Humanitarian

by David Baake

2006/4/21

A New Era of Imperialism: Defending the Unipolar Order

@ 01:10 PM (43 months, 5 days ago)

 

In recent years, the American government has instituted a foreign policy designed to expand and maintain the unipolar neoliberal economic and ideological empire which came into existence following the demise of the Soviet Union.  In its campaign to expand the reach of its mercantile system of global capitalism, the United States has engaged in military operations in countries with policies adverse to American hegemony in order to gain control over markets, geopolitically important areas, and the last of dwindling resources, particularly energy resources.  Although these operations are typically justified as noble humanitarian acts motivated purely by altruism or else as necessary to protect the lives of American civilians in public statements by government officials and in the commentary of the mass media, serious discussion amongst the leaders of the establishment—which is usually devoid of the rhetoric, emotion, and ideological fanaticism which permeates popular discussion of foreign policy—makes it quite clear that the goal of American foreign policy is designed principally to  perpetuate the hegemony of the American political and economic elite throughout the world.  It is important for people interested in dismantling the American Empire to have an understanding of the motives and interests that American foreign policy is designed to satisfy, so that we may develop appropriate strategies for combating this imperial system which are maximally effective.

In order to maintain American political and economic hegemony across the world, it is necessary for the United States to contain potential military, economic, or political rivals that might become powerful enough to threaten US dominance in any of these fields.  This policy of containment typically involves isolating rival states in the international community, surrounding these countries with well-armed and subservient client states in order to prevent the rivals from expanding their spheres of influence, and inhibiting the economic development of contending world powers.  When there is competition for dwindling resources with other emerging powers, as there is today, it is doubly important, from the perspective of political elites in the United States, for the US to gain control over disputed resources; even if the action is not immediately profitable for American corporations, starving rising powers of the raw materials that are necessary for economic development is an end in itself.[i]

The importance of perpetuating the unipolar international system was expressed most clearly in a Pentagon document written by Paul Wolfowitz leaked to the New York Times in 1991, entitled Defense Planning Guidance.  The document makes clear that the principle aim of the American foreign policy following the collapse of the Soviet Union would be to prevent regional powers from threatening the US’ ideological, military, or economic dominance.  This includes stifling attempts by “advanced industrial nations [to] challenge our leadership,” and containing “regional threats and risks,” which could threaten “regions critical to the security of the US and its allies, including Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and the territory of the former Soviet Union... Latin America, Oceania, and Sub-Saharan Africa...  The US will be concerned with preventing the domination of key regions by a hostile power.”  The document warns that the immediate threat to US world domination would be “an authoritarian regime bent on regenerating aggressive military power... in Russia.”

             

Threats to Hegemony

 

Presently, the greatest threats to US hegemony include Russia and China, and to some extent India.  Most of America’s recent foreign policy can be interpreted as an attempt to secure America’s position of global dominance in a time when this dominance is being tested by the rise of these nascent Asian superpowers.  Some aspects of American foreign policy have been aimed at directly stifling the growth of China as a power, but many operations have had indirect effects on the balance of global power.  The most direct action that the United States has taken to contain China has been a campaign of encirclement around the country.  The United States has strengthened old alliances and created new alliances with countries surrounding China including Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Nepal, and Indonesia,  and has also increased military aid to some of these countries, to ensure that China can not expand its sphere of influence at the expense of the US.  The US has also worked to diminish the sphere of Russian influence, by offering a great deal of financial backing to pro-EU, pro-NATO, anti-Russian candidates in former Soviet provinces,[ii] leading to the “color-coated revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan.  A similar situation may be developing in Belarus, which has recently been placed under US and EU sanctions following a contested presidential election in which the pro-Russian candidate was named victor.[iii]  The United States has also strengthened its military presence in the oil-rich Caspian region, which has traditionally been Russia’s main source of oil and natural gas, ostensibly to starve Russia of important resources.

Traditional American allies such as the European Union and Japan may also challenge the unipolar system in the near future, as they are no longer dependent on US military support to protect them from “Soviet aggression” and may desire more independence from Washington.  The European Union and China are developing increasingly close ties, and together could be economically and militarily powerful enough to counter the dominance of the United States in international affairs.  The Centre for European Reform notes that “China's exports to the EU have risen by an astonishing 820 per cent since 1990, while EU sales to China have jumped by 600 per cent... Bilateral trade is expected to top €180 billion, making the EU China's largest trading partner, ahead of the US and Japan. EU-based companies have also ploughed vast amounts of investment into the booming Chinese market. Many EU companies, such as Volkswagen or Carrefour (a French retail giant), now rely heavily on China for their profits.”[iv] The European Union also repealed an arms embargo and has started to sell weapons to China, as has Israel; amidst deafening protest from ideologues in Washington. 

