Imperial Washington

By John Stossel

There are 2 different America's, one for the elite, and another for the rest of us.

A Brief History Of Superpowers

By William Blum,
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

From the Congress of Vienna of 1815 to the Congress of Berlin in 1878 to the “Allies” invasion of Russia in 1918 to the formation of what became the European Union in the 1950s, the great powers of Europe and the world have gotten together in grand meeting halls and on the field of battle to set the ground rules for imperialist exploitation of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Australasia, to Christianize and ‘civilize’, to remake the maps, and to suppress revolutions and other threats to great-power hegemony. They have been deadly serious. In 1918, for example, some 13 nations, including France, Great Britain, Rumania, Italy, Serbia, Greece, Japan, and the United States, combined in a military invasion of Russia to “strangle at its birth” the nascent Bolshevik state, as Winston Churchill so charmingly put it.

And following World War 2, without any concern about who had fought and died to win that war, the Western powers, sans the Soviet Union, moved to create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO, along with the European Union, then joined the United States in carrying out the Cold War and preventing the Communists and their allies from coming to power legally through elections in France and Italy. That partnership continued after the formal end of the Cold War. The United States, the European Union, and NATO are each superpowers, with extensive military, as well as foreign policy integration — almost all EU members are also members of NATO; almost all NATO members in Europe are in the EU; almost all NATO members have had a military contingent serving under NATO and/or the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and elsewhere.

Together, this Holy Triumvirate has torn apart Yugoslavia, invaded and devastated Afghanistan and Iraq, crippled Iran, Cuba and others with sanctions, overthrown the Libyan government, and are on the verge now of the same in Syria. Much of what the Triumvirate has told the world to justify this wanton havoc has concerned Islamic terrorism, but it should be noted that prior to the interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria all three countries were secular and modern. Will the people of those sad lands ever see that life again?

In suppressing the left in France and Italy, and later in destabilizing the governments of Libya and Syria, the Holy Triumvirate has closely aligned itself with terrorists and terrorist methods to a remarkable extent. In Syria alone, it would be difficult to name any Middle East terrorist group associated with al Qaeda — employing their standard car bombings and suicide bombers — that is not taking part in the war against President Assad with the support of the Triumvirate. Is there anything — legally or morally — the Triumvirate regards as outside its purview? Any place not within its geographical mandate? Britain and France have now joined Turkey and Arabian Peninsula states in recognizing a newly formed opposition bloc as the sole representative of the Syrian people. “From the point of view of international law, this is absolutely unacceptable,” Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev declared. “A desire to change the political regime of another state by recognizing a political force as the sole carrier of sovereignty seems to me to be not completely civilised.” France was the first Western state to recognize the newly-formed Syrian National Coalition and was swiftly joined by Britain, Italy and the European Union. The neck irons tighten.

The European Union in recent years has been facing a financial crisis, where its overriding concern has been to save the banks, not its citizens, inspiring calls from the citizenry of some member states to leave the Union. I think the dissolution of the European Union would benefit world peace by depriving the US/NATO mob of a guaranteed partner in crime by returning to the Union’s members their individual discretion in foreign policy.

And then we can turn to getting rid of NATO, an organization that not only has a questionable raison d’être in the present, but never had any good reason-to-be in the past other than serving as Washington’s hit man.

Colonialism With A Kindly Face

If you needed any further proof that Amnesty International is to the 21st century what rum-swigging bearers of the White Man's Burden were to the 19th, look no further than its current campaign for a global arms trade treaty. 

Amnesty is basically agitating for the West, which it considers civilised and responsible, to prevent the rest, or what Amnesty euphemistically refers to as the "wrong" people, from getting their hands on guns and bombs. 

It is a call for a colonial-style carve-up of the world, between those judged decent and grown-up enough not only to own guns but also to determine who else may own them (us), and those judged too infantile and brutal to be let anywhere near a gun lest they unleash "the worst kind of atrocities" (them).

Given that America has used its vast armoury to cause more destruction around the world than any other nation over the past 10 years, it is bizarre that Amnesty should be pleading with it to lead the way on restricting the flow of guns to the "wrong" countries. 

Amnesty wants Washington to give its blessing to a treaty that would restrict the global sale of weapons if there is a "substantial risk" that those weapons will be"used to commit serious human rights violations". (I'm not being funny, but what else would the weapons be used for? To tickle people?) 

Amnesty says Washington should "demonstrate true leadership" on the issue of arms trading and "send a clear message to other world leaders" that it will not tolerate weapons falling into "the hands of human rights violators".

Why ask a nation that has committed numerous "atrocities" and "human rights violations" to authorise a treaty that will allegedly prevent those kind of things from happening elsewhere by taking guns out of the "wrong hands"? It is because, like its moral forebears in the colonial movements of the nineteenth century, Amnesty believes that the fundamentally decent West, whose wars are but an aberration of its normal character, has a moral responsibility to disarm and pacify and by extension to civilise the gun-toting hordes over there, whose wars are an expression of their innate warped character.

What Amnesty is calling for is the concentration of weaponry in the hands of powerful, allegedly trustworthy nations, and also for those nations to play the role of global governors of war and peace by granting the flow of weapons to some nations but not to others. 

Probably the most patronising thing about Amnesty's campaign is its belief that simply by removing weapons from chaotic warzones around the world, we might stop war. 

Amnesty says the cause of global conflict today is the fact that we live in "a world awash in weapons and military hardware that are too easily obtained". From this moralistic viewpoint, weapons themselves cause wars; guns are the actual drivers of conflict Over There; the "wrong" people see that these weapons are pretty easy to buy and so they buy them and kill people with them – for a thrill, presumably. 

In truth, the wars being fought in Africa and elsewhere are fundamentally political or territorial; they're struggles for power or resources, just as Western governments' wars are. 

War is the pursuit of politics by other means over there just as much as it is over here. 

By depicting these conflicts as a product of the arms trade itself, Amnesty further robs foreign peoples of their status as adult actors, as creatures of politics and power, and reduces them instead to overgrown kids playing with dangerous toys simply because they can.

