical power with whom I can enter into coalition when our goals or interests coalesce. One cannot form a genuine coalition on the basis of bribes and phony offers of “relevance in the new world order” – phony because the relevance of our purported allies hinges on their sacrificing an independent will. An Empire, wherever it may go, and no matter with whom it goes, will always go it alone. It is defined by its geopolitical solipsism.

It is fitting to call this kind of delusion political insanity because it entails a willful ignorance of the fundamental conditions that define politics, and in willfully ignoring them, it willfully destroys them. At the most basic level, the political situation is defined by the existence of multiple powers, whether these be in conflict or harmony and whether they be represented in individuals, groups, organizations, nations or classes. Politics is based on the decision, as a famous political philosopher once put it, to live together. But geopolitical solipsism cannot comprehend this decision. In fact, it is decided against it. To believe oneself sovereign over the world involves a deluded attitude, not only toward the possibility of others, but also toward the world itself. In the case of the geopolitical solipsist, this delusion, backed by force, disfigures the world beyond recognition. Among the first casualties of his insanity, as we will see, are evidence and law.

When it became apparent that the UN was planning to own up to its responsibilities by submitting US claims to rational judgment, the organization of over 180 nation states was derisively characterized by White House officials as an irrelevant debating society. They meant that debate itself had become irrelevant. Political things cannot appear to the geopolitical solipsist as matters for potential dispute. Political disputation requires the presence of at least two powers with different points of view, and it is in this rift between perspectives that things begin to function as evidence. Just as the individual solipsist cannot see an apparition in the night sky that demands confirmation or dismissal in the eyes of another, the Empire surveys a political landscape in which the controversial has no meaning. This is not just because, as is often supposed, it has the power to ignore what others think. More importantly, it is because the geopolitical world, in its state of disfiguration, cannot support the existence of disputation. It is because evidence has ceased to function.

In this solipsistic setting, it makes no sense to speak of political deception, if we take this to imply an effort to conceal motives from the other. The Bush administration telegraphed its war plans to Saddam Hussein across the front pages of every American newspaper several months in advance of the invasion, and was inordinately sloppy in its effort to cover up the goal of regime change with words about disarmament. But this does not mean that the geopolitical solipsist tells the truth. On the contrary, he lies all the time. Still, this lying does not feel itself as a transgression, and is free of the worry that another may show up to measure the distance between what is stated and what is so. The language of Empire knows neither deception nor truth-telling. It says what is convenient and is unashamed in the face of contradiction and inconsistency. There was something unmistakably eerie in the nonchalance with which Powell would summarize Blix’s reports by contradicting the whole of their substance. How could a man stand before others and pretend not to hear? The answer is that, insofar as he was a representative of Empire, he did not stand before others, and he did not hear.

The death of geopolitical evidence foreshadows the collapse of all binding conventions, treaties and laws. Geopolitical solipsism disrespects law, not only because it cannot recognize the evidence that would determine violation or obedience, but also because law itself is based on an agreement between powers. Whether between the citizenry and itself or between nation and nation, to achieve law means to enter into a pact in which each recognizes the fundamental relevance of the other. I can “see” and “feel” the law because I “see” and “feel” myself as one amongst others. We know that geopolitical solipsism is blind and numb in this respect. When Bush backs out of long-standing treaties or conventions with the justification that they are “from another era,” he is not kidding. These bygone eras are the era of the Cold War, in which we perceived a genuine enemy, and perhaps the era of Clinton, during which certain Republicans loved to accuse the US of mistaking itself for the “world’s policeman.” Suffice to say that the metaphor no longer holds. A policeman, even if he patrols the entire world, acts in the name of a law to which he supposes a tacit or explicit assent on the part of those he polices. In the contemporary era, one of Empire or geopolitical solipsism, the US patrols outside the bounds of law, which has become identical with its act. The delusion here is not that of omnipotence. That would be an overstatement. It is simply the belief in a geopolitical world laid out before the feet of the “uni-power” that the United States is.

It is worth mentioning that, from the solipsist stance, the appearance of the other is identical with apocalypse. Once the being of the world itself has been disfigured so as to exclude all traces of the other, his appearance means the destruction of that world. Now, by definition, from within the solipsist purview, this other cannot be seen. We have just said that there are no enemies and no allies, that there is no indication of divergent or concurrent viewpoints in controversy, deception or evidence, that there is no sense of the other in law, treaty or convention. The geopolitical other is nowhere to be found. And yet, his appearance would mean the destruction of the solipsist’s world. The appearance of the geopolitical other, then, must be given as an ultimate threat. The anticipation of his appearance must be given as ultimate paranoia. He is suspected everywhere and nowhere found, for the moment he appears he is no real power, no real enemy, but a mere thorn in the side of a behemoth. The geopolitical other, in the era of Empire, appears as terror.

These are frightful times. There was a faint hope in the wake of 9/11 that those horrific events would cause America to realize that it is not alone in the world. Under the direction of Bush and the ultra-right, just the opposite has occurred. They have constructed a world order in which only one viewpoint is relevant. We have seen that do so is to undermine the very conditions of geopolitic life and to succumb to an insanity that knows neither evidence nor law. Because this solipsism operates on the level of collective life, it leaves the rationality necessary for everyday and practical existence intact. Thus, the illusion of normalcy. But the insanity is insidious. Its minions whisper to each of us insofar as we live that anonymous identity “American,” tempting us to succumb to a blissful ignorance. In the midst of this, it is important to recall that reason comprehends unreason, not vice versa, and that, despite all delusions to the contrary, we are not alone.