Meanwhile, Asia has continued to grow closer together and assert itself as a unified bloc; Japan and India have agreed to back each others’ bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, China and India have settled border disputes and have become increasingly friendly, China and Pakistan have agreed to cooperate in anti-terrorist anti-separatist actions.  Asia is also becoming more economically integrated, with bilateral trade between India and China reaching $13.6 billion in 2004, threatening to surpass bilateral trade between India and the US which is currently at $20 billion.[v]  While there still may be divisive political and ethnic tensions between China and Japan, their economies are highly integrated.  According to Asia Times, “China is Japan's biggest trading partner, accounting for 20.1% of its trade in 2004. In concrete terms, it was worth a staggering 22.2005 trillion yen ($206.56 billion) in 2004 with exports to China hitting 11.8278 trillion yen and imports totting up to 10.3727 trillion yen. Major Japanese firms such as Toyota Motor Corp are expanding rapidly in China while big Chinese players such as the Shanghai Electric Group are entering the Japanese market.”[vi]

Given the trend towards greater Asian unity and independence, and greater closeness between the EU and Asia, it seems obvious that if the United States intends on holding onto unipolar dominance, it will have to act quickly to disrupt the unification of Asia, solidify oil resources under its rule, and perhaps attempt to isolate China by allying itself with India.  The US has been courting India for an anti-China alliance in recent years.  On this subject, the Economist magazine reports that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has positioned India “no longer as a leader of the third world, nor [as a non-aligned country], but as ‘proud to identify with those who defend the values of liberal democracy and secularism across the world’... India's strategists [say that] America needs India more than India needs it.”[vii]  Earlier this year, the United States signed a major nuclear deal with India in a further attempt to solidify an anti-China alliance.[viii]

 

Neoliberalism versus unipolarity?

 

Why is it necessary to control economic and military rivals, when today’s world of capitalist globalization is supposed to be destroying the nation-state and leading to global integration? Contrary to the argument put forward by globalization’s enthusiasts, such as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, neoliberalism is not an internationalist system, and global economic integration is certainly not going to lead to more stability or a more peaceful world.  In fact, the economic system that is referred to as “globalization” is merely a mercantilist project designed to benefit American corporations.  This system of mercantilism rarely tolerate competition from other capitalist powers, let alone from alternative systems of economic management, and can only be perpetuated by constant military action to suppress challenges to its rule.  The fact is, the slogan of capitalist globalization—“plutocrats of the world unite”—can never be achieved; it is simply incompatible with capitalist logic of infinite individual accumulation.  The oligarchs in Russia, China, and the United States will always be in competition with each other and will only cooperate when it is absolutely necessary to do so to suppress internal dissent.

                All of this completely contradicts the theories of Thomas Friedman, who suggested that corporate globalization would usher in a new period of world harmony.  Friedman’s thesis is that no two countries that both have a McDonald’s restaurant have ever waged war against each other; thus, McDonald’s must be the harbinger of world peace, as anyone who knows the joy of a Big Mac will be too complacent to fight for anything.  For one thing, when was the last time a third world country (one without a McDonald’s) invaded anyone?  To my knowledge, the only recent example of such an occurrence was Saddam Hussein’s invasions of Iran and Kuwait, both with American weapons, with American encouragement in the first example and a “green light” from George H. W. Bush in the second.  Other than that, it doesn’t seem to be the countries without McDonald’s that are starting all of the world’s wars.  A more realistic thesis would state that the US invades countries that have not opened their doors to US corporate domination and then installs puppet regimes with pro-American business policies. So, it makes about as much sense to say that McDonald’s restaurants bring world peace as it does to say that Christian churches brought peace during the Crusades; no two countries with Christian Churches attacked each other during the crusades, as the Christians were far too busy committing atrocities against Muslims in Palestine.  In both cases, one group was trying to export its own system, be it neoliberalism or Christianity, and was invading countries precisely to instate this system and to erect the McDonalds or Christian Church.

            The struggle between the American Empire and the powers of the emerging world for global hegemony will be grand in scale, and will most likely define international politics throughout the early part of the 21st Century.  It is important for us to understand the nature of this struggle, and to understand that it is ultimately rooted in the capitalist economic system, if we wish to develop rational strategies for confronting imperialism.

 

[i] It is within this context that the invasion of Iraq should be understood.  While the war has certainly been profitable for certain sectors of the economy, especially those tied to the military-industrial complex and the oil industry, the overall effect of the war on the American economy will almost certainly be negative.  It has been estimated by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz that the war will cost the US government between one and two trillion dollars, and while some of this money will be transferred to US corporations, much of it will simply be squandered.  However, when one factors in the importance of oil as leverage over developing powers such as China and Russia, then the investment in the Iraq war will almost certainly be profitable for the American economic elite in the long run.

[ii] One report of such an instance can be found in the Russian newspaper, Kommersant, (http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?id=-3641 )

[vii] India and America: Happy ending? Economist, Mar 17th 2005

2006/4/14

On Overpopulation

@ 08:32 PM (43 months, 12 days ago)

            Earlier this year, the human population of Earth rose to 6.5 billion, according to census estimations.  As we surpass yet another population milestone, the issue of overpopulation is once again brought to the forefront of political and social debate.  It seems that the world may soon be faced with catastrophic resource shortages (and violent conflict as a result of this scarcity), as well as worsened environmental destruction as a result of our unsustainable rate of population growth, if action is not taken to quickly stabilize global population.  In order to stabilize human population and avoid these catastrophes, there are many things that we as humans must do, individually and collectively. 

