Rationalising imperial conquest

BOOKS

PRAFUL BIDWAI

The book is a devastating critique of the U.S. Empire-building project and its principal rationalisations.

FIVE and a half years after the United States launched its Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, by invading Afghanistan, the world has become considerably more insecure, and terrorism has become more menacing than ever before. A study for Mother Jones magazine in the U.S. by the Centre on Law and Security at the New York University (NYU) Foundation finds that there has been a 607 per cent increase in the incidence of terrorism between September 2001 and March 2003, and March 2003 and September 2006.

One of the biggest failures of GWOT strategy is none other than Iraq, where over 150,000 U.S. troops are deployed. A country free of religious extremism and terrorism until its invasion four years ago, Iraq now reports the world's largest number of terrorist and violent incidents, week after week. Over 650,000 civilians have perished in Iraq, besides 3,000-plus U.S. troops. The occupation forces there have no grip on the fast-deteriorating situation despite the "surge" in U.S. troops.

Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has seen any of the promised "stabilisation" or "democratisation". In Afghanistan, there is a strong resurgence of the Taliban amidst rampant warlordism, and a serious danger that President Hamid Karzai's regime may come unhinged altogether. Opium production is booming as never before and now accounts for well over one half of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Worse, GWOT has alienated and antagonised large numbers of people in the Islamic world. The U.S. has lost all credibility in their eyes, as well as among growing numbers of people in the West. Discontent in the Islamic world, in particular West Asia, is growing along with the expanding cesspools of unaddressed grievances — further feeding violence, counter-violence and terrorism.

The U.S. is now increasingly perceived as a power in search of an Empire, to be built primarily by military means. It presents a new, ugly, aggressive and belligerent face in the post-Cold War era. New apologists have also emerged for the new imperialism of the post-Cold War era. During the Cold War, U.S. hegemonism was based on "saving the world from communism", and presenting a benevolent face to the "free world". Today's Empire needs different, if equally irrational, justifications or rationalisations.

Six of these rationalisations or banners and apologies for Empire are important: (i) the global war on terror; (ii) weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the `wrong hands'; (iii) failed states; (iv) the necessity and justice of external and forcible humanitarian intervention; (v) regime change in the name of democracy; and (vi) the war on narcotics.

The present book, an initiative of the Transnational Institute, an Amsterdam-based radical fellowship, and authored mainly by its Fellows, is a devastating critique of the U.S. Empire-building project and its principal rationalisations. Its greatest merit is that it centrally confronts the reality of post-Cold War U.S. imperialism and tries to analyse it comprehensively. It persuasively argues that each of the slogans and premises through which U.S. Empire-building is sought to be legitimised is fundamentally flawed.

The book's authors make their case on a broad canvas, which includes a discussion on the purposes of Empire (themselves related to specific regimes of economic power and to furthering inequality-enhancing neoliberal capitalism); the manufacture of intellectual opinion in favour of neoliberal ideas; and the special role played by American exceptionalism in legitimising Empire-building through its assertion that the U.S. is unique as the world's "natural" leader, in that "it is the one country whose pursuit of its national interest is, at one and the same time, the pursuit of a cosmopolitan universal interest".

These essays are followed by six chapter presentations on the six ideological banners. As important as these sections are the Introduction and Conclusion, both by Achin Vanaik, who weaves together the different themes and illuminates numerous connections between them.

To begin with, Walden Bello analyses the economics of Empire by postulating a massive crisis of over-accumulation: overproduction and building up of excess capacities, whose output the economics of the industrial North cannot absorb. He argues that recent attempts by international capital to develop new communications technologies; to colonise public spheres such as health, education, power, water supply and transport; to "financialise" itself; and to tap China's rapid growth to finance a debt-led consumption boom in the U.S. will not adequately remedy the causes of this crisis. Walden Bello presents U.S. post-Cold War belligerence as a consequence of economic weakness, not strength.

Susan George presents a critique of the neoliberal doctrine, rooted in a combination of conservative interpretation of neoclassical economic theory, and libertarian and ultra-individualist legal-political ideas. Susan George convincingly shows that the dominance of neoliberalism owes little to its intrinsic merit; nor was it a "natural" outcome of intellectual debate.

Rather, it followed a systematic and lavishly funded effort to "sell" the ideology through think tanks, select university departments, policy institutes and key individuals in the media. She explores and exposes the institutional framework through which this $1 billion enterprise was conducted.

Mike Marquesee's chapter is a searing critical analysis of American exceptionalism and its historical roots in settler colonialism. This notion sees the U.S. not just as a territorial entity, but as a "great social experiment", which must be propagated — if necessary, through colonial wars and the Monroe Doctrine. American exceptionalism sees the U.S. as the ultimate telos and goal of modernity itself.

Marquesee explains how this exceptionalism survives despite the blows delivered by the U.S.' ignominious defeat in the Vietnam war and the visible inferiority of the U.S. model of capitalism in relation to its Western European variants in respect of, say, public services.

The six chapter presentations that follow delve into the rationalising banners, by analysing their provenance and purpose, and their structural weaknesses and deceitful nature. They also suggest some alternative approaches.

Vanaik argues that the one-sided view of terrorism contained in the dominant discourse in the U.S. (which excludes state terrorism altogether), and the militarised solutions offered to it through GWOT, is an excellent "framing device" for the imperial project and "possesses the greatest capacity to mobilise domestic support for the U.S. pursuit of Empire abroad".

Vanaik, however, dissects GWOT's failure. He holds that demonisation of Islam and Muslims is "an inevitable corollary" of GWOT. Vanaik offers the International Criminal Court as an alternative framework within which to prosecute and punish terrorist acts.

Zia Mian takes apart the WMD argument as an excuse for waging war on Iraq. Washington deliberately concocted falsehoods about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of WMD and manipulated the media. The "in the wrong hands" proposition is a means of selectively rewarding friends, allies or client-states, while attacking enemies and "Axis of Evil" states.

Mian documents the U.S.' spectacular hypocrisy in developing new uses for and designs of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile defence systems, while preaching disarmament to others. He also shows how the mystique built around the bomb comes back repeatedly to haunt the U.S. through its spread to other countries. This is the inevitable consequence of the "Empire of Fear".

The U.S. claims that its wars in Central and West Asia were rationally calculated to promote regime change in the interests of "democracy"; or they were humanitarian interventions, necessitated by the failure/paralysis of the multilateral system (the United Nations, in particular). This argument has some resonance outside the U.S., especially given the context of the former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Rwanda — although the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organisaion (NATO) allies failed to act in these very cases.

But as Mariano Aguirre shows, unilateral, offensive, armed intervention mocks at international law and weakens multilateral institutions that ought logically to intervene and honour their obligation to protect threatened civilians.

Aguirre persuasively argues that the Left "should not abandon the moral imperative to protect victims, nor the principles of democracy and international law... We need to recognise that there are massive violations of human rights, that there are dysfunctional states that do not protect their people... Also, that the U.N. system lacks the administrative capacity and flexibility to respond and that power politics limit its capacities, and that, therefore, the international community has a role to play."

Phyllis Bennis writes a blisteringly critical account of how the U.S. first contemptuously bypassed the U.N. Security Council, and then cynically manipulated it to obtain a carte blanche in Afghanistan and Iraq. She criticises the U.S.' mollycoddling of regimes with dubious human rights records (for instance, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Russia), its setting up of puppet regimes in the occupied countries, and its policies of creating or widening sectarian divides and of promoting the outright loot of Iraq's wealth through corporatisation and privatisation.

