Friday, July 02, 2004
The New Rome - America, the Reluctant Empire
By Sam Vaknin
When the annals of the United States are written, its transition from republic to empire is likely to warrant special attention. Nor is the emergence of this land and naval juggernaut without precedent. Though history rarely repeats itself in details - both Ancient Rome and Byzantium hold relevant - albeit very limited - lessons.
The first teaches us how seamless the transformation from democracy to military dictatorship appears - when it is gradual and, ostensibly, reactive (responding to external shocks and events). The second illustrates the risks inherent in relying on mercenaries and insurgents as tools of foreign and military policy.
Arnold Toynbee, the distinguished historian correctly observed that the last days of empires are characterized by grandiose construction schemes, faraway conquests and a materialistic spree of conspicuous consumption. Is the United States about to disintegrate?
The notion sounds preposterous. Hale, affluent, mighty, victorious and assured - the USA appears to be beyond destruction. But so did the U.S.S.R. in 1981. As history accelerates, processes which used to unfold over centuries, now consume mere decades. Telecommunications, global transports and information networks, such as the Internet - pit the likes of the USA against the ultimate superpowers: world opinion and global capital.
But first, Rome.
The disintegration of empires is rarely the outcome of merely one or more external shocks. For these to have their deleterious effects, the edifice must be already rotten, the pillars crumbling, the consensus gone, the ethos disputed and adversity rampant. As internal tensions mount and the centrifugal outweighs the centripetal - democracy is surreptitiously and incrementally eroded and replaced by an authoritarian form of government.
In his tome, "The Future of Freedom", Fareed Zakaria bemoans the existence of "illiberal democracy" - with all the trappings of one but without its constitutional substance and philosophical foundations. The United States is: ''increasingly embracing a simple-minded populism that values popularity and openness as the key measures of legitimacy... The result is a deep imbalance in the American system, more democracy but less liberty.''
Herodotus (Histories, Book III) would have concurred:
''In a democracy, malpractices are bound to occur ... corrupt dealings in government services lead ... to close personal associations, the men responsible for them putting their heads together and mutually supporting one another. And so it goes on, until somebody or other comes forward as the people's champion and breaks up the cliques which are out for their own interests. This wins him the admiration of the mob, and as a result he soon finds himself entrusted with absolute power.''
As would Jose Ortega y Gasset (The Revolt of the Masses, 1932):
"A characteristic of our times is the predominance, even in groups traditionally selective, of the mass and the vulgar. Thus, in intellectual life, which of its essence requires and presupposes qualification, one can note the progressive triumph of the pseudo-intellectual, unqualified, unqualifiable..."
The columnist Chris Deliso notes in Antiwar.com that "since September 11th especially, the country has suffered draconian restrictions on civil liberties and the rapid erosion of judicial and governmental transparency. At the same time, the increasing expenditure of taxpayer dollars has been conducted at variance with traditional ideals of free market competition and avoidance of embedded government cronyism. Now, with the invasion of Iraq, the nadir has been reached: long-suppressed desires for empire have come out into the open."
Deliso ascribes these worrisome trends to "three toxic substances. The first is relentless paranoia of the outside world. According to this, all kinds of civilian restrictions and pre-emptive foreign wars become justified for the sake of 'national security'. Second is the all-pervasive cronyism between government oligarchs and corporations, which retard the practice of a free market economy. Finally, there is a belief in the ineluctable nature of 'progress', i.e., a teleological narrative that describes America's political system as supreme, and destined to supercede and convert those of all other nations."
As others have noted, America's transition from republic to empire is remarkably reminiscent of Rome's. The irony is that as the United States inevitably becomes less democratic - it will also become less elitist. The mediocre and inapt peripatetic representatives of the popular will be replaced not by disinterested technocrats and expert civil servants but by usurpers, power brokers, interest groups, and criminal-politicians.
The Founding Fathers looked to Rome as a model. It is often forgotten that Rome has been a republic (509-27 BC) for as long as it has been an empire (27 BC - 476 AD). Hence the Senate, the bicameral legislature, the institutions of jury and professional judges, the interlocking system of checks and balances and other fixtures of American life.
