The End of the "End of History"

Everything was going smoothly. 

Serbia, on its knees, had just soldMilosevic to the International Criminal Tribune for a fistful of dollars(most of which turned out to be earmarked to pay debts going back to Tito'stime). NATO was expanding eastwards toward a powerless Russia. SaddamHussein could be safely bombed whenever one felt like it. Invaded by UCK,Macedonia was obliged to accept the farce of a disarmament of that same UCKby the very ones who armed it in the first place. The Palestinianterritories were under tight control while their leaders were assassinatedby smart bombs. For the past few years, stockholders had been makingrecord profits. The political left had died out and all political partieshad rallied to neoliberalism and "humanitarian" interventionism. 

In short,as certain commentators put it, we were living in peace.       

Then suddenly shock, surprise, horror: the greatest power of alltimes, the only truly universal empire struck in its very heart, at thecenter of its wealth and power.  A unique and all-powerful electronicspying network,  unparalleled security measures, a staggering defensebudget -- none of this was of any use in preventing the catastrophe.

Let us be perfectly clear. We do not share the attitude expressedby Madeleine Albright when she was asked whether pursuing the embargoagainst Iraq was worth the price of  half a million Iraqi children who havedied: "this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worthit", shereplied.  The massacre of innocent civilians is never acceptable.  Butthisdoes not mean we should not try to understand the underlying meaning ofthat incredible attack.       

The American pacifist A. J. Muste once remarked that the problem inevery war was posed by the winning side: the victor had learned thatviolence succeeded. The whole of postwar history illustrates the pertinenceof that observation.

In the United States, the War Department was renamedDefense Department, precisely when there was no direct danger threateningthe country, and one government after the other launched campaigns ofmilitary intervention and political destabilisation in the guise ofcontaining communism -- against moderately nationalist governments such asthat of Goulart in Brazil, Mossadegh in Iran or Arbenz in Guatemala. 

Tolimit ourselves to the present, let us examine a few questions rarelyraised concerning Western, especially American, policy.

The Kyoto Protocol: The principal United States objection is noton scientific grounds, but merely that "it is bad for our economy".Whatare people who work 12 hours a day for slave wages to make of such areaction?

The Durban Conference. The West rejects the slightest thought ofreparations for slavery and colonialism.  But isn't it clear that the Stateof Israel functions as a form of reparations for anti-Semitic persecutions,except that in this case the price is paid by the Palestinian Arabs for thecrimes committed by Europeans? And isn't it obvious that this shift ofresponsibility must be felt as a sort of racism by the victims ofcolonialism?

Macedonia: Here is a country that the West pushed intoindependence in order to weaken Serbia and whose government has alwaysfaithfully followed Western orders. As a result it has been subjected toattacks by terrorists armed by NATO and coming from territory under NATOcontrol.  How does this look to Slavic Orthodox peoples, especially afterthe expulsion, as NATO looks on, of the Serbian population of Kosovo andthe eradication of a large part of its cultural heritage?

Afghanistan: it is too quickly forgotten that Osama Bin Laden wastrained and armed by the Americans, who openly admit that they were usingAfghanistan to destabilize the USSR even before the Soviet intervention.How many people have died in the game that former President Carter'sadviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, calls "the great chessboard"?  Andhow manyterrorists, in Asia, in Central America, in the Balkans, or in the MiddleEast, are left to run loose after having been used by the "FreeWorld"?

Iraq: for ten years the population has been strangled by anembargo that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths -- of civilianvictims. All because Iraq tried to recover the oil wells that were de factoconfiscated from them by the British. Let us just compare the treatmentgiven Israel for its totally illegal occupation of territories conquered in1967. Is it really likely that the notion, generally accepted in the West,that Saddam Hussein is to blame for everything, makes much sense in theArab-Muslim world?

China: when a U.S. spy plane was shot down along the Chinesecoast and its crew briefly held prisoner, there was indignation inWashington.  How dare they?  But what were the Americans doing therein thefirst place?  How many Chinese or Indian spy planes circle around thecoasts of the United States?

Is it really so urgent to squander the precious resources of theplanet, not least human intelligence, to construct an anti-missile defensethat would certainly not defend the United States against terrorist attacksnor even, in the long term, against nuclear bombs?

By pure coincidence, the September 11 attacks took place on theanniversary of the overthrow of Allende, which not only marked (a facteasily forgotten) the installation of the first neoliberal government, thatof General Pinochet, but also the start of a broad movement againstnational and independent movements in the Third World which was to leadthose countries to bow to the dictates of the IMF.

This is why we suspect that in Latin America, in Indonesia, inIran, in ruined and humiliated Russia, in China where nobody is fooled byattempts to destabilize this emerging giant, as well as in the Muslimworld, the September 11 tragedy will cause people to shed little more thancrocodile tears.

Of course there will be shouts of indignation and messages ofsympathy. There will be applause for "firm responses" when they occur(willthey destroy a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan or bomb the civilianpopulation of an Arab country?). 

Large numbers of intellectuals will befound to produce clever analyses full of false analogies connecting theseattacks to whatever it is they are against: Saddam Hussein, Kadhafi,Western pacifists and anti-imperialists, the Palestinian liberationmovement or even China, Russia or North Korea.

It will be repeated thatsuch barbarism is totally alien to us: after all, we prefer to bomb fromhigh altitude and kill gradually by means of embargos.  But none of thatwill solve any basic problem.  There is no use attacking revolt itself.What must be attacked is the suffering that produces revolt.