What must we do to stem future population growth?  To begin with, it is obviously necessary that we drastically decrease the global birth rate.  Birth rate has already substantially decreased in recent years in Western countries, and perhaps this model can be used as a precedent to be followed in other parts of the world.  The greatest amount of population growth is currently occurring in economically underdeveloped countries, which have experienced an increase in average lifespan in recent decades—due in part to the partial diffusion of modern medical practices to these countries—but have not yet undergone the cultural transition that Western countries have undergone, away from the notion that larger families are preferable.  There may be several explanations for the absence of this cultural transition.  An obvious reason is that the ideologies dominant in many countries with higher birth rates stress that sexual activity is only justified as a means to procreation, and so people living in these cultures must bear children every time they seek to satisfy their biological urge to engage in sexual activity.  The hindrance posed by these social taboos against sexual activity for pleasure is further aggravated by the fact that even people who would willingly use birth control often do not have access to it due to economic restraints and limited availability. 

            In addition to these problems associated with the use of birth control, there are other reasons why people in the underdeveloped continue to favor larger families, some of which are rooted in the most basic biological human urges.  For instance, while there has been a general increase in lifespan in most underdeveloped nations over the last century, mortality rates remain extremely high, especially for infants and children, so families often feel that it is necessary to have many children to ensure that they will have surviving offspring, even if some of their children die when they are young.  Obviously, the desire to perpetuate one’s genetic line is among the most essential and basic of all animal desires; after all, this desire is the reason that life has been perpetuated thus far, and the reason that evolution by natural selection is possible.  People will almost always seek to have as many children as they feel they need to ensure that they will have at least one biological heir.  As long as material conditions exist that make it necessary for parents to have a large number of children in order to guarantee a surviving offspring, population will continue to grow.

            Theoretically, both of these issues could be solved fairly easily.  All that is necessary is for a slight cultural change to occur in nations with taboos against having sex for pleasure, for birth control to become more widely available, and for poorer countries to gain enough wealth to lower child mortality rates enough so that individuals feel that they can have fewer children without jeopardizing their opportunity to have surviving offspring.  Practically, however, it will take an enormous amount of effort to ensure that these very basic and essential conditions are met.

            Cultural taboos against sex for pleasure and against the use of birth control must be fought from within cultures, by activists living within these societies.  There is no way that such a change could be imposed on a culture from an external power, and even if it were possible, it would be incredibly unethical.  This transformation of mentality about sexuality will be part of a larger project that the survival of the human race may very well depend on: the project to find safe, alternative means of fulfilling basic biological desires which evolved to suite an environment vastly different from the one we currently live in, and which if recklessly pursued in our modern era, lead to disastrous consequences.  Examples of these potentially dangerous urges include two of the most basic animal urges, the urge to reproduce—which, if pursued recklessly, will lead to vast overpopulation of the Earth, which will in turn lead to horrible violence and environmental destruction—and the urge to aggressively compete—which, if pursued recklessly, results in millions of deaths in large scale warfare, in addition to rampant poverty.  Each of these urges is essential to the existence of the human animal, and in prehistoric days, it was often beneficial to pursue these urges recklessly.  In our modern era, however, we can no longer afford to do this; we must learn to fulfill our desires without causing destruction.  This should not be terribly difficult to do, as the pleasure of sexual intercourse is completely independent of the productivity of this intercourse, and the pleasure of competition is, for all but the most extreme sadists, independent of the suffering of other competitors.  However, it will require humans to consciously consider the repercussions of their actions, rather than acting impulsively.

            It is also necessary that we eradicate poverty in countries with high birth rates, and to increase the availability of birth control in these countries.  Poverty in nations with high birth rates can be fought jointly by people living within these countries and by people living in richer parts of the world, through actions to cancel the debt of poor nations, unionize workers, nationalize corporately controlled resources, and repeal “free trade” agreements.  Birth control should be distributed by NGOs and charity organizations, as well as international bodies such as the United Nations.

            In addition to working to decrease the global birth rate, it is also wise to take action to ameliorate existing human and environmental problems which have arisen due to the Earth’s current level of population.  The best way to do this is to use as few resources as possible, so that there will be more available for other people, and so that our detrimental impact on the world’s ecosystem is as small as possible.  The modern Western way of life is unsustainable, highly wasteful, and irrational, and if we continue to live as we do, we will greatly aggravate coming problems related to overpopulation.

            If we do all of this, then we will be able to avert a great deal of suffering. We certainly cannot underestimate the magnitude of the potential population crisis, but we must also be wary not to accept the erroneous Malthusian notion that overpopulation is inevitable, as this notion leads people to view other people as excessive and expendable, and increases the likelihood that people will be complacent with policies (military, economic, or otherwise) that result in unnecessary human deaths.  The potential problem of overpopulation can easily be averted if we make rational choices in the present.