Rome, like the USA, was a multicultural, multiethnic and inclusive melting pot. The family and religion - the mainstays of the American value system - were also the pivots of Roman society. Their work ethic was "Protestant" and their conduct "Calvinistic": frugality, self-reliance, steadfastness, seriousness, "fides" (good faith and reliability) were considered virtues.
From 287 BC, Rome was a full-fledged democracy and meritocracy - one's acquired wealth rather than one's arbitrary birth determined one's place in life.
The Roman takeover of Italy is reminiscent of the expansion of the United States during the 19th century. Later, Rome claimed to be "liberating" Greek cities (from Macedonian domination and other Middle Eastern tyrants) - but then proceeded to establish a series of protectorates throughout Asia Minor, Greece and today's Israel, Palestine, Syria, Egypt and North Africa.
As Rome's sphere of interests and orbit of alliances widened to include ever growing segments of the world, conflicts became inevitable. Still, early Roman historians, patriotic to a fault, always describe Roman wars as "just" (i.e., in "self-defense"). Rome was very concerned with international public opinion and often formed coalitions to attack its foes and adversaries. It then typically turned on its erstwhile allies and either conquered or otherwise absorbed them into its body politic.
Roman commanders and procurators meddled in the internal affairs of these territories. Opposition - in Carthage, Corinth and elsewhere - was crushed by overwhelming force. Lesser powers - such as Pergamum - learned the lesson and succumbed to Roman hegemony. Roman culture - constructed on Greek foundations - permeated the nascent empire and Latin became the Lingua Franca.
But, as Cato the Elder forewarned, foreign possessions and the absence of any martial threat corrupted Rome. Tax extortion, bribery, political machinations, personality cults, and moral laxity abounded. Income equality led to ostentatious consumption of the few, contrasted with the rural and urban destitution of the many. A growing share of gross domestic product was appropriated for the state by the political class. Rome's trade deficit ballooned as its farmers proved unable to compete with cheap imports from the provinces.
A whole class of businessmen - the equites, later known as the equesterian order (the equivalent of today's "oligarchs") - lucratively transacted with the administration. When erstwhile state functions - such as tax collection - were privatized, they moved in and benefited mightily. The equites manipulated the commodities markets, lent money at usurious rates, and colluded with Senators and office holders.
Sallust, the Roman historian, blamed the civil wars that followed on this wealth disparity. Cato the Elder attributed them to moral decadence. Cicero thought that the emergence of the armed forces and the "mob" (the masses) as political players spelt doom for Senatorial, republican Rome.
Some are comparing the relentlessly increasing weight of the Pentagon since 1941 to the rise to prominence of the military in republican Rome. Yet, this is misleading. The role of the army in the Roman republic was enshrined in the centuriate assembly (the army as a voting collective) and the consuls, magistrates in chief were, invariably, former army generals. Though many American presidents, starting with George Washington, were former generals - the ethos of the United States is individualistic, not military.
Thus, when the tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (133 BC) embarked on a land reform, he was opposed by the entrenched interests of the nobility (the optimi). Undeterred, through a series of piecemeal, utterly legal steps, Tiberius Gracchus sought to transform himself into a despot and neutralize the carefully constructed system of checks and balances that sustained republican Rome. The Senators themselves headed the mob that assassinated him. This was the fate of his no less radical brother, Gaius, ten years later.
These upheavals gave rise to the populares - self-appointed populist spokesmen for the disenfranchised "common man" in the Senate. They were vehemently confronted by the nobility-backed Senators, the optimates. To add instability to earthquake, Roman generals began recruiting property-less volunteers to serve as mercenaries in essentially private armies. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, an impoverished aristocrat turned army commander, actually attacked Rome itself twice.
To secure popular support, Roman politicians doled out tax cuts, free entertainment, and free food. Ambitious Romans - such as Julius Caesar - spent most of their time electioneering and raising campaign finance, often in the form of 'loans" to be repaid with lucrative contracts and sinecures once the sponsored candidate attained office. Long-established, prominent families - political dynasties - increased their hold on power from one generation to the next.
