Imperialism Then
And Now
By David Barsamian
Zmag
30 June, 2003
Tariq Ali, born in Lahore, Pakistan, is based in London where he is
an editor of New Left Review. A prolific writer, hes the author
of more than a dozen books on world history and politics. In his spare
time he is a filmmaker and novelist. His latest book is the The Clash
of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity. I talked with him
at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil in late January 2003.
Imperialism is not a word
that is often used in polite discourse in the United States.
Ive always found it
very strange, traveling and speaking throughout the United States, that
its a word they dont like. They assumed that an empire consisted
of colonies abroad that were ruled and staffed by people sent from the
imperial country, whether it was Britain in India or France in Algeria
or Germany in Namibia or Belgium in the Congo. And they said, Well,
we dont do it like that.
For a long period the U.S.
kept to its own sphere. What caused them to move out was not so much
the need for colonies, which they didnt need in that sense, given
the size and scale of the United States itself and the natural resources
it possessed, plus the fact that they dominated South America. What
forced them to move out was the Russian Revolution. There is a very
interesting parallel that at the same time as the Russian Revolution
was taking place, Woodrow Wilson decided it was time for a major U.S.
intervention because they were nervous now that the threatening of capitalist
interests in Europe could actually threaten them in the long term. Thats
when they decided they had to go international.
The victory of the Russian Revolution meant that it had an enemy. Here
was a country that challenged capitalism quite openly. So for 70 years
they fought that system. Finally they defeated it by forcing it to go
on a binge of military spending, which was completely unnecessary. So
the USSR imploded. That was a big, big victory for this empire.
To what extent is imperialism
connected to or is an outcome of capitalism?
All the early empires were founded by the need for capital to expand,
the need for capital to find new markets. It was this struggle for markets
that finally created the British empire, the Dutch empire, the Belgian
empire, the French empire. World War I was a war fought over colonial
expansion. Who would control the trade routes? Who would control the
markets? Germany, which had unified late and came to capitalism later
than the other powers, decided it wanted its own empire. It felt that
the way to get it was to defeat Britain, and then it could actually
move forward.
For a while this got disguised
because while the Soviet Union and that whole bloc of states existed,
there was talk of imperialism, but by and large people in the West saw
this as essentially fighting a war against an evil enemy, an evil empire.
Now the slate is clean once again. We have the world before us naked.
We see exactly what is going on. The September 20, 2002 strategy doctrine
put out by the Bush administration makes it crystal clear what this
is all about. They say a holy moral principle is the defense of free
trade, i.e., free trade as we see it and according to rules that we
make and how we regulate it. In order to defend this, we are prepared
to go to war. That has been the principle of all empires. The difference
between the American empire and previous empires is that the United
States usually prefers to work through local compradors, local rulers
who are on their side. They dont like ruling directly because
they know its an enormous expense. Why send your own people out
to run a country when you can find locals to do it? That is how theyve
always operated. For example, they occupied Japan after World War II,
they created a constitution and MacArthur was like a viceroy. But they
pulled out after a few years and let their local relays in Japan carry
on, as they still do. The Japanese Liberal Democratic Party was created
by the United States to do the job for them.
At a distance, they see the
Far Eastern region, the united Korean peninsula, Japan, and China, as
a combination that could be deadly if it ever got together economically,
politically, and militarily. They fear that if this happened, within
ten years this area would become economically hegemonic. Thus, American
strategic policy is designed to keep these countries separate from each
other. Thats why the Bush regime is now trying to stop Korean
reunification because they are fearful that a unified Korean peninsula
with nuclear weapons would make the Japanese go for nuclear weapons.
Then you would have three nuclear powers in the region: Japan, Korea,
and China. If that happened, I think they would try and make them fight
each other because they are really fearful of a link-up in this region.
That would severely threaten their interests.
If you read Thomas Friedmans
article on the war in Iraq, this guy spells it out. He says, Its
laughable to pretend its not about oil. He says, Its not
just about oil and of course we know its not just about oil, but
he says oil does play a big part in it. So they are no longer trying
to conceal their real aims. They are saying, This is the situation.
Were the worlds mightiest power. These are our economic
interests, these are our strategic interests, and these are our geopolitical
interests. Youd better watch out, guys, because were going
to defend them. This is imperialism, different from the past, in a new
situation. In the war in Iraq they will assert new, raw imperial power
in a way they have not done before.
Walter Rodney, a political
thinker and writer from Guyana, talked about what he called the
local lackeys of imperialism. Tell me more about this class of
collaborators.
In the middle of the last
century, you have the Korean Wara three-year war fought by the
United States under the banner of the United Nations, in the course
of which the industrially strong part of Korea, which was the north,
is completely devastated. Not a single building was left standing. Its
entire infrastructure was destroyed.
Then you had the Vietnam
War. First, the French were defeated in Vietnam. The United States was
not prepared to see that defeat and stepped in. The aim of the American
empire was, by hook or by crook, to get rid of these governments somehow;
to maintain a nationalist pretense and to get in a different group of
people who could pretend to be anticolonial nationalists, but who would
actually be serving the needs of the great metropolitan empire.
How did they do this? They
failed in Vietnam. They succeeded in dividing Korea. But they couldnt
rule South Korea democratically because no lackeys could be found who
could be elected. So when you dont find lackeys who can be elected
democratically, you put the army in power. They did the same thing in
Pakistan. When a general election was planned for April 1959 that would
have returned a government that would have withdrawn from the security
pacts into which they tied Pakistan, they organized a coup detat
and put the military in power in October 1958 to preempt a general election.
The country that worried them the most in the middle of the last century
was Indonesia because this country had the worlds largest Communist
Party outside China and Russia, with a million members, with an additional
two million people in front organizations. It had a big influence on
the government and the armed forces. So what do they do? They organized
one of the most dastardly actions we have seen since World War II, a
military coup, where they put Suharto in power. Suharto proceeds to
kill a million people and wipes out the most powerful social movement
in the country. In 1975 he invaded East Timor, killed several hundred
thousand people there and wiped out all the secular, radical opposition
in the country. Then people are surprised the Islamists are so powerful
because the Islamists are the people who were used in 1965 to kill Reds.
Then you have a new phase,
which is the post-Cold War phase, where basically the triumph of the
United States and world capitalism totally disarmed even seminationalist
politicians, who said, Now there is nothing else to do. Just work with
them, serve them. This led to a phenomenal growth in corruption all
over the Third World, and not just the Third World, in the First and
Second Worlds as well. Massive corruption in politics. Politics became
part of corporate life, which they had been in the States for some time,
but that process then began to seep through. Its been very difficult
for the last 20 years to get elected leaders who are prepared to fight
for their own people.
Interestingly enough, were
having this interview in Latin America, and this is a continent that
has been in revolt for some time. You have seen the election of Chavez.
You have seen the failure to topple Fidel Castro after 40 years of the
blockade. Youve seen a victory of Lula in Brazil. You have seen
the victory of Gutierrez in Ecuador. Evo Morales in Bolivia, came very
close to defeating the corporations candidate. So we are seeing
beginnings of a new wave of, lets call it, subnationalism or protonationalism,
which wants to resist. But by and large, in Asia and Africa they have,
so far, been pliable regimes.
I dont think this can
last indefinitely. I think, curiously enough, the war in Iraq and the
occupation of Iraq and the substitution of Saddam with a U.S. puppet
government, so the oil can be shared out as war trophy is bound to create
resistance sooner or later. It may take four years. It may take ten
years. We dont know. But it will happen. In that sense, the American
empire is no different from other empires. It is slowly sowing the seeds
of the forces that will one day confront it.
Clearly, 19th century
European imperialism was predicated on racism, the white persons
burden, bringing Christianity and enlightenment to the benighted natives.
That was then. What about now?
You cant deny the underlying
feeling of white superiority in all this. Ill give you a concrete
example. The tragedy of 9/11, when lots of civilians were killed in
New York and some in Washington, the whole world was forced to weep
for them in public. Why? Because they were citizens of the United States
of America. When Afghan citizens are killed by indiscriminate bombings,
by so-called accidental bombings and the deaths from starvation, these
deaths dont count for much. No one will ever build a monument
for the Afghan civilians who died in the bombing raids. Just a crude
war of revenge, as I called it at the time.
Why not? Why are Afghan lives
not as important as any other lives? Because underlying all this is
still the belief that we are a superior nation, a superior race, and
a superior people.
Look at the cavalier way
in which casualties are discussed in the case of Iraq. There was a conference
organized by the State Department and its favorite Iraqis and an Iraqi
friend of mine attended who wasnt on their list. He told me, What
shocked me was the way they were discussing casualties, how many civilian
deaths would be acceptable. He said the figure the Iraqis and
the Americans were talking about was 250,000. It shouldnt go above
that. A quarter of a million civilian deaths acceptable? When 3,000
deaths are not acceptable in the United States of America, but a quarter
of a million Iraqi lives are acceptable, what is that if not the most
grotesque demonstration that the lives of these poor Arabs dont
matter a damn. The form racism takes is different from the old empires,
but its still there.
Talk about the role of
the media in shaping and forming public opinion. For example, the media
constantly repeat that Saddam Hussein represents a grave threat to the
United States.
This notion of Saddam Hussein
being a threat to the United States makes everyone in Europe laugh,
including European politicians. Recently, I was at a debate in Berlin
at a big theater, 1,000-2,000 people there. I was debating Professor
Ruth Wedgewood. She is an adviser to Donald Rumsfeld. To my amazement
she suddenly turned to the Germans and she said, I know the reason you
are opposed to this war. Its because youre scared of Saddam.
Afterwards, people came and told me, We were really taken aback
by that. What does she mean? I said, This is what they say
in the United States all the time. They frighten the people that Saddam
represents a real threat. Im staggered that theyve begun
to believe their own rhetoric.
Why is Tony Blair such
an enthusiastic partner of George Bush in his war on terrorism?
In terms of foreign policy,
I think Blair decided very early on after he came to office that he
was going to continue the deals Thatcher had done with Reagan. What
these deals have done, basically, is they have locked the British Ministry
of Defense into the Pentagon. Its to the point now that when the
Pentagon upgrades, the British Ministry of Defense, which doesnt
need to do it, has to do it because its part of the same system.
Now the British are totally
committed to this alliance. It reminds you of what Charles DeGaulle
used to say when he kept on vetoing British entry into the Common Market.
He used to say that Britain will always be an American Trojan horse
in the European Union. How right he was. Blair likes to go and tell
the Europeans, Im close to Bush. I can influence him. He tells
Bush, Its important Im in the European Union, because I
can make sure that your views there are properly defended.
Underlying Blairs servility
to the United States is how he sees the country. Britain is a medium-sized,
northern European country. It no longer has an empire. The country has
quite an exploitative deregulated system, which attracts foreign capital
because wages and taxes are low. This is what Thatcher achieved. Blair
believes this has to be maintained because he doesnt have any
other vision. One of the ways it can be maintained is by hanging alongside
the United States in whatever they do, sharing part of the proceeds
and being seen by Washington as a loyal ally. Its classic.
I have to also tell you,
because it would be one-sided not to do so, that he is hated by large
numbers of people in Britain for doing this, including the British establishment,
who find that sort of servility to the United States to be incredibly
debased and vulgar and low. Both within the mandarin civil service and
the military establishment there is a lot of nervousness and hostility
to the war on Iraq. For the first time also in Britain you have a majority
of public opinion against the war. So Blair is really putting his future
on the line.
The United States, since
the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been fervently looking for an
oppositional force to replace it. They tried Noriega in Panama, Qaddafi
in Libya, and the Cali and Medellin drug cartels. Now theyve zoomed
in on Islam, fundamentalist and militant, as the new archenemy.
Its crazy to make Islam
into a monolith. Its just as divided as any other part of the
world. The maximum number of people al-Qaeda has, 3,000? Maybe 4,000?
Though no one has agreed on it, its definitely somewhere between
2-3,000, ensconced in different parts of the world, including Europe
and the United States. So how come this cant be destroyed? It
could be. But the problem is not al-Qaeda. The problem is the conditions
that create this mood, which drives young people to despair. That will
not stop unless the central problems in the Middle East are solved.
Bernard Lewis has achieved
almost iconic status in the West as an expert on Islam and how Muslims
think. He wrote an essay for Atlantic magazine in 1990 called Roots
of Muslim Rage, in which he used the term clash of civilizations.
That term was picked up later by Harvard University professor, Samuel
Huntington. He wrote a book called The Clash of Civilizations. Now you
have written a book called The Clash of Fundamentalisms. What do you
think about this so-called theory?
The Lewis theory is largely
based on a view of a world that I dont recognize. I grew up in
that world and have traveled throughout it. There is rage in the Muslim
world, obviously, and the reasons for that rage are the imposition of
a settler state in the heart of the Arab world and the attempt to destroy
the Palestinians and their identity. I know in the United States this
is a sensitive subject, but before the formation and foundation of Israel,
there was very little anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Large Jewish
communities lived in the Maghrib, North Africa, or in the heart of the
Middle East, in Egypt and Iraq.
The Baghdadi Jews in particular
had a special flavor culturally in terms of cuisine, in what they did,
in how they operated, and many of them were founders of the Egyptian
and Iraqi Communist Parties. Thats how integrated they were in
those societies. This was all destroyed by the Zionist project and the
creation of Israel. Obviously, the result has been a lot of crude anti-Semitism.
But please dont think it comes out of something, which is fundamental
to Islam. It doesnt. It did not exist in that shape or form until
the 20th century.
So the rage of which Bernard
Lewis talks is a different rage from the rage I see because he sees
it as inherent in civilizational differences. I see the differences
as being fundamentally political and economic.
If you read Huntingtons
book, you see that he has these formulas, which hes now modified
subsequent to 9/11. He said, we, the West, are a Judeo-Christian civilization.
We are now confronted by all the other civilizations: Islamic civilization,
Chinese civilization. African civilization he didnt mention because
he said he was not sure such a thing existed. The big danger, he said,
came from a possible unification of Chinese and Islamic civilizations.
When you read between the lines, these are coded messages for the phenomenal
growth of the Chinese economy and Chinese exports to the U.S. and the
centrality of Arab oil. That is what all this civilization nonsense
boils down to.
In The Clash of Fundamentalisms,
I said it was a clash between a tiny religious fundamentalism, which
was very retrogressive and retrograde, but that the parent of all fundamentalisms
was American imperial fundamentalism. This empire, the most powerful
in history, now uses its economic and military muscle to reshape the
world according to its needs and its interests. Resistance against this
is bound to rise. At the moment, its taken the form of an ultrareligious
fundamentalism, which will not work because it has nothing to offer.
But this will change. Other resistances will come.
The average American might
say to you, Well, even though youve said many interesting
things, Im not quite sure. How do I get a better understanding
of what the United States is doing and how the world system operates?
One of the suggestions I
would make is dont ignore history. One of the things that has
happened in our culture as a whole is that history as a subject has
become devalued. If you read the history of the United States, you will
find not just the history of an empire in the making, but you will also
find the history of dissent in the United States and you will also find
many surprising things. Walt Whitman, for instance, is supposed to be
the poet of liberation and anti-slavery and pro-Lincoln, but in his
earlier years Walt Whitman was a firm believer in American whites as
a superior civilization, which had the right to crush Mexicans because
they were a second-rate civilization. There was a lot of ambiguity in
the early American poets and writers about American expansionism. This
changed by the end of the 19th century, with Mark Twain and with Whitman
in his last years, by the way. After the end of the Civil War, he was
a deeply shaken person, when he saw how much blood had been spilled.
I always say to my American
friends that America is a very rich country in every way. It is rich
economically. It is rich in the dissenting movements that have grown
up within it. Its rich also as a country that has committed atrocities
all over the world. You have to choose which of these riches you want.
Martin Luther King, the year before he was assassinated, said, the
greatest purveyor of violence in the world is my own country.
People should learn that the most gifted and capable Americans, many
of whom were killed by the state, historically are people who have stood
up and resisted.
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David Barsamian is the founder and director of Alternative Radio, based
in Boulder, Colorado. His latest book is Decline & Fall of Public
Broadcasting.