Imperial Perspectives (Part VII)

by Jim Miles

2005

All empires have a mixture of ideals and beliefs that are usually in conflict with the practices that are ‘on the ground’ in any particular region or country. The idealized empire is a benevolent force bringing freedom, democracy, a higher culture and religion to some deprived area. The actual empire is one of control, of resource wars, of exploiting foreign nationals. Part VII of Imperial Perspectives takes an idiosyncratic philosophical look at these ideas before entering the era of the acquisition of the Spanish Empire.

VII. Ideals of Empire

The only moment of history that has ever existed is now, the current moment. What is occurring at this moment is the confluence of an infinite number of previously possible historical outcomes that collapse together into what becomes and what we experience as the present. What has happened in the past is irretrievable, immutable; what will occur in the future, as an absolute, is unknowable. Our current global situation is the collapse of all possible past actions into the one moment that we experience – what we are is realized from the past actions of global players, whether they have directly interacted with one another or made no direct contact with certain others on the planet. From those strange workings of possibilities and probabilities one could determine that we are simply reliving the same moment over and over again, or, in simpler turns, we are not learning from history and until we do, we are bound to repeat it. Until the new generations learn that the rhetoric and actions of past interventions is essentially the same as with current interventions, we will be destined to be taken in by the military-political-corporate agenda, and follow it into its next intervention.

Rhetoric Vs. Resources

Certainly the current world situation is based on the millennia of empirical drives that have shaped how humanity has ‘progressed’ in a technical sense, but also how humanity has remained rather basic in motive and concept throughout these histories. ‘Basic’ could imply a positive, the common sense humanitarian knowledge of doing unto others as you wish they would do unto you or living a life of sharing and compassion towards other people, of submitting yourself to a higher benevolent power. I use the term benevolent as many leaders have claimed to have talked to god and found their militantly inspired answers there. ‘Basic’ could also imply that no matter how grandiose the rhetoric, it is used endlessly to conceal baser motives such as greed, envy, distrust, jealousy, hubris and conceit, and their kind. All large empires have worked this way, from Mesopotamia to the present. The American empire is composed of this duality, of fine sounding rhetoric concealing the basic greed and mistrust of others that surfaces in the corporate-military-economic circles and fuels their aggressive foreign policy.

Part of the rhetoric is the argument that the American empire is not truly an empire because it does not have colonies in the traditional British – or rather European sense – of the word. Instead, America “will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world” according to the National Security Strategy for 2002, going even further to making free trade a “moral principle” rather than simply an economic idea. The result however is “not an ideology of freedom or democracy. It is a system of control, an economics of empire.” [1]

The idea that free market capitalism and democracy are, if not identical, then mutually reinforcing, does not hold up well in studies that critically examine the results from their intrusion into other societies and cultures. It is “a powerful assumption in Western policy and intellectual circles that markets and democracy go hand in hand” yet there remain “important links between colonialism and the phenomenon of market dominant minorities,” minorities that have usually been put in place by the colonizer or are direct descendants of colonizers. [2] As we enter the history of the Philippines below, the American empire is a prime example of these market beliefs supporting cronyism and ethnic violence, remnants of a long history of colonialism and empire.

One of the main ideas that leads to empire is the fight for resources, the most important resource at the moment being oil. As Michael Klare has shown in Blood and Oil, wherever there is oil there is turmoil and the presence of the American military, American covert operatives, and American corporations. This comes from oil transforming from a domestic policy in the first half of the past century to being a matter of national security in the latter part of the century and on into the new millennia. It is a requirement for the survival and maintenance of a strong military (an ongoing self-supporting circle) and for the survival and maintenance of “a distinctly American way of life” [3] , one of consumptive consumerism. Of course war in itself could be considered the ultimate act of consumptive consumerism, and the size of the industrial corporations that comprise the ‘defence’ industries attest all too well to that as we will see later.

Rationales for Empire

Empires require some form of rationale for their actions, not rationales to argue against their empirical subjects, but rationales to present to the homeland in order to garner their support for actions that are far too ugly to deal with on a purely economics based resource grab. Today the rationale is a combination of the ‘evil’ rhetoric from the Orientalist and religious right perspective to the advance of ‘democracy’ in order to make a happier world. The current conflict in Iraq is now based on the latter idea, of making the place safe for a democratic flowering, but democracy at the receiving end of a gun is a very nebulous thing. It is also very difficult to impose a democracy based on capitalism into a region where capitalist principals are not part of the religious background, where free market ‘morals’ are unsupportable. Instead, concepts “of a petroleum common owned by the ummah, the entire Islamic community” and a “redistributive principle…the prohibition of charging interest…[and a] duty to fund the poor, the needy, the travelers, the debtors” do not sit well with neo-liberal thinking. Finally there is a “third principle of Islamic economics…based on the prohibition of waste and the concern for conserving scarce resources”, a common sense principle probably derived from the harsh environment of its origin. [4]

Religion is still an underlying theme of empire as the ‘evil’ Islamic fundamentalists are opposed to an American Christian right that has an overly significant influence on the American government. The Orientalist view of the Islamic world being a backward and unprogressive entity tries to support the claim that these interventions will also bring them into the modern world, with modern technology and a modern outlook – or a world of corporate dominance of the oil fields and international ownership of the resource legacy of the country. It is a war against terror, but it is an imperial war in the name of Christianity, capitalism, and neo-liberal progress.

Familiar Themes, Familiar Actions

How familiar these themes appear, within the two hundred years of the United States as an imperial force, tired themes that are reiterated over and over, and are believed over and over, except for those being forcefully made subjects to the empire. As much as many people have tried to emulate the American dream, the false precepts made perfect by American spin and advertising, I have no recollection of reading any argument anywhere that says “We wish you would come here and take over our country, our lives, our heritage, our resources, our future.” Certainly those wishes have been engineered from time to time, and certainly in America there was the belief that the Americans would be welcomed as heroes and liberators, but the invitations never went out, except from a few expatriates living in other countries or future elitists wishing to have American support to gain power. The history of empire is replete with ungrateful wretches, primitives, savages, heathens, and reluctant and recalcitrant citizens, all ignorant of the benefits of being subjugated to American military and corporate dominance.

The story has always been the same, the circumstances different. An excuse for intervention is made or found, usually because some government is not following a corporate desire or is showing socialist tendencies (the same thing, really), or there is a valuable resource available for exploitation whether it be land for sugar cane fields or land for minerals. The public at home is warned of the dangers to their kin and possibly to the very survival of the American political system and its economy if action is not taken. Warning shots are fired, verbal and actual. The navy is moved into position, the air force armed, feeble efforts are made to rationalize actions to other governments that may or may not have concerns and interests in the area. Eventually a triggering action occurs or is set to occur and the military moves in.

Resources are then used to enrich and strengthen the corporate owners of the empire with the wealth of the occupied nation being transferred back to headquarters. Geographies are transformed into projecting economic and military power to an ever widening American frontier, which now lies adjacent to the riven Russian empire and the increasing ‘threat’ of an economically and militarily strengthening China. The cultural demographics change as economic change introduces capitalist doctrine, helping in part the rise of cronyism and the unequal distribution of wealth. The wealth rises in many cases to a dominant minority, the easy profiteering that comes with an economy regulated in part by large corporations, homemade as in Russia, or imported, and a compliant if not defeated labour force. This happened within the American boundaries and it continued as the American frontier pushed itself overseas.

Enter Spain

It was not that the Americans had not already made inroads into other territories that were not contiguous with the United States before the era of truly global empirical expansion began. Before what is commonly considered the first overseas global action by the American military, the Spanish American war, there had been numerous interventions and some minor take-overs in various parts of the world in Northern Africa, South and Central America and the Caribbean. Given the communications of the day, these actions probably never registered except in dusty recesses of the Congressional archives. There had been obvious propaganda against the Indians, but as heathens and savages in an underutilized and empty land, it did not take much to convince the settlers and business people that their retreat came as a result of their reluctance to accept the new order of Christianity, private land ownership, and civilization in general. When it came to Spain and its empire, a different formula had to be adopted, a new spin had to be created.

Notes:

[1] Tabb, William K. “The Two Wings of the Eagle,” Pox Americana, Exposing the American Empire. Monthly Review Press, 2004. p. 100
[2] Chua, Amy. World on Fire How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. Anchor Books, Random House, New York, 2004. p. 120.
[3] Klare, Michael T. Blood and Oil. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2004 p.viii – ix.
[4] Caffentzis, George The Petroleum Commons, Counterpunch, January 15, 2004.

© Jim Miles. Used with permission.