American Empire: plus ca change
A common misconception, at least in mainstream western discourse, is that the Presidency of Bush II is a kind of aberration in the broader history of US foreign policy. The word "empire" has become so commonplace over the last 8 years that one could easily forget how marginal its usage was in polite discussion, before the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Talk of "American Imperialism", until that point, was strictly the preserve of irrelevant people; like the Western political left, and the millions of people across the third world who don't have the luxury of living under illusions about such matters.But the Bush Presidency is no mere "imperial moment". Rather, it is simply a particularly bold expression of drives and instincts that are intrinsic to the nature of power itself. As such, the urge to accumulate, to dominate, runs as a core theme right through the history of the United States government; as it has through the stories of powerful governments across time (including our own, of course).
As Howard Zinn points out in the video below, the protestation oft-heard around 2001-2002 that the US has no history of imperialism, is a preposterous denial of history itself. Did Europeans always live on the American continent? Did 13 states on the Eastern Seaboard become 50 merely by accident? Were wars like Vietnam, or covert actions to replace democratically elected centre-left governments in Chile, Guatemala and Iran with right-wing dictatorships, really no more than acts of "self defence"?
So the thought that a future Presidency of Barak Obama, or anyone else, might awaken the United States government from its temporary imperial episode, and return it to its natural state of enlightened liberal munificence, was always far less than misguided optimism. It represented a fundamental misreading of the nature of power in general, and US power in particular. US imperialism is more than the whim of the current president and his entourage. It is a network of interlocking state and commercial actors and institutions, an ideological tradition, a political modus operandi, and a system of checks and balances underwriting the interests of power.
This is not to say that individual agency is irrelevant; within the overall framework, it is human beings that make the decisions. Had Al Gore been president, the US would probably not have invaded Iraq. Around a million Iraqis (according to the best estimates available) would still be alive today. One in six of them would not be refugees. So the differences are non-trivial, and it is the self-indulgence of intellectual and moral laziness to say that each presidential candidate would be equally as bad as another.
But while human beings make the policy decisions on a day to day basis, they do so within the confines of a framework that they, their peers and their predecessors have created; a framework that circumscribes the choices available, even the choices that rise to the level of consideration. A person that the system has allowed to reach the level of the presidency, having passed the tests of ability to raise corporate funds for campaigning, having withstood the ideological demands of the commercial media, and having internalised the ideological assumptions adhered to by the governing class in general, will be unlikely to so much as consider certain policy options, whether or not they are morally compelling on an objective basis, if they do not accord with the perceived interests of US power.
Powerful mechanisms exist to filter out those who would challenge power in any meaningful way long before they get anywhere near the levers of influence. That Obama has come so close to the White House already, and with such relative ease, should already raise a question mark over whether he will really bring, to quote his campaign slogan, "change you can believe in".
As Noam Chomsky notes here, while a President Obama would make certain tactical changes in US foreign policy to bring it back to the operational methods of the pre-Bush era, the over-arching tradition of US global dominance will remain firmly in place. Obama's talk of the US playing a "leadership" role in the world, a standard imperial conceit, should make that abundantly clear.
What should make it clearer still is Obama's declaration last week (partially backed away from subsequently, but with the substance remaining) that Jerusalem would be the undivided capital of Israel under any future settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a fact that Israel has no legal or moral claim to East Jerusalem: a fact affirmed by regular votes of 180odd to 6 in the UN General Assembly (the US, Israel and some Pacific atolls voting against) and by the World Court in 2004. East Jerusalem is illegally occupied territory, and contrary to Obama's claim, Israel has no more legitimate claim to "sovereignty" over it than it does over the Gaza strip, the West Bank, or Belgium. The assumption that it is for a nominee for US President to summarily take land from one people and give it to another, in defiance of international law - thus destroying the Palestinian's chances of ever having a viable state, which would be impossible without the heartland of East Jerusalem - is an assumption that is imperial to its fingertips.
The imperial policies that would remain in place under an Obama presidency are no mere detail that can be brushed aside by saying that "at least he's not George Bush". Certainly not to the Palestinians, who will apparently continue to bleed to death as a nation while the crippling US-Israeli embargo, imposed on them as punishment for voting the wrong way in the elections of January 2006 and supported by Obama, continues well after the day in January 2008 when Obama brings "hope" to Washington.
The fact is that American imperialism began long before George W Bush, and will continue long after he's gone. Unless of course, we all choose to do something about it.
Labels: Barack Obama, US Imperialism
posted by David Wearing at 9:47 AM
6 Comments:
David,
East Jerusalem was cleansed of Jews - up to 85,000 people - in the 1948 war. There, in fact, was a Jewish Quarter in East Jerusalem.
The UN partition plan called for Jerusalem to be a temporary international zone, with sovereignty to be decided later. That makes it not something to which Palestinian Arabs have a legal claim.
An important issue you miss is that the Palestinian Arab side views the dispute in religious terms. Such view is pretty well documented in the book, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, by Benny Morris. He sees it as a central reason for the dispute.
The UN partition plan called for Jerusalem to be a temporary international zone, with sovereignty to be decided later. That makes it not something to which Palestinian Arabs have a legal claim.
No, the International Court of Justice, which is the highest judicial body on the planet, and practically every single nation state bar the US and Israel, affirm that East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are all illegally occupied territories. The prohibition of territorial conquest is the founding principle of international law. There's no ambiguity here.
Its a shame about what's happened to Benny Morris in recent years, but he's by no means the only western intellectual to fall into the habit of pathologising Arabs and Muslims during the "War on Terror".
The notion that the Palestinians are driven, not by the fact that they were violently expelled from their homeland, not by the fact that they've been subjected to a brutal occupation for forty years, including arbitrary house demolitions, beatings, massacres, false imprisonments, torture and enforced impoverishment, but because they're just intrinsically hateful Muslims, is of course a useful and comforting delusion for some people.
Colonialists have always portrayed the people they subjugate as dangerous extremists who seek not liberation but some imaginary evil ends, and who thus need to be kept firmly under the boot. To do otherwise would be to admit the guilt that is obvious to all but themselves.
Mr. Wearing,
Good scholarship closely hones to facts and events. I would like to see one stitch of evidence that Morris is incorrect that religion serves as a driving force for the Muslim side in Arab Israeli dispute.
It is worth noting that Morris' earlier scholarship, which did not dig deeply into the motives of the Arab side, was severely criticized for not examining such issue. Instead, he merely assumed that he knew the motive. Well, once he began to dig, he discovered that his earlier assessment was wrong.
That is called proper historical revision, although, to be fair, other scholars pointed to evidence regarding the motives of the Arab side from early on. He had merely overlooked such writing.
Your criticism of Morris appears to be that he no longer holds your political views. That, however, does not make his scholarship wrong. And, having found facts that really cannot be squared with the view you present, you might take such into consideration.
I can, by contrast, post facts to support my view and can, if you are interested in facts - which is what history is about, rather than ideology -, send you a long conversations between ibn S'aud - which comes from the archives of the British government - in which ibn S'aud expressed his utter contempt for Jews - not because of Zionism but because, he said, of what is taught by his faith. Here is a taste of what ibn S'aud had to say in the Autumn of 1937 to Colonel H.R.P. Dickson:
Our hatred for the Jews dates from God's condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa, and their subsequent rejection later of His chosen Prophet. It is beyond our understanding how your Government, representing the first Christian power in the world today, can wish to assist and reward these very same Jews who maltreated your Isa.
Isa is the Islamic Jesus.
