Snowden Is Neither Strange Nor Sudden
By Farooque Chowdhury
12 November, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Snowden is neither a strange nor a sudden “syndrome”. The incident is not also “mysterious” or mischievous, which may appear to a section. Rather, Edward Snowden is a product of a time, product of a phenomenon in a society.
Once, KGB, the intelligence arm of the rulers in Kremlin, had a role in geopolitics. A sort of “competition” between KGB and CIA, the world famous intelligence arm of the USA, made news headlines. Defections from both sides, USSR and USA, but mostly from Moscow-end, were almost regular incidents. Sports stars/Olympic celebrities, diplomats, dancers regularly defected, and those were not unusual news during the Cold War. Accusations by both the parties were traded: Defection was provoked or induced or allured or coerced. Peace movements or citizens’ movements opposing deployment of Pershing, etc. missiles in Europe by the US/NATO were branded KGB-induced/funded.
But now, that phase has gone to the sphere of memory. Even, immediately-after Gorbachev’s master stoke – the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, COMECON, etc. – a section of analysts dreamed: Peace dividend would be reaped as the Cold War went out, as super power rivalry would be absent, as arms race would not be the order of the day, as unipolar world has emerged, as history has reached to its “end”.
But within a short time those dreams turned day dreams as the root of rivalry, expansion, subjugation, aggression, interference were fully alive and active in the world system. Those analysts denied the reality of conflict, competition and contradictions, denied to recognize causes behind competition, contradiction and conflict, and claimed a freehand in world affairs as denial of contradictions and causes of contradictions within society was their only source of optimism.
But the reality of competition denied to get subjugated by those analysts as analysts don’t frame reality, rather reality rules, interests invade and dictate, and the reality is full of conflicting interests and contradictions.
Consequently, in an almost unprecedented way a number of states had to face non-state actors. A bunch of these non-state actors emerged in the ocean blue waters along a part of Africa. NATO warships had to be deployed to charge pirates, primitives compared to NATO-fire power.
How many times NATO war fleet had to face Warsaw fleets or USSR’s fleet although there was at least a case of intrusion by a Russian submarine in the waters of a Nordic country? And, similar cases of intrusion were probably many.
But, amazingly, mighty NATO had to face sea pirates, and the trans-Atlantic military alliance downgraded itself into a sea police force. History behaves in “strange” way while it “terminates”!
How the pirates of Somalia were created? Was it by the NATO-despised KGB? Were not the pirates created by the world system, of which NATO is a part? Was the pirate chasing by the NATO economic? Had NATO designers imagined that the mighty force had to face pirates of seas, had to float in combat ready condition in the Indian Ocean instead in the Baltic Sea or the Mediterranean or the Atlantic? Had they imagined that merchant shipping would turn difficult in a particular corner of the Indian Ocean instead of the Black Sea or the Bosporus Straits? It’s a reality beyond imagination of dictators of the world system.
The entire piracy-scene is not strange; one, a bigger piracy, chased out the other, the smaller one, while piracy is at the heart of the “story”; so, the petty pirates sailed to the sea. The both came out from hunger: the petty ones harbor hunger for daily survival while the monstrous one is owner of an ever widening stomach for accumulation with ever stretching hands towards a continent full of resources and rivalry between black sahibs, compradors of catastrophic capital.
Other non-state actors are also there. Once they were nourished as proxy by a section of states. That was the phase of bleeding the Red Army of the USSR in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan.
After the withdrawal of Russian forces from that bloodied land the proxies wasted no time to find enemies within own camp as there were other designs, other interests and other rivalries by other secondary masters in the wing. The proxies turned turncoats in the eyes of their masters and mentors.
Ultimately, the situation took unprecedented turn: A section of states are always being haunted by these non-state actors. It’s difficult to find a parallel in world history: The most powerful state and its allies are always being hunted, as is told, by a group of persons.
Consequences the situation has brought include (1) Spending of billions of dollars, which is budgetary allocation and which is tax payers’ money, and (2) curtailment of freedom and rights that democracy extends, which is tax payers are bestowed with but are regularly denied. One consequence is economic and financial while the other is political. A political culture stuffed with hatred and scare, 1984 – big brother’s ever open eyes – emerged as an efficient propaganda machine was already there. Accountability, an integral part of democracy, was getting lost in the maze of authoritarian “considerations”. Legalities were conferred on business interests trading with the issue of security, a lucrative market. These business interests – defense contractors – ultimately thrive on tax payers’ money although their activities most of the time move below radar of accountable mechanism.
A clumsy situation appears despite much exposed facts; and the situation is not linear. A few comparisons help find out the real face of the arguments, single dimensional in type, being propagated in this build up to unprecedented variety of war:
(1) A world system with elaborate mechanism “can’t” choke a band of individuals although it effectively imposed economic sanctions and choked a society and “awarded” deaths of children, hospitals without medicines, stores without food, as Saddam-ruled-Iraq experienced, although the system is well aware of all the secret arms cache or secret nuclear arming efforts, as is evident from its publicity related to Iran, although the system can threat with punishment to all business deals with Cuba and carry on human history’s longest ever economic blockade against the geographically small island-country.
(2) The system gets engaged in an almost-indefinite war with its enemy – a band of persons – as it can’t cut supply line of its purported enemy as the system “doesn’t” know the source(s) and supply line(s) of arms, ammunition, cash, know how the band brandish/procure although the system enters into alliance with the band in specific areas of operation, although it has the technical capability of knowing all movements/thought process of millions of individuals, keeping eyes, like a big brother, on the entire Earth, even deep into oceans, although it used to keep eyes on Ho Chi Minh Trail with technology less efficient compared to today’s.
(3) The system can’t identify the state actors, if any, patronizing the band of non-state actors although the system had the intellectual capacity to analyze power-equation by observing who was standing how far from Brezhnev or Mao during their celebrations on the Red Square or the Tien An Men Square.
(4) The system fails to enter into political “games” with the band of individuals and their state-patrons although the system made significant and meaningful inroads into pre-Gorbachev-Kremlin, found friends in East and central European countries well before the Berlin Wall was made to crumble down and well before those countries formally renounced socialism and embraced capitalism.
(5) The present day non-state actors can continue with their activities “without” help from any state actor although the East and central European states, allies of former USSR, turned helpless in the face of Gorbachev’s passive stance.
Are all these possible in reality?
Or, is there an existence of some other equation, or has there begun a process of erosion/decay in the system? Is there something rotten in the state of …? Is it getting reflected in the system of democracy/governance that the states practice? Or, is the decay/erosion in political culture/political practice/governance/practice of democracy output of the economy that dominates the system?
One can argue that the seemingly decay/erosion is an evolution of democratic concepts, ideas and values. In that case, an evolution with a decaying orientation signifies “something” fundamental.
The questions, complex or simple, have answers, and the answers get reflected in the reality. And, the reality, decay of or evolution in governing and democratic system, affects citizens living within the system and paying with taxes for operation of the system.
This can act as background of the emergence of Snowden and other whistleblowers. Snowden had no opportunity of interacting with or getting induced by KGB, as the arch-rival of CIA turned non-existent long ago. The tricking away of Snowden, as is being alleged, by China and Russia signifies further serious questions, which will show inefficiency within. Then, why Snowden behaves or performs in the way that the world now witnesses?
One can, as an attempt try to find out answers to the questions, raise the issue of emotion, sense, conscience, thought process, and sources of these, and the way ideas enter into human heads.
Do these emerge all of a sudden? Do ideas, values, etc. come from void? Does reality plays a role in these areas? What’s reality? Are economy, society, politics, culture isolated from reality? Do these influence human “mind” and actions? And, can reality be ignored while finding out answers to these questions?
Whatever the answer is there a bold fact emerges: The dominating system can’t control and monitor all “minds”, emotions, conscience, senses, persons although it monitors millions of telephone calls and e-mails. Answers to the questions tell Snowden is neither a sudden nor a strange syndrome and not isolated from society.
But a school denies reality and imagines that engineering of human head and society is possible. To this school, Snowden is a sudden, sporadic and isolated case, a sort of failure somewhere in a system.
Whether it’s a sudden, sporadic and isolated case or not the questions are: Is the case part of a reality, part of a society? Why and how a society creates such a case? Don’t allurement or fear desist persons from performing in the way Snowden has performed?
Whistleblowers were always there in the society. The Snowden case reflects state of a society, of a politics, of a governing system where weaknesses lie within strengths, where a mighty system turns vulnerable to an individual, where dependable individuals turn opposite, where a system can’t subjugate conscience. It reflects state of a democracy where a band of individuals, if that is the fact, can compel a state to go in a way that the whistleblower has exposed.
A democracy reflects the dominating economy and economic interests the democracy safeguards. Sovereignty of these economic interests is ensured with democracy of these interests.
Consequently, shall the question arise: Does the economy require this state of democracy? The answer will show a state of decay within. Dealing with the Snowden case as an individual’s act or behavior pattern will be a failure to recognize the state of decay.
A narrative account by Kurt Eichenwald, an award-winning New York Times reporter, rewinds a few facts that help perceive the state of the economy and politics. KE’s Conspiracy of Fools (2005, Broadway Books, New York) is related to the now-probably-forgotten story of Enron, a story of power and politics operated with lies and conspiracy reaching the sphere of crime in the palaces of economic and political power, “that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street …” KE writes in the prologue of the book: “It [the Enron debacle] set off what became a cascading collapse of public confidence … Soon Enron appeared to be just the first symptom of a disease that had somehow swept undetected through corporate America … What appeared was a scandal of scandals …. It was not simply the outgrowth of rampant lawbreaking …. Shocking incompetence, unjustified arrogance, compromised ethics, and an utter contempt for the market’s judgment all played decisive roles…. It is, at its base, the story of a wrenching period of economic and political tumult as revealed through a single corporate scandal. It is a portrait of an America in upheaval at the turn of the twenty-first century …”
Governance, and as a whole politics, is not immune from this economy that produces the Enron case. More scandals, stories of corruption in banking and financial world, in the dominating part of the society got exposed during the Great Financial Crisis. It’s decay.
The decay doesn’t spare democracy being practiced. Observation by Al Gore, former US vice president, can’t be ignored. In early-November, 2013, in the public lecture Technology and the Future of Democratization at McGill University, Montreal, Al Gore said the “outrageous” and “completely unacceptable” NSA surveillance revealed by Snowden showed possible “crimes against the Constitution”.
And, this reality interacts with human head – conscience, sense of responsibility of citizens. Citizens turn intolerant to decaying political practice that tramples democracy. Number of such intolerant citizens grows. Thus emerge Snowden and many similar actors, seemingly individuals, but actually a social phenomenon. People join them to protest decaying practice and to uphold people’s rights. It’s a long process that governing eyes and ears miss.
Farooque Chowdhury is Dhaka-based freelancer.
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