Even To Empire Rules ApplyBy Jeff Berg
30 September, 2004
Countercurrents.orgSimply because Israel with massive U.S. military aid has successfully occupied the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights for over 30 years does not make it a legal occupation. In fact by international law according to declarations to which the U.S. is signatory it is correctly classified as an illegal occupation and Israel is guilty at the very least of the international crime of unlawful use of force. The international legal equivalent of terrorism. The same facts now apply to America's illegal war in Iraq excepting that the U.S. is guilty of the even greater crime of aggression as it is in contravention of Article 51 of the U.N. Charter to which it is signatory.
From its inception the American nation has been an expansionary one. First establishing the homeland by exterminating the indigenous population while pushing ever westward and southward on the continent of North America. Next it began extending its control to the hemisphere at the turn of the century with the invasion of the Philippines. (200,000 killed) Since the Second World War the U.S. has been involved in several hundred military actions (Vietnam 2 to 3 million killed) and maintains over 700 military stations worldwide. It is also no coincidence that since the second world war in Latin America wherever U.S. influence has been greatest human rights violations have been greatest and democracy least advanced. That these facts are well known and freely discussed in scholarship is no surprise as in this way America is remarkably free. Though notably less so this decade than last. What is surprising though is how little known these facts are by the majority of people and how little priority they are given even when they are known. (In America most especially but by no means exclusively)
Despite her record America has managed via Madison Avenue, television, Hollywood, her artists and her sportsmen, to present herself to the world as the beacon of democracy and exemplar to the world. The campaign to promote and export 'American values' to the world and inculcate the accompanying mythology in its own people has been run in tandem with America's consumer driven economy. As a result literally trillions of dollars have been spent since the Second World War in distracting people from paying much attention to America's activities abroad. Activities that were aptly described by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in an op-ed piece in 1999. "For globalisation to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." Despite this moment of truth (a radical departure for Mr. Friedman, not repeated as far as I can tell) and a few others like it, for the most part for the last half a century the myth making machinery has worked successfully for the elite of America and even today the American system continues to enrich its corporations at an ever increasing pace relative to the population.
Cracks are however beginning to appear in the foundations of the edifice of America's empire. None more significant than the fact that despite corporate wealth the homeland itself is now drowning in trillions of dollars of debt (7 trillion) generated by historically unprecedented levels of spending on weapons of war at the same time that huge tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations have been instituted. As Chalmers Johnson puts it in the documentary 'Hijacking Catastrophe', "Things that can't go on forever don't." Today the economic laws of gravity apply to every country except America, a defiance of reality owed solely to the power of being the reserve currency for the world. When this political choice by the countries that holds America's debt changes capital flows and corporate mobility will do to America exactly the same 'good' as it has every other country that has experienced the phenomena. (e.g. Argentina's middle class sifting through city streets garbage looking for their next meal. Sadly, no exaggeration.)
We are now entering a period of history never before seen. We are literally reaching the ends of the earth and in this case the earth is flat and there is an edge that we can fall off. We have seen the eradication of the buffalo herds that use to blanket whole states in North America. In the last 50 years corporate commerce has presided over the end of the inexhaustible cod fishery and the destruction of 90% of all large fish in the ocean. At the same time we have seen the taking of 98% of all old growth trees on private land in the U.S. and exploited all but 1% of available grain lands in North America, the breadbasket of the world. Next up is the fact that peak oil is upon us. Within five years we will reach the tipping point in peak oil production and from that moment forward we will finally be forced to do what we could not do voluntarily. Abandon an economic model predicated on endless growth. Despite the fact that many of these facts were widely known in influential circles up to and including the moment of 9-11 most of us in the developed world had the feeling that we were in this together and that together we could make our way of life work for us, as well as bring it to most if not all others in the world, and make the whole system 'sustainable' thanks to ever more powerful scientific advances.
America's attempt to illegally occupy Iraq has changed all that. For decades the world has balked but not revolted against American exceptionalism. As a body, through the U.N., though the principles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter we have sought to counterbalance and accommodate America's pre-eminence with our existence. We sought to bring America into the fold of the world and to balance her wants with the worlds needs. The unilateral invasion of Iraq marks a turning point in America's place in the world. It has brought to the fore in a way that not even the death of millions in Indo-China could the fact of U.S. financial and ecological mismanagement of the planets limited resources. America's blatant grab for the power and wealth that Middle Eastern oil represents has made it terrifyingly clear that America accepts no limits on her wants irrespective of the needs of the people of the planet and the planet itself. As a result despite ever increasing expenditures on the branding of the 'American way' the veils are beginning to slip from an ever-increasing plurality of eyes. Very quickly, much more quickly than any could have projected, whole populations are recognizing who is the greatest danger to our health, wealth and pursuit of happiness.
