Opendemocracy.com has an outstanding piece by the British writer and intellectual Anatol Leiven. Leiven posits that the exagerated American sense of Nationalism America has adopted sense 9/11 has much to do with the current atmosphere.
In the vision set out in its National Security Strategy of 2002 (NSS 2002), embodying the so-called Bush doctrine, American sovereignty was to remain absolute and unqualified. The sovereignty of other countries was to be heavily qualified by America, and no other country was to be allowed a sphere of influence, even in its own neighbourhood.
In this conception, "balance of power" - a phrase used repeatedly in the NSS - was a form of Orwellian doublespeak. The clear intention actually was to be so strong that other countries had no choice but to rally to the side of the United States, concentrating all real power and freedom of action in the hands of America.
This approach was basically an attempt to extend a tough, interventionist version of the Monroe doctrine (1823) to the entire world. This plan is megalomaniac, completely impracticable (as the occupation of Iraq has shown) and totally unacceptable to most of the world. Because, however, this programme was expressed in traditional American nationalist terms of self-defence and the messianic role of the US in spreading freedom, many Americans found it entirely acceptable, and indeed natural.
The Bush administration, then, like European elites before 1914, has allowed its own national chauvinism and limitless ambition to compromise the security and stability of the world capitalist system of which they are the custodians and greatest beneficiaries. In other words, they have been irresponsible and dangerous not in Marxist terms, but in their own.
This point is vitally important in relation to the stability of the world and of United States hegemony in the world. A relatively benign version of American hegemony is by no means unacceptable to many people round the world - both because they often have neighbours whom they fear more than America, and because their elites are to an increasing extent integrated into a global capitalist elite whose values are largely defined by those of America.
But American imperial power in the service of narrow American nationalism is a very different matter, and an extremely unstable base for hegemony. It involves power over the world without accepting any responsibility for global problems and the effects of US behaviour on other countries - and power without responsibility was defined by Rudyard Kipling as "the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."
American nationalism has already played a key role in preventing America from taking advantage of the uniquely beneficent world-historical moment following the fall of communism. Instead of using this moment to create a "concert of powers" in support of regulated capitalist growth world stability, and the relief of poverty, preventable disease and other social ills, nationalism has helped direct America into a search for new enemies.
This is key to understanding why we are responsible for how the world has come to view us. The oppurtunity to bring the world to our side slipped through our finger when the Bush administration took power. One need only look at world public opinion polls to view empirical evidence of the shift. This is not as the Weekly Standard and its ilk argue, their problem with us, not vis-a-versa. We are responsible for how the world sees us.
Such nationalism may encourage its adherents to cultivate not only specific national hatreds, but also hostility to all ideals, goals, movements, laws and institutions which aim to transcend the nation and speak for the general interests of mankind. This form of nationalism is therefore in direct opposition to the universalist ideals and ambitions of the American Creed - upon which, in the end, rests America's role as a great civilisational empire and heir to Rome and China; and upon which is based America's claim to represent a positive example to the world.
The historical evidence of the dangers of unreflecting nationalist sentiments should be all too obvious, and are all too relevant to US policy today. Nationalism thrives on irrational hatreds and on the portrayal of other nations or ethno-religious groups as congenitally, irredeemably wicked and hostile. Yesterday many American nationalists felt this way about Russia. Today those or other nationalists may regard the Arab and Muslim worlds, and to a lesser extent any country that defies American wishes, in the same way. Hence the astonishing explosion of chauvinism directed against France and Germany in the approach to the war in Iraq.
When other nations are declared to be irrationally, incorrigibly and unchangingly hostile, it is obviously pointless to seek compromises with them or to try to accommodate their interests and views. And because they are irrational and barbarous, America is free to dictate to them or even conquer them for their own good. This is precisely the discourse of nationalists in the leading European states towards each other and "lesser breeds without the law" (Kipling again) before 1914, which helped drag Europe into the great catastrophes of the 20th century. It was also a central part of the old hideous discourse of anti-Semitism.
If such visions spread in the United States, they will be disastrous not only for American interests and American security but for America's soul. Pathological hatred and fear of the outside world will feed the same emotions in American domestic politics, until the nation's moral and cultural greatness lies in ruins, and its legacy to the future is broken beyond repair.
Anti-Americanism is something America has consistently failed to grasp. There is an odd aspect of the American interaction with the world commonly referred to as American Exceptionalism. It has to do with the belief that America is a unique power in world history, one that has sought establish itself as a benevolent superpower by promoting liberal democratic ideals around the world. The problem is that reality has forced America to be only mildly successful in this objective, forcing us to sidestep or even ignore its importance when they interfere with our economic imperatives, particularly related to oil. So while our "in principle" support of liberal ideals has been persuasive enough to convince the majority of Americans of the worthiness of our motives, it is the very fact of our moments of inconsistency that has made us appear hypocritic to the world, especially in the Middle East where our inconsistency has been the most overt.
Therefore, American Exceptionalism is not just an American phenomenon, it is something both we and the rest of the world believe in. We both believe that in this day and age, along with great power comes great responsibility, and that we have an obligation to use it to those ends. The difference is that for us--at least in as far as the conservative side our national character sees things--what we've done should be enough. For the rest of the world, however, it isn't.
This is fundamental to understanding the failure of the Republican approach to Terrorism. As opposed to attempting to understand this perception, they are appalled that it even exists, refuse to understand the the perspective, and, in fact, believe it should be punished. They, in general, believe it is more or less useless to attempt to communicate with this point of view, and to do so is to acknowledge the correctness of anti-Americanism and even Terrorism in general. It is essentially "dealing with terrorists".
Of course, this then leads to another unrealistic assumption the American Right and the world share: the belief in American omnipotence. The difference is that, for the Right, if our ability to act is unfettered by international obligations, there is no problem we face which our power cannot remedy. On the other hand, for the world, this means there is no situation in which we cannot act as they would have us act. The problem, of course that we are not omnipotent and that there are limits to what we can do.
This is the great advantage of the Left to America, for it uniquely understands the interaction of anti-Americanism and Terrorism and is therefore the only agent acting in the world which can fill the gaps in understanding between the Right and the World. We understand the hypocrisy we have conveyed with our past actions and tend to believe that we are in a better strategic position when our actions coincide with our ideals. We also understand, if no one else does, that there is a limit to what power can achieve, and if it is misapplied, can even create more problems than it solves. Above all, we understand, the fundamental importance of a true engagement with the rest of the world, for beyond all the campaign positioning, there is indeed a "global test" for our actions, and we have been consistently failing it.
|
|
|
Permalink :: 2 Comments :: Post a Comment
|
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account right here. It's quick and free.
