AUT: Samir Amin: Democracy Against Hegemony (fwd)

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 11:48:34 -0700
From: Non Peer Competitor Intelligence Associates <npcia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Subject: Democracy Against Hegemony

Democracy Against Hegemony
By Samir Amin

Al-Ahram Weekly
22 - 28 April 1999  Issue No. 426
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875


The 28 March issue of the New York Times contains an informative article on
US political strategy. Its content is summed up by an eloquent image that
takes up one page of the publication: a boxing glove in the colours of the
American flag, accompanied by the following caption: "What the world needs
now -- for globalisation to work, America can't be afraid to act like the
almighty superpower that it is". The reason for the announced punches is
elucidated in these terms: "The hidden hand of the market will never work
without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell
Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world
safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the US Army, Air Force,
Navy and Marine Corps." The writer of these words is not a provocative
joker, but none other than Thomas Friedman, Madeleine Albright's adviser.

We are very far, here, from the unifying discourse spouted by fashionable
economists on the self-regulating market as a guarantor of peace. The
American ruling class knows that economics are political, and that it is
relations of power -- including military power -- that command the market.
There will be no "global market" without an American military empire, they
say -- for the above-mentioned article is but one amongst hundreds. This
brutal frankness is no doubt possible over there because the media are
sufficiently controlled for the government's strategic objective never to
be subject to debate; freedom of expression -- a freedom which often
reaches the burlesque -- applies only to matters involving individuals and,
beyond them, to conflicts within the ruling class, rendered perfectly
opaque in these conditions. There is no political force capable of
combating the system and enlightening a public manipulated with such
consummate ease.

More curious is the silence of the European powers and some others who,
pretending not to read the press on the other side of the Atlantic (I dare
not think they have no idea what it says), forbid their adversaries from
hinting at the very existence of Washington's global strategy, falling back
instead on facile accusations that these opponents harbour a
"conspiratorial" view of history, or even that they are behaving like
visionaries who see the shadow of the "Great Satan" around every corner.

And yet the strategy in question is quite limpid. The US is less convinced
than its allies, so it would seem, of the virtues of competition and "fair
play" -- virtues, incidentally, which it violates with impunity every time
its interests are at stake (cf. the banana wars among many other
instances). Washington knows that, without its military hegemony, America
cannot force the world to finance its savings deficit, which is the
condition for the artificial maintenance of its economic position.

The instrument of choice in the imposition of this hegemony is therefore
military, as the highest US authorities never tire of repeating. This
hegemony, which in turn guarantees that of the Triad (US-Canada; Japan;
Western Europe) over the global system, would therefore demand that the
US's allies accept to navigate in its wake. The UK, Germany and Japan have
put forth no objections, not even "cultural" ones. But the speeches
European politicians feed their audiences -- with respect to Europe's
economic power -- thereby lose any real significance. By placing itself
exclusively on the terrain of mercantile disputes, with no project of its
own, Europe is beaten from the start. Washington knows this well.

The weapon against the US's global strategy is a process of globalisation
which must be at once multipolar, democratic (at least potentially), and
negotiated. The margin of autonomy that this allows is the only means of
correctly addressing fundamental social problems, which differ due to the
unequal development of markets, and is by the same token the condition for
democracy to take root seriously, since it gives a better chance to
demilitarisation, security and peace. In contrast, American hegemony, in
association with neoliberalism, has so far only produced chaos, the
multiplication of conflicts and large-scale military intervention. This,
after all, was only to be expected.

The principal tool in the service of Washington's chosen strategy is NATO
-- hence its ability to survive the collapse of the adversary that was its
raison d'etre. Today, NATO speaks in the name of the "international
community", thereby expressing its contempt for the democratic principle
that governs this community through the UN. In debates conducted in the US
on the global strategy we are discussing, human rights or democracy are
mentioned only rarely. They are invoked, in fact, only when this is useful
for the functioning of this same global strategy, which explains the
blinding cynicism and systematic use of double standards in evidence.

There is no question of intervening in favour of democracy in Afghanistan
or in the Gulf, for example, no more than there has ever been any question
of hampering Mobutu yesterday, Savimbi today, and many others tomorrow.
People's rights are sacred in certain cases (Kosovo today, perhaps Tibet
tomorrow), and forgotten in others (Palestine, Turkish Kurdistan, Cyprus,
the Serbs of Krajima, expelled at gunpoint by the Croatian regime, etc.).

Even the terrible genocide in Rwanda gave rise to no serious investigation
into the responsibility of diplomats who had supported the governments that
were openly advocating it. Certainly, the despicable behaviour of certain
regimes -- like those of Saddam Hussein or Milosevic -- makes the task
easier by offering pretexts that are easy to exploit. But the complete
silence that meets other cases deprives the discourse of democracy and
people's rights of any measure of credibility. It would be impossible to do
a greater disservice to the fundamental requirements of the fight for
democracy and human respect, without which no progress is possible.

The avowed goal of the US's strategy is not to tolerate the existence of
any powers capable of resisting Washington's orders, and therefore to seek
to dismantle all those countries deemed "too big", as well as to create the
largest possible number of pawn states -- easy prey for the establishment
of American bases guaranteeing their "protection". Only one state has the
right to be "big": the United States, as its two last presidents have said
explicitly. The method put into practice, however, is not limited to
wielding the bludgeon and manipulating the media. It attempts to enclose
people in immediate and unacceptable alternatives: bowing to oppression,
disappearing, placing themselves under the US protectorate. For this to
take place, it is necessary to draw a veil of silence over the policies
that have created the tragedy. For example, we may cite the rapid
recognition of the states of the former Yugoslavia, with no concern for
preparing them by regulating the fate of the concerned peoples in a
democratic manner.

Alignment with the strategy of the US and its subaltern NATO allies has
dramatic consequences. The UN is about to succumb to the fate of the League
of Nations. Clearly -- and fortunately -- American society is not that of
Nazi Germany, but for the decision-makers in Washington, like those of
Berlin before them, force has been established as a supreme principle, to
the complete detriment of international law, for which the dominant
discourse has substituted an odd "right of intervention", disturbingly
reminiscent of the "mission civilisatrice" of 19th-century imperialism.

The struggle for democracy will remain completely ineffective if it is
accompanied by submission to American hegemonism. The struggle for
democracy is indissociable from the fight against Washington's hegemony.

(c) Al-Ahram Weekly





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