Political conflicts need political solutions, not white-skinned do-gooders in Gap jackets decreeing which Johnny Foreigners may be armed and which may not. 

It is more than a hundred years since Kipling, in his poemThe White Man's Burden, described certain foreign peoples as "half devil and half child". How depressing that groups like Amnesty still cleave to such an outlook.

Via: "The Telegraph"

Lessons In Empire

England and The First World War 

By Jon Basil Utley 
February 17, 2012 
Courtesy Of "The American Conservative"

The killing power of modern weaponry just wasn’t understood when Europeans first turned such firepower and technology upon themselves. Before then they thought that colonial victories were just because of the superiority of white races and European civilization. There were warnings such as the battle of Omdurman (1898) when England’s new “Maxim” machine guns, firing 500 rounds per minute, killed or wounded 26,000 Sudanese with the loss of only 48 Brits. Still, European generals blithely sent millions of their soldiers to certain death without comprehending consequences of new technology. To End All Wars is a book about the lessons from imagined “easy wars.” The author quotes army officers about the “ecstasy of battle” and the “rapture giving delight” experienced by the British soldiers winning easy battles against Asians and Africans. One is reminded how today most Americans thought of starting wars in the Middle East as a “cakewalk.” The attack on Iraq with “shock and awe” had hardly any American casualties. War is understood as exciting entertainment on television, experienced while comfortably ensconced in safe, warm homes. Witness today the assumption of an easy and cheap attack upon Iran with no thought for unforeseen consequences.

The commanding British General Sir John French’s first battle order was for his infantry to clear a path through the German barbed wire and machine guns so that he could order a horse cavalry charge.  Cavalry generals were the elites of the British Army just like former fighter pilots are the majority of highest ranks in the American Air Force and Navy. The Europeans ordered their soldiers to attack just the way it had been done nearly 75 years before In the American civil war. I thought of this last year when visiting the site of the Crimean War, Sevastopol. A great museum there shows the British cavalry in the famous Charge of the Light Brigade wearing bright red coats just like 75 years before in the American Revolutionary war.

It wasn’t only the British. Austrian officers in bright blue uniforms were easily targeted by enemy snipers. The Germans had the best army, but even they started the war with horse cavalry waiting in the rear. It’s not just that generals always start using the same tactics as their nations’ last wars, rather they use the tactics of nearly a century before. Today we see the American military still focusing training upon aircraft carriers, fighter planes and tank warfare like were used nearly 75 years earlier in World War II. In Iraq the generals fancied they could repeat World War II tactics with massive bombing and maneuver and then get tidy surrender documents. Instead they created a failed state and less security for America.

Most of us think we already know about the First World War, the senseless slaughter of the young men of Europe, the incompetent generals, the ruin of Western civilization’s self-confidence for a generation, bringing about the aftermath of communism and Nazism. To End All Wars well explains the psychology of Europe’s self destruction, the war mania, the unbelievable misery. It details how four great empires were destroyed. Their leaders also imagined it would be over in a few months, just like the think tank warriors of Washington fancied about Iraq and Afghanistan. Parents rallied to their sons and now daughters going off to glorious war; they also imagined that war would be “cheap.”  World War I showed how great nations could be trapped and even ruined by the actions of tiny allies, Serbia then, Israel or Taiwan for us today, plunging the world into war.

More Lessons

The book brings home more valid lessons:

•  When nations have not had war for a while its mystique and excitement become more and more appealing. Citizens warm to its siren call of conquest and “glory.” Leaders find it easy to lie and excite their peoples into wanting, what is always presupposed, an easy and quick war.  If one adds to this the power and profits of the American military-industrial-congress complex one finds overwhelming support for more wars. Equally we see younger Chinese officers chafing at American arrogance and threats. Recently England’s and France’s leaders were hot to have an easy war of their own, one against Libya. Kings always loved war and wars were a major reason European immigrants fled to America in past centuries. I often recall how my friend, Richard Viguerie, once told me that French immigrants first came to America primarily to save their sons from being drafted and killed by the French kings in perpetual wars.

•  Europe’s leaders feared the growing socialism and its virulent sister, communism.  War was fostered by many of Europe’s ruling classes as a way to rouse nationalism and weaken leftists’ appeal, to take their citizen’s minds off growing international worker solidarity.  English leaders argued that war would “rejuvenate the national spirit and the bonds of empire.”  Ironically, instead the war accelerated the leftist agendas. Indeed, it directly brought about the monsters of communism and Nazism.  I’m often reminded of the great Israeli general Yitzak Rabin, later murdered by Zionist fanatics, warning America against starting the First Iraq war in 1991.  He warned, as have many through history, that those who start wars never know the final unintended consequences.

•  Censorship is necessary for nations at war. Remember always, the first casualty of war is the truth. We see equally today how Washington is gradually increasing its powers to censor objections, e.g. its assault on the 4th Amendment and its growing monitoring of private communications.  Most Americans are either very supportive or don’t care. This assault comes from the Right more than the Left. Tony Blankley, Newt Gingrich former press secretary and subsequently long time editorial page editor at The Washington Times, wrote in his book about the necessity for censoring antiwar media. During the first years of the Iraq war he never allowed anti-war opinions on his editorial page.

•  The war’s casualties and deaths are still astounding to recount. Nearly ten million soldiers were killed.  21 million were wounded. Of every 20 English males between the ages of 18 and 32 when the war started, 3 were dead and 6 were wounded by its end. France had double the casualties of England and Germany had three times as many. 12 to 13 million civilians died.

The war was astonishingly lethal for the ruling classes. Whereas 12 percent of all British soldiers in the war were killed, 19 percent of officers died. Of Oxford’s graduating class of 1913, 31 percent were killed.  Wounded were at least an equal number. My own uncle, Basil Temple Utley, was a British officer with the Connaught Rangers. He was gassed and died some years after the war’s end, weakened by having only one functioning lung.

Author Adam Hochschild vividly describes Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 to celebrate the glory of the British Empire. Within 20 years the nation was on the rocks and war had sown the seeds which would dissolve its empire. One thinks today of America’s self glorification and pride upon the defeat of communism and now our growing bankruptcy just 20 years later.

To End All Wars is a fascinating read, with much about the effects of war on the home front and descriptions of the war’s dissenters and resisters.  Those who fear for America’s arrogance and incredibly wasteful, self-destructive war policies will find many parallels with England’s self destruction and loss of its primacy in the world.

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative.

Franve and The Last Genocide Of The 20th Century

French involvement in at least two genocides in Africa during the 20th century is still contested [EPA]


Unspoken History: Despite Evidence To The Contrary, France Still Completely Denies Involvement In Two Of Africa's 20th Century Genocides. 

By Julie Owono 
Julie Owono is a Cameroonian freelance journalist and international relations consultant based in Paris. 
Last Modified: 25 Jan 2012 18:41 
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Paris, France - The recent publication of French judge Trevidic's report on the assassination of President Habyarimana, which triggered the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and the deaths of moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994, revives the debate on the possible role of France in the last genocide of the 20th century. Moreover, it rekindles questions related to the attitude of French authorities and intelligentsia whenever the country is directly involved in a genocide in Africa.

More worrying, these findings question the poison slowly instilled in the veins of the French nation's collective body: A recent poll shows that one third of French citizens share the views of an openly racist and anti-Semite political party, the National Front.

Unspoken history, attempts at denial, and historical smokescreens systematically orchestrated by those who own the means of propaganda challenge the capacity - for those in France who disagree with the far-right - to help a disturbing truth emerge.

In the light of this revelation, one can notice strange similarities in the attitude adopted by those authorities regarding the question of the lesser-known Bamileke genocide orchestrated by the French army at the beginning of the 1960s, which might have caused the death of up to 400,000 people.

'France aided Rwanda genocide'

Equivocation Surrounding Rwanda Genocide

On January 11, 2012, French Judge Marc Trevidic published a 400-page investigation on the circumstances of the shooting of "Presidential Falcon 50", in which President Juvenal Habyarimana and the President of Burundi, along with other officials and three French crew members, were assassinated. The report concludes that the missiles which hit the airplane were shot from Konembe hill which was at that time in the hands of the Presidential guard.

The elucidation of these events will give an explanation to the beginning of the last genocide of the 20th century: the plane crash triggered the systematic murder of 1 million Tutsis in 100 days by extremist Hutus.

The Trevidic Report puts an end to 18 years of uncertainty and attempt to revise history. In fact, a first investigation led by French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière showed that the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) - the army of the actual Tutsi President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame - was responsible for the attack, and thus responsible for the elimination of other Tutsis. This theory was embraced by numerous French politicians and intellectuals, such as journalist Pierre Péan, who in 2005 published Black Furies, White Liars. His book, along the same lines as the legal investigation, not only suggests that RPF was the perpetrator of the presidential assassination, but also upheld that only 280,000 Tutsis had been killed, compared with possibly one million Hutus exterminated in revenge by Kagame's RPF.

Nevertheless, these explanations left many questions unanswered.

In the first place, one can question the position of Agathe Habyarimana, widow of former Rwandan president: it is indubitable that the massacres were started and encouraged by Hutu extremists. This vague expression conceals the name of the informal organisation, recognised by the French National Assembly in 1994, which regrouped these "extremists": the Akazu. Their most influential members were close relatives of President Habyarimana, and might have been headed by Agathe Habyarimana, along with three of her brothers, according to several reports. 

The day following the assassination of her husband, she was exfiltrated to France with the help of the French army. Since then, she has been living in France. Despite an international arrest warrant issued against her in 2009, and a complaint lodged by a French association over her alleged role in the perpetration of the genocide, she hasn't yet been judged by a court.

Listening Post - Rwanda's media 17 years after the genocide

Another enigma surrounds the alleged suicide of François de Grossouvre, former shadow adviser on African Affairs to President François Mittérand, at Elysee Palace, the French president's official residence. He died on April 7, 1994, just a few hours after Habyarimana was assassinated. Voices have been raised to denounce a possible murder and a slapdash investigation.

The role of Paul Barril also raises interesting questions. Barril, the former commander-in-chief of the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention group), may have been introduced in Rwanda as the special adviser to Juvenal Habyarimana on military affairs after the launch of "Operation Noroit", which officially aimed to protect French interests in the country, but also served as a way to train the Rwandan army after the offensive by Paul Kagame's RPF in October 1990. This military help from France resulted in the increase of trained Rwandan soldiers: the army of the country went from 5,000 men in 1990 to 50,000 in 1994.

The aspects of these events obviously explain why French soldiers of "Operation Turquoise", which, in June 1994, was supposed to put an end to the massacres, were welcomed as liberators by the auxiliary of horror, those who were perpetrating the unspeakable crime against other human beings.

Denial Of The Bamileke Genocide

Going to the west of the continent and a few degrees of latitude north, arguably the first genocide in Africa of the 20th century was perpetrated nearly 40 years earlier in Cameroon. The death toll, still debated by many experts, ranges from 100,000 to 400,000 people killed between 1959 and 1964, with a reported 120,000 killed in 1960 alone - just in the country's western region, populated by an ethnic group named the Bamileke.

Training of cadets at the Joint Army School of Cameroon in 1960 [National Archives of Yaounde]

Much less about this is known however, since the archives detailing direct French involvement remain under the seal of secrecy by the French state. The recent publication of ajournalistic and historical thesis by two French journalists and a Cameroonian historian, recounts in detail the war by France on the edge of the independence of Cameroon to impose the first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, to a population which in a majority supported the Cameroonian Independence Party, testimony in support of survivors of the massacres and actors, as well as the paradoxically more accessible archives of the Cameroonian army, and has gradually begun to open the wall of silence in which the French authorities had sealed the question of this genocide.

The answer given by French Prime Minister François Fillon during his official visit in Yaounde in 2009 might therefore attest the same memoricide will: "I absolutely deny that the French forces were involved in anything related to murder in Cameroon. All this is pure invention."

However, the Cameroonian national archives reveals that the training of Cameroonian military loyalists included the French technique named "counter-revolution", which proved its efficiency in Algeria and Indochina a few months earlier; the sending of French troops, who, for months, directly plundered hundreds of villages and hamlets in the mountainous Bamileke area; and the direct implication of the highest French authorities.

The evils of history are alive. Regarding the Bamileke farming villages wiped out by pilots of the French army, terrifying and eloquent figures exist. A French military report counts "43,363 incendiary cartridges of 7.5mm used against the enemy" for the single month of March 1960. According to a witness, the planes flew over the villages in pairs: the first poured fuel and the second shot incendiary bullets. How many Bamileke farmers were killed in these raids?

How many villages were simply wiped off the map? On the use of napalm or other combustible fuel on the Bamileke by the French army. Pierre Messmer, who was defence minister under General de Gaulle for nine years, probably gained his appointment thanks to the success of this "pacification of Cameroon" operation. Then the prime minister answered in a television documentary on French television: "It's not important."

Riz Khan - Rwanda: An African success story?

General Max Briand, named to head the French Expeditionary Corps from December 1959, acknowledged in a report to his superiors 20,000 deaths for the year of 1960 alone. This figure is to be taken with great care; the assessment of the French military is a low figure, in terms of military resources deployed, the ammunition used and the demographics of the country. Unlike Prime Minister Francois Fillon, the soldier nowhere denies direct involvement of French troops in what can be called with no euphemism a mass killing, and even concedes that the "rebels" had almost no weapons: "It seems that the only weapons that were introduced in Cameroon are forty Czech guns..."

If today, General Semengue, a major actor in the Cameroonian forces and Auxiliary of the French army, who later became Chief of Staff of the Cameroonian army, can make jokes before cameras, smile at the corner of the lips, and explain away the decapitation of heads [FR], it is precisely because this memoricide work was conducted in an implacable way.

Contrary to what some will assume, this memory work should not and will not be a pretext for repentance or reparation demands, but will give the possibility to millions of French, Rwandan and Cameroonian citizens to imagine an appeased future. As Urugayan writer Eduardo Galeano writes: "We know that the loss of our memory mortgages the future. Those who cannot learn from their past are condemned to live without the possibility of imagining it."

Julie Owono is a freelance Cameroonian journalist and international relations consultant based in Paris. She blogs at Global Voices and is the Africa Desk Cordinator at Internet Sans Frontières, a French NGO which promotes online freedom of expression.

Follow her on Twitter: @JulieOwono

Intervention Without Responsibility

The Libyan 'No-Fly' Zone Of Intervening May Have Paved New Way For Treating Symptoms Without Addressing The Problem. 

By Tarak Barkawi 
Last Modified: 22 Nov 2011 13:52 
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Cambridge, UK - Is NATO's operation in Libya a model for future Western interventions?

Many argue that the combination of UN legitimacy, Western airpower and indigenous resistance forces is a powerful recipe for taking down dictators. Certainly such an approach avoids the pitfalls of a Western role on the ground, so evident in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2006, the UN Security Council affirmed its support for the doctrine of "responsibility to protect". This is the idea that if a member state cannot protect its own citizens from crimes against humanity, it is the responsibility of the international community to do so.

"R2P", as this doctrine is known, would have been a wonderful justification for intervention and liberal imperialism if only the UN were an effective organisation.

Due to Western disinterest in supplying troops for peacekeeping operations, the application of R2P has been typically selective. The primary targets have been weak African states.

However, Libya and the current romance with airpower have breathed new life into ideas like R2P. They have reignited also the neo-conservative belief that democracy can be exported by military means.

Airpower offers the illusion that a "clean" war can be fought. Only the "bad guys" are hit by precision guided munitions. The complexities and moral ambiguities of intervention on the ground are seemingly avoided.

To be sure, contemporary airpower, especially in the hands of the experienced professionals in the USAF and the RAF, is extraordinarily precise. Whatever else one can say about Libya, very few civilian casualties were caused by Western air action.

Airpower, however, remains subject to the vicissitudes of war and the diabolical dilemmas of armed intervention. 

Its use - and withdrawal - may yet contribute to a protracted civil conflict in Libya.

There are other reasons to doubt Libya will be a model for the future in the way advocates of philanthropic violence hope.

In June 1950, the US called on the UN Security Council to approve the use of force to halt the North Korean invasion of South Korea. The Soviets were boycotting the UN and were absent for the crucial votes. As a result, the US was able to deploy its forces to South Korea under cover of UN authority.

As the fortunes of war turned, US forces invaded North Korea in the fall of 1950, sparking Chinese intervention, risking nuclear war and leading to two years of costly stalemate along the 38th parallel.

The Soviets learned from their mistake and rapidly returned to the UN, their Security Council veto in hand.

Today, the Russians and the Chinese will draw similar lessons from UN Security Council Resolution 1973, authorising the no-fly zone over Libya. This resolution invoked the basic idea of R2P: action by the international community to protect civilians from war crimes.

But in practice UNSC 1973 was tantamount to authorisation for regime change. Certainly this is how the US, the UK and France interpreted it.

Future no-fly zone resolutions will face far greater scepticism. The legitimacy of a Security Council resolution - a crucial piece of the Libya model - may well be unavailable.

Another problem with that model was exposed by the role of the US' NATO allies and their under-resourced militaries.

While the US retains large and capable forces, its public and political class have been tired of the expense in blood and treasure of foreign adventures. In order to make Libya happen politically, the USAF had to retire into the background after its vital initial debut outside Benghazi. The Europeans and their Gulf allies then took over the sharp end.

But the European air forces remained dependent on US intelligence, command and control, and refuelling assets. NATO was able on any given day to put up an embarrassingly small number of strike missions. That is partly why it took months for the arrayed air forces of the West to take down a nearby, ramshackle desert kingdom run by a murderous buffoon and his sons.

By the end, some of the smaller NATO air forces were hitting the limits of their operational tether. Pilots and ground crew were exhausted; spare parts and munitions running low.

Any future interventions on the Libya model, it would seem, will require enemies as weak and hopeless as Gadaffi's regime.

In some respects, however, the Libyan intervention does point to the future. But not in ways that will warm the hearts of those who seek to further democracy and enlightenment by force of arms.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has opted for the full nation-building programme at extraordinary cost in lives and money, and with very little to show for its efforts. In Libya, the West learned that a "lighter touch" intervention, conducted from the skies, achieved regime change without political and military costs. Even if Libya were now to sink into civil war, the West could easily blame the situation on the Libyans.

This is an aspect of the Libya model that warrants serious attention: that it is becoming increasingly legitimate to use military power in the global South without taking responsibility for the political and human aftermath.

Such an approach is consonant with the reduced resources of Western states, their publics suffering under the politics of permanent austerity.

Africa, Asia and the Middle East continue to be imagined as sites of danger and of savage crimes requiring intervention. Rogue regimes, failed states, pirate dens, terrorist networks and warlords populate the thinking of both national security experts and advocates of the use of force for humanitarian purposes.

How might these problems be dealt with in future?

Here, Libya offers the prospect of a temporary and limited military intervention to deal with the perceived threat only. A short glorious war is fought without having to take on the burden of sorting out someone else's country.

Handily, Western powers can proclaim as "anti-imperialist" the absence of the aid and commitment that nation-building requires.

The Obama Administration's widespread use of drone strikes outside of Afghanistan is another sign that such intervention without responsibility is the way of the future. In Libya, drones were adapted to the purposes of "humanitarian war".

In retrospect, Libya may appear less a model for the enlightened use of force than a step on the way to a world in which armed intervention is more common and shorn of the "social work" that has characterised both counter-insurgency and UN peacekeeping operations.

We may return to an era in which it is thought that military power can be used "surgically" to deal with problems that are ultimately political, social and economic in nature.

Tarak Barkawi is Senior Lecturer in the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge.

The Decline Of Western Power In The Arab World Is No Bad Thing 

Oct 29th 2011 
Courtesy Of "The Economist"

AFTER a slow summer, the Arab spring has turned into a turbulent autumn. The past few days have seen the gruesome end of Muammar Qaddafi, the more edifying spectacle of an orderly and open election in Tunisia (see article) and the death of Saudi Arabia’s ancient crown prince Sultan amid demands for the kingdom to modernise faster. Egypt, by far the most populous Arab country, is poised to hold its first proper election next month. Revolts and civil strife continue across the region, from Syria to Yemen and Bahrain.

For the West, whose ties to Arab dictators once gave it great clout in the Middle East, events in the region have spun way out of control. That fact was underlined this week by the Iraqis’ insistence that all American forces must quit the country by the end of the year. Yet the West should not regret this turn of events. The power that it has lost in the short term should, in the long run, be replaced by influence born of good relations with decent governments.

It’s Still On Course

On balance, the Arab world is in far better shape than it was less than a year ago. For sure, the economies of all the countries affected by the democratic upheavals have slumped. That is true even of Tunisia, which has the best education and skills in the region. But dictatorship and state control suffocated the Arab economies—even those awash with oil. Once Arab countries’ borders open up and their governments become accountable to their citizens, they are likely to grow faster. And that will not happen until they have put in place a system of government that gives a far wider degree of participation than before.

It is beginning to happen. Tunisia has led the way. Egypt promises to follow, though the generals in charge of its transition have been horribly inept of late, raising fears that the country may slip backwards to disorder or military control. But a parliament is due for election next month. It is to choose an assembly that may take a year or so to write a constitution providing for the election of a new Egyptian president. Libya, too, should have elections within a year. Everywhere risks lapsing into bouts of chaos and strife. But this trio of north African states looks set to give a democratic fillip to other Arab countries, including those such as Syria that seem destined for a time to be soaked in blood while they strive for liberation.

The rise of political Islam is not necessarily cause for alarm among democrats in the West and the Arab world. In Tunisia an Islamist party, Nahda (“Renaissance”), that was brutally banned for decades has won a stunning victory at the polls. Egypt’s Muslim Brothers are likely to do well too. In Libya the Islamists may also be gaining ground. This rattles secular-minded Arab liberals and many well-wishing Westerners. But a more open and tolerant brand of political Islam better suited to the modern world seems to be emerging, especially now that its proponents must compete for the favours of voters who admire the Islamists’ hostility to corruption, but dislike the sectarian and conservative attitudes that many of them expressed when they were underground.

No one can be certain that if Islamists gain power they will give it up at the ballot box, but secular rulers sometimes fail that test. And, on the whole, the threat of religious extremism with which strongmen used to justify repression has not materialised. Barring a few ungoverned pockets in Yemen and on the fringes of the Sahara, al-Qaeda has failed to benefit from the democratic wind.

It’s A Local Show These Days

The strength of these revolutions is that they have been almost entirely home-grown. Those in Egypt and Tunisia had no outside help. Syria’s brave protesters are on their own and may, in time, triumph. Libya’s new rulers could not have succeeded without NATO’s bombers, but the absence of Western ground troops and of proconsuls telling the locals what to do has been in salutary contrast to what happened in Iraq eight years ago, where democracy was crudely imposed on an unprepared people (see Lexington).

After the deaths of some 150,000-plus locals and around 5,000 Americans and other foreigners, Iraq has a freely elected government. But it has not developed the habits of tolerance between communities and the independent institutions that underlie all truly successful democracies. A decade of American hard power has been less effective than a few months of peaceful protest in setting countries on the road towards representative government.

Partly because of the Iraqi adventure, America—at least its foreign policy—remains heartily disliked by Arabs across the region. That is only slightly less true under Barack Obama than it was under George Bush. America’s unpopularity stems partly from its backing of Israel and the continuing humiliation of the Palestinians, partly from its willingness to use force to get its way and partly from its history of supporting useful Arab dictators. Prince Sultan’s death may make this last point particularly salient. If the reactionary Prince Nayef becomes the crown prince and de facto regent, America may struggle to maintain an alliance with him alongside friendships with the Arab world’s nascent democracies.

Yet in the decline of Western power lie the seeds of hope for healthier relations in the future. Although the Arab world’s revolutionaries in general, and the Islamists in particular, are unlikely to hail the West as a model, they seem to be moving towards open political and economic systems. Nobody in Egypt, Tunisia or Libya is arguing for a Saudi Arabian, Iranian or even Chinese model. Arab students, businessmen and tourists in their thousands still choose to go to the West for their studies, their deals and their fun.

The prospects for Western influence in the Arab world are good. But in the future it will be won through education, investment and, when requested, advice on building up institutions. Such levers do not work as quickly as those that were forged from deals with unpopular and unstable dictators. But, in the end, they are likely to prove more reliable.

Continue With "Look East Policy"

Sunday, October 30th, 2011 13:09:00 
Courtesy Of "The Malay Mail"

LANGKAWI: Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said Malaysia and other Islamic countries should look to other Eastern countries and not the West as a model for their development.

He said he believed he made the right decision in introducing the "Look East" Policy of emulating work ethics and business techniques from Japan and South Korea during his tenure as the prime minister.

"Right now, there are so many problems with Western countries. The problem
in the West is that they have borrowed too much and cannot repay. You cannot have that kind of a country as a model.

"If you see countries like (South) Korea, Japan and China in the East ...China has US$3.2 trillion in reserves. They are swimming in money. Korea can come up with major products better than that produced by companies in the West.

"Japan, as you know, is a country which lost a war ... totally destroyed but as it rebuilt itself, it become the second biggest economy in the world.

If you want to copy or learn something, learn from the successful people, not from the failures," he said during a question-and-answer session at the Third Langkawi Islamic Finance & Economics International Conference (LIFE 3), here.

The three-day conference, with the theme "Islamic Banking and Finance:

Waqaf, Zakat and Sadakah as Community Empowerment and Strategies for the Economic Transformation of the Ummah", began yesterday.

Dr Mahathir said one could not learn much from the West because it was a total failure.

"So, we should continue to look to the East and not to the West. The West is going bankrupt," he said. 
He also said that he was personally against socialism because it would make everyone poor.

"For capitalism, it is the way to prosper the country. If we look around, capitalist countries seem to be so rich, that even workers can drive big cars.

But people can become extremely greedy ... wanting more and more money without thinking about the consequences.

"They borrow and borrow until they cannot pay and they are all bankrupt.Greed will cause this. Today, we are seeing failed countries in the developed world.

"It is because countries like Greece are so indebted ... borrowing more than 200 per cent of their GDP (Gross Domestic Product)," Dr Mahathir added.

Without War We Are Nothing. Apparently.

Alex Massie
Tuesday, 10th November 2009
Courtesy Of The Spectator

Happily my Outrage Outage didn't last long. Thanks, Robert Kaplan! Your Atlantic column on the fall of the Berlin Wall proved a most adequate tonic. You conclude your piece:

What does the European Union truly stand for besides a cradle-to-grave social welfare system? For without something to struggle for, there can be no civil society—only decadence.

Thus, with their patriotism dissipated, European governments can no longer ask for sacrifices from their populations when it comes to questions of peace and war. Ironically, we may have gained victory in the Cold War, but lost Europe in the process.

Well! It's almost as though Kaplan thinks more wars are a good thing! Without them, after all, there is the terrifying prospect of lapsing into - gosh! - decadence.

Now besides a "cradle-to-grave social welfare system" I'd say that the EU stands for, or at least has ambitions towards, peace and prosperity and that, whatever one may think of the organisation, these are hardly small things. Indeed, their absence through for much of the twentieth century was, shall we say, marked.

For that matter, absorbing the countries of central and eastern europe into the EU is itself no tiny task and one that, not unreasonably, has preoccupied europe these past twenty years. That this absorbtion has, generally speaking, been a success is also an achievement of note. And, of course, the process is not yet complete. (There have, for sure, been some serious problems along the way: hello Yugoslavia.)

But no, apparently a europe at peace is a symptom, or perhaps a proof, of weakness. Yet when considering the history of the twentieth century, a dissipation of patriotism - in the sense Kaplan employs the term, which is to say, a dissipation of the willingness to fight vast and costly wars unless they become a matter of utmost necessity - might be considered no bad thing either.

It may be that a national effort on the scale of that mounted between 1939 and 1945 is no longer be possible. But that's a thesis that, happily, has remained untested since, again mercifully, there's been no opportunity to try it on for size. Normally that too might be considered a Good Thing.

Even if one grants the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more generally, the conflict with radical Islam the status of war it's clear that the natures of these conflicts are rather different from previous wars. National survival does not, despite what the fretters say, seem imperilled. A degree of stout vigilance may be - no, certainly is - required but that's not quite the same thing.

Kaplan's argument is actually rather similar to one made in the Edwardian age. Then too we were told that civilisation had grown fat and soft and complacent*. Then too, a fair number of intellectuals suggested that a purging moment of barbarism, while undoubtedly unfortunate for the victims, might be a useful means of reinvigorating our dangerously decadent societies. Well, we saw where that led us, didn't we?

Maybe Kaplan is right. But if he is then that might be considered something worth celebrating, not bemoaning.

Kaplan's normally something of a realist - see here and here for instance - and from what I can tell he thinks bombing Iran would be an act of folly. So perhaps this was just a slightly strange column. On the other hand, Kaplan spends a lot of time with the US mlitary (and has written very well on it) and perhaps it's just that he views the world through martial spectacles and, consequently, finds the civilian world rather dull and drab and feeble and disappointing.

One last point: Kaplan, who generally acknowledges uncertainty, abandons that useful reminder here. That europe has looked inward these past twenty years doesn't mean it is doomed/destined/guaranteed to do so forever. Times and circumstances change and countries tend to change with them.

*There are many examples of this. But it's the sort of thing that crops up in Buchan quite often. Then again, Buchan's very much a novelist for our age too. But that's a matter for another day.

Our Enemy, The President

The Greatest Threat To The Republic Comes From The Oval Office.

By Daniel McCarthy
February 23, 2009 Issue
Courtesy Of The American Conservative

After eight years of George W. Bush, conservatives find themselves back at the beginning—that is, back at the beginning of the modern American Right, circa 1933. Once more the country is in a deep financial crisis (we don’t call them “depressions” anymore) for which Republicans have taken the blame. And again a pragmatic Democratic president, backed by majorities in both chambers of Congress, promises to spend us back to prosperity. After conceding the president virtually his every whim during the Bush years—with the occasional Harriet Miers-sized exception—conservatives have begun to rediscover the virtues of checks upon executive power.

The 1930s Old Right arose in reaction against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. But conservatives today need not look back quite so far to find articulate critics of presidential aggrandizement. Unlike Roosevelt’s enemies in the 1930s, James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall, two of National Review’s original senior editors, were not strict in their devotion to individual rights, the free market, or limited government. Kendall, a “wild Yale don” in Dwight Macdonald’s description, was a majority-rule democrat who held that legislatures could and should circumscribe personal liberties for the sake of national security. Burnham, a former New York University philosophy professor, was a Rockefeller Republican in politics and disciple of Machiavelli in philosophy. Yet both were as staunch as any Old Right libertarian in their hostility to presidential power. To them, the executive branch was not only the seat of liberalism but an incipient threat to the Republic.

Kendall and Burnham spoke for the mainstream Right in the 1950s and ’60s. By 2007, however, right-wing attitudes toward executive power had undergone a sea change. Harvard University professor Harvey Mansfield, writing that year in the Wall Street Journal, gave voice to the new presidentialist attitude prevailing among conservatives in what he called, “the debate between the strong executive and its adversary, the rule of law.” Mansfield argued that in times of emergency, executive power should be unfettered, both at home and, especially, in foreign policy. “One man, or, to use Machiavelli’s expression, uno solo, will be the greatest source of energy,” he wrote. “Such a person will have the greatest incentive to be watchful, and to be both cruel and merciful in correct contrast and proportion.” Mansfield attributed “the difficulties of the war in Iraq” not to presidential overreach but to “a sense of inhibition.”

Mansfield lent philosophic weight to the case for the strong executive, but Vice President Dick Cheney gave it the force of the policy. For 30 years, Cheney has been the Zelig of presidentialism, present whenever there is a constitutional dispute over the executive’s prerogatives. As chief of staff under Gerald Ford, he chafed at the restraints Congress placed on the post-Watergate presidency’s use of intelligence services. As a congressman in 1987, he was the ranking Republican on the committee investigating Iran-Contra. His minority report condemned “the boundless view of Congressional power [that] began to take hold in the 1970’s, in the wake of the Vietnam War” and argued that presidents have “inherent executive powers under Article II of the Constitution” to employ secret agents and “a broad range of foreign policy powers” as they deem best. Three years later, as secretary of defense under George H.W. Bush, Cheney asserted before the Senate Armed Forces Committee that the president did not need a congressional authorization to commit forces to the Persian Gulf. (In an intimation of things to come, Cheney cited a United Nations resolution as “not authorization, but certainly … support” for the president’s intentions.)

Indeed, burnishing executive authority seems to be a Cheney family value. Daughter Elizabeth wrote her undergraduate thesis on presidential war powers, arguing that the Framers “certainly did not intend, nor does history substantiate, the idea that Congress should legislate specific limits on the President’s power.” “Her father may not have written her thesis,” Zac Frank commented in Slate, “but before and after its publication, he held unwaveringly to its ideas.” Wife Lynne, for her part, published a novel in 1979 titled Executive Privilege, about a president besieged by the press. President Jenner, who bears a more-than-passing resemblance to Cheney, believes that “the history of the presidency in the twentieth century is the history of a gradually weakening institution. … It’s almost as though the President becomes a symbol when he’s elected, a symbol to be torn down and destroyed when the nation’s frustrations reach a certain pitch.” The novel’s plot revolves around Jenner lying to the press (and public) to protect a democratic coup in the Philippines.

That a presidential chief of staff and later vice president would have a fond view of executive power is not surprising. But Cheney’s resentment of the limitations Congress imposed upon the Nixon and Ford administrations was shared by many grassroots conservatives. In 1974, while his colleague Burnham continued to rail against “Caesarist mass democratism,” National Review senior editor Jeffrey Hart noted with approval the Right’s changing attitude toward the presidency. Hart believed that something more than mere partisanship—conservatives rallying to embattled Republicans Nixon and Ford—was at work here. He advanced two arguments of his own for right-wing presidentialism. First, he believed that only a strong president could tame the federal bureaucracy. “No matter who the people actually vote for,” he wrote, “they end up being governed by the same semi-permanent bureaucrats and quasi-autonomous agencies.” Nixon had been “making modest moves” in this direction, Hart argued, before Watergate brought him down. Alas, subsequent presidents, weak or strong, would prove equally incapable of the task.

Hart’s second argument for embracing executive power was more compelling. Only the president, by virtue of his office’s stature, could take on the most powerful new force for liberalism to emerge since the New Deal—the left-leaning national media. “The capacity of the media to determine the terms of the public debate gives them, at least for extended periods, a political leverage that may well be superior to that of a variegated and often ill-informed Congress,” Hart contended. Thus the Fourth Estate could shape the direction of public policy—unless the president stood in the way. “The key struggle in the American political equation,” Hart continued, would no longer “pit ‘great’ liberal Presidents against resisting Congress, as in Kendall’s formulation. The key struggle, on the frequent occasions when a centrist or a conservative occupies the White House, will be between the President and the media, and it will be a contest over public opinion.” Vice President Spiro Agnew had shown the way—his attacks on the media made him a popular figure, especially on the Right, until scandal brought him down.

Hart’s essay was prescient. Over the next 30 years, conservatives would indeed expend as much energy fighting Dan Rather as trying to limit government. What has become apparent since Hart wrote, however, is that the media, liberal or not, and the president, Republican or not, enjoy a mutually reinforcing relationship. After all, among the many extraconstitutional roles the modern president plays is that of the nation’s number-one celebrity. Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and now Obama made the most of this status. But even presidential failures such as Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush acquired vast influence over public discourse thanks to the media role of their office. (A sign of just how important celebrity is as a feature of the modern presidency can be seen in the power of the executive branch to make famous even those who merely seek, but do not attain, high office. Ron Paul had been arguing for sound money and noninterventionism for decades, but only when he made a run for the Republican nomination did he become a star. Before being tapped as John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin was just another of the nation’s 50 governors. Even Obama, for all his telegenic appeal, was not half the celebrity he became in 2008 before he decided to run for president.)

