crossfire
Peter Vale
The study of international relations divides into two houses: one is preoccupied with state power and its management; the other house fears the effects of power and its economic, military and cultural manifestations.
This is at the core of the recent exchange in these pages between the Wits academic Professor John Stremlau and myself.
If this were an insignificant difference the immediate squabble could be settled in the footnotes of academia or its modern form, the trading of e-mail insults. However, because the real world is constituted by the understandings that anchor scholarship, the divide between Stremlau and myself goes to the heart not only of South African but also of American foreign policy.
We must begin by clearing some ground. In his determination to draw this country into pro-American posture, Stremlau has both misunderstood and misconstrued my position: to fully answer his rebuttal will require that I quote and requote sentence after sentence of two articles and one letter. Since this would be tedious, let me take my cue from the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
What happened on September 11 was horrendous: it has rightly been condemned throughout the international community. But the official United States response to turn the tragedy into a defining moment of history, equally rightly, has caused alarm throughout the world. Applauded by some, especially liberal internationalists like Stremlau, as the ending of American isolationism, many have seen this as the repositioning of American power that froze the world into a Cold War.
That particular condition was rooted in a simple-minded belief that humanity was divided into two realms, good and evil. Although cast almost as naturally occuring categories, access to these two worlds was determined by the threat they posed to national security, especially the US’s. Within this divide there was little space for difference, and the record suggests that far too many countries, let alone communities and individuals, were punished for falling on the wrong side of this rendition of history. If this were not enough, US officialdom was seldom contrite and never took responsibility for those demonstrable actions, which caused pain and suffering in many corners of the world.
These facts, and ominous tone of the present moment, point to the real tragedy of our times: for all its undoubted genius, the US has failed to construct a language of global politics, which has assured the people of the world that things could no, should now be different. Instead, for 10 and more long years, academics and the movie industry have competed to identify the next most plausible enemy to the American way.
This search for this ”grand strategic cause”, it now seems clear, ended on September 11. The immediate result was a resuscitation of old and tested strategic bondings alliances if you insist. The first foreign visitor to Washington was Tony Blair, the leader of a country with whom the US has a ”special relationship”. This was quickly followed by the leaders of other, mainly Western, countries all of whom have been drawn into the common cause of finding and punishing those who were responsible for the atrocities.
This was an opportunity lost, alas. The condemnation of the attacks on the US should have been accompanied by warnings of the inadequacy of officialdom to meet the challenge that the international community faced. Instead there was an outpouring of national grief, widespread international sympathy and licence issued to the US to act in the name of the globalised. But many across the world are not globalised and they fear the bitch of US ideology on heat again to twist Bertolt Brecht’s damning phrase.
So, the real issue is not whether the war against the Taliban, Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda is a Just War or not. The issue is argument and action: to sharpen the point, the ”War Against Terror” is all too reminiscent of a painful past in which the powerful, acting in their own interests, claim justice for all.
Regretfully, official US behaviour these past 10 days has only confirmed the worst of these fears. The arrival of captured Taliban and Al Qaeda in Guantanamo Bay suggests all to ominously for me that the US will not readily respect human rights if these conflict with its interests. Instead, the familiar breed of American officialdom secretaries of defence, state, attorneys general and the like will create a self-justifying public relations discourse which will determine in the interests of national security, of course the fate of captives in places far, far away from the public gaze.
Should South Africa be drawn into this new moral crusade to parody George W Bush’s phrase? I think not. But this may be a hope in vain. Quibbling over communiqus rather than quarrelling over the way the world works has been the chief characteristic of South Africa’s post-apartheid foreign policy.
Let me finally be very clear about all this. These fears do not make me an enemy of democracy or even an opponent of human rights; indeed, the very opposite is true. My reporting of this position only confirms a deep scepticism of power especially sovereign power and, more especially, sovereign power that believes it is called to global service.
Peter Vale is senior professor in the school of government and professor of social theory at the University of the Western Cape