Bennis presents a scathing analysis of the effects of U.S. policy in West Asia, including promoting authoritarian allies, legitimising Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine, and the negative examples all this has set for West Asia as a whole.

David Sogge exposes state weaknesses, fragility or "failure" as a dishonourable pretext for Empire-building.

Most characterisations of failing states totally ignore the causes of failure, typically rooted in the structure of the global economy, neoliberal policies imposed by international financial institutions or Western governments, and absence of democracy and accountability. Military interventions rarely offer a solution, nor does the "shell of elections".

Last but not least is a discussion by David Bewley-Taylor and Martin Jelsma of the "war on narcotics" as yet another excuse for Empire. The U.S.'s supply-side approach to the drugs problem emphasises physical interdiction, although this has proved a failure. In practice, as "Plan Colombia" shows, the "war on narcotics" provides a convenient excuse for attacking Left-wing insurgents and maintaining a heavy U.S. military presence in select Third World countries. The authors argue for an alternative "harm reduction" and "decriminalisation" approach to drugs.

Vanaik concludes with a final summing up, which takes a bird's-eye view of the six legitimising themes and their weaknesses, and argues for a comprehensive, critical, Left-wing approach to dissecting Empire.

The book is, then, a broad-horizon yet penetrating critique of the rationalisations for Empire in the post-Soviet era. One wishes it had explored some themes (for instance, the economics of Empire, the relations between the U.S. and its allies, the manufacture of domestic consent in different countries, and alternative international arrangements, and so on) in greater depth.

Above all, one wishes it had devoted some space to a discussion of the growing resistance to Empire through the anti-war and peace movements, themselves linked to the global justice agenda.

Despite these shortcomings, the book remains one of the sharpest critical analyses of contemporary imperialism published recently. It is highly recommended.

Praful Bidwai is a Fellow of the Transnational Institute. He co-authored with Achin Vanaik South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999.

Rehabilitating US Imperialism

Review of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower

by Ashley Smith / May 8th, 2007

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US stood triumphant as the lone superpower with no peer rivals and in a unique position to reshape the international system in its interests.

However, as Brzezinski notes in his new book, Second Chance, “barely fifteen years after the wall came down, the once proud and globally admired America was widely viewed around the world with intense hostility, its legitimacy and credibility in tatters, its military bogged down…, its formerly devoted allies distancing themselves, and world-wide public opinion polls documenting widespread hostility toward the United States.”

While Brzezinski excoriates the Bush Administration for what he calls its “catastrophic leadership,” he does not put the current imperial crisis merely at the feet of the toxic Texan. Instead, he argues that the last three Presidents have failed to craft a new grand strategy for the US and each in turn contributed to the current crisis.

As the former National Security Advisor to the Carter Administration, Brzezinski is no leftist. He is perhaps the most insightful imperialist thinker produced by Cold War liberalism and the most important one to confront America’s imperial crisis and propose a strategy to rehabilitate it.

Brzezinski reviews the records of the last three presidents attempt to shape the emerging new world system. To lead the world he argues a new grand strategy would have to take shape around are three priorities: (1) shaping the power relationships toward a more cooperative global system; (2) containing civil wars, preventing terrorism and halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and (3) ameliorating rising global inequality and spreading ecological crisis.

According to Brzezinski, the first Bush Administration did not develop a new grand strategy to address these priorities, relying on a vague slogan that the US was committed to a “New World Order.”

Amidst the dramatic transformations brought about the collapse of the Russian Empire, Bush I scrambled to keep up and essentially relied on conventional great power diplomacy to maintain the status quo among great and lesser powers, not lead their transformation.

Brzezinski singles out Bush’s failure to capitalize on its military victory in the Gulf War as his presidency’s “original sin.” He did not turn military success into a political victory to address the regions problems especially the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Instead Bush maintained the regional status quo.

Even worse he established military bases in Saudi Arabia and maintained sanctions against Iraq. All of these failures would provoke Arab anger and provide fertile grounds for the appeals of Al Qaeda against the US.

Brzezinski is no less scathing toward the Clinton Administration for failing to come up with a grand strategy. Clinton instead hoped that economic globalization would of its own accord erode conflicts between nations in the world system.

Brzezinksi argues that this naïve economic determinism led the Clinton administration to inadequately attend to statecraft among great and regional powers. Moreover, Clinton’s trumpeting of globalization left the US vulnerable to criticism and resistance from victims of multinationals, IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs, and the Asian economic crisis.

Globalization’s inequalities both eroded US legitimacy and sparked what Brzezinski calls a populist movement dramatically expressed through the Seattle protest in 1999 that shut down the World Trade Organization meeting.

Brzezinski attacks the Clinton Administration for encouraging America’s elites to indulge in “social hedonism.” He argues that the ruling class’ unwilling to pay taxes or subordinate itself to international treaties and rules provoked denunciations of the US as a callous hyper-power. Its behavior risked fraying the strategic alliance with other global leaders, especially Europe.

George Bush’s foreign policy turned a problematic position into a catastrophe. Neoconservative advisers shaped his administration’s strategy in the wake of 9/11. In place of fostering alliances engaged in deterrence Bush announced his doctrine of preemptive war carried through by the US, whether other powers came along or not, telling other regimes “you’re either with us or against.”

Brzezinski argues that the neocons have foolishly narrowed US policy to the Middle East ignoring other strategic interests. Moreover, they demonized Moslems and Arabs and turned the US into an open partisan of Israel compromising any semblance of neutrality in negotiations over the Palestinian crisis.

As a result of Bush’s policies and wars, Brzezinski concludes that the regime has done “calamitous damage to America’s global standing,” caused a “geopolitical disaster” of broken alliances, destabilized Central Asia and the Middle East, increased the stimulus for terrorist counter-attacks, and encouraged rather than deterred the spread of weapons of mass destruction as all those under threat from the US race to build a bomb out of self-protection.

Most troubling for Brzezinski is how Bush has encouraged Russia, China and “rogue states” like Iran to begin forming a potential rival alliance that could threaten the primacy of American leadership of Europe in shaping the world system.

In a startling passage, he summarizes the consequences of Bush’s “suicidal statecraft”: “Europe is now increasingly alienated. Russia and China are both more assertive and more in step. Asia is turning away and organizing itself while Japan is quietly considering how to make itself more secure. Latin American democracy is becoming populist and anti-American. The Middle East is fragmenting and on the brink of explosion. The world of Islam is inflamed by rising religious passion and anti-imperialist nationalisms. Throughout the world, public opinion polls show that U.S. policy is widely feared and even despised.”

Brzezinski concludes that the US must conduct a regime change, replacing the Bush administration and its neocon policy advisers with foreign policy realists and chart a new grand strategy capable of repairing the damage done by the last three Presidents. The 2008 election is America’s second chance and, given the dire predicament of its current imperial crisis, he says there will not be a third.

Brzezinski proposes that the US take up Human Rights as the guiding principle of a new grand strategy. By focusing on human rights, the US can undue its lost legitimacy, win over its alienated allies, and rehabilitate itself in the eyes of those suffering in poverty and aspiring to fulfill the nationalist aspirations.

To carry this through, the US must rebuild its alliance with Europe and incorporate China, Japan, and Russia into formations like NATO and a rehabilitated WTO, thereby preventing the development of imperial rivals.

