by Mputhumi Ntabeni

G21 Africa Staff Writer

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Mputhumi
Ntabeni

QUEENSTOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - Damn you masters of war, yea who build to destroy. - Bob Dylan

The dash, stop and whistle five-nation African tour by the Bush II entourage found me reading Robert Kagan's book Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. Kagan is a former official of the State Department and a member of the group of the so-called 'neo-conservatives" who dominate current policy-making in the United States. It is apparent that he has no doubts about the benevolence of American power, what Bush has described as 'compassionate conservatism." ÝIn bygone days the phrase was "Caesar with a soul." Albert Camus, especially, exposed its real colours regarding France's dominance of Algeria. This resurgence of belief in the benevolence of imperial powers would be comical were it not for tragic consequences like the recent American invasion of Iraq. The US government does have the material power to pursue this tragic comedy of consecrated vanity.

The book gives some semi-literate historical depth to the neo-conservatives' vision. Kagan shows with frightening unintended clarity how in present American governing circles the word freedom is abused and disabused at will. The Republican administration, judging by Kagan's essays, feels it can do whatever it wills so long as what is done, sometimes speciously, is done in the name of freedom. The rest of the world, meantime, is fresh from the lesson that to opt for pure freedom is to condone the right of the strong to dominate. What [imperial action does is] prolong the conflicts that profit by injustice, as Albert Camus saw in the beginning of the last century. At best, the so called "neo-conservatives" that dominate policy-making in the US today are trying to make their ignorance of this fact into a virtue. Their ill-conceived attempts to spread the values of democracy by forcing their norms - by ruse or military means - on other countries around the world will misfire in their faces. The fat is already in the fire in Iraq.

Kagan is also of the opinion that European integration has been made possible only because of the security shield provided and paid for by the United States. He mistakes Europe's wariness in meddling in the affairs of sovereign countries as an inability to act effectively without American intervention. Europe, as a parent to the US, has a long history. It experienced the nihilistic revolutions of the twentieth century. Those desperate attempts to achieve the unity of the human race through an exhausting series of benevolent crimes, which ended up by denying all forms of morality, freedom included. Kagan's kind of reasoning acts with no reference except its own success. The present Republican administration in the US seems to have adopted it. It ends with noble laws expressing nothing but a provisional inclination; with virtue uniting with crime; with freedom expounded but not lived. It ends up with a state demanding an unconditional adoration of its principles and accusing those who dissent from its vision as unpatriotic or treacherous. In short, it makes for terrorist states whose banner is specious freedom.

Its no secret that the form of American democracy today, under the present Republican administration, exists only to keep alive the illusion of self-determination. American politics have become the politics of leaders only. Only a small number of people make real decisions.

Imperialism, even that of progress, is unjust because it contrives to conquer the world and create an empire after its own interests and values. To conquer one has to crush the freedom of those who do not see eye to eye with the views of the empire. The unity that is achieved by making freedom equivalent to the conqueror's interests is in its totality not unity, but rather merely a change of denominations, as the Iraqi people are quickly finding out. Freedom that suppresses differences seeks unity by false principles. Once people feel coercively overwhelmed by it they'll have no choice but to resort to desperate means against it. Where you see acts of terrorism they'll see the voice of the unheard establishing itself. I'll paraphrase Camus to give you an idea of how powerful anonymous suppression by powerful states who see themselves as harbingers of freedom give rise to desperate men:

There'll be born men who profess the position of absurdity they've been compelled to live by. More ready to kill as to die. Who would say this much and no more, and prefer dying in their own feet than on their knees. Men who to keep their integrity accept death with a terrible indifference. Declaring that if men cannot refer to the common values of justice for all then destruction must terminate mankind. They'll codify the wickedness of mankind to an extent that even the ocean will boil. Nothing, and I mean nothing will be happy, from the bird in the sky to the fish in the deepest ocean. They'll destroy all fables that give men some semblance of affluence by allowing violence to depict how mankind is caught up in the horns of the dilemma of its own making.

As the American saying goes, fasten your seat belts, we're going for a bumpy ride. America might have the power to resist this, the question is does she have the stamina to scrap the barrels of hell on earth.

Europe, writes Kagan, is becoming increasingly irrelevant to America's main concerns. (Were I a European in this day in age I would take that as a compliment.) He says Europeans are living in the "post-modern paradise of international order" under American protection. He says they fail to realise that outside this paradise the world is still a "Hobbesian jungle", where Realpolitik rules.

Now doesn't that explain the Bush II attitude towards Europe? The failure to appreciate the European situation. And the conclusion, naturally: the institutions of international law and order, together with the US's national interests of course, can only be defended by naked force in this day in age. Of course, only the US has the authority to sanction that international order. The end of the Cold War has given the US freedom of action "to deal with the strategic dangers that it alone has the means and sometimes the will to address." In discharging that task - in the interests of the world community as well as of the United States - it is obliged to operate by double standards: although it should as far as possible show what its founders called "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." It cannot (and should not) always observe in the jungle the standards which it protects and applies within the post-modern paradise. In short, America, on which the new world order rests, is a Behemoth, but "a Behemoth with a conscience".

There can be no fence sitting when faced with this kind of attitude. In Bush II's notorious words; "You are either with us, or against us."

No one who wants to know the real colours of the government of the United States of America can afford to miss this book. I've been arguing lately that the US is gradually falling away from the great potential envisaged by its founding fathers. Some people have argued against me. Reading books like Kagan's makes me feel vindicated. It made me see clearly where cometh the tendency of the present US's government to see as only right the ideas that promote its vested interests. To see well why the present American State government is nothing more than a reinforcement of power to the capitalist magnates who wish only to throw the bones to the vanquished at their own whim. How democratic freedom has become a blanket to hide factual inequalities and greed. How the damaging sense of exaltation has taken the place of truth in the present American political scene.

It's been said often enough that Bush II is the master of cheerleading. Added to that, here in Africa he's gradually being regarded as the master of empty promises, which in a way is related to cheerleading. His tank of goodies is punctured below the watermark. Bush's policies have an irritating habit of benefiting the advancement of corporate America more than the supposed beneficiaries.

A leading weekly national paper in South Africa likened Bush II's government of interests instead of principles to the oldest profession in the world. Their only concern is tactics and strategy. Hence winning is their only test of achievement. I donít know how much of their progress the world will be able to stand. African countries are now wary of the fact that attention has turned towards them.

Rumours are rife that the US is thinking of redeploying troops for securing strategic assets (oil), especially in Nigeria and reopen it's embassy at Equatorial Guinea - "where oil income has raised the domestic product by 60% in two years." Suddenly Guinea's atrocious human rights record is of no significance. The Leviathan is salivating. It is sniffing for an occasion to unleash its "military humanism." Dare I go to Zimbabwe? No, no, no spoils to plunder, the Leviathan thinks. Meanwhile some African countries are grumbling under the pore of the Leviathan, "Please Mr Bush, there's been 'progress' enough." Others are thrusting forward their begging bowls in an Oliver Twistian pose,"Please, Sir, can I have some more." No longer is there any choice, scope or ideological preference for them, only the tyranny of circumstances. The Leviathan makes friendly moves towards Botswana. "Mine, all mine," its tail leashes the third of Botswana's diamond mines.

As the face of compassionate, Leviathan graced our soil last week. A red carpet was rolled out for it to the chagrin of Anti-War Coalition and other protesting parties. These went as far as to demand that Bush II be arrested and tried in the international court as a war criminal. African governments, perhaps understandably, were charmed by his usual chequebook diplomacy. Demonstrations against him didn't gain much support.

Talking to a friend of mine on the phone who mixes in high political places, I asked why. Is the tide already turning, i.e. are people already starting to forget Iraq and forgive Bush? He was surprised, or acted it, by my question. "You, of all people should know," he said. "We're Africans. It is not in our culture to embarrass one's visitors at your own home, no matter what differences you have with them."

His answer was confirmed by [South African] President T. Mbeki when, in proposing a toast to President Bush, he said: "As the eminent representative of such a people [the ordinary American people who helped SA in its struggle against apartheid], we could not but receive you as a friend and an honoured guest."

In giving Bush II a red carpet, that is, we were extending to the American people (not Bush and the cabalistic government whom we regard only as an aberrant phase in American politics) our heartfelt gratitude for the support they gave us against our own version of the Leviathan. It is the ordinary people who have the power to slay the dragon. Stand up make your voices heard against the Mugabes, the Sharons, etc., of the world. Power to the people.