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Dear Javed and FOTH members
Here is a long posting which I began some time
ago. However, it was delayed as I responded to new contributors.
In Imperialism 101, I rejected the concept of
economic imperialism. Later in this posting, I'll have more to write on
another aspect of imperialism, and why I reject it. But first, I want to
turn to some of the things which you (Javed) wrote. Of course, I cannot
address all the points you made, because it was a scattershot approach, and
I don't have the time. As it is, this posting is very long!
First, back to Japan. Javed, you are right
that Japan
was a developed and educated nation (though bellicose, feudal and
expansionist). It had even had a brief flirtation with a form of democracy.
But that is hardly the point. A defeated nation which is developed and
educated can still be enfeebled by a vindictive conqueror. This happened to
Germany after its defeat
in WW1, when the Versailles reparations kept
Germany
poor. The point is that the Americans did not do this to the Japanese after
WW2, thus allowing their natural diligence to bring them the kind of wealth
that turned them into economic rivals to America.
I once taught a class of about twenty older
Japanese (all at least 50, and that was nearly twenty years ago), who were
learning English. I remember being surpised, when
the topic accidentally drifted to the war, just how little anti-American
feeling there was amongst them. In fact, I was more anti-US than they were
(I was younger and more idealistic). The atomic bombings of course were a
terrible tragedy, they acknowledged, but they had forgiven the Americans,
and said, in effect, "war is war". On the subject of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Alastair Cooke estimated that had the bombs not been dropped,
the Japanese would have taken up to two years to be dislodged from the
places they still held in South-East Asia and that it would have cost
around five million more lives.
Javed, you talk about various books that
support the notion that imperialism continues into the modern age. However,
I wonder how broad your reading is. I am in no position to know, of course,
but it always bothers me that polemical writers of the left, such as Noam
Chomsky, Robert Fisk and John Pilger, attract a
huge readership, and for western leftists and idealistic youngsters have
become like new holy books. However, those who might challenge any anti-US
concept of imperialism seem to be hardly known. I have read Chomsky etc,
but I have also read those whose analysis disagrees with the former
writers, such as Nick Cohen, Christopher Hitchens
(though he is more in the middle) and Jean-Francois Revel. I generally
agree with them. I wonder if you have read the latter's book
"Anti-Americanism". It is very good.
Javed, I also disagree with most of your
(admittedly brief) assessment of England and its history.
Although I cannot defend England's
colonial expansion, that was far from the sole reason for its economic
success. In the eighteenth century, in particular, it led the world in
economic reform and social openness, though of course it still had a long
way to go by modern standards. However, by the standards of its day it was
so successful and so inclusive that the canny Scots decided that if they
couldn't beat 'em, they might as well join 'em, and stopped fighting the English. England's
golden age would have happened (admittedly to a lesser degree) without exploitng its colonies. To reform-minded Europeans of
other nations, England
was the place to be (just read Voltaire on the subject). And don't forget
that slavery was hardly the preserve of European colonialists; the Arabs
were ruthless slave runners, and the Africans themselves did possibly worse
things to each other than any outsiders did to them. Slavery in England was
ended largely by a groundswell of enlightened public antipathy towards it.
Anyway, back to my original rant. I have
already written that I find it rather puzzling that the notion of imperialism
is accepted so unquestioningly by FOTH contributors. I admitted that I
simply did not know what those contributors meant by it. In an earlier
posting I gave my reasons for rejecting it as an economic concept. Now I
would like to turn to it as a political/military concept. I will deal with Afghanistan
as a sample case. Iraq
would perhaps be a more interesting example, but it is more complex, and I
simply do not have the time.
Even Afghanistan is complex enough.
Let me simplify matters a little, purely through expediency. I am not
concerned with the US
invasion of Afghanistan
beginning in 2001; rather, I shall focus on the more recent multi-nation
engagement. The two are naturally related, and the former largely led to
the latter. However, I think most people would agree that the motives and
the scope of the two differ somewhat. This separation should not suggest
that I opposed the US
invasion. On the contrary, I supported it almost one hundred percent.
Furthermore, for the beginning of my argument I
need to go back to that initial US invasion. Looking back, it
had more support at the time than I expected. I was surprised that most of
my friends and acquaintances, except those bitterly anti-US, offered at
least tepid support, because the outrage of 9/11 was still fresh. Even some
left-leaning columnists did not go purple with rage. However, there was one
stipulation: that after the invasion, the world should not abandon Afghanistan.
It was said that the US
supported the mujaheddin against the Russians,
but that after the Russian withdrawal the world just left Afghanistan
to rot. The world could not afford to do this again, in fairness to the
long-suffering Afghan people.
This was of course a reasonable demand. But
here is the central issue. What kind of action would constitute support for
the Afghan people? What form should it take, and how could it be applied?
Clearly, to do nothing would be neglect, of the kind that was criticized
before. We must rule that out. How about we just give the Afghan government
billions of dollars? Of course not! It would just disappear into a sinkhole
of corruption. Besides, what Afghan government? The country has always been
wracked with fierce and proud tribalism, and has usually lacked a central
power.
Clearly, the country needs money, but if the
world cannot simply donate it, what do we do? Perhaps we should send it in
the form of western advisors: well-funded engineers, doctors, soil
scientists, mechanics, biologists, and all kinds of other specialists, who
can advise on reconstruction and development. The problem here is that Afghanistan
is a wild and lawless place, and there are people who would kill and kidnap
such interlopers. Admittedly, the majority of Afghans would no doubt
welcome them, but it takes only a small minority to create havoc. In the
case of the Taleban, it’s actually quite a
sizeable minority. These are medievalists who have no concern at all for
their compatriots’ well-being or advancement, and judge people by their
acceptance of a 1400-year-old book. They feel no ethical obligation to
non-Muslims. They want to defend their religion at any cost, which is a
nonsensical notion: only people need defending. Their hostility means that
we have to send in soldiers, at best to defeat the Taleban,
or at least to keep them at bay to allow development to occur. And so, we
have the present conflict. Tragically, people are dying, including Canadian
soldiers. Yet if we cut and run, wouldn’t this be abandonment?
The argument for abandonment maintains that democracy
should evolve naturally within each society, and
that therefore it cannot and should not be imposed by force, which would be
a kind of cultural imperialism. Does this mean that Afghanis must wait for
many more generations - perhaps centuries - to acquire their rights under
the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights? This is what abandonment
would mean. In fact, I suggest that it would take a country like Afghanistan
an inordinately long time to modernize socially and culturally. Congo, for
example, is also a lawless place, but it has one advantage – no Koran.
The situation in Afghanistan is all about the
maintenance of power; but not western power. Western agencies – and, yes,
even its armies – are trying, among other things, to establish a fair realignment
of power, not only in central and local government, but also ultimately
within families. Those who oppose them refuse stubbornly to abandon their
stifling hold on power. Local culture is a large part of the problem and no
part of the solution.
To those who call military intervention
"western imperialism", I would like to know what kind of action
you suggest to assist the Afghan people. By this, I mean some specific
course of action, rather than idealistic waffle. In short, what do we (the
international community) actually do? This question is really a broader
one, and it means this: how do you improve the miserable situation of
people in failed countries when the reason for the failure is the primacy
of irrational, entrenched tribalism over any proper, people-centred governance? I have no answer. However, if one
method used by the developed nations involves military intervention, don’t
call it imperialism. Bill Clinton remains haunted to this day by his
inaction over the 1994 Rwanda
massacre. However, it is hard to imagine any action the Americans might
have taken that would have satisfied the America-haters: the Americans
ignored the Tutsis’ plight by sitting on their hands, but no doubt if they
had intervened, the left would have protested about “US
expansionism”. Sometimes you are damned if you do and damned if you
don’t….and if you are the US
government, take away the “sometimes”.
What can help fuel this anti-US hostility is
the fact that no country acts against its own interests. This means that
whatever action the US
takes, of course the likely result would bring it benefit. However, this
does not mean that the other country does not benefit as well. In the case
of Iraq, naturally the US benefits
if Iraqi oil flows freely and securely, and finds its way onto the world's
markets. But the Iraqis would benfit even more.
In the case of Afghanistan,
those who hate the west or the US can always invent a
self-interested motive for any action (or inaction) it pursues (or does not
pursue!). Muslims can see it as a Christian-inspired war on Islam, and
western leftists can see it as imperialist expansion, that it is to benefit
its “war economy”, etc etc. There's something for
every hue of anti-Americanism. I see this attitude in Javed's
criticism of the US
for its assistance to defeated countries after WW2: it was to keep them
non-communist. Well, yes, in part I'm sure it was - and a good thing too!
But that wasn't its only benefit, and I consider it extremely cynical to
suggest that it was. Javed says the Americans are really only interested in
being in Afghanistan
for the Caspian oil pipeline. Keep accentuating the negative, Javed! It's
always there, if you look hard enough. Even more do I object to Javed's accusation that the Americans flew supplies to
Berliners to "keep them grateful"! If you lie bleeding
at the side of the road, how can you presume to know what is in my heart
when I stop to offer assistance? This is the very definition of cynicism.
In its most extreme form, such a anti-western attitude strongly resembles a religion.
One of the defining aspects of religion is that its tenets are
non-falsifiable in the mind of the believer. If any action the west does is
condemned as self-interested – if action A is wrong and action not-A is
also wrong – what can ever serve as counter-evidence to the belief? If the
west ever did the right thing, how would you know?
In Somalia right now there are
around 1700 Ugandan soldiers. Uganda
is, I believe, the only African Union country to front up with peacekeeping
soldiers for Somalia,
though a total of around 8000 had been promised from other African
countries. None delivered. They are, so I am led to believe, a well-trained
and disciplined force, doing a necessary job in a hell-hole (surely, even
worse than Afghanistan).
A few weeks ago I saw a documentary about them. They talked about their
fears as they went out on patrol in Mogadishu.
Even in their camp, they feel threatened, because somehow insurgents have
found out some of their cellphone numbers, and
ring threats through to them (in English!). A Ugandan officer said that one
of their problems is that they are outgunned by the militants, and the
Ugandans need better weapons to match the enemy's firepower. Now, for all
of you who read this posting, do you support the Ugandans in what they are
doing? Would you want them to be better armed, or do you think they should
leave? After all, they are foreigners whom many of the local population
detest as outsiders. If you want them to stay, how are they different from Nato soldiers in Afghanistan?
In these two postings, I have considered
imperialism from both an economic and a military/political viewpoint. I
cannot see any reason for believing in either.
Regards to all
Peter Joyce
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