The US must conceive of its project as promoting national interests that are also in the interests of the global community. It must impose self-restraint on the social hedonism of the ruling class in order to spend money and build international formation that implement global policies to further the world’s common interests.

The price of failing to implement this strategy is two fold. First, the US will spur Russia and China among others to form a rival axis of power that could tip the world toward larger imperial wars. Second, it will antagonize the emerging populist rebellion against global inequality.

This widening inequality is producing “revolutionaries-in-waiting … the equivalent of the militant proletariat of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries …. [The] political awakening is now global in geographic scope, comprehensive in social scale …, strikingly youthful in demographic profile and thus receptive to rapid political mobilization, and transnational in sources of inspiration because of the cumulative impact of literacy and mass communications. As a result, modern populist passions can be aroused even against a distant target, despite the absence of a unifying doctrine such as Marxism …. Only by identifying itself with the idea of universal human dignity—with its basic requirement of respect for culturally diverse political, social, and religious emanations—can America overcome the risk that the global political awakening will turn against it.”

Brzezinski’s book is a liberal manifesto for rehabilitating imperialism. But it relies on a fundamental, faulty assumption that the world’s nations, both great powers and war torn nations, can be led by the US as a global commonweal.

While it is true that Bush’s incompetent and reckless strategy exacerbated conflicts between rival powers, it did not create them. As Lenin argued in Imperialism, capitalism compels great powers to compete with one another generating all sorts of conflicts and inevitably military conflagrations. Only this competitive dynamic can in the final instance explain the increasing antagonisms between China, Russia and the US in particular that have developed in the wake of the Cold War.

Moreover, while Brzezinski’s program of social reform to address global inequality and climate change might produce at best more aid, a revitalized peace core, and implementation of the Kyoto Protocols, it will not address the systemic causes of the world’s growing problems.

The period of our rulers providing guns and butter is long gone. The competitive pressures of the capitalist race to the bottom preclude fundamental social reforms because of the vicious competition built into the system and dramatically increased since the 1970s.

Brzezinski’s grand strategy of human rights may position the US better to win its way in the system than the previous three failed ones, but it will not overcome the imperialist and exploitative pressure built into capitalism.

The alternative to these lies in precisely what he most fears, what he calls rising populism or at other moments the tyranny of the majority. Only such a mass movement from below can win social reforms.

And for that new rebellion against social inequality to win and replace capitalist imperialism and class exploitation with genuine democratic control of society by the majority, it will need both Marxism and revolutionary parties. That which Brzezinski wants to preempt is the only solution—worker’s revolution.

Ashley Smith is a writer and activist in Burlington, Vermont.

The imperial overreach

H.D.S. GREENWAY

By H.D.S. Greenway | May 8, 2007

LISTENING TO President Bush's petulant tones lambasting Congress for questioning his war, I had a feeling that what we are seeing in Washington has been going on for close to a thousand years in the political tradition in which America was formed. Rulers reach for more and more power until their parliaments and barons think things have gone far enough and begin clipping regal wings.

This has not been a good spring for the president. Democrats, and even some Republicans, are beginning to think about choking off the war in Iraq; the Supreme Court didn't like his closing down environmental regulations; his Justice Department is under scrutiny as never before for conducting politically motivated purges. The dark prince, Vice President Dick Cheney, mutters repeatedly that the president is all powerful, and that Congress should have little to say about war.

--MORE--

America's Coming Dictatorship

May 4, 2007

The theory and practice of oligarchical "conservatism"

