We have previously disputed and tried to debunk the common western idea that, prior to Donald Trump becoming president of the USA that there was such a thing as a just, liberal post-World War II ‘world order’. This was a US and western fiction. Biden and Obama used drone or other attacks to kill who they wanted. The USA – and others such as the UK – helped destabilise Asia, the Middle East, and Africa through their attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Going back a generation or two, the USA killed many millions in Vietnam and Cambodia for absolutely no logical purpose and with no positive result except its own perceived interests.
Any analysis of the history of the USA has to conclude that while its foundation was ‘anti-colonialist’, its establishment in pushing aside and often exterminating the first nations, and its actions against Mexico, when expanding its boundaries was undoubtedly imperialist. Now we are again told, by the US State Department, that “This is OUR hemisphere” after the attack on Venezuela and the abduction of Nicolás Maduro. This was not the way to bring human rights to Venezuela. And the USA is not ‘America’.
While the attack on Venezuela was limited, with perhaps forty people killed, the idea that one country can intervene where it likes in its own interests and force a country to act as dictated to is extremely dangerous – the idea that it was to control drugs supply if a fictional fig leaf and there were many other ways to do that. The question is of course – who will be next? If the cowardly western nations with their supposed high minded ideals fail to condemn Trump then the Donald will conclude that he can act with impunity, certainly in his ‘own’ hemisphere but elsewhere as well – Africa, the Middle East, who knows.
It is ironic, though partly based on his own musings, that Trump was seen initially as an ‘isolationist’ president. With failures at home on the cost of living, for example, he may have turned to foreign military ventures as a way to distract and show his power. The problem is not just what he has done and may do but what Putin and Xi may conclude from such events. If one military superpower, admittedly the pre-eminent one, can act like this, why should Russia and China restrain themselves from acting accordingly? The USA is not the only rogue superpower, it seems to go with the territory. The fact the world is looking at a possible military takeover of Greenland by the USA is evidence of current international lawlessness and dangers.
Imperialism always has its self justifications and often there is some truth in them. The British Raj brought a railway system to India, essential for movement of goods and people, but it did so to enable control and its economic gain. Maduro has been a brutal tyrant who needed replaced along with his regime – but do we really think the USA was acting out of the goodness of its heart to control drugs and liberate the people of Venezuela? The USA likes to think of itself as the world’s policeman but it is a world bully. And what the outcome will be in Venezuela is far from certain beyond suborning itself to the demands of the US president; will the people be any freer or less poor and the country more democratic? The answer to these questions is ‘currently unlikely’.
Ireland is heavily dependent economically on US multinationals and investment. That does not mean it should not take action – it means it is morally obliged to do so. The least it can do is express strong disagreement with the US action as well as ban the US military from the use of Shannon Airport (or anywhere else in the Republic) to avoid actively facilitating US military control and further rogue actions around the world. Moral cowardice is too weak a term to apply to Irish governments over the last few decades in regard to Shannon; it is reprehensible political failure of the worst kind to support such a violent, rogue state as the USA. Irish inaction on this is woefully shameful especially when most citizens want to see Ireland playing a positive, neutral role in world affairs rather than supporting militaristic ventures by a country which acts in such a destructive way.
However there is another way in which governments and often people in Ireland and Europe are avoiding what is really happening in the world and especially in Europe itself. The drift to armed conflict with Russia is like the drift into the First World War. There is a massive lack of understanding of conflict and how it develops – and a massive lack of understanding of how conflict can be de-escalated without perpetuating injustice or simply acquiescing to might-is-right approaches. Western Europe seems intent on continually adding fuel to the fire – and the Irish government is now a fellow traveller with that approach.
Of course there are dangers emanating from Russia but many of those dangers come from western European approaches and responses to that country and its brutal and autocratic leader – whose personal emergence came not only through the re-emergence of political patterns in Russia but also western approaches to that country at and after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It is cruelly ironic that with all our 21st century knowledge of science, technology, and some human sciences, we as a world know so little about creating a peaceful world through creative means of dealing with conflict. As with global heating, closing our eyes and hoping the issue will go away can be, literally, fatal. We have the ready means to destroy what civilisation we have and yet we seem content to tread the same weary path to self-destruction. Homo ‘sapiens’ may be a misnomer.
The greeting to wish people a ‘peaceful New Year’ seems both wildly appropriate and inappropriate when we find ourselves where are are now. We do have the means, through nonviolence and creative approaches to conflict and global heating, to deal with the big issues but what we need are the political will and direction to take the path to peace and not the path to oblivion. As peace, green and human rights activists we can do what we can but we need to have a larger, wider movement with national-cultural support and governments that look, listen and learn. l