The Bush administration was characterised by a curious indifference to inconvenient facts. Not just bare-faced lies, such as Iraq’s fearsome and non-existent arsenal, or the disingenuous obfuscation of scientific evidence to muddy the waters on climate change; they also denied reality to themselves, in a way that elevated incompetence to self-sabotage (de-Baathification, the economy). The people of the world (unlike many of their timorous leaders) were rightly disgusted, and popular opposition to the US reached unprecedented levels.
With the election of Barack Obama, we have seen a return to common sense in many ways. Torturing prisoners, refusal to meet with those deemed ideologically outside the pale, and a head-in-the-sand attitude to global warming: these strategic blunders and public relations disasters have been repudiated. Actual movement on the issues has been slow, but there is no doubt that a change is taking place. The US, according to the conventional narrative, has woken up to reality, and restored basic standards of decency: we can all breathe a sigh of relief and welcome them back from their vacation in neoconservative fantasy-land.
You can see this narrative underlying such analyses as Mark Weisbrot’s article on Latin America:
It is remarkable that pressure for a reality-based view of the world has had to come from the south, and says a lot about the state of civil society in the US. How is it that nobody from our leading foreign policy institutions could have figured this out years ago? On Cuba, there has been dissent – partly because there are powerful business interests that want access to the island, and partly because 47 years of failure is a long time even for slow learners. But on Venezuela, the primary focus of US foreign policy in the hemisphere for the past seven years, there has been an overwhelming consensus of fantasy and hype.
It is certainly true that truth, historically, has never been an impediment to the official US line vis-a-vis its ‘backyard’, the rest of the Americas. To what extent, though, are the problems of the role of the US in the world due to illusions or strategic errors? In the case of Latin America, it is dangerous folly to read the US as a blundering yet ultimately benevolent neighbour, the victim of its own failure to see things for what they are. Its record of support for dictators, coup by proxy, and economic bullying belie such a view.
Acknowledgement of global multi-polarity, admission of past mistakes, better diplomacy; these are all positive steps from the Obama administration. In terms of domestic politics, rolling back the regressive tax cuts of the Bush years should bring some welcome relief to the poor. If the governor of Texas is talking about secession, the federal government must be doing something right.
But Obama puts a friendlier face on a system that is far bigger than the morality of any individual, or the persuasions of any political group: a ruthless system that does not hesitate to sacrifice thousands of lives to preserve its interests. Try telling the families whose homes and the bodies of their children were torn apart by unmanned American drones in Pakistan, that change has come to Washington; preach the audacity of hope to the inhabitants of Gaza, of whom, while they were being killed in droves with the complicity of the US, then-incoming president Obama refused even to comment, on the grounds that it would be indecorous. This is not to say that Obama and his administration do not have good intentions; it is to say that their intentions are largely irrelevant. The framework in which the Obama administration carries out its business necessarily prioritises the interests of the core over those of the periphery. A failure to submit to these priorities would ensure a swift dethronement.
The democratic principle, that we accept as obvious within the nation-state, is that only by vesting power in the people themselves can their interests be served. Let’s leave aside the problems inherent in representative democracy and the way in which business interests co-opt politics; those of us lucky enough to get an opportunity to kick the bastards out if they screw us over, are much better off than those of us who never get the chance. Democracy does not guarantee justice, but if there is no universal suffrage, inequality is certain. Anyone suggesting that we abandon democracy and instead return to the days when only a small elite had the vote, hoping that their sense of noblesse oblige would protect the rights of everyone else, would rightly be ridiculed.
Why is it, then, that at the level of global politics, we accept a system of fealty, and are ready to break out in cheers if the mighty occasionally get things right? The fact that their policies are based in reality does not change the fact that policy is an expression of power. Weisbrot is correct to note:
The sad reality is that while the US has at least some civil society organisations that can present an independent view to the public on domestic issues, on foreign policy issues we are much more like Russia.
This should be no surprise. The history of organised labour in the US has been a troubled one, but workers are also voters, and as such, have a degree of clout. The victims of US foreign policy do not. US voters might get up in arms about it, but it wasn’t the Iraq war that guaranteed Obama’s victory, it was the credit crunch. Voters act in their own interests; we can’t expect them to do anything else. This isn’t charity. It’s politics. The bottom line is that elected politicians are motivated by love of power and fear of being ousted at the ballot box. In a world where corporations can operate across borders, we should demand our citizenship, and with it, a truly universal franchise: direct representation at the level of global governance.
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