by Justin Raimondo

The Iraq war and the inquiry into its origins has provoked interest in a number of subjects formerly considered obscure, the discussion of which was once limited to the rarified aeries of academia and specialty journals. Some examples are neoconservatism, just war theory, and, most surprisingly, the theories of Leo Strauss, the philosophical avatar of a cynical Machiavellianism that promotes the idea of the "noble lie." As the disaster in Iraq unfolded, subjects once considered abstruse were introduced into the pages of the popular press, so that, at one point, we were treated to a long explanation of the doctrines of Strauss in the pages of the New York Times. As Jeet Heer put it in the Boston Globe, "Odd as this may sound, we live in a world increasingly shaped by Leo Strauss, a controversial philosopher who died in 1973. Although generally unknown to the wider population, Strauss has been one of the two or three most important intellectual influences on the conservative worldview now ascendant in George W. Bush's Washington. Eager to get the lowdown on White House thinking, editors at the New York Times and Le Monde have had journalists pore over Strauss's work and trace his disciples' affiliations. The New Yorker has even found a contingent of Straussians doing intelligence work for the Pentagon." This sudden interest was due to the unusual number of Straussians who had found their way into close proximity to the centers of power in Washington – an extraordinary number of Strauss's students (or students of his leading followers) were employed in and around the Bush administration, particularly at key points in the national security bureaucracy, as William Pfaff pointed out, including then- "Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Abram Shulsky of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, Richard Perle of the Pentagon advisory board, Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council, and the writers Robert Kagan and William Kristol." One can easily see how the concept of the "noble lie" fits neatly into the neoconservative scheme of things, and the run-up to the Iraq war is surely a textbook example of the Straussian method in action: an enlightened elite deceives the public into an action that must be taken, after all, for their own good. In this case, we were lied into invading and occupying Iraq, for reasons that had nothing to do with "weapons of mass destruction" and Saddam's alleged links to al Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, both of which the promulgators knew to be lies, and yet reiterated ceaselessly. Since we are now permanently at war, the ideal atmosphere for a Straussian (or any authoritarian) to theorize in, this is the time for the War Party to come out in the open with its theory of government, which, in normal times, is dressed up as "peace through strength," and now comes out of the closet as "peace through dictatorship." Aside from rationalizing a regime based on lies, the Straussian method, and philosophy, is useful in other ways. The prominent Straussian Harvey Mansfield, a professor of government at Harvard, demonstrates his usefulness as a promoter of the regime's authority, and specifically the supremacy of the executive branch of government in wartime. Mansfield makes "The Case for the Strong Executive" in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and it is an argument that constitutes a vital part of the intellectual blueprint for the dictatorship I wrote about the other day. Mansfield starts out with a paean to the incorrect and unfortunately near-universal conception of the Constitution as a "flexible" document, and the resulting reference to "the living Constitution" is one of those cliches that no one ever thinks to challenge – except when it's too late. When the tanks are already rolling through the streets, that is … Look: there is nothing "flexible" about the Constitution. It means precisely what it says, and its language is not in any way obscure or complex. Furthermore, I would note that every time someone is about to take away our liberties, or in some way circumvent the plain intent of the Founders, they inevitably preface it with odes to the Constitution's "flexibility." Balderdash! The Founders meant what they said, and said what they meant in plain and simple English, language that even a Harvard professor can understand. Yet, examining Mansfield's case for an executive dictatorship – and that is surely the intent of his piece – we see at work the old Straussian method of "reinterpreting" an author's clear intent to mean its exact opposite. Now it would seem that the Founders, being revolutionaries, and even libertarians of a sort (except for Hamilton), were intent on setting up a republic of freemen, that is, a form of government that was constitutionally limited and certainly had nothing to do with the royalism against which they had recently rebelled. Ah, but a Straussian can find "hidden" meanings that the rest of us are blind to, and Mansfield detects a built-in contradiction, a deliberate tension between "one-man rule" and the republican spirit that imbues the Constitution with – yes, an authoritarian streak: "Now the rule of law has two defects, each of which suggests the need for one-man rule. The first is that law is always imperfect by being universal, thus an average solution even in the best case, that is inferior to the living intelligence of a wise man on the spot, who can judge particular circumstances. This defect is discussed by Aristotle in the well-known passage in his ‘Politics' where he considers ‘whether it is more advantageous to be ruled by the best man or the best laws.' "The other defect is that the law does not know how to make itself obeyed. …There must be police, and the rulers over the police must use energy (Alexander Hamilton's term) in addition to reason. It is a delusion to believe that governments can have energy without ever resorting to the use of force. "The best source of energy turns out to be the same as the best source of reason – one man. One man, or, to use Machiavelli's expression, uno solo, will be the greatest source of energy if he regards it as necessary to maintaining his own rule. Such a person will have the greatest incentive to be watchful, and to be both cruel and merciful in correct contrast and proportion. We are talking about Machiavelli's prince, the man whom in apparently unguarded moments he called a tyrant." This is the theme of Mansfield's book, Taming The Prince, in which he asserts that the modern idea of the executive is merely the old Aristotleian portrait of a royal personage who exemplifies the right of the strong to rule over the weak. In our own time, we are unable to directly acknowledge this ancient legacy and so we mask it in the mythology of the Constitution. We cloak the royalist reality in the raiment of republicanism, and promulgate the myth that the executive is somehow the servant of the people. "The American Founders," Mansfield avers, had a different idea, because they "Heeded both criticisms of the rule of law when they created the presidency. The president would be the source of energy in government, that is, in the administration of government, energy being a neutral term that might include Aristotle's discretionary virtue and Machiavelli's tyranny – in which only partisans could discern the difference." Tyranny, discretionary virtue – whatever. It's all a matter of partisan, i.e. totally subjective, opinion. In any case, the cult of Strauss is built around the cult of the Leader, or the "wise man," as Mansfield puts it, the solo uno who sees beyond what ordinary citizens can perceive. Sure, he's driven by a relentless drive to achieve and maintain his own power, but this very ruthlessness is what gives a republic its "energy" and the ability to survive its own inherent fragility. "A free government" avers Mansfield, "should show its respect for freedom even when it has to take it away." This little aphorism, worthy of being carved in stone on the gravestone of the American republic, just about sums up the tone and content of Mansfield's panegyric to the "greatness" of the presidential office, and its necessary "expansion" in time of war – which means, in the neocon lexicon, from now on. Rights are not inherent, in the Manfieldian-Straussian universe, but purely conditional, and our condition today is one that cannot afford such luxuries. According to Mansfield: "In our time … an opinion has sprung up in liberal circles particularly that civil liberties must always be kept intact regardless of circumstances. This opinion assumes that civil liberties have the status of natural liberties, and are inalienable. This means that the Constitution has the status of what was called in the 17th-century natural public law; it is an order as natural as the state of nature from which it emerges. In this view liberty has just one set of laws and institutions that must be kept inviolate, lest it be lost. "But Locke was a wiser liberal. His institutions were ‘constituted,' less by creation than by modification of existing institutions in England, but not deduced as invariable consequences of disorder in the state of nature. He retained the difference, and so did the Americans, between natural liberties, inalienable but insecure, and civil liberties, more secure but changeable. Because civil liberties are subject to circumstances, a free constitution needs an institution responsive to circumstances, an executive able to be strong when necessary." I won't dispute Mansfield's reinterpretation of the Lockean position on natural rights, except that it resembles a Bizarro Locke, inverting the philosopher's defense of natural rights and limited government, and somehow managing to turn it into the manifesto of a super-centralism that the 17th century English liberal would recoil from in horror. This is typical of the Straussian method. Leaving Locke entirely out of it, however, let us look at the Mansfieldian theory of "civil liberties" as forever "subject to circumstances" – just like our "flexible" Constitution, and, of course, the "secure but changeable" Bill of Rights. In the Bizarro-Mansfieldian world of perfect "freedom," where "a free government should show its respect for freedom even when it has to take it away," there is no right to free speech, no right to assemble, nor, really, any rights at all, including the right to hold property: all of these are merely temporary privileges, and are particularly ethereal in wartime. Inalienable rights? Not if the President says otherwise. This is nothing less than a rationalization for a dictatorship. It is authoritarianism dressed up in seemingly "American"-sounding verbiage, a prescription for fascism just as surely as the rantings of Alfred Rosenberg or the polemics of Robert Brassillach. As John T. Flynn, the liberal-turned-‘Old Right' opponent of the New Deal put it: "When fascism comes it will not be in the form of an anti-American movement or pro-Hitler bund, practicing disloyalty. Nor will it come in the form of a crusade against war. It will appear rather in the luminous robes of flaming patriotism; it will take some genuinely indigenous shape and color, and it will spread only because its leaders, who are not yet visible, will know how to locate the great springs of public opinion and desire and the streams of thought that flow from them and will know how to attract to their banners leaders who can command the support of the controlling minorities in American public life. The danger lies not so much in the would-be führers who may arise, but in the presence in our midst of certain deeply running currents of hope and appetite and opinion. The war upon fascism must be begun there." Flynn, one of FDR's bitterest opponents, wrote these words in As We Go Marching, his indictment of a postwar America that had fought national socialism – and was beginning to fight Soviet totalitarianism as the book was published – but, he feared, would lose the fight against incipient authoritarianism on the home front. Flynn defined fascism in a way that was congruent with the rising Welfare-Warfare State, founded on the principle of Big Government at home and militarism abroad. "First let us state our definition of fascism," he writes: "It is, put briefly, a system of social organization in which the political state is a dictatorship supported by a political elite and in which the economic society is an autarchic capitalism, enclosed and planned, in which the government assumes responsibility for creating adequate purchasing power through the instrumentality of national debt and in which militarism is adopted as a great economic project for creating work as well as a great romantic project in the service of the imperialist state." What a near-perfect anticipation of our present state! He must have seen it in a dream. As an unpopular war reaches its horrific crescendo, and the President upholds his "right" to wage it in defiance of Congress and the popular will, the theoreticians of the new fascism – what Lew Rockwell trenchantly calls "red-state fascism" – are given ample space on the editorial page of the War Street Journal to make their case. Are the masses growing increasingly discontented with the "wisdom" of their rulers, who are, after all, by definition, their betters? Well then, let us endow the President with kingly powers, so he can disregard the "temporary delusions" of the people, as Mansfield puts it – such as, for example, the "delusion" that we cannot win the war in Iraq, and shouldn't have gone there in the first place – and let our glorious Leader and Commander-in-chief get on with the job. This, Mansfield avers, is true "greatness." Naturally he invokes the spirit of FDR, among others (Lincoln, the great "emanicipator," who jailed his opponents and closed down newspapers for "seditious" utterances, also gets Mansfield's strong endorsement). What is odd is that both Flynn and Mansfield are considered conservatives, men of the Right – and yet their political and moral stances could not be more adversarial. What kind of "conservatism" is it that extols the Leader Principle, disdains the Constitution and the concept of "rights" as inalienable, and openly calls for authoritarian rule in case of "emergencies"? Today we have an ostensible "conservative," Thomas Sowell, pining for a military coup in the pages of National Review, and, in the same magazine, Col. "Buzz" Patterson, author of War Crimes: The Left's Campaign to Destroy Our Military and Lose the War on Terror, opining that the Democratic party, and especially its congressional branch, is legally guilty of "treason," and ought to be punished for this crime forthwith. Mansfield articulates the theory, while Sowell and Patterson – along with the Anne Coulters and David Horowitzes of the neoconized "conservative" movement – exemplify the practical politics of red-state fascism. The American Right has come a long way from The Conscience of a Conservative. The legislative basis of the new autoritarianism – the "Patriot Act," the Military Commissions Act [.pdf], the growth of the national surveillance state – is underpinned by the Mansfieldian theory of presidential supremacy and the concept of the "unitary presidency" – in short, the Leader Principle, which is the foundation stone of the modern fascist edifice. Centered around imperialism and the push to expand its system over all or most of the earth, this "energetic" ideology employs the administrative and economic centralism that is the hallmark of modern American "liberalism," and the militarism and imperialism that is the hallmark of the modern "conservative," in a perfect synthesis of "left" and "right" that satisfies everyone and leaves the dissidents in the "far left" and "far right" margins. This is how our modern fascists can, with some justification, call themselves "centrists," and even "moderates." In the Bizarro World we seem to have fallen into, post-9/11 – when a rip in the space-time continuum, caused by the explosive power of the planes' impact on the World Trade Center, caused us to slip into another dimension – who will dispute their self-characterization? After all, in Bizarro World, up is down, truth is a lie, and "democracy" means rule by a self-appointed elite. A Straussian is perfectly comfortable with this universal inversion: as for the rest of us, we'll just have to get used to it.

