Nonviolent Imperialism: Major Revision
March 10, 2008
A revision to Michael Barker’s earlier article.
On March 8, 2008, I wrote that Professor Stephen Zunes was correct to point out that Stephen Gowans was mistaken to claim that “the governments Zunes really seems to be concerned about (Zimbabwe, Iran, Belarus and Myanmar) are hostile to the idea of opening their doors to unrestricted U.S. investment and exports” (Point 5).
My statement was incorrect, because in Zunes’ first article “Nonviolent Action and Pro-Democracy Struggles”, it is very clear that he is primarily concerned with four counties in particular, that is, Zimbabwe, Iran, Belarus and Myanmar. These are all countries in which the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its democracy manipulating cohorts are highly active. Moreover, judging by NED’s project database, over the past five years the NED has funnelled over $13 million to the following groups working within (and also outside of) these four countries.
Zimbabwe ($1.5 million in 2004, 2005 and 2006 only; in 2006 groups obtained $1 million) Groups funded include: American Center for International Labor Solidarity, Centre for Policy Studies, Crisis Coalition, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Federation of African Media Women – Zimbabwe (FAMWZ), International Republican Institute, Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI), Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-ZIM), National Constitution Assembly, National Democratic Institute, Zimbabwe Community Development Trust (ZCDT), Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, and ZimRights.
Iran ($1.4 million) Groups funded include: Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, American Center for International Labor Solidarity, Center for the International Private Enterprise, Civic Education and Human Rights, Institute of World Affairs, International Republican Institute, Iran Teachers’ Association, National Iranian-American Council, Vital Voices Global Partnership, and the Women’s Learning Partnership. For further discussion of the NED’s work in Iran, see here.
Belarus ($2.9 million in 2004 and 2005 only) Groups receiving funding are not listed. For further discussion of the NED’s work in Belarus, see here.
Myanmar ($7.7 million – in 2004, 2005, and 2006 only) Groups receiving funding are not listed. For further discussion of the NED’s work in Myanmar, see here.
Needless to say these NED grants represent the tip of the iceberg of the ‘democratic’ monies following into these counties, as their grants topped up by better funded ‘aid’ agencies, like the US Agency for International Development: indeed, total official overseas development aid provided by the United States for 2005 came to $27.6 billion.
Michael Barker is a British citizen based in Australia. Most of his other articles can be found here.
Why Blame China?
February 14, 2008
So China is indirectly responsible for human rights abuses in Darfur by virtue of its business links with Sudan, and Steven Spielberg pulls support for the Beijing Olympics. Israel on the other hand is directly responsible for the creeping genocide of Palestinians, and what does he do? Make propaganda films to deflect attention from its crimes.
‘It’s gratifying to have a new focus on Darfur but China’s role in halting the country’s conflict is no bigger than anyone else’s', writes Jonathan Steele
The excitement over Steven Spielberg’s withdrawal of support for the Beijing Olympics has helped to re-focus attention on Darfur. That is all to the good, especially if it leads his fellow-protesters to look more clearly at what is actually happening there and what moral responsibility China really has in allegedly failing to stop the war in Darfur. Brian Brivati wrote on this blog yesterday that “China is the key“, but is that really the case?
Wars always have at least two sides, and in the Darfur case that is an underestimate. There are around a dozen different rebel groups currently fighting the government. To put the blame on only one party makes no moral or political sense. The best way to stop the fighting and the humanitarian emergency that flows from it is to have an organised ceasefire and hold talks. This is what the Sudanese government did last October on the eve of the peace conference that the UN and the African Union held in Libya. Only a minority of the rebel groups reciprocated the ceasefire offer or attended the conference. They preferred to go on fighting, in part because they feel the one-sided approach of much of the outside world, with its exclusive pressure on the Khartoum government, helps their cause.
The point is slowly being accepted by many of the so-called Darfur support groups. Compared with three years ago, when the campaign started, their statements now show a greater willingness to recognise the rebels’ negative role in attacking aid workers, stealing humanitarian supplies, and raiding government-held villages and towns. The latest atrocity in early February when Khartoum-backed militias burnt down two towns in Western Darfur was provoked by attacks by the Justice and Equality Movement, one of the main groups which rejects peace talks. The pattern is depressingly familiar from almost every counterinsurgency campaign in history – rebel raids, which produce a government over-reaction. But who is to blame? If the rebels went to the peace table, there would have been no impulse for the government to respond with force.
The support groups still seem not to appreciate that the humanitarian situation has changed. Claims of genocide were never accepted by the UN, but the events that gave rise to them occurred in 2003 and 2004. Today’s Darfur is still appalling but not so bloody a place. In any case, the death rates of those years are heavily disputed, as is their cause. The victims of hunger and disease exacerbated by forced displacement are one-sidedly, and often deliberately, described by lobby groups as having been killed by government forces or their militias, as though they were executed.
Subsequent years have seen a huge deployment to Darfur of UN and other international aid agencies. They eliminated starvation and massively reduced death from disease. Displacement in overcrowded camps is no longterm solution and people need confidence and security to go home. But the need to bring in a more powerful UN peacekeeping force to help to ensure that should not obscure the fact that the humanitarian effort has already been one of the UN’s most successful interventions anywhere.
Getting governments to fulfil their promises of troops for the new hybrid UN/AU force in Darfur, trying to obtain more helicopters, and building the peacekeepers’ bases more quickly are important tasks. But, however well-equipped its force is, the UN cannot impose peace. That can only be done through a ceasefire and political talks. As Ban Ki-moon rightly said last week, “the deployment of Unamid will only be as effective as the political process it is mandated to support“.
How does China relate to this? It helped to pass the UN resolution to set up Unamid. It has contributed several hundred military engineers to Unamid. What more can it realistically do? The idea that it can pressure Khartoum “to stop the killing”, as Brivati wrote yesterday, is too simple. The killing is more likely to stop when the rebels come to the peace table that the AU and the UN (with China’s help) have laid out for them.
Humanitarians Do Darfur
December 1, 2007
Black Agenda Report has an excellent piece on the exploitation of the conflict in Darfur for political reasons entitled ‘Ten Reasons Why “Save Darfur” is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa‘, except he studiously avoids mentioning the Israel connection. As the article correctly points out, these philanthropists have actively preempted resolution of the conflict in order to have a cause that they could champion and deflect attention from Israeli crimes. However, as the following article by Gbemisola Olujobi (How Not to Help Africans) shows, the members of the Humanitarian Intervention Industry don’t have any compunctions inflicting abuses of their own, so long as it advances their agenda. (p.s. Also check out this poignant plea from an African writer for the West to ‘Stop trying to “save” Africa‘)
The French charity group L’Arche de Zoé (Zoë’s Ark) took 103 Chadian children from their homes with promises of sweets and a trip to the city of Abeche. But the group put the children on a plane that was bound for France, passing them off as “Sudanese orphans from Darfur” who needed urgent medical care and foster homes in France. The fiasco sheds new light on the activities of Western “angels of mercy” in Africa.
What was Zoë’s Ark up to in Chad? On Oct. 25, a plane carrying 103 children was stopped in the Chadian city of Abeche moments before it was to take off to France. The children were swathed in bloody bandages and IV drips. Officials of Zoë’s Ark, the charity group that arranged the airlift, said the children were sick and destitute orphans from Sudan’s conflict-ridden region of Darfur who needed urgent medical attention. They said the children would be placed temporarily with French families after receiving medical treatment.
