We hates Imperialism! We hates it!
Brendan O'Neill has made it quite clear that he would like to see an end to "Imperialism," by which he means all "Western interference in other states' affairs." Bit of a lost cause, but fair enough.
He correctly points out that anti-globo spokesmodel George Monbiot, in calling for US-British action to avert a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, is failing rather spectacularly to live up to his full anti-Western potential. It's true: there's something rich and ironic about the spectacle of the scion of anti-Everythingism urging a massive international intervention through the exercise of power politics, politically correct euphemisms notwithstanding. If you're dead set on being an anti-Western nihilist, you might as well go all the way, and Monbiot fails to get the gold star here, "showing his true colors" as an inconsistent anti-American. Bless my soul. Hypocrisy among anti-war leftists? No way!
O'Neill is right about the hypocrisy of the "neo-White-man's-burdenism" (Steven Chapman's phrase) that seems to animate many of those with anti-war pretensions. He's also right that the contours of the current crisis were substantially determined long ago by the often short-sighted plans of British statesmen and that the US's Afghanistan campaign has contributed by further destabilizing the region. Is it fair to say that the West "caused" the current crisis? Perhaps, in a manner of speaking (though you could just as easily say that the Cold War was "caused" by the defeat of Germany in WWII.) His general axiom doesn't necessarily follow, however: "western interference causes conflicts and further intervention always makes them worse." Always? Wouldn't attempting (insofar as it's possible) to avert a nuclear war on the subcontinent be one of those situations where the interests of Our Evil Imperium and those of the world in general might happen to coincide? In O'Neill's view, the West is irrevocably tainted by its past crimes, and supporting Western "interference" in this matter is akin to putting the killers in charge of a murdered mother's orphaned child. The "murderers" are in charge whether he likes it or not, of course. But what non-Western, untainted entity does he have in mind for the job? The Arab League? I suppose O'Neill would like to see no "interference" of any kind by any state in the internal affairs of any other state. (And while we're at it, let's try to do something about all this bad weather, too...)
It's a (mildly) interesting thought experiment to try to imagine what kinds of international conflicts we'd have if the West were somehow to be subtracted from the geo-political equation and all historical events that have arisen through its influence were somehow to be undone; or to imagine what kind of world we'd have if global superpowers never attempted to use their power and influence to advance their interests. There's no way of knowing. Nor is there any way of knowing how things would stand between India and Pakistan had the US failed to act in response to the 9/11 attacks: there's simply no chance that such a scenario would ever have come to pass.
It's often difficult to draw a firm line between "internal affairs" and international ones. Sometimes it's easy, though: to adapt an aphorism, Afghanistan's internal affairs ended where our World Trade Center began. Is it a good idea for the world's superpower to attempt to use its power and influence to induce India and Pakistan to pull back from the brink of nuclear war? I don't know if it'll work, but that doesn't seem like a tough call either. In any case, interference is here to stay.
Posted by Dr. Frank at June 9, 2002 10:14 AM | TrackBack