Hillary and the End of Occupation and of the New Imperialism

Friday, May 04, 2007

Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a surprise move, will introduce legislation with Sen. Robert Byrd to revoke the war powers granted to Bush in October of 2002. She says she had originally supported a Byrd amendment at that time to limit those powers to a single year. In the US Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war, even though once it is declared the president is commander in chief. The Founding Fathers would have been appalled at the tendency of Congress to cede war-making to the executive during the past century.

As George Lakoff reminds us, actually what is needed is a bill to cut off Bush's authorization to occupy another country. The US was born in a revolt against colonialism and empire; it is shameful for it to seek to retain other countries as colonies now, in the mold of King George III. You may as well bring back slavery as to seek to go on occupying Iraq, as the Republican presidential hopefuls want to do.

And this is what I would add to Lakoff's suggestion. The war was over in 2003. What we've had since then is an occupation, at least in the Sunni Arab areas and some of the Shiite south, where US military presence is unwelcome. Although the Bushies trumpet the two elections, in fact the prime minister elected as a result of them, Ibrahim Jaafari, was unseated through heavy-handed US intervention in Iraqi domestic affairs. When Bush is telling Iraq who it can and cannot have as prime minister, then Iraq is not an independent country.

Such an occupation is just warmed over 19th century colonialism of the "white man's burden" variety. And, such colonialism is just as objectionable as slavery. When the revolutionary French National Assembly abolished slavery in 1794, its abolitionists voiced the hope that ending slavery would also end colonialism.

SUPER-IMPERIALISM: The Shameful Legacy Of Liberal Democrats

April 29, 2007

By Carolyn Baker

It is a war against the globalization of the market, against the destruction of nature adn the confiscation of resources, against the termination of indigenous peoples and their lands, against the growing maldistribution of wealth and the consequent decline in standards of living for all but the rich.

Andrew Kopkind

Professor Michael Hudson, an independent Wall St. financial economist, has written an extraordinary book entitled Super Imperialism: The Origins and Fundamentals Of U.S. World Dominance. I first heard of Michael Hudson when browsing Bonnie Faulkner’s “Guns And Butter” website, and as I listened to him, I knew that I needed to read Super Imperialism for many reasons, not the least of which is that I am not an economist and am only beginning to educate myself on how the money works in the domestic and world economies. For this reason, I have been reluctant to write a review of Hudson’s book; I am still learning, as are many of my readers, about dysfunctional and oppressive economic systems and how they work, as well as learning about how a healthy economy might function to meet the needs of its citizenry without harming them or the ecosystem. That said, as an historian, I believe that in order to fully appreciate the current tyranny of centralized financial systems, it is necessary to understand how they evolved within the past six decades.

While reading Hudson’s book I quickly realized that it is a crucial companion to Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy of books on U.S. imperialism, namely, Blowback, The Sorrows Of Empire, and Nemesis. Johnson’s emphasis is primarily on the military aspects of U.S. imperialism since the end of World War II, with much less focus on American economic imperialism during that era.

In the current milieu of blatant neo-conservative world domination rhetoric and behavior, it is oh so tempting to believe that the Republican Party and political conservatism have been historically at the forefront of an imperialist foreign policy. What is crucial to understand is that from an historical perspective, the economic imperialism engineered by the United States was overwhelmingly the brain child of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Bretton Woods

Hudson takes us back to 1945 when the United States was the most powerful creditor nation on earth, having lent billions to other nations during and after World War II. Today, the U.S. is the most powerful debtor nation on earth, and Super Imperialism describes and documents superbly how such a stunning reversal of economic positioning occurred.

Although corporations and centralized financial systems were the means by which economic imperialism was implemented, …it is not to the corporate sector that one must look to find the roots of modern international economic relations as much as to U.S. Government pressure on central banks and on multilateral organizations such as the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization….At the root of this new form of imperialism is the exploitation of governments by a single government, that of the United States, via the central banks and multilateral control institutions of intergovernmental capital rather than via the activities of private corporations seeking profit. What has turned the older forms of imperialism into a super imperialism is that whereas prior to the 1960s the U.S. Government dominated international organizations by virtue of its preeminent creditor status, since that time it has done so by virtue of its debtor status. (23-24)

The genesis of this re-positioning was the International Monetary and Financial Conference of 1944 held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire out of which was born the Bretton Woods System of “international monetary management for commercial and financial relations among the world’s industrial states.” It was there that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were established, and as Hudson notes, “The U.S. economy was enabled to draw the finances of other governments into an international cartel directed by its own policy-makers, dominated by U.S. officials and their appointees.” (139)

As I have noted in my recent book U.S.HISTORY UNCENSORED: What Your High School Textbook Didn’t Tell You, the ultimate “cure” for the Great Depression was not the New Deal and its economic programs, but World War II, out of which the U.S. emerged not only as the most powerful nation militarily, but economically as well. A number of modern historians have speculated that one reason Franklin Roosevelt’s administration failed to intervene economically to undercut Hitler’s rise to power was Roosevelt’s ultimate dream: that the U.S. would emerge from war as the most powerful nation on earth economically and militarily, forever precluding, in Roosevelt’s mind, the possibility of another Great Depression. FDR’s dream was realized, making possible the economic supremacy of the United States during and subsequent to the Bretton Woods conference, without which the U.S. could never have achieved the commanding position it assumed at the momentous gathering of nations.

Hudson seems unable to overemphasize the auspiciousness of America’s post-war preeminence:

What occurred after World War II was nothing less than an inversion of the law of nations as it had been evolving for centuries, at least on the part of Europe if not that of the United States. The most basic principle of international law is that nations are equals with regard to their rights and policy-making autonomy. In addition to this legal principle is a basic behavioral law of diplomacy: in a world of nation-states it is unnatural for any nation to abrogate its international position voluntarily….Europe demurred from pressing its self-interest at any point where this conflicted with that of the United States. Exhausted by war, it voluntarily abrogated what had been more than four centuries of imperial ambitions. (265)

To American diplomats the United States simply was living up to its historic destiny as world leader when they formulated their plans for the postwar world at Bretton Woods. In their idealism they anticipated that the breakup of nationhood—at least on the part of foreign countries—would inaugurate a world economy of peaceful interdependence and perhaps even altruism. They did not ponder how alien this concept was to the basic principle of nationhood, that no nation can be expected to relinquish its independence with regard to economic policy-making. Nonetheless, American now asked, and received, European capitulation on every major point of postwar relations. (265)

Pegging international currency to the dollar, backed by the gold standard, the U.S. continued to exert economic supremacy throughout the Cold War era. Although the Bretton Woods system “officially” collapsed in 1971 when the U.S. suspended convertibility from dollars to gold, America’s economic dominance did not subside with abandonment of the gold standard.

In fact says Hudson, “The key to understanding today’s dollar standard is to see that it has the form of gold bullion. While applying creditor-oriented rules against Third World countries and other debtors, the IMF pursues a double standard with regard to the United States. It has established rules to monetize the deficits the United States runs up as the world’s leading debtor, above all by the U.S. government to foreign governments and their central banks.” (35)

Everyone got something as a result of Bretton Woods, but ultimately the cost was untenable. Europe received resources it could have never acquired otherwise and assistance in rebuilding after the World War II, but its war debts remained on the books. Developing nations, particularly the agriculturally backward ones, received resources as well, but the price they have paid has been nothing less than brutal. Hudson states that the United States “simply anticipated that these countries would increase their purchases of American farm products, which they could have produced for themselves if only they had set out to restructure their agricultural sectors.” (186) The World Bank and IMF were “protectionist” in the sense that they protected U.S. investors against foreign commercial nationalism. Any movement by developing countries toward industrial and agricultural self-sufficiency was halted and reversed, leading to increased impoverishment of developing countries since World War II. (187)

Throughout the book, Hudson is perhaps kinder than he should be. Although he does not use the term, what he is superbly describing and documenting in his book is economic warfare far more brutal and merciless than the limited-hangout offered by John Perkins’ Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man on which Catherine Austin Fitts comments:

In the process of providing a colorful account of a 1970s whodunit (complete with low tech strategies devoid of the dazzling technology toolkit that is now an essential part of the economic hit man's weaponry of economic warfare), Perkins delivers to readers the "big lie": he reveals the secret that there is no greater conspiracy. This is simply globalization run amok, he would have us believe. Somehow, this particular conspiracy theory seems charmingly credible as part of a "confession." Perkins admits to what is known and then uses the credibility created by his "limited hangout" to further obscure the reality of who's who in the real governance of global investment and risk management. We are to presume that the investment networks in and around the Harvard Corporation, the City of London, the Vatican and investment managers and bankers for the proceeds of transnational organized crime are simply good-hearted fellows who let things get out of hand.

What the United States never addressed in developing countries, and still is not addressing, are the oppressive and corrupt institutions of those nations that manage inequity in land distribution, tax structures, and the allocation of natural resources. One consequence of refusing to do so was “to draw population from the countryside to the cities in search of employment. But the growth of industrial hiring was insufficient to absorb this rural exodus.” (207)

In recent years, living as I do near the U.S./Mexican border, I have observed firsthand the myriad ways in which this destructive pattern plays out. Hundreds of thousands of dispossessed people from rural Mexico, particularly its southern regions, migrate to Mexican border towns where if they are fortunate, they find jobs in maquiladoras which are overwhelmingly owned and managed by U.S. corporations. Currently, many of these corporations are leaving Mexico and moving their operations to China or Southeast Asia where labor is even cheaper and tax loopholes even sweeter than they are in Mexico. As they do so, they leave behind environmental devastation and a large number of unemployed, dispossessed people who end up on the streets or make desperate attempts to enter the U.S. illegally. Saul Landau’s excellent documentary on these issues, “Maquila, A Tale Of Two Mexicos”, may be watched online.

When super-imperialism is fully understood, the “mystery” of illegal immigration will immediately be resolved. It is as if the international corporatocracy of world dominance functions like a giant broom sweeping the dispossessed into the United States where they are greeted by the domestic corporatocracy and further exploited as wage-slave laborers with all the accoutrements of “the good life, huaraches exchanged for vinyl sandals made in China and corn tortillas supplanted by “happy meals.” One can only wonder what this government’s policy will be when the dire consequences of Peak Oil and climate-chaos drought hit the fan. What then will be America’s border policy? Today, gorging itself on cheap labor, the corporatocracy sucks up taxpayer money to build meaningless border fences that it knows will not deter the illegal workers it needs, but when Walmarts have weeds growing in their parking lots and thousands of meat packing plants have shut down because only the very wealthy can afford to remain carnivorous, we will see how many new immigrants will be allowed to inhabit the U.S. and consume the last drops of its water and oil.

As a result of the mass exodus to cities, food prices have soared in numerous developing countries so that people who have relocated in cities are working primarily to get the money to buy the food they eat. Thus, says Hudson, the World Bank has been “pauperizing the countries it had been designed, in theory, to assist.” (208)

According to Hudson, “Freeing debtor, food-deficit countries from their yoke of obsolete political and social systems therefore must entail not only a re-education of U.S. strategists, but at some point direct political action by the developing countries to thwart their strategies. The ultimate action would be for these countries to withdraw from the World Bank, GATT, and the IMF altogether and to form a new set of development institutions run by themselves and in their own interests.” (209)

Increasingly, Latin American countries, whom Hudson asserts have been intentionally managed and contained by the World Bank and IMF in order to prevent their autonomous departure from the economic control and management of the U.S., are doing exactly what he prescribes. Venezuela has taken the lead in rejecting World Bank and IMF carrot and stick economics, and more recently, Ecuador and Bolivia have joined Hugo Chavez in working to create Latin American self-sufficiency apart from the control of the U.S. Just this week, Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa banned a World Bank official from the nation. Currently, Ecuador, Argentina, and Brazil are discussing the creation of a Southern Bank, operated by and for Latin Americans, as an alternative to the World Bank.

The Power of Debt

Today, the United States, through the issuing of treasury bills and various forms of borrowing from other nations, has risen to the status of Planetary Debtor In Chief, and in stark contrast to its position of planetary creditor sixty years ago, it now rules the world economically. Hudson comments:

In sum, the United States is able to rule not through its position as world creditor, but as world debtor. Rather than being the world banker, it makes all other countries the lenders to itself. Thus rather than its debtor position being an element of weakness, America’s seeming weakness has become the foundation of the world’s monetary and financial system. To change this system in a way adverse to the United States would bring down the system’s creditors to America. (386)

But changing that system is indeed what America’s myriad creditors intend to do, and many are strategically working toward economic self-sufficiency in order to walk away from the stranglehold that the World Bank and the IMF have held on them for six decades.

Neoliberalism: The Offspring Of Liberalism

Overwhelmingly, Latin American nations and their leaders are rejecting neoliberalism and speak freely of doing so. One of the most informative and succinct primers on neoliberalism can be found at Corpwatch where Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia explain that:

"Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Rightwing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism.

"Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, an English economist, published a book in 1776 called THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise," "free" competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished.

