Tag Archives: imperialism

Political Rants

Riding Grievance all the way to armageddon

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Biden recently announced another $1.1 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, this on the heels of Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre-ass junket to the island / breakaway province. This, I think, is called tripling down, based mostly on a calculation common to most U.S. politicians that provoking China is a political winner, regardless of context. That may be true, but only if you’re cravenly pursuing popularity with no thought of human consequence. While that may sound particularly like Donald Trump, it also sounds like pretty much every other modern president.

We live in a time, once again, when criticism of American foreign policy is characterized as either foolishly alarmist or callously dismissive towards the victims of our official adversaries. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called out for not being sufficiently critical of either China or Russia. It’s not enough to say that the leadership of both states is arbitrary and rapacious. You need to cheer on the weapons as they roll off the assembly line and into the waiting hands of our Ukrainian or Taiwanese allies.

The actual grievance narrative

What gets glossed over in this toxic discourse is a fuller understanding of history and motive. What is the power behind Putin? He presents himself as the protector of his people – the strong dude who’s going to rescue them from the ravages imposed by the west. This narrative resonates with many Russians because they lived through a catastrophe in the 1990s – an economic implosion born of the “shock therapy” doctrine pushed by the United States and Europe. Many, many Russians lost their livelihoods, their security, even their lives. They also lost any lingering sense that Russia was a great nation. Into that breach walked Putin.

There’s a similar dynamic with China. Xi Jinping and his cohort seek to present a strong, non compliant nation. While China is far from being a democracy, it’s likely that the Chinese people want to think of their country as consequential. That is probably founded in China’s history over the last 100+ years, which started with decades of humiliation at the hands of Europeans (the British especially), followed by civil war and a long, bitter occupation by imperial Japan. No question but that Xi is a tremendous dick, like Putin, but their grievance narrative is based on something real, unlike that of the Republicans.

Revisionist history 2.0

It’s kind of amazing how little understood this dynamic is. The public radio show On The Media did a story about competing historical narratives regarding Hong Kong and China (thanks to Best of the Left for clipping this). What fascinated me about this was that these narratives, which were presented as mythical, all had varying elements of truth embedded in them. There was this “King of Kowloon” graffiti artist who became notorious for claiming that his family owned the Kowloon Peninsula before the British claimed it. Well, maybe. It was something like a feudal society. Then, of course, there is the tabla rasa myth of British Imperialism – the place was empty when we got here.

But then this NPR reporter talked about how China was rewriting history books again to, in effect, erase British imperialism:

Now they’re claiming that Hong Kong never was a British colony. They’re saying that when the British took over Hong Kong, there were these series of treaties, which the Chinese call unequal treaties. They say they were forced upon them by gunboat diplomacy, by violence, and they never actually agreed to any of these treaties. So sovereignty was never ceded. It’s a crazy argument when you think of all those governors and the British administration of Hong Kong to claim that it was never a colony, but it also shows you the sort of mutability of history.

Is it crazy to say that China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong was taken from them by force? Really? It was a forfeit as a result of one of Britain’s opium wars. What do you call that?

No more gunboats.

We seem to be leaning into our imperial posture. And while it’s natural to empathize with the victims of Russia and China, let’s not forget that there are people directly in the cross-hairs of our policy as well. We need to spare them some concern and intervention as well. We also need to bear in mind that major power conflict in the modern age carries with it an insupportable risk of nuclear war.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

While you were looking over there

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As Russia continues to do what Russia always does, this time in Ukraine, other atrocities try to keep pace. The Saudis put 81 people to death this past week in one of their execution sprees. Ali AlAhmed shared some photos of the victims on Twitter, and it’s worth scrolling through the list just to afford these people a small portion of the humanity being accorded, quite rightly, to Ukrainians.

Then, of course, there’s Yemen – still Yemen. Over the weekend, UNICEF reported that almost 50 children were killed or maimed in January alone, adding to the more than 10,000 child casualties recorded since the war began, with our nod and crucial material support, in 2015. Yemen remains among the worst humanitarian crises in the world, and yet it has fallen from the front page, particularly in America.

