Egemonia

Should we pick up where the British left off?

Vivek Chibber

Colossus: The Price of America's Empire
Niall Ferguson
The Penguin Press, $25.95 (cloth)

> Not too long ago, it was difficult to find mention of empire in American intellectual circles, save in discussions of bygone eras or, more commonly, of the Soviet Union’s relation to its satellites. The steady stream of U.S. interventions in countries around the globe could not, of course, be denied; but they were commonly explained as defensive responses to Soviet or Chinese imperialism—as efforts to contain Communist aggression and protect our way of life. But America itself could not be cast as an imperial power.

Times have changed. America and empire are joined at the hip in political discourse, not just on the Left but also in visible organs of the Right. The United States is often described as an empire and proudly proclaimed to be in the company of the best, outshining its English predecessor and catching up with the standard-setting Romans.‚This semantic shift was not instantaneous. In the immediate aftermath of the Eastern Bloc’s demise, the terms most typically used to describe American supremacy were more benign—sole superpower, new hegemon, and so on. The real change came with the George W. Bush presidency, and especially in the aftermath of 9/11. Commentators and ideologues no longer shy away from the E word and, indeed, openly embrace it—as well as the phenomenon it describes.‚For the most part, the arguments favoring a Pax Americana have not been developed beyond short articles or op-ed pieces. But the work of Niall Ferguson—a Scottish historian now transplanted to Harvard—takes them further. In his recent and widely reviewed book Colossus, and in a series of other publications, Ferguson offers an extended defense of the imperial project, past and present. Unlike many of his conservative peers, however, Ferguson does not cast his defense of imperial expansion in terms of its benefits for the United States—as a strategy of prevention against potential aggressors or as a mechanism to secure American dominance for the foreseeable future. Instead, he views an American empire as a boon to its subjects. As he explains, he has “no objection in principle to an American empire,” for indeed, “many parts of the world would benefit from a period of American rule.” To be sure, American rule must be subject to constraints. Empire is beneficial, he avers, if it is imbued with, and institutionalizes, the spirit of liberalism: enlightened and non-corrupt administration, fiscal stability, and free markets. In short, what the world needs is not empire per se: it needs a liberal empire.‚In pursuing this project, the United States needn’t venture forth untutored because it can draw upon the considerable achievements of its predecessor, the British empire, which was the first to use its power to spread liberal institutions to the developing world. The British experience plays a dual role in this argument. First, it provides a record of historical achievement, which gives support to the view that a properly conducted imperialism can be a force for social improvement. Second, it offers lessons on how to properly go about colonizing those who need it. And there is no shortage of needy nations. Ferguson mentions, in passing, the Central African Republic, Uganda, Liberia, Rwanda, Chad, Niger, Eritrea, Guinnea-Bissau, Burundi, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and several others. That they are almost all in Africa does not escape his notice. The fact is, he writes, that the African “experiment” with decolonization (as he calls it) has largely failed. For many countries across the continent, the only hope is to be folded into a new empire, which could finish the job that the British started.

The only problem is that the United States seems unwilling to accept the challenge. It is chary to go beyond the imposition of informal control over its minions and hence is unable to provide the benefits of direct colonial rule. Ferguson’s large ambition is to persuade American elites to shed their hesitancy and embrace, for the good of the world, their colonial mission.

Ferguson’s defense of liberal empire has made him into something of a media celebrity: he is featured prominently on national radio and television, a much sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit, and even the star narrator of two television series. Although the attention is unusual for a professional historian, it is not entirely surprising. Here we have views that were, until recently, associated with the crackpot Right now being defended by a rising academic star who comes with all the status of Oxford (his previous employer) and Harvard. More surprising is the reception that his book has received in established academic journals and magazines. One might have thought that, in the most respectable organs of the liberal intelligentsia, a book calling for the resuscitation of colonial rule would have met with at least a few raised eyebrows. Instead, it has been given a surprisingly warm welcome. John Lewis Gaddis goes so far as to single out for special praise the call for the United States to colonize parts of the world to save them from their infirmities; in fact, Gaddis worries that the book’s other shortcomings might prevent a more serious consideration of the need for American “tutelage” of these deserving states. Further to the right, Charles Krauthammer has echoed Ferguson’s fond remembrance of the British Empire. In the fall 2004 issue of The National Interest he offers that the United States “could use a colonial office in the state department—a direct reference to British institutions.

Were it not for this warm reception, there would not be a pressing call to engage the arguments in Colossus. The book doesn’t cohere especially well, being more a concatenation of loosely connected essays than a well-structured argument. Ferguson writes in a highly discursive fashion, scattering the text with claims and asides that are often only distantly connected with the theme at hand. Some of them are so outlandish that they seem less the handiwork of a respected historian than of an academic shock jock. What, for example, are we to make of the notion that the United States ought to have seriously considered using nuclear weapons against China during the Korean War? The actual arguments Ferguson makes to support his case are by no means new; to the contrary, he trots out some of the hoariest myths of the colonial experience. To make matters worse, his own narrative undermines several of his central points, as I shall demonstrate below.

The main reason to examine the book closely, then, is that it reflects a widening current of opinion among American intellectuals, including its liberal wing. It is the fact of the book’s success, and the warm praise showered upon its author, that warrants a sustained examination of its arguments.

* * *

Ferguson identifies colonial rule with sound governance, and this identification lies behind his fondness for the imperial idea. Sound governance is, he says, the most significant British legacy—valuable as an end in itself, but also because it furthers democracy and economic growth. Ferguson can’t quite maintain that colonialism directly generated democracy, but he suggests that it laid the foundation by tutoring imperial subjects on the finer points of statecraft and by building secure administrative apparatuses. And by its commitment to the rule of law, secure property rights, and “sound” fiscal management, colonialism encouraged entrepreneurial initiative and coaxed an impressive economic performance out of the colonies. This wasn’t true of the whole span of colonial rule. Ferguson doesn’t think that the 18th-century slave trade, for example, catalyzed African democracy. He restricts his claims to the Victorian era, starting after the Indian Sepahi Rebellion, through the Scramble for Africa and the first decades of the 20th century. This was the high-water mark of liberal empire.

Colossus is a short book that makes many claims. In assessing them, we need to ask two main questions. First, are the claims true? In particular, was British rule basically about sound governance and the building blocks of democracy? And second, if they are true—if colonialism did have the beneficial outcomes Ferguson attributes to it—was colonial rule necessary to producing such outcomes? Was succumbing to external rule the price that colonies had to pay for democracy and modern economic growth?

Ferguson bases his defense of colonialism principally on the Indian experience, so I’ll start on the subcontinent. As it happens, the Victorian era provides a strong test of Ferguson’s claims about the quality of British statecraft, since it was marked by a series of severe droughts in areas of colonial rule. Thanks to Amartya Sen, we now know that famines are not naturally occurring phenomena; they can largely be averted, or at least minimized, if authorities intervene swiftly and decisively. If drought does turn into severe famine, it is most likely because of a breakdown in, or an absence of, well-functioning social institutions. On the Indian subcontinent, which relies heavily on the timeliness of the annual monsoons, droughts occurred periodically. Over the centuries, local elites and villagers had built up a rudimentary apparatus—in effect, an insurance system—to blunt the worst effects of the crop failures, and the British inherited this system as they took over. So at the very least, a regime that prided itself on good governance ought to have performed at least as well as its predecessors in minimizing damage from droughts.

In reality, the Victorian era witnessed perhaps the worst famines in Indian history. Their severity, and the role of colonial authorities in this pattern of disaster, has been brought to light by Mike Davis in his stunning book Late Victorian Holocausts. Even before the onset of the Victorian famines, warning signals were in place: C. Walford showed in 1878 that the number of famines in the first century of British rule had already exceeded the total recorded cases in the previous two thousand years. But the grim reality behind claims to “good governance” truly came to light in the very decades that Ferguson trumpets. According to the most reliable estimates, the deaths from the 1876–1878 famine were in the range of six to eight million, and in the double-barreled famine of 1896–1897 and 1899–1900, they probably totaled somewhere in the range of 17 to 20 million. So in the quarter century that marks the pinnacle of colonial good governance, famine deaths average at least a million per year.

Two factors contributed to this outcome. First, the structure of the colonial revenue system—with its high and inflexible tax rates—drastically increased peasant vulnerability to drought. Whereas pre-colonial authorities had tended to modulate revenue demands to the vagaries of the harvest, the British rejected this tradition. Agrarian revenues during the 19th century were critical to the colonial state, and to funding British regional and global military campaigns. So the screws on the peasant were kept tight, regardless of circumstance. This remorseless pressure drove a great number of peasants to the edge of subsistence, making them deeply vulnerable to periodic shocks in the agrarian cycle. Hence it is no surprise that, according to a report of 1881, 80 percent of all the famine fatalities came from the poorest 20 percent of the population—precisely those peasants who lived on the brink of disaster.

The second, more proximate factor was the administrative response to famine, which is neatly summed up in the Report of the Famine Commission of 1878: “The doctrine that in time of famine the poor are entitled to demand relief . . . would probably lead to the doctrine that they are entitled to such relief at all times . . . which we cannot contemplate without serious apprehension.” So Viceroy Lytton sent a stern warning that administrators should stoutly resist what he called “humanitarian hysterics” and ordered that there be “no interference of any kind on the part of Government with the object of reducing the price of food.” British officials energetically held the line against humanitarianism as grain prices skyrocketed upward. “Sound” public finance—according to Ferguson, one of the great gifts of Victorian governance—trumped even the most meager efforts at relief the moment they strained at the exchequer. Curzon, who oversaw the decimation wrought by the 1899 famine, warned that “any government which imperiled the financial position of India in the interests of prodigal philanthropy would be open to serious criticism; but any Government which by indiscriminate alms-giving weakened the fibre and demoralized the self-reliance of the population, would be guilty of a public crime.”

To help Indians internalize this Spartan ethic, Lytton, Elgin and Curzon shut down all but the most anemic relief efforts across the country. Grain surpluses in states where rainfall was adequate were not used for famine relief but were shipped instead to England, which apparently could relinquish its own self-reliance in agriculture without descending into moral turpitude. To further help the Indian peasant pursue his virtuous path, all pleas for tax relief were rebuffed, and collection efforts were redoubled: not a rupee of revenue was to be left on the parched plains. And in case peasants didn’t get the point that they were supposed to pay the government and not the other way around, relief camps were closed down in areas where tax collection threatened to fall short of normal receipts.

These taxes, it should be noted, were not covering the administrative costs of good governance, but were paying for British colonial wars—the Afghan wars in Lytton’s time, and the Boer War in Curzon’s reign. So as the British extended their empire across new frontiers, the bodies of the Indian peasants funding the effort were piling up outside the Viceregal verandas. The colonial state consciously forswore any attempt at intervening and averting these catastrophes. In so doing, it reversed centuries long traditions of famine relief, set aside known techniques of reducing mortality, telling the “natives” all the while that it was being done for their own good.

This last point bears emphasis. It isn’t that the British responded to the crisis with insufficient alacrity, or that they showed a want of resolve. The point instead is that they resolutely—indeed, with homicidal intensity—pursued policies that predictably escalated the human disasters. Ferguson notes that the late Victorian famines were indeed a pity but “were far more environmental than political than origin.” But he does not advance a shred of evidence in support of this thesis. A far more appropriate conclusion is the one drawn by Davis himself, that “imperial policies toward starving ‘subjects’ were the moral equivalent of bombs dropped from 18,000 feet.”

The sheer scale of human suffering wrought by the colonial state in just these few decades has deep moral significance. Even if Ferguson’s claims about the other positive legacies were true, we could justifiably wonder if they counterbalanced the staggering levels of suffering and death produced by the Victorian famines. But there is no call to concede to Ferguson his other arguments—either that British colonialism fostered economic growth in the colonies or that it encouraged the transfer of democratic institutions.

* * *

When it comes to the putative economic benefits of empire, Ferguson is a garden-variety neoliberal. Imperialism was great because it promoted the integration of markets and subordinated indigenous peoples to the stern hand of fiscal and monetary prudence. “[It] seems unequivocal,” he announces, that “Britain’s continued policy of free trade was beneficial to its colonies.” This he contrasts to the maladroit policies pursued by the natives after they acquired independence—which included high tariffs, industrial planning, labor protection, and the like. It is because of these policies that the “experiment with political independence . . . has been a disaster for most poor countries.” What liberal empire did, and will do again if the U.S. can gather up its resolve, was to save the natives from themselves.

A venerable literature criticizes the economics of empire—for draining wealth from the colonies, deindustrializing their economies, and discriminating against local industry. But Ferguson will have none of it. To the contrary, he insists, being in the empire brought the benefits that come from joining an exclusive club—colonies had the imprimatur of international, especially British, investors. Financial managers, always nervous about the possibility of default, saw a country’s colonial status as a kind of guarantee against government default on loans, precisely because they trusted the administrative expertise that Britain brought with it. The most notable effect of colonialism, he tells us, was that it provided the colonies access to British financial flows, which entered these regions as vast pools of capital ready to be invested. That, coupled with the sound governance that the masters provided, was the real benefit of the empire, one which would not have otherwise been available.

Once again, Ferguson manages to steer clear of the facts. The most striking fact about British capital flows in the Victorian era is how little of it went to the colonies. Ferguson reports that around 40 percent of British investments went to the colonies in these years. But the vast bulk of the money was flowing to the colonies of recent settlement—the self-governing colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Only a small fraction went to the areas that Ferguson pretends to be talking about, namely, the dependent colonies in Asia and Africa, where the “experiment” of independence has failed. More than 70 percent of all the money that went to “the empire” was flowing to the colonies of recent settlement, leaving slightly more than a quarter—some 10 percent of total foreign investment—to be split between Asia and Africa. By comparison, the free countries of South and Central America—who did not have the good fortune of being subjugated by the British—did better than the colonies, as of course did the dominions. These facts, well known since Paish’s report at the turn of the century, have been confirmed by every major study of the past five decades.

Financial investors were, then, far more impressed by independent Latin America as an investment outlet than by the tropical colonies in Asia and Africa. Ferguson may be right in saying that England was not a drain on colonial wealth—though scholarly debate on this issue continues. But it is quite clear that the inverse of this argument—that the colonies were a magnet for British wealth—is not true.

In any case, there is no reason to focus so narrowly on numbers. The more important issue is the wider set of policies that characterized British colonialism and their economic effects. Here, Ferguson simply rehearses the standard neoliberal litany: since property rights were respected, fiscal prudence exercised, and open trade practiced, the imperial order was the best that the dependencies could have had it.

But in the Victorian era, high tariffs were strongly associated with high growth rates. Paul Bairoch made this observation years ago, and Kevin O’Rourke has recently confirmed it. It is consistent with the more general fact, well known to historians for generations, that all developed economies relied on subsidies and tariffs for substantial periods during their initial industrialization. So while Fergsuon assumes, without fact or argument, that the enforcement of a free-trade regime was beneficial to the colonies, we would seem on surer ground assuming the opposite, as did the nationalists whom he so consistently disparages.

In countries that developed in the 19th century, the state took an active and strategic role in the local economy—this was not the neoliberal’s night-watchman state. But, then, colonial states weren’t especially good night watchmen. They actively maintained policies to promote colonial and not local needs. So in the case of India, Ferguson’s exemplar, the main goals were threefold: to use India as the lynchpin of imperial defense policy, to keep the country open for British exports, and to siphon off its export receipts to London so England could balance its external account. Fulfilling these goals meant, as a standard history of the colonial economy explains, that “administrative concerns took precedence over development initiatives.” In fact, the main effect of colonial policy was undoubtedly a deflationary one, as a consequence of low tariffs, high exchange rates (to encourage imports) and a massive military budget, most of which was spent abroad. Indeed, the very book that Ferguson relies on to make his case, by Tirthankar Roy, shows that the development expenditures of the colonial state declined over time. We can do no better than to echo Tomlinson’s conclusion, that “the advances that were made in India . . . were largely achieved in spite of the inertia created by an administration that ruled in economic matters by a mixture of benign and malign neglect.”

* * *

With regard to self-determination, Ferguson maintains that the British bequeathed two critical legacies to their colonies: the idea of liberty, and the parliamentary institutions associated with democracy. Here, Ferguson is on firmer historical ground: democratic norms and institutions did migrate from England to its colonies. But as a defense of colonialism, this fact cannot suffice. For that, it needs to be shown that stable democratic institutions would not have emerged without British colonialism. But while the link to England may have been important for the parliamentary form of democracy, there is no reason to fix on one institutional form of democracy. The relevant issue is whether democracy would have emerged, whatever its form, and Ferguson gives us no reason for doubts on this score. There was no British tutelage of, say, Brazil, or Costa Rica, or Chile, all of which moved toward a more executive-centered democracy rapidly in the early 20th century. Of course, these countries had a colonial history, but hardly one that is congenial to Ferguson’s theory—unless he wants to make a case for Spanish and Portuguese colonialism as being liberal in nature. So even without British colonialism, some kind of movement for popular rights would likely have emerged in the developing world through the course of the past century or so. It could have been derailed, to be sure—but this possibility should be weighed against the horrible devastation wrought by colonial “good governance.” Why, then, insist that the minions should be happy to have suffered under colonial rule?

Ferguson makes it sound as if colonial authorities stuck around basically because they were readying their wards for self-rule. And it is easy to find lengthy disquisitions from Macaulay, Churchill, Smuts, and the like to this effect. Indeed, whenever he feels compelled to present evidence for his view, Ferguson quotes from them, rather than referring to the historical record. We very quickly encounter Churchill enunciating the general principle behind British colonialism: “to reclaim from barbarism fertile regions and large populations . . . to give peace to warring tribes” and so on. Soon thereafter, Macaulay is drafted to the campaign, declaring, “never will I attempt to avert or to retard” Indian self-rule, which, when it comes, “will be the proudest day in Indian history.”

Once demands for self-rule emerged in Asia and Africa, authorities responded with violence. From the early decades of the 20th century, progress toward self-rule proceeded in lockstep with the strength of the movements demanding it. But Ferguson makes no reference at all to either the massive independence movements that finally rid the world of British colonialism, or to the quality of the British response to them. But even the briefest consideration of these phenomena undermines the notion that the colonizers were educating the “natives” in the ways of self-rule.

In omitting this political dynamic, Ferguson’s obscures perhaps the most important aspect of the story behind institutional transfer. British resistance to independence movements was not exclusively military. When confronted with anti-colonial mobilizations, the British would make political concessions on the one hand, while taking steps to divide the opposition on the other. In India, the divide-and-rule strategy exploited existing religious divisions by communalizing the vote. From the passage of the Minto-Morley reforms in 1909, the advancement of the independence movement also brought in train a deepening of Hindu–Muslim tensions, as electoral mobilization—limited though the elections were—pitted communities against each other.

This maneuver was part of the deeply conservative core of colonial administrative techniques, which mobilized—and thus amplified—local traditions of rule and regulation. For the British, the central dilemma, as Mahmood Mamdani has reminded us, was to figure out how “a tiny and foreign minority [can] rule over an indigenous majority.” The natural strategy was to rely heavily on local elites—tribal chiefs, landlords, and especially the priestly strata—and thereby reinforce the symbolic, cultural, and legal traditions that sanctioned rule by these elites. In India, it meant using local caste and religious divisions and giving them a salience that they had never enjoyed before. In Africa, this entailed a splintering of civil law and political rights on ethnic and tribal criteria, relying ever more strongly on the despotic rule of chiefs and hardening indigenous linguistic and cultural divisions.


Consider the process of hardening in the case of equatorial Africa, Ferguson’s preferred target for re-colonization. Chiefs were certainly in place before the British arrival. But in pre-colonial times, chiefly power was circumscribed and balanced by both lateral checks—consisting of kinsmen, administrative functionaries, and clan bodies—and vertical checks, consisting of village councils and public assemblies. These institutions did not by any means democratize pre-colonial polities; but they did impose real social constraints on chiefly rule and thus imbue it with a degree of legitimacy. The chief was the paramount power, but his power was constantly negotiated with peers and subordinates.

Colonial rule either severely weakened or simply dissolved these social constraints. The colonial authorities needed to have clearly identifiable nodes of power through which they could exercise their rule, and these local functionaries could not be accountable to anyone but the colonizer. So the clan bodies, village councils, and public assemblies were either dissolved or made toothless against the chiefs. What remained was a stern, vertical line of authority from the colonial office, though the district administrator, to the chief—all according to London’s desires. Locally, the indigenous state structure was turned into what Mamdani has appropriately called a decentralized despotism, as chiefs were endowed with unprecedented power.

Having stripped away the checks to chiefly power, and thus the main sources of its legitimacy, the British were now confronted with the task of finding new means of making it stable. For this, they turned to customary law—with appropriate changes, decided as ever in London. The effect was that colonial rule preserved and hardened traditional structures of authority and group membership. Tribal membership now determined access to land, tax rates, and the entire gamut of rights enjoyed by African peasants. Tribal membership and identity became the primary sources of welfare—and also, by extension, a principal basis of political mobilization. Group membership of this sort in turn became a significant resource for anti-colonial movements, from the Maji Maji, to the Mau Mau, to the end of South African Apartheid. It also, not unsurprisingly, outlasted the colonial era and was the gift that the British left behind for the new governments to handle.

Ferguson seems clueless about this legacy. Colonial authorities of course did not invent caste divisions, tribalism, or religious fundamentalism. But there is little doubt that, prior to colonial rule, these divisions and religious identities were far more fluid. Left alone, they would have evolved in unpredictable ways through local negotiation and contestation over the course of time and through the formation of a central state. But the British enforced them with a vigor that was altogether new to the colonies. Far from revolutionizing local political traditions, imperial authorities rested on them and used them for their own ends. When we add this imposition to the very conscious strategy of divide and rule, it is impossible to avoid implicating colonialism in the hardening of indigenous divisions.

If the British gave the colonies parliamentary institutions, then, they also left behind the racialized, communalized, tribalized states within which the former were embedded, and which have consistently undermined the vitality of self-rule.

This double legacy suggests two alternative, though not incompatible, conclusions. The first is that the colonial legacy was a poisoned pill, bequeathing limited organs for self rule and also a host of institutions that subverted self-government. The second—stronger and more disturbing—conclusion is that if, as I have suggested, democracy was on the historical agenda anyway, then the legacy most specifically associated with colonial rule is a tribalized and communalized state, consciously created by colonial rule, and designed for precisely the divisive effects it has generated. In either case, we have compelling reason to reject Ferguson’s claim that the success of democratic institutions in the ex-colonies owes to the colonial legacy. It is far more accurate to say that what success we have seen of democratic self-rule in the ex-colonies has come about, not because of colonialism, but in spite of it.

* * *

The calamitous results of British rule should not surprise us. Colonialism was rule by an alien, despotic power, lacking local legitimacy, and utterly unaccountable to the local population. In such a situation, it was predictable that the rulers would use administrative instruments to weaken potential resistance, rather than to tutor in civic norms, and mask their assertions of power in the guise of “good governance.” Postcolonial pathologies were a natural consequence of normal colonial rule.

Ferguson’s inability to understand this is striking. And it is what lurks behind the remarkable sleight of hand that he performs in his political analysis: colonial rule gets all the credit for the things that went right but none of the blame for the disasters it left behind. Having elevated imperial history to the mythical realm of good governance, Ferguson eliminates the predictable violence of colonialism as well as any structural relation between British rule and the postcolonial order. If there was violence, repression, underdevelopment, tribal and communal statecraft, it was a product of “sins of omission”—as he pleasingly puts it—a result of the British falling short of their own noble ideals.

This blindness to the causal link between colonialism and its pathologies drives Ferguson’s equally facile conclusions about America’s own 200-year imperial history. Ferguson knows that history, and what troubles him most about it is that American imperialists, unlike their British cousins, have never stuck around in the countries they have invaded—at least not long enough to pursue the same noble ideals that drove the British. Indeed, for Ferguson, the largest failing of American empire is a kind of attention-deficit disorder. Americans have never admitted to themselves that they wield an empire. So instead of accepting their civilizing mission, they abjure it; instead of colonizing countries that “will not correct themselves”—as he puts it in his schoolmasterly way—they seek to dictate from afar.

Leave aside for the moment the untenable assumptions about the civilizing motivations and effects of the British predecessors, and attend, once again, to the facts that Ferguson mobilizes. Have America’s own interventions, with their own record of bloody devastation, fallen short of their virtuous effects because they failed to turn into long-term occupations? In response to this question, Ferguson engages in more serious historical argument, but in so doing, undermines his own case.

As to motivations, Ferguson shows that, as far as the developing world is concerned, American foreign-policy elites have not shown much interest in their victims’ economic development or democratic enhancement. He insists that noble motives were at work, with the usual reference to Wilsonian internationalism. But he finds that alongside this, “older imperialist impulses continued to work.” As his narrative unfolds, it becomes pretty clear that the “older impulses” were not just working alongside the high-minded internationalism but were undermining it at every turn. We are shown that economic and strategic considerations, not high-minded internationalism, dictated imperial policy toward Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Honduras—where by the 1920s, “any pretense of interest in democratic government was abandoned” by the United States, which was more concerned with the well-being of United Fruit. Indeed, we are told that the United States not only intervened to overthrow democratically elected governments when they interfered with imperial interests, but that when “left-wing governments were overthrown with American assistance or approval, they were generally replaced by military dictatorships whose murderous conduct did nothing to endear the United States to Hispanic-Americans.”

These observations completely undercut Ferguson’s central argument: what difference would it have made if the Americans had stayed on as colonizers if their motives were to set up “a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in”? How would “staying the course” have helped to promote democracy or the rule of law?

Let us consider the two countries that the United States did occupy as colonies in the 20th century, Haiti and the Philippines. How do these cases figure in Ferguson’s argument? Hardly at all. From reading Colossus, one would not know that the United States occupied Haiti for almost 20 years and the Philippines for close to a half-century. This neglect is unfortunate, because the benefits of good governance and institutional transfer would surely be most evident here, where Americans had the power—and the long-term engagement—they lacked elsewhere. It might have been illuminating to examine how, as a colonial power, the United States was able to achieve substantially better results than it managed with the less committed invasions of Central and South America. Unfortunately, however, Ferguson does not explore the differences between Nicaragua’s Somoza, the misbegotten spawn of a half-hearted imperial effort, and Haiti’s “Papa Doc” Francois Duvalier, the legitimate progeny of a fully committed colonial occupation.

Of course, the fact of colonization made no difference to the results, at least not of a kind that would be congenial to Ferguson’s argument. The virtuous outcomes of sustained occupation have never materialized because the occupations were used to undermine any efforts toward such ends. In this respect, the American record conforms to the record of British colonialism. But just as Ferguson can’t make the connection between British colonialism and the devastation it wrought, so too is he blind to the forces behind, and consequences of, the American counterpart.

Bad things, it seems, just happen to follow these empires around.

* * *

Pace Ferguson, America’s reluctance to follow in Britain’s footsteps does not derive from a national lack of resolve (whatever that might mean). It is, rather, a consequence of the United States being a latecomer to the game on a genuinely global level. As Ferguson seems to recognize, nothing in American history suggests a squeamishness about the nasty business of conquest. It’s just that, for the first hundred years or so, there was so much to conquer in North America. Westward expansion involved considerable annexation of Mexican territory, not to mention the annihilation of Native American tribes. A rapidly expanding frontier and, more importantly, a burgeoning national market, provided more than enough opportunity for profit; on the other hand, the same expansion consumed considerable political and military energy. America was interested in imperialism, but empire began at home.

This much Ferguson appears to understand. What puzzles and frustrates him is that the process was not continued with appropriate vigor in the 20th century (aside from the admirable efforts in Haiti and the Philippines). But there is nothing to puzzle over, if we appreciate the history of 20th-century colonialism. The British empire came to an end because independence movements made its continuation impossible. These movements make no real appearance in Ferguson’s account, and he seems genuinely not to understand their significance. This is why he so coolly enjoins American elites to embrace the venture, wondering all the while why they don’t. What he fails to confront is that the independence movements are not just of historical significance, but are symptomatic of a deeper phenomenon, which makes any future colonial projects impossible.

This phenomenon, of course, is the emergence of national identities and a deep sense of national rights. Colonial empires might have been possible in the 18th and 19th centuries, prior to the emergence of strong national identities; but they became increasingly untenable as such identities came into being and basic notions of self-determination took root. For countries that had annexed territory in the preceding two centuries, the only real option was to fight for as long as seemed possible and then arrange an orderly retreat. But it made no sense for a country, operating in a world of nationalist movements and convictions, to assume the costs of colonial occupation. Britain operated differently from the United States as a global power not because of a remarkable national capacity for sustained attention but because of the pre-nationalist world in which British colonialism operated. Given the changes in the world, the United States adopted a prudent and effective strategy of ruling through intermediaries, quislings, or friendly autocrats.

The proposition that the United States could embark on a colonial enterprise today, with national identities arguably more powerful than ever, is mind-boggling. No peoples will accept a military occupation for any length of time, especially by the United States. Ferguson clearly doesn’t wish that American colonizers limit themselves to occupying only countries that invite their own colonization. But uninvited colonization cannot but take a despotic form. Confronted from the outset by a vast and growing popular opposition to their presence, American occupiers will have to rely overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, on military rule.

Sound familiar? The devastation now being wrought on Iraq exemplifies the essential problem with the new colonialism. Where does Ferguson think the venture will succeed, if it is being torn apart by a nation already in tatters from a brutal sanctions regime and bled dry by its own dictator? He seems to hold out hope that, once stabilized, the occupation will rest on an alliance with local elites recruited to the job. But what kind of legitimacy will any such regime enjoy? Any ruling government colored by the tint of collaboration will face unceasing opposition, because the opposition will have strong incentives to argue that any objectionable policy is really a result of subordination to the occupying power. The current situation in Iraq has historical parallels, but not of the kind Ferguson would like to see. Iraq isn’t a modern replay of the initial stages of colonial rule—the military phase of pacification, to be followed by the onset of stable indirect rule. Rather, the popular anti-colonial resistance, which historically signaled the terminus of colonial rule, has emerged in its earliest stages. The political dispensation to follow will be either stable or colonial, but not both.

Over the course of the 20th century, members of the American foreign-policy establishment understood the importance of nationalism and appreciated, as a rule, that the days of formal empire and annexation were over. So they devised a vast apparatus for wielding political and economic influence, steering states in a direction consistent with American interests, while leaving the formal apparatus of rule in local hands. That strategy was remarkably effective. In terms of its economic and strategic payoffs, the American empire has been at least as successful as its predecessor. Not only has its elite avoided formal empire, there has been no need for it.

If arguments like Ferguson’s are now enjoying wide currency today, it is an understandable reflex of a culture and an elite drunk with power: proof of Acton’s dictum about the corruptions produced by absolute power. Visions of Rome, British Viceroys and grand processions, the benevolent babus tutoring their hapless and childlike wards—these are the fantasies of an imperial elite suddenly finding itself without peer. And this explains the popularity of Ferguson’s history. For what he offers is not an analysis of empires past and present, but empire’s self-image—buffed and manicured. Until recently, such fantasies were expressed mainly by the far right, or in the laments of despondent Oxbridge dons. But with the new cabal of neocons in power, and a new imperial project seemingly underway, such fantasies resonate powerfully with elite moods.

Such fantasies would be amusing, were they not so dangerous to the rest of us. <

Vivek Chibber is an assistant professor of sociology at New York University.

Originally published in the February/March 2005 issue of Boston Review

di Gino Strada

Tra le anime belle della politica nostrana, c’è chi si infastidisce se gli si fa notare che stanno per decidere di continuare “la guerra” in Afghanistan. Preferiscono, per il pubblico, chiamarla in altri modi, mascherarla. Mimetizzarla con gli “impegni internazionali” e “le alleanze”, perche’ i cittadini non capiscano che di guerra e non altro si tratta. Qui qualcuno non dice la verita’. Che siano proprio i nostri politici?


Enduring Freedom, missione di guerra
La risposta e’ nel sito del Ministero della Difesa (www.difesa.it). Nel capitolo sulle “operazioni militari in atto” (al 25 giugno 2006) si spiega che l’Italia partecipa alla Operazione Enduring Freedom. “Il Comando dell'operazione è affidato al Comando Centrale americano (USCENTCOM) situato a Tampa (Florida, USA)... L'operazione militare è parte della guerra globale che impegna la grande coalizione nella lotta contro il terrorismo, denominata Global War Against Terrorism (GWAT)”. Questo e’ parlare chiaro.
Una guerra locale come parte di una guerra globale. E noi in mezzo, agli ordini.
“E in atto – cosi’ il Ministero della Difesa spiega la situazione attuale in Afghanistan e i compiti delle nostre forze - la terza fase, che prevede l'impiego di unità di terra... Circa le attività volte a neutralizzare le sacche di terrorismo ancora presenti, le possibili basi logistiche ed i centri di reclutamento, la fase, dopo un periodo iniziale di intensi combattimenti, sta evolvendo in operazioni di interdizione di area per la completa bonifica del territorio. Sono operazioni condotte mediante pattugliamenti, posti di blocco ed eliminazione delle residue presenze di Al Qaida, sulla base dell'attività di "intelligence".
In altre parole, i comandi USA, basandosi sui racconti delle loro spie, indicano di volta in volta chi ammazzare, mandando truppe, o qualche aereo a bombardare. E fare a pezzi esseri umani si chiama ora – nel sito ufficiale del Ministero della Difesa italiano – “bonifica del territorio”. Nessun commento. All'operazione, come ci informa lo stesso sito, “contribuiscono 70 Paesi dei quali 27, tra cui l'Italia, hanno offerto "pacchetti di forze" da impiegare, per la condotta dell'operazione militare vera e propria”. Inequivocabile. E allora come mai i politici dell’attuale maggioranza continuano a intorbidire le acque? Hanno forse paura di essere considerati “guerrafondai”? Scelgono la guerra ma conviene loro farsi credere pacifisti (i guerra fondai dichiarati stanno, questa volta, perlopiu’ all’opposizione).
“Ritirarci dall’Afghanistan significherebbe uscire dalla UE e dalla Nato” si proclama con toni solenni, come se fosse l’orlo del baratro. E’ in effetti l’ultima delle scuse. E’ possibile che il “ripudiare la guerra” (quella in Afghanistan, ad esempio) comporti problemi con quei Governi europei e d’oltreoceano che producono una guerra dopo l’altra. E anche con le loro alleanze militari. E allora? La nostra Costituzione e il suo Articolo 11 vengono prima o dopo le “alleanze internazionali” o “gli impegni NATO”? Si puo’ fare una guerra perche’ e’ “un impegno preso”? Il mondo della politica – apparentemente compatto – risponde “si’”. Si puo’ fare la guerra (se si riesce poi a farla passare come un’opera di carita’, e’ ancora meglio!) se si e’ con la Nato, o con gli USA, o con l’ONU, se la guerra e’ legittima, se e’ per la democrazia, se e’ umanitaria. “La guerra per far finire tutte le guerre” come sentenzio’ il Presidente Wilson cercando (con risultati mediocri) di convincere gli americani ad entrare nella Prima Guerra mondiale.
Le “ragioni” per una guerra, per qualsiasi guerra, non sono mai mancate. Vere o fittizie, dichiarate o meno, se c’e’ una guerra ce ne sara’ pure una ragione. E poi ci sono le varie forme di propaganda di guerra. Sono convinto che in questi anni moltissimi cittadini, italiani e non solo, abbiano compiuto un grande percorso di riflessione sui temi della guerra e della pace, dei diritti umani, della violenza. Alcune idee si sono fatte largo e sono finite dentro la coscienza di molti, nella loro etica, nel modo di concepire i rapporti tra esseri umani. Una di queste idee e’ che non esista piu’ giustificazione alcuna per la guerra. Ne’ etica, ne’ storica, ne’ politica. Per quel movimento di coscienze, nessuna guerra sara’ “mai piu’” accettabile ne’ negoziabile. Perche’ sarebbe un’altra perdita di pezzi di umanita’, sacrificata alle misere alchimie della politica. Se la scelta “contro la guerra” dovesse davvero obbligare l’Italia a uscire dalla NATO, perche’ la NATO intende continuare la guerra in Afghanistan, non mi sembrerebbe una grande tragedia. Lo sarebbe di certo per buona parte dei politici, ma non per i cittadini italiani. Anzi. Scommetto che, dovesse l’Italia uscire dalla NATO, ci sarebbe in Italia una festa di popolo di milioni di persone, a prescindere dalle direttive e dagli anatemi dei politici.


ISAF: l'altra faccia di Enduring Freedom
Se su Enduring Freedom non viene detta la verità, tantomeno ciò accade per la missione "di pace" ISAF. Quando, verso la fine del 2001, l’ONU autorizza per 6 mesi una forza di sicurezza internazionale (ISAF) in Afghanistan, al governo italiano non par vero: finalmente si puo’ essere in Afghanistan sotto l’ “ombrello” dell’ONU, senza dovere rendere conto a nessuno. O quasi. Perche’ in realta’ la missione ISAF e’ solo una manovra, un “gioco delle tre carte”. Alla riunione che il 20 dicembre 2001 approva la Risoluzione 1386, i membri del Consiglio di Sicurezza si trovano sul tavolo una lettera in cui gli inglesi si propongono di assumere il comando dell’ ISAF. Ma a comandare e’ sempre il Padrone, e’ chiaro. Perfino esplicito. Nella stessa lettera, resa nota dal Dipartimento di Stato USA, viene precisato che: “Per cio’ che riguarda i rapporti tra le forze dell’ ISAF e altre forze operanti in Afghanistan in Enduring Freedom… per ragioni di efficienza, il Comando Centrale degli Stati Uniti avra’ autorita’ sulle forze ISAF”. Tu sei il comandante, ma io ti comando.
Un trucco sopraffino: l’ONU mette in piedi, su richiesta USA, una forza ONU per l’Afghanistan; gli inglesi, che partecipano a qualsiasi guerra made in USA e che sono pertanto in Enduring Freedom, si offrono di guidarla (e come rifiutare tanta generosita’?); le truppe dell’ISAF (quelle dell’ONU) guidate da un inglese, prendono poi ordini dai militari USA, mandati li’ non dall’ONU, bensi’ dal Pentagono. Aderiamo, secondo i desideri del Padrone, anche alla missione ISAF. Figurarsi, manna dal cielo! Avevamo gia’ deciso di entrare, in modo ancora piu’ illegale, con Enduring Freedom. Adesso arriva l’ombrello dell’ONU a giustificarci. Nell’agosto del 2003, la missione ISAF entra nella terza fase (anche lei, come Endruing Freedom: ma guarda un po’ che coincidenza) e passa sotto il comando della NATO. Con i compiti che ben sappiamo, ce li hanno gia’ assegnati: combattere gli insurgents, quelli che si ribellano in qualsiasi modo e a qualsiasi titolo alla pax americana, e portare avanti la “guerra al terrorismo”, il lavoro di Enduring Freedom. Poco importa, siamo comunque felici dello “scudo” rappresentato dalla NATO: per sentirci piu’ tranquilli, in regola, quando si dovra’ sparare parecchio. Il momento sembra arrivato.
Il “lavoro” che attende le truppe NATO, e che ci attende, non sembra facile neppure agli USA, se il Washington Post scrive: “Ne deriverà una battaglia per il controllo del sud, cruciale per l’Afghanistan e per la Nato”. Con l’avvicinarsi della battaglia cruciale - un’altra “madre di tutte le battaglie” ? – non e’ casuale che le truppe NATO, ex ISAF, ex Enduring Freedom si ritrovino, cinque anni dopo, un comandante di nuovo inglese, che sara’ poi sostituito, verso la fine dell’anno, da un comandante USA. Eh si’, quando il gioco si fa duro... Cosi’ anche ai “nostri ragazzi”, sotto il comando dei militaristi piu’ convinti, spettera’ il compito di estendere “il controllo del governo Karzai” e di “rimpiazzare” gli USA nelle operazioni di contro- insurrezione. “Restate, chiedete rinforzi” ci sta domandando ora il Padrone, e ci assicura che stavolta saremo anche noi “in prima linea“ perche’ le sue truppe intendono passarci il testimone. Anche noi adesso abbiamo l’occasione per sederci al tavolo dei grandi, “chi non spara non e’ di serie A” come dice Luttwack. Enduring Freedom, ISAF, NATO: perde, sbaglia, la carta bianca vince! Proprio come nel mezzanino del metro’. Poi i politici possono sguazzare tra articoli e codicilli alla caccia di qualcosa che giustifichi scelte gia’ decise, e i cittadini capiscono sempre meno.


Fuori l’Italia dalla guerra, senza ‘se’ e senza ‘ma’
Dira’ si’ o no a “finire il lavoro” lasciato incompiuto (per la verita’ un fallimento totale anche sul piano militare) dall’ Alleato-Padrone? Siamo alla vigilia di “grandi offensive”, dicono i comandi USA, e non si puo’ dubitarne. Il Governo sta per decidere – con il rifinanziamento della missione militare in Afghanistan - se mandare militari italiani a combattere, per conto degli USA e sotto il loro comando, i “nemici” che le forze USA, di volta in volta, additeranno come soggetti da eliminare. E se mandarli a combattere per proteggere “gli amici”. Criminali quanto i nemici ma servili quanto noi, e quindi dalla parte “giusta”. Non e’ strano che il Governo sia in difficolta’.
Molti tra loro vorrebbero, col senno di poi, non essersi mai infilati anche nel “pantano” Afghanistan. Ma cinque anni fa la maggior parte di loro ha votato di tuffarcisi dentro entusiasticamente, approvando una Risoluzione (7 novembre 2001) che restera’ nella storia della Repubblica come esempio di stravolgimento, in una sola pagina, della Costituzione Italiana, dello Statuto dell’ONU e delle risoluzioni del suo Consiglio di Sicurezza. Della situazione difficile in cui ci troviamo in Afghanistan, e da cui non e’ facile uscire, molti politici dell’attuale maggioranza sono corresponsabili. Da qui nasce la prima difficolta’. L’altra difficoltà, per i governanti di oggi, e’ tutta interna. Tra pochi giorni devono andare in Parlamento e votare un documento importante. Non tanto per il suo contenuto. Per molti parlamentari dell’attuale maggioranza, quello che si decidera’ e’ in un certo senso secondario. La cosa piu’ importante, quando non la sola importante, e’ che il documento del Governo, quale che sia, venga approvato. Non si puo’ rischiare di “andare sotto e far cadere il Governo” e’ voce di popolo. Non si puo’ rischiare. Quindi bisogna incominciare a fare rinunce, cercare compromessi, delineare una exit-strategy, o un modo per toglierci dai guai, per essere piu’ chiari. Sembra un vicolo cieco. Perche’ il vero problema su cui la politica sta annaspando e’ la necessita’ di inventare un trucco. Una formula per poter tenere i militari a fare il lavoro per il Padrone, dando allo stesso tempo un carota a quella parte della maggioranza che sa – dovesse votare per il rifinanziamento – di trovarsi in linea di collisione con i propri elettori.
Ma se “la Patria vuole sacrifici”, che cosa non si farebbe per fare stare in piedi un Governo, specie quando la sua “stabilita’” e’ considerata l’obbiettivo primario da raggiungere? Cosi’ in quell’area politica normalmente associata (o forse non piu’, potremo capirlo meglio dopo il voto) al “pacifismo” tira aria pesante di suicidio. Non e’ principalmente un problema di uomini di partito, ma di cittadini, di elettori, di coscienze. Se i partiti di quell’area votassero per la guerra, ne pagherebbero un prezzo politico e di consenso devastante. Un prezzo ancora maggiore finirebbero col pagare se cercassero di truccare le carte, di fare passare inosservata o cammuffata la scelta della guerra. “No alla guerra, senza se e senza ma” e’ espressione certamente efficace. Oggi si puo’ darle concretezza.
Essere contro la guerra – prima ancora che un obbligo costituzionale - mi pare il discrimine tra civilta’ e incivilta’, tra le cose umane, per brutte che siano, e quelle dis-umane. Rifiutarsi di avere qualsiasi ruolo nel produrre violenza e omicidi di massa, pulizie etniche e genocidi, stupri e torture, mi sembra insieme un valore primario di specie e una garanzia di sopravvivenza, da custodire entrambi gelosamente. Non si tratta di un valore di “destra” ne’ di “sinistra”. Ma possono la coscienza e l’intelligenza rifiutare l’orrore della guerra a giorni alterni? Una guerra si e una no, questa guerra e’ diversa, in quest’altra il nostro ruolo e’ diverso, qui siamo forze ONU e la’ forze NATO, gli impegni internazionali, le alleanze, questa guerra e’ giusta... Basta alle nostre coscienze sapere che i soldati italiani hanno il bollino ONU, per rendere “accettabile” la partecipazione alla guerra in Afghanistan?
Negli ultimi anni e’ maturato un importante movimento di persone che non vuole piu’ saperne della guerra ne’ della “logica della guerra”, della logica del togliere agli altri quello che hanno, o quello che potrebbero avere, fino a togliere loro anche la vita. Questo movimento rifiuta di aggredire economicamente, militarmente e moralmente, di sfruttare altri esseri umani. In questo movimento sono state rifiutate tutte le “ragioni per la guerra”, le sue giustificazioni. Per questo credo che un voto per la guerra sarebbe un macigno per quella area politica che ha piu’ volte dichiarato sintonie col movimento per la pace. Rifiutate la guerra “umanitaria” del centrosinistra e quella “per la civilta’” del centrodestra, rifiutata la guerra bipartisan “al terrorismo”, puo’ il movimento accettarla oggi “perche’ non cada il governo italiano”? Nel nuovo modo di pensare di milioni di persone, la “questione guerra” e’ stata “risolta”, da tempo e per sempre. Perche’ cio’ che ogni guerra produce e’ talmente ripugnante che nessun fine, neppure il piu’ nobile, potra’ mai “giustificarla”. Ci potranno essere guerre legali o perfino legittime – le leggi cambiano - ma non ci saranno mai guerre giuste.
Per questo, nessuna guerra e’ negoziabile. Dopo cinque anni di evidente fallimento del nostro intervento in Afghanistan – con il risultato paradossale che i supposti militari “in missione di pace” sono visti con sempre maggior insofferenza - il mondo della politica dovrebbe – se non altro per buon senso - provare un approccio diverso.. Vuole il Governo, per qualsiasi ragione, scegliere di stare ancora li’, a fare servilmente la guerra per conto terzi? Vogliono vedere “altro sangue italiano in Afghanistan” (e forse non solo) come poi titolerebbero le prime pagine dei nostri quotidiani, per “estendere il controllo del governo Karzai”? Sta a loro decidere. Penso solo sia mio dovere, come cittadino che fa parte del popolo di Emergency e del movimento per la pace, riaffermare che chi scegliera’ la guerra lo fara’ not in my name, non a nome mio.

(da www.peacereporter.net – Luglio 2006)

by Norman Stockwell

Published on Saturday, July 22, 2006 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)

http://www.madison.com/

Last Sunday's rally of up to 1.5 million Mexicans in the main square of the capital city is only the latest stage in a series of lessons in democracy that our neighbors to the south are teaching us here in the United States.

In Mexico, campaigning must cease several days before voting takes place; on election day and the day before, no alcohol can be sold (or used to buy votes); and election day itself is always held on a Sunday so people will be sure to have time off from work to get to the polls. A nationwide electoral law and system of voter IDs guarantees uniformity, and hand-marked paper ballots stuffed into clear boxes give the process a sense of "transparency" fast disappearing in our country.

And yet, in spite of these provisions, questions of fraud, inconsistency and inaccuracy plague the results of the July 2 election. The prize in this contest is the presidency of the world's largest Spanish speaking nation, and both front-runners have claimed victory. Felipe Calderon, of the incumbent National Action Party (PAN) claims a win by a mere 0.57 percent margin. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) says his exit poll numbers show a clear win, and wants a vote-by-vote recount to prove it. Sunday's rally is just one piece of a nationwide campaign in the streets and the courts to call for that recount.

Lopez Obrador has filed challenges to the vote counts in over 50,000 of Mexico's 130,000 polling places. He has extensive evidence to back up these claims videos of ballot boxes being stuffed by PAN operatives; testimonies from people who waited in line for hours only to find their polling station had run out of ballots; statistical analysis of returns and counting anomalies; and more. A difference of a mere two votes at each polling place nationwide would flip the victory to the PRD.

But more disturbing to many in Mexico is the fact that although things went pretty smoothly on election day itself (a far cry better than elections in previous decades), it is the events of the days and weeks before that may have had the largest effect on vote totals. A questionable contract with the U.S. data firm ChoicePoint was revealed by one Mexican paper; a spring visit by political consultant Dick Morris was followed by a vicious negative ad campaign spuriously linking Lopez Obrador to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez; and links were exposed by several journalists between Calderon's brother-in-law's data firm and the IFE the supposedly neutral Federal Electoral Commission which counted the votes on July 2.

On election weekend, the PRD's Web page was hacked, then two PRD poll-watchers were gunned down in a scene that brought back bitter memories of the 1988 election, when PRD candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas was defeated through a computer failure, followed by the burning of the ballots and the killing of hundreds of PRD activists. The stage was clearly set for a difficult showdown in this visibly close race.

Election day itself seemed to go smoothly, but a shocked silence filled the pressroom on Sunday night when the IFE announced at 8 p.m. and then again at 11 p.m. that the contest was too close to call. Lopez Obrador took the stage in Mexico City's central square the Zocalo and announced that their polling numbers showed a clear win, but asked people to wait for the official process to run its course.

The PAN, asserting its own victory, began pressuring PRD supporters to concede defeat. But unlike John Kerry in 2004, Lopez Obrador, called AMLO by his supporters, refused to give in before the count was complete. And unlike Al Gore in 2000 in Florida, his ultimate strategy was to ask for ALL the votes to be counted.

The Monday after election day, much of Mexico sat quietly stunned by events. Tuesday, a hard rain in Mexico City washed the last of Sunday night's confetti the remains of an incomplete victory celebration from the streets around the Zocalo. It seemed people were beginning to resign themselves to AMLO's defeat from taxi drivers to hardware store clerks, I heard "of course he won, but they will steal it from him." Then in an amazing turn, the IFE admitted Wednesday morning that at least 2 million ballots (out of a total of 41 million) had been omitted from their initial count.

After that moment, everything changed. People's hope grew, neighborhoods and committees began to mobilize. There were, after all, paper ballots in this election they could be counted! That Sunday, a huge crowd gathered in the Zocalo, the following Wednesday people began assembling in every state around the country, then this past Sunday the largest gathering in Mexican political history assembled, with another planned for two weeks hence. The people of Mexico wanted their ballots counted, their voices heard. The courts have until the end of August to make their decision, but the people of Mexico plan to be very vocal until that decision is reached.

As many states in the U.S. move toward electronic voting machines with no paper trail, as media conglomerates try to give voters the winners' names before the count is done, and as huge data companies get the contracts to "Help America Vote" perhaps we should look south and learn a lesson from people who believe their vote can make a difference.

Copyright (c)2006, Capital Newspapers

Globe and Mail 19/07/06

By Jeffrey Simpson

With Israeli bombs blasting Lebanon and dozens of daily killings defining Iraq's civil strife, it's easy to forget Afghanistan, except when a Canadian gets killed and our media blanket the story.

Just now, however, about 600 Canadians are fighting with U.S., British and Afghan soldiers in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.

Within that province, they have concentrated in the Sangin region; there are as many soldiers and police officers as there are residents.

They aren't having much success, according to news reports, in finding the Taliban and their allies, despite considerable military efforts. While Canada and its allies hunt for the Taliban in this area, the Taliban have captured two other Helmand towns, Garmser and Nawa-i-Barakzayi.

Helmand province, where Britain is supposed to be taking the lead in guaranteeing security, lies west of Kandahar province, where the Canadians have responsibility. Both provinces border on Pakistan. Both have plenty of Taliban activists and sympathizers. Both are what David Richards, NATO's commander in Afghanistan, has called a "post-medieval society." What applies in Helmand would not be dissimilar from Kandahar.

So what's in Helmand, a province with a million people and a thousand dusty villages? The last time British soldiers were in Helmand, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1880, the Royal Regiment got wiped out in the Battle of Maiwand along the Helmand River.

A recent report on Helmand from the London-based Senlis Council makes for sobering reading -- the kind it's too bad Canadian parliamentarians and, through them, the Canadian public, didn't hear about before approving a two-year extension of the Canadian mission in southern Afghanistan.

The literacy rate in Helmand is 14 per cent. Discrimination against women is ingrained in the culture. Only 1,305 girls are attending schools, compared with 113,148 boys, at least when the schools are not being attacked. The Senlis Council found that "schools and in particular girls' schools are increasingly coming under attack from the insurgents. Through death threats, insurgents have accomplished the closure of several schools." (Insurgents also target Afghan police and military recruits.)

These "insurgents," the ones Canadians soldiers are hunting, are a mixture of Taliban, al-Qaeda and foreign jihadists who slip across the border from Pakistan, drug lords and tribal chiefs.

They thrive because too many people are poor and feel abandoned or even threatened by interlopers from the West. They can operate easily back and forth across the Pakistani border. They use low-cost techniques such as suicide bombings, beheadings and explosives. There has been a 600-per-cent increase in violent attacks in Helmand in the past six months. More open fighting has accompanied the usual terrorist tactics.

U.S. and NATO spokesmen insist that progress has been made in routing the "insurgents." Senlis reports that "recent incidents suggest the arrival of British troops has done little to deter the insurgency."

The Americans, through Operation Enduring Freedom, did lots of fighting but not much reconstructing. The British and Canadians are supposed to pay much more attention to reconstruction, thereby winning the hearts and minds of the villagers and farmers. It's hard to reconstruct and fight simultaneously, even with the best will in the world.

Helmand, like Kandahar, is saturated by the drug trade. In Helmand, according to Senlis, 26,500 hectares are cultivated with opium poppies and 80,000 with wheat. But opium produces revenue of $143-million, whereas wheat produces $44-million.

The opium trade is therefore lucrative and essential -- for farmers' incomes, feeding endemic corruption (including from government officials), supplying money to warlords and "insurgents." The insurgents get the money by extortion, in exchange for promised protection, or from outright sympathizers.

U.S. and NATO policy is to eradicate the opium-poppy economy and replace it with something else. It's an easy policy to state but a hard one to accomplish when more than a third of the population relies on the drug trade. In Britain, voices are already insisting the U.K. needs more troops in Helmand. It's increasingly obvious that a successful NATO commitment to Afghanistan, especially in the south, isn't going to last two years, but much longer.

Canada, having given its word, can't withdraw from Kandahar. But with the troops, equipment and budget the country has deployed -- given the obstacles in southern Afghanistan -- Canada can't easily succeed, either.

The ridiculously rushed and largely ill-informed parliamentary debate never even came close to outlining these hard facts to the Canadian people.

jsimpson@globeandmail.com

di Valentino Parlato

(tratto da il manifesto del 22 luglio 2003)

Vent'anni fa, il 21 luglio del 1983, moriva Franco Rodano e oggi, nell'ondata del postmoderno e nel decadimento politico e culturale della sinistra, il suo nome ha un suono tra i più anziani e solo tra rari giovani. Del tutto diversa era la situazione quando noi anziani di oggi eravamo giovani. Allora l'uomo Franco Rodano suscitava fascino, in verità un po' enigmatico: questa persona coltissima e profondamente cristiana, che politicamente era comunista e non per ragioni di classe, ma piuttosto di liberazione dell'uomo. Con una scomunica ad personam, poi ritirata ai tempi di Giovanni XXIII, ma sempre cristiano e comunista, limpidamente, senza mai nessuna confusione democristiana. Un uomo di ottime frequentazioni cattoliche e laiche, era sodale di Raffaele Mattioli, l'illuminato presidente della Comit, ma che ha sempre rifiutato la cosiddetta ascesa sociale: mai parlamentare, mai presidente di un qualche ente, ma sempre e solo Franco Rodano, ricercato, discusso, ma sempre apprezzato, anche dagli avversari. Anche di lui va detto «lo stile è l'uomo». E il suo era uno stile produttivo di pensiero, suscitatore di discussioni e ricerche. Aveva cominciato, giovanissimo, al Liceo Visconti di Roma, dove ostentava («fiammeggiante» diceva Giorgio Coppa allora mio capo alla Cna) il distintivo dell'azione cattolica, fondatore del Movimento dei comunisti cattolici, ispiratore del crociano Spettatore italiano e direttore di Dibattito politico, rivista alla quale collaboravano i giovanissimi Giuseppe Chiarante e Lucio Magri e poi, negli anni `60, fondatore con Claudio Napoleoni della prestigiosa Rivista trimestrale. Un grande lavoro, un capitale di pensiero, oggi piuttosto trascurato.

La questione cattolica - se ne parla anche oggi in rapporto alla difficile costituzione europea - rimane centrale, culturalmente e politicamente. E davanti a questo problema il lavoro di Rodano può aiutare. Di fronte alla questione cattolica, Rodano non è affatto un sostenitore del «compromesso storico», che per certi significava il degrado della grande questione nell'ambito riduttivo della «solidarietà nazionale», una mezzadria con la Dc. In un articolo apparso tempo fa su Critica marxista, Lucio Magri dà una interpretazione convincente del pensiero di Franco Rodano: «Il rapporto con la Chiesa, sia come comunità di fede che come istituzione, senza mediazioni di un partito cattolico... rappresentava un'occasione e una garanzia per depurare il movimento comunista non solo dell'ateismo scientista, ma anche di una visione totalizzante della rivoluzione politica e sociale (il mito del regno dei cieli sulla terra e di una storia senza alienazioni)... Corrispettivamente il movimento comunista era il portatore necessario di una trasformazione della società che non si presentasse... come inveramento e compimento della razionalità illuministica, della rivoluzione borghese, ma anche e soprattutto come loro rovesciamento dialettico, e perciò offrisse un fondamento storico e materiale ad un mondo in cui la persona umana diventasse centro e misura, liberata dalla reificazione capitalistica, e perciò stesso base reale di un pieno sviluppo di un cristianesimo, non integralista, ma consapevole, diffuso, praticabile». La posizione di Rodano è radicalmente e discutibilmente antiborghese è perciò piuttosto eversiva in un'epoca di borghesia trionfante.

Questo il terreno di lavoro anticipato da Rodano, certamente discutibile, ma oggi nel postfordismo e nella crescita del lavoro cosiddetto cognitivo, può essere più realistico di quanto non fosse venti anni fa: come a dire che l'uomo non è solo quel che mangia e che tra la struttura e la sovrastruttura i rapporti sono assai più complessi di quanto non fosse nel marxismo che abbiamo imparato da giovani. Soltanto che oggi attraversiamo una fase di crisi politica e culturale nella quale il valore più alto è la forza, cioè la guerra diffusa a tutti i livelli. Contro gli Hobbes di oggi forse Franco Rodano può darci un aiuto.

Questo penso oggi, ma tanti anni fa quando fui invitato a cena da Franco Rodano, insieme con Aniello Coppola, e quella cena era un po' un esame d'ammissione, ritengo di essere stato bocciato.

· Nato commmander's views in stark contrast to ministers'
· Forces short of equipment and 'running out of time'

Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday July 21, 2006
The Guardian



The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan today described the situation in the country as "close to anarchy" with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption.
The stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of Nato's international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that western forces there were short of equipment and were "running out of time" if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people.

The assumption within Nato countries had been that the environment in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in 2002 would be benign, Gen Richards said. "That is clearly not the case," he said today. He referred to disputes between tribes crossing the border with Pakistan, and divisions between religious and secular factions cynically manipulated by "anarcho-warlords".

Corrupt local officials were fuelling the problem and Nato's provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan were sending out conflicting signals, Gen Richards told a conference at the Royal United Services Institute in London. "The situation is close to anarchy," he said, referring in particular to what he called "the lack of unity between different agencies".

He described "poorly regulated private security companies" as unethical and "all too ready to discharge firearms". Nato forces in Afghanistan were short of equipment, notably aircraft, but also of medical evacuation systems and life-saving equipment.

Officials said later that France and Turkey had sent troops to Kabul but without any helicopters to support them.

Gen Richards will also take command of the 4,500-strong British brigade in Helmand province at the heart of the hostile, poppy-growing south of the country when it comes under Nato's overall authority. He said today that Nato "could not afford not to succeed" in its attempt to bring long-term stability to Afghanistan and build up the country's national army and security forces. He described the mission as a watershed for Nato, taking on "land combat operations for the first time in its history".

The picture Gen Richards painted today contrasted markedly with optimistic comments by ministers when they agreed earlier this month to send reinforcements to southern Afghanistan at the request of British commanders there. Many of those will be engineers with the task of appealing to Afghan "hearts and minds" by repairing the infrastructure, including irrigation systems.

Gen Richards said today that was a priority. How to eradicate opium poppies - an issue repeatedly highlighted by ministers - was a problem that could only be tackled later.

General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the British army, said recently: "To physically eradicate [opium poppies] before all the conditions are right seems to me to be counter-productive." The government admits that Helmand province is about to produce a bumper poppy crop and is now probably the biggest single source of heroin in the world. Ministers are concerned about criticism the government will face if planting over the next few months for next year's crop - in an area patrolled by British troops - is not significantly reduced.

Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Afghanistan, told the Guardian that the immediate target had to be the biggest poppy cultivators and dealers who control the £1bn-plus Afghan drug trade.

The strategy should be: "Go for the fat cats, very wealthy farmers, the movers and shakers of the drug trade" and their laboratories, he said. Asked about the concern of British military commanders that by depriving farmers - and warlords - of a lucrative crop, poppy eradication would feed the insurgency, Mr Howells admitted: "It's a big problem for us."

Tanya Reinhart

This is an excerpt from Israel/Palestine- how to end the war of 1948, Seven Stories Press, 2002, 2005, pp. 83-87

It appears that Ehud Barak had one big achievement for which the majority of Israeli society was enthusiastically thankful—he withdrew the Israeli army from Lebanon. Nevertheless, his real intentions for doing that remain a mystery. I quote from a column I wrote in Yediot Aharonot in May 29, 2000, at the time of the withdrawal from Lebanon.

But there are still a few puzzling questions [regarding the withdrawal from Lebanon]. A first wonder—how is it that the border line has not been fortified and prepared? For a year, the government and the army have been discussing the withdrawal from Lebanon and when the moment came, it turned out that all that was done so far is to approve the plans. In most areas, the work will take another year. A second wonder—how is it that there was not even a slight bargaining attempt over the border line, which now passes in the middle of kibbutz Manara's water reserve? There was not even bargaining over areas which were probably held by Israel before 1978… And a third wonder—how is it that the right-wing is not protesting? Sharon seems to be furiously attacking Barak. But over what? Over the fact that Barak didn't deliver harder “preventive blows” to Beirut before the withdrawal. As for the withdrawal itself (to this implausible and unprotected border line)—Sharon is warmly supportive.

It is actually easy to understand Sharon's stand. After all, he is the first who proposed, three years ago, a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. By his plan, such a withdrawal will provide Israel with the support of the international community. Under such circumstances,the first slightest incident will be viewed as a legitimate excuse for Israel to attack Lebanon and Syria with devastating blows and return to Lebanon under better conditions. Whoever plans to go back in will not argue over the exact border line and will not invest time and resources in fortifying this border for only a month or two.

But Sharon isn't the one conducting this withdrawal. It is Barak. Then, still, why wasn't the border fortified? There are two options: either there has been a very big goof-up, or Barak is executing, in practice, Sharon's plan. Under the first scenario, Barak is determined to achieve peace, which can explain goof-ups here and there. Although it is Barak who suggested in 1982, in a memo to Sharon, to extend the Lebanon war to a comprehensive war with Syria, he has come to his senses since then. In the second scenario, Barak is the same Barak. Perhaps he believes that it is still possible to realize Ben Gurion's vision according to which control of Southern Lebanon is crucial for the future of Israel. Indeed the [Israeli] public is tired of the price in casualties, but it will soon learn that without Lebanon there cannot be quiet in the north….Then the spoiled public will learn that there is no choice—we have to go back to Lebanon. Yossi Sarid, at least, has been warning for months that the road of unilateral withdrawal is leading, in fact, back into Lebanon.

The problem is that we have no way to know what goes on in Barak's mind, because he doesn't share his plans with others. Democracy or not—Barak is known to be a person who takes his decisions by himself… It is the same Barak who wrote to Sharon at the eve of the Lebanon war in 1982 that it is possible to keep a very small number of confidants who “know the full extent of the plan” ...

Indeed, we cannot know what Barak planned, because an unexpected development interfered. On June 10, 2000, two weeks after Israel completed its withdrawal from Lebanon, Hafez Assad, who ruled in Syria for thirty years, died of a heart failure, and his son Bashir Assad took his place. If an Israeli attack on Syria was planned at the time, it had to be postponed, since there could be no international legitimization for attacking the son for the putative crimes of his father.

But one thing is clear: Barak insisted on keeping a small area of conflict—the Shaba Farms. This is a narrow fourteen-kilometer-long and two-kilometer-wide strip near Mount Dov that Israel insists belonged to Syria, and not to Lebanon, hence it would not withdraw from this strip. (Both Syria and Lebanon deny this and declare the area is Lebanese and should be returned to Lebanon.) Hizbollah continues, as might be expected, to fight over this strip of land, demanding its liberation from Israeli occupation. This remains a source of tension and potential incidents. The story now is that Hizbollah, and Syria backing it, continues to threaten Israeli existence, and a war with Syria may be inevitable. As we shall see in Chapter IX, the Sharon administration is currently talking openly about such a forthcoming war.

---

Tanya Reinhart is Professor Emeritus of linguistics and media studies at Tel Aviv University and a frequent op-ed writer for the Israeli evening paper 'Yediot Aharonot'. The second edition of her 2002 book Israel/Palestine - how to end the war of 1948 has appeared last year (Seven Stories), and her new book: The Road Map to Nowhere, will appear in September (Verso).

==========
[1] Yoav Stern, 'Nasrallah: Only deal will free kidnapped soliders,' Ha'aretz July 13, 2006.
[2] Amos Harel, Aluf Benn and Gideon Alon, 'Gov't okays massive strikes on Lebanon,' Ha'aretz, July 13, 2006.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Amos Har'el, 'Israel prepares for widespread military escalation', Ha'aretz internet edition, Last update - 21:50 12/07/2006.
[5] Amos Harel, Jack Khoury and Nir Hasson, Over 100 Katyushas hit north, Ha'aretz July 14, 2006.
[6]'Lebanese PM to lobby Pres. Bush on Israeli withdrawal from Shaba', by Reuters, Ha'aretz, April 16, 2006 :

"Lebanon's prime minister [is] asking U.S. President George Bush to put pressure on Israel to pull out of a border strip and thus enable his government to extend its authority over all Lebanese land... 'Israel has to withdraw from the Shaba Farms and has to stop violating our airspace and water,' Siniora said. This was essential if the Lebanese government was 'to become the sole monopoly of holding weapons in the country'.., he added. 'Very important as well is to seek the support of President Bush so that Lebanon will not become in any way a ball in the courtyard of others or... a courtyard for the confrontations of others in the region,' Siniora said. Lebanon's rival leaders are engaged in a 'national dialogue' aimed at resolving the country's political crisis, the worst since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. One key issue is the disarming of Hezbollah... The Shi'ite Muslim group says its weapons are still required to liberate Shaba Farms and to defend Lebanon against any Israeli threats."

[7] Amos Harel, Aluf Benn and Gideon Alon, 'Gov't okays massive strikes on Lebanon', Ha'aretz, July 13, 2006.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Robin Wright, 'Strikes Are Called Part of Broad Strategy', Washington Post, Sunday, July 16, 2006; A15.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Tanya Reinhart Israel-Palestine - how to end the war of 1948, Seven Stories press 2002, 2005, p. 83-87.
See 'How Israel left Lebanon' http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart (Media articles section, as of Thursday).

History Is What Comes Next: Mexico Splits in Half as Viciously Contested Presidential Election Goes Into the Streets

by John Ross

[John Ross's BLINDMAN'S BUFF incorporates and expands on his weekly report from Mexico, MEXICO BARBARO, focusing in on global hotspots from Bolivia to Baghdad. Copyright 2006 by John Ross. For one-month free trial subscription, contact: wnu@igc.org]

Period: July 7-14, 2006, #125 MEXICO CITY (July 11)

A full week after the most viciously contested presidential election in its modern history, a Florida- sized fraud looms over the Mexican landscape and the nation has been divided almost exactly in half along political, economic, geographical and racial lines.

Mexico has always been two lands--"Illusionary Mexico" and "Profound Mexico" is how sociologist Guillermo Bonfils described the great divide between rich and poor. But now, should it be allowed to stand, rightwinger Felipe Calderon Hinojosa's severely questioned 243,000-vote victory over leftwing populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) will split the country exactly in half between the industrial north and the impoverished, highly indigenous south, with each winning 16 states--although the southern states won by Lopez Obrador, who also won Mexico City by a million votes, constitute 54% of the population.

Moreover, the disputed election pits an indignant Indian and mestizo underclass that believes AMLO was swindled out of the presidency by electoral fraud against a wealthy white conservative minority that controls the nation's media, its banks and, apparently, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), Mexico's maximum electoral authorities. Lopez Obrador charges the IFE and its president Luis Carlos Ugalde with orchestrating Calderon's uncertain triumph.

At a raucous July 8 rally that put a half million supporters in Mexico City's vast Zocalo plaza, the political heart of the nation, Lopez Obrador called upon his people to demand a complete vote-by-vote recount of the results. Speaking from a flatbed truck set up in front of the National Palace, the official seat of the Mexican government, the fiery former Mexico City mayor characterized President Vicente Fox Quesada as "a traitor to democracy" and for the first time at a public meeting uttered the word "fraud," accusing the IFE of rigging the election to favor his opponent.

Indeed, fraud was the central motif of the mammoth meeting. Large photos of IFE president Luis Carlos Ugalde slugged "Wanted for Electoral Fraud" were slapped up on central city walls, and tens of thousands of protesters waved home-made signs dissing the IFE official with such colorful epithets as "No to Your Fucking Fraud!" Throughout the rally (which was billed as a "first informative assembly"), the huge throng repeatedly drowned out Lopez Obrador's pronouncements with thunderous chants of "Fraude electoral!" At times, AMLO seemed on the verge of tears at the outpouring of support from the sea of brown faces that pressed in around the speakers' platform.

The gathering in the Zocalo signaled the kick-off to what is sometimes called "the second election in the street": a mass effort to pressure electoral officials into a ballot-by-ballot recount that Lopez Obrador is convinced will show that he was the winner July 2. The IFE has resolutely resisted such a recount.

AMLO, a gifted leader of street protest, is always at the top of his game when he is seen as an underdog battling the rich and powerful, and the next days will be heady ones here. This Wednesday (July 12), the left leader is calling upon supporters in all 300 electoral districts across Mexico to initiate a national "exodus" for democracy that will converge upon the capital on Sunday, July 16 for a "megamarch" that may well turn out to be the largest political demonstration in the nation's history. Indeed, AMLO already set that mark in April 2005, when 1.2 million citizens surged through Mexico City to protest Fox's efforts to bar the leftist from the ballot--the president dropped his vendetta three days after the march.

But Lopez Obrador and his Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) will not just do battle in the streets. Evidence of widespread ballot box manipulation in a third of the 130,000 polling places (including ballot-stuffing and duplicate numbers in thousands of them), malfeasance in the reporting of district totals to the IFE, inexplicable cybernetic confabulations in both the preliminary count, or PREP (three million mostly AMLO votes were removed), and the final tabulation in the districts are being presented to the nation's top electoral tribunal (code- named the TRIFE) by Lopez Obrador's battery of attorneys in an effort to persuade the seven justices that a hand recount is the only way to determine who will be the next president of Mexico. Such recounts have recently been conducted in close elections in Germany, Italy and Costa Rica as well as in Florida 2000 until ordered shut down by the US Supreme Court.

Felipe Calderon and the PAN and Ugalde's IFE consider AMLO's demands to open the ballot boxes an "insult" to the "hundreds of thousands of citizens" who were responsible for carrying out the election. "The votes have already been counted--on Election Day," Ugalde upbraids Lopez Obrador.

The TRIFE is an autonomous judicial body with powers to annul the presidential election--it has annulled gubernatorial elections in Tabasco (AMLO's home state) and Colima and invalidated results in entire districts because of electoral flimflam in recent years. Lopez Obrador and the PRD have also petitioned Mexico's Supreme Court to invalidate the election because of Vicente Fox's apparently unconstitutional meddling on behalf of Calderon, and this reporter has learned that AMLO is considering calling upon all PRD elected officials not to take office Dec. 1 if the ballots are not recounted, a strategy that could trigger constitutional crisis.

Despite the uncertainty about who won the July 2 election, the White House and Ambassador Tony Garza, a crony of US president George W. Bush, have been quick to congratulate Felipe Calderon, for whom they exhibited an undisguised predilection during the campaigns--Bush actually called the rightwinger from Air Force One, and Garza has been lavish in his praise of the much-questioned performance of the IFE as proof of "a maturing Mexican democracy."

The US embassy has a track record of intervening in Mexico's presidential selection--Ronald Reagan recognized Carlos Salinas de Gortari as the winner of the stolen 1988 election within 96 hours of the larceny. In 1911, US ambassador Henry Lane Wilson signed off on the assassination of Mexico's first democratically elected president, Francisco Madero, to whom Lopez Obrador has often compared himself.

Most of the US Big Press has followed in lockstep with the White House--the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Washington Post all expressed editorial satisfaction at Calderon's coronation based on the results of the admittedly manipulated preliminary count. But the New York Times--which 18 years ago, after free-marketeer Carlos Salinas stole the presidency from leftist Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano, called that tormented proceeding "the cleanest election in Mexican history"--this time around was more cautious, voting for a ballot-by-ballot recount before extending its benediction to the winner.

As tens of thousands of AMLO's supporters--"the people the color of the earth" Subcomandante Marcos names them--march across the Mexican landscape on their way up to the capital to demand electoral justice, invoking scenes of the great movement of "los de abajo" (those from down below) during Mexico's monumental 1910-1919 revolution, the country holds it breath.

In Mexico the past has equal value with the present, and the memory of what came before can sometimes be what comes next. These are history-making moments south of the Rio Bravo. North Americans need to pay attention.

[A shortened version of this piece appeared on The Nation.com. John Ross's Making Another World Possible-- Zapatista Chronicles 2000-2006 will be published this October by Nation Books.]

AprileOnLine.Info n. 206 del 18/07/2006

Al di là delle dichiarazioni ufficiali, la verità che si nasconde dietro l'offensiva israeliana in Libano e nella Striscia di Gaza
Uri Avneri*


Il vero obiettivo è quello di cambiare il regime libanese insediando un governo fantoccio.
Così come questo è stato l'obiettivo di Ariel Sharon quando ha invaso il Libano nel 1982. Obiettivo fallito. Ma Sharon e i suoi seguaci ai vertici militari e politici non vi hanno mai veramente rinunciato.
Come nel 1982, l'attuale operazione israeliana è stata pianificata e portata avanti in collaborazione con gli Stati Uniti e come allora non c'è dubbio che sia stata concordata con una parte della elite libanese.
E' questo l'aspetto più importante. Tutto il resto è rumore e propaganda.

Alla vigilia dell'invasione del 1982, il Segretario di Stato Alexander Haig disse ad Ariel Sharon che prima di dare il via all'operazione era necessario attuare una “chiara provocazione” che fosse benaccetta dal mondo.
E la provocazione ebbe davvero luogo – esattamente al tempo giusto – quando le milizie di Abu-Nidal cercarono di assassinare l'ambasciatore israeliano a Londra. L'episodio non ebbe alcuna relazione con il Libano, e tanto meno con l'Olp (il nemico di Abu-Nidal), ma servì allo scopo.

Questa volta la provocazione necessaria è stata fornita dagli Hezbollah attraverso la cattura dei due soldati israeliani. Tutti sanno che non potranno venire rilasciati a meno di uno scambio di prigionieri, ma l'enorme campagna militare pronta a scattare da mesi è stata venduta all'opinione pubblica israeliana e internazionale come operazione di riscatto. (Piuttosto strano che l'identica operazione sia accaduta due settimane prima nella Striscia di Gaza, dove Hamas e i suoi partner hanno catturato un soldato offrendo così la scusa per l'avvio della massiccia operazione che il governo israeliano teneva in caldo da tempo con l'intento di distruggere il governo palestinese).

Il chiaro proposito dell'offensiva sul Libano è di spingere gli Hezbollah lontano dal confine in modo da rendere impossibile la cattura di altri soldati e il lancio di razzi sui villaggi israeliani; l'invasione della Striscia di Gaza ha l'obiettivo ufficiale di togliere dalla gittata dei Quassam gli insediamenti di Ashkelon e Sderot.
Tutto ricorda la “Operazione Pace per la Galilea” del 1982, quando all'opinione pubblica e alla Knesset (il Parlamento israeliano n.d.t.) fu fatto passare che l'obiettivo della guerra era di “Spingere i Katyusha 40 chilometri lontano dal confine”. Una deliberata bugia. Negli 11 mesi precedenti la guerra non un singolo razzo Katyusha (né un singolo colpo) fu fatto esplodere oltre il confine. Fin dall'inizio il vero obiettivo dell'operazione è stato arrivare a Beirut per insediare un dittatore Quinsling (collaborazionista n.d.t.). Come ho avuto a dire in altre occasioni, è stato Sharon stesso a raccontarmi la verità dei fatti nove mesi prima dello scoppio della guerra, cosa che io debitamente pubblicai allora con il suo consenso (senza citarlo).
Certamente l'attuale operazione militare ha anche diversi obiettivi secondari, che non includono comunque la liberazione dei prigionieri: tutti sono consapevoli che il raggiungimento di questo scopo non può avvenire attraverso le minacce militari. Ma è però possibile che si arrivi a distruggere una parte delle migliaia di missili che gli Hezbollah hanno accumulato negli anni. A tale fine i capi militari sono pronti a mettere in pericolo gli abitanti dei villaggi israeliani più esposti ai razzi Katyusha, ritenendo che, utilizzandoli come pedine degli scacchi, valga la pena di giocare la partita.
Un altro obiettivo secondario è riabilitare il “potere deterrente” dell'esercito. Si tratta del codice volto a restaurare l'orgoglio ferito dell'esercito israeliano che ha subito parecchi colpi dalle audaci azioni militari di Hamas nel sud e degli Hezbollah al nord.
Ufficialmente il governo israeliano pretende che quello libanese disarmi gli Hezbollah e li rimuova dalle regioni di confine. Ma tutto ciò è chiaramente impossibile sotto l'attuale regime libanese, delicata commistione di comunità etno-religiose in cui il più piccolo sconvolgimento potrebbe portare l'intera struttura a crollare gettando il paese nell'anarchia totale, specialmente da quando gli americani sono riusciti a spazzar via l'esercito siriano, unico elemento che ha provveduto a fornire negli anni una certa stabilità alla regione.

L'idea di insediare un Quinsling in Libano non è nuova. Fu David Ben-Gurion a proporre, nel 1955, di prendere un “ufficiale cristiano” e di insediarlo come dittatore. Ma Moshe Sharet dimostrò come una simile idea non potesse basarsi che sulla completa ignoranza della realtà libanese e la bocciò. Eppure 27 anni più tardi Ariel Sharon tentò comunque di attuarla attraverso l'imposizione di Bashir Gemayel come presidente, per poi vederlo morire assassinato poco tempo dopo. Il fratello Amin che gli succedette firmò un trattato di pace con Israele, ma fu destituito dal suo incarico (ed è ora pubblicamente sostenitore dell'operazione israeliana).
I calcoli si avvalgono della previsione che, in presenza di pesanti bombardamenti aerei da parte israeliana sulla popolazione libanese con relativa paralisi di porti ed aeroporti, distruzione di infrastrutture, bombardamento di aree residenziali e taglio del collegamento stradale tra Beirut e Damasco, l'opinione pubblica libanese si infuri sempre più con gli Hezbollah arrivando a pressare il governo affinché aderisca alle richieste israeliane. Dal momento che l'attuale governo non si sogna neanche di arrivare a questo, un dittatore verrà mandato al potere con il supporto di Israele.
E' questa la logica militare, sulla quale nutro seri dubbi. E' molto probabile che la maggior parte della popolazione libanese reagirà come farebbe qualsiasi altro popolo del mondo: con furia e odio contro l'invasore. E' quanto accaduto nel 1982 quando gli sciiti nel sud del Libano, fino a quel momento docilissimi, insorsero contro gli occupanti israeliani creando il movimento degli Hezbollah, poi divenuta la più forte organizzazione del paese. Ma il rischio per l'elite libanese è alto. se palesata la collaborazione con Israele, ne andrebbe della sua stessa sopravvivenza (in ogni caso, i razzi Quassam e Katyusha hanno mai portato la popolazione israeliana ad esercitare pressione sul governo perché si arrendesse? Assolutamente no.)

La politica americana è piena di contraddizioni, il presidente Bush anela ad un “cambio di regime” in Medioriente, ma l'attuale governo libanese è stato solo recentemente formato sotto la pressione degli Stati Uniti. Nello stesso tempo, Bush è riuscito unicamente a spaccare l'Iraq e a causare una guerra civile. Potrebbe ottenere la stessa cosa in Libano se non si decide a fermare le truppe israeliane in tempo. Ancor più, una devastante azione contro gli Hezbollah potrebbe fomentare la furia non solo dell'Iran ma anche tra gli sciiti iracheni, sul cui appoggio si fondano tutti i piani di Bush per un regime pro America.

Allora qual'è la risposta? Non a caso gli Hezbollah sono usciti allo scoperto con il rapimento dei soldati proprio quando i palestinesi chiedevano soccorso. Dal momento che la causa palestinese è molto popolare in tutto il mondo arabo, dimostrando di essere amici nel bisogno mentre gli altri paesi arabi latitano, gli Hezbollah sperano di incrementare la loro popolarità, mentre al contrario, se si dovesse raggiungere un accordo israelo-palestinese, gli Hezbollah verrebbero relegati ad un irrilevante fenomeno locale.

A meno di tre mesi dalla sua formazione, il governo Olmert-Peretz è riuscito a sprofondare Israele in una guerra su due fronti caratterizzata da obiettivi irrealistici dai risultati imprevedibili. Se Olmert spera di essere assimilato al Signor Macho-Macho, uno Sharon numero 2, rimarrà molto deluso. Lo stesso vale per i disperati tentativi di Peretz di venir preso seriamente per un potente Signor Sicurezza. E' sotto gli occhi di tutti quanto questa campagna militare, a Gaza come in Libano, sia stata pianificata e imposta dall'esercito. L'uomo che prende le decisioni ora in Israele si chiama Dan Halutz e non è un caso che il lavoro in Libano sia stato portato avanti dalle forze aeree.

L'opinione pubblica israeliana non è entusiasta della guerra, si è solo rassegnata con stoico fatalismo perché le è stato detto che non c'è alternativa. Ed invero, chi può esservi contro? Chi non desidera che vengano liberati i “soldati rapiti”? Chi non vorrebbe che venissero rimossi i Katyusha e ripristinata la deterrenza? Nessun politico osa criticare l'operazione, ad eccezione degli Arab Mks (arabi israeliani membri del Knesset n.d.t.) che sono comunque ignorati dalla popolazione ebraica.
Nei media i generali regnano indisturbati, e non solo quelli in uniforme. E' difficile trovare un generale ormai in pensione che non sia stato invitato dagli organi di informazione per commentare, spiegare e giustificare ciò che sta accadendo: tutti parlano all'unisono.
(Un esempio: il più popolare canale televisivo israeliano mi ha invitato per un'intervista sulla guerra dopo aver saputo che avevo preso parte ad una manifestazione pacifista. Ero davvero sorpreso. Ma non per molto: un'ora prima di andare in onda mi ha chiamato un redattore del talk show a cui ero stato invitato per comunicarmi che si era verificato un terribile errore, la persona che volevano invitare era il professor Shlomo Avineri, ex direttore generale del Foreign Office, sul quale contavano perché giustificasse qualsiasi atto perpetrato dal governo, qualunque esso fosse, in alto linguaggio accademico).

“Inter arma silent Musae” quando le armi parlano, le Muse tacciono. O piuttosto: Quando le pistole ruggiscono, il cervello cessa di funzionare.
Infine solo un breve pensiero: Quando lo Stato di Israele fu fondato, nel pieno di una guerra crudele, un poster fu attaccato ai muri: ”Tutto il Paese – un fronte! Tutto il popolo – un esercito!”
58 anni sono trascorsi, ma lo stesso slogan è ancora valido come allora. Che cosa ci dice circa le generazioni di statisti e generali?

*Gush Shalom