Humanitarian Imperialism

Using Human Rights to Sell War

Jean Bricmont, Diana Johnstone

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781583674888
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Derechos humanos

Since the end of the Cold War, the idea of human rights has been made into a justification for intervention by the world's leading economic and military powers—above all, the United States—in countries that are vulnerable to their attacks. The criteria for such intervention have become more arbitrary and self-serving, and their form more destructive, from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan to Iraq. Until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the large parts of the left was often complicit in this ideology of intervention—discovering new “Hitlers” as the need arose, and denouncing antiwar arguments as appeasement on the model of Munich in 1938.

Jean Bricmont’s Humanitarian Imperialism is both a historical account of this development and a powerful political and moral critique. It seeks to restore the critique of imperialism to its rightful place in the defense of human rights. It describes the leading role of the United States in initiating military and other interventions, but also on the obvious support given to it by European powers and NATO. It outlines an alternative approach to the question of human rights, based on the genuine recognition of the equal rights of people in poor and wealthy countries.

Timely, topical, and rigorously argued, Jean Bricmont’s book establishes a firm basis for resistance to global war with no end in sight.

1

Power and Ideology

Whenever dictators, monarchs, bosses, aristocrats, bureaucrats, or colonialists exercise power over others, they need a justifying ideology. That justification almost always comes down to the same formula: when A exercises power over B, he does so for B’s “own good.” In short, power habitually presents itself as altruistic. In 1815, at the fall of Napoleon, the tsar of Russia, the Austrian emperor, and the king of Prussia came together in what they called their Holy Alliance, claiming to base “their reciprocal relations upon the sublime truths which the Holy Religion of our Savior teaches” as well as on “the precepts of that Holy Religion, namely, the precepts of Justice, Christian Charity, and Peace,” and vowed to regard “themselves toward their subjects and armies as fathers of families.” During the Boer War, the British prime minister, Lord Salisbury, declared that it was “a war for democracy,” and that “we seek no goldfields, we seek no territory.” Bertrand Russell, citing these remarks, commented that “cynical foreigners noted that we nevertheless got both goldfields and territory.”¹ Hitler, for his part, waged his wars to protect (German) minorities and defend Europe from Bolshevism.

At the height of the Vietnam War, the American historian Arthur Schlesinger described U.S. policy there as part of “our general program of international good will.”² At the end of that war, a liberal commentator wrote in the New York Times: “For a quarter-century, the United States has been trying to do good, encourage liberty and promote social justice in the Third World.” But, in doing so, “we have been living beyond our moral resources and have fallen into hypocrisy.”³ It is fairly difficult to find an openly cynical power; individuals living on the margins of society, such as members of street gangs or mafias, no doubt provide the best examples.

But this nearly universal altruism in the legitimization discourse is precisely what ought to arouse skepticism. Indeed, that is exactly what happens in daily life: altruistic statements are commonly greeted with skepticism and with reminders that acts speak louder than words. Yet in public life, words often manage to outweigh acts.

What We’re Fighting For: A Letter from America

We pledge to do all we can to guard against the harmful temptations—especially those of arrogance and jingoism—to which nations at war so often seem to yield. At the same time, with one voice we say solemnly that it is crucial for our nation and its allies to win this war We fight to defend ourselves, but we also believe that we fight to defend those universal principles of human rights and human dignity that are the best hope for humankind.

One day, this war will end. When it does—and in some respects even before it ends—the great task of conciliation awaits us. We hope that this war, by stopping an unmitigated global evil, can increase the possibility of a world community based on justice. But we know that only the peacemakers among us in every society can ensure that this war will not have been in vain.

We wish especially to reach out to our brothers and sisters in Muslim societies. We say to you forthrightly: We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. We have so much in common. There is so much that we must do together. Your human dignity, no less than ours—your rights and opportunities for a good life, no less than ours—are what we believe we’re fighting for We know that, for some of you, mistrust of us is high, and we know that we Americans are partly responsible for that mistrust But we must not be enemies. In hope, we wish to join with you and all people of good will to build a just and lasting peace.⁴

Ideological Control in Democratic Societies

Ideology is especially important in democratic societies, where it may constitute the principal form of social control. The dominant ideology is far more powerful in the United States, with its freedom of expression, than it was in the Soviet Union, where the obvious monopoly of political expression, enforced by repression, created widespread disbelief. In more autocratic societies, people are kept in line by fear. In a society where people are free to demonstrate and vote, control over “hearts and minds” needs to be much deeper and more constant.

The enforcement of mainstream ideology in our societies is the task of what has been called the secular priesthood, an analogy for the religious priesthood in traditional societies.⁵ That traditional priesthood presented itself as an intermediary between the human and the divine and legitimized the power of the dominant social strata by appropriate interpretation of divine will. In so doing, it ensured its own relatively privileged social position under protection of the temporal power.

With the Enlightenment and the democratic revolutions in Europe, the role of religion as a justification for power was constantly eroded. Lord Salisbury’s remarks about democracy cited above have a more contemporary ring than those of the Holy Alliance about religion. Even someone as ostentatiously religious as George W. Bush does not justify his wars primarily in the name of religion, but rather in the name of democracy and human rights. It is worth noting that his supporters in Europe are often embarrassed by his religious side and wish that he would stick strictly to the human rights discourse.

