Category Archives: Economy

Thomas Piketty: A Security-Minded Response Isn’t Enough

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I’m not sure if it’s exactly kosher for me to provide my own translation of a copyrighted article originally published on a major website in another language, but this is an important piece which I’d like to make available in full to an English speaking audience.

Thus, I give you this recent analysis by French economist Thomas Piketty (who became famous for his 2013 study Capital in the Twenty-First Century) in which he argues that the root causes of ISIS-style extremism can be traced to the unequal distribution of resources in the Middle East. His remedy for jihadism is correspondingly simple: economic opportunity and social justice. These are, perhaps, not new ideas, but he presents them in an exceptionally clear-cut way, not hesitating to point out our own responsibility in the West for maintaining inequality in that part of the world.

The original article can be found in French on Piketty’s blog on the Le Monde website, and there have been several discussions of its contents in the American news media, such as in the Washington Post and in New York magazine. For any flaws in the translation, I take sole responsibility. Take it away, Professor Piketty!

A Security-Minded Response Isn’t Enough
Thomas Piketty in Le Monde, November 22–23, 2015

It’s clear: terrorism nourishes itself on the powder keg of inequality in the Middle East that we have contributed a lot to create. Daesh (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) is a direct product of the decomposition of the Iraqi regime, and more generally of the collapse of the system of borders established in the region in 1920.

After the annexation of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990–1991, the coalition powers sent in their troops to return its oil to the emirs — and to Western companies. In the process they inaugurated a new cycle of technological and asymmetric wars — a few hundred deaths in the coalition that “liberated” Kuwait, versus several tens of thousands on the Iraqi side. This logic was pushed to its extreme during the second Iraq war between 2003 and 2001: around 500,000 Iraqi deaths for more than 4000 American soldiers killed, all that to avenge the 3000 deaths of 9/11, which of course had nothing to do with Iraq. This reality, amplified by the extreme asymmetry in human loss and the absence of a political solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, serves today to justify all the abuses perpetrated by the jihadis. Let us hope that France and Russia, on the front lines since the American disaster, will cause fewer casualties and inspire fewer recruits.

Concentration of Resources

Beyond the religious clashes, it is clear that the entire social and political system of the region is overloaded and weakened by the concentration of oil resources in small territories without population. If we examine the zone running from Egypt to Iran by way of Syria, Iraq and the Arab peninsula, with around 300 million inhabitants, we note that the oil monarchies make up between 60% and 70% of the regional GDP for barely 10% of the population, making it in fact the most unequal region on the planet.

We must further point out that a minority of the inhabitants of the oil monarchies keep for themselves a disproportionate part of the wealth, while large groups (notably women and immigrant workers) are kept in semi-slavery. And these are the regimes that are supported militarily and politically by the Western powers, who are all too happy to get back a few crumbs for financing their soccer clubs, or for selling them weapons. It is not surprising that our lessons of democracy and social justice carry little weight among Middle Eastern youth.

To gain in credibility, we would need to show these populations that we care more for the social development and political integration of the region than for our finacial interests and our relations with the reigning families.

Denial of Democracy

In concrete terms, the oil money must go in priority to regional development. In 2015, the total budget available to the Egyptian authorities for financing the entire educational system of that country of nearly 90 million inhabitants was less than 10 billion dollars (9.4 billion euros). A few hundred kilometers away, oil revenues reach 300 billion dollars for Saudi Arabia and its 30 million inhabitants, and exceed 100 billion dollars for Qatar and its 300,000 Qataris. A development model so unequal can only lead to catastrophe. Condoning this is criminal.

When it comes to lofty rhetoric on democracy and elections, we must stop engaging in it merely when the results suit us. In 2012 in Egypt, Mohamed Morsi was elected president in a fair election, something which is hardly typical in Arab electoral history. By 2013, he was expelled from power by the military, which soon enough executed thousands of Muslim Brothers, whose social work at least served to fill in some of the gaps left by the Egyptian state. A few months later, France set that aside so as to sell its frigates and capture a part of that country’s meager public resources. Let us hope that this denial of democracy will not have the same morbid consequences as the interruption of the electoral process in Algeria in 1992.

The question remains: how is it that young people who grew up in France can confuse Baghdad with the Parisian suburbs, seeking to import conflicts here that are taking place there? Nothing can excuse this macho, bloody and pathetic turn of events. Nevertheless, let us note that unemployment and professional discrimination in hiring (particularly massive for those who checked all the right boxes in terms of diploma, experience, etc., as recent studies have shown; see also here) don’t help. Europe, which before the financial crisis managed to take in a net migratory flow of 1 million people a year, with unemployment decreasing must relaunch its model of immigration and job creation. It is austerity that has led to the rise of national egoisms and identity tensions. It is through equitable social development that hate will be defeated.

For Obama’s New Term, Cascading Crises

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President Obama has only been reelected for one week, and already the U.S. and the world seem to be hit with a series of cascading crises, real and manufactured: the “fiscal cliff” budget negotiations in Washington; the Petraeus scandal; ongoing controversy over Benghazi; the recognition of the Syrian opposition by France, Turkey, and the Gulf States; signs of revolution in Jordan; unrest across southern Europe regarding austerity; and what looks like will soon be a new land war in Gaza. It’s as if the world held its collective breath until after the American elections, and is now vomiting all its accumulated bile at once.

The “fiscal cliff” is a manufactured problem, in the sense that it can be solved as soon as Obama can agree with Republican members of Congress on a plan to reduce the federal deficit, most likely through a combination of increased revenues (higher tax rates or lower deduction limits for the top 2%), tweaks to Social Security and Medicare, and trimming of domestic programs. Progressives insist there is no reason to cut the deficit for now, and technically they are right, because world markets are eager to buy U.S. Treasuries and fund our further debt. However, there is a limit to what the market will bear, as seen in Greece, Spain, Italy, and even France, which are all being forced into austerity precisely because the markets are unwilling to finance further spending. Nor do we want to end up like Japan, which has no problem with the markets but has carried debt equal to 200% of GDP for the better part of tweo decades, putting a brake on its economy. Careful debt trimming doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me, as a cautionary measure for the future. The trick will be to make most of the burden fall on the wealthy who have benefitted enormously over the past ten years, and are still benefiting despite the crisis, while preserving support for working families and small businesses that are essential to our fragile recovery. I have hope that common sense will prevail, and a reasonable compromise will be found over the coming weeks.

