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Four
More Bush Years:
What
Exciting Opportunities!
PressInfo #
201
November
11, 2004
By
Jan
Oberg,
TFF
director*
This is a follow-up to
PressInfo
200.
With some dialectical thinking,
four more years with George W. Bush at the helm of the
United States Empire may turn out to be a great
opportunity for something new and better to emerge. In
the ying-yang of crisis, there is both suffering in the
old and seeds of visions about the new. And suffering
there will be the next four years; none of the arguments
below ignore that. However, the one who despairs too much
over Bush's re-election may contribute more to suffering
than to realising the positive potentials we have at
hand. Let's at least try to roll up our sleeves
now.
1.
Criticism and protests without constructive alternatives
is a waste of energy
One lesson to be learnt from the
most recent wars, the war on terrorism and the
re-election of Mr. Bush is that it is not enough to
protest and criticise; there has to be what Gandhi called
a constructive program too. See TFF
PressInfo 200 for further
argument. There has to be well-informed alternatives by
civil society organisations and governments critical of
US policies that build on knowledge as well as new ideas
and goals combined with some creative strategy for
action. The next four years cannot be devoted to marches
against this war today and that war tomorrow and to
anti-globalisation; civil society energies must be
directed toward answering the overarching question: if we
don't want that, what do we want instead and how are we
going to get there?
It will require more study circles,
courses, training and dialogue than marches to achieve
that! It will take hearts - ethics, values and hopes; it
will take brains - i.e. education, theoretical
understanding, clear concepts and rational planning of
action; and it will take muscles - the courage to think,
speak and act non-violently not against the U.S. or some
issue but for the "damned of the earth" and new ways.
2. We
know enough about the U.S. administration to work on
changes from today
We know now what values, leadership
style and violence-based policies we may come to witness
ahead. We
have the basics of the President's character and beliefs,
among them that he is operating on the mandate of God.
The good thing is that we
do not have to spend time guessing and experiencing the
way we would with a new administration in Washington.
Some believe, hope or have to say that in Bush's second
term, we may see more multilateralism and more
co-operation. Nothing speaks for that prediction; it's
wishful thinking. On the contrary, the stronger mandate
he has now may place risk-taking and hubris even more in
the foreground of his administration.
3. It
won't be possible for decent governments to stand idly
behind the U.S.
This is written while Falluja is
being destroyed, the 14th year of destruction of the
Iraqi people and their society. Decent government leaders
will find it more and more difficult to openly or tacitly
support or defend US foreign policy in general and
interventionism and war-fighting in particular. Internal
opposition in, say, Europe and the Arab world will put
many government in a squeeze. The sheer lack of
legitimacy and support will drive more and more
policy-makers to think in terms of new alliances and of
standing more on their own legs. Counter currents will
emerge slowly but surely. Where such decency does not
exist, there may be a rising terror threat - and that
will eventually force change, although perhaps only after
terrible suffering and loss of many lives. Thus, there
may be other military action but a new occupation
modelled upon Iraq won't happen.
4.
Pro-action will substitute re-action to Washington's
policies.
The convenient and intellectually
lazy policy of wait-and-see what the Americans think and
do in a particular situation and then positioning one's
own country as a re-action to that, would sooner or later
have to give way to a much more pro-active policy: we are
willing to listen to Washington, but we develop our own
views and policies pro-actively. The future is about
dialogue between us, about pluralism and not about
disciplined submission. The more countries that begin to
stand on their own feet, the more balance there will be
in the global order. Thus, no country should sit and wait
to see what the U.S. will do vis-à-vis North
Korea, Iran, Syria or some other actors; everyone, the EU
in particular, should develop their own policies and get
engaged in peaceful conflict-management and genuine,
creative diplomacy. France and Germany cannot in the
future, like in the case of Iraq, just say "no" to war
and lack every alternative to it.
5.
This is a tremendous opportunity for the European
Union.
The
EU, in particular, should be able to grasp the
opportunity now. There is no way it will be able to match
the U.S. in military terms.
The only alternative the EU has is to get its foreign and
security policy acts together - but not necessarily as
one uniform policy dominated by the few big, but as
flexible alliances and co-operative schemes among
shifting groups of members. The EU could easily become
much more attractive in the eyes of actors in the Middle
East, Russia, Central Asia and Asia as well as Africa; it
will depend on the extent that it becomes the credible
"soft power" conflict-manager, the mediator, the
organisation with well-trained dialogue experts and
better analyses/diagnoses of world event and solutions to
conflicts. In short, offering to the world what the U.S.
doesn't offer.
The comparative advantage of the EU
is potentially huge, proportionate in the eyes of the
rest of the world to Washington's destruction of every
potential for a legally based and just world order.
Spending much more on reconstruction, reconciliation,
humanitarian aid and civil conflict-management before,
during and after the U.S. has ravaged the place will help
the millions and make everyone see the
difference!
The EU is strong in political,
economic, social and cultural dimensions of power,
whereas the U.S. is only strong militarily and declining
on the other four dimensions. If the EU does not exploit
this historic opportunity in which the great majority of
the world's people strongly look for alternatives to the
U.S. Empire, the EU itself hardly has a great future in
the world system.
Like the U.S. won independence from
Europe, it is now time for the Europeans to do the same
politically and, above all, intellectually. There should
be fewer Americanised brains in the European ministries
of foreign affairs in the future - and a little more
intellectual and ethical self-confidence and collective
self-reliance, a little more compassion for the world as
a whole.
The objective opportunities seem
better than ever since 1945. So, be open to co-operate
with the U.S. when in Europe's interest, but don't be
submissive; stop believing in the Father figure, follow
the example of the East Europeans who liberated
themselves from their paternalistic ghosts some 15 years
ago.
In summary, it is not
anti-American, it is pro-everything and everybody else.
It is liberation and thinking with indigenous minds,
throwing off the yoke of security intellectual and other
types of submissiveness and obedience.
6. No
more proofs are needed: violent conflict-management is a
disaster.
Both under Clinton and under the
Bushes, the U.S. has practised violent
conflict-management. What's left behind is a chain of
fiascos and chaotic non-peace situations; the catchwords
are Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo/a, Serbia, Macedonia,
Somalia, Afghanistan and, for everyone to see so sadly,
now Iraq. People with little conflict literacy and a high
degree of U.S. loyalty usually argue that the bombing of
these places came too late or there was too little of it.
Others, including score of TFF Associates, have argued
long before the military actions took place that these
conflicts were not of the type that could be solved - or
peace emerge - by those types of military policies which,
in addition, also lacked coherent strategies for the
post-bombing, post-war situation. Neither was there any
decent exit strategy that benefited the people living in
these troubled areas.
So we are in a very fortunate
situation: nobody in touch with reality (in contrast to
virtual-media reality) on the ground in these places have
the slightest doubt that the militarized interventionist
and culturally insensitive U.S. style of
conflict-management has been tested enough now to be
found hopelessly counterproductive. The locals know it,
the internationals there know it, the NGOs working there
know it and some high-level diplomats and UN people who
have been on the ground for a month - they all know it.
It's only the decision-makers, the advisers in the
offices of the prime ministers, the ministries of foreign
affairs and the media who still don't seem to know
it.
7. The
great potentials of non-violence, peace by peaceful
means, is right in front of our eyes.
Point 6 was a negative conclusion.
Its positive side is that a huge potential for
non-violent political, diplomatic, psychological, social,
ecological and cultural conflict-management emerging. As
a matter of fact, and pointed out repeatedly be Jonathan
Schell in his seminal 400-plus page book, The
Unconquerable World, there are a few things we now know
about violence. For instance, we know that due to the
fact that nuclear weapons, if used, could wipe out the
human race several times over and destroy the earth,
there cannot exist any political motives that can be
furthered by their use.
Two, the changes that have worked
better are those undertaken with peaceful means. Says
Schell, "The English, the American, the French, the
German, and the Indian revolutions all demonstrated the
power of people to enervate and paralyze a regime by
withdrawing support from it while at the same time
building up parallel organisations." (p. 185).
Later on in his very comprehensive
expose, Schell goes through the cases of the overthrow of
the Greek junta in 1974, the fall of Portugal which was
the last European empire in Africa, the democratization
in Spain from 1975, following Franco's death. In South
America in the 1980s, generals surrendered power in
Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Marcos dictatorship in the
Philippines disappeared in 1986, South Korea's autocracy
in 1988, Indonesia's Suharto fell in 1990, a strong
opposition against the mullahs in Iran developed, in 2001
over 70 years of unbroken rule by the Mexican People's
Revolutionary Party was broken by the people, Milosevic
fell in October the same year and Georgia's Shevardnadze
in 2003. South Africa's experience - everybody had
predicted terrible bloodshed - went through transition by
means of trust building, reconciliation and a truth and
reconciliation commission.
All this has worked, more or less,
and much better than civil wars and military
interventions or imperial warfare. Souls have been
healed, democracies were given a chance, as was peace.
Not so in the places we mentioned above in the 1990s
where foreign military intervention was the main tool
employed to stop wars and create peace.
It's time to see now that there is
only one measure against four more years of militarist,
imperial Bush policies: to criticise it less and point
much more than hitherto to the efficiency and decency,
the healing and freedom potential of people's
mobilisation without weapons in their hands.
In short, there is so much reason
for hope - if people, media and decision-makers could
only see it. One basic reason they can't is their
blinding loyalty with a sinking empire - that of the
United States. Peace education, civic education, skills
training in international affairs and civil
conflict-management may turn out to be the most powerful
tools we have.
8.
Have patience - empires don't last forever. The US
displays weakness in Iraq.
There are general, historical
reasons why empires go down.
Some are: militarization, overextension, i.e. trying to
control too much at to many places; decreasing legitimacy
in the eyes of everybody else; economic exhaustion; a
perverted belief that everybody else should do things the
only way, the way we do them, i.e. diminishing tolerance
of pluralism and, as time goes by, an ever increasing
inability to listen and learn from anyone else - and from
one's own mistakes. In short, intellectual and moral
stagnation, inflexibility, monolithic policy,
self-aggrandizement and megalomania - series of cover-ups
of the fact that the Empire is but an
illusion.
It can be argued that the United
States is moving rapidly in this general direction. (TFF
xxxx) If so, four more years with George W. Bush will
speed up the process - i.e. bring about the end of the
Empire faster than would otherwise be the case.
So, while the U.S. is being
weakened from within due to its drift toward exhausting,
uncontrolled Empire and potential fascism, it will also
be weakened from outside, by the rest of the world
becoming more independent and less fearful and obedient
of the Empire. One of the most important lessons to learn
from the last 40-50 years of warfare is that big,
technologically powerful countries with low morale and
bad motives lose wars to smaller, less technologically
and sometimes more moral countries: US to Vietnam, the
Soviet Union to Afghanistan, Serbia to other republics,
and now the U.S. the U.K. and others in Iraq.
The U.S. is history's strongest
military actor, it's obsession with threats is greater
than anyone else on earth, it is hated by more than
others, isolating itself from its friends and destroying
within what made the U.S. so attractive for people around
the world. Somebody must draw the conclusions from
that…
9.
Boycott the U.S. economically
One such weakening factor, indeed a
major one, would be a global economic boycott of the U.S.
economy - first consumer goods, then successively capital
goods and flows, loans and credits, U.S. dominated
economic institutions, investments in and selling to the
American market, stop granting the U.S. loans to finance
its wars, stop travelling to the U.S. etc.
Such economic protests would be
much more efficient than street demonstrations against
U.S. foreign policy and would benefit the emergence of
new economic relations crisscrossing the world. However,
as with all other embargos, solutions must be found so
the poor segments of the American society are not
hurt.
Here is what Lester
Brown, one of the most important global thinkers of our
times, wrote in late October 2004 - worth quoting at
length:
"Now the
rejection of American foreign policy is translating
into a rejection of products with U.S. brand names.
Europeans are in effect holding an economic
referendum on U.S. foreign policy, voting with
their pocketbooks. The effect of this can be seen
in the third quarter earnings reports now coming
out for several leading U.S. corporations.
Worldwide, eight of the ten
leading product brands are American. More than half
the sales of each of these brands are outside of
the United States. John Quelch, professor at the
Harvard Business School, says, "A deepening
opposition to American foreign policy is
threatening the long-term strength of these
brands."
The Financial Times reports
that some of the world's strongest consumer brands,
like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Gap, are being hit
hard. Coca-Cola sales in Germany dropped 16 percent
from the similar period last year and the company
is writing off $392 million "to reflect impaired
business assets there."
McDonald's, a corporation
with a remarkable historical growth record, has
seen its sales come to a near standstill across
Europe. Gap has pulled out of Germany entirely, a
move that has helped to reduce its international
sales by 10 percent. Falling attendance at Disney's
theme park outside Paris dropped revenues to where
it had to be rescued by its parent company.
Wal-Mart, the world's most successful retailer, is
facing heavy losses in Germany, which is the
world's third largest economy after the United
States and Japan.
Sales of automobiles made by
GM and Ford are also suffering in Europe. With
losses of $236 million in the region, GM is laying
off 12,000 workers in Germany. Ford may soon follow
with layoffs.
Not wanting to feed the
anti-American backlash, companies typically blame
economic conditions for their declining sales, but
the International Monetary Fund estimated in
September that Germany's economic growth this year
would be 2 percent, a much better performance than
its negative growth last year. In France, another
country where U.S. products are taking a beating,
growth is projected at 2.6 percent, compared with
0.5 percent a year ago.
The decline in sales and
earnings of U.S. companies abroad is most evident
with the leading name brands cited earlier, but the
acceptance of U.S. brand products is declining
across the board. Other well-known brands where
consumer approval abroad is declining include
Microsoft, Nike, and Yahoo. But much more is at
stake than name brands. The economic fate of
thousands of U.S. companies operating
internationally will be affected.
The indirect effect of the
Iraq war on the U.S. economy may soon become a
major issue. Quelch shares this thinking, noting
that, "the cost to the American economy could be
far greater than the cost of the war."
If continued and strengthened over
time, your personal boycott of American products could
well be the most important single form of protest against
U.S. foreign policy, its militarism and imperialism. And
it's a global citizens democratic alternative to the UN
Security Council; that body could never decide about
sanctions because at least the United States itself, one
of its five permanent members, would veto it.
But George Bush has no way to force
you and I to buy American products. We have gigantic
powers to express our solidarity with the rest of the
world now by a worldwide economic boycott of the U.S. -
but no longer than until it begins withdrawing its
military from around the world and withdraws from its
bases and wars. The action, again, must not be
anti-American, but anti- the specific destructiveness of
its foreign and security policy. And that means its
nuclear weapons too.
*
I am grateful to TFF Associate Johan
Galtung for inspiring
certain points of this PressInfo.
© TFF and the author 2004
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