Today’s secular priesthood is made up of opinion makers, media stars of all kinds, and a considerable number of academics and journalists. They largely monopolize public debate, channelling it in certain directions and setting the limits on what can be said, while giving the impression of a free exchange of ideas. One of the most common ideological reinforcement mechanisms is to focus debate on the means employed to achieve the supposedly altruistic ends claimed by those in power, instead of asking whether the proclaimed aims are the real ones, or whether those pursuing them have the right to do so. To take a current example, the question will be debated as to whether the United States has the means and intelligence to impose democracy on the Middle East, or, eventually, whether the price to pay (the war) is not too high. All these debates only reinforce the idea that the proclaimed intentions (to liberate peoples, to spread democracy) are the real ones and that less noble consequences, such as control of oil or strengthening American hegemony (globally) and Israeli hegemony (locally) are only collateral effects of a generous enterprise.

Bush’s Loyal Opposition

In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Chicago on January 10, 2006, President George W. Bush said he welcomed “honest critics” who question the way the war is being conducted and the “loyal opposition” that points out what is wrong with his administration’s approach. But he termed irresponsible the “partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil or because of Israel or because we misled the American people,” as well as “defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right”

It is very important to those in power to confine public debate within the narrow limits of whether or not means and tactics are effective, which leave unchallenged the nature and legitimacy of aims and strategies. In an autocratic society, such debates would not be allowed. In our societies, they are actually quite useful. The “respectable” left plays a major role in this legitimization process by focusing debate on the first type of questions (means and effectiveness) and marginalizing the second (the nature and legitimacy of ends). In contrast, we can expect that any analysis of past or adversary powers, such as the Roman Empire, Napoleon, or the Soviet Union, will include a critical look at their legitimization mechanisms, without accepting at face value their official declarations of purpose. It is only when speaking of our societies today that such analysis is considered out of line.

Another ideological reinforcement mechanism frequently used by the respectable left is the ritual denunciation of “totalitarian” systems of indoctrination, usually with almost religious reference to Orwell, in particular concerning characteristic features of systems least like our own. This encourages the notion that mechanisms to control and manipulate people’s minds are to be found everywhere except in our own societies.

On the other hand, when critics of our system, such as the communists in the past, claim that it is not fundamentally different from totalitarian systems, they are easily refuted, since the mere freedom to express such criticism is enough to show the difference. That line of criticism only helps to blur understanding of how ideological control works here and now, by giving the impression that the only indoctrination mechanisms are those which are not found in our societies.

It is important to note that ideology is not the same thing as lies. Members of the secular priesthood usually believe what they say. Indeed, their internalization of ideology is essential for them to be effective. This shows up in the obvious contrast between the way they express themselves and the dull ritualistic discourse of those who repeat an ideology they don’t really believe.

When it comes to individuals who really have power, political or economic, the matter is a bit more complicated, but even there, the hypothesis of generalized cynicism is not plausible. Ideology has the advantage of enabling people to live in a state of mental comfort where they can avoid asking troubling questions. This means that criticizing the lack of sincerity of those in power or of the secular priesthood should be done with precision: the problem is not that they are lying or that they are consciously hiding their real aims, but that they spontaneously adopt a distorted view of the world and history that enables them to profit from their privileged position with a perfectly clear conscience. This is a phenomenon that can be observed in daily life: generous words and speeches about “values” often go hand in hand with an analysis of reality that conveniently makes it possible to identify personal interest with moral imperatives. Genuine sincerity is not simply a matter of believing what one says, but of honestly asking whether the actions one undertakes really serve the noble aims one claims to pursue. Unfortunately, there is nothing new about all this, and those who criticize the organization of society today, in one way or another, have a lot in common with Blaise Pascal or Jonathan Swift criticizing the injustice and hypocrisy of society in their day.

However banal this may be, it is nevertheless important because it implies that ideological representations of the world, since they are not simply lies, may have unforeseen results and can sometimes, if defended with enough fanaticism, actually have harmful consequences for the very powers they are supposed to legitimize. It is still too soon to say whether the American attack on Iraq is an example of such a situation, but the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, as well as the obstinate American war in Vietnam—both of which claimed to aim at “liberating peoples from communism”—are both clear examples of pursuing ideological aims all the way to disaster.

2

The Third World and the West

With the end of the decolonization process, the suggestion of any conflict beween the Third World and the West has been increasingly dismissed as out of date. The mainstream discourse stresses that the Third World is by no means united and that many of its leaders (or the domestic opposition to its leaders) have abandoned their earlier nationalism in favor of pro-Western liberalism. Nevertheless, it remains true that an ongoing conflict exists, at least in a latent form, just as class conflicts can take more or less antagonistic forms from one historical period to another. There is conflict concerning the terms of trade, debt, provisions of raw materials—conflict that can very well explode into open hostilities, as in the Gulf wars. Moreover, both in Latin America and in the Muslim world (despite the sharp differences between those two regions), the vision of relations between “us” and “them” is very different from ours. In general, that vision is dismissed as stemming from fanaticism or jealousy, especially in the case of the Muslims.

Let us start, then, by summarizing what can be considered wrong with Western interventions in the Third World from a universalist point of view, without going back to the African slave trade and other past horrors of colonialism, rather focusing on the policies pursued since 1945, especially by the United States. These have given imperialism its neocolonial form. Countries remain formally independent, but every form of coercion is brought to bear to keep them under Western domination. If we examine those policies objectively we should be able to grasp the answer to that famous post-September 11 question, “Why do they hate us?” We should be able to understand why it would be perfectly natural, if not to hate “us,” at least to hate the policies pursued by our governments. And then we can also understand why we would no doubt feel the same as they do if we were in their place.

The costs of Western imperialism to the Third World can be divided into four different categories.

A Dangerous Example

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over forty years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution. The Sandinistas weren’t perfect… But they were intelligent, rational, and civilized. They set out to establish a stable, decent pluralistic society The death penalty was abolished. … More than 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one-seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated. The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist-Leninist subversion. In the view of the U.S. government, a dangerous example was being set…

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty-stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over Big business r...