The Petraeus scandal — in which CIA director David Petraeus was caught in an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, when Broadwell sent threatening emails to another woman, Jill Kelley, whom she saw as a rival — provides a fascinating glimpse into how politics at the top level in Washington is deeply personal. Critics of the CIA-run drone warfare program, and the related militarization of the CIA, have rightly questioned why these aren’t the real scandal, rather than a personal dalliance that should have concerned no one but the parties involved. True, but people forget that for better or worse, Washington is a tightly knit social circle of highly ambitious people drawn by the taste of power. With elected officials, political appointees, military officers, lobbyists, and pundits switching roles as they climb the ladder of influence, there is much opportunity for intrigue, and personal relations do affect policy. Some people have asked whether Petraeus really had to resign, but he was the CIA director, and he exposed himself to the possibility of blackmail and manipulation — either from Broadwell herself if she turned vengeful, or from some interested third party who found out. Moreover, and most important in my mind, it seems that he didn’t report the situation to his boss, the Director of National Intelligence, as soon as he realized he was in hot water. Even after being interviewed by the FBI, he apparently said nothing, as if hoping to keep it to himself until it blew over. If I were his boss, James R. Clapper, the first thing I would have asked him after learning what happened is, “Why am I hearing this from the FBI and not from you?” Petraeus showed every sign of putting personal interest above the interests of the institution he was serving, and this would be a firing offense in any company.

The question of what happened in Benghazi seems to be one of those controversies that is ginned up for political advantage. Dark motives are being attributed to the Obama administration for initially blaming the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others on an angry mob gone out of control, rather than a preplanned attack by an extremist militia. The idea is that the Obama administration ignores terrorist threats or is perhaps even an enabler of them, and is now engaged in a coverup of that fact. This ignores that Ambassador Stevens himself was the person most responsible for assessing his embassy’s security needs, and he chose to take risks so he could meet with local leaders in their own homes, something that won him respect and admiration. Bssides, whether the attack was preplanned or not seems like a matter of semantics, since the Ansar al-Sharia militia was based nearby and its potential for violence was well known. Did they have the September 11 date in mind all along, or did they seize the opportunity of a mob that had gathered to protest the anti-Mohammed film? These are the kinds of details it is impossible to judge without careful investigation — and faced with the need to inform the American public, the administration went with the information it had in the first days after the attack. Those trying to turn this into a scandal seem to have the impression that the administration deliberately leaves its embassies unprotected because of “sensitivities in the region.” This is absurd because the last person interested in risking Stevens’ life was Obama himself, who had chosen this man for the post above all others because of his unique understanding of Libya and his communicative gifts.

Turning from Washington scandals to world affairs, the U.S. has finally succeeded, working behind the scenes with Qatar, France, Turkey, and its other allies in the region, to cajole the Syrian opposition into forming a unified coalition with a reasonable claim to international recognition and support. France has already granted recognition to the Syrian National Coalition as the sole representative of the Syrian people, and it is poised to send them arms and other material aid. Turkey and six Gulf States have also extended recognition. While the U.S. is awaiting further proofs of the group’s legitimacy before going as far as Turkey or France, they are clearly pleased at this latest step, which Hillary Clinton called for a month ago. (When Hillary speaks, the world responds!) I suspect that the next move will be to help the SNC to establish a provisional government within Syria, perhaps with the aid of “humanitarian corridors” to ensure a flow of supplies, from which they will be able to call on the world to protect them against Assad’s aerial attacks. This will lead to either the declaration of a “no-fly zone” and an endgame similar to Libya, or if the Russians resist this, then pressure on the Russians to wash their hands of Assad and ensure a negotiated solution. In either case, NATO, the Arab League, and the U.S. are coming out of the closet in their direct backing of the Syrian opposition — and with that coalition behind them, it will be only a matter of time before the uprising succeeds.

This may seem like smart maneuvering by the Americans, or at least effective management of a situation they neither initiated nor control, but developments in neighboring Jordan cut against American interests in the short term. How many destabilized countries can the Middle East afford at once? Iraq has never returned to a stabilty after it was invaded by George W. Bush; tensions are rising in Lebanon as its many factions take sides in the Syrian confilct; and Egypt’s path to stability remains precarious a year and a half after the fall of Mubarak. Now Jordan, a U.S. ally and one of two Arab nations (along with Egypt) to have a peace treaty with Israel, has experienced three straight days of protests and rioting, aimed not at the puppet government but directly at the king. The trigger for the protests was a rise in the price of gasoline and bottled gas, due to the reduction of subsidies as part of economic reform efforts. Reports state that those protesting aren’t so much members of the organized opposition, but rather the underclass that knows little of politics, but regards their economic future with increasing desperation. Elections are coming soon that the opposition is likely to win, but recent constitutional reforms still leave King Abdullah with near-absolute power. He has already changed prime ministers four times in the past year, leaving himself isolated, with no positive effect on the lives of the people. This is an explosive situation that will be tricky to manage, should a longstanding U.S. ally fall to a popular uprising before the situation is resolved in Syria in favor of the NATO/Gulf alliance.

In Europe, the rolling austerity crisis trundles on with no end in sight. The EU as a whole just went officially into recession, meaning that it has known two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. The Greek parliament passed yet another round of severe austerity measures, guaranteeing the next installment of EU bailout aid, as violent protests occurred outside. Meanwhile, Spain and Portugal underwent a day of general strikes, as labor movements in Italy and elsewhere protested in solidarity. It’s possible that at some point a tipping point will be reached, and the people of southern Europe will decide that the price of economic unity with the more prosperous north is one they are no longer willing to pay. However, until now the politicians have been able to bring the people along with them, almost despite themselves, because everyone knows that the cost of a Euro breakup would be worse than the pain of gritting their teeth, for now, and enduring the attempts to fix the system. My sense is that eventually the crisis will burn itself out and stability will return, at the cost of several years or even a decade of lost economic potential for Europe. The alternative is a direct challenge to the global capitalist order itself. That could be interesting, but it’s not on the horizon for now.

And finally, on top of all that, things are heating up again in Gaza. You will recall that the last time Israel staged a ground invasion there, the result was hundreds of civilians dead (along with a large number of militants), leading to the Goldstone Report accusing Israel of war crimes, and the embarassing American veto of that report at the UN. Now, Israel is poised to do it again — they say they will invade Gaza and personally target any Hamas leader who dares to show his face. Apparently there have been an unusual number of missles landing in Israeli territory lately, and Israel has decided it is time to practice its favorite sport, aggressive deterrence. The first step was the assassination by missile of Ahmed al-Jabari, described in the Western press as Hamas’ top military leader. This was followed by a series of air strikes on missile launching sites in Gaza, and the ground invasion is now days, if not hours, away. President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt, whose Muslim Brotherhood faction shares ideological roots with Hamas, addressed the nation to say, “The Israelis must understand that we do not accept this aggression.” He also recalled his ambassador to Israel, and called on President Obama and the UN to intervene. He later went to Gaza himself on a solidarity visit, perhaps forcing the Israelis to put off their invasion for a day or two. Past experience shows that once the Israelis have made up their minds to do something, no outside pressure will deter them until they themselves decide they are finished. So we are likely to see a week or two of carnage in Gaza, adding yet one more match to the tinderbox in a region where flames are already bursting out all over.

Welcome to your second term, President Obama, and best of luck!

We Are the 47%

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You know, the looters and moochers who are in the tank for Obama no matter what.

Mitt Romney, caught on tape at a fundraiser:

    “All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax…. So my job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

The term “looters and moochers” comes from Ayn Rand, the inspiration for Romney running mate Paul Ryan’s political philosophy. In Rand’s alternate universe, uber-capitalist superheroes are the “job creators,” while those of us who want some kind of social safety net are bloodsuckers leading America into a world of collectivist depravity. For an interesting take-down of Rand’s early admiration for serial killer William Edward Hickman, see this piece by Mark Ames.

By the way, Ayn Rand said on a 1979 talk show that Israel is the “advanced, technological, civilized country amidst a group of almost totally primitive savages,” so she had that part of the modern Republican Party philosophy down too.

Netanyahu, Make My Day!

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today:

    “The world tells Israel, ‘Wait, there’s still time’ [to deal with Iran]. And I say, ‘Wait for what? Wait until when?'”

Okay then, attack Iran. Get it over with, already! You’ve been yapping about it for months. Just don’t drag President Obama into it.

Netanyahu went on:

    “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”

He must be referring to people like General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said recently that an Israeli attack would “probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear program” and added, “I don’t want to be complicit if they choose to do it.”

In his usual delicate, subtle fashion, Netanyahu has been trying to inject himself into the American presidential campaign, threatening that Israel will attack Iran between now and November, in an attempt to force Obama’s hand before the election. What he wants, apparently, is a full-throated commitment from Obama to use force against Iran if certain “red lines” are crossed. This while publicly embracing Mitt Romney, who accuses Obama of “throwing Israel under the bus,” and who is bankrolled by Netanyahu’s biggest supporter, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

Two days ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reaffirmed American policy, saying, “We’re not setting deadlines” and negotiations with Iran remain “the best approach.” Netanyahu’s latest trash talk is his response to that. It has since emerged that President Obama won’t be meeting with Netanyahu while he’s in New York to address the U.N. General Assembly later this month. It was assumed only recently that Netanyahu would make a side trip to Washington to discuss his famous “red lines.” But now, the president says he’s too busy.

Draw your own conclusions!

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In unrelated news, this is the most fun you’ll ever have learning about the effects of Federal Reserve policy on the U.S. economy.

And Mitt Romney has warned that if President Obama is reelected, he will “take God off our coins.”

Economic Monopoly, Political Stalemate in Morocco

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Some excerpts from How Morocco Dodged the Arab Spring, by Nicolas Pelham, which appeared on the New York Review of Books blog:

    “It is hard to ignore the royal court’s smugness at how they co-opted the Islamists to revive the monarchy’s legitimacy at its weakest hour. On the one-year anniversary of the King’s ‘historic’ March 9 speech ceding powers to a prime minister, the Moroccan state press, which usually commemorates royal anniversaries with religious attention, carefully avoided covering the event. ‘M6 [as the King is commonly known] was shaken to the core, and gave the biggest speech of his career pledging to open a new page,’ says Karim Tazi, a politically-active businessman who initially backed the protestors. ‘The way he changed his mind when the February 20 movement began to lose its way is shocking.’ …
    “But the King has not been able to resolve Morocco’s economic troubles. In his thirteen years on the throne, he has removed many of the shackles his father placed on modernization. Child mortality has fallen 30 percent in five years, and literacy is sharply up from previous appalling lows. Yet development projects seem mostly aimed at the country’s upper crust and at foreigners, who are feted by hoteliers in Marrakesh. Moroccan trains run on time, the streets are spotless, and motorways are being built across the country, while everyday life for many is staggeringly squalid. …
    “On the edge of nearby Jorf Lasfar, a fenced industrial zone containing a petrochemical and phosphates hub and a port which has pretensions to be the most modernized on Africa’s Atlantic coast, sheep pick through the detritus of nine cinder-block shacks scavenging for edibles smashed by police. The air is acrid with the exhaust of chimney stacks making money for German and American firms and Managem, the mining consortium which forms part of the royal portfolio. ‘The authorities told us we were squatting in an industrial zone,’ says Shakaroun, a jobless thirty-five-year-old, whose family lived in one of the nine. ‘They erected factories on our land without compensation, and then destroyed our homes.’
    “The primary school in Shakaroun’s village, meanwhile, is a picture of Dickensian neglect. Its doors hang from their hinges, chairs are missing their seats, flattened cardboard boxes cover holes in the roof, and the playground is a scrap of scrub. And it is just one of more than 15,000 primary schools the local press say lack drinking water and toilets. ‘Knowledge is the peak of happiness,’ reads the Orwellian slogan on the wall beneath the vacant windows of Classroom 3. And it is mockingly called Ibn Battuta, after Morocco’s fabled medieval traveler and man of letters. …
    “Ali Anouzla launched a popular news service, Lakome.com, on the Internet in the hope of bypassing state the censors, but the authorities simply frightened off his advertisers. Sitting almost alone in his office in Rabat, surrounded by banks of black computer monitors, even the coffee he sips makes him angry. Every time he adds a spoonful of sugar or drop of milk to his coffee, he says, he is boosting the profits of Société Nationale d’Investissement (SNI), the investment holding firm controlled by the king and his family. State subsidies on fuel, wheat and sugar all help the royal business. So too does a state road-building program, which uses royal cement. ‘King Hassan, his father, liked the symbolism of calling himself the first peasant, the first sportsmen, and the first artist,’ he says. ‘But with this king it’s real. He really is the country’s biggest banker, biggest farmer, biggest insurer and hotelier.’”

This article does a better job than most of showing how economic and social inequality are at the root of Morocco’s problems. Morocco shows a modernizing face to the world, with its high-speed trains and five-star hotels, but urban shantytowns and rural poverty are a stubborn reality behind the façade. It’s a bit like the legend of the “Potemkin villages” in which the Russian czar Catherine the Great toured the countryside to see how happy and prosperous the peasants were, but the colorfully decorated homes she saw were just an empty shell, and the peasants she saw dancing from a distance were actually being whipped.

Besides making the point that Morocco’s system benefits the wealthy elite far more than the people, Pelham’s article is also a report card on the first few months in power of Prime Minister Abdellah Benkirane, who has promised reform. The jist of it is that Benkirane is running up against the limits of his role, since real power, both policial and economic, remains with the king. Indeed, my friends in Morocco have felt all along that giving the PJD, Benkirane’s Islamist party, the chance to govern was largely for show.

The Arab Spring accomplished this much in Morocco, the arrival in power of a political party that had previously been outside the cozy circle of governance — but will anything really change? Or will the PJD in its turn, as the Socialist and Istiqlal parties before them, be blamed in the end for their lack of progress? In this view, politics in Morocco is a kind of theatre, designed to deflect blame onto elected leaders, while profit-taking and self-dealing among the elite continues its merry way. One thing I can say is that none of my friends knows what to do about this, because real change would require a chaotic upheaval none of them want to see.

The real problem seems to be the imbalance of prices and wages, along with unemployment which is alarmingly high. A restaurant worker or cashier might earn $150 a month, while a computer technician or language teacher might earn $300. Jobs in the public sector pay a bit more, but not everyone can work for the state, and more than half of young people have no job at all. Meanwhile, the price of clothing or electronics is about the same as in the U.S., while the price of staples like sugar or bread is maybe half. In Morocco as everywhere else, you get what you pay for. Obviously this works like a charm for the business class — among whom the king, through his holding company SNI, is the leading member — but far less for the workers or the unemployed. Can liberal reforms fix the problem, or are they just a salve on an open wound? And when will the elephant in the room, economic monopoly, become a matter for public debate?

My friend doga raised this very issue in his first post here back in 2006, which he titled Young Moroccans, A Neglected Future:

    “Confronted with [their desperate economic situation], young people start to wonder, ‘Why do I find myself in a house that is too small when there is someone living in a huge villa, or even a palace? Why are there people with Jaguars, when I struggle with what to eat each day? Why are Europeans better off than us? Is it because their officials and business owners love them, and our officials and business owners hate us?’ Despite the simplicity of these questions, they push us to wonder, ‘What methods and criteria are being used to distribute our nation’s wealth and its revenues?’ …
    “How can we speak of fighting poverty without discussing the way wealth and revenues are distributed? Keep in mind that a lack of justice in the distribution of wealth, revenues and resources is a basic factor contributing to poverty in Morocco.”

What’s sad is that after all these years, and even the Arab Spring, Morocco’s political system is still not up to the task of responding to my friend’s “simple” questions.

The End of the Beginning

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I feel that this article by Fatma Benmosbah expresses in eloquent terms many of the same themes I explored in my recent post, Three Revolutions. It is a translation from French, idiomatic in places, of an original I found on nawaat.org, an excellent source for testimonials by Tunisians about their revolution-in-progress.

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On the ground today, a face-off is occurring between yuppies and proles: two revolutions, two forces on the scene.

On one side, the urban middle class. These are the young and the less young who very quickly sided with the rebels. Fed up with censorship, lack of freedom and repression, sickened by the material gluttony of the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans, they immediately seized the opportunity to express their thirst for independence and their hatred for the regime. They didn’t always go out into the street, but through their manipulation of the internet, particularly social networks, they played the role of citizen media perfectly, relaying information, posting live videos of the situation on the ground. It is often thanks to them that the big media networks like Al Jazeera, France 24 or Al Arabia completed their coverage of the events of early January. By swelling the ranks of the large demonstration of January 14, they provided the necessary contribution to win the last round, the fatal blow that finished off the Ben Ali presidency. Their mission accomplished, they returned to their garrisons to try to resume a more or less peaceful life, leaving to the new team the responsibility for getting things back on track. […] It is clear that this sector of the population serves as the base of the Prime Minister and his team. Nothing can tell us yet how strong their support will be.

On the other side is the population of the nation’s interior. Left behind since the era of Bourghiba, they are the ones who provided the spark that set off the powder keg. It is these people who, although unarmed, went out into the street. They are also the ones who, prepared to receive real bullets in the stomach and head, confronted the bloody police machine. Like the young city dwellers, the young and the less young of the interior were just as fed up and sickened, but for different reasons. Democracy and liberty were among their demands, but they added to these insecurity and unemployment. As well-educated and well-trained as their fellow citizens from the city, they found themselves forced to accept marginal jobs in order to get something to eat.

Having known the brutal and often deadly repression of the government as a result of having occasionally risen up and proclaimed their despair, these people place no confidence in anything that reminds them, either more or less, of the dark years of the Ben Ali regime. They want, require and demand the departure of Ghannouchi and his entire team without delay. They haven’t forgotten the unkept promises [of the past]. Cut off from material comforts which in any case they don’t possess, they are ready to go all the way for what they call “their revolution.” Armed with convictions deeply rooted in the hearts of all their members, supported by a very strong labor union, they are camped in the streets around the Prime Minister’s office with the purpose of evicting its tenants. How much longer will they hold back?

The revolution of January 14 hasn’t said its last word. It is certain that Tunisia can expect further events whose impact will be even more profound than the departure of Ben Ali. It seems that as Winston Churchill said so well, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Three Revolutions

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The way I see it, there is not one revolution to be had in Tunisia, but three: the revolution against the dictator, Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, which succeeded; the revolution for freedom of expression and new democratic institutions, which is ongoing; and a third revolution against the economic policies that created the social inequalities in the first place, which has not even begun. The danger, I think, is that Tunisians will win substantial concessions in terms of political expresion and representative government, but that the old economic structures will remain in place, albeit with greater transparency, because they serve the interests of local and foreign elites.

As I write this, the debate on the ground revolves around the transitional government, in which many of the old faces appear, particularly Ben Ali’s prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, and the ministers of finance, interior, defense, and foreign affairs. Three political parties from the “legal” opposition have also been offered ministerial posts, but one of those parties has since withdrawn from the coalition, under pressure from Tunisia’s national labor union, the UGTT. Ghannouchi and the other holdovers from the days of Ben Ali have resigned from their party, the RCD, which was effectively the only political force under Ben Ali, and have vowed to cut all ties between the party and the state. Ghannouchi himself insists he has no political ambitions, and will step down as soon as elections are held. He promises that his government is only there to prepare the way for democratic elections, and that major reforms are in store in the political arena. As a sign of his sincerity, political prisoners have been freed, censorship has been lifted, and the national television channel is broadcasting expressions of independent, popular speech. Previously outlawed politicial parties, both Islamic and leftist, are now legal, and political opponents of Ben Ali are being welcomed back from exile.

All this is not enough, however, for many Tunisians, and pressure from the street is ongoing. Among the demands being made are a complete disbandment of the RCD and return of its assets to the people; accountability before the law for those responsible for the corruption and repression of the previous regime; a transitional government made up of completely new faces with no connection to the Ben Ali era; and a constitutional assembly to create new political structures, with one popular demand being to replace the presidential system with a parliamentary one. The argument here is that the existing system favors centralized authority and the rule of a single party, and the people don’t want to replace Ben Ali with a “dictator lite.” There is also the problem that after years at the margins, in exile, or in prison, the political opposition will need time to organize, reconnect with the people, and adapt their platforms to current events before fair elections can be held. If the elections are held within 60 days as the Constitution demands, it is argued, this will give the advantage to the RCD or its successor, as the only political party with national structures in place.

So there is still a danger of the revolution, which remains leaderless, being hijacked by wily politicians committed to the old way of doing things. Ghannouchi’s government seems to be playing a game of appeasement, in the hope that popular anger will die down and they can go back to business as usual. Ot to put it another way, even assuming they are sincere in their desire for reform, their instincts are with stability and the status quo. But Tunisians are now well and truly awake, and there is an outpouring of desire for profound change. People have “lost their fear” and are speaking out, forming popular committees to protect their neighborhoods, embracing the army as the one national force that has remained above politics, and engaging in spirited public debates about the way forward. I’ve seen this described as cathartic, a therapy session on a national scale. After twenty-three years of silence, those who have been handed a chance to write their own history will not easily be persuaded to go back into a coma. I suspect that for this reason alone, and because Tunisians sense their opportunity to serve as an example to the whole Arab world, the changes to the political order will be real and profound, and a representative system of government will emerge from the current confusion.

One sign of how closely the demands for change are in tune, even at the “extremes” of the political spectrum, is the statement of the Tunisian Communist Workers Party:

    “All forces which played an effective and crucial role in toppling the dictator, whether political, trade unionist, human rights, or cultural, whether organized or otherwise, are, alongside the masses, to be involved in drawing Tunisia’s future and cannot be represented by any other figure or body in any negotiations or communications with the government.”

Meanwhile, the Islamic Annahdha Party is calling for:

    “…a Constitutional Council which represents all political tendencies and civil society institutions such as trade unions, the Association of Lawyers, and representative bodies of unemployed graduates who played an important role in the revolution, with the aim of building a democratic constitution for a parliamentary system that distributes and de-centralises power on the widest scale possible….”

So let’s be optimistic, even idealistic for a moment and assume that the second phase of the revolution succeeds. Within a few months, we will be looking at a new Tunisia which, for the first time in its history, has a vibrant multiparty democracy, representing all strains of political thought from the socialist left to the Islamic right, in a popularly elected parliament committed to rebuilding the nation in the best interests of all its citizens. Some leaders, by their eloquence and sincerity, will capture the imagination of the people, but this will not lead to the emergence of a new Mafia don in the Ben Ali style, because the people will reject any politician who distributes public resources as a point of personal privilege, and alternance and competition will ensure a balance of power. Cafés and internet chat rooms, public squares and workplaces will be alive with debate, journalists will take eagerly to their new role as watchdogs of the public trust, and in the towns and villages, people will press their claims with municipal authorities with a new pride of citizenship. Bribes and patronage networks will become a thing of the past — okay, maybe I’m getting carried away, but at any rate, profound changes are in store for Tunisia. Now that the people are awake, I have no doubt that in a few months Tunisia will be running according to very different rules, and this will keep the neighboring autocrats in Egypt, Algeria, and Libya on their toes, because the old tired excuses just won’t work any more.

This is where the third revolution comes in — the revolution of social justice, or to use that dreaded word, redistribution. Ben Ali was more than a cruel repressor of free speech and political dissent, he was a man who consumed the resources of a nation for the benefit of himself, his friends and extended family. Where will those resources go now? Even more to the point, he was a collaborator with powerful economic interests outside Tunisia, who were quite happy to hold up his system as a “success story,” a model for development in the Arab world. It is instructive to note that Habib Bourghiba, Ben Ali’s predecessor, first ran into trouble in 1984 when he tried to remove price controls for food under the guidance of the IMF, and that among Ben Ali’s first acts as president in 1987 was to push through a package of IMF-dictated reforms. Neoliberalism, the ideology promoted by the IMF for over a generation, calls for a radical cutback in state intervention in the economy, through privatization of national industries, slashing of government social spending, and throwing the doors open to foreign investment. This inevitably leads to a sweatshop economy, which is exactly what happened in Tunisia. Development failed to benefit the people as a whole, but rather private interests seeking cheap labor, cheap agricultural products, and cheap tourism. The system wouldn’t have held together as long as it has without massive support from Tunisians living abroad, sending their wages home to help their families.

Mohamed Bouazizi, the young vegetable seller who set himself on fire and launched the Tunisian uprising, was a victim of these policies. His region of Sidi Bouzid was underdeveloped because it had no obvious resources to exploit, no Mediterranean beaches, no industry, and no ports. Bouazizi was presented in early reports as a college graduate reduced to selling vegetables on the street when he found no better work, but his situation was even more basic than that. He’d been to high school, but he had no special skills, and his family was unable to support themselves when their land was repossessed by the bank. As his sister put it:

    “The worst thing was what happened to the land. We owned it with our neighbours and we grew olives and almonds. It was earning good money, but then things turned bad for a lot of people, our sales went down and the bank seized our land. I went with Mohamed, we appealed to the bank, we appealed to the governor, but no one listened. Other families had the same problem; people just ignored us.”

My point is that Tunisia is a symptom, a case model, of what is happening around the world due to globalization, which in its current form is concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Ben Ali’s entourage was just an especially shameless example. This is the problem that the newly elected, democratic parliament of Tunisia will have to reverse, if they want to solve the problems that led Bouazizi to his final act of desperate courage. Already, the international community is giving clear signs that they care about stability in Tunisia above all else, meaning the appropriate environment for investment dollars to keep flowing. Moody’s, the bond rating agency, has already downgraded Tunisian bonds, which are needed for the financing of state programs, and the other major bond agencies are preparing to follow suit. I can easily imagine even a government with the best intentions, and a populist bent, finding themselves confronted with an ultimatum from the world of international finance — either you toe the line and keep Ben Ali’s business-friendly policies, or the money will dry up.

I’m currently reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, and the story of Tunisia fits perfectly into her larger narrative. She shows how in nation after nation, starting with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the 1970s and continuing to this day, neoliberal policies have been forced on an unwilling people either through overt repression, or through back-room deals in moments of crisis. Her point is that these policies, which are the opposite of redistributive development that seeks to spread prosperity as broadly as possible, can never win the consent of the majority unless they are in a state of shock. Both Islamists and leftists in Tunisia are likely to call for redistributive policies designed to help the rural poor and urban working class, which explains why it was precisely those groups that were banned, tortured, and imprisoned under Ben Ali. But even if they will now have a seat at the table, the international community is likely to deploy its considerable resources to promote “responsible centrists” and “non-ideological technocrats” willing to play the game of finance and profit. Continuity will be the watchword, and withdrawal of aid and investment will be the threat. The last thing the IMF wants is the emergence of a Tunisian Evo Morales, a democratically elected leader who was quick to nationalize his country’s resources.

Both Latin America and Eastern Europe have been touted in recent days as examples of how a democratic revolution in one nation can have a domino effect in other nations across the region. In the early 1980s, dictatorships fell across Latin America, and were replaced by popularly elected governments. A similar thing happened in Eastern Europe later in the same decade, as the Soviet empire came undone. This is inspiring for those who hope that Tunisia’s democratic changes will spread to other nations, but there is a warning here as well. As Naomi Klein makes clear in her book, the first elected governments in places like Argentina, Chile, and Brazil followed the same economic policies as their military-run predecessors, often with the very same individuals in charge. It was only twenty years later that Latin Americans felt secure enough in their democratic rights to choose leaders willing to stand up to the neoliberal consensus — people like Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, or Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. In Eastern Europe, early hopes of finding some middle way between communism and capitalism, such as worker-owned industries, were quickly overwhelmed by a wave of privatization, in which the nation’s factories were sold off at bargain prices to international speculators. No doubt Tunisia will be facing similar pressures to reform its politics, but not to mess with the lucrative financial arrangements put in place by Ben Ali.

There are millions of young people like Mohamed Bouazizi, in Tunisia and across the Arab world. They have a single aspiration, to lift their families out of poverty through their hard work. So will Tunisa’s third revolution ever take place? Will Bouazizi have a revolution worthy of his name? Will factories be built in Sidi Bouzid, so that Tunisia can start to produce for itself what it now imports? Will workers have the right to fight for better treatment by their employers, and a minimum wage of more than $155 a month? Will Tunisia’s largest bank, owned by Ben Ali’s son-in-law, now be nationalized? Will foreign companies be required to reinvest a share of their profits in Tunisia? Will the nation’s largest enterprises be forced to pay their fair share in taxes? Will decent housing, electricity, clean water, free education and health care be guaranteed to all? Or will Tunisia remain a sweatshop nation, with one economy for the rich and another for the poor — only this time with a popularly elected government as enabler, because that is how the game is played all around the globe?

A month ago, I didn’t dare to believe that anything would come of the Tunisian protests — as if believing in it would somehow jinx it, and bring the revolution to a halt. But Tunisia has surprised us all, and Ben Ali is gone. The outpouring of solidarity and popular feeling that has followed impresses everyone who is there. Clearly, Tunisians are ready to build a society worthy of their hero’s sacrifice. So I believe they will have their second revolution, the democratic one, and full political rights will be won. This is already a historic accomplishment, because the right to organize, speak without fear, and hold one’s leaders to account has been denied to Tunisians for far too long. But for these changes to mean anything in the long run, a third revolution is needed. Economic justice is the goal, and Tunisia must find a way to improve the quality of life for all its citizens. A whole set of tools is available, such as tariffs, planned development, guaranteed wages, jobless benefits, subsidized housing, national health care, and progressive taxation. The world’s richest nations have used these tools in the past to build their economies, but if Tunisia were to try it today, they would fly in the face of the IMF and these same powerful nations. It will take an engaged public that understands they are the authors of their own future, and a political class willing to translate the people’s desires into policy. Above all, it will take a whole new economic mentality, one that puts the economy to work for all Tunisians. Just as I didn’t dare hope that Tunisia would ever be rid of Ben Ali, I don’t dare hope for this now. But perhaps Tunisia will surprise us again, and if they do, it will be an example for us all.

Cross-posted to Talk Morocco.

Run and Tell That

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“You have given me this opportunity to shine so dammit I’m going to shine.” — Antoine Dodson

An act of ordinary heroism (July 28):

YouTube remix, 8 million views (July 30):

Internet celebrity (August 10):

Background here and here. Musings about “race and media” here.

UPDATE: From a Reddit comment thread:

    “I’m really glad he decided to capitalize on this, rather than let other people produce shirts and other merchandise. Remember, beneath the outrageous interview is a guy who ran into his sister’s bedroom to stop a rape — he deserves all the good fortune he can get.”

From Antoine Dodson himself (August 15):

    “I’m really starting to get mad because everyone is out for money and don’t care about whats really going on. I’m not going to play this funny role anymore. I really haven’t foreal. Realize that my goal is to be a business man not a joke and… lately people been taking me there. That is not who I am. Understand that I was just mad and wanted justice for my sister. It wasn’t made to be funny. Although I thought it was funny but all jokes are aside now. People are really sweeping this under the rug. I hope that this man will be caught. You don’t know how this changed our life. So I guess it’s funny that we are moving from house to house too. I guess it’s funny my little sisters are scared t death to sleep at night. I guess it’s funny that he may climb in someone else’s window. This is not a game so don’t take it there.”

From blogger Dr. Goddess:

    “There is nothing wrong with Antoine. Or his story. Or how he chose to express himself. Kelly [Antoine’s sister] and Antoine were very clear… they live in the projects. They are also Southern… they live in Huntsville, Alabama. And they both had a right to be exceptionally angry about Kelly’s attempted rape. Yet, even in their rage, they exhibited more intelligence and articulated a sense of well-being than many of the persons who have been elected or otherwise appointed (and some self-appointed) to represent us.
    “Embarrassed by Antoine?! Please. We should be thankful he’s here. He may just force us to redefine our priorities and how we think we understand one another.
    “Antoine Dodson’s character seems to be better than most.”

She goes on to remind us of how this all started. This is the story of a poor family living in public housing that failed to keep them safe. They reached out to the authorities in the aftermath of an attempted rape and were not taken seriously — so they got mad. This inspired her to write a letter to the Huntsville, Alabama authorities on their behalf, and she provides contact information on her blog for anyone else who wishes to “hold these people accountable.”

UPDATE 2: It occurs to me that the reason this young man’s cri de coeur touched a chord with so many of us — “Y’all need to hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband, ‘cuz they’re rapin’ everybody out here” — is because it reflects the unease we all feel in these troubled times. Don’t we all somehow feel under assault after a decade of economic crisis and war, with no end in sight? As Antoine said in a radio interview about all the newfound attention his family is getting:

    “We’re not used to this, you know what I’m sayin’? Like, everybody steps on us, you know what I’m sayin’? People degrade us, so it’s like… all this love that the world has been showing us lately, is like, ‘Man, this is so amazing,’ and every time I get a chance with my sister, we cry about it, ‘cuz it’s so amazing, like, ‘Wow, two and a half weeks ago, nobody cared.'”

So doesn’t this young man speak for all of us, and our sense of powerlessness in some way? Haven’t we all wondered how this could possibly be happening, how there could be millions out of work and at risk of losing their homes, how communities could be closing their libraries and shutting off streetlights for lack of funds — yet the government, under a new president and a new party, still seems powerless to end the disasterous policies that brought us here? Antoine at least did something. He stopped a rapist, he protected his family, and he spoke up as we’d all like to do. So in this, the more I think about it, he is a hero — an accidental hero, the best kind.

My Powerful Voice

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Yesterday, President Obama told me:

    “I’ll never stop fighting to make sure that the most powerful voice in Washington belongs to you.”

It’s nice to know that my voice is the one everyone else is listening to. It certainly doesn’t feel that way.

I wanted a much stronger economic stimulus back in the spring, focused on creating jobs by building a new, “green energy” infrastructure. I wanted at least some of the big banks to be taken over by the government, and thoroughly reformed before being broken up and resold to the private sector. I wanted guaranteed health care for everyone, paid for through a national system like in Britain, France or Canada. I wanted an immediate end to the use of drone aircraft in war, which invariably kills civilians. In fact, I wanted all troops withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq, closure of most American bases overseas, and a massive cut in our defense budget. I wanted an end to all those unconstitutional things Bush was doing in the name of national security. I wanted a criminal inquiry into torture, secret prisons, and the illegal war in Iraq. I wanted the U.S. to join the International Criminal Court, and to recognize the Goldstone Report that found Israel guilty of war crimes. I wanted a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with a right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel. I wanted full diplomatic relations and open exchange with Iran, Cuba and Syria. I wanted to allow anyone, anywhere in the world who wants to move to the U.S. to be able to do so, unless she has committed a violent crime. I wanted a new era of peace and prosperity worldwide, based on economic justice and respect for human rights — and if that wasn’t possible, I at least wanted the U.S. to try really hard to make it happen, without firing a single bullet.

I know my voice isn’t being heard in Washington, and President Obama isn’t hearing it either. There’s probably good reason for that, because my voice is one of many, and not eveyone agrees. But at least spare me the fatuous talk, Mr. President, because you don’t even know me.

Beacon of Hope?

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Something about the last few years has got me rethinking the globalist project. Back in the 1990s, when I was working for a biotechnology company in San Francisco, I witnessed the internet startup bubble firsthand. It seemed that everyone I knew was caught up in this fever, in which people still in their twenties were living lifestyles fueled by emerging technologies, designer drugs and high-priced fashion. I was aware at the time that it couldn’t last, but in this optimistic context I was largely dismissive of the critics of globalization. Globalism then seemed to me like a good thing: capitalism was the motor of human development, and economic opportunity was spreading as far away as Indonesia and Brazil. Even if people making gym shoes or motherboards in the Third World were being exploited by American standards, I felt it was still better than anything they had known before. “A rising tide lifts all boats” was the word of the day.

Then came the attacks of September 11, 2001, and America’s preparations for a “long war” of revenge and conquest. There was heady talk by neoconservatives about America as the new Rome, and a New American Century. When I participated along with tens of thousands of my fellow San Franciscans in mass demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq, I felt I was standing up for a better vision of how the world could be, and America’s role in it. In my own mind I was defending the globalist project, and the humanistic vision of the Clinton–Gore years, against the us-versus-them mentality we were coming to know under Bush–Cheney. It didn’t have to be this way, I felt. Surely all people of the world wanted the same thing: democracy, economic prosperity, dignity for themselves and their families. So why couldn’t we build this together? There were good capitalists and bad capitalists, I argued: those who felt that limited resources were something to be fought over and controlled, and those who created new technologies that enlarged the sphere of human possibility. America in the recent past had been a model of this new way. The neoconservatives and their wars of empire were betraying this vision.

I moved to Morocco in 2003 and lived there for three years because I wanted to experience life on the other side of the Islamic–Western divide, but just as importantly, on the other side of the divide between rich and poor nations. I thought a good deal at the time about democratic ideals, because it was clear to me that my Moroccan friends were hoping for changes in their country that would help it to become a society in which basic rights were protected, government was transparent and accountable to the people, and development was pursued in the common interest. I spoke often with my friends about the principles enshrined in the American Constitution, such as a government of checks and balances, the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty, the right not to be held without charges, and of course the rights of freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. I admired my friends’ ambition to build a more free and transparent society, and I insisted that these principles were the essential foundation of any such project.

At the same time, however, the internet was bringing me news almost daily of how America had betrayed its own principles in the name of the “global war on terror” and imperial ambition. Wiretapping without a warrant, a global network of secret prisons, torture, kidnapping of suspected terrorists, assassinations with robot aircraft, funding of death squads and militias, use of white phosphorus on civilians, and the mother of all war crimes, the illegal war itself: it seemed that nothing was off limits to the power-mad, fiercely ideological war profiteers in Washington. My only consolation was that eventually democracy would prevail, the abuses would be turned back, sanity would be restored, and the Constitution would return to force. Perhaps even justice would be done, and the war criminals would be held accountable for their crimes. All it would take would be an election in which the basic decency of the American people reasserted itself, putting in place an administration committed to doing the right thing.

I was back in the U.S. for the 2008 presidential election, and the nearly two years of political maneuvering that preceded it. Progressives, those who seek justice and equality for all people and oppose the idea of American empire, were looking for a candidate, and many thought they had found him in Barack Obama. But even though Obama had opposed the invasion of Iraq before it even began, he did so on pragmatic, not idealistic grounds. “I’m not opposed to all wars,” he said. “I’m opposed to dumb wars.” Another early warning sign was when he went before AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and spoke of how he had walked on the streets of an Israeli town and found it to be like “a suburb in America.” I liked what he said about regimes like Iran and Cuba—that we should not be afraid to sit down with them, without preconditions, to discuss our differences—and I liked the way he seemed to understand the aspirations of young people in poor countries to improve their lives in ways that Americans take for granted. But in the same foreign policy speech where he spoke of “reaching out to all those living disconnected lives of despair in the world’s forgotten corners,” Obama called for “building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people.” His rhetoric was quick to defend the idea that America has a unique mission in the world—a “beacon of hope” that shines on the huddled masses—and this mission, though couched in humanistic terms of “recognizing the inherent equality and worth of all people,” still justified American intervention in the affairs of every nation, through military means if necessary.

Even before becoming president, Obama presented a plan to expand America’s fighting force by 90,000—and while he supported military withdrawal from Iraq, it was only to refocus our efforts on what he saw as the “right battlefields in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Meanwhile, foreign policy scholar Chalmers Johnson had written a scathing critique of American empire in the form of three books, Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis, in which he reminded us of the amazing fact that America has military bases in no less than 130 foreign nations—a network built up to contain the Soviet empire during the Cold War, but in no way diminished since then. What are we still doing there? Johnson asked. To what end? Obama’s project was not to dismantle this network, but in fact to strengthen it, to make it more intelligent and effective, extending American influence even further. For Obama, humanism and dialogue were simply tools in the toolbox of American empire, ones the Bush administration had neglected. I supported Obama through lack of a better choice—of course, electing a president who wants to diminish American power is impossible—but I periodically wondered if my fellow progressives were naive in assuming he was one of us. Since the election, Obama’s willingness to continue many of the worst Bush-era policies—military courts for suspected terrorists, attacks by robot aircraft that inevitably kill civilians, use of the U.N. veto to defend Israeli aggression, and so on—has confirmed my doubts.

Just before the election, the American empire suffered a huge, self-inflicted blow in the form of an economic collapse brought on by uncontrolled speculation by the nation’s largest banks. Obama’s level-headed response to this helped get him elected—he proposed stimulus spending to create jobs, aid to struggling homeowners, regulation of global markets, and long-term reforms in the fields of education, energy and health care—and in this, at least, I was proud to support him. He seemed to understand that American and indeed global development were at risk if they were left in the hands of speculators and profiteers. He seemed ready to use the power of the state—the people’s power—to protect the common good against corporate interests in ways not seen in a generation. Clinton had been a tinkerer, I felt, albeit an effective one—Obama would reform the system from top to bottom. He had a bold, integrated vision, and the moment was ripe for a profound transformation. He would lay the foundation for a new progressive era, much as Roosevelt had done in the Great Depression.

Instead, since taking office, Obama’s reforms have been terribly cautious, and in many ways they aren’t reforms at all. His stimulus spending was the minimum necessary. His handling of the banking crisis has left all the old structures intact, and even the old practices. Wall Street is already designing new speculative products, such as life insurance policies resold in the form of securities—“the earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return.” Worse still, Obama’s signature issue of health care reform is shaping up as a huge giveaway to the private insurance industry, rather than forcing them to compete on equal terms with a robust public plan available to everyone, as he promised during the campaign. No wonder the populist right is throwing “tea parties” and talking revolution. They feel it’s business as usual in Washington, with handouts to the very forces—banks and insurance companies—that are squeezing every dime from their pockets. Even Obama’s most ardent supporters are beginning to have their doubts about all the compromising they’ve been forced to do. Obama is beginning to look like a tool of corporate interests—smoother and more thoughtful, no doubt, than Bush, but serving the same ends with greater intelligence. So in economic as well as foreign policy, Obama is reinforcing, rather than dismantling or reforming, the existing structures of exploitation.

Returning now to the globalist project, with which I began this article: I’ve conflated it here with American empire, but it is also the heir to earlier imperial projects, notably the British Empire of a century ago, and the European colonial project in general. In fact, “globalization” is nothing new. For centuries there has existed an international network of financing, trade and military might, designed to extract the resources of faraway lands for the benefit of a tiny elite. In the Clinton years, I persuaded myself that this project had turned democratic—indeed, for its century on the world stage, the American empire has promoted itself as the champion of democracy and opportunity for all peoples. But its record is far from that, and only the willful self-delusions of American public discourse blind us to that reality. From the military interventions in Latin America of the 1920s, to the CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s, to the support for dictators around the world in the 1970s, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today, America has continually and aggressively intervened in the affairs of foreign nations in the pursuit of its own interests—or more precisely, in the interests of its powerful elites. Obama has in no way deviated from that course. Indeed he affirms it, in two wars and countless “advisory” engagements around the world—and affirming it is a necessary condition for his being president.

We live in a world where power relationships are what matter, and no matter how much humanizing rhetoric we use, the fact remains that this is a bloody game. Directly or through its sponsorship of local forces, America has been responsible for millions of deaths on every continent since World War II. It’s not that the American empire is worse than any other, but precisely that it is no better. It is the nature of empires to work this way, and the current focus of imperial expansion is the Islamic world. What astonishes me is how it is possible for Americans to continue to believe in our civilizing mission as bringers of democracy and opportunity to faraway peoples, while our armies are spreading destruction in the service of corrupt regimes. Iraq was recently ranked as the most corrupt government in the Arab region, while Afghanistan is the second most corrupt in the entire world, after only Somalia. Meanwhile we provide exceptional support for the state of Israel, in the form of direct financing for whatever weapons they choose, while turning a blind eye to their program of ethnic cleansing in Palestine—even when the Goldstone Report on last year’s war in Gaza, accepted by all but eighteen of the world’s nations, accuses them of “direct attacks against civilians” and targeting “the people of Gaza as a whole.”

Whenever we read or think about these strategies of domination and conquest, we do so through the filter of our own supposed humanitarian intent. But how can such a logic stand up to scrutiny? The only way is to demonize our victims, taking away their humanity. Those weren’t women and children who died under our missiles at a wedding party, they were Al Qaeda or Taliban terrorists. If there were women and children involved, it was their fault for harboring terrorists. Israel used this same logic when fighting Hezbollah in 2006, and again when fighting Hamas in 2008. They aren’t really people like us—like “a suburb in America” as Obama said of the Israeli town he visited—they are dangerous, angry people, crazed by an ideology that values death over life. To defend our humanistic values against such a threat, we have no choice but to use the most severe measures. Our bombs and bullets are a reflection, not of our own inhumanity, but the inhumanity of our enemy. They made us this way!

This line of thinking first appeared in the American psyche during the Indian Wars of the 19th century. It was an era of frank territorial expansion, or “Manifest Destiny” as it was called then—meaning that God had given America the right to occupy the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. To justify our massacre or subjugation of the people already living there, they were painted as savages who knew no scruples in war. They would slaughter our women and children if they could, so we had no choice but to slaughter theirs. They had no army or uniforms, so we were at war with an entire race. I am indebted to a recent article by Arthur Silber for pointing out that in America’s first war beyond its shores, this thinking and these tactics were translated to the world stage. In the Philippine–American War of 1899–1902, America seized the Spanish colony of the Philippines as its own, but the Filipinos fought bravely for their independence. Hundreds of thousands died in this conflict, and an American general gave the order to kill everyone over ten. This was justified with rhetoric familiar to us both from the Indian Wars, where most of the officer corps had gained their battlefield experience, and from the “global war on terror” today. “It is not civilized warfare,” said the Philadelphia Ledger, “but we are not dealing with a civilized people. The only thing they know and fear is force, violence, and brutality, and we are giving it to them.” Mark Twain, at the time America’s most celebrated writer, wrote an eloquent protest against this hypocrisy, but the war was popular with the American people. Later the same rhetoric was used against Germany in World War I, Japan in World War II, and in Vietnam, which American soldiers called “Indian Country.”

In 2004, neoconservative luminary Robert D. Kaplan wrote an article proclaiming that the whole world is now “Indian Country” and that Americans must be prepared to fight “dirty little struggles” against “small clusters of combatants hiding out in Third World slums, deserts and jungles.” We will encounter “warrior braves beside women and children, much like Fallujah.” Such thinking is now the common wisdom of America’s top generals like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, so the connection of the Indian Wars to the “global war on terror” is complete. America is engaged in nothing less than a war of imperial domination around the globe, which requires demonizing whatever popular, local forces may stand in our way. It is Manifest Destiny all over again, only this time on a global scale. American force has the right to assert itself wherever it pleases, because it America’s mission to bring light to the darkness. Unfortunately, whether he realizes it or not, this is the meaning of Obama’s “beacon of hope.”