NEW WORLD ORDER
Amid the bombardment of Afghanistan, diplomats are planning a post-Taleban government. Proponents call efforts to rescue failed states "defensive imperialism" and "respectable colonialism" but ANDY HO asks, what lurks beneath these labels?
DOES a rose by any other name smell as sweet? As Nato missiles pummel Afghanistan and plans for a post-bombardment government are broached, a New World Order appears to be gelling.
Its real nature, as Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf has described, is one of "defensive imperialism" or, as historian Paul Johnson, writing in the Wall Street Journal, terms it, "respectable colonialism".
Surely, colonialism still stinks? And how is imperialism justifiable in this day and age?
Armed efforts by outside powers to "rescue" failed states are really "humanitarian intervention", say fans like New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in his 1999 "manifesto" on Kosovo.
After all, the collapse of legitimate authority results in anarchy, which renders such nations a menace not only to their citizens and immediate neighbours but also the world at large.
The morally virtuous must right such wrongs.
SOMEONE MUST RUN THE FAILED STATES
IN NEW Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo, Noam Chomsky says Nato's war on Yugoslavia was the start of a "new epoch of moral rectitude under the guiding hand of an idealistic New World bent on ending inhumanity. Yet, its New Military Humanism is but a euphemism for the rehabilitation of an imperialism that dares not speak its name".
But history seems to have turned a corner on Sept 11. In the frightening new world, someone must run failed states, if the planet is to be safe again.
So, no need to disguise imperialism or apologise for colonialism.
Paul Johnson traces the origins of old colonialism to the US naval war, from 1805, on Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli -- states that sponsored piracy.
Quickly, Britain and France followed suit, resorting to military action against state-sponsored piracy.
Still, once the Western gunboats were over the horizon, rogue states would be back to their tricks. So, taking the next logical step, France annexed Algiers in 1830, and the age of colonial expansion was soon in full swing.
There are uncanny parallels with Afghanistan and Kosovo: The doctrine now, as then, is to use overwhelming force to chasten rogue states or rescue failed states.
Still, the US Congress has the irritating power to constrain a sitting president from deploying military force, an inconvenience the British premier does not face.
So Britain has become New Imperialism's main spokesman. Which is why British premier Tony Blair declared recently: "This is a fight for the economic and social freedom of the starving, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountains of Afghanistan. They, too, are our cause."
Bombardment is followed by "enforcement of peace", even if "peacekeeping operations" look a lot like war.
Or, as Mr Blair told an American audience, with former United States president Bill Clinton looking on approvingly, just before bombing Yugoslavia: "We cannot simply walk away once the fight is over. Better to stay with moderate numbers of troops than return for repeat performances."
Afterwards, invading powers will provide the rescued with stable governments.
But, as the English are wont to say, a rose by any other name smells as sweet. Appending ethical pretensions to imperialism or colonialism makes it stink no less....
...There is already a Muslim friend in Kosovo, while repressive Central Asian republics welcome the redefining of their war on Muslim separatists and Russia's crushing of Chechnya is now permissible in the War On Terror.
And if Western troops could be stationed semi-permanently in Afghanistan in the name of humanitarian intervention...
But wait a minute. What happened to the principle of the sovereignty of nations and non-interference that has underpinned the United Nations system for 50 years?
Speaking in Chicago in 1999, Mr Blair suggested that an "important qualification" to this principle was required. In other words, rendered of no effect.
In fact, Nato secretary-general Lord George Robertson announced: "The Rubicon was crossed" at the bombing of Yugoslavia, that an irrevocable assault on that very principle had begun.
Mr Blair suggested the UN should create a military code to allow international armies to use "overwhelming force" to save faltering states.
Rationale: "Many of our domestic problems are caused on the other side of the world. Financial instability in Asia destroys jobs in my own constituency. We are all internationalists now," averred Mr Blair.
So here's the rub: internationalism or globalisation, or the planetary extension of capitalism is an intrinsically expansionist project, one as old as gunboats.
One snag: Global capitalism is not a done deal. Yet.
As the Seattle riots or Genoa protests suggest, the still-fragile global economy may break up. Nations may retreat into protectionism, there may be global rearmament and the erosion of international law.
GLOBAL CAPITALISM IS NOT A DONE DEAL
THUS, the need to build a globalism based on "our values" and "the rule of law" to enable the march of capital all over the world in search of profit.
"The spread of our values will make us safe,"' said Mr Blair, meaning liberty and democracy, but also the neo-liberal theology of free markets.
Trouble spots or "rogue states" that impede the smooth functioning of global capitalism must be sorted out, attacked and taken over, where necessary.
Yet this militarised humanism is but imperialism given a humanitarian gloss to effect its recuperation to respectability.
Frank Furedi recalls in The New Ideology Of Imperialism that, once upon a time: "The moral claims of imperialism were seldom questioned in the West. The expansion of Western power was seen unambiguously as a major contributor to human civilisation."
But that project went awry when it became obvious that fascism proclaiming racial and cultural superiority was also imperialism. So the word dropped from polite usage.
But now that the white man's burden has been re-named the liberal humanitarian's burden, and imperialism re-presented as crisis management, the Wall Street Journal has no compunction editorialising that, after the Olympian thunderbolts cease raining down on Afghanistan, "nation-building doesn't have to be a dirty word".
So we may well need a whole new vocabulary for polite conversation.
Thus far, there is no other word for it but imperialism which, by any other name, still fails the smell test. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>