This is nowhere better seen than in the elections of Spain something people like Charles Krauthammer have exactly backwards. When terrorist's blow things up it makes it far more likely not less likely that people will vote for the 'strongman' who promises security and vengeance. This unsurprising though lamentable fact is so well documented I will not belabour the point. Though it is appropriate to mention the fact that this phenomenon is currently very obviously distorting the nature of American politics as each candidate strives to find ways to prove he is the 'strongest' on security. America not Spain is the one who has allowed herself to be stampeded by fear. America is the one giving up her civil liberties. America is the one mortgaging her future for an imperial present not the Spaniards, not the French and hopefully soon no longer the Australians.
To a rational person the surprising thing about Spain is that Zapatero was able to win despite the bombing. Claiming he won because of the bombing is what I like to call a Rovean inversion of reality and is notable principally for how contemptuous such an attitude is of democracy. The simple math of the matter is that 90% of Spaniards did not support America's illegal invasion of Iraq. Call the election result there what you will you cannot call it undemocratic. (Something the U.S. cannot say about their last 'Jim Crow/Felonious Five' election.)
Once the U.S. nation was viewed as the "Zion of democracy" in the world. Today she is merely the nation that is most well armed and dangerous. Once the U.S. was viewed as the nation who could lead the world to health and wealth. Today she is seen as a foolishly indebted nation who has recklessly mismanaged her and our limited resources. So much for the battle for hearts and minds. And while it is true that America's closest allies (England, Australia, Canada, Japan) pretty much toe the line out of fear for her extensive ability to do them harm, be it economic, military or both. The kind of harm that she has amply demonstrated herself capable of doing in such countries as Vietnam, Nicaragua, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Columbia, Haiti, Brazil, Chile, Iraq, Iran, Cuba, etc.Unlike imperial Rome America does not have a world of virtually limitless resources to allow her to square the imperial circle? The limits of the natural world will soon do what human systems cannot and it is then that America will be openly defied. Not from principles of moral universality, leaders quickly learn to ignore such impulses or they even more quickly become ex-leaders. (I hasten to add that the people do have such impulses but they have never had a way to enforce their will in this area in any political system yet devised by the modern state.) No it will not be morality that forces us into a survival mode rejection of the American way it will be the simple natural limits to what can and cannot be done in and to the natural world if it is going to continue to support life. It will be the abyss that the American way is forcing us to look down. Today in Iraq America's leaders are playing a testosterone filled game of chicken and the American leadership is gambling that the world will be too afraid of the
possible consequences to meaningfully oppose her. America is gambling that the world will let her take what she wants, let her be as profligate as she wants, because we so fear beginning a chain reaction to nuclear war if we oppose her.
What America is failing to take into account is that the she is looking at the wrong abyss. The nuclear abyss is a bogeyman from the past and most of us have long understood that at the very least it has the redeeming quality of taking them down with us. (This verity was institutionalised years ago as
the "MAD doctrine") In other words: So what if Iraq has a nuclear weapon? So what if Iran has a nuclear weapon? So what if North Korea has a nuclear weapon? They can't and won't use it against us because they know that we would annihilate every last one of them if they ever did. The one thing a nuclear weapon does endanger is the army of an invader. So it is no surprise that Iran is saying that, "Our nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes." Translation. "If we have a nuclear weapon we will be left in peace." This any adolescent can see which is why aside from would be occupiers very few people in the world give this issue anything but third order priority. There is on the other hand an abyss that has very much captured the imagination of the people of the world. A possible future that has completely captured the attention of the majority.