Partisanship was rampant. Even Cicero - a much-admired orator and lawyer - failed to unite the Senators and equites against assorted fanatics and demagogues. The Senate kept repeatedly and deliberately undermining the interests of both the soldiery and the equites, Rome's non-Senatorial businessmen.
This clash of vested interests and ulterior motives gave rise to Gaius Julius Caesar, a driven and talented populist. Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the river that separated Gaul from Italy, and subdued a rebellious and obstructive Senate. He was offered by an intimidated establishment, the position of dictator for life which he accepted. The republic was over.
Life in Rome improved dramatically with the introduction of autocracy. Roman administration was streamlined and became less corrupt. Food security was achieved. Social divisions healed. The republic was mourned only by the discarded ancien regime and by intellectuals. Rome the city-state was no more. It has matured into an Empire.
And now, to Rome's crippled successor, Byzantium.
The modus operandi of the United States involves ad-hoc alliances with indigenous warlords, drug czars, terrorists, guerrilleros, freedom fighters, and armed opposition groups aimed at ousting unfriendly incumbent regimes, imposing political settlements or military solutions, countering other foreign influences, attaining commercial goals, or securing long-term presence and say in local affairs.
America's "exploit and discard" or "drain and dump" policies consistently boomerang to haunt it.
Both Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Manuel Noriega in Panama were aided and abetted by the CIA and the US military. Later, America had to invade Panama to depose the latter and conquer Iraq for the second time to force the removal of the former.
The Kosovo Liberation Army, an American anti-Milosevic pet, provoked, to great European consternation, a civil war in Macedonia two years ago. Osama bin-Laden, another CIA golem, "restored" to the USA, on September 11, 2001 some of the materiel it so generously bestowed on his anti-Russian outfit - before he was dumped unceremoniously once the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan.
Normally the outcomes of expedience, the Ugly American's alliances and allegiances shift kaleidoscopically. Pakistan and Libya were transmuted from foes to allies in the fortnight prior to the Afghan campaign. Milosevic has metamorphosed from staunch ally to rabid foe in days.
This capricious inconsistency casts in grave doubt America's sincerity - and in sharp relief its unreliability and disloyalty, its short term thinking, truncated attention span, soundbite mentality, and dangerous, "black and white", simplism. It is also a sign of short-sightedness and historical ignorance. All major empires fell prey to rampant mercenaries, erstwhile "allies" turned bitter enemies.
At its peak, the Ottoman Empire ruled most of the Balkan, up to the very gates of Vienna, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Romania, Greece, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Egypt, North Africa including Algeria, and most of the Arab Peninsula. It lasted 600 years.
The Ottomans invaded Europe while still serving as a proxy army of mercenaries and guerilla fighters. When not at war with Byzantium, they were often used by this contemporary superpower (Byzantium) to further its geopolitical goals against its enemies - very much as the Afghan Mujaheedin or the Albanian KLA collaborated with the USA and its sidekick, the EU, during the last two decades of the twentieth century.
Not unlike the Moslem Afghani warriors of 1989, the Ottomans, too, turned on their benefactors and brought on the demise of Byzantium after 1000 years of uninterrupted existence as a superpower.
The Ottomans were named after Osman I, the Oguz (Turkmen) tribal leader, the off spring of a noble Kayi family. They were ghazis (Islamic Turkish warriors). Fleeing from the Mongols of Genghis Khan, they invaded Anatolia in the second half of the 11th century. They immediately and inevitably clashed with Byzantium and delivered to it the first of a string of humiliating and debilitating defeats in the battle of Manzikert, in 1071.
They spread inexorably throughout the fertile Anatolia, confronting in the process the Byzantines and the Mongols. They were no match to the brute efficacy of the latter, though. They lost most of Anatolia to the Mongols and maintained a few autonomous pockets of resistance in its eastern fringes. One of these anti-Mongol principalities (in the northwest) was led by Osman I.
