Barbarians at the gate
Once upon a time the US had a moral compass, these days, Ayman El-Amir* argues, it is adopting the unsavoury behaviour of an unfettered imperial power
If V.I. Lenin were rehearsing the rhetoric for the Bolshevik revolution today, his rallying call would be "Axis of evil, unite!" Such a reworking would be à propos these days because an inexorable momentum is building towards a new global struggle, underwritten by the usual pseudo- moralistic rationale of self-righteousness. This is reminiscent of the post-World War I landscape, when the shape of the world for the 20th century was being worked out. Today, the battleground has been levelled, the enemy defined and the war cry sounded. The struggle for global domination has pitted the United States, as the new imperial power who claims the moral high ground, against the marauders of civilisation represented by the axis of evil, consisting of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. It is good against evil all over again -- the difference being that the world is now more divided than ever as to who the bad guys are.
Until recently, the enemy was indisputably well- defined. Under the US administration's analysis, Iraq spearheaded the axis of evil that sustained terrorism which, on 11 September, hurt the American national ethos beyond historically tolerated levels. The other members of the club, Iran and North Korea, huddled in the shadows, awaiting their destiny. Then North Korea rudely stomped into the foray, uninvited and unexpected, with China lurking in the background. The US would have preferred to take on each member of the axis separately, or to make the invasion of Iraq the bullet of mercy that would put to rest the entire membership of the club. But North Korea opened a second front -- a move for which the US was unprepared. In Iraq, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Committee's (UNMOVIC) inspectors have so far been unable to come up with the "smoking gun" the US so eagerly seeks, which has clearly undercut its argument for an invasion. Meanwhile, with every passing day, the anti-war movement is gathering steam in a way that suggests it will soon rival that against the war in Vietnam.
US allies, bowing to their constituencies, are less sure that removing Saddam Hussein and his regime are worth the Armageddon that the US is prepared to visit upon the Iraqi people. Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians, for which American support is regarded by the Arabs as the epitome of superpower hypocrisy, continues unchecked. US moral authority, consequently, is being eroded.
Imperial powers do not like to have their political or moral authority questioned -- not because they are self-righteous, but because they have the firepower to make it legitimate. The US, heady with a sense of power, is cruising around the world on a new messianic mission. That sense of purpose is distilled from the more than 140 wars it fought in the past 200 years in defence of the American value system. The mission, like many of the US's bloody wars, is motivated by a muddled mix of greed, self-interest and self-styled global responsibility. It uses the force of international law and the law of imperial force as two sides of the same coin. In this spirit, the US -- without the authorisation of the UN Security Council -- led a NATO air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in order to roll back acts of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
In the case of Iraq, the US has reluctantly deferred to the Security Council, but with the clear intention of winning time to build up forces capable of carrying out a devastating war against that country anyway. While the stated purpose is to take out President Saddam Hussein and his regime -- as an act of international criminal justice -- the US has spurned the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court for fear of self-incrimination. It views the International Court of Justice with little more than disdain.
In its global leadership role, the US has seen fit to reject the Kyoto protocols on climate change (which set mandatory levels for emissions of greenhouse gases) towards supporting instead the interests of US oil and chemical corporations. The US presents itself as the champion of human rights, while it violates international humanitarian law with respect to the prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay camp. Similarly, it promotes free trade and open markets, while imposing protectionist duties on steel imports. Particularly germane at this moment is its pursuit of countries alleged to have weapons of mass destruction, while at the same time it defends Israel's possession of them.
Such behaviour is typical of unchallenged imperial powers. It is a replay of the actions by Athens, Rome, Constantinople, the Ottomans and Great Britain. They all believed that military might was a projection of moral right, but they all suffered the same fate. What they tend to overlook is that the barbarians are relentlessly banging on the exclusionary walls of the empire, not because they want to destroy civilisation, but because they are demanding a fair share of it.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was the main factor that gave the US a global political vacuum to fill. With this went the illusion that the end of the USSR was a moral victory of the forces of democracy over the inequities of totalitarianism. This is only partly true. Paradoxically, the Soviet Union imploded when it tried to modernise Communism by emulating capitalism. Mikhail Gorbachev did not want to dismantle the Communist system -- he wanted to make it more competitive on the global scene. The decades of broadcasts by Radio Free Europe had nothing to do with the change that shook the foundations of the Soviet empire.
In dealing with the so-called axis of evil, the new marauders of civilisation, the US has replaced its historical axiom of "freedom and justice for all" with the doctrine of "fire and brimstone for those who oppose us". At the turn of the 20th century, the US stood tall, raising the beacon of freedom, respect for human rights and self-determination for colonised peoples. Today it faces rising opposition to its policy of global domination. It is not merely because George W Bush is no Woodrow Wilson, or that it is not the closing scene of World War I and the dawning of a new era. It is simply that the US is going through the consuming historical malaise of imperial power without a consistent, universally- acknowledged code of moral justice.
* The writer is former correspondent of Al-Ahram in Washington DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