The issue that people overwhelmingly care about, the abyss that will scare us sufficiently to revolt against U.S. imperial aims, no matter how fearful the consequences of such a revolt, is the abyss of the 'great die-off'. The great herds of buffalo are gone, the inexhaustible supply of cod is gone, 90% of all large fish in the ocean are gone, the icecaps are going, topsoil is going, England and India's forests are gone, China's and America's are next, the lions and tigers and bears are going and the diversity of life in the world is literally coming to an end around us. Meanwhile the U.S. Congress worries about corporate health, passes tax cuts and Wall Street editorials fulminate about how little is being done for them them. (The echo chamber at work) Statistically speaking almost none of the world owns
stock but we all very much have a stake in the natural order of things. An order that is rapidly collapsing around us. Tipping point after tipping point is either past or rapidly approaching for countless species of life in our world. As the majority of the world cannot survive for very long without
these natural resources to sustain their lives this is the abyss that will motivate active resistance. And just as with the Palestinians, the Chechnya's, the Afghans and the Iraqis as more and more of us are faced with relentlessly grinding poverty, grotesque inequalities of wealth and imminent extinction, the demand for change will come from every corner. How 'pretty' this will be and how soft our landing will depend on many factors. Foremost among them the 'game plan' of the U.S. corporate elite.
If the U.S. elite continues to take the line that it can insulate itself from the demands of the people of the world in every way that matters events will very likely escalate dramatically because the empirical evidence is no longer arguable. Global warming, rising sea levels, massive die-off of species, cannot be spun indefinitely no matter how tightly controlled is the U.S. media's corporate message. As the crescendo of cognitive dissonance rises in the U.S. population it's leaders may well begin to wish that they had razed Abu Ghraib and they're like in the homeland when they had the chance. For the greater their resistance the greater is the chance that they will end up in the dock.Democracy as we have known it for the last half-century will not survive if adherence to the status quo and obstruction of essential changes to the way we organize commerce and the use of our natural resources continues for much longer. Exactly "how long we have" is unknowable. What is knowable is what the indigenous populations of North America have always known, it is enough to pay attention to the evidence of your senses to know that many things have gone dreadfully wrong. To me nothing better illustrates the truth of this than the fact that despite the distortions of the media fully half the
population of America believes the electoral process to be worthless. Again, it is unknowable if the direct apprehension of our deteriorating reality will in any way soften our landing but inevitably empiricism trumps propaganda every single time. (aka. "When theory and reality collide theory
gets run over.")It is an elementary truism to state that no system of human organization that is incapable of caring for the future can survive the future it brings. This is as true today as it was for the Roman, Ottoman, or English empires. Today the American empire busies herself with pouring her vast wealth into technological decadence as profoundly destructive to her as it is to the rest of us. Trillions of dollars spent on nuclear bombs, missiles, planes, ships and tanks and to what avail? Has it saved the biodiversity of a single ecological niche, a single fishery, and a single species? Has it enhanced our future, has it made us safer? No, but then why should it as that is never what is designed to do. Ruthlessly clever men constructed this system in the aftermath of the Second World War. Truman, Acheson and Keenan et al constructed the military industrial complex and a permanent wartime economic footing for a specific purpose that it has largely served exactly as it was supposed to. To wit. It has made a very few people and companies in the world incomparably wealthy and powerful. However what it has also done is unleash an ever-increasing concentration of wealth for the few and thereby eroded support for the institutions that underlie the very democracy it was purportedly created to protect. America has wasted her talents, her wealth and her vision and so humanity will seek another vision. In this one respect at least history is exceedingly clear. Only those that plan and sacrifice for the care of future generations have themselves a future. And in the communal future of human civilization only those societies that promote human needs over human wants will avoid the power of entropy by regenerating as opposed to degenerating.
The ROW (rest of the world) will very soon throw off the imperial American yoke and abandon the failed American project in exchange for the vision of those nations that show us how to live in such a way that brings the planet back to health. By those who show us how to live a healthy, long, fulfilling life that increases as opposed to devastates the biodiversity of the planet. At this point in the story it is much easier to see a future as shown by the people of Cuba than it is one as shown by the people of America. The American elite has become corrupted by an orgy of wealth and martial power. Simplistic it's true but also as true as it is simple. As a result America has bankrupted herself both fiscally and morally. The world now waits with fearful anticipation the slow motion train wreck that America's course represents to see how much repair we will have to do to the tracks that we must all travel. And we can only pray as we work to organize our rescue that her fall will be less damaging than was her rise and rule.Jeff Berg is a Canadian who lives in Toronto: [email protected]
Your Support
Is Absolutely
Necessary
For Our
Survival
Thank You!