by Izeth Hussain
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In this Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012 photo, Iranians walk at Tehran’s old main bazaar, Iran. A simple trip the store these days offers a crash course in life under sanctions. The price tags on many imported goods from South Korean refrigerators to Turkish crackers are sometimes double from last year. The money to buy them, meanwhile, has plunged in value against the U.S. dollar and other foreign currencies. (AP)
In my article In Support of Iran in the Island of February 1, I cited material from an article by Peter Jenkins, who is from right within the British Establishment, to sustain the argument that sanctions and the threat of war are clearly disproportionate responses to the Iran nuclear imbroglio, and that all that is required – in Jenkins’ words – is that "Iran should be allowed to enrich uranium – but with the toughest safeguards". In this article I want to contextualize the Iran nuclear imbroglio in relation to what in earlier articles I have called the New Imperialism.
A distinction has to be drawn between the New and the Old Imperialism, a distinction that cannot be an absolute one because the Old continues to persist with the New as can be demonstrated by noting the reactions to the Iran imbroglio. What I have in mind is that there has come about a note of moderation in the West, a retreat from the "aggressive lunacy" that I noted in my earlier article, but Israel seems determined to give Iran a nuclear bomb whacking. The explanation is that Israel is stuck with the Old Imperialism, while the US and the West as a whole have been shifting – in the case of the Iran imbroglio – from the Old to the New Imperialism.
The US and the EU now want more time to be given for sanctions to work, envisaging even tougher sanctions than have been applied up to now. There is a note of moderation about this position that is in striking contrast to the bellicosity that prevailed earlier, symbolized by the sending of US warships into the Straits of Hormuz. The probable reason for this shift is that the world has come to know that Iran is still years away from the capability to make nuclear weapons that can be effectively deployed. The supposition that it wants to proceed to that stage is furthermore no more than a supposition. Also, there is now some degree of alarm that continuing sanctions, with the prospect of even more serious sanctions to follow, will cause serious damage to the world economy. Clearly, sanctions and the threat of war have been disproportionate responses, as pointed out by Jenkins. What is the reason for the aggressive lunacy shown by the West? I believe that it regressed – temporarily we must hope – into attitudes typical of the Old Imperialism: racist arrogance and murderous bellicosity towards natives who dare to defy the West. But Israel, as I have noted, is stuck in the Old Imperialism. US Defense Secretary Panetta is reported as believing that there is a "strong likelihood" that Israel will attack in April, May, or June. At present the world is witnessing the ludicrous spectacle of the US, Britain, France, the UN Secretary General etc pleading with Israel to desist. But Israel is hopping about and yelping delightedly at the prospect of bomb-whacking Iran.
I will now draw the distinction between the two kinds of imperialism. It will help if we approach this distinction by noting what is meant by "modernity". Usually this term is meant to denote a configuration brought about by certain Western historical processes: the Renaissance, the discovery of the individual, the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, the Enlightenment of the eighteenth, and the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. In politics it has led to the liberal democratic order being widely regarded as the ideal one. But there is an obverse side to this notion of modernity. An alternative notion gained wide diffusion after 1992 which saw the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. In 1492 Christian Spain conquered Granada, ending Muslim rule in Western Christendom. That led to two major consequences: the unification of a nation, Spain, and the Western drive towards the conquest of the world.
Both consequences, the nation-state and imperialism, led to dominant groups treating others as inferior. In 1492 Christian Spain ordered the Jews to convert or leave, treatment that was extended to the Muslims as well in 1499. Outside Spain the Conquistadors ravaged Latin America, robbing silver and gold and natural resources after subjugating or committing genocide against the indigenous peoples. That inaugurated the several centuries of imperialist domination by the nation-states of the West, and that was "modernity" as experienced and understood by the peoples of Afro-Asia and Latin America. It was an imperialism that was racist to the bone. Of course the Enlightenment ideology was also there, but what clearly predominated was the Columbus ideology. A major change took place after 1945, when the Enlightenment ideology became much more assertive.
I have argued in an earlier article that it is wrong to think of the New World Order and the New Imperialism in terms of a dichotomy in which one is good and the other evil. We should rather think of them as positions in a spectrum in which the one can slide into the other, and back again. The changing Western attitudes to the Iran imbroglio that I have noted above illustrate my point. Another convincing illustration is provided by the case of Syria. Practically everyone agrees that the Assads pere et fils have been grisly horrors, that Bashir should go and a democracy be installed, and that that would help towards a New World Order. The difference is that China, Russia and others want an orderly transition to democracy, whereas the West’s focus is on regime change behind which could lurk the drive towards a New Imperialism.
As I have noted above Israel is stuck in attitudes appropriate to the Old Imperialism, and recently Obama has declared that in the event of an Iran-Israel conflict the US will side with Israel. Nothing surprising in that of course, but what is the explanation for what looks like US idiocy. Would it be far-fetched to suggest that they are in unholy bedlock because both nations have their origin in the expropriation of lands belonging to natives and bouts of genocide against them? Was that also the reason for the unholy bedlock between Zionist Israel and apartheid South Africa? Anyway, some kind of explanation has to be found to dissuade the West from sliding into the aggressive lunacy appropriate to Colombusian modernity.
I will next make some very brief observations on why the West’s aggressive lunacy over Iran has been allowed to go this far. Iran is years away from the capability to equip itself with even a rudimentary nuclear arsenal, and even if it goes further it is difficult to see how that arsenal can be deployed. If it is used aggressively, Iran‘s own extinction will quickly follow. Only Islamophobic idiocy can lead to the supposition that Iran will use the nuclear bomb for aggression. It can of course serve as a deterrent to make Israel and the West think twice before committing aggression against Iran – about which I will be making some further observations. I believe that the reason why the West’s aggressive lunacy has been allowed to go this far is that powers, such as Russia, China, and India, which earlier curbed the West are now showing a readiness to compromise with it. The underlying reason for that is that they are pleased by the prospect of the West co-opting them as the world’s bosses to run the New World Order.
The most important question underlying the Iran imbroglio is this: Are Iran and other small states entitled to defend themselves? The answer of the international community will of course be resoundingly in the positive. But that is in theory. In practice of course the answer is in the negative, because the small states are not allowed to acquire nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction which are reserved for the powerful nations, the happy few. By way of illustration of what I have in mind I will cite the case of Iraq. In 2002 there was no UN authorization for military action against Iraq. At that time Iraq had been mercilessly beaten down through the Gulf War and posed no threat whatever to any country. And yet, the Bush-Blair gang pretended that Iraq had WMDs, deliberately ignoring the contrary evidence provided by Al Baraedi of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and unleashed aggression resulting in the deaths of 600,000 guiltless Iraqis and other horrific consequences. Would all that have happened if Iraq had a dinky little nuke that could be dropped on Golden Californy, or on the M-East buddy boys of the US, or – perish the thought – on Israel? A very plausible case can be argued that only a nuclear bomb could have served as a deterrent against that aggression, one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed.
The case then is for all states to be equipped with nuclear weapons. But that prospect is terrifying because the small states, not just the powerful ones, can also be subject to fits of aggressive lunacy. The valid case therefore is for total nuclear disarmament, but we all know that the present nuclear weapons powers will agree to that only theoretically, not in practice. There seems to be only one possible deterrent for the small states in the present situation: the power of international public opinion. This may sound rather fanciful, but not if we consider the case of Vietnam. The US did not withdraw from there because it was defeated militarily, retaining as it did the power to bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age if it so desired. It withdrew because international public opinion turned against the US aggression, most powerfully in the US and other Western countries as manifested by the huge mass demonstrations that took place there. Interestingly, no such demonstrations took place in the Third World countries. Why not? The probable reason is that very few of them had fully functioning democracies, and the masses were not accustomed to the idea of asserting their will through demonstrations. It would appear therefore that the only deterrent against aggression for small states requires fully functioning democracies as a pre-condition. Otherwise they could be at the mercy of the New Imperialism.
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