Osman's was not the strongest principality. Its neighbour to the east, the Germiyan principality, was much stronger and more sophisticated culturally. Osman, therefore, drove west, towards the Bosporus and the Marble (Marmara) Sea. His desperate struggles against the corrupt and decadent Byzantines, made him the Robin Hood, the folk hero of the millions of urban unemployed, nomads, and dislocated peasants turned brigands - from Syria to the Balkan. Osman offered to these desperados war booty, a purposeful life, and Islamic religious fanaticism. They joined his armies in droves.
Byzantium, his avowed enemy, was no longer prosperous and powerful, but it was culturally superior and vital, Christian, and modern. But it was decaying. Its social fabric was disintegrating, corroded by venality, hubris, paranoia, avarice, inter-generational strife, and lack of clear religious and cultural orientations. Its army, much reduced and humbled by defeats and budget cuts, was unable to secure the frontier. Economic, religious, and social discontent undermined its consensus.
Gradually, it lost its erstwhile allies. The Ilhanid dynasty in Persia refused to back it against its tormentors. Byzantium, high handed and conceited, was left to fight the Islamic terrorism on its borders all by itself. Mercenaries imported by the Byzantines from Europe served only to destabilize it further. Osman's successors tore Byzantium to hemorrhaging shreds, conquering the rest of Anatolia and the Balkan. They even employed Christian mercenaries against the Byzantines.
When Orhan, a successor of Osman, secured a territorial continuum and access to the Sea of Marmara, he took on another Turkmen empire, based in Aydin.
The people of Aydin were mercenaries at the service of competing factions in Byzantium (Thrace versus Constantinople). Orhan wanted to cut into this lucrative business. He started by defeating emperor Andronicus III and his advisor, John Cantacuzenus in the battle of Pelekanon in 1329. This unleashed the Ottoman troops upon Nicaea (1331) and Nicomedia (1337).
Faced with the loss of the historic heart of their empire, the Byzantines accepted a Faustian deal. They made peace with the Moslem Turks and recruited them as allies and mercenaries against the Christian enemies of Christian Byzantium - the Serbs, the Italians, and the Bulgarians. Orhan became the principal ally of the young and dynamic Byzantine politician (later emperor) John VI Cantacuzenus, thus gaining entry, for the first time, into Christian Europe.
Andronicus III died in 1341and another civil war broke out in Byzantium. John Cantacuzenus, deprived of the much expected regency, confronted Alexius Apocaucus, the patriarch John Calecas, and the powerful and cunning empress mother Anne of Savoy.
The Serb king Dusan wavered between support and rejection for Cantacuzenus, who was crowned as Emperor John VI in Thrace in 1346. The new emperor, aided by hordes of Turkish troops, demolished the coalition set against him. A revolution erupted in Thrace and Macedonia. "The Zealots", having seized power In Thessalonica, declared an independent community which lasted till 1350.
Byzantium was reduced to penury by these events and by the Black Death of 1347. It fought with Venice against Genoa only to lose tax revenues hitherto paid by the Genoese. Foreign powers - the Turks included - manipulated the hopelessly fractured Byzantine ruling classes to their advantage.
In the meantime, Orhan was introduced to Europe's modern weaponry, its superior tactics of laying siege, and its internecine politics by his Byzantine masters. After he helped Cantacuzenus grab the Byzantine throne from John V Palaeologus, the new emperor granted him the right to ravage both Thrace and his own daughter, Theodora, whom Orhan married.
Ottoman raiding parties between Gallipoli and Thrace became a common sight. The loot was used to attract all manner of outcasts and dispossessed and to arm them. Byzantium was thus arming and financing its own worst enemy, facilitating its own demise.
In 1354, Ottoman mercenaries occupied and fortified the earthquake shattered Gallipoli. The Ottomans crossed permanently into Europe. When Orhan's son, Suleyman, transformed Gallipoli into an ominous base from which to overpower Christian Europe - the emperor (and other Christian nations) protested.
The Ottomans ignored them and proceeded with their expansionary preparations. They raided the Balkan as far as Adrianople. Cantacuzenus was toppled and denounced for his collaboration with the Turks. Europe woke up to the nightmare on its doorstep. But it was way too late.
It was the emperor John V Palaeologus who forced Cantacuzenus to abdicate and to retire to a monastery. John V appealed to the Pope, and through him, to the Western world, for help against the Turks. But the Popes were more concerned with the three centuries old schism between the Roman Church and the Church in Constantinople. John V has begged for help for more than a decade. In 1366, he visited Hungary and pleaded for assistance, but in vain.
The Ottomans embarked on three centuries of unhindered conquests, arrested only at the gates of Vienna in the 17th century. Recurrent international (read European) alliances and crusades failed to constrain them. The Serbs, the Bulgars, the Hungarians were all routed in bloody battlefields.
Cut off from its grain supplies and tax base, proud Byzantium accepted the suzerainty of the Ottomans, their former mercenaries. When emperor John V united the churches of Constantinople and Rome in a vain and impetuous effort to secure the military involvement of the West - he only succeeded to fracture Byzantium further.
Murad, the Ottoman ruler, incorporated large parts of Christian south-eastern and central Europe into his burgeoning feudal empire. Local kings and emperors were left to govern as administrators, vassals to the Ottomans. They paid annual tribute and provided contingents to the Ottoman army. These achievements were consolidated by later Ottoman rulers for centuries to come.
In 1449 the sultan Mehmed II prepared to assault Constantinople. The West wringed its hands but provided no material or military help. The union of the two churches - Rome and Constantinople - was celebrated in the magnificent church of in Hagia Sophia in 1452. But the people of Byzantium revolted and protested against this opportunistic move. Many said that they preferred the rule of the Turks to being enslaved by the Latin West. Soon their wish would come true.
On May 29, 1453 Turkish soldiers forced their way into the shattered city. Most of the commanders (among them Venetians and Genoese) were dead or wounded. Constantine, the last emperor, fought, on foot, at one of the gates and was seen no more.
Constantinople was plundered and savaged for three long days and nights by the triumphant Turks.
The Encyclopedia Britannica (2002 edition) sums it up thus:
"The Ottoman Empire had now superseded the Byzantine Empire; and some Greeks, like the contemporary historian Critobulus of Imbros, recognized the logic of the change by bestowing on the Sultan all the attributes of the emperor. The material structure of the empire, which had long been crumbling, was now under the management of the sultan-basileus. But the Orthodox faith was less susceptible to change. The Sultan acknowledged the fact that the church had proved to be the most enduring element in the Byzantine world, and he gave the Patriarch of Constantinople an unprecedented measure of temporal authority by making him answerable for all Christians living under Ottoman rule.
The last scattered pockets of Byzantine resistance were eliminated within a decade after 1453. Athens fell to the Turks in 1456-58, and in 1460 the two despots of Morea surrendered. Thomas fled to Italy, Demetrius to the Sultan's court. In 1461 Trebizond, capital of the last remnant of Greek empire, which had maintained its precarious independence by paying court to Turks and Mongols alike, finally succumbed; the transformation of the Byzantine world into the Ottoman world was at last complete."
More about this topic here:
http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com
http://samvak.tripod.com/briefs.html
http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conflictransition/messages/
By Sam Vaknin
When the annals of the United States are written, its transition from republic to empire is likely to warrant special attention. Nor is the emergence of this land and naval juggernaut without precedent. Though history rarely repeats itself in details - both Ancient Rome and Byzantium hold relevant - albeit very limited - lessons.
The first teaches us how seamless the transformation from democracy to military dictatorship appears - when it is gradual and, ostensibly, reactive (responding to external shocks and events). The second illustrates the risks inherent in relying on mercenaries and insurgents as tools of foreign and military policy.
Arnold Toynbee, the distinguished historian correctly observed that the last days of empires are characterized by grandiose construction schemes, faraway conquests and a materialistic spree of conspicuous consumption. Is the United States about to disintegrate?
The notion sounds preposterous. Hale, affluent, mighty, victorious and assured - the USA appears to be beyond destruction. But so did the U.S.S.R. in 1981. As history accelerates, processes which used to unfold over centuries, now consume mere decades. Telecommunications, global transports and information networks, such as the Internet - pit the likes of the USA against the ultimate superpowers: world opinion and global capital.
But first, Rome.
The disintegration of empires is rarely the outcome of merely one or more external shocks. For these to have their deleterious effects, the edifice must be already rotten, the pillars crumbling, the consensus gone, the ethos disputed and adversity rampant. As internal tensions mount and the centrifugal outweighs the centripetal - democracy is surreptitiously and incrementally eroded and replaced by an authoritarian form of government.
In his tome, "The Future of Freedom", Fareed Zakaria bemoans the existence of "illiberal democracy" - with all the trappings of one but without its constitutional substance and philosophical foundations. The United States is: ''increasingly embracing a simple-minded populism that values popularity and openness as the key measures of legitimacy... The result is a deep imbalance in the American system, more democracy but less liberty.''
Herodotus (Histories, Book III) would have concurred:
''In a democracy, malpractices are bound to occur ... corrupt dealings in government services lead ... to close personal associations, the men responsible for them putting their heads together and mutually supporting one another. And so it goes on, until somebody or other comes forward as the people's champion and breaks up the cliques which are out for their own interests. This wins him the admiration of the mob, and as a result he soon finds himself entrusted with absolute power.''
As would Jose Ortega y Gasset (The Revolt of the Masses, 1932):
"A characteristic of our times is the predominance, even in groups traditionally selective, of the mass and the vulgar. Thus, in intellectual life, which of its essence requires and presupposes qualification, one can note the progressive triumph of the pseudo-intellectual, unqualified, unqualifiable..."
The columnist Chris Deliso notes in Antiwar.com that "since September 11th especially, the country has suffered draconian restrictions on civil liberties and the rapid erosion of judicial and governmental transparency. At the same time, the increasing expenditure of taxpayer dollars has been conducted at variance with traditional ideals of free market competition and avoidance of embedded government cronyism. Now, with the invasion of Iraq, the nadir has been reached: long-suppressed desires for empire have come out into the open."
Deliso ascribes these worrisome trends to "three toxic substances. The first is relentless paranoia of the outside world. According to this, all kinds of civilian restrictions and pre-emptive foreign wars become justified for the sake of 'national security'. Second is the all-pervasive cronyism between government oligarchs and corporations, which retard the practice of a free market economy. Finally, there is a belief in the ineluctable nature of 'progress', i.e., a teleological narrative that describes America's political system as supreme, and destined to supercede and convert those of all other nations."
As others have noted, America's transition from republic to empire is remarkably reminiscent of Rome's. The irony is that as the United States inevitably becomes less democratic - it will also become less elitist. The mediocre and inapt peripatetic representatives of the popular will be replaced not by disinterested technocrats and expert civil servants but by usurpers, power brokers, interest groups, and criminal-politicians.
The Founding Fathers looked to Rome as a model. It is often forgotten that Rome has been a republic (509-27 BC) for as long as it has been an empire (27 BC - 476 AD). Hence the Senate, the bicameral legislature, the institutions of jury and professional judges, the interlocking system of checks and balances and other fixtures of American life.
Rome, like the USA, was a multicultural, multiethnic and inclusive melting pot. The family and religion - the mainstays of the American value system - were also the pivots of Roman society. Their work ethic was "Protestant" and their conduct "Calvinistic": frugality, self-reliance, steadfastness, seriousness, "fides" (good faith and reliability) were considered virtues.
From 287 BC, Rome was a full-fledged democracy and meritocracy - one's acquired wealth rather than one's arbitrary birth determined one's place in life.
The Roman takeover of Italy is reminiscent of the expansion of the United States during the 19th century. Later, Rome claimed to be "liberating" Greek cities (from Macedonian domination and other Middle Eastern tyrants) - but then proceeded to establish a series of protectorates throughout Asia Minor, Greece and today's Israel, Palestine, Syria, Egypt and North Africa.
As Rome's sphere of interests and orbit of alliances widened to include ever growing segments of the world, conflