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| Sunday, 23 March 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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In a sarong, barebodied, in Michigan's winter A war to defend civilization Observations by Lakshaman Gunasekera I can still remember watching the priest's cassock as it hung from the clothesline in the afternoon sunshine, the long, pristine white robe, with its white arms, swaying eerily in the dry Vanni breeze like some daytime ghost haunting the church compound by the Jaffna roadside. I can remember wondering why, as I sipped his tea along with other members of the social activists' team heading for the Peninsula on an ethnic conflict fact-finding mission sometime in 1986, our Anglican priest host had to spoil his church's front entrance rather than use the back garden for his laundry. As I watch a BBC TV news anchorperson, in a bulletin on the build-up for the United States-led invasion of Iraq, interviewing a representative of an Europe-based international volunteer 'human shield' movement, I also recall the rather sheepish smile breaking the swarthy countenance of that youngish Tamil pastor seventeen years ago as he confessed the reason for hanging his clerical laundry upfront. "It's a safety measure," he explained. "The Army will think twice before coming to attack a priest." Those were the days of massacres of Tamil civilians by angry Army personnel on the rampage after attacks by secessionist insurgents (the Tamil militant movement had not yet lost its discipline and begun its own massacres). But despite the obvious justification for a stratagem for survival, I could understand the shame of the priest. After all, rather than remain with and suffer alongside the poor and oppressed, as his faith demanded of him, he was taking cover and standing aside from them for his own safety. It was not simply his priesthood that saved him but, his Christian clerical identity. And the reason why Christian identity yielded far greater safety rather than Hindu was not merely that breaking of the basic Tamil-Hindu ethnic mould. In revealing his 'non-Tamil' personality the priest was also claiming affiliation to an identity that, if it did not, by its colonial linkage, surpass, at least rivalled the power of the Sinhala State. The Christian church, anywhere in the world, enjoys the privileges of its link with the Western big powers. In the Sri Lankan context, the Church, or at least a dynamic group within the Church, had long deployed this global influence to criticise the ethnic injustices here as well as the State repression against both ethnic and social class justice movements. Human shields In the war torn Vanni it was the white cassock, with its implied Western link, that offered protection. In Iraq as well as in Palestine and many other conflict situations, the tactic is even simpler: it is their White skin that protects the volunteer 'Human Shields' and similar groups intervening to save local people from violence. As the Human Shield movement representative explained to the BBC on Thursday morning when American bombs began raining down on Iraq, the movement hoped that the presence of Western (White) civilian teams in selected sites, chosen for their importance to civilian life, would save those sites and the civilians in the vicinity. The presumption implicit in this strategy is that Westerners have greater power and influence and, thereby command greater respect and immunity than other humans. This presumption is perfectly correct, at least in some situations, as in the Persian Gulf and Palestine. At the same time, however, just as the priest in the Vanni plays off one kind of ethnicity (Tamil-Hindu) against another (Christian), at the world level too, the heroic action of the more than one hundred foreign (Western) Human Shield volunteers staying on in Iraq under massive bombing, also plays on an ethnic differential and ethnic privilege. In both these cases the reality of ethnic differentiation and contest is actually underlined in the very action of ethnic cross-over or transcendence. That is why those mapping out the fault lines of current global politics should guard against simplistic generalisations on socio-economic lines in terms of a class-based contestation and an inter-state dynamic based purely on economic power interests. The most common, almost pervasive, interpretation of the current geo-politics is one that points to the economic interests of the globally dominant capitalist powers as well as the specific interests of global capital itself. This emphasis, however, not only ignores the equal importance of cultural-political dynamics, but also, by such disregard, hides a vital lever that could have a bearing on the economic contestation. Even if economic interests are a major motive of global capital, the manner in which this motive can be pursued geo-politically is completely dependent on inter-state politics that are configured by socio-political interests not only of the convergent capitalist class of some states. The interests of global capital are fulfilled by political mobilisation at nation-state level, a mobilisation which must eventually be comprehensive to the degree that whole nations can be deployed to risk their lives and social order in war in order to further those economic interests. Anti-war demonstrations Hence, the appeal to the mass of American and British people by their leaders in going to war against Iraq. Unless that mass support is there, it is not possible to achieve a mobilisation significant enough to prosecute and sustain a major military campaign without disruption caused by domestic dissent. In the case of the current invasion of Iraq, despite the size of the anti-war demonstrations in the US and UK, it is clear that a numerical majority of both Americans and British support the invasion. The fact is that even if the US and UK had got the overt support of the other major world powers, they would not have initiated war without substantive domestic support. Likewise, in the case of Iraq, the perceived gain nationally coincided with the desired objective of the governing political groups in both Washington and London, and therefore, these two powers have shown their readiness to proceed with the war minus international support. In fact, the current regime in Washington is known to want to prosecute the war sooner rather than later precisely because it feared that domestic support of military action would wane with time. The political strength of those States launching the Second Gulf War is based not on international mobilisation but on domestic, national, constituency support. When both United States President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair address their domestic constituencies on action against Iraq they stress, as Blair was quoted yesterday, the threat to "Our way of life, our freedom and our democracy" (my emphasis). When they speak to American and British audiences and use "our" and "we", their audiences think of themselves and their own countries and society, as against any other society or country. 'National' interests Hence, it is a mobilisation on the basis of 'national' interests. Of course this 'national' interest is couched in a discourse that has double or even triple meanings. "Our freedom" can also mean the freedom of all countries and societies that could be defined and labelled as having 'ways of life' similar to that of the US and UK. The reference to 'civilisation' can always mean Western civilisation specifically or, civilisation in general. Thus, to the rest of the world, the specific nationalist mobilisation is masked by a seeming appeal to so-called universal norms of 'freedom', 'democracy', and 'civilisation' (norms so easily lapped up by some westernised social groups dominant in non-western societies as well). But to the American and British people the rhetoric of their leaders appeals straight to their own national interests and, thereby, successfully mobilises popular support for war. That mobilisation is crucial if the mass of American and British are to risk life and limb in prosecuting a war. After all, it is not Bush or Blair nor the CEOs of Caltex, Haliburton, and Shell who actually go and fight. domestic mobilisation It is in this domestic mobilisation that we see configured the cultural-ethnic dimension of current geo-politics, something that former American intelligence analyst Samuel Huntington so explicitly described in his seminal book The Clash of Civilisations. Even here, no doubt the economics mesh with the cultural-national. While the control over Iraq's oil wealth means massive geo-political power to the ruling elites in Washington and London (and, by extension, to the entirety of global capital), to the mass of Americans and British people it means cheap or even cheaper fuel that will enable them to persist with their comfortable 'way of life'. How comfortable it is, I learnt in Michigan, USA, in the dead of winter some years back, when it was minus 20 F Degrees outside and snow piled up on the window sill, and I was yet hot enough to open that window while I was only dressed in sarong and bare-chested! It was nothing more than the cheapness of fuel that enabled the university housing complex maintain such extravagant levels of heating. Luxuriating in that comfort, who would want oil prices to rise? In my case, with my Third World experiential perspective, I could view this facility as 'luxury', even as decadence. To the American born in this context and not knowing of any other lifestyle, this is nothing more than her/his 'way of life' and, thereby, eminently worth defending - with America's own weapons of mass destruction, if necessary. When you add to this mix the powerful ego-boost of upholding 'civilisation', you get an enthusiasm that may not match the fanaticism of a non-Western suicide bomber, but is certainly strong enough to stimulate support for war and for actual mobilisation for battle. The Bush and Blair gamble is that the fighting will be over in weeks, quickly enough not to see that popular support decline. The action of ordinary Western citizens to voluntarily stay in Iraq in the midst of war in a brave effort to compel Western forces to avoid attacking the sites occupied by those 'Human Shields' thereby sharply highlights the ethnic nature of the war. Current global order In doing so, they help undermine the very claim to legitimacy of the war as one not securing the interests solely of a specific 'civilisation' and group of nations but of the whole world. Even more significant, in breaking that norm of 'universality', this exposure of the clash of civilisations, then begins to undermine the general political legitimacy of the current global order that sustains the domination of that specific civilisation and group of nations on the basis of the universal value of their civilisation. The more mature societies of this dominant civilisation, on the basis of their long experience in building this domination throughout nearly a millennium of mercantilist expansion and colonisation, see the danger of hasty military action based purely on domestic support and lacking international legitimacy drawing on the legal and ideological institutions of that civilisation. What France and Germany wanted was a 'moral' justification of military action based on 'international law'. Now, they see the long-term scenario of the crumbling of the whole edifice of their globally dominant civilisation. Is the battle between civilisations being slowly joined? What will be left to ensure the hegemony of global capital: Christian Armegeddon?
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