In the Yom Kippur War, the Egyptians employed calls for Jihad against infidels, with hardly any mention of Israel or Zionism, to stir up the troops. Here is how such is explained by famed historian Elie Kedourie - Islam in the Modern World and Other Studies, (pages 58 - 59):
Another document is even more significant than this speech in exhibiting the political vocabulary and arguments by means of which the Egyptian regime seeks to establish a rapport with the people and involve them in its purposes. This is a small booklet entitled Our Religious Faith is our Path to Victory. This booklet was printed in a million copies in the summer of 1973 and distributed to all Egyptian soldiers, obviously in preparation for the coming war. In itself a booklet of this kind is nothing out of the ordinary. All armies find it essential to indoctrinate their soldiers, teach them the virtues of discipline and obedience, and the necessity of surmounting fear on the battlefield, as well as the allurements of enemy propaganda. What is remarkable about this Egyptian booklet is the manner in which it seeks to attain this end. It does this exclusively by quotations from the Qur'an and the Traditions of the Prophet, by recalling Muhammad's record and the early Islamic conquests. There is hardly any reference to Arabism as such, or to the Zionist or Israeli enemies. The cause is Islam, the example is the Prophet and his Companions, and the Jews are the enemies, the very same Jews that Muhammad had to fight. The relevant section here is entitled: 'Good Tidings of Victory over our Enemies the Jews.' The good tidings consist of citations from the Qur'an where the Jews are cursed for their transgression, denounced for their hostility to the believers and threatened with punishment here and thereafter. Jihad is recalled as a Muslim's duty the accomplishment of which is rewarded with Paradise, and the military virtues which jihad necessitates are extolled as peculiarly Islamic virtues which the Arabs have learned in 'the school of Islam'. Islam, the booklet says 'praises the believer who is strong, and considers him more useful and better in the sight of God than a believer who is [physically] weak'. Islam, again, exhorts the Muslim to be prepared to encounter his enemy: the Prophet is quoted as saying that 'Whoever learnt the Qur'an and then forgot it is not one of us, and whoever learnt shooting and forgot it is not one of us'; the Prophet, the booklet also recalls, approved the use of mosques as military training grounds.
In short, then, the cause for which the soldiers were to do battle is pre-eminently an Islamic cause, and the military virtues are pre-eminently Islamic virtues. The whole doctrine of the booklet may be summed up in the Qur'anic verse that God has made the Arabs as the best among nations (umma wasatann), which the booklet quotes and follows with the comment that God in his wisdom has designed Muhammad's umma to be an umma given to holy war, to be impregnable and not submissive or acquiescing in humiliation. Arabism and Islam are coeval or, rather, Islam is the soul of Arabism.
On your view, people like Kedourie and Morris must be lying by presenting contrary facts that do not fit your angelic model about the motives of those who fought and fight the Israelis. You might also read, if you have the stomach for it, Matthias Küntzel's interesting, new book, Jihad and Jew Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11. Unlike Professor Kedourie, Küntzel is on the left of the political spectrum. He too sees hatred of Jews as going to the heart of the Arab Israeli dispute. And, again, he cites to specific facts and events.
How do you know that these scholars are all so very wrong?
Mr. Wearing,
I forgot one other point. The ICJ opinion does not state that the Jerusalem is illegally occupied. That is in your head. It says that East Jerusalem is occupied - not illegally occupied, which is a different thing - but that the building of villages on land occupied is illegal.
On the other hand, holding onto the land is perfectly legal under the opinion, because such is permitted under UN 242 and 338.
anonymous poster
Your evidence of the Palestinian cause being religious in motivation appears to consist entirely of quoting a couple of Arabs speaking about hte conflict in religious terms.
Since you're a fan of good scholarship you'll know that this is a straightforward logical error. That you have found individual examples of religiosity amongst pro-Paletsinians no more proves a general religious nature of the cause than my finding a black swan proves that all swans are black. Actual scholars get taught this early on. Its basic stuff.
If you want to believe that the Palestinians are motivated by Islam, and not by the enforced malnutrition of their children, theft of their land, systematic torture, summary beatings, false imprisonment and general brutalisation for decades by the Israeli state, then that, my friend, is your own problem. As is your deluded view of the legal situation.
I welcome serious contributions here, but yours don't fall into that catagory so don't expect another reply. Not least because you remind me more than a little of a certain troll called "neal".
Dear Mr. Wearing,
As I said, a great many respected historians - most especially those who have bothered to read what Arabs write and say, when the language employed is Arabic - agree with me. The thing about the Israeli revisionist historians is that they, as a group, have largely ignored the Arab archives that exist. Hence, they have little to say of interest regarding Palestinian Arabs.
Noting what the ruler of Saudi Arabia thinks, is not a statement of a minor person. It is a statement by a major figure. By your logic, there was no Jew hatred in Europe, just because, let's say, some individual name Hitler mouthed some anti-Jewish rhetoric. In fact, though, when national leaders speak in bigoted manners, it is important.
You would have it that the Arabs are starving. That is nonsense. When the Intifadah began in 2000, there was nothing akin to starvation. In fact, by Arab standards, Palestinian Arabs had longer longevity, better education, better nutrition, better healthcare, etc., etc. than average Arab in pretty much all of the Arab states.
In No God But God, Egypt and the Triumph of Islam (Oxford University Press 2000) by Geneive Abdo - a protege, of sorts, of Muslim apologist John Esposito -, at pages 64-65, the following discussion is repeated:
The Grand Sheikh's battle with his conservative critics boiled over in December 1997, when Tantawi hosted an unprecedented meeting at al-Azhar with chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, leader of Israel's Ashkenazi Jews. Held just before the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, and amid growing outrage in the Arab world toward Israeli intransigence in the stalled Oslo peace process, Tantawi's meeting was nothing short of explosive. Ordinary Egyptians had never accepted the Camp David peace accords, or for that matter any attempt to normalize relations with Israel. Most Muslims saw the invitation of the chief rabbi into the very citadel of Sunni Islam as a complete betrayal of the fifty-year effort against the Jewish state.
Egypt's most respected Islamic thinker, Seleeem al-Awa, spoke for many when he bitterly denounced the visit on the front page of the Islamist daily al-Shaab and wrote a letter of protest to the Research Academy. "I did not believe my eyes when I read that the Grand Sheikh met the Zionist rabbi in Cairo.... It is as if the Zionists want to declare before the whole world that they have achieved normalization with the symbol of Sunni Islam and the entire Islamic world, and with the Sheikh of al-Azhar himself."
"Why did you headquarters become the site of normalization with the Zionists? How are we going to welcome Ramadan with the biggest spiritual defeat of the modern age?" al-Awa asked.
Tantawi was filled with consternation. He had never expected that such a meeting would outrage the Muslim world. Shaken and tense, he defended himself in a long interview with a Qatari satellite television channel that was broadcast in Egypt and across the Middle East. The interviewer asked Tantawi why he had decided to meet the rabbi, when his predecessor, Gad al-Haq, had refused.
"I followed in the footsteps of our Prophet, peace be upon him. He met Jews and had a dialogue with them.... Was I supposed to refuse to meet him, so he'll go to his country and say the Sheikh of al-Azhar was unable to meet me?"
"What is you answer to Dr. Seleem al-Awa who said this meeting is more dangerous than any form of normalization?" the interviewer asked.
"This is the logic of cowards and pacifists," Tantawi replied. "Can Dr. al-Awa deny that the Prophet and his companion Abu Bakr met with the Jews? And after that, they say 'normalization.' What normalization?"
Tantawi's response did little to pacify his critics with al-Azhar. In fact, the controversy handed the traditionalists the evidence they needed to challenge his suitability to hold Sunni Islam's highest position. "What we read about the meeting between the Sheikh of al-Azhar and the Israeli rabbi shocked us all," commented Yahya Ismail, the general-secretary of the Azhar's Scholars' Front. "We must abide by fatwas issued by senior scholars since 1936, which are official fatwas that forbid dealing with the occupying Jews with any weapon other than jihad (holy struggle) until they evacuate from our lands."
The dispute is about religion.
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