It is extremely important to understand that the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt which gave birth to the Bretton Woods system were engineered by Democrats, Cordell Hull and Harry Dexter White, the two principal architects of the system and two of the most powerful bureaucrats close to Roosevelt. Further left of center than Hull, White was an avid internationalist and was later accused during the McCarthy Era of being a member of the Communist Party.

During the Great Depression the New Deal unarguably brought economic relief to millions of Americans and their families who otherwise might have starved. It is also true that just as the so-called “reforms” of the Progressive Era under another President Roosevelt (Teddy), were legislated from a fundamental underpinning of social control, the essential intention of the New Deal’s framers was to ward off a revolution in the United States that, left unchecked, could easily have spiraled out of control, driving an increasingly desperate populace into the arms of Soviet-style Marxism.

Since the United States Civil War, reform in America has always been wedded to the principal assumptions of the capitalist economic system, namely, that corporate capitalism, the maintenance of order, and the passage of laws that enforce the predominance of the business class and contain the unruly have-nots, is preferable to any possible alternatives. To succinctly describe this, historian Gabriel Kolko in The Triumph Of Conservatism uses the term political capitalism to define a political system engineered to meet the needs and serve the interests of business. Of the Progressive movement he states that: “Progressivism was initially a movement for the political rationalization of business and industrial conditions, a movement that operated on the assumption that the general welfare of the community could be best served by satisfying the concrete needs of business. But the regulation itself was invariably controlled by leaders of the regulated industry, and directed toward ends they deemed acceptable or desirable.” (3)

The Bretton Woods system was yet another milestone of political capitalism in which, in the name of world peace and “stability”, the United States would dominate the world economically. As with domestic political capitalism, it was motivated by the necessity of restraining the influence of the Communist bloc and managing impoverished nations that were likely to align with it as a result of their fundamental survival needs. The engineers of that system were not ideological conservatives but liberal members of the Democratic Party.

Whereas the Bretton Woods system was constructed largely by New Deal liberals, the resultant policies of the IMF and World Bank have transmuted into the current neoliberal paradigm, bolstered by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) of which Harry Dexter White was a member, embracing an internationalist, globalist perspective which shares more than less in common with the neoconservative ideology of blatant geostrategic hegemony as typified by the Project For The New American Century (PNAC). Differences in rhetoric between the two organizations imply a divergence in policy, yet historical functioning reveals otherwise. The endgame of both is geopolitical dominance politically, economically, and militarily by the United States. Whereas the neoconservative agenda envisions an ever-expanding military to accomplish blatant conquest and subjugation of nations, the neoliberal vision would be realized by the dissolution of nation-states altogether under the economic administration of transnational corporations.

Thus, we should not be surprised by the close ties developed in recent years between the Bush family and the Clintons. The Bush crime family has multigenerational experience in waging super-imperialist economic warfare on the world and on American citizens, and it appears that the Clintons have become two of their most prodigious pupils—their “entrance examinations” being the creation of NAFTA and throwing masses of welfare-dependent individuals into “welfare to work” jobs on which no one in America could survive.

In the current political milieu, no candidate who is not committed to a policy of super-imperialism has the slightest chance of ascendancy to the Presidency of the United States. Echoing her CFR colleagues, Hillary Clinton states, “First, and most obviously, we must by word and deed renew internationalism for a new century.” And Barack Obama chimes in with, “Whether it’s global terrorism or pandemic disease, dramatic climate change or the proliferation of weapons of mass annihilation, the threats we face at the dawn of the 21st century can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries.”

I am not suggesting that the United States become an isolationist country in the sense that we have nothing to do with all of the other nations with whom we reside on planet earth. What I am declaring is that I support no leader who is unwilling to radically alter the super-imperialist trajectory on which the United States has traveled since World War II. Having said that, I am well aware that no one who would do so could ever be nominated, let alone elected President of the United States.

Inextricably tied to the super-imperialism project is the $4 trillion dollars stolen from the U.S. Treasury in the past decade, the unanswered questions regarding September 11, 2001, the USA Patriot Act, Peak Oil, the privatization of water and other resources, the cesspool of corruption surrounding government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the domination of U.S. money supply and fiscal policy by the Federal Reserve and other centralized financial systems.

Each of these issues is beyond the scope of any president or party to thoroughly remediate. Only one thing is absolutely certain regarding super-imperialism—its collapse. Whether collapse occurs suddenly or gradually, before, during, and after, there will be many opportunities for those of us residing in the belly of the beast to create new economic and social structures. The pivotal question is: Will we be prepared to do so?

Did I watch the Democratic candidates’ debate, April 26? No, I was sitting in a local movie theater watching the film “Shooter” which, in my opinion, rips the mask off the current political landscape and ventures into territory where no candidate anointed by the corporatocracy is willing to travel. “Shooter” is the real deal; presidential debates, yet another distracting soap opera. A line from that film now comes to mind, depicting the essence of super-imperialism: “There is no Sunni or Shia, no Democrat or Republican—only the have’s and have-not’s.”

Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of World Bank

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

An Institution Created To Shore Up The Interests Of World Capitalism And US Imperialism

The World Bank along with the IMF have been the main instrument's of global capitalism and US imperialism.
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Capitalism as always is searching for new methods of exploitation of workers, and with the help of the Zionist apartheid regime, they have found new ways to hold people captive, and exploit their labor.

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Inside the giant walled prisons of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they are planning on developing what are being called "industrial Zones" which is basically going to be an imprisoned work force, who in order to survive will be forced to sell their labor at very cheap slave wage prices to the Zionist apartheid regime, so that the Zionist regime can then inturn sell the products created by this slave wage labor on the world market for hefty profits.

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If this were Nazi Germany these so-called "industrial zones" would be called what they really are...

"work camps."

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I am posting an article about this from left turn magazine, as well as yesterdays Flashpoints program with news about occupied Palestine, and other stories.

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Flashpoints:

After a bloody weekend in the occupied West Bank, is Israel preparing to once again re-invade and destroy Gaza? We'll speak with the executive director of the International Middle East Media Center, George Rishmawi; PLAY or DOWNLOAD

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Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of World Bank

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By Jamal Juma
Through the violent occupation of Iraq, the US is laying the foundations to further open the economy of the Middle East for their corporate interests. Countries once protected by oil revenues are lining up to sign bilateral agreements leading to a Middle East Free Trade Agreement. MEFTA would impose free market policies that have enslaved other regions of the global south to global capital. In Palestine, the World Bank has played a key role in facilitating the cooperation of global capital and occupation.

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In Palestine, international powers are eager to implement plans to use the apartheid apparatus of the Israeli occupation—particularly the infrastructure created by the Apartheid Wall—for the establishment of industrial zones, guaranteeing economic dependency and exploitation of Palestinian communities on top of the occupation control.

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The Apartheid Wall is a devastating extension and acceleration of occupation policies, designed to annex nearly half of West Bank lands and imprison the remaining population within 12 percent of historical Palestine. The Wall to date has destroyed thousands of dunums (4 dunums are equivalent to one acre) of land, uprooted olive trees, displaced families and communities, and separated Palestinians from their land and other Palestinians. Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision, which took up the Palestinian call that the Wall must be torn down and affected communities compensated—the construction of the Wall has only accelerated in the last year.

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Legitimizing occupation

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Global bodies have only increased their support for the Wall and occupation policies over the last year. The G-8 controlled World Bank has outlined the framework for this policy in their most recent report on Palestine published in December of 2004, Stagnation or Revival: Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian Economic Prospects.

