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>Where was the left? Why weren't they holding the administration's feet to
>the fire? Why weren't they joining their voices with those in less
>powerful countries who out of the most basic sense of humanity were calling
>for international peacekeeping forces? ...Rwanda's case raises lots of
>issues about "intervention" that the left hasn't grappled with enough.
>Issues lost sight of in the wake NATO's bombing of Belgrade. They're
>issues of a piece with the rest of this thread, because capitalism, the
>nation-state, etc., are never going to be left behind if in the meantime
>the left wants no truck with international forums such as the UN until
>American hegemony has been totally vanquished.
>
>Maureen
I very much agree with the thrust of these comments. It is possible to have an imperialist policy of laissez faire as well as an imperialist policy of aggression. I do not see exactly at what point there could have been a useful UN approved intervention into Rwanda, but at some point there should have been.
Africa is not one cent less exploited and oppressed by imperialism because there was no military intervention.
Compare Sierra Leone.
No doubt someone on this list can point out trumphantly that the main contingent of troops in the West Africa Peace Keeping Force come from Nigeria, neo-colonial sub-imperialist regional state, but I cannot see that it is wrong for it to intervene in Sierra Leone. In that country the factional fighting again takes the form of attacks on civilians with atrocities like chopping peoples legs off.
Yesterday the Organisation of African Unity, passed a resolution against terrorism.
That for the leftist international anarchists will be an invalid resolution because most of the countries of the OAU are bourgeois or comprador imperialist. They all use armed forces. All armed forces are forces of the state, which good marxists know must be smashed so it is revisionist to argue that an international body like the OAU could have anything progressive to say in the world. Simple to be a revolutionary from an arm chair.
Besides what about the poor little Belgium argument? Poor little Rwanda or Sierra Leone? Clearly, however sympathetic one may be, these are sentimental petty bourgeois emotions. The only issue at stake strategically is the redivision of the continent of Africa between different coalitions of sub-imperialist powers with different imperialists behind them.
Simple.
This leftist international line is an anarchist one in the present context when there is no possibility of an imminent socialist revolution in the imperialist countries. It acknowledges the influence of bodies of armed men, but denies that some can be more destructive to the interests of working people than others. It denies that a wider form of state structure, perhaps with regional peace keeping, may be somewhat more democratic and in the interests of the ordinary working people and their unity.
{BTW this still does not mean I was in favour of the west intervening in Yugoslavia with a massive bombing campaign.)
I think the touchstone of the progressive nature of international intervention is whether it is set up as condescending saviours coming to deliver from on high, or whether it concentrates on building the strength of local people to stabilise the situation and use conflict management techniques to reduce violence. That is essentially the method of democracy.
Of course the imperialists will not want that, but of course we should struggle to press them to help provide it. That is the best way to take the initiative out of the hands of the imperialists.
Am I spreading reformist illusions that this will be easy?
No. We only want the earth.
Chris Burford
London