excerpts from the book

The Clash of Fundamentalisms

by Tarij Ali

Verso Press, 2002, paper

A short course history of US imperialism

282
As he [Reverend Billy Graham] flanked President Bush at the New York memorial to honour the [9-11] dead, Reverend Graham informed the gathering of stars and megastars that he had been deluged with letters and queries since the events. People wanted him to explain 'why God had let them hit America'. The preacher's response was straightforward. He confessed his bewilderment. He told his flock he had no answer.

p284
In October 1948, President Conant of Harvard University informed the New York Herald Tribune Forum, that

In the first place, this nation, unlike most others, has not evolved from a state founded on military conquest. As a consequence we have nowhere in our tradition the idea of an aristocracy descended from the conquerors and entitled to rule by right of birth. On the contrary we have developed our greatness in a period in which a fluid society overran a rich and empty continent .

Thinly populated, yes, but empty? In whose eye? Were the Indian wars not real? Were they phantom struggles? Or was it that Protestant fundamentalism provided a moral justification for large-scale theft of land held in common by different native tribes, as well as the mass murder of 'heathens'? The land on which Harvard University was built had been taken from Indians through 'military conquest'. The remapping of North America was a long process, which has been tracked with great care by the historian Oliver LaFarge in his classic work, As Long as the Grass Shall Grow:

The roster of massacres of Indian men, women and children extends from the Great Swamp Massacre of 1696 in Rhode Island, through the killing of the friendly Christian Indians in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, when the republic was young, on through the friendly Arivaipas of Arizona, the winter camp of the Colorado Cheyennes, to the final dreadful spectacle of Wounded Knee in the year 1870.

p285
The earliest manifestations of America's imperial destiny became visible in the nineteenth century, first in relation to Latin America, later in the Pacific with the conquest of the Philippines and an early declaration of interest in Japan. Some of the most effective criticism of the first phase of US empire-building was to come from an insider, someone whose credentials could not be challenged by even the most ardent Americophile. This was Major General Smedley Butler (1888-1940) of the US Marine Corps, described by General Douglas MacArthur as 'one of the really great generals in American history' and twice awarded the Medal of Honor. MacArthur's admiration extended to naming the US base in Okinawa after Butler. Would Butler have been equally impressed by the Viceroy of Japan and the defender of the Korean Peninsula? His writings would suggest the opposite. After he retired from the US army, General Butler spent some time in reflecting on his career before he concluded: 'Like all members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.'

His first book was entitled "War as a Racket". Its thesis was simple. He was no longer in favour of offensive wars. He would defend his country, but he would never again become 'a racketeer for capitalism'. 'War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the very few at the expense of the masses.' In a speech in 1933, General Butler expounded his 'anti-American' or proto-Occidentalist views with remarkable clarity, spelling out the nature of US imperialism in Latin America:

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its 'finger-men' to point out enemies, its 'muscle-men' to destroy enemies, its 'brain men' to plan war preparations and a 'Big Boss' Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it.

I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. 1 brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given A1 Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

p286
Thomas Friedman from New York Times Magazine article of 28 March 1999,

For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty super( power that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

p292
President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell speech, January 17, 1961

... This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

p294
[In 1989] the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Soviet Union disintegrated. The Cold War came to a sudden end, not with a bang, but a whimper. The Warsaw Pact ceased to exist. The fall was both sudden and unexpected. It was not the result of military intervention. The causes were internal: the political and economic bankruptcy of the bureaucratic elite that had led the Soviet Union. The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had certainly not intended this result. He had wanted reforms on every level. He was prepared to envisage a nuclear-free zone from the Atlantic to the Urals and hoped for a transition from a statist to a mixed economy on the model of European social-democracy of the Fifties, assuming that the West would help in this process. He harboured fatal illusions about Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They let him down. The predators took over. What happened? In a recent essay the historian Georgi Derlugian, a former Soviet citizen now resident in Chicago, who had witnessed the process, reflected on this question:

The Soviet Union was not brought down from without- the West stood watching in amazement. Nor was it undermined either from above or below. Rather it imploded from the middle, fragmenting along the institutional lines of different bureaucratic turfs. The collapse occurred when mid-ranking bosses felt threatened by Gorbachev's flakiness as head of the system, and pressured by newly assertive subordinates beneath them. The eruptions of 1989 in Eastern Europe provided the demonstration prod. In the process of disintegration, it was the particularly cynical apparatchiks of an already decomposed Young Communist League who led the way In their wake followed the governors of national republics and Russian provinces, senior bureaucrats of economic ministries, and section chiefs all the way down to supermarket managers. As in many declining empires of the past, the basest servants - emboldened by the incapacitation of emperors and frightened by impending chaos - rushed to grab the assets that lay nearest to hand. Mingling with them were nimble interlopers, ranging from the would-be yuppies to former black marketers and outright gangsters. The luckiest few in this motley galere would become the celebrity post-communist tycoons.

p303... the cost of the imported oil ... makes up 10 per cent of US consumption. The same oil accounts for one-quarter of European and one-half of Japanese needs.

p303
There are at the moment 187 member states of the United Nations. The United States has a military presence in 100 countries.

p304
Chalmers Johnson

One of the things this huge military establishment also does is sell arms to other countries, making the Pentagon a critical economic agency of a United States government. Militarily oriented products account for about a quarter of the total U.S. gross domestic product The government employs some 6,500 people just to coordinate and administer its arms sales programme in conjunction with senior officials at American embassies around the world, who spend most of their 'diplomatic' careers working as arms salesmen. The Arms Export Control Act requires that the executive branch notify Congress of foreign military and construction sales directly negotiated by the Pentagon. Commercial sales valued at $14 million or more negotiated by the arms industry must also be reported. Using official Pentagon statistics, between 1990 and 1996 the combination of the three categories amounted to $97,836,821,000. From this nearly $100 billion figure must be subtracted the $3 billion a year the government offers its foreign customers to help subsidize arms purchases from the United States.

p311
The fascist triumph in Germany would not have been possible without the support of big business, which benefited enormously during the first five years of the Third Reich: profits rose from 6.6 billion marks in 1933 to 15 billion in 1938. The destructive delirium of fascist ideology was carefully targeted. It never obstructed the payment of permanent homage to its economic backers. Even at the height of the war, patriotism was never permitted to deflect the search for profits. In most cases, the Nazi regime obediently capitulated.(~A classic example is the detailed negotiations between the Flick companies and the government on the price of bazooka shells. The government offered 24 RM per shell. Flick demanded 39.25 RM per shell. Agreement was reached at 37 RM, which meant an extra gain of more than 1 million marks over the period 1940-3.97)

To dress all new enemies in the black shirts and leather jackets of European fascism is grotesque. It is done because it helps the media to project the enemy, but the credulity of Western citizens has its limits and the Hitler fix won't work every time. State intellectuals might be better advised to ponder their own back yard. The democracy they boast of is ailing. Politics equals concentrated economics. The author of a recent intellectual biography of Tocqueville concludes thus:

Far from being valued as symbolising an aspiration towards the democratisation of power and a participatory society of political equals - democracy as subject - democracy would come to be regarded by late-modern power elites as an indispensable yet valuable myth for promoting American political and economic interests among premodern and post-totalitarian societies. At home democracy is touted not as self-government by an involved citizenry but as economic opportunity. Opportunity serves as the means of implicating the populace in | anti-democracy, in a politico-economic system characterised by the dominating | power of hierarchical organisations, widening class differentials, and a society | where the hereditary element is confined to successive generations of the defenseless poor.

This is what the fanatical preachers of neo-liberalism had always intended. When they began their work in the Sixties and Seventies of the last century they were treated as a joke by Keynesian liberals, scorned by social-democrats and kept at a distance by the conservatives. A majority of Marxist economists did not even deign to take them seriously. But for a quarter of a century, Von Hayek and his loyal followers ignored the ridicule and burrowed away underneath the surface, suddenly to emerge and greet the leaders of the victorious counter-Revolution: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The combination of neo-liberal ideas and the social forces represented by the two politicians transformed the globe.

Hayek was not just the high priest of hard doctrines at home. He favoured military actions to defend US interests abroad. On the domestic front he favoured the invisible magic of a manipulated market. No state intervention against the interests of capital was to be tolerated. But the state was vital to undertake military interventions in the sphere of international relations. The circle of neo-liberals were staunch defenders of the Vietnam war. They supported the US-backed military coup in Chile. In 1979, Hayek favoured bombing Tehran. In 1982, during the Malvinas conflict, he wanted raids on the Argentinian capital. This was the creed of neo-liberal hegemony most favoured by its founder.

The cuts in direct taxation, deregulation of financial markets, weak trades-unions and privatised public services were necessary to assert the primacy of consumption - the commodification of all goods and services - which was fuelled by the private sector. The modified capitalist system now accepted speculation as a central feature of economic life in the world's financial markets. The success of the system required that private capital was permitted to penetrate the social fabric with the mass marketing of mutual and pension funds.

Having united the Western world on the necessity to push through neoliberal 'reforms', the American Empire was to follow through on the need to assert its power globally. In this it was supported to the hilt by its old Trojan Horse in the European Union, otherwise the United Kingdom. For many years now, one of the main priorities of the WTO has been to accelerate the privatisation of education, health, welfare, social housing and transport. With the decline of profit-margins in the once prosperous manufacturing sector, Western capitalism is determined to force entry into a once inviolate public sphere. Giant multinationals have been busy preparing competitive tenders to capture the public services share of the gross domestic product.

