Just saying no
By Alain Gresh
Le Monde Diplomatique
September 2005
BEIJING and Moscow signed an agreement, at the Vladivostok
conference on 2 June, to settle their border differences; India confirmed
its plans for investing in the Russian oil industry with $1bn for the
project Sakhalin
I. The Chinese, Russian and Indian foreign ministers meeting there also
issued a statement condemning double standards in international relations,
a clear reference to the United
States.
Because of massive
opposition in the US, China’s CNOC oil company in August withdrew its
offer for the US oil giant Unocal; the global free circulation of capital
lost to security imperatives. Also in August, Iran rejected the proposals
of France, Germany and Britain, with US backing, that Tehran should
abandon its uranium enrichment activities (under the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, it has a right to this technology). In Tehran,
where memories of foreign intervention, from the Russians in the 19th
century to the CIA in 1953, are strong, the current preference is for
national sovereignty.
There were other, not
unrelated, events: frequent visits by Chinese leaders to Africa and Latin
America; trade tensions between the US, Europe and China over textiles,
aircraft and agriculture; South Korea’s recognition of North Korea’s right
to a civilian nuclear industry (in contradiction to the position expressed
by the US). Cumulatively these suggest the contours of a geopolitical
situation far more complex than is generally imagined, which cannot be
reduced to the onward march of globalisation and economic liberalism.
Nationalisms, cultural specificities and ambitions rooted in history are
alive and well; and more and more people are refusing to accept the terms
of the new world order.
There is no sign of a
supra-imperialism that might end the competition and rivalry. The US, as
the Unocal affair showed, has no hesitation in defending its own
interests; while from Beijing to São Paulo, from Seoul to New Delhi, there
is a growing economic and political patriotism, and a determination that
independence should be defended. At the World Trade Organisation meeting
in Cancún in September 2003, 20 countries of the South, including India,
Brazil and South Africa, blocked proceedings when their demands were not
met. In France recent strong opposition to PepsiCo’s planned takeover of
the food group Danone was the result of similar views.
To Francis Fukuyama, the
end of history meant not only the triumph of globalisation, but also of
the model of economic liberalism represented by the US. But the past 10
years have shown that globalisation and liberalism cannot win hearts and
minds. In 1789 the ideas of the French revolution were popular in Europe
and beyond; later the Soviet revolution served as an ideological and
military challenge to the West. But while the armed might of the US grows
to unprecedented power, US popularity around the world has slumped.
Washington’s image abroad has never been so negative. As the
International Herald Tribune put it : “Even China’s better” (1).
It is unlikely that any
country will emerge to rival the US during the coming decade in the way
that the Soviet Union did in the second half of the 20th century. Yet,
despite its unrivalled military power, the US is still bogged down in
Iraq, facing a resistance movement whose few thousands of fighters
successfully tie down 148,000 US soldiers. The scandals of Guantánamo Bay
and Abu Ghraib, torture and the erosion of civil liberties, undermine the
claims by the US and some in Europe (the double-act called “the West”)
that they alone are capable of defining universal values of human rights,
democracy and liberty and have the authority to decide between good and
evil, between which regimes are acceptable and which not, which are to
have sanctions imposed on them and which not.
Everywhere there is a
rejection of the media-promoted attempts of “the West” to impose
shortsighted views of the world and dubious definitions of legality and
morality. The success of satellite television channels in the Arab world,
particularly Al Jazeera, and the launch of the Telesur satellite in South
America, prove people’s unwillingness to be subjected, and this is evident
in all areas of political, economic and cultural life (although it
sometimes takes the deviant form of religious or national extremism,
feeding the idea of a clash of civilisations).
In the early 18th century
Europe was able to impose its hegemony on other powers. History has shown
that this primacy derived from a particular conjuncture of advantages
afforded by the colonial possession of North America and by trade (2).
This translated into a military supremacy that enabled the old continent
to impose colonialism on the rest of the world.
Europe
sought to legitimate this domination by a claimed millennial superiority
of its values and thought, particularly Greek philosophy (3), despising
all other cultures as barbaric or inferior. Now it seems that the US, and
sometimes Europe, have returned to these earlier prejudices. They should
remember that, no matter how developed or advanced, the colonial empires
all eventually vanished.
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