[casi] Going Global: Building A Movement Against Empire

["AS-ILAS" <AS-ILAS@DELETETHISgmx.de>]

http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/justice2003.html

Going Global: Building A Movement Against Empire

By Phyllis Bennis
Phyllis Bennis <pbennis@compuserve.com> is a Fellow at the Institute for
Policy Studies and writes regularly for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at
www.fpif.org). This was prepared for the Transnational Institute's Fellows'
Meeting, held May 16 - 17, 2003 (online at www.tni.org) and is reprinted
with permission.



Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org



As the Bush administration strengthens its military victory and consolidates
its occupation of Iraq, it continues its trajectory toward international
expansion of power and global reach. The arrogance of its triumphalism,
ignoring civilian carnage and dismissing the destruction of the ancient
cities because, in Rumsfeld's words, "free people have the right to do bad
things and commit crimes," reflects the hubris of ancient empires.
Shakespeare's "insolence of office" could well describe the contempt with
which the Pentagon warriors look down on the peoples of the world.

The U.S. war in Iraq is certainly not the first time the U.S. has
unilaterally, illegally, and without justification attacked another country.
But in the past--whether Grenada, Panama, the first Gulf War, even
Kosovo--Washington generally attempted to validate its wars through some
kind of claim (however spurious) of international legality. In giving life
to Bush's doctrine of preemptive war, the assault on Iraq represents the
first time a U.S. president has claimed--even boasted--that he had the right
to launch such a unilateral attack against a country that had not attacked
the U.S. and did not pose any imminent threat, and that international
authority was unnecessary.

Claiming the right of preemptive war would not, by itself, be proof of
empire. Even launching a war more accurately defined as an aggressive
preventive war (since a preemptive attack implies an imminent threat) does
not by itself represent such proof. But the eagerness of Washington's
powerful to launch this war, without United Nations authorization and with
such reckless disregard for the consequences, with the expressed aim of
toppling the government of an independent country, albeit one mortally
wounded from war and twelve years of murderous sanctions, may represent just
such proof. Certainly one can argue, as Paul Schroeder does, that there is a
critical distinction between hegemony and empire. (The History News Network,
Center for History and the New Media, George Mason University, February 3,
2003.) "Hegemony," he writes, "means clear, acknowledged leadership and
dominant influence by one unit within a community of units not under a
single authority. A hegemon is first among equals; an imperial power rules
over subordinates. A hegemonic power is the one without whom no final
decision can be reached within a given system; its responsibility is
essentially managerial, to see that a decision is reached. An imperial power
rules the system, imposes its decision when it wishes."

Schroeder concludes that the U.S. "is not an empire--not yet." Writing some
weeks before Washington's invasion of Iraq, he describes the U.S. as "at
this moment a wannabe empire, poised on the brink. The Bush Doctrine
proclaims unquestionably imperialist ambitions and goals, and its armed
forces are poised for war for empire--formal empire in Iraq through
conquest, occupation, and indefinite political control, and informal empire
over the whole Middle East through exclusive paramountcy."

The rapid overthrow of the Iraqi regime, with its attendant moments of
exhilaration and long hours of horror for tens of thousands of Iraqi
civilians, has pushed Bush administration officials over that brink. Their
smug "other Middle Eastern governments better learn their lesson" attitude
indicates a fortified sense of self-righteousness and the justification of
their cause. If Washington has not yet consolidated its global empire, the
drive toward it is now undeniable.



An Imperial Moment?
Ultimately though, what is key is less the debate over whether the U.S.
today is an aggressive hegemon or an imperial center bound for global
domination, than understanding the political significance and consequence of
this historical moment. U.S. tanks control the Euphrates valley and U.S.
troops occupy the sites of the earliest records of humanity. But U.S.
policymakers willing to look beyond their own euphoria will see not only a
devastated and dishonored Iraq facing at best an uncertain and difficult
future; not only an Iraqi population whose largest components are calling
equally for "No to Saddam Hussein" and "No to the U.S." in their street
protests; but also a humiliated and enraged Arab world; a shattered system
of alliances; and a growing constellation of international opposition that
includes Washington's closest allies and an emerging global people's
movement saying no to Washington's war, and no to Washington's empire.

If war in Iraq were the only clear imperial thrust of the Bush
administration, it would be tempting to reduce it to the resource-grabbing
of an oil industry administration, the actions of an irresponsible hegemony
soon to be taken to task by the rest of the global community. Opposition to
the war could indeed be reduced to the demand of "no blood for oil." But
when taken in the context of even longer-standing and more visionary efforts
to reshape regional and global power relations, the Iraq war emerges far
more as exemplar of a broad and entrenched pattern, than as an isolated
proof of U.S. intent.

That is particularly significant in light of the combination of military,
political, and economic factors whose collective expansion undergirds the
relentless drive for power and empire. Militarily, the creation of a network
of permanent bases throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, the
Pentagon's techno-lethal "revolution in military affairs," the scaffolding
of Israel's rise as an unchallengeable regional military power, and most
especially the public commitment to a new generation of nuclear weapons
designed for actual battlefield use, have contributed to a military capacity
so enormous that no combination of other countries could even hope to
approach, let alone match or surpass it.

Elsewhere in the world, U.S. military involvement is on the rise in Latin
America, particularly in Colombia, despite some emerging gains for popular
forces on the continent. In Africa, U.S. military aid to oil-producing
countries (such as Nigeria) is on the rise. In Asia, the U.S. is rebuilding
its military connections with the Philippines, and discussions are
continuing with Japan regarding expansion of Tokyo's military capacity and
especially eliminating the now-contentious Article VI of Japan's
constitution, which prohibits the use of military force other than in
self-defense. Washington is goading an unstable North Korea into
consistently higher levels of nuclear brinksmanship, almost daring China to
rise to the bait. All over the world, the U.S. is reclaiming access to bases
lost earlier to the vagaries of post-cold war and post-neocolonial
politics--in places such as Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, and the Philippines.

The Bush administration's September 2002 National Security Strategy refers
directly to maintaining the enormous military chasm between the military
capacity of the U.S. and that of the rest of the world, calling for the use
of military force to insure that no nation or group of nations ever imagines
even matching, let alone surpassing, U.S. prowess. The cavalier dismissal of
concerns regarding increasing regional instability as a likely result of war
in Iraq reflects a rash acceptance of the view that every political
challenge has a military answer. And earlier, abandoning the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty and essentially consigning the Non-Proliferation Treaty to
the dustbin of history were part of the assertion of military unilateralism
as a point of legitimate principle.

Economically, both internationally and domestically, it is clear that
consolidation of economic power in fewer and fewer hands remains a key
strategic approach of the administration. The Bush team continues its
enthusiasm for domestic tax breaks for the rich and lack of concern with the
dire domestic economic consequences of their $100-200 billion war in Iraq.
The post-war contract-grab and war profiteering for administration-linked
companies in Iraq reflects the broader privatization focus of Bush foreign
policy. Abroad, the United States continues its agenda of advancing
corporate trade and investment rights, as it attempts to craft a new round
of global trade talks in the World Trade Organization. Over the past six
months Washington has blatantly tried to use economic aid and trade
agreements as carrots and sticks to bribe, threaten, and purchase coalition
partners for the war in Iraq. (Although it was in this area, particularly
the refusal of the "Uncommitted Six" in the UN Security Council to sign on
to Bush's "coalition of the willing," that Washington's failure was most
visible.) And, the continuing moves to tighten U.S. control over strategic
oil and gas reserves in the Middle East and Central Asia are aimed at
providing more economic clout to Washington vis-à-vis its economic
competitors and allies.

Politically and diplomatically, Washington's effort to undermine and render
"irrelevant" the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq war, clearly
demonstrated the view of key Bush administration ideologues that UN
authorization was not only unnecessary but actually damaging to the holy
grail of legitimizing the unilateral assertion of U.S. power. Coming on the
heels of earlier rejections of treaty obligations and/or negotiations
(Kyoto, ABM, the International Criminal Court, etc.) the Bush
administration's grudging and dismissive use of the UN went far beyond the
Clinton administration's cynically instrumentalist view of the UN as what
Madeleine Albright famously called "a tool of American foreign policy." The
Bush White House dismissed any notion of accountability to international law
or the UN Charter, operating instead on a litany of assertions that UN
resolutions meant whatever President Bush said they mean, and that anyway we
don't need any UN resolutions, we have the god-given right to go to war when
and where and against whom and for as long as we like.

