Here
is the column I have in the CSM today. It is a plea to Americans (and our leaders) to get back to supporting the UN and its stress on finding nonviolent ways to resolve international differences.
23 thoughts on “CSM column on US and the world”
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Good one.
Indeed, a good piece, and a much-needed point of view amongst Americans.
I can agree with your suggestion that the US desperately needs to back away from the lawless (and immoral) modern US/British practice of using unilateral force whenever their treaty commitments to forego such prove inconvenient. At the same time I applaud the Bush regime for resisting Kyoto and the ICC (though I still believe Bush should be imprisoned – by the US – for his actions in Afghanistan and Iraq).
The bottom line is that the UN was a good thing insofar as it stuck to what you yourself describe as its main purpose – nonviolent resolution of conflicts. The rest of the UN’s functions should be taken behind a barn and done away with tomorrow. If we were to stick to non-intervention, maybe this left/right antiwar alliance thing could work.
The UN did its job over Iraq, declining to legitimise the US and UK’s intended attack on Iraq, and forcing them to shamelessly breach international law and their own binding treaty commitments in order to carry out their conspiracy against peace. Nothing more could be expected of it, given the US veto.
Given that, if US foreign policy does not change we non-Americans will be forced to try to resist the hegemon in the time-honoured way, by building a coalition against the US, as was done against the Soviets in the late C20th, , the Germans in the early C20th, and the French in the early C19th.
Once we knew that war was a curse, to be avoided at some risk even. Even our bellicose US national anthem speaks of standing against “war’s desolation” — we don’t sing that verse much. Not that hardly anyone can sing it at all.
Afraid I agree with Randal; of necessity there will be a coalition against the hegemon. Perhaps then we’ll look fondly to international law.
Helena, it’s a nice article, and I wish I shared your sense of direction. But I don’t. While I fully agree that war is a scourge, I do not buy your argument that current US militarism is the result of some change in public perception of war, nor do I agree that we can look to the UN for solutions. The people are the people – they haven’t changed. The relentless need for ever-increasing corporate profits has simply used up the available margins here in the US, necessitating the exploitation of foreign labor and resources. Naturally, this predatory behavior has encountered resistance in some parts of the world. The response is a resort to force, in protection of “our” economic interests. You have to understand that for corporations, there is no such thing as “choice” when it comes to pursuing higher profits. They are amoral and rather fatalistic entities, like machines. The US is currently governed on a corporate model. The people have very little say in this. Of course they could theoretically rise up in revolt, but conditions are not nearly bad enough yet for that. What relevance does the UN have to any of this? How is the UN going to rest control of the US government or its economy from corporate interests?
John wrote :
“They are amoral and rather fatalistic entities, like machines.”
Of course the US multinational corporations have an only goal, aka to make profit and you are right to underscore their amorality. But not all government are the same. The Bush administration has been especially complacent toward the militaro industrial complex and toward the oil companies. However they can be stopped if the citizen realizes where that brought the country.
I find that your view is far too determinist and fatalist. As if people couldn’t do anything.
Of course, the economic groups try to confiscate the political power. Yet, the citizen have a power if they can be moved to exercize it. The politic has to reassert himself against the economy. The economy isn’t governed by “natural unavoidable laws”. Citizen can have their say, but they must engage themselves in the political fight.
The UN reflects the power relationships between the nations of the world. IMO, they can have a benefic influence, if the US (the main military actual power) support it and doesn’t undermine it by its unilateral approach.
“Of course they could theoretically rise up in revolt, but conditions are not nearly bad enough yet for that.”
This is a peculiar and revealing construction of JC’s. It seems to suggest that the masses only rise up in revolt when they are stimulated by pain. Yet the mention of “theory” already gives the lie to this assumption.
It is not pain that consolidates the masses for revolution, but consciousness. Yes, they will initially organise to respond to experienced difficulties. But it is only when they move beyond this primary form of defensive organisation that they become capable of confronting the political system in its organic entirety.
Christiane is right to say that JC is deterministic. The people are not always the same, as JC writes. The subjective consciousness of the people is developed in experience and debate, of the kind exemplified by this blog, and in other forms.
We should rather say that the condition of the people at any time is the product of a dynamic struggle between the dumbing down and the acting up. And we can then say that we find ourselves on JWN positioned right in the middle of just such a struggle of opposites.
Fatalism and determinism are our main internal enemies and must be consciously fought. A better world is possible!
“If US foreign policy does not change we non-Americans will be forced to try to resist the hegemon in the time-honoured way, by building a coalition against the US…”
But won’t that require giving up the your cradle-to-grave welfare systems to fund your military?
“It seems to suggest that the masses only rise up in revolt when they are stimulated by pain. Yet the mention of ‘theory’ already gives the lie to this assumption.
It is not pain that consolidates the masses for revolution, but consciousness.”
Really? Give me some historical examples of people living in comfortable economic circumstances who rose up to overthrow the power structures of their societies through elevated “consciousness.”
Most good research on this point shows that revolutionary circumstances are not created by fixed factors like the pain of poverty. In many cases the pain of poverty induces people to despair, fatalism, and inaction. What counts is the relative loss of goods or advantages, whether relative to a previous era or relative to neighbors who may have a different ethnic or cultural make-up.
History shows this is what stimulates revolution.
In my reading of current events, I think much of the world entered such revolutionary circumstances at the end of the Cold War and the great acceleration of the third or fourth phase of this thing we call globalization. The evidence of tremendous shifts in relative loss (and gain) of goods/advantages is all around. The breakdown of the international institutions we have, and their failure to regulate these tremendous shifts in relative losses and gains, is a further sign of the highly revolutionary circumstances in which we live.
I don’t see what the argument is about. If a coalition of other countries coalesces and forms counter institutions to those currently mismanaged and ignored by the US, then all the better. If a little consciousness raising can occur here in the US and around the world to assist these developments, then all the better again.
One thing is certain. Helena should be at the forefront of all these efforts. Would you accept the title of Secretary General of consciousness raising and the coalescence of the new UN?
Bravo!
Helena for Secretary General of consciousness raising and the coalescence of the new UN!
Yes!
JC, what about Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Jesus of Nazareth, Pericles, Jeremiah, and a few dozens of others I could probably reel off given a few more minutes, but you get the idea?
JC, how about Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Mohammed, Jesus of Nazareth, Pericles, Jeremiah and a few dozen more I could mention given a bit more time? I think you get the idea.
This is the second time I am posting this message. The first time I got an error response. My apologies if it ends up being posted twice.
Hammurabi: “won’t [building a coalition against the US] require giving up the your cradle-to-grave welfare systems to fund your military?”
Well, that would be an added bonus, imo, but no, I don’t think it would be necessary. Defence is a lot cheaper than offence, and Russia, China and the EU are much more than a match for the US if they were ever to stop appeasing Washington. Russian nuclear umbrella, EU R&D and tech sharing, and Chinese numbers should do the trick. The biggest obstacle is turning or getting rid of of the US quislings such as Blair, and perhaps Merkel (Aznar and Berlusconi are gone, fortunately).
All that is really needed is a forceful and open rejection of cooperation with the US – ending redundant bodies such as NATO and booting US forces, bases and intel ops out of our countries, plus applying the rules and norms of international relations properly to the US. In other words, rather than letting the US get away with claiming “special” moral status as the exemplor and guarantor of global freedom and democracy, or pretending to take seriously its paranoid claims to be acting in “self defence”, actually treat its aggressions as aggressions. Combined with regional resistance agreements, that should do, without requiring huge (in GDP terms) increases in spending.
There are encouraging signs, for instance, that Turkey, Iran and Syria may be finally starting to be driven together (with the Kurdish question as the catalyst) to resist US high-handedness in the ME.
Well said, Sd. You are certainly correct that relative disadvantage, or the perception of same, and not any fixed measure of wealth, is the motivating factor. In my opinion, the perception of relative disadvantage will have to grow significantly among a much larger percentage of the American population, before revolutionary change is possible in the US. Of course, I would be happy to be proved wrong.
Dominic, no I don’t get the idea. Your reference to Jesus, Mohammed, etc. seems highly out of character and rather beside the point. Aren’t we talking about “the people” rising up en masse, as opposed to flocking behind some charismatic leader?
Anyway, Helena would certainly make a fine SG. We can all agree on that.
JC,
There is nothing wrong with charism (kairos). In fact one of the famous documents of our revolution is called The Kairos Document. There is nothing wrong with prophecy. The people have always needed prophets since time immemorial.
Ideas of a successful spontaneous uprising by the anonymous, infuriated masses have been around a long time. The genesis of Karl Marx’s “Marxism” c. 1845/6 concides precisely with his struggles against Wilhelm Weitling and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who held similar views to your own.
Marx’s first “mature work” (Lenin’s description) is “The Poverty of Philosophy” (1847), written as a polemical rebuttal of Proudhon’s “The Philosophy of Poverty”.
There has never been any such popular rising that has succeeded in instituting permanent, qualitative change, and the question to consider is: Why?
This is exactly what Marx set out to do. It means exploring historical change, how it happens, and how it can be made to happen. In other words the objective and the subjective conditions for change.
Why I previously mentioned all those old characters was to show to all, if not to you, that popular movement is always and necessarily articulated by individuals.
The tearing down of individual leaders whether in the name of spontaniety or of brutal reaction does not serve the masses, it cripples their movements.
We should build the brave ones up, not tear them down. We should build each other up and in this case we should encourage Helena Cobban to make even more bold statements like the one she made in the CSM.
“Why I previously mentioned all those old characters was to show to all, if not to you, that popular movement is always and necessarily articulated by individuals.”
And yet, who knows how many potential revolutionary leaders have lived and died in obscurity because they had the misfortune to be born in the wrong time and place? I tend to believe that when conditions are right for prophets, prophets arise.
Our differences won’t matter much in the long run, because the growing disparities of wealth and privilege in the US will eventually piss off enough people that change will occur.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Or woman.
If not us, then who? If not now, then when?
Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.
I think our differences matter a lot JC, because it is differences (the unity and struggle of opposites) that propel things forward in life.
But the difference between special bodies of armed men on the one side and an inarticulate jacquerie on the other is such as to bring forth only slaughter and subjugation.
To win, we the people must be more than a rabble. We must have organs of popular power, whether Galleries du Bois, Soviets, UDF, Bolivarian Circles, or any other that will serve the purpose in the given place and time.
why didn’t I think of that?…Building a counterforce to American fascist hegemony with Iran, Syria, China and Russia the exemplors of a contrasting model of democratic humanism…That’ll teach those overbearing Yanks…of course, as pointed out above, there will remain the task of enlisting Blair, Merkel, Howard, Sarkozy, Singh, Koizumi…
“The people of Africa are hardworking, creative and talented. They can play an important and valuable role in providing for the needs of humanity and contribute to its material and spiritual progress. Poverty and hardship in large parts of Africa are preventing this from happening. Don’t they have the right to ask why their enormous wealth – including minerals – is being looted, despite the fact that they need it more than others? ”
Mahmood Ahmadi-Najad President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Funny, the US leaders of their so-called “greatest generation” didn’t seem to have any difficulty in allying themselves with a Soviet regime which had barely finished butchering millions of defenceless peasants. Nor does the US of today seem to have much problem cooperating with non-democratic or even repressive regimes when it suits them.
Ooh sorry Hammurabi. Did I slip into “moral equivalence”, again? Was I forgetting the US’s “special” moral status as the exemplor and guarantor of global freedom and democracy, which means it’s ok for the US to do such things because the end justifies the means, but more evidence of moral inferiority if the opponents of the US seek to do the same?
Then again, of course, I didn’t use the term “American fascist hegemony”, as you imply in your response.
And as for the list of leaders you mention, it’s only the few remaining Yankophile (and increasingly out of step with their voters in being so) EU leaders that stand in the way of the joint Sino-Russo-EU stand which is all that’s needed to put a stop to the US’s current rogue state behaviour, well described by Helena in the piece to which these comments are attached. Characteristically, for partisans of the US regime, you assume any opponent seeks the destruction of the US. On the contrary, most of us just want to be left to get on with our lives without US interference.
Randal, some of us here in the US just want to get on with our lives without US interference too. Evidently we’re in the minority, since 66 percent of Americans “said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/12/AR2006051200375.html
Reading the history, a groups or a nation went to wars, invasions and distractions of other nations is in reality for wealth search and gain power over others.
What are the changes from 2000 years ago till now, in my view there are no changes with the human nature a long the timeline.
The only difference right now the way we dressing and the tools (technology etc.) In fact if we look closely to the invasion of Iraq or the plantation of state of Israel in ME will concludes those human who are prods with themselves of the level of knowledge, power, in facts they did same as their grand’s generations before 1000 years ago like looting killing, invading taking hostages etc…
If this power happen to be lead by a bad guy then we will see some one like Hitter and others bad examples in our living history.
In our days we seeing the powerful nation taken a small nation by war we saw the distractions, looting and we seeing the stealing of the wealth of that nation, there is no difference from what happened back 100 years ago when British Empire went from East to the West hunting for the resources to feed their hungry empire.
So what ever these big aggressive powerful nations done in the past there is no stopping for their aggression until it start to rotting from inside because the wealth they got will makes these nations eating itself down and a new nation will appears in other part of the glob.
This circle of history will continue whatever we think and we do, I agree with JC when he said “wealth and privilege in the US will eventually piss off enough people that change will occur.” the wealthy and greedy they drive the power of the nation and what the majority thinks have limited affects but not can change too much.
The “land of the free and the home of the brave”, eh John C? 🙂 As has been noted elsewhere, the Bush regime decided that the rest of us hate Americans because of their freedoms and has taken action to reduce the causes of that hatred.
Seriously, it seems likely that our personal domestic political viewpoints are diametrically opposed on most issues, but as long as your politics goes on in your own country and not mine I have absolutely no problem with you. It seems likely the Bush regime will collapse under the weight of its own incompetence, irrationality and corruption, and drag the Republican Party down with it. Please, just try to find a leftie leader who is willing to mind America’s own business instead of everyone else’s like the last few. Beyond that, it’s really none of my business.