In its notorious 1993 development report titled 'Investing in Health, the World Bank described public services as an obstacle to abolishing world poverty. There have been important conflicts between US/Canada and the EU on some of the policies advocated by the WTO which affect the health and safety of citizens, but the multinationals are winning. A few years ago in the hormone-treated beef dispute, the WTO ruled in favour of USA/Canada arguing that EU safety standards were higher than those accepted internationally. In a sharply critical review of WTO policies Professor Allyson Pollock (of the Health Services Research Unit at University College, London) argued in Lancet, the leading British medical journal, on 9 December 2000:

. . . the WTO's national treatment rule was used to define a public-health initiative as protectionist and therefore potentially illegal ... The new criteria proposed at the WTO threaten some of the key mechanisms that allow governments to guarantee / health care for their populations by requiring governments to demonstrate that | their pursuit of social policy goals are least restrictive and least costly to trade.

New Labour, like their Thatcherite predecessors, ever desperate to please the United States and its financial institutions, are determined to be the first EU state that fulfills all the WTO conditions. Accordingly, the British public was informed that the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) would be used to create a new structure in the public sector. In other words New Labour declared that it would go further than Thatcher and Major dared and attempt to complete the Thatcher counter-revolution. The air-traffic controllers will be sold off to a few wealthy airlines. The railways, whose privatisation has been a total disaster financially and has led to the breakdown of safety, will not be taken back into any form of public ownership. New laws are being passed to make it possible for any local authority to sell off any school to private industry. At the moment only those schools considered to be 'failing' - i.e. not provided with sufficient resources by the government to teach children from poor families - are handed over to companies. Among the firms directly engaged in teaching children of 'failed' schools are Shell Oil (special lessons in ecology?), British Aerospace (lectures on the arms trade?), McDonalds (healthy eating?).

France and Germany were moving in the same direction. Lionel Jospin and Gerhard Schroeder had come to power repudiating the hard-nosed policies that promoted accumulation and inequality, but their policies have promoted both of them. The privatisation carried out by the French Socialists have exceeded that of the previous six administrations. The German social-democrats have been more hamstrung, but their trajectory is clear.

As they accommodated to neo-liberal fundamentalism at home, they accepted its militarist logic abroad. Britain, France and Germany supported the Third Oil War (1991), the Balkan wars and the 'war on terrorism'. So keen was Germany to become part of the new world order that the RedGreen coalition voted through the re-involvement of the German Republic in military adventures abroad. The dissident Greens in the Bundestag met privately to determine how they could register a few votes against, without threatening the coalition.

It would be illusory to imagine that it is only the Big Three of the EU who line up as obedient retrievers on US hunting missions. The Scandinavian states, once respected throughout the world for their independence, have not wanted to be left behind. Like obedient poodles they follow the leaders of the Empire: Norway was proud of its role in creating Palestinian bantustans, Finland brokered the bombing of Yugoslavia, the Swedish government has been party to the starvation of Iraq, while Denmark supplied a Viceroy in Kosovo.

Meanwhile in the rest of the world, a billion people are undernourished and 7 million children die as a result of the debt owed by the countries in which they live. It is this that accounts for the desperation and hatred that :surfaces in large parts of the world against the United States and its allies. Senegal was instructed by the IMF mullahs to withdraw territorial sovereignty from its territorial waters or else its debt would not be rescheduled. It did so. The result? The factory-trawlers of Europe have taken the fish for the supermarkets of the EU. The waters from which the fishermen of 5enegal drew sustenance for many thousand years have been taken over by the rich West. The people of this country are suffering because there is now a shortage of fish. Bolivia was ordered to privatise its water. The poor were forbidden to collect the rainwater that had accumulated on their roofs. Water rates became prohibitive. There was a semi-uprising in the town of Cochabamba as a result and some concessions were won. The situation in Ghana is virtually the same. Here the poor have been forced to drink untreated water which has led to disease and death. The Ivory Coast was compelled to withdraw subsidies to its cocoa farmers. This led to massive redundancies. Skilled workers were replaced by indentured children. Two-fifths of the chocolate drunk and eaten by the West is produced by super-exploited child labour.

This is the world in which we live - out of tune with the lucid humanity and the social compassion demanded by anti-globalisation protesters - and beyond which, write the intellectual apologists of this system, no substantial improvement can be imagined. 'Obliterate all political passions', cry the politicians of the globalised world.

p311
from a biography of Alexis de Tocqueville

Far from being valued as symbolising an aspiration towards the democratisation of power and a participatory society of political equals - democracy as subject - democracy would come to be regarded by late-modern power elites as an indispensable yet valuable myth for promoting American political and economic interests among premodern and post-totalitarian societies. At home democracy is touted not as self-government by an involved citizenry but as economic opportunity. Opportunity serves as the means of implicating the populace in | anti-democracy, in a politico-economic system characterised by the dominating | power of hierarchical organisations, widening class differentials, and a society | where the hereditary element is confined to successive generations of the defenseless poor.

p313
In a review of WTO policies, Professor Allyson Pollock of the Health Services Research Unit at the University College, London, in the Lancet, British medical journal, on December 9, 2000:

. . . the WTO's national treatment rule was used to define a public-health initiative as protectionist and therefore potentially illegal ... The new criteria proposed at the WTO threaten some of the key mechanisms that allow governments to guarantee / health care for their populations by requiring governments to demonstrate that their pursuit of social policy goals are least restrictive and least costly to trade.

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