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!

New Cold War? U.S. Shifts Geographical Focus

To start, I want to make it clear that the true geographical focus of the U.S., as a world imperial power, is nothing less than the entire world. In this post I am referring specifically to its more overt military operations, as opposed to CIA actions and other things more “under the radar.” For the past decade or more, U.S. military focus has concentrated overwhelmingly on the Middle East, particularly at the sites of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not that I see a complete abandonment of these regions anytime soon, but it appears that the center of gravity of military strategy is spreading in two different directions.

First, there is Africa. The ‘Arab Spring’ in its historic import is coming to symbolize not so much some real transformative movement, but more the moment when the U.S. military started bringing in “the big guns” to Africa. Obviously the U.S. has diligently been helping to overthrow governments and support brutal dictators and ethnic conflict in Africa for the duration of the decolonization/post-WW2 era. Yet, they never thought The Dark Continent deserved the best of its military resources. Not until they finally got their opportunity to overthrow Gaddafi.

Side note. Although I am restricting my discussion to the U.S., clearly, as always, the interests and actions of other Western powers are intertwined with those of the U.S. In that vein, the shift toward Africa has coincided with the re-emergence of French imperialism. The French, of course, were at the forefront of the decision to invade Libya, and are pretty much going solo right now in Mali.

Back to the U.S. Now that the U.S. has been getting weapons into the hands of militant groups, and Islamist movements are re-branding themselves as Al Qaeda syndicates, it is possible for the U.S. to argue that Africa is an important front in the War on Terror. As such, the military is very visibly upgrading its African operations, including more advanced surveillance and killing technology – complete with a brand new drone base in Niger! Some analysts are even predicting that Mali will become the next Afghanistan.

But that’s not all. The U.S. is also stepping up its military presence in the Pacific. The move was never designed to be secret and has been trumpeted by the Obama administration as a means of countering Chinese regional hegemony. Less well-known is the way in which the U.S. has been covertly trying to provoke conflict among various Asian states and China. For example, goading the Philippines (an important U.S. ally) into disputing the Chinese occupation of the Spratly Islands.

In fact, China may be a common denominator in both of these geographical shifts. True, Africa is rich with resources, including gold, oil, and uranium – all coveted by Western powers (and this may largely explain France’s interests). But the U.S. (and its Western allies) is concerned about the Chinese encroaching on its African investment opportunities. Many Africans are optimistic about the possible benefits of Chinese investment for “rising Africa,” and China, seeing limitless potential for exploitation, is pouring in the capital. The thing about capitalism, though, is that it is characterized by a centrifugal inertia which demands ever larger markets, resource-rich peripheries, and more opportunities for investment. Western economic hegemony cannot abide a competitor. Witness what happened to the Soviet Union! In this way, the characterization of relations between the U.S. and China as “the new Cold War” is quite apt. The differences in Cold War Part 2 are that 1) the ideological divisions have somewhat lost their significance, such that the Chinese can barely manage to still call themselves “Communist” and are in no way pursuing systematic support of socialist or communist regimes (although China is perceived by many in the Third World as more “anti-colonial” and friendly);  2) "Terrorism" has superseded "Communism" as The Great Evil;  3) far from having entered a period of great economic expansion, the world is languishing in the midst of the latest manifestation of a decades-long economic contraction, which has the power to create enormous global instability; and 4) U.S. hegemony may be teetering on the brink.

It’s hard to know how all of this will play out. At the very least, I am expecting to see Africa play a more significant role in U.S. foreign policy.

The Real Petraeous Scandal: the CIA and Imperialism

Being a cynic, I tend to think that the timing, focus, and slant of news stories are usually very carefully orchestrated. Therefore, I couldn't help but feel there must be some reason for the hullabaloo surrounding Petraeus's affair. However, the conspiracy theory propagated by conservative media seemed wholly unsatisfying.

Then I ran across this article, whose explanation I find much more plausible. The long and short of it is that the attack in Benghazi exposed some of the lies surrounding the conflict Libya, which included covering up the role of the CIA in arming and supporting jihadist militias - a strategy in which Petraeus was intimately involved.

The End of American Empire

There are multiple signs that the American Empire is crumbling.

In Latin America: Throughout the past decade, U.S.-friendly puppet dictators have been replaced with democratically-elected, leftist regimes that are standing up to U.S. They are consorting more with Cuba these days than the U.S.

The allies of U.S. hegemony - Western Europe and Japan: are also standing up to the U.S. and refusing to comply with its every wish. In fact, U.S. involvement in Libya occured more at the behest of Western European members of the UN security council than vice versa. Western Europe has been strengthening its ties with Russia, while the U.S. is trying to court the former Soviet states who still feel some vulnerability.

The Middle East: Resistance to U.S. domination has been visible for quite some time. However, the declining relations with Pakistan, and one can only assume with Egypt once the dust settles, and possibly at some point even Israel (who is also watching its regional hegemony fall to pieces), in addition to tension with supposedly U.S.-friendly leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan, point to the unraveling of U.S. power.

Asia: U.S. relations with Southeast Asia were forged primarily through mutually beneficial economic arrangements. However, with the "rise" of China, and the collapse of the global economy, there will surely be a realignment of allegiances in this region.

U.S. economic and military power have been weakening precipitously (particularly since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan). The U.S. is no longer able to strong-arm other countries like it used to. Instead, everyone seems to be acting in defiance of U.S. aims these days.

Obviously, the global economy has reached a turning point as well. Interestingly, there is some connection between economic patterns and geo-political developments. For example, historically, a decline in a hegemonic power has typically been accompanied, first, by a shift in focus from production/material expansion to financial speculation as a source of profit (started in 1979), and then, a full-scale collapse of the economy, partially driven by the financial speculation (that can be crossed off the list too). This does not bode well for the U.S. as an empire.

Why should this pattern hold? Because, as I have previously argued, the state is merely a tool for enforcing the regional constraints to competition that are necessary for the accumulation of wealth. Thus, the existence of a hegemonic power merely represents a system of restraints necessary to uphold a particular spatial organization of production (both in terms of the social division of labor and the logistics of the production process itself), which itself undergirds a certain form of accumulation of wealth.

Thus, as a particular organization of production reaches the limits of its capacity for profitability, the system is thrown into chaos, and the basis for the regional restrains and spatial organization upheld by the hegemon no longer serve the same purpose. Geopolitical organization is necessarily thrown into chaos as well and hegemonic power dissolves.

Or, in other words, inability to limit competition in the economic sphere (a result of declining profitability, as it both weakens the power of the monopolies and diminishes the ratio of potential profits to competitors) necessarily translates as an inability to limit competition in the political realm, since political institutions derive from economic relations.

So now we find ourselves in a multi-polar world. What will come next?

The American Empire

My busyness lately has prevented me from posting too frequently.  However, I thought I would share an excerpt from an email I wrote to someone in response to the claim that the U.S. was traditionally "isolationist" (or, in the words of Pat Buchanan, "a republic, not an empire"):

I would have to say, the reason that America was more "isolationist" in the beginning was because it was essentially a dependent satellite of the British empire, benefitting from British imperialism and trans-Atlantic trade, with no real need for imperial actions of its own.  However, things started to change with the Great Depression of the late 19th century, which began to erode British economic hegemony and simultaneously create a need for cheaper raw materials (procured through colonization of the rest of the world), and thus opened the way for an emerging U.S. imperialism that was inaugurated by the Spanish-American War.  U.S. imperialism really took off, though, after WW2, when European hegemony was dealt a fatal blow and the colonized world gradually became independent... or maybe a better word than "independent" is available for re-colonization and exploitation by the U.S. and Soviet empire.  The U.S., of course, has been more subtle in the form of colonization it has employed... but even if control is exerted through transnational organizations and covert support of coups/destabilization of governments, it is control nonetheless!


The U.S. may not have become an empire until a century into its existence, but it became an empire precisely when there was room for it to become an empire. (Besides, does taking land from the Native Americans and Mexico not count as imperialism??) The fact of the matter is, for better or worse, U.S. growth has always been fueled by imperialism, whether of its own undertaking or that of its economic allies.