Proximity, proximity is everything

It’s not surprising or outrageous that the mainstream corporate media, and much of the independent media, spends most of their time on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s a huge story, and it should be reported on. But some crises fail to command the attention that Ukraine has garnered over the past three weeks. Yemen is chief among them, but certainly not the only instance.

The reason? Impossible to be precise, but it’s not hard to discern a pattern. If an atrocity is being committed by an official enemy, it is all over the media. If, on the other hand, the atrocity is being committed by us or by a close ally, it gets much, much less coverage, by and large. Count the number of stories about the war in Yemen that have run in U.S. major media. You will have fingers left over. Now compare that with this wall-to-wall Ukraine coverage.

Conclusion: Ukraine is being attacked by someone we don’t like; Yemen is being attacked by an ally who’s dependent on our help to conduct the war. The less likely it is that we can stop a war, the more likely it is that our media will focus on it.

Sticking to what you know

Russia’s military, at Putin’s behest, is doing what they know how to do: blowing things up. That’s how they get people to bend to their will. It’s the sharpest imperial tool in their toolbox by far. They destroy whole cities and drive people into the wilderness. That’s all they know.

Bombs, missiles, shells, and bullets are what’s available to Putin. But he doesn’t have a corner on imperialism. The United States, on the other hand, has more than one way to skin a country. When we put a nation under sanction, it hurts very badly. We can shut off access to international financial institutions. We can starve whole populations and ruin their public health infrastructure. This is what we did to Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s, between two spates of bombing. That’s how we bent them to our will.

Russia doesn’t have that. If they sanction someone, it doesn’t mean much. They don’t have anywhere near the leverage of the U.S. in international finance. All they have is the bombs.

Finding the exit

Maddeningly, this attack on Ukraine, all in the space of a few weeks, is doing what was done in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq at the height of those conflicts – destroying societal infrastructure on a massive scale. Much as you have to admire the Ukrainians’ courage and stubbornness, I hope the sides aren’t getting so entrenched that some settlement can’t be reached.

This war will end. The question is, how much of Ukraine will survive that long? If Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and others are any indication, it’s better to find a way to settlement sooner rather than later. I think that’s one channel by which the international community can help.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

When war is always the answer

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As I write this, we appear to be inching towards that thing we always say we don’t want but nearly always opt for. The difference this time is that we’re flirting with a conflict that, at minimum, will send the global economy into yet another tailspin, and, at maximum, will result in terminal nuclear conflict. Neither seems to me a good option.

I have written about this previously, of course – as has nearly everyone. My hope has been that we would begin to back away from the breach, but that hasn’t happened yet. This past week, French President Macron met with Putin and seemed to come away with assurances that the Russians wouldn’t escalate the situation. Somewhat encouraging, though it is a slender thread from which to dangle the fate of this insane world.

Mutually supporting motives

This threatened conflict has brought the art of Kremlinology back with a vengeance, which must please Putin no end. In truth, the practice never entirely went away. But now there’s something like a cottage industry in supposition about what’s going on between Vlad’s ears. I guess people have to keep themselves busy somehow as we wait for the world to explode like a firecracker.

One of the most informed discussions along these lines took place on Democracy Now! on Monday. The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen and Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute talked about the simmering conflict threatening to boil over. Lieven sees overriding considerations of national security interests in what Russia is doing; Gessen sees it more as an expression of Putin’s anxiety over his waning hold on leadership.

I actually think they’re both right – the two theories are not mutually exclusive. Putin is dead set against NATO membership for Ukraine, as I’m sure any Russian leader would be. He also likes to play to his base – basically that large population of Russians who want their country to be a world power and not be pushed around by the West.

Good memories for bad things

There’s no justification for military aggression, and I have never been a fan of Putin, as I’ve said many times. But the strongman leader thing is a direct outgrowth of the catastrophic collapse of the Soviet state back in the nineties. In America, people see this as a time of triumph and vindication, as well as a lot of back-slapping.