There are practical explanations for the symbiosis between the president and the press. Covering a presidential news conference is, after all, easier than reporting on the activities of 535 congressmen and senators organized into scores of committees. More important than this, however, are the reciprocal privileges of access. The White House can grant favored journalists—does anyone re-member Jeff Gannon?—special access to the world’s greatest celebrity. And when George H.W. Bush wanted to plead with conservatives to re-elect him after he broke his pledge not to raise taxes, he went on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. What was good for Bush was good for Rush, just as what would later be good for Bush’s son was good for Fox News. Democratic presidents and the liberal media enjoy the same relationship. The careers of Jay Carney, George Stephanopoulos, and the late Tony Snow attest to the intimate link between executive power and the national media.

Far from dismantling the liberal media, conservatives’ embrace of presidentialism helped create a right-wing echo chamber. Neither presidential power nor the influence of the media suffered for it. But conservatism as a philosophy, and the fortunes of the GOP in Congress, did suffer.

The nexus of presidentialism and media power hastened the emergence of a nationalized, homogeneous conservatism that contributed to the Right’s downfall in 2006 and 2008. Through the president—Nixon, Regan, or the Bushes —the Right learned to speak with and listen to one voice. Earlier conservatives had pronounced regional accents: Southern conservatism was very much its own thing; the Midwestern Right, even during the Cold War, had a noninterventionist and populist streak; both coasts had their own regional variations. Reagan as a media figure, the “Great Communicator” if not the great administrator, successfully blended these regional voices into his own. But by the time of George W. Bush, the accent of conservatism sounded the same across the country—it was the twang of a Southwestern oilman.

At the same time as the polyphony of the old conservatism gave way to monoglot presidentialism, liberals recovered their fluency in speaking the language of the states. That fluency goes far toward explaining how Democrats maintained their hold on Congress—where regional and local interests still count for something—throughout the years of conservative ascendancy in the executive branch. This may even account for why liberals have failed at national talk radio—although they control the mainstream media, which tries hard not to present itself as an official mouthpiece of liberalism, the Left finds it difficult to speak with one universally popular voice (or ideology) to the whole country.

Kendall and Burnham had warned about the dangers of letting the presidency symbolize or speak for the nation—one of their reasons for believing the executive branch to be inherently liberal was its seemingly direct connection (the Electoral College notwithstanding) to the public. Those who wish to see a Rousseauvian General Will expressed within the American constitutional form would naturally look to the executive branch. The General Will must be indivisible and univocal, which within the American system only the president can be.

By contrast, Congress embodied plurality and diverse local interests. The “little platoons” of Edmund Burke may not have direct representation in Congress, but the organs of civil society—families, churches, businesses, civic associations—have considerably more sway within congressional districts than within the great pool of the presidential electorate. Kendall emphasized that conservatism depended upon these local institutions, and whatever virtue might be found in government relied upon the expression of these ordered (and often hierarchical) interests within the legislature. Not only did Congress give voice to these groups, but the machinery of the legislature worked toward compromise and consensus—in contrast to presidential unilateralism. This made the legislature a poor venue for idealism or “high principle” but an excellent medium for deliberation and prudence.

The tendency of the executive is always to reach over the heads of the little platoons and appeal to absolute truth and national unity, according to Kendall. He wrote:

Because the Executive so clearly represents ‘high principle and knowledge,’ the conclusion is well nigh irresistible that Congress represents low principle (or, worse still, no principle at all)…

The Executive regards ‘pork barrel’ measures as ‘selfish’ and ‘particular,’ and does what it can, through pressure and maneuver, to forestall them. It appeals frequently to a national interest that is allegedly different from and superior to the interests of the constituencies.

To presidentialists, as Burnham noted, “intermediary institutions always appear to be incomplete, distorted and obstructive expressions of the general will. Through them are expressed the interests of classes, local regions, industries, churches, races, or other sub-sections of the people as a whole.” Yet “it is precisely through these intermediary institutions that the otherwise formless, politically meaningless, abstract entity, ‘the people,’ is given structure, and become articulate, organized, operationally significant.” If these organs are bypassed, the Republic is doomed: “Caesar is equivalent to the destruction of the intermediary institutions, or at least of their independence.”

This suggests another, subtler reason for the conservative turn toward executive power. Civil society and social authority have been besieged since the 1960s, in part by the growth of state power and in part by upheavals such as the sexual and civil-rights revolutions. In the absence of strong social authority, Caesar has become more appealing to the Right. He provides a direct outlet for the energies of activists who would like to stage a counter-revolution. Yet conservatives who support Caesar misunderstand the nature of the problem, which lies less with the triumph of the political Left than with the (related but distinct) decline of traditional authority. Presidential power not only cannot restore that social authority but actually displaces it, as Kendall and Burnham warned.

The effects of right-wing presidentialism can be seen in the reckless behavior of the Bush administration and in the decline of intellectual conservatism. By embracing executive power, the Right tacitly embraced the qualities that Kendall and Burnham identified with the president: idealism in foreign policy; abstract values-talk in domestic politics; energy and action, rather than prudence and deliberation, both at home and abroad. The tenor of the intellectual Right during the Bush years—and indeed since Nixon—has echoed the qualities of the executive branch itself, above all in a preference for absolutes over prudent deliberation and consensus.

This may explain why conservatives over 60 frequently detested the Bush administration, while those under 50 embraced it. The older conservatives possess “legislative” characters. The younger generation has “presidential” personalities. In Platonic terms, their souls mirror the element of the Republic to which they give their allegiance.

Right-wing presidentialism failed spectacularly under Bush and has now yielded to what may be the strongest expression of left-wing presidentialism since Franklin Roosevelt. Conservatives have an important lesson to learn here. They must not only oppose Obama as they once opposed FDR, they must recognize the threat that presidential power represents to an ordered Republic no matter which party occupies the Oval Office.

Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative