America's leading intellectual, Professor Noam Chomsky. (photo: unknown)
06 November 13
Many countries in the world see the U.S. as the single greatest external threat to their societies.
uring
the latest episode of the Washington farce that has astonished a
bemused world, a Chinese commentator wrote that if the United States
cannot be a responsible member of the world system, perhaps the world
should become "de-Americanized" - and separate itself from the rogue
state that is the reigning military power but is losing credibility in
other domains.
The Washington debacle's immediate source was the
sharp shift to the right among the political class. In the past, the
U.S. has sometimes been described sardonically - but not inaccurately -
as a one-party state: the business party, with two factions called
Democrats and Republicans.
That is no longer true. The U.S. is still a one-party
state, the business party. But it only has one faction: moderate
Republicans, now called New Democrats (as the U.S. Congressional
coalition styles itself).
There is still a Republican organization, but it long
ago abandoned any pretense of being a normal parliamentary party.
Conservative commentator Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise
Institute describes today's Republicans as "a radical insurgency -
ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, dismissive of
the legitimacy of its political opposition": a serious danger to the
society.
The party is in lock-step service to the very rich and
the corporate sector. Since votes cannot be obtained on that platform,
the party has been compelled to mobilize sectors of the society that are
extremist by world standards. Crazy is the new norm among Tea Party
members and a host of others beyond the mainstream.
The Republican establishment and its business sponsors
had expected to use them as a battering ram in the neoliberal assault
against the population - to privatize, to deregulate and to limit
government, while retaining those parts that serve wealth and power,
like the military.
The Republican establishment has had some success, but
now finds that it can no longer control its base, much to its dismay.
The impact on American society thus becomes even more severe. A case in
point: the virulent reaction against the Affordable Care Act and the
near-shutdown of the government.
The Chinese commentator's observation is not entirely
novel. In 1999, political analyst Samuel P. Huntington warned that for
much of the world, the U.S. is "becoming the rogue superpower," seen as
"the single greatest external threat to their societies."
A few months into the Bush term, Robert Jervis,
president of the American Political Science Association, warned that "In
the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is
the United States." Both Huntington and Jervis warned that such a course
is unwise. The consequences for the U.S. could be harmful.
In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the leading
establishment journal, David Kaye reviews one aspect of Washington's
departure from the world: rejection of multilateral treaties "as if it
were sport."
He explains that some treaties are rejected outright,
as when the U.S. Senate "voted against the Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities in 2012 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban
Treaty (CTBT) in 1999."
Others are dismissed by inaction, including "such
subjects as labor, economic and cultural rights, endangered species,
pollution, armed conflict, peacekeeping, nuclear weapons, the law of the
sea, and discrimination against women."
Rejection of international obligations "has grown so
entrenched," Kaye writes, "that foreign governments no longer expect
Washington's ratification or its full participation in the institutions
treaties create. The world is moving on; laws get made elsewhere, with
limited (if any) American involvement."
While not new, the practice has indeed become more
entrenched in recent years, along with quiet acceptance at home of the
doctrine that the U.S. has every right to act as a rogue state.
To take a typical example, a few weeks ago U.S.
special operations forces snatched a suspect, Abu Anas al-Libi, from the
streets of the Libyan capital Tripoli, bringing him to a naval vessel
for interrogation without counsel or rights. U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry informed the press that the actions are legal because they
comply with American law, eliciting no particular comment.
Principles are valid only if they are universal.
Reactions would be a bit different, needless to say, if Cuban special
forces kidnapped the prominent terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in Miami,
bringing him to Cuba for interrogation and trial in accordance with
Cuban law.
Such actions are restricted to rogue states. More
accurately, to the one rogue state that is powerful enough to act with
impunity: in recent years, to carry out aggression at will, to terrorize
large regions of the world with drone attacks, and much else.
And to defy the world in other ways, for example by
persisting in its embargo against Cuba despite the long-term opposition
of the entire world, apart from Israel, which voted with its protector
when the United Nations again condemned the embargo (188-2) in October.
Whatever the world may think, U.S. actions are
legitimate because we say so. The principle was enunciated by the
eminent statesman Dean Acheson in 1962, when he instructed the American
Society of International Law that no legal issue arises when the United
States responds to a challenge to its "power, position, and prestige."
Cuba committed that crime when it beat back a U.S.
invasion and then had the audacity to survive an assault designed to
bring "the terrors of the earth" to Cuba, in the words of Kennedy
adviser and historian Arthur Schlesinger.
When the U.S. gained independence, it sought to join
the international community of the day. That is why the Declaration of
Independence opens by expressing concern for the "decent respect to the
opinions of mankind."
A crucial element was evolution from a disorderly
confederacy to a unified "treaty-worthy nation," in diplomatic historian
Eliga H. Gould's phrase, that observed the conventions of the European
order. By achieving this status, the new nation also gained the right to
act as it wished internally.
It could thus proceed to rid itself of the indigenous
population and to expand slavery, an institution so "odious" that it
could not be tolerated in England, as the distinguished jurist William
Murray, Earl of Mansfield, ruled in 1772. Evolving English law was a
factor impelling the slave-owning society to escape its reach.
Becoming a treaty-worthy nation thus conferred
multiple advantages: foreign recognition, and the freedom to act at home
without interference. Hegemonic power offers the opportunity to become a
rogue state, freely defying international law and norms, while facing
increased resistance abroad and contributing to its own decline through
self-inflicted wounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment