Samir Amin on the war

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun May 9 01:28:12 PDT 1999


[And a tip of the cap to RKMickey for point out this Egyptian paper]

Al-Ahram Weekly Al-Ahram Weekly

6 - 12 May 1999

Issue No. 428 [black.gif]

Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 [empty.gif]

http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly

The worst catastrophes imaginable

By Samir Amin

In my previous article (Al-Ahram Weekly, 29 April-5 May), I

defined the goals and means of Washington's hegemonic ambitions.

While the simplistic economicist discourse of neo-liberalism holds

that the globalisation of a deregulated market (that is to say,

regulated unilaterally by capital) should spontaneously produce

peace and democracy, the facts prove that US military hegemony is

the necessary condition for the functioning of this system,

ensuring as it does both its domination by the Triad (US-Canada,

Western Europe and Japan), and the submission of Europe and Japan

to America's strategic objectives.

To this vision of a unipolar world, I had opposed that of

multipolar globalisation, the only strategy that would allow

acceptable social development for the different regions of the

world, and thereby the democratisation of societies and the

reduction of motives for conflict. The US's strategic hegemony, I

had concluded, is today the principal enemy of social progress,

democracy and peace.

The reply the dominant forces brought to the crises that have

occurred in rapid succession since 1990 and the chaos engendered by

the establishment of the neo-liberal utopia reveal both the US's

hegemonic goals and the dissolution of the European project.

The Gulf crisis had already revealed Washington's objectives.

Secretly encouraging Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, the US turned

the situation to its own benefit in order to establish a military

protectorate over the petrol states of the region, with the

blessing of Europe and the UN, domesticated for the occasion. The

Iraqi regime's use of nerve gas against the Kurdish guerrilla

movement, which had never bothered Western diplomatic circles

before, was suddenly orchestrated by the media to justify the

systematic destruction of Iraq.

Encouraged by this first success, the United States then became

involved in European affairs, exploiting the Yugoslavian crises in

a bid to achieve a variety of objectives, not least the surrender

of the European Union. It is not my intention to disregard the

principal responsibilities of the fragmented local ruling classes,

all of which chose ethnic chauvinism as a means of reconstituting,

to their profit, a "legitimacy" to replace that of Tito-ism, which

had been based on social progress and the equality of nations.

Ethnic cleansing was therefore practiced by all these ruling

classes, in Croatia (through the expulsion of the Serbs, a majority

in Krajina) as in Bosnia (by each of the three components of this

absurd state -- for, if coexistence is possible in the "little

Yugoslavia", why would it not be so in the large one?) and in

Serbia (Kosovo). But we must admit that Europe threw oil on the

fire by its almost immediate acceptance of Slovenia and Croatia's

unilaterally proclaimed independence, without the imposition of any

conditions in terms of respect for the rights of the minorities

created by the explosion of Yugoslavia. This decision could only

serve to encourage the criminal regimes in question. The point was

made at the time, but the media abstained from any critical

analysis of the policy inaugurated, it must be said, by Germany,

but which an initially reticent France resisted no longer than two

weeks. Subsequently, the media systematically applied double

standards, mobilising all the means at its disposal to denounce

massacres in one place while ignoring them in another.

The massacres in Kosovo and the provocation practiced by its

"Liberation Army" (was it any better, at the outset, than the

Basque ETA?) provided the pretext for the US's systematic

intervention, already put to the test in Bosnia. This intervention

is based on three principles: 1) the brutal replacement of the UN

with NATO as the means of managing the international order; 2) the

alignment of Europe with Washington's strategic objectives; 3) the

adoption of military methods reinforcing American hegemony (no-risk

bombing campaigns and the use of European troops for an eventual

ground intervention).

The consequences of these choices are catastrophic at all levels.

They have deprived the dominant discourse on democracy and people's

rights of any scrap of credibility. They reveal that the real

strategic goal, beyond Serbia, is Russia and China -- a fact that

American strategists do not refrain from stating. NATO, now openly

the tool of American expansionism, and no longer that of European

defence, has thereby been able to put an end to illusions of

"European autonomy", forcing the EU into a new alignment, even more

severe than that imposed in the past under the pretext of the "Cold

War".

The only option which would have had some meaning for Europe would

have been to inscribe its construction within the perspective of a

multipolar world. The margin of autonomy that this option defines

would have allowed the invention of a socially valid project, in

keeping with the best humanitarian and socialist European

traditions. This option, of course, implied the recognition of the

same margin of autonomy for Russia, China, and each of the large

regions of the Third World. It also implied that the NATO page

would be turned, once and for all, and replaced by the concept of a

European defensive force, which could be integrated gradually at

the rhythm of European political construction itself. It implied,

furthermore, the conception of adequate modes of regulation at the

European level, and at that of the world system, to replace the

dominant forms: Bretton-Woods, the World Trade Organisation (WTO)

and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). By choosing

liberal globalisation, Europe has in fact renounced the use of its

potential economic competitiveness, and been satisfied to navigate

in the wake of Washington's ambitions, of which it has become the

zealous servant.

The fact that the European states have chosen this path reveals the

frailty of the European project itself, and even the fact that this

project is only a subaltern priority on the scale of dominant

political visions. Great Britain's fundamental option since 1945

has been to console itself for the loss of its imperial role by

reliving it vicariously through the US. Germany, having given up

the insane Nazi dream of world conquest, has chosen to limit its

ambitions to the means at its disposal by reconstituting its

traditional zone of influence in eastern and southeastern Europe,

tailgating Washington's global hegemonic strategy. For somewhat

similar reasons, Japan -- confronted with China, and even Korea --

has also inscribed its strictly regional expansionist ambitions

within the same global American perspective.

Today, Blair and Schrder are, clearly, not only the most dangerous

gravediggers of the traditions that were once the pride of the

European left, but also the servile executors of America's

anti-European project. Their association with Clinton in the

so-called "Third Way" discourse must be the object of no illusions,

for the new "Clinton doctrine" that has been announced aims --

after Yugoslavia -- "to turn on the East and the Middle East".

Robert I Hunter, senior adviser at the Rand Corporation and US

ambassador to NATO from 1993 to '98, recently wrote the following

in the Washington Post (21 April), with respect to the Clinton

doctrine and its application in Kosovo: "It is the gateway to areas

of intense Western concern -- the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq and

Iran, Afghanistan, the Caspian Sea and Transcaucasia. Stability in

southeastern Europe must be a precursor to protecting Western

interests and reducing threats from farther East." Again, the only

question is that of protecting Western interests (such as oil and

pipelines, or the flourishing of McDonald's -- see my previous

article), not democracy or the rights of Kurds and Palestinians.

We must therefore expect a policy of systematic provocation in

Russia and China. As for the Middle East, as it is clearly

impossible to imagine the US bombing Israel to make it accept the

Palestinian state and the return of refugees (the official motive

for the intervention in Kosovo!), the use of force in Lebanon

(where Hizbullah's "fanaticism" can serve as a pretext) and Syria

(an "undemocratic" regime) will be the means of imposing the Pax

Israeliana.

Can the European project be saved from this debacle? Things being

what they are, the only means of climbing back up the slope that

leads to the eradication of the European project implies that the

political forces attached to it -- in France, Germany or Italy --

should rethink this project in terms of what is immediately

possible -- in other words, in terms of a return to a more modest

concept of a "Europe of nations", while waiting for the progressive

ripening of cooperation. This in turn would imply a friendly -- and

non-aggressive -- approach to Russia, China and the Third World

and, in this framework, a revival of the UN's functions. Once

again, this is not the option taken by the European governments,

including the socialist majority. The priority given to the

ultra-conservative management of a fictive single currency, the

support for globalised liberalism and the US's hegemonic strategy

are arrayed against the project of a multipolar world, and will

lead to the worst catastrophes imaginable, for Europe and the rest

of the world.

______________________________________________________________

Translated from the French

by Pascale Ghazaleh

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