polo writes:

"The New Imperialism"

By Pepe Escobar

ISLAMABAD -- Joseph Conrad was the first modern
writer to fully understand
that in extreme situations the distinctions and
nuances between civilization
and the "heart of darkness" collapse with a bang.
Conrad showed how the
sublime heights of European civilization could fall
into the pit of the most
barbarous practices -- without any sort of preparation
or transition (no
wonder that Belgium still has not officially
acknowledged the genocide of
millions during King Leopold's possession of the
Congo).

Now more than ever it is rewarding to re-read
Conrad - and as an added bonus
to watch Francis Ford Coppola's reading of Conrad
in the recently released
director's cut of Apocalypse Now. The New Afghan
War increasingly runs the
risk of being configured as The New Vietnam.
Washington has said from the
beginning this is not Gulf War II. But now, deeply
frustrated because they
are unable to break the Taliban -- those medieval
architects of a pan-Islamic
utopia -- the Pentagon is contemplating a Desert
Storm-style invasion the
next Afghan spring. This won't be Gulf War II: this will
be Vietnam II.

Most of the Muslim world's uneducated masses
suffer from political and
social underdevelopment and extremely corrupt
elites. Osama bin Laden
capitalized on this dysfunction. Osama and the
Al-Qaeda, in their warped
world-view, would have the Muslim world believe
that we are now facing a war
between Islam and the West. It may come as a
striking revelation that the
West also has its hordes of fundamentalists, of the
armchair kind -- but
although they don't resort to jet-turned-to-missile
suicide squads, they are
just as deadly.

When Samuel Huntington came up with his Clash of
Civilizations reductionist
classic in 1993, he relied heavily on "The Roots of
Muslim Rage," a 1990 essay
by the Orientalist Bernard Lewis. Professor Edward
Said, a most acute critic
of Orientalists, has pointed out that neither
Huntington nor Lewis were
careful enough to examine the fact that "the major
contest in most modern
cultures concerns the definition or interpretation of
each culture". This
goes way beyond a simplistic clash of cultures.
Huntington's clash became a
road map for American foreign policy because it is
basically an ideology: a
very handy ideology to fill the vacuum created by the
end of the
ideology-heavy Cold War.

We don't even have to invoke Freud and Nietzsche --
as Said does -- to realize
that "there are closer ties between apparently
warring civilizations than
most of us would like to believe". Huntington's clash
-- although a dangerous
warring ideology -- must be ridiculed for what it is:
mere defensive
self-pride. As any urban youth in any world city can
attest, the name of the
game in the 21st century is interdependence:
cultures are not monolithic,
they interact in an orgy of cross-fertilization.

Bush the elder was wrong -- or his formulation was
ahead of his time. Not the
Gulf War, but the Afghan War, fought by young Bush,
is the preamble to a New
World Order. The signs are already in print -- and
they are all offshoots of
Huntington's clash.

An otherwise obscure opinion page editor of the
Wall Street Journal is in
favor of "colonization of wayward nations", including
"the application of a
dose of US imperialism". Not beating around the
bush either, British
historian Paul Johnson has also published in the
Journal a piece titled "The
Answer to Terrorism? Colonialism". The Financial
Times, not to be upstaged
by American competition, has carried its own "The
Need for a New
Imperialism". So what are all these self-important
paragons of free speech
and exchange of ideas basically saying? They're
saying that the future,
ladies and gentleman, is the past.

The New Imperialism according to the Financial
Times is "defensive" -- as
defensive as Huntington's clash. It is based on the
arbitrarily-defined
concept of a "failed state". Afghanistan is given as a
prime example. The FT
cleverly omits to examine how Afghanistan failed
because of relentless
Russian and American armed interference since the
late 1970s.

In The New Imperialism, the "coercive apparatus"
must be provided by the
West. To disguise the imperialist thrust, the FT
suggests that the United
Nations should be in charge of these "temporary
protectorates". This is
exactly what the US has in mind for Afghanistan.
Obviously, nobody is
listening to the UN special envoy to Afghanistan,
Algerian diplomat Lakdar
Brahimi, who said in Islamabad last week that the
heavily-publicized utopia
of a "broad-based government" cannot be forced
down the Afghani people's
throats: it will take time, it will have to come from
within. Otherwise the
end result will be, again, chaos.

Paul Johnson theorizes that the war against
terrorism will lead to a new
form of colonialism -- of the benign or "respectable"
kind -- by "the great
civilized powers". He can only mean America and its
blind follower Britain --
because the last time we checked France, Germany,
Italy, Japan and China, to
name but a few, are extremely civilized but not
exactly keen on turning back
the digital clock of history.

What Johnson really wants is to keep again
arbitrarily-defined "terrorist
states" under "responsible supervision" -- meaning
"unavoidable" political
interference from the West. He even provides a list
of eligible countries:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Iran and Syria. No
coincidence: they are
all Islamic. But if Johnson abandoned his leather
armchair to do a bit of
traveling, he could verify that at least three of these
have better fish to
fry.

Tony Blair bent over backwards on his recent visit to
Damascus to engage
Syria: Bashar Assad may not be a paragon of
democracy, but he is more
interested in education and information technology
than bombs. Libya -- not
South Africa -- is the new El Dorado for millions of
black western and central
Africans: Gaddafi, the Great Survivor, prefers to
seduce African youth with
economic opportunities rather than with bombs. Iran
is torn between
hardliners and moderates, but the young generation
is fully behind Khatami
and his "dialogue of civilizations" -- a splendidly
articulated cultural
platform that strikes a chord all over the developing
world.

Billions of people in Southeast Asia, China, South
Asia, Latin America,
Africa, the Middle East , Eastern Europe or even
Western Europe were not
consulted about the designs of the New
Imperialism. But it is no coincidence
that the New Imperialism is being proposed exactly
at this historical
juncture. The current Pentagon production on the
word's screens has turned
out to be essentially a relentless bombing of
innocent, starving civilians
as punishment for terrorist attacks. It is widely
regarded -- not only in the
Muslim world -- as a very expensive and ultimately
apalling exercise in
futility. Apart from America, public support around the
world is vanishing
at an alarming rate.

This war was imposed from above on the Afghan
population. They were never
consulted about its legitimacy. They are not
responsible for it. They are
helpless victims. A cartoon in the Pakistani press
explained the real
meaning of "carpet bombing": American bombs fall
on an Afghan carpet while a
group of unflappable Taliban pose on the side for an
Al Jazeera TV crew.

The proponents of New Imperialism conveniently
forget to examine how the
Taliban got to the ruined top of "failed" Afghanistan
in the first place.
The Taliban are eminently an Afghan, Pastun and
tribal movement. It is easy
to forget they are a direct product of the
Saudi-American-financed anti-USSR
jihad of the '80s. They took power in Kabul in 1996
with the absolute
blessing of the US.

Afghanistan was beyond "failed" as a state in 1996.
But at the time the
Taliban were regarded as a convenient tool for the
implementation of another
classic American business plan: the construction of
oil and gas pipelines
from the Central Asian republics through
Afghanistan, with Karachi as a
major destination. The Taliban would theoretically
control the whole
country, impose law and order, and guarantee a
safe trading environment.

The US had high hopes for the Taliban. They would
clear Afghanistan of
drugs. They would act against Russian and Iranian
economic and geopolitical
interests. They would get rid of terrorist training
camps. They would pave
the way for the return of former king Zahir Shah (no
joke: this is what
Washington thought way back in 1996). And most of
all they would open the
gates for the mega-pipelines from Central Asia.

So the whole thing was a sub-plot of the New Great
Oil Rush: how America
would win against the stiff competition of Russia
and Iran. The
American-Saudi coalition of Unocal and Delta was
the main Western player.
Then came the fall of Kabul -- mostly financed by
none other than Osama bin
Laden himself. Unocal at the time was madly in love
with the Taliban: an
official statement praised the Taliban and the
prospect of "immediately"
doing business with them. In Afghanistan in 1996,
as Afghan veterans comment
in Peshawar, the perception was that the Taliban
were supported or even
financed by Washington.

Unocal was actively negotiating with the Taliban the
construction of
pipelines from Turkmenistan to the Arabian Sea, via
Afghanistan and
Pakistan. Unocal officials were extensively briefed by
CIA agents. The
positioning of Unocal in relation to Pakistani
sources was equivalent to the
positioning of the CIA during the jihad in the '80s.
Unocal's main source of
information was the disinformation-infested US
Embassy in Islamabad.

Apart from all the by-products of their demented
version of Islam, the
Taliban in the end dealt a major blow to
Washington. They did not control
all of Afghanistan as expected. They did not bring
peace: on the contrary,
they installed a police state and engaged in ethnic
cleansing (against the
Hazaras). Average Afghans stress that the Taliban
version of "peace" soon
degenerated into an internal jihad against the
civilian population.

They did not end poppy cultivation: on the contrary,
they made a lot of
money out of it. They treated women in the most
repulsive way. And -- the
ultimate reason for their current predicament -- they
extended a precious red
Afghan carpet to Osama bin Laden and his
Arab-Afghans.

From courting this irascible lover, America is now
bombing it to oblivion.
But as millions in the Muslim world keeps on
repeating, not a single piece
of evidence has been produced in public to suggest
that the Taliban are
totally, partially, or even marginally responsible for
September 11. Not a
single piece of a so-called unimpeachable evidence
was "independently
verified" -- as BBC and CNN are so fond of saying
(even when they are
verifying something during a Taliban-sponsored tour
of Kandahar).

Any talk of a future broad-based Afghan government
is a smoke screen. As far
as American interests are concerned, it has to be a
government that no
matter what facilitates the American perspective of
the Last Great Oil Rush.
If push comes to shove, America may even
contemplate an occupation of
Afghanistan, more or less disguised via the UN.
Before that happens, policy
makers had better listen to Afghan professor
Jamalluddin Naqvi, who says,
"History is witness to the fact that Afghanistan is a
human and territorial
Bermuda Triangle from where no one ever comes
out -- at any rate in one
piece."

Henry Kissinger would grumble that this is just
realpolitik. It would
certainly be an instance of the New Imperialism in
action. The international
community should thank the Wall Street Journal and
the Financial Times for
informing us all in advance.

Another imperialist with impeccable credentials,
globalization's puppy dog
Thomas Friedman, wrote in the New York Times
that "the hidden fist that
keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's
technologies to flourish is called
the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps".
Globalization does not work
without the New Imperialism. But another reading of
history is always
possible. In their seminal book Empire, Tony Negri
and Michael Hardt argue
that the process of globalization has generated a
universal and oppressive
New Imperialism -- but stress that a real humanist
alternative to imperialism
and war is more than possible.

Ibn Khaldun, a Muslim historian of the 14th century,
would agree. He was not
deterministic like Huntington, Fukuyuma and
assorted cohorts. He said that
civilizations follow a process -- they go through
different stages. Centuries
before Adam Smith, Ibn Khaldun came up with an
extremely sophisticated
analysis of free trade, the role of the market, and the
rule of law. The
Muqaddimah -- the introduction to his immense
Universal History, is a prodigy
of humanism: nothing remotely similar to the
intolerant Islam of the Taliban
or the confrontational Islam of Al-Qaeda.

If Ibn Khaldun were alive today, he would tell us that
American civilization
-- like the Caliphates, or the Umayyad dynasty of his
time -- has expanded to
almost limitless power. And when you reach
Absolute Power, the only way is
down. Not only the eminent Muslim reached this
conclusion, but also Western
icons like Gibbon -- talking about the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire --
and more recently Professor Paul Kennedy, who
excelled in his examination of
the concept of overextension of great powers.

In a fruitful "dialogue among civilizations" -- an
Iranian idea -- Ibn Khaldun
and Professor Kennedy would probably agree that
America is now overextended.
And they would certainly agree that civilizations do
decline. America still
is by all means a civilization of boundless,
fascinating energy and
dynamism. But it must beware of hubris -- the
essential element in Greek
tragedy, the cultural foundation of Western
civilization. Unfortunately,
some dreamers of New Imperialism and assorted
Pentagon generals have never
heard of Sophocles. They'd better get their act
together before they plunge
America into another heart of darkness."