During the 1990s, while the U.S. was helping to midwife the new capitalist Russia, the country went through a Great Depression-like economic failure resulting in loss of income, pensions, and something like five million excess deaths. This remains a fresh memory in the minds of many Russians. Somewhat like the North Koreans, whose country was destroyed by U.S. munitions in the 1950s, they know the consequences of letting the West get the upper hand.

Looking for an off-ramp

As Americans, our problem is a simple one. We can’t stand to see other countries do with impunity what we ourselves have repeatedly done with impunity. When the Russians were using hysterical firepower in Syria, it was all over U.S. media. Now that our bombs are killing even more Yemenis, you barely hear about the place. After the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, what standing to we have to tell others to play nice?

That said, it seems only reasonable for us to make every effort to keep this conflict from happening. For the sake of the Ukrainians and Russians that could die as a result, it is in no way worth it to anyone.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

A short ending to the longest war

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There’s a lot that’s been said about what happened in Afghanistan over the past couple of weeks. Most of what you’ll hear on cable talk shows is a brand of imperial outrage that would be hard to mock with any justice. I would need a pith helmet and some bad white shorts, for starters. As I’ve said in previous posts, the imperial world view runs deep in our commercial media. It’s like the setting moon illusion – they just can’t help but see things that way.

I’ve got a few thoughts on this issue. Don’t expect to see me invited onto any daytime news shows anytime soon. What I’m about to say would likely make heads explode on Morning Joe.

First, do no harm

A lot of the criticism of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is deserved by this administration. I’ve said often enough that their foreign policy is abysmal, and now they’ve managed to make a mess of practically the only part of it that I agreed with. They’ve known this day was coming since before the inauguration – what the hell were they thinking?

I think the most reasonable explanation is that the Biden administration is terrified of taking in too many refugees. Sam Seder said this on Majority Report a few days ago. It’s like they don’t want to be yelled at by Republicans, so they let these Afghanis swing in the wind. That’s the thanks you get for working with us. You’re welcome, people of Afghanistan!

Bravery and cowardice defined

Another thing I’ve heard is outrage that Biden suggested the Afghan government forces didn’t fight hard enough. This is where the imperial worldview is crucial. Most television commentators I’ve seen appear to consider fealty to American war aims as the standard by which to judge bravery or cowardice.

Let’s face it – many Afghans took part in the U.S. supported military because they needed money. There’s nothing wrong with that. If they folded in the face of the Taliban advance, it’s because they didn’t want to be the last people to die defending a government that no one believes in. Who can blame them?

We always take this condescending view of our allies in-country whenever we invade and occupy another nation. The same stuff was said about the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), or the South Vietnamese forces. Somehow we expect these folks to fight to the death for our national objectives, and that’s plainly irrational.

Let them in

There’s no question but that we owe a massive debt to all Afghans for using their country mercilessly over the course of the last 45 years, first to bludgeon the Soviets, and later to satisfy post-9/11 bloodlust. The least we can do, at this point, is bring a large number of refugees stateside. I know Tucker Carlson and various other white supremacists think that this is some kind of “great replacement” conspiracy, but fuck those guys. If we suddenly care about Afghans, we should help the ones who need help.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Living through another Cuba Obsession.

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The Biden administration has essentially balked on its Cuba policy, saying through its State Department spokesperson that they are reviewing the policy set by their grisly predecessors and that they will, in essence, get back to us. Meanwhile, the people of Cuba are slowly dangling in the breeze, still under sanction from the global superpower 90 miles to the north, no relief in sight.

I’m not surprised, inasmuch as this administration make no pretense of departing from the imperial line when they were trawling for votes last year. As I’ve mentioned many times, Biden’s campaign web site contained almost no foreign policy position papers, and the ones they did post were bank-shot policies related to some domestic concern. The utility of that strategy is obvious – for the left, there’s nothing to push back against; for the centrists and right-wing Democrats, if they fill in the blank with what’s in their heads, they won’t be far from wrong.

Ned’s price

It’s worth listening to what the State Department Spokesperson said about Cuba a few days ago. Aside from the ongoing policy review process, he said U.S. policy is focused on “democracy” and “human rights”, that it’s up to the Cuban people what they think of their own leadership succession, and that U.S. citizens “tend to be the best ambassadors for freedom in Cuba.” Really? Let’s interrogate these notions for a few moments.

First, democracy. The United States is selective in its application of this principle. There is zero democracy, for instance, in Saudi Arabia, and yet they are not under sanction – far from it; they get arms, trade, you name it. Cuba, on the other hand, has been under punitive sanctions my entire lifetime, and I am sixty two. I know inconsistency is a weak charge against states and politicians, but the very idea that we think of democracy as a value is simply ludicrous.

No, Cuba is not a formal democracy along the lines of the U.S. As I’ve mentioned in this blog before, any comparison between Cuba and the United States is meaningless because of the power/wealth differential. But honestly – look at what the U.S. considers democracies in the Western Hemisphere, like Haiti.

Vox populi in Haiti

Do ordinary people in Haiti have more of a voice in public affairs than citizens of Cuba? Yes, they have elections, but their elections are meaningless. The head of the only mass-based political party in Haiti – Lavalas – was deposed from the presidency twice by the military, with the tacit or open support of the United States. Haiti is shot through with investment capital from overseas. Once the source of much of France’s wealth, the country cannot support itself, as its agricultural and industrial base has been reconfigured by foreign powers.

Cuba’s liberty is in its independence from the United States, not in electoral politics, which never developed beyond a certain point in the shadow of 60 years of sanction, assassination, terrorism, and attack from El Norte. Which is why Ned Price’s comment about U.S. citizens being “the best ambassadors for freedom in Cuba” is so infuriating. We’ve done nothing but strangle them for six decades. Where’s the freedom in that?

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
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Required reading.

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I don’t read a lot of books these days, given my lack of personal time, but right now I’m reading a book I think every American should read. It’s called Kill Anything That Moves, by Nick Turse, it’s a few years old (maybe five or six), and it lays out the systematic slaughter of the U.S. war in Vietnam in sickening detail. Meticulously researched and documented, this book is a really useful guide to archival sources on what was certainly one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century and one that the United States has never come to terms with.

The "things" we killed for moving.

Here is a brief excerpt that describes what was done in the American effort to pacify the Binh Dinh region of South Vietnam in 1966:

During the six weeks of [Operation] Masher/White Wing, from late January to early March 1966, the 1st Cavalry Division fired 133,191 artillery rounds in to Binh Din’s heavily populated An Lao Valley and Bong Son Plain. The navy added 3,213 rounds from its ships. The air force launched 600 tactical air sorties, dropping more than 427 tons of general-purpose bombs, 265 tons of fragmentation ordinance, 165 tons of napalm, and 80 tons of white phosphorus, which damaged and destroyed more than 600 huts and other structures. Of course, troops on the ground also laid waste to many other homes at the same time. 

Bear in mind that this took place in one small area of South Vietnam over the course of six weeks. Turse concentrates a great deal on the retail violence of the war, chronicling attacks on villages by Army and Marine units. Probably the most disturbing part of this narrative, aside from the wanton bloodshed, is the familiarity of the tactics. Our troops in Vietnam would profile Vietnamese in much the same way that drone pilots profile their targets – what decides your fate is where you happen to be standing, whom you’re hanging around with, what you look like, etc. It also recalls stateside police tactics.

Our media and our political leaders spend a fair amount of time criticizing other governments for not owning up to their crimes against humanity. For decades I have heard commentators decrying the strange resistance the Japanese have toward being honest about their imperial past, for instance. But what we have done with regard to our own imperial history is at least as impressive. This war that killed millions is barely known to us, except in broad strokes. This important book takes a major step towards remedying that little issue.

luv u,

jp

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Empire redux.

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There were some hair-on-fire moments on talk television this week about Trump acting as a Russian “agent” or “asset” or something similar. I have my own thoughts on this issue, which I’ve shared previously on this blog, but what I find kind of interesting about this discourse is the degree to which it reveals the state of mainstream opinion on national security issues. Mind you, I don’t mean popular opinion; rather, “articulate” opinion of the kind you find on Morning Joe and other similar platforms. The ability of the American imperial project to repackage itself in such a way as to appeal to another generation of gullible subjects has always fascinated me, and we’re seeing it play out again on screens large and small all across the nation.

One of the points of outrage regarding Trump came from a newspaper piece that reported on the president floating the idea of pulling the U.S. out of NATO. The reaction went beyond just the usual tropes about NATO’s vital mission of keeping the peace in Europe since the end of the last war and how Russia is dedicated to pushing it back and splitting it up. Some commentators suggested that the idea of ending NATO is something so outlandish and outside of the mainstream that it simply had to come from Russia. Of course, unless these people are all younger than they look, they might all recall that at the end of the cold war many Americans questioned whether NATO still had a mission. People can disagree on that, but it isn’t outlandish to raise the question, particularly in that context.

NATO expansion since 1945

What’s more, it doesn’t take a Putin apologist to suggest that the Russian government has a more than defensible reason to be suspicious of the NATO expansion that has taken place over the past three decades. For one thing, Russia was promised by the U.S. – George H.W. Bush specifically – that NATO would not expand one inch to the east. That was a lie, of course. Why would Russians care about that? The biggest reason is that they have been invaded by foreign alliances three times in the last century, the last time at the cost of 20 million lives. When the Soviet Union ceased to be a thing, I’m sure their expectation was that NATO would go away. It didn’t, and like any hammer looking for something to do, it sees everything as a nail.

As Trump prepares another generation of phony missile defense weapons, one can only hope that these aren’t coffin nails.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Korea’s January thaw.

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Sometime in the coming days, the North and South Korean Winter Olympic Teams will march together under a unified flag, and the Women’s Hockey Teams will play on the same side. And it looks like it’s happening, now that the International Olympic Committee has said it’s okay. Think about that statement for a moment – did they really need to deliberate on this? It’s just a freaking game, people. If it provides a means of reducing tensions, why would your cheesy rulebook ever stand in the way? Score one for President Moon Jae-in, over the objections of his country’s hardliners and, of course, the United States.

The imperialist's nightmare.Think it strange that the U.S. would be against a lessening of tension? Well, it’s not just a Trump thing. There’s a deep imperial institutional bias against ending that conflict, and it manifests itself in a host of different ways. Just Wednesday of this week I saw an NBC story about the North Korean woman who allegedly blew up a South Korean airliner; she is out of jail, living in exile as a defector in South Korea. The bombing was decades ago – so why did the network decide to dredge this story up now and hang it around the father of the current North Korean leader’s neck? I would say that NBC is about as close to the core of the U.S. foreign policy establishment as any institution can be. With a lot of positive stories coming out about the glimmer of North/South detente in Korea, it’s no surprise that this old chestnut would bob up to the surface.

Of course, blowing up an airliner is a heinous crime. We’ve done it – recall the shootdown of the Iranian Airbus back in July 1988, to say nothing of our support for CIA asset Luis Posada Carriles’ downing of the Cuban airliner carrying their Olympic fencing team in 1976 (the perpetrator now living unmolested in Miami). Of course, so too is blowing up a whole country. We’ve done that, too … to North Korea, for instance. Putting that aside for a moment, it seems clear to me that we have a strong resistance to defusing this Korean bomb. When obvious peaceful solutions are available and remain untried, it’s reasonable to assume that there are other considerations at work.

Consider this: the Korean conflict gives us a strong foothold in Asia. When it flares up, the many of the regional players turn to us. It provides justification for our massive military presence in the south and substantial presence elsewhere in the region. Most importantly, the conflict prevents greater international cooperation leading to full integration of that region’s economies, independent of the American-dominated global system. That, I suggest, may be the nightmare scenario that keeps our planners awake at night – not the prospect of nuclear war.

Changing our priorities in Korea is going to take real work. It goes way beyond party and personalities.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Just like old times.

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This probably isn’t a wise practice, but I sometimes view Morning Joe as a bellwether of establishment opinion, particularly regarding foreign policy. Their panel covers the spectrum from neocons to liberal interventionists – a narrow span to say the least. And they appear to be as happy as the proverbial pig in shit about Trump’s recent cruise missile attack in Syria. Both the liberal interventionist wing and the neocon wing have been highly critical of Obama’s failure to start a unilateral, extra-constitutional war with Syria back in 2013, so this past week was sweet validation for them all. As a group, they seem anxious for evidence that Trump’s administration is “normalizing” and settling in to the usual, conventional insanity, so they tend to jump on every lurch towards the institutional consensus.

Mother of all BullshitAnd clearly, there is a solid, institutional consensus on American foreign policy. It’s a relatively small box that contains, on one end, the Obama approach, then the center-left liberal interventionist school (Clinton, Samantha Power, etc.), followed by the center-right establishment Republicans (James Baker, Kissinger, etc.), the hot-head interventionists (McCain, Graham, Cotton), and the neocons (Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Elliot Abrams, etc.). In terms of blowing things up and killing people, there isn’t a lot of distance between any of these groupings, and they all share a common imperial worldview. The encouraging development for the Morning Joe crew is the notion that Trump has now put himself in that box.

If this turns out to be a feature, not a bug, of the Trump Administration, the 2016 general election had no impact on foreign policy at all. Policy-wise, Trump appears to have put himself pretty close to Obama on that score. He maybe has a little more bomb than Obama, but it’s basically the same stuff, and the Morning Joe crowd has little to say about that. I sometimes wonder if these people remember last year, let alone 16 years ago. Do they remember that W. Bush ran a hair to the left of Gore on foreign policy – no “nation building”, right? – then pivoted back to the center-right of the consensus box after a few months (certainly after 9/11).? Obama did something similar. It’s pretty simple: presidents put out pleasing rhetoric during campaigns, then peddle back to the default policies when they win office.

Now Trump has dumped the MOAB super bunker-buster bomb on Afghanistan. What is this routine  now, bomb-drop Thursday? I guess we’ll see … next Thursday.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

For the ages.

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Perhaps the most predictable response to the death of Fidel Castro was the corporate media’s nearly exclusive focus on his critics’ jubilation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard audio of car horns honking in Miami over the past week. Contrary to the impression viewers and listeners might get from this coverage, the exile community’s joy was a small island in a sea of regrets pouring in from nearly the entire world, particularly those corners of it that benefited directly from Cuban assistance over the past 55 years. As was becoming the case with regard to our relationship with the OAS, our reaction to Castro’s death isolated us from the rest of the hemisphere and, indeed, the globe.

Made a difference.This cannot be overstated: South Africa and some of its immediate neighbors (Namibia, Angola) would not be the nations they are today without Cuba’s intervention on their behalf in the fight against the racist Apartheid military and its allies. Whatever criticisms anyone may have about Castro’s rule and his repression of internal dissent, we have to acknowledge that the Cubans have engaged in humanitarian intervention to a degree that far surpasses anything we have done. They did so at great cost: Washington really turned the screws on Havana, making them pay dearly for their activist stance in support of independence movements overseas.

To be clear, our attack on Cuba was never about human rights. We maintain full diplomatic relations with states that have abysmal human rights records, with no problem whatsoever. (China, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain come to mind.) In any case, it’s important to remember that when Castro’s revolution came to the island, Cuba was not facing a choice between socialism and Jeffersonian democracy. The other option was what Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Haiti saw under the imperial imprimatur of the United States: slaughter in the hundreds of thousands, an all out war on the poor and the church, and a degradation of society that reverberates to this day. And the notion that Cuba was a “terrorist” state is laughable: we carried out terror attacks on the island for decades, making many attempts at assassinating Castro himself, supporting terror bombers like CIA asset Luis Posada Carriles, who blew up an airliner carrying the Cuban Olympic fencing team, as well as Orlando Bosch.

So, Fidel Castro is for the ages, but the legacy of our imperialism is still alive and well.