by Badri Raina
first published in Mainstream Weekly, November 22, 2005
I t is now obvious that the neo-imperialists in America—and their apologists at home here—wish to hard sell the thesis that the Westphalian bedrock (sovereign nation-states, and the principle of non-interference), upon which international relations have been based for over two centuries, must be deemed to have slipped with finality from under the countries of the world.
by Badri Raina
first published in Mainstream Weekly, November 22, 2005
I t is now obvious that the neo-imperialists in America—and their apologists at home here—wish to hard sell the thesis that the Westphalian bedrock (sovereign nation-states, and the principle of non-interference), upon which international relations have been based for over two centuries, must be deemed to have slipped with finality from under the countries of the world.
In all cases, that is, except the one: America must be conceded the right to be the world’s only nation-state, with the additional prerogative to interfere wherever and whenever it so considers to be in its national interest. In the pursuit of that interest it is just as well, say the apologists, to recognise that it will meddle, bully, blackmail, or attack pre-emptively whenever its steady supply of raw materials, chiefly energy sources, comes into the mildest of questions.
Imperialism is nothing new, having always been an inherent necessity within Capitalism. Indeed, Lenin here ought to be recognised as having had the proverbial last word. What then is new? Truly the unabashed dumping of the fig-leaves of civility that sometimes characterised bourgeois terms of discourse as between classes and nations. Perry Anderson has recently argued with pristine clarity how before the collapse of the Soviet Union the opposition between the two camps used to be conceptualised as between democracy and dictatorship, and how since then imperialist discourse has boldly recast that alterity into one between the virtues of Capitalism and the defunct status of Socialism. This makes for an openness of the nature of the contentions we experience today; but that openness inevitably is accompanied by a crassness of assertion which reduces the possibilities of argument to nil. Currently, the seemingly unchallengeable hubris of American neo-imperialism drags the quality of its articulation to new depths of vulgarity, even among the top echelons of ‘educated’ people in the American power structure. Never particularly rich in the graces of civilised language-use (given the antecedents of subject-formation within the all-too-brief rough and tumble, grab and snatch of American history—for want of a better description), prominent purveyors of power in the American Senate (Rome, be mortified) are now at a par with some of our own new breed of worthies in the Assemblies. Our ‘strategic partnership’ thus carries new linguistic dimensions of equality.
Consequently, a Lantos there (not much to be looked for in a name of sort anyway) can go ahead in a formal Senate hearing and call our Minister of External Affairs, a worthy and well-read gentleman by any standard, ‘dense’. And do you know why? Because he had the gumption to say that India’s decisions with respect to Iran would be based on Indian national interests. Poor man, he should have known that only America anymore has national interests, and those indeed represent global interests as well.
There is the problem; the unrelenting fascistisation of the American State now requires and demands what fascists and fundamentalists have always required and demanded—that all complex and pluralist realities of life and language be reduced to the unlinear and moronish definitions of their making. The moral complexities of diverse human processes, the tough ambiguities of making choices and exercising freedom, the lessons of contradictory histories, the fine awareness of the contingent nature of the mighty principles of order and dominance, indeed the decline and fall of empires (the sun, after all, did set over Britannia, as it surely is setting over American neo-imperialism)—all of that must be reduced to the frightened binaries of simple-minded born-agains; depending on whether you are for or against the beastly hegemon, you will be designated loser or winner, satanic or godly. At a time when the American Presidency is being driven by periodic messages from god (we have it from the horse’s mouth), the terms of political discourse collapse hopelessly into those of a morality play. It is of course highly convenient, and relevant, that god seems entirely in conformity with the rapacious gluttony of American-based Capital, decreeing in its defence the invasions both of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Those, therefore, that presume to express a thought divergent in the least from the Lantos lexicon cannot but be ‘dense’. Contrarily, those others—and it matters not a jot whether they be fundamentalists, dictators, or new-minted democrats—who see atonce the transcendant wisdom of Lantos and the thesis he articulates must be deemed to be of the company of saints who will go marching in. Furthermore, the ‘dense’ ones must be taught ‘abject lessons’. And after India’s disgraceful surrender at the last IAEA vote on Iran, more abject lessons are in the pipeline. Already a group of Senators have written to the Indian Prime Minister to indicate the vote-with-us-next-time-around-as-well, or else sentiment. Anacondas are not known to relent pressure once they have the prey within their coils.
Since all truths in history are, in the final analysis, relational, the big bully is not entirely to blame. With Nietzsche in the left lobe and god in the right, and only willing victims in sight, it is hardly logical to expect a Bushwacker to see sense. American Caesarism, after all, is made possible only because we, in Cassius’s famous words, are ‘underlings’. Even as evidence of resistance to the bully mounts with each passing day—including in America—, even as neo-con imperialism sinks with each passing hour in the quagmire of their own making in Iraq, even as the American economy stutters in the depths of irretrievable internal and external debt, breathing only on the oxygen of American Treasury Bonds bought by the Japanese, the Germans, the Saudis and so forth, even as the disgraceful inability and unwillingness of the crony Bush Administration to protect and preserve its own against a Katrina or a Rita (while it seeks to protect and preserve all the rest of us from you know who) is jeeringly exposed, our own clutch of Bush-builders in the media and sundry opinion-making conclaves advise the Manmohan Government to ground its decisions in the ‘unalterable’ realities that confront the world. We are to understand that the world has changed, the embedded implication being that it cannot be changed any further, or ought not to be changed any further. (Recall that Macaulay was to write in his History of England—1840—that English history had reached its apogee; that at a time when some seven per cent property owners had the right to vote, and ‘two nations’ within England were in brutal contention.) Or that the messy and risky business of undertaking any further changes in the ‘changed world’ (for whose preservation the neo-con-driven imperialists are willing to kill pre-emptively) is best left to the Blue Americans, to the protesters in Washington and other cities, to the peoples and governments in those reckless Latin American countries, to the country-wide strikers in ideological France, or to those Russians who have seen through the glories of Reform, or to the recalcitrants among those alternate crusaders, the Islamists, or indeed to god. As for India, aspiring to a rightful super-powerdom, the canny way is to draft itself as willing vassal to the bullying hegemon so that the interests of our own privatising comprador bullies at home flourish, leading, don’t you know, to sweetness and light for all Indians, aam aadmi included. Thus, had the honourable Foreign Minister been called ‘dense’ by some lesser breed of nation, a démarche might have been in order, reinforced by some bullying of our own. But coming from Lantos, the appelation may only be wisely pondered, keeping ‘national interest’ in mind. And should the honourable Prime Minister squeal at the mention of the ‘abject lesson’ he has been taught? For god’s sake, no. It is no more than a sign of immaturity, common among those who bear a colonised mentality, to bristle at insults to the nation when these come from our superior well-wishers. The ladder to super-powerdom, after all, is knotty and nailed, and the many jagged edges must necessarily be negotiated with finesse. How may this great land of pacifists become a nuclear front-runner and all its populace happy if umbrage is taken at those that supply uranious alms? After all, if Indian Dalits can continue to be lorded over by the twice-born (although at this very minute some naughty ones are complaining to the very same Senate of which Lantos is the lanturn), it is in the order of things that the born-agains may lord it over the old-time twice-borns, for in the end it is power, stupid, that matters. (Not for nothing does the RSS membership remain open only to the male of the species with a deep admiration for the macho-militarists in America; not for nothing does the Equal Rights Amendment remain unendorsed by most American states; these women, didn’t Nietzsche tell us, are there merely for the all-important purpose of yielding the ruling male, and then serving all his needs.)
Now to the nitty-gritty. There is some evidence that within the Indian power structure (and one is thinking here especially of the Congress party) there are sections that are somewhat mortified by the surrender both to American bullying and Senatorial insults, and who recall the Party’s Nehruvian legacy with a sad twinge. But where is the spunk? One influential opinion-maker—in an adroitly specious lead article in the Hindustan Times—has contended, since argued would be inaccurate, that in casting its vote in the way it did, India has taken a bold initiative and shown a new way to the countries of the world. Such are the glossy wrappers in whichdamaging bitter pills are often marketed. There is nary an indication in that article as to why one may be sold on that assertion when everything that has come out about that vote points only in one direction. (See report in The Hindu, October, 1, p. 11) Another editorial opinion-maker (same daily) has sought to make the case that Iran, after all, has always sided with Pakistan on issues concerning India and Pakistan. That such a view of the matter begs a rather monumental question entirely escapes the gentleman. Who, for god’s sake, has sided more consistently, more crucially, more consequentially—and continues to do—with Pakistan, especially since the 1971 war—Iran or America? Why then do the latter’s bidding, or seek to make our own peace with Pakistan, for that matter? The answer of course is a crude and obvious one: if the greater devil promises succour to our own meaty interests, befriend him.
Come the November meeting of the IAEA, then, are we likely to see an Indian initiative that may do us proud, and give strength to peoples and governments, including millions of sane Americans, who seek to emaciate Goliath? Doubtful, it must be said, given the road-map the Manmohan Government and the interests it espouses seem to have elected. Is it to be thought that between now and the November meet the Congress’s party leadership can assert itself to refashion policy and undo the tilt? How far may one trust the general emphases in the policy direction contained in the address of the Congress President at the recent Chief Minister’s conclave at Chandigarh to extend to foreign relations? Will a new alignment to halt the trampling jackboots of the disoriented hegemon be considered? The answers to those questions will, needless to say, determine what kind of nation-state India is likely to be in the coming years.
These questions, equally needless to say, weigh heavily with the Indian Left that has so far lent support to the UPA on the basis of the CMP and reasoned argument. Apart from the fact that the new tilt is likely to prove deleterious to Indian national interest in the long-term, it must remain a genuine worry for the Left that its association, however critical, with a dispensation that now seeks deep collaboration with one of the worst imperialist regimes the world has ever seen bids fair to destroy its own credibility as an organised political force. Should the Manmohan Government carry on in the vassal-way in November, the Left may have no option but to withdraw support. In that eventuality, it will then be upto the people of India to decide which way they think the nation should go.