As George Monbiot recently wrote, "the U.S., in other words, seems to be
ripping up the global rulebook. As it does so, those of us who have
campaigned against the grotesque injustices of the existing world order will
quickly discover that a world with no institutions is even nastier than a
world run by the wrong ones. Multilateralism, however inequitable it may be,
requires certain concessions to other nations. Unilateralism means piracy:
the armed robbery of the poor by the rich. The difference between today's
world order and the one for which the U.S. may be preparing is the
difference between mediated and unmediated force." (Guardian - February 25,
2003)



Moving Against Empire: The Second Super-Power?
There is no country or group of countries capable of launching a military
challenge to Washington's power drive. But for perhaps the first time since
the end of the cold war, there is a serious competitor challenging the U.S.
empire for influence and authority--global public opinion, including a
mobilized international civil society joined by key governments as well as
the United Nations itself. Not only the Non-Aligned stalwarts of South
Africa, Cuba, Malaysia, although they are vital to this challenge. Not only
the key U.S. allies such as France, Germany, or Russia eager to remain on
good terms with Washington but clear about the danger of an unrestrained
rogue empire. Not only the UN secretariat, facing extraordinary pressure to
cave in to Washington's will yet aware that the global organization's real
survival depends on its willingness and ability to stand defiant of that
pressure in defense of the UN Charter. But together all of those forces make
up the astonishing movement toward a new internationalism that today forms
the global challenge to the empire. And the United Nations, while not the
only sector, is at its center.



The UN at the Center
We are living through an extraordinary historical moment. The combination of
events in mid-February--the unprecedented Security Council response to
Villepin's call to defend the UN as an instrument of peace and not a tool
for war and the resulting refusal of the Council and its members to accede
to U.S. demands, and the outpouring of millions across the globe on February
15 when "The World Says No to War," and the amazing reaction to those
demonstrations by the U.S., UK, and other governments--provided even clearer
evidence that we are at a critical historical juncture. The New York Times
analysis defined this as a moment proving that once again there are two
superpowers in the world--"the United States, and global public opinion."

Although that global movement against war in Iraq failed to stop the U.S.
onslaught, it is in the process of transformation into a movement against
the emerging U.S. empire. Many of the speakers at many of the simultaneous
February 15th rallies around the world hit the same point--this war, and
this anti-war movement, are no longer just about Iraq. This is about
mobilizing the world against Washington. To the shock of ideologically
driven American analysts, European and other governments recognized that the
need to constrain the U.S. is as urgent--or more so--as the need to restrain
Baghdad--and that effort was reflected in the UN debate. Writing in the New
York Times magazine, James Traub quoted an unnamed UN official saying that
the Security Council "members ended up feeling that they had to stand up to
American unilateralism."

It was in this context that the conscious struggle--again with the UN as the
primary venue--emerged among Europeans. "Old Europe" recognized the danger
of ignoring the rise of U.S. power, and sought to go public with the
long-denied goal of building Europe as an explicit counterweight to America.
Public opinion in France, Germany, and elsewhere made it possible--indeed vi
rtually mandatory--for those governments to stand defiant against the U.S.
in the Security Council, making what likely began as a tactical disagreement
with Washington into a point of principle. The "new" European governments,
still caught up in the illusion of taking advantage of the EU's generous
cash benefits while keeping their strategic eggs solidly in Washington's
basket, faced 65-80% public opposition to their support for Bush's war.
Differences over the nature of an expanded Europe, then, emerged as a
crucial sub-text within United Nations debates.

The events of February 15 transformed a widespread antiwar sentiment into a
powerful global movement, one that was mobilized around the world on the
same slogan--The World Says No to War. It wasn't simply a matter of
simultaneous demonstrations--there was the qualitatively greater power that
comes from a shared framework (even if spontaneous and rudimentary rather
than conscious and comprehensive). It was that connection and coordination
that set in motion Washington's and other international ruling class'
recognition of the importance of our movement, at a moment when elite
opposition had been largely squelched within U.S. domestic politics.

For the moment the main focus must remain on Iraq--because even the millions
of people in the streets around the world couldn't reverse Bush's military
course, and with Iraq laid to ruin the work of our antiwar movement isn't
done yet. But what's clear is that a quickly increasing number of people
within that movement understand it as part of a much bigger, global
mobilization against a much bigger threat even than devastating war in Iraq.

The arguments shaping that movement are only now being woven into a coherent
whole. They start with condemning the civilian lives lost and massive
destruction in Iraq, warning of regional instability throughout the Middle
East and the possibility of increased terrorism world-wide as a result of
the war, exposing the increased economic costs of the war and their impact
on the poorest strata in the U.S. and elsewhere, including the virtual
abandonment of already insufficient economic aid to Africa. Even before the
war began, the movement was developing clarity on issues of U.S. hypocrisy
regarding its own role in Iraq's WMD programs, double standards regarding UN
resolutions, and the massive Iraq resource-grab inherent in the hand-out of
multi-billion dollar contracts to Bush administration corporate minions and
cronies.

As the movement's parameters expand, the broader articulation frames the
Bush administration's global trajectory and explains the connections within
it. Those include the links between Iraq and Israel-Palestine; between oil,
Central Asia, and the unfinished Afghanistan war; between preemptive war
doctrine and aggressive preventive wars; between North Korean nukes and
Israel's nuclear arsenal; between Syria, Iran, and weapons of mass
destruction; between corporate domination and military spending; between
U.S. power projection and local budgets; and between building a new
internationalist movement and the role of the United Nations.

The issue of the UN role in the Iraq crisis alone is widely misunderstood
and confusing for many people. The question of whether the UN, dominated by
the U.S., is primarily a villain or a victim in situations like that
surrounding the Iraq war, remains unresolved among many parts of the
activist movement. Should the global organization be defended from U.S.
attack, or targeted as "imperialism with a global face"? Recognition of the
UN's potential as a center of opposition to U.S. hegemonic moves, while
understanding the constraints imposed on the organization and the need for
civil society to defend it from the ravages of U.S. power, is not
wide-spread. The organizations created to defend the UN have served largely
as cheerleaders, afraid or unable to articulate the political context of the
current anti-UN crusade. And many within the broader peace movement remained
confused, seeing the UN's silences in the face of the U.S. war build-up as
evidence of collaboration with the war. In the fall 2002/winter 2003 period,
the refusal of the six Non-Aligned Security Council members to cave in to
Washington's extraordinary pressure to endorse the U.S. war was amazing. But
it remains insufficiently appreciated in many quarters.

U.S. pressure on the UN continues. Along with other coercion, the
threatening letters sent to most UN member states in February 2003 demanding
that they refuse to consider a General Assembly debate on Iraq, seem to have
worked. An international team of activists continues its campaign to urge
the General Assembly to take up the issue, challenging Security Council
primacy, pushing for a UN condemnation of the war and empowered UN
leadership in the political and humanitarian reconstruction of Iraq.

In examining the composition of the emerging movement against empire, it is
notable that in key countries where governments stood defiant of the U.S.
war--including France, Germany, Brazil, the Philippines, and many other
countries--the peace movements are made up of largely the same forces as the
anti-corporate globalization or global justice movements. Their demands for
a more equitable, just, and sustainable global order, even while pressing
the need for peace, provide a key framework for global mobilization. And the
nuanced political framework required to recognize the role Paris or Berlin
play as part of the global front against U.S. empire, while rigorously
challenging their corporate-driven economic trajectory as well as other
domestic and foreign policies, is beginning to take shape.

We are engaged now in building a global movement for peace and justice in a
new kind of world--and we need a new global strategy. It will take some time
for a unifying agenda for the "global peace and justice movement" to emerge.
One feature will have to include universal disarmament, focusing first on
the largest nuclear/military powers, including America. Another will be the
focus on economic justice as a linchpin of social mobilization. Other issues
should include the primacy of internationalism and the centrality of the
United Nations in all our work. That means claiming the UN as our own, as
part of the global mobilization for peace, and working to empower the UN as
the legitimate replacement for the United States empire we seek to
disempower. Even now, in Iraq, we must emphasize the need for the UN, not
the Pentagon, to take charge of not only the humanitarian crisis but the
move to create a new government.

Our movement is broader and more complex than ever, being made up both of
states and governments, and regional and international organizations
including the United Nations, and the growing popular antiwar/global justice
movements. That breadth provides both the promise of new power and
influence, as well as extraordinary complexity and the need for strategic
creativity involving careful combinations of "inside-outside" approaches to
governments and multilateral organizations. Transnational Institute (TNI),
with ties to key activists and organizations central to the broad people's
movements, as well as links to key governments and inter-governmental
organizations, is one of the few international centers positioned to play a
vital role (in the original, not the Bush-Blair meaning) in building the
global movement against empire in this new period.

Responding to the more-or-less spontaneous emergence of this global movement
means helping provide a space for strategic planning among key actors in the
key countries, and helping to shape a political/intellectual framework on
which a world-wide peace and justice movement can transform itself into a
politically conscious movement challenging empire while building a new
internationalism.









_______________________________________________
Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss
To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk
All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk