Saturday, February 2, 2013

Book Review: Humanitarian Imperialism

Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human RIghts to Sell War by Jean Bricmont

This short book is really a persuasive essay targeted at Bricmont's fellow leftist who have abandoned the idealism of their youth (the revolutionary 1960s) and have for decades been advocating humanitarian interventions in other countries. Bricmont, though not writing from a pacifist perspective per se, highlights the weaknesses of the leftist criticisms of the anti-war movement, and explains how interventions ostensibly undertaken to defend human rights in reality always serve to strengthen Western imperialism.

Although I didn't agree with every single line of reasoning used by Bricmont (e.g. faith in international law), as an argument against the pro-militaristic left it is fantastic. Bricmont situates U.S./NATO military campaigns in the context of colonial history and present neocolonial hegemony. He makes a compelling case as to why a Western state will never have altruistic aims, and why an army can never be used to promote human rights.

I do wish he could have expanded a bit more on why WW2 can't be used an example of justifiable intervention. He mentions that Western elites admired fascist regimes; that the purpose of waging war with Hitler had nothing to do with concern for human rights abuses; and that, in fact, mass killings of Jews did not occur until after Western powers became involved (thus, the war was not really an effective tool to stop genocide). Bricmont could have also mentioned the role of U.S. capital investments in Germany's rearmament - in fact, the role of capitalism more generally.

On the other hand, I was very interested by some of Bricmont's arguments regarding the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is always used to make the case that communism/socialism/Marxism has "been proven wrong." This frustrates me to no end, and I think I may just devote another entire post to the subject. However, one interesting idea proposed by Bricmont is that the instability caused by Western intervention in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution should be factored into the type of dictatorship that emerged. It is true that threats from the outside always engender a curtailment of civil liberties. Bricmont also rightly points out that there were plenty of cases of democratic socialism/communism, but they just happened to be undermined by Western-sponsored coups and the like. Bricmont argues that dictatorships are harder to topple, and thus the only socialist/communist states that were able to survive the Western onslaught were those that were dictatorial. Thus, the most popular examples of the failure of communism do not really prove anything about the inherent nature of communism.

The conception of violence as a useful tool is one of the last bits of dominant ideology that is so entrenched as to be nearly unquestionable. Bricmont takes a great step toward demystifying the nature of violence and war. I can already think of several people who I would love to get to read this book!

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