"Real change in Iraq would mean that Obama realized that for five years straight the United States has promoted and consolidated an artificial sectarian system in the country, and that disengagement from Iraq should also aim at reversing this trend."
Bingo.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
starting a lil' conflict
I'm about to have a little clash of civilizations RIGHT HERE with the editors of my Intro course textbook/anthology, Leashing the Dogs of War. Soon into the intro I developed a suspicion that Eds. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall were neo-con imperialists, nothing too apocalyptic mind you, just your average American university faculty think-tank types operating with certain assumptions about the legitimacy of global U.S. intervention, but I was floored- FLOORED- when I got to this staggering paragraph:
Since the collapse of European empires, the assumption has been that new states emerging in their wake would have whatever time it took to develop effective and legitimate institutions of governance...Regional actors in formerly dependent areas have gradually taken control of their own destiny while intesifying linkages to the major world power centers of Europe, Asia, and North America.
"No way!" I was thinking. "Formerly dependent areas? DEPENDENT? Like, you mean Africa and Latin America and the Middle East and the other areas that were colonized against their will by European countries?" It continues...
Since September 11, 2001, however, new understandings have challenged this assumption. It is no longer accepted that chaotic, ill-governed regions and zones of failed modernization should be allowed to flounder towards an uncertain future...
Uh, yeah, that's exactly what they meant. I'm reminded of my Oxford prof who famously in MY memory once reminisced about the British Empire by exclaiming, "Ghandi! Wasn't HE a pain in the neck!"
Could this be any more patronizing- or less democratic? Couldn't we at least give a little shout out to the people of those nations who deserve self-determination? The vision here is one of post-colonial states freed to make a name for themselves and royally screwing up; the insinuation is that things were orderly before the independence movements of the 20th century and that if the states are failing, it's their fault alone, and that we've got the right to intervene, like parents taking back the car keys. Or, perhaps, like slave-owners catching runaways because we know what's best for them. (Yeah, I'm gonna risk the harshness of that metaphor.)
I think this is the core conflict between the tasks of "promoting democracy" and "policing the world." This little introduction, and most American foreign policy, places security above democracy (or, if you will, freedom.). And as long as you put your idea of what a secure, ordered world looks like above your commitment to honoring human dignity and the right of peoples to self-determination- well, we got beef.
That's not to say that a Robert Mugabe or even a Hosni Mubarak doesn't merit some kind of international, sanctioning (not necessarily economic) response. (In Mugabe's case, global outcry is appropriate.) They are certainly not interested in creating democratic states, either. But the U.S. approaches these situations not as a servant of people who should live democratically or even as a partner in creating democracy but as a SWAT team. And remember, what's happening in Afghanistan and Iraq are the results of the U.S. "no longer accepting" that other states take care of themselves.
Since the collapse of European empires, the assumption has been that new states emerging in their wake would have whatever time it took to develop effective and legitimate institutions of governance...Regional actors in formerly dependent areas have gradually taken control of their own destiny while intesifying linkages to the major world power centers of Europe, Asia, and North America.
"No way!" I was thinking. "Formerly dependent areas? DEPENDENT? Like, you mean Africa and Latin America and the Middle East and the other areas that were colonized against their will by European countries?" It continues...
Since September 11, 2001, however, new understandings have challenged this assumption. It is no longer accepted that chaotic, ill-governed regions and zones of failed modernization should be allowed to flounder towards an uncertain future...
Uh, yeah, that's exactly what they meant. I'm reminded of my Oxford prof who famously in MY memory once reminisced about the British Empire by exclaiming, "Ghandi! Wasn't HE a pain in the neck!"
Could this be any more patronizing- or less democratic? Couldn't we at least give a little shout out to the people of those nations who deserve self-determination? The vision here is one of post-colonial states freed to make a name for themselves and royally screwing up; the insinuation is that things were orderly before the independence movements of the 20th century and that if the states are failing, it's their fault alone, and that we've got the right to intervene, like parents taking back the car keys. Or, perhaps, like slave-owners catching runaways because we know what's best for them. (Yeah, I'm gonna risk the harshness of that metaphor.)
I think this is the core conflict between the tasks of "promoting democracy" and "policing the world." This little introduction, and most American foreign policy, places security above democracy (or, if you will, freedom.). And as long as you put your idea of what a secure, ordered world looks like above your commitment to honoring human dignity and the right of peoples to self-determination- well, we got beef.
That's not to say that a Robert Mugabe or even a Hosni Mubarak doesn't merit some kind of international, sanctioning (not necessarily economic) response. (In Mugabe's case, global outcry is appropriate.) They are certainly not interested in creating democratic states, either. But the U.S. approaches these situations not as a servant of people who should live democratically or even as a partner in creating democracy but as a SWAT team. And remember, what's happening in Afghanistan and Iraq are the results of the U.S. "no longer accepting" that other states take care of themselves.
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