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In the report, the World Bank adopts the occupation’s strategically misleading terminology for the Wall, referring to it and its connected infrastructure as a “security fence” or “separation barrier.” This move by the World Bank seeks to legitimize the confiscation of Palestinian lands and obscures the reality on the ground in which 80 percent of the Wall’s destructive path deviates from the 1967 Armistice Line, separating Palestinians from other Palestinians, their capital Jerusalem, land, and essential sources of livelihood.

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The World Bank’s vision of “economic development” evades any discussion of the illegality of the Wall, the occupation, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. To the contrary it takes Israeli “facts on the ground” as given scenarios and lays the foundations for the economic sustainability of the Palestinian ghettos created by the Wall. The World Bank thinks they can circumvent ICJ concerns if it is justified as a humanitarian project.

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Central to the vision of the World Bank for a thriving and successful Palestinian “state” is the development of an export-orientated economy in which Palestinian dispossessed farmers are exploited as cheap labor and dominated by markets and free trade. Israeli and World Bank interests merge to destroy local forms of trade, sustainable patterns of agricultural production, and existing social structures.

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Agriculture, traditionally the core sector of the Palestinian economy, is barely mentioned in the report, presumably because the World Bank realizes that Palestinians will be left with no land. The only mention of a future for agriculture in areas of Gaza focus on the use of land for export-oriented production, not local sustainability and consumption.

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Industrial zones

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Central to World Bank proposals are the construction of massive industrial zones to be financed by the World Bank and other donors and controlled by the Israeli Occupation. These are envisaged as forming the basis of economic “development” built on Palestinian land around the Wall. Previous initiatives in the Gaza Strip are being used as the “catalyst” and model for the way in which Palestinians imprisoned by the Wall can be put to work in industrial zones.

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International Financing Institutions are proposing a series of new or revitalized industrial zones. Primary among these are the “Green Line” zones which would be located in areas close to or on the Green Line, including sites close to Jenin, Tarkumiya and Rafah which already have backing with several European and US firms.

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The gates built on the 20 percent of the Wall that fall on the Green Line are integral to World Bank plans as the existing gates will facilitate their ability to fund high-tech checkpoints for the transport of goods and control of people with fewer legal barriers stemming from the ICJ decision. Further industrial parks are planned in “Seam Zones” in Palestinian land isolated behind the Apartheid Wall and the Green Line. Given that 80 percent of the Wall deviates from the Green Line, there is scope for various projects on isolated land confiscated by the Israeli Occupation.

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One location highlighted in the Bank’s report is the so-called Tulkarm Peace Park where construction is already underway. Construction has involved using around 600 dunums of land from the villages of Irtah and Farun that have been confiscated by the Wall.

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The industrial zones are designed to serve the needs of the industry markets of Israel, whether by doing the most environmentally destructive production in Palestinian areas or by providing cheap labor. Additionally these zones would benefit the Israeli Occupation abroad where goods “Made in Palestine” have more favorable trade conditions in international markets.

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And while the Israeli Occupation plans to stop issuing work permits in 2008 cutting about 30,000 Palestinian jobs (adding to the potential labor force in industrial zones), the World Bank as part of the overall economic plan encourages the issuing of some permits so the Occupation economy can further profit from Palestinians.

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Imprisoned labor

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Through the Apartheid Wall, the occupation and international financing institutions aim to cement several realities into the future of Palestinian people. Primary among these is the long-term sustainability of the ghettoization of Palestinians.

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This post-Wall vision includes complete control over Palestinian movement. The report proposes high-tech military gates and checkpoints, through which Palestinians and exports can be conveniently transported and controlled. This will be supplemented with a “transfer system” of walled roads and tunnels to funnel Palestinian workers to their jobs, while simultaneously denying them access to their land around them that lies outside the Bantustans created by the Wall.

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The World Bank places these conditions of imprisonment within a scenario of exploitation of the workers who will be channeled through the Occupation control system. Sweatshops will be one of the only possibilities for earning a living for the Palestinians left in the disparate Bantustans throughout the West Bank.

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The World Bank states:

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“In an improved operating environment, Palestinian entrepreneurs and foreign investors will look for well-serviced industrial land and supporting infrastructure. They will also seek a regulatory regime with a minimum of ‘red tape’ and with clear procedures for conducting business. Industrial Estates (IEs), particularly those on the border between Palestinian and Israeli territory, can fulfill this need and thereby play an important role in supporting export based growth.”

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The “red tape” which the World Bank refers to can be presumed to mean trade unions, a minimum wage, good working conditions, environmental protection and other workers’ rights that will be more flexible than the ones in the “developed” world. The World Bank explicitly states that current wages of Palestinians are too high for the region and “compromise the international competitiveness” even though wages compromise only a quarter of the average in Israel. On top of a military occupation and forced expulsion, Palestinians are to be subjects of an economic colonialism common throughout the Southern hemisphere for inflicting poverty and misery.

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Aiding displacement

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The governments of the G-8 have shown vivid interest in this project of displacement, imprisonment, and oppression of Palestinian communities under the pretense of development and humanitarian aid. In breach of the ICJ ruling, the US has already contributed $50 million to construct gates within these prisons to “help” serve the needs of Palestinians. Perhaps even more disturbing is the normalization of such brutal schemes within the programs of donors (such as USAID), who implement politically motivated projects under the rubric of humanitarian assistance.

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The World Bank, alongside the US and significant portions of the international community, are using the Palestinian Authority (PA) as an institution through which these policies can be implemented and an “attractive environment for investors” created. The PA is given the role of prison guard, preventing the Palestinian people from defending their lands and rights. The responsibility of the PA towards the Palestinian people necessitates that it stands up against these projects—not by “modifying” or “only partially backing” them, but by completely opposing them.

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Right to exist

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The industrial zones and Bantustans are not new ideas; they are reminiscent of the economic models of racial capital promoted by apartheid South Africa in Bantustans like the Ciskei and Bophuthatswana. They reflect the World Bank’s conscious choice to support the needs and vision of the Occupation which entails the destruction of the Palestinian nation. While espousing the politics of free markets and free trade, the World Bank is not interested in the creation of a free people. Quite the opposite—its interests are best served by keeping Palestinians in economic enslavement.

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The failure of the international community and financial institutions to work towards the implementation of the ICJ decision to tear down the Wall and to ensure the respect of Palestinian rights has come at an enormous human cost. And yet, against this bleak and overwhelming reality, Palestinian communities are actively defending their right to exist. Palestinians are implementing the ICJ decision with their own hands, where in villages like Bil`in, the Wall’s cement foundations were physically dismantled in active resistance.

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Villages are mobilizing regular demonstrations against the construction of the Wall in the midst of violent reprisals by the Occupation Forces and continue to direct their protest beyond these imprisoned boundaries, towards the international community at large. As history illustrates repeatedly, attempted pacification of resistance to Occupation will always be thwarted by a people’s unrelenting will for self-determination.

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Now more than ever it is crucial that movements step up efforts to isolate the Israeli Apartheid and support Palestinians in their struggle for their land. It is important to be prepared to resist new assaults masked in the guise of “development” and “aid” and stand behind the uncompromising demands of a Palestinian led movement—not for comfortable ghettos or colorful walls but liberation and justice.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Jamal Juma' is Campaign Coordinator for the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (www.stopthewall.org).
For further information on the World Bank, and Boycotts against Israel, please refer to

http://stopthewall.org/factsheets/920.shtml

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