But something seemed out of place, and Chadian security insisted on checking out these children. They found that their wounds and illnesses were fake. The bandages had been smeared with dark liquid to make them look bloody, and the IV drips were unconnected. On top of it, the children said they were not from Darfur but were in fact Chadians and that no one had told them they were going to France. They had been picked up from their villages by “humanitarians” who gave them sweets and promised them an educational trip to Abeche.
Promoting Humanitarian Imperialism in Cuba and Beyond
October 15, 2007
Michael Barker with another important investigation of one of the myriad dodgy outfits set up by the humanitarian imperialists.
“People in Need (PIN) is a Czech organization that provides relief aid and development assistance, while working to defend human rights and democratic freedom… PIN is one of the largest organizations of its kind in post-communist Europe, and has administered projects in thirty-seven countries over the past fourteen years.” – People in Need (2007)
Formerly known as the Epicentrum Foundation, People In Need was founded in 1992 by “conflict journalists” and “dissidents and leaders of the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution”, only changing it name to People in Need (PIN) in 1994 when they began to work in partnership with Czech Public Service Television. For those readers already aware of the ‘democratic’ background of the so-called Velvet Revolution (of 1989), it will come as little surprise to hear that PIN currently works closely with the US’s premier democracy manipulating organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Writing from Czechoslovakia shortly after the successful Velvet Revolution – a revolution that swept Communism out, and Vaclav Havel in – Stephen Engelberg (1990) noted that:
“An American attempt to foster democracy is being denounced here as unfair interference favoring the political parties closest to President Vaclav Havel.
“At issue is $400,000 that the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington has given to the Civic Forum [which Havel led before becoming president] and the Public Against Violence, the organizations that coalesced last November to lead the revolution against Communist rule.”
Comprehending the significance of this ‘democratic’ funding to the progressive movement worldwide is critical to understanding the implications of PIN’s current work, so it is worth briefly summarizing the NED’s origins.
Created in the 1983, with bipartisan support, the NED was launched amidst much fanfare by President Reagan who stated that it would enable the US to “foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities” all over the world. Given the unquestionably murderous nature of Reagan’s regime, his adoption of the rhetoric of democracy was cunning indeed, and to date there has been little media sustained attention paid to the manipulative work of the NED and it’s numerous cohorts. Thus unhindered by the mainstream and alternative media alike, Jonah Gindin and Kirsten Weld (2007) observe that:
“…the NED and other democracy-promoting governmental and nongovernmental institutions have intervened successfully on behalf of ‘democracy’ – actually a very particular form of low-intensity democracy chained to pro-market economics – in countries from Nicaragua to the Philippines, Ukraine to Haiti, overturning unfriendly ‘authoritarian’ governments (many of which the United States had previously supported) and replacing them with handpicked pro-market allies.”
Professor William I. Robinson was the one of the first researchers to draw attention to the hypocrisy that was the antidemocratic practices of the NED, and his seminal work on this topic was Promoting Polyarchy, a book which examined the hijacking of democratic transitions in Nicaragua, Haiti, the Philippines and Chile. Robinson notes that the primary goal of such ‘democracy promoting’ groups is the promotion of polyarchy or low-intensity democracy over more substantive forms of democratic governance, enabling “the replacement of coercive means of social control with consensual ones”. Crucially, Robinson concluded that the success of foreign interventions can “be understood only when seen in its entirety – as a skilful combination of military aggression, economic blackmail, CIA propaganda, NED political interference, coercive diplomacy, and international pressures”.
Vaclav Havel as Arch ‘Democracy Promoter’
Seeing that Havel helped head off communism with NED aid, it is fitting that Havel – who retained his presidency until 2003 – would become a key ally of the ‘democracy promoting’ community, and a “long-term partnerof People in Need”. The beginning of this ‘democracy’ love-in was of course marked by his successful rise to power in 1989, but it has been maturing ever since.
In 1990 the ‘democratically’ connected Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institutehonored HavelHavel then received the NED’s annual Democracy Award, and the National Democratic Institute’s W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award (the other recipient of this award was Lane Kirkland who at the time was the president of the AFL-CIO – one of the NED’s core grantees). Sadly for Havel, such ‘democracy’ awards then dried up until 2003 when he was awarded the International Rescue Committee’s Freedom Award. The following year he was then awarded the W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award for a second time, while a further three years laterHavel was also awarded the NED’s much sought after Democracy Service Medal. with their Four Freedoms Award. Two years later
Given Havel’s strong ‘democratic’ connections it is fitting that Edward S. Herman and David Peterson (2005)refer to Havel as belonging to a group of war apologists whom they refer to collectively as The New Humanitarians. They write that:
“The defining characteristics of the New Humanitarians are that (1) they take sides, and have done so in parallel with NATO policy [that is, NATO’s policies in Yugoslavia]; (2) they reject traditional humanitarianism’s principles of neutrality, impartiality, independence, non-violence, and the provision of care; and (3) they advocate a ‘humanitarian’ right to intervene by state violence to terminate human rights abuses.”[1]
Knowing this it is not surprising that Havel is a patron of the New Atlantic Initiative, an international organization that was formed in 1996 apparently to revitalize and expand the Atlantic community of democracies. Of course, the type of democracy being promoted by the New Atlantic Initiative is low-intensity democracy, which explains why the Initiative is headquartered in Washington, D.C. at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. Other notable patrons of the New Atlantic Institute include Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, and Margaret Thatcher.
Havel’s other ‘democratic’ affiliations come through his membership of the international advisory board of the NED’s Journal of Democracy, and through his serving on the advisory boards of both the Project on Justice in Times of Transition, and the NED-funded International Campaign for Tibet (a group which in 2005 awarded its annual Light of Truth to the president of the NED). Finally, Havel is also a member of the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba, a group whose significance to the ‘democracy promoters’ will be discussed later.
Returning to People in Need, their current director and co-founder, Simon Panek, is directly linked to Havel because: “He was one of the student leaders of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ and later became a member of Civic Forum and actively participated in Havel’s team that negotiated the establishment of a democratic government.” Indeed, at PIN’s annual One World International Human Rights Film Festival there is even a Vaclav Havel Special award for the film judged to make the “most significant contribution to human rights awareness”. So given the vigorous links that exist between Havel and the NED it is understandable that the NED is such a strong supporter of PIN’s work.
People [Not] in Need of ‘Democratic’ Funding
I was first alerted to People in Need’s ties to the NED via the latter’s online Democracy Projects Database when I was researching the Education grants that they had recently been providing to Iraqi groups (the database provides grant details from 1990 onwards). This initial search revealed that in 2004 PIN had received $75,000 to enable them to “assist nascent Iraqi NGOs to build their technical and managerial capacity”. The following year PIN then received a further $100,000 grant from the NED which allowed them to continue this project.[2] Having gained my attention, I subsequently searched the NED’s database for other instances of where PIN had received NED funds by searching for grants distributed to both “People in Need (PIN)” and “People in Need Foundation (PINF)”. However, by using these terms I could not even locate the grants I had just looked at, and the database simply displayed the message “Unable to recognize as a correctly formed query”. Subsequently, I then searched the database using the term “People in Need”, which returned the same message, and then I tried the search using the term “People in Need Foundation”, which this time provided me with the details of a further four NED grants, three for work in Central and Eastern Europe Region (between 1999 and 2002), and one for work in Cuba (in 2003).[3]
At this stage I had discovered that between 1999 and 2005, the NED had provided PIN with six grants worth just over $300,000, however, as I wanted to find out more about the other funders’ of their work I examined the financial sections of their six most recent annual reports (all of which are conveniently located on their website). This is when I worked out that PIN receive a lot more money from the NED than I was led to believe by looking at the NED’s project database. In fact, according to their annual reports, in the past six years PIN has received a whopping $1 million from the NED. Furthermore, it was evident that PIN’s work was being funded by a host of ‘democracy promoting’ organizations, as they had received two grants from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (the British version of the NED) which were worth a total of $17,000, a single grant from Freedom Houseworth $19,000, a single grant from the NED-linked Reporters Without Bordersworth $3,600, and significantly, they had also received annual grants from the NED-funded Center for a Free Cuba which came to a total of a massive $389,000.[4] PIN’s links to the final Cuban group is noteworthy because Reporters Without Borders “limitless obsession with Cuba” is also funded by them, therefore, the final section of this paper will briefly examine the ‘democratic’ credentials of both the Center for a Free Cuba and the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba – a group that was founded by Havelin 2003.
Exporting ‘Democracy’ to Cuba
“The Czech Republic is at the heart of the U.S. efforts to secure multilateral support for precipitating a transition for democracy in Cuba… They’ve stuck to their principles every step of the way. Thank the Lord for the Czech Republic.” – Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen cited in Bachelet (2006)
Like many ‘democracy promoting’ organizations the Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) – which was formed in November 1997 – sounds like an innocuous democracy-loving group, and it describes itself as an “independent, non-partisan institution dedicated to promoting human rights and a transition to democracy and the rule of law on the island [Cuba]”. However, the Center’s choice of Frank Calzon as their executive director makes easy to understand the type of democracy they are interested in promoting, as for the ten years prior to starting work at the CFC Calzon had worked as the Washington representative for the neoconservative Freedom House. Calzon is also a former director of the infamous Cuban-American National Foundation CANF – another non-profit group that was formed in 1981 to advance “freedom and democracy in Cuba”.
Here it is critical to note that CANF’s ex-president, Jose S. Sorzano, previously served as a director of the Center for International Private Enterprise [5] – which is one of the NED’s four core grantees – and he formerly acted as an aide to former CFC director, the late Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick. CANF is also directly linked to CFC through retired chief executive of Bacardi, Manuel J. Cutillas, who is a former chair of CANF’s board of directors, and is currently a director of CFC.[6] (Cutillas is also presently a trustee of the Free Enterprise Foundation, where he sits next to ‘democratic’ notable Edwin Meese III.)
Other interesting ‘democratic’ CFC directors include Nestor T. Carbonell (who is also a director of the Council of the Americas, is a member of the board of overseers of the International Rescue Committee, and serves on the advisory board of the Cuba Archive – an organization that is supported by Freedom House), Jeronimo Esteve-Abril (who serves on the advisory board of the Cuba Archive, and is a former CANF director), and Susan Kaufman Purcell (who is the vice president of both the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society, serves on the advisory council of the International Executive Service Corps, serves on the advisory council of the Inter-American Foundation (in 2004 at least), is a former trustee of Freedom House, and a former member of the editorial board of the NED’s Journal of Democracy).
Finally three particularly ‘democratic’ members of CFC’s research council are Luis E. Aguilar (who serves on the advisory board of the Cuba Archive), Irving Louis Horowitz (who served on the editorial board of the NED-funded China Perspective in the late 1980s, and was a member of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya), and Georges A. Fauriol (who is a Senior Vice President of the International Republican Institute, is the former Director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and has also worked for both the US Information Agency and the Inter-American Development Bank).
Having illustrated how closely CFC’s work is to tied to the ‘democracy promoting’ community (especially the US ‘democracy’ community), it is fitting that Vaclav Havel should also have foundedthe International Committee for Democracy in Cuba (ICDC) in September 2003 – a group whose website maintains that it “assist[s] those struggling for democracy in Cuba”. Like CFC, who state their unwavering commitment to the export/support of democracy, this group’s members have strong ties to the ‘democratic’ community. Thus other than Havel, ‘democratic’ members of ICDC include Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Urban Ahlin (who serves on the steering committed of the World Movement for Democracy), Madeline Albright (who is Czech-born, and is the chair of the National Democratic Institute, chair of the advisory committee of the Eurasia Foundation, and a member of the board of overseers of the International Rescue Committee), Patricio Azocar Aylwin (who was the president of Chile from 1990 to 1994 – that is, directly after an NED-backed transition to ‘democracy’ – and also a member of the Club of Madrid), Elena Bonner (who received the NED’s democracy award in 1995, and in 1992 co-founded the Russian Research Center for Human Rights – an organization housed in the same building as the NED/USAID recipient, the Moscow Research Center for Human Rights, where Bonner also serves on their advisory board), Kim Campbell (who is the secretary-general of the Club of Madrid, and a director of the International Crisis Group), Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (who was President of Nicaragua between 1990 and 1997, and received the NED’s democracy award in 1991), Adam Michnik (who serves on the advisory board of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition, and is a member of the international advisory committee of the NED’s Journal of Democracy), and Karel Schwarzenberg (who is a member of the strategy committee of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition).
Concluding Thoughts: Beyond Sudan
As Edward S. Herman and David Peterson (2005) conclude in their groundbreaking essay, Morality’s Avenging Angels; the New Humanitarians – to which one might add People in Need – have “served as a political and propaganda arm of the new imperialism” by helping sustain the moral cover for imperial projects by “sanctioning the abandonment of the rule of law in the purported interest of human rights”. Moreover in another seminal article Herman and Peterson (2007) argue that while:
“Those on the left recognize the enormity of the lying that helped insulate U.S. and UK policymakers during their preparation to seize Iraqi territory, the depth of ideology required for educated Westerners to speak of a ‘war on terror’ or a ‘clash of civilizations’ without laughing, and so on. These lies and the structure of false beliefs that undergird them have not fared too well lately – at least to a point. In this respect, the contrast with the as yet far more impregnable edifice of lies that serves and protects the Western interventions in the former Yugoslavia – and which laid the ideological foundations for the U.S. role in Iraq and for future so-called humanitarian interventions – is stark indeed.”
This is clearly an intolerable situation, and it is one that needs to be urgently addressed by all concerned citizens: moreover, the widespread recent calls for a ‘humanitarian’ intervention in Sudan make addressing this issue all the more pressing. It is ironic indeed, that while over a million Iraqi citizens lay slaughtered by an illegal massacre led by the world’s leading state terrorist, many prominent human rights groups across the US are calling upon these same terrorists to stop the genocide in the Sudan: supposedly unaware of their own government genocidal foreign policy, which is drawing the world to the brink of a new world war – a war which is slated to be launched in the near future with the bombing of Iran.
Vijay Prashad (2007) draws our attention to the US’s oil interests in Sudan, while former NATO commander, General Wesley Clark (2007) explains that in 2001 a classified memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office described how the US planned “to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”. Furthermore, it is vital to note that on July 27, 2004, the US submitted draft resolution 1556 to the UN Security Council (which was adopted three days later) an act that Michel Chossudovsky described as “a first step in justifying a ‘humanitarian intervention’”. A ‘humanitarian’ intervention would of course provide the perfect pretext for taking out the Sudanese government. Yet is an intervention warranted? As Stephen Gowans (2007) points out:
“According to the UN commission appointed to investigate Washington’s charges that the Sudanese government is pursing a policy of genocide, the accusations have no foundation. It’s true, the commission found, that Khartoum has responded disproportionately to attacks on government forces by rebel groups, and it’s true that Khartoum is implicated in war crimes, but the commission found no evidence the Sudanese government is engaged in the project of seeking to eliminate an identifiable group, the defining characteristic of a policy of genocide. As far as humanitarian disasters go, the disaster in Iraq is far worse. So who would trust the perpetrators of that disaster – who, after all lied about there being a genocide in Kosovo and banned weapons in Iraq – to intervene in Darfur to resolve the humanitarian crisis there? That would be like giving your car keys to a known thief and pathological liar.”
Likewise Herman and Peterson (2007) observe that:
“…the only ‘never agains’ around which we’ve observed the ‘humanitarian’ war-sect mobilizing are the ones that advance an imperial agenda – never that run counter to it. The Bosnian Serbs, Yugoslavia in Kosovo, and the Sudan in Darfur (to name three examples).”
Implementing progressive solutions to the problems identified in this article simply requires that concerned citizens begin to apply their common-sense to the issues at hand. Certainly one of the first steps that progressive activists will need to take to advance a truly progressive agenda will involve them gaining a firmer grasp of the historical context to the rise of ‘humanitarian’ (read: humanitarian imperialism) interventions worldwide. Then perhaps people may begin to look more critically at the ongoing cooption of progressive voices – most notably through liberal philanthropy –and then they can start rebuilding the left, by creating a powerful grassroots-funded movement that can present a serious threat to the antidemocratic elites that stand between the world and democracy (that is, more participatory forms of democracy).
Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached at Michael.J.Barker [at] griffith.edu.au, and some of his other articles can be found here.
Endnotes
[1] “Havel praised the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia as the first case of a military intervention in a country with full sovereign power, undertaken not out of any specific economico-strategic interest but because that country was violating the elementary human rights of an ethnic group. To understand the falseness of this, compare the new moralism with the great emancipatory movements inspired by Gandhi and Martin Luther King. These were movements directed not against a specific group of people, but against concrete (racist, colonialist) institutionalised practices; they involved a positive, all-inclusive stance that, far from excluding the ‘enemy’ (whites, English colonisers), made an appeal to its moral sense and asked it to do something that would restore its own moral dignity. The predominant form of today’s ‘politically correct’ moralism, on the other hand, is that of Nietzschean ressentiment and envy: it is the fake gesture of disavowed politics, the assuming of a ‘moral’, depoliticised position in order to make a stronger political case. This is a perverted version of Havel’s ‘power of the powerless’: powerlessness can be manipulated as a stratagem in order to gain more power, in exactly the same way that today, in order for one’s voice to gain authority, one has to legitimise oneself as being some kind of (potential or actual) victim of power.” Slavoj Zizek, Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, London Review of Books, October 28, 1999.
[2] Exact grant details:
Grantor: NED; Grantee: People in Need Foundation (PINF); Country(ies): Iraq; Region: Middle East; Subject(s): Education; Grant Awarded: 2004; Amount: $75,000*; Program Summary: To increase cross border cooperation with a pilot mentoring program. PINF will assist nascent Iraqi NGOs to build their technical and managerial capacity. NGO experts from Central Eastern European countries with technical skills matching the needs of the Iraqi groups will be identified and placed as mentors with appropriate Iraqi NGOs.
Grantor: NED; Grantee: People in Need (PIN); Country(ies): Iraq; Region: Middle East; Subject(s): Education; Grant Awarded: 2005; Amount: $100,000*; Program Summary: To continue its NGO training and capacity building program for nascent Iraqi NGOs. PIN will provide two weeks of NGO management training in Amman, Jordan for 30 Iraqi NGOs and select 15 recipients for small grants of Amount $2,500. These NGOs will attend a two-week advanced project management training in Amman before returning to Iraq to implement the grant activities.
Grantor: NED; Grantee: People in Need Foundation; Country(ies): Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Kosovo; Region: Central and Eastern Europe; Subject(s): Media and Publishing; Grant Awarded: 1999; Amount: $21,000 (special USIA funds for the Balkans and Slovakia); Program Summary: To work with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to organize a one-month training program in Prague for 15 young Kosovar journalists. The program will include seminars and lectures on the fundamental principles of journalism and hands-on training on state-of-the-art radio broadcasting equipment and the Internet.
Grantor: NED; Grantee: People in Need Foundation; Country(ies): Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Kosovo; Region: Central and Eastern Europe; Subject(s): Media and Publishing; Grant Awarded: 2000; Amount: $23,240*; Program Summary: To raise professional and managerial competence of independent news organizations in the province and to promote a free and democratic media.
Grantor: NED; Grantee: People in Need Foundation; Country(ies): Central and Eastern Europe Regional; Region: Central and Eastern Europe; Subject(s): Media and Publishing; Youth; Grant Awarded: 2002; Amount: $27,500*; Program Summary: To enable the Faik Konica Journalism Academy to conduct a series of courses on professional journalism and media management for more than 200 young journalists. Funding will also be used to help cover the Academy’s infrastructure costs.
Grantor: NED; Grantee: People in Need Foundation; Country(ies): Cuba; Region: Latin America and the Caribbean; Subject(s): Media and Publishing; Grant Awarded: 2003; Amount: $60,000; Program Summary: To work with various independent groups in Cuba to develop their capacity to produce and distribute samizdat. The Foundation will work closely with local journalists and dissident groups and help promote their work internationally.
[4] In 2000, PIN received CZK 4,108,663 ($107,000) from the NED, CZK 605,904 ($16,000) from the Center for a Free Cuba, CZK 33,948 ($1,000) from the Westminster Foundation, In 2001, PIN received €105,903 ($150,000) from the NED, €22,339 ($32,000) from the Center for a Free Cuba, €11,127 ($16,000) from the Westminster Foundation.
In 2002, PIN received €96,032 ($136,000) from the NED, €63,949 ($91,000) from the Center for a Free Cuba, €13,422 ($19,000) from Freedom House, €15,951 ($23,000) from Saferhouse
In 2003, PIN received €111,717 ($158,000) from the NED, €109,361 ($155,000) from the International Rescue Committee, €42,864 ($61,000) from the Center for a Free Cuba, In 2004, PIN received €171,869 ($243,000) from the NED, €127,786 ($181,000) from the International Rescue Committee, €48.810 ($69,000) from the Center for a Free Cuba,
In 2005, PIN received €169,454 ($240,000) from the NED, and it is also interesting that they received €7,137 ($10,000) from the Americans Friends Service Committee, €2,517 ($3,600) from Reporters Without Borders, and €85,502 ($120,000) from the Center for a Free Cuba.
Currency conversions from Euros to US$ were made using current exchange rates.
[5] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_International_Private_Enterprise
[6] For more background information on Manuel J. Cutillas’s involvement with Bacardi, see Hernando Calvo Ospina, Bacardi: The Hidden War (London: Pluto Press, 2002).
War in the Name of Peace
October 5, 2007
The world’s best news service Inter Press Service interviews Jean Bricmont, the author of Humanitarian Imperialism.
BRUSSELS, Sep 20 (IPS) – International law is seen by many to have been shunted aside by Western powers when launching their most significant military operations in the past decade.
In 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation lacked any mandate from the United Nations when it attacked Serbia. In Afghanistan, the U.S. continued bombing in 2002, even when the government that replaced the Taliban asked it to stop (lest the civilian death toll rise).
And the United States asserted a highly disputed entitlement to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iraq a year later, citing bogus claims that the country had weapons of mass destruction and had played a role in the Sep 11, 2001 attacks.
In his new book ‘Humanitarian Imperialism’, the pacifist intellectual Jean Bricmont exposes how human rights have been used to justify military exploits that he regards as legally dubious and morally odious.
A 55-year-old professor of theoretical physics in Belgium’s University of Louvain, Bricmont is also editor of ‘Chomsky’, a new collection of articles on the linguist and trenchant political analyst Noam Chomsky.
Bricmont spoke to IPS Brussels correspondent David Cronin.
IPS: You have suggested that NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 was a turning point for a new form of imperialism. Why do you think so?
JB: There were several reasons against that war but there was so little reaction from people on the left. If you exclude a very small number of individuals who knew better, everyone was convinced the war was necessary and the U.S. should intervene for humanitarian reasons, irrespective of the particularities of the case.
I don’t agree that it was a good thing to destroy international law. I don’t agree that the situation in Kosovo was so dire, that it was necessary to bomb (Serbia). And I don’t agree that the removal of (then Serbian president Slobodan) Milosevic was a good thing, irrespective of everything else.
Milosevic was elected. Maybe his election was not pure. But there is no pure democracy in the world. In France, you needed six times as many votes to elect a communist in urban areas as you do to elect a (right-leaning) Gaullist in rural areas. But nobody says France is not a democracy.
IPS: Much of ‘Humanitarian Imperialism’ deals with Iraq. Why do you reject the widely held view that the oil industry should be blamed for the war there?
JB: Of course, oil had a role to play in a trivial sense. The U.S. doesn’t want Iraq’s oil under the feet of Iran, Saudi Arabia or even the present Iraqi government.
But the naïve view of the peace movement that the U.S. went there to rob oil doesn’t seem defensible. I don’t know of any evidence that the oil industry lobbied for war.
Every war needs war propaganda. And the oil industry — to my knowledge — have not done any war propaganda at all.
The Zionist lobby, on the other hand, have always done war propaganda. If you open an American newspaper, you will find columns that are written by people who are Zionist and pro-Israel, even if they are not all Jews. It is fair to call (President George W.) Bush and (Vice-President Dick) Cheney Zionists, even if they are not Jewish. Especially Cheney.
IPS: The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was preceded by huge protests across Europe. Why has the peace movement lost that momentum?JB: I’m not a sociologist but if I can resort to conjecture: many people went out in the streets because they thought the war would turn ugly. Of course, it did turn ugly but not in the way that was thought. There were no weapons of mass destruction. And don’t forget that (then British prime minister) Tony Blair was talking about missiles being launched within 45 minutes.
The people in the peace movement were either genuinely anti-war or genuinely concerned about the interests of their own countries.
There are different situations in different countries. In Britain the anti-war movement faced a problem of deciding who to vote for. The Conservatives are as gung-ho as Labour. And with the Liberal Democrats, the system is biased against them.
IPS: Given your criticism of Israel’s tactics in the Palestinian territories, do you think there is a case for boycotting Israeli goods?
JB: Yes, there should be a campaign for a boycott. That is one way that citizens have to show they are angry.
Some people say: why not boycott the U.S.? I think we should boycott the U.S. but I don’t see how this could be done practically.
In Britain and the U.S., a large part of the population does not agree with the government. In Israel, there is much more homogeneity. Even the moderates in the genuine peace camp are very marginal.
IPS: Reviewers have pointed out that your book doesn’t examine the situation in Darfur. What should the West do about the killings there?JB: My book is not against intervention within the framework of the UN. In principle, maybe something could be negotiated there. A peacekeeping force can be sent when there is a peacekeeping agreement to prevent rogue elements from destroying the peace. But when you send a peacekeeping force before you have a peacekeeping agreement, that is war.
It also seems to me that some people are using Darfur to change the subject away from Iraq. Iraq may be the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. You have three-four million refugees and maybe one million dead.
IPS: You are quite critical of human rights organisations for being selective in deciding what rights they focus on. Why is that?JB: Human Rights Watch says it will not discuss whether a war is legitimate or not. All it wants is for war parties to respect the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention is not respected in any war.
IPS: You’ve also written that the left in Europe is only moderately less in favour of unfettered capitalism than the right. Can you explain what you mean by that?
JB: It is amazing how after the fall of communism, democracy became the new cause. The left adopted this and turned it into a pro-Western, anti-Third World discussion.
Look at the way the left complains about China. When the Chinese said recently that they want to improve the rights of workers in Chinese factories, big Western corporations said: ‘If you do that, we will move abroad, we will move to Vietnam.’ This is not something the left is concerned about. It just blames the Chinese leaders for everything.
IPS: Can I ask you about the European Union and the current efforts by its leaders to introduce a reform treaty that is largely the same as the constitution rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005. I understand you were pleased by the ‘No’ vote in France?JB: I wasn’t entirely happy. I was happy that at least the media was defeated.
But I have no illusion about why people voted ‘No’. They voted because of nationalism. Fifty-five percent of people voted ‘No’ and of that 35 percent were from the left and 20 percent were from the right.
There is nothing telling me that that the reason why people on the left voted ‘No’ was all for social reasons and not for reasons of nationalism. With the victory of (centre-right candidate Nicolas) Sarkozy (in a presidential election earlier this year), a lot of people who voted for him had voted ‘No’. People over 65 who voted overwhelmingly for Sarkozy had voted ‘No’.
The failure I see in Belgium at the moment (where Dutch and French-speaking parties have not yet formed a coalition government several months after a general election) could anticipate the future of Europe. Why should the Finns, Portuguese, Irish and Greeks be feeling closer to each other, more than Flemish and Walloons feeling closer to each other?Without a common feeling, how do you build a country with bureaucracy and free markets? There is an enormous amount of delusion (about European integration).
IPS: Finally, I’ve been told that you are the man who effectively introduced Noam Chomsky to francophone Europe. Is that true?
JB: I first met Chomsky when I went to listen to him in Princeton (the U.S. university) in the early 1980s. After the first Gulf War, I invited him to Belgium to speak at the Flemish university VUB.
In France it has been an uphill battle to put him on the map. (Journalist) Philippe Val attacked him recently because (Osama) bin Laden mentioned him in his recent video.
He is still being demonised and misrepresented.
Kouchner Does Iran
September 17, 2007
Israel’s man at the Quai d’Orsay and renowned warmonger, Bernard Kouchner, is settling comfortably into his new role — he has just threatened war. However, this time he appears to have gotten ahead of himself. Even the generally staid IAEA has been impelled to rebuke his crude warmongering (recall that in the past Kouchner has been wise enough to cloak his martial ambitions in humanitarian garb), along with the generally restrained Austrians.
It is not clear how the rest of France feels about Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions, but the lobby has for some time been annoyed with IAEA’s refusal to play ball (even though IAEA inspectors have been turning over data from their tours of Irani nuclear facilities to Israeli and US intelligence ever since Iran began the voluntary cooperation. I emphasize the ‘voluntary’ because Iran is not required through its NPT obligations to submit to these inspections). It has been ratcheting up its rhetoric to pressure the agency into taking a more hardline position. The lobby is also concerned with the recent focus on its role in urging US on towards the Iraq war; a new war will relieve the pressure, albeit temporarily, as the nation will predictably respond with characteristic jingoism, lining up behind ‘our boys’.
Like Tariq Ali, even some astute observers have been dismissing the possibility of war too lightly. Col. Sam Gardiner of the USAF who was here in Glasgow recently in fact believes (based on information from insiders) that the decision to bomb Iran has already been taken. And if you think war with Iran is too improbable, then this article from Jean Bricmont should disabuse you of such false complacence.
Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran
September 4, 2007
This is a very important article from Jean Bricmont.
Many people in the antiwar movement try to reassure themselves: Bush cannot possibly attack Iran. He does not have the means to do so, or, perhaps, even he is not foolish enough to engage in such an enterprise. Various particular reasons are put forward, such as: If he attacks, the Shiites in Iraq will cut the US supply lines. If he attacks, the Iranians will block the Straits of Ormuz or will unleash dormant terrorist networks worldwide. Russia won’t allow such an attack. China won’t allow it — they will dump the dollar. The Arab world will explode.
All this is doubtful. The Shiites in Iraq are not simply obedient to Iran. If they don’t rise against the United States when their own country is occupied (or if don’t rise very systematically), they are not likely to rise against the US if a neighboring country is attacked. As for blocking the Straits or unleashing terrorism, this will just be another justification for more bombing of Iran. After all, a main casus belli against Iran is, incredibly, that it supposedly helps the resistance against U.S. troops in Iraq, as if those troops were at home there. If that can work as an argument for bombing Iran, then any counter-measure that Iran might take will simply “justify” more bombing, possibly nuclear. Iran is strong in the sense that it cannot be invaded, but there is little it can do against long range bombing, accompanied by nuclear threats.
Russia will escalate its military buildup (which now lags far behind the U.S. one), but it can’t do anything else, and Washington will be only too glad to use the Russian reaction as an argument for boosting its own military
forces. China is solely concerned with its own development and won’t drop the dollar for non-economic reasons. Most Arab governments, if not their populations, will look favorably on seeing the Iranian shiite leadership humiliated. Those governments have sufficient police forces to control any popular opposition– after all, that is what they managed to do after the attack on Iraq.
With the replacement of Chirac by Sarkozy, and the near-complete elimination of what was left of the Gaullists (basically through lawsuits on rather trivial matters), France has been changed from the most independent European country to the most poodlish (this was in fact the main issue in the recent presidential election, but it was never even mentioned during the campaign). In France, moreover, the secular “left” is, in the main, gung-ho against Iran for the usual reasons (women, religion). There will be no large-scale demonstrations in France either before or after the bombing. And, without French support, Germany–where the war is probably very unpopular — can always be silenced with memories of the Holocaust, so that no significant opposition to the war will come from Europe (except possibly from its Muslim population, which will be one more argument to prove that they are “backward”, “extremist”, and enemies of our “democratic civilization”).
All the ideological signposts for attacking Iran are in place. The country has been thoroughly demonized because it is not nice to women, to gays, or to Jews. That in itself is enough to neutralize a large part of the American “left”. The issue of course is not whether Iran is nice or not according to our views — but whether there is any legal reason to attack it, and there is none; but the dominant ideology of human rights has legitimized, specially in the left, the right of intervention on humanitarian grounds anywhere, at any time, and that ideology has succeeded in totally sidetracking the minor issue of international law.
Israel and its fanatical American supporters want Iran attacked for its political crimes–supporting the rights of the Palestinians, or questioning the Holocaust. Both U.S. political parties are equally under the control of the Israel lobby, and so are the media. The antiwar movement is far too preoccupied with the security of Israel to seriously defend Iran and it won’t attack the real architects of this coming war–the Zionists– for fear of “provoking antisemitism”. Blaming Big Oil for the Iraq war was quite debatable, but, in the case of Iran, since the country is about to be bombed but not invaded, there is no reason whatsoever to think that Big Oil wants the war, as opposed to the Zionists. In fact, Big Oil is probably very much opposed to the war, but it is as unable to stop it as the rest of us.
As far as Israel is concerned, the United States is a de facto totalitarian society–no articulate opposition is acceptable. The U.S. Congress passes one pro-Israel or anti-Iran resolution after another with “Stalinist” majorities. The population does not seem to care. But if they did, but what could they do? Vote? The electoral system is extremely biased against the emergence of a third party and the two big parties are equally under Zionist influence.
The only thing that might stop the war would be for Americans themselves to threaten their own government with massive civil disobedience. But that is not going to happen. A large part of the academic left long ago gave up informing the general public about the real world in order to debate whether Capital is a Signifier or a Signified, or worry about their Bodies and their Selves, while preachers tell their flocks to rejoice at each new sign that the end of the world is nigh. Children in Iran won’t sleep at night, but the liberal American intelligentsia will lecture the ROW (rest of the world) about Human Rights. In fact, the prevalence of the “reassuring arguments” cited above proves that the antiwar movement is clinically dead. If it weren’t, it would rely on its own forces to stop war, not speculate on how others might do the job.
Meanwhile, an enormous amount of hatred will have been spewed upon the world. But in the short term, it may look like a big Western “victory”, just like the creation of Israel in 1948; just like the overthrow of Mossadegh by the CIA in 1953; just like the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine seemed to be a big German victory after the French defeat at Sedan in 1870. The Bush administration will long be gone when the disastrous consequences of that war will be felt.
PS: This text is not meant to be a prophecy, but a call to (urgent) action. I’ll be more than happy if facts prove me wrong.
Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, is published by Monthly Review Press. He can be reached at bricmont@fyma.ucl.ac.be.
When Zionists Go Humanitarian
August 22, 2007
Lessons from the first Zionist encounter with humanitarianism: People from Darfur are good enough to be political props, but not good enough to be allowed refuge in your country. Whe the US Israel Lobby established the Save Darfur campaign, it clearly hadn’t taken into account the possibility that it may be saddling with humanitarian responsiblity a country whose human rights abuses it was set up to deflect attention from. This Reuters report is touching.
ISRAEL has begun deporting refugees from the massacres in the Sudanese region of Darfur despite claims that the legacy of the Holocaust imposes a special responsibility on the Jewish state to protect fugitives from genocide.
On Saturday, for the first time Israel deported African refugees who had sneaked across its border with Egypt. The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported most of the 50 refugees returned to Egypt were believed to be from Darfur, where militias allegedly supported by the Sudanese Government have killed an estimated 200,000 people.
The office of the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said the forced return of the 50 refugees complied with Israeli and international law.
This month 63 of Israel’s 120 parliamentarians, including the opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, signed a petition asking the Government to allow Sudanese refugees to remain in Israel until another country could be found to take them.
“The refugees need protection and sanctuary, and the Jewish people’s history as well as the values of democracy and humanity pose a moral imperative for us to give them that shelter,” the petition said.
In recent months the number of African migrants trying to sneak across Israel’s border with Egypt has reached 50 a day, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says.
Although most of them say they are fleeing persecution, the Israeli Government argues that they are economic migrants who have chosen to leave the safety of Egypt in search of better conditions in Israel.
At the weekend an Israeli Government spokesman said that some of the approximately 500 Darfuri refugees already in Israel would be allowed to stay but new arrivals would be sent back.
Israel estimates that around 2800 mainly African migrants and refugees have illegally crossed its border in recent years – far fewer than the numbers of would-be migrants coming to European Union states but high for a country where non-Jewish immigration is frowned on.
Over the past two decades Israel has accepted about 100,000 immigrants from Ethiopia and a million from the former Soviet states. They have been encouraged to come under Israel’s Law of Return, which grants citizenship and benefits to anyone who can show they had at least one Jewish grandparent.
The Israeli Government argues that it is entitled to return the fugitives to their country of first refuge and that it has been assured by the Egyptian Government that they will not be harmed or returned to Sudan.
Human rights groups say there are already about 2 million Sudanese refugees in Egypt, where they complain of discrimination and state brutality.
This month an Israeli television channel said that it had footage shot by Israeli border guards of two Sudanese refugees being beaten to death by Egyptian border guards. It said it would not show the footage to avoid a dispute with Egypt.
US food aid is Wrecking Africa
August 17, 2007
When Oscar Wilde spoke about the sins of charity he was perhaps being flippant. However, as the following report confirms, charity has played a key role in the de-development of the so-called Third World.
Critics of US food aid subsidies say they help cause obesity among Americans and starvation among Africans.
Now Care, one of the world’s biggest charities, has announced that it will boycott the controversial policy of selling tons of heavily subsidised US produced food in African countries. Care wants the US government to send money to buy food locally, rather than unwanted US produced food.
The US arm of the charity says America is causing rather than reducing hunger with a decree that US food aid must be sold rather than directly distributed to those facing starvation. In America, the subsidies for corn in particular, help underpin the junk food industry, which uses corn extracts as a sweetener, creating a home-grown a health crisis.
The farm lobby meanwhile has a stranglehold on Congress, which has balked at making any changes that would interfere with a system that promotes overproduction of commodities.
Critics of the policy say it also undermines African farmers’ ability to produce food, making the most vulnerable countries of the world even more dependent on aid to avert famine.
Under the system Washington buys tens of millions of dollars of surplus corn and other products from agribusiness. The food, which can only be exported on US flagged ships, is then sold by charities to raise money to pay for emergencies.
Globally, about 800 million are chronically hungry and the number is rising every year. US farmers love the present system, but it is slow and unresponsive when there are food emergencies.
Care has caused a huge upset in the American charitable sector by deciding to phase out the practice. It has also upset US agribusiness and shipping interests, which benefit to the tune of some $180m a year from the practice.
Attempts to get Congress to end the policy, as it debates a new farm bill that will last for the next five years, have failed.
Alina Labrada, a spokeswoman for Care said: “I don’t think that Americans who generously donate want people to go hungry at their expense.”
Care’s decision has led to a rift with some of the biggest US charities, including World Vision, Feed the Children and Africare, who rely on the system to fund a large part of their budgets. They argue that it keeps hard currency in impoverished countries and stops food prices rising.
The US claims to be the world’s most generous provider of food aid, giving $2bn annually. Much of that aid lost in the overheads of shipping it to Africa.
Not only does subsidised US food hurt African farmers, but food purchased in the US regularly takes four months to reach the destination where there is an emergency. In contrast food bought locally takes only days to arrive.
“Humanitarian Wars” and Associated Delusions
August 14, 2007
Today’s guest editorial is an excellent review of Jean Bricmont’s new book Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War (Monthly Review Press, 2007) by my friend Paul de Rooij.
Most inhabitants of Western countries are afflicted by nefarious delusions about the nature of their societies and government policy; the public at large is led to believe that their societies are superior, and their governments’ policies are noble and generous. The illusions have to do with the dissonance between the fabricated image and the reality of state power, especially when it entails wars waged against third world countries. Awful wars are waged for crass motives, yet they are sold on the basis that they are driven by benevolent intent. Promotion of democracy, freedoms, human rights, women’s rights, and even religious tolerance are some of the purported motives for current interventions, subversion or wars. Since the 1990s, in the lead-up to the wars against former Yugoslavia, the primary justification offered to wage war was that it was necessary to safeguard human rights or to improve the humanitarian conditions of the target population. If the blatant hypocrisy wasn’t bad enough, the Left’s delusions regarding the stated humanitarian rationale for wars has had a distinctly deleterious effect on the Left as a movement and the organized opposition to the depredations of their states. Jean Bricmont’s Humanitarian Imperialism is an extensive analysis of the “humanitarian war” rationale, and how its twisted arguments should be countered and its rationale for war rejected. One of the defining aspects of the Left of yesteryear was an opposition to imperialism and its consequent wars; Bricmont’s important contribution aims to resurrect the principled opposition to the new imperial wars waged primarily by the United States and Britain.
Subversion of International Law
Perhaps the most important point addressed in this book is that the “humanitarian intervention” rationale served as a cynical means to sideline international law; it is usually presented as one requiring utmost speed to avert further disaster and therefore there is no time for formalities such as observing the UN Charter or international law in general. For at least two decades, the US has been itching to emasculate the UN even further and to undermine the basis of international law; the means to obtain this objective has been to promote “humanitarian wars” or even “humanitarian bombing” (it is difficult to concoct a nicer oxymoron) [1]. What is disconcerting is that this Trojan horse wasn’t repelled by the principal human rights organizations, the so-called public intellectuals, or groups on the Left. The acceptance of the justification for wars has undermined the anti-war movement and it seems that few are aware of the stark implications of a debilitated international legal framework, i.e., a world afflicted with incessant wars and ruled by the law of the jungle. Those seeking to resist imperial wars or obtain a modicum of justice ought to defend the principle of international law, and certainly not allow it to be undermined by disingenuous appeals for war.
Kissing your SUV goodbye
If the US and its allies wage wars on the basis of false justifications, then the question arises what their real motives are. Another important section of Bricmont’s book analyzes the nature of state power and the real reasons for wars or interventions. His analysis suggests that one of the reasons wars are waged is to guarantee access to raw materials and markets [2]. It is also fair to say that most western societies owe their economic development very much to the access to cheap resources, and most interventions seek to continue to guarantee such access. Even the tiniest/poorest third world countries are whipped into compliance — no deviation is tolerated. If one rejects the notion of wars to guarantee cheap resources then there are serious implications for our societies; our economies will have to be weaned from such cheap supplies entailing costly restructuring. To change our societies so that they are less destructive to others requires rejecting delusions about our states, it demands rejecting interventionist wars, and certainly confronting specious justifications for such wars.
Clearing up arguments
Bricmont provides a lengthy analysis of the pro-war humanitarian arguments, and, in order to do so, also addresses the ineffective anti-war arguments used by some on the Left. Maybe it is fair to suggest that the Left in western countries has sometimes engaged in less-than-clear thinking. In the past Leftist groups opposed wars against third world countries as a matter of principle, but beginning in the late 1990s some succumbed to the humanitarian interventionist ideology; what is surprising is how effective this ploy has been. Others reject wars, but do so using weak, confusing or even contradictory arguments. In countering the pro-war arguments, Bricmont provides analysis suggesting the strongest counter-arguments, and how the twisted historical analogies used to sell wars are best dealt with (e.g., appeasement, or confronting Hitler early on). Bricmont’s analysis of the Second World War analogies — a favorite with the human rights crusaders — should certainly be studied by anyone opposing wars.
What is missing
While the book deals with pro-war humanitarian arguments, it doesn’t mention that some humanitarian disasters haven’t elicited the same reaction. For human rights crusaders some cases deserve the intervention imperative, yet others are neglected. While they demand intervention in Darfur they are mysteriously silent about Congo; Palestine is perhaps the most neglected issue. Since part of the book deals with exposing the hypocrisy in the way wars are sold, maybe the book could have highlighted the cases where the vocal advocates for war apply a double standard.
The book is perhaps best read in conjunction with Diana Johnstone’s Fools’ Crusade (Johnstone is also the translator of Bricmont’s book). While Humanitarian Imperialism deals with the humanitarian war topic in general, Fools’ Crusade deals with a case history of this issue, i.e., the war against Yugoslavia, a particularly important chapter for the humanitarian war rationale and the origins of this ideology. Her book provides a historical background of the way the wars against Yugoslavia were deliberately and cynically planned. Kirsten Sellars’ The Rise and Rise of Human Rights is another important book providing additional context. Sellars presents a history of how human rights have been exploited by the United States and Britain, and it also provides an unflattering history of the principal human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch in particular has been a key organization pushing for humanitarian wars, and a proper appreciation of such organizations is necessary to counter their influence. Finally, while Bricmont refers to a few of the principal proponents of humanitarian wars, the so-called public intellectuals or Liberals, more of these human rights crusaders need to be taken to task about their positions [3]. Edward S. Herman and David Peterson have compiled a list of these operators and it is also worth reading in conjunction with Bricmont’s book [4]. One of the listed crusaders is Bernard Kouchner, the recently appointed French Foreign Minister, and his interventionist proclivities may well explain the changing French policy aligning itself closer to US policy.
Applying the lessons to Darfur
Bricmont’s book doesn’t deal with Darfur in any great detail, but one should apply its lessons to this case in rejecting calls for intervention. There are several reasons for this, and the primary one is that it has been a stated objective of the neocons to “take out” Sudan [5], and if this rotten gang bays for intervention, it behooves one to reconsider joining the chorus. The US has stepped up its presence in the region by organizing an invasion of Somalia, establishing a military presence in Chad, arming some Sudanese rebel groups, etc. The US seeks to undermine Sudan for reasons unrelated to the humanitarian situation, e.g., denying oil resources to its competitors. The US has also used the Darfur issue to deflect attention from its own depredations in Iraq or Afghanistan. Furthermore, several US-based zionist groups have taken up the Darfur issue for equally cynical ends. Pushing the Darfur issue is viewed among some of these groups as a means of deflecting attention from Israel, suggesting that the situation in Darfur is worse and therefore “why single out Israel”. Divestment from companies doing business in Sudan serves the similar purpose of undermining efforts in the US to launch a divestment from Israel or boycott campaign. The situation in Darfur was also exploited after the Israeli war of aggression against Lebanon in 2006; as soon as the war ended, the media focus shifted immediately and preponderantly to cover the Darfur situation in order to deflect attention from a criminal war by US/Israel. There is also the question of focus as a humanitarian catastrophe of a much higher magnitude in Congo has barely elicited a peep. Finally, it is also clear that much of the conflict has to do with population dislocations due to environmental change, and it is likely that armed interventions aren’t the best solution.
If we reject intervention as Bricmont urges us to do, there is an issue about what must be done. According to Jonathan Steele, negotiations among local groups will likely result in accommodation and conflict resolution [6]. Armed intervention on the other hand could only make matters worse.
Just like the chickenhawks, but more likely useful fools
The neocon chickenhawks are best known for urging the US military to go to war while they remained safely ensconced in their think tanks. The leftists or Liberals who have jumped on the humanitarian war bandwagon engage in very much the same hypocrisy. When anyone today prescribes “intervention”, they are really only urging the military of their state to attack other countries, while they themselves are sitting pretty. Someone else will die for the positions they propound, and it is certainly a very different attitude compared to those who joined the International Brigades in Spain — no chickens then. What makes matters worse is that the military was really not established to further humanitarian aims, but is meant to impose the interests of state power. Recently, the British military was concerned that “increasing emotional attachment to the outside world” had led the British public to expect humanitarian interventions [7]. The UK military sought to shape public attitudes so that military activities wouldn’t be constrained or, let alone, face demands to have the military be used in legitimate peacekeeping! When the military are actually used for “humanitarian intervention” this means that the rationale has been exploited by state power to sell its wars and they have even managed to get some Lefty or Liberal dupes on board. Alternatively, if a state doesn’t care to intervene in a given country, it will simply ignore the humanitarian appeals. When the British government’s hypocrisy is exposed, e.g., with the “genocide” in Darfur, it simply states that it will “consider joining multilateral action” and, of course, it has been wringing its hands about what to do [8]. The first indication that a state doesn’t want to use its military for humanitarian ends is when there are references to “multilateral action”; translation: do nothing or simply provide token forces subject to stringent “rules of engagement”. Anyone opposed to the imperialist trends of the US and its faithful poodles should reject calls for direct military intervention in the third world; there already have been too many interventions.
Tony Judt wrote: “In today’s America, neoconservatives generate brutish policies for which liberals provide the ethical fig leaf. There is no other difference between them” [9]. His article’s apt title is “Bush’s Useful Idiots”. When jumping on the same bandwagon as the neocons, human rights crusaders might consider whether they are being jerked around.
Conclusion
The adoption of the humanitarian war rationale has had a particularly damaging effect on what remains of the Left in Western countries; one of the basic tenets for Leftists should have been to oppose imperial wars, and it has been disconcerting to witness the adoption of the human rights lingo to either co-cheerlead wars, accept portions of the rationale for war or simply to demonstrate unreflective muddled thinking. Jean Bricmont’s book, Humanitarian Imperialism, is a clearly written guide through this moral maze, an unmasking of tendentious interpretation of history, and an antidote to the principal malaise afflicting our times: hypocrisy. It is an important contribution to help the Left to assess critically history, and to break through an intellectual logjam surrounding the so-called humanitarian wars.
Paul de Rooij is a writer living in London. He can be reached at proox@hotmail.com (NB: all emails with attachments will be automatically deleted.) Paul de Rooij © 2007Notes
- See Alexander Cockburn, How the US State Dept. Recruited Human Rights Groups to Cheer On the Bombing Raids: Those Incubator Babies, Once More?, CounterPunch Newsletter, April 1999.
- Of course, there are other reasons too — some of them irrational, others to favor Israel, etc. For further discussion see: Jean Bricmont, The De-Zionization of the American Mind, 12 August 2006.
- Public intellectuals are only public or “celebrity” in so far as they present a serviceable rationale for state power. As soon as their message deviates from the interests of the state, they are quickly demoted to the ranks of relegated intellectuals.
- Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, Morality’s Avenging Angels: The New Humanitarian Crusaders, Znet, 30 August 2005.
- Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander stated on DemocracyNow: “… And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, *Sudan* and, finishing off, Iran.” Amy Goodman interviewed Wesley Clark, “Gen. Wesley Clark Weighs Presidential Bid: “I Think About It Everyday“ , 2 March 2007.
- Jonathan Steele, Unseen by western hysteria, Darfur edges closer to peace, 10 August 2007.
- Mark Curtis quoted in David Miller (ed.), Tell me lies: Propaganda and Media distortion in the Attack on Iraq, Pluto Press 2004.
- Statement by Mike Gapes MP, member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Compass Conference, London, 2006.
- Tony Judt, “Bush’s Useful Idiots”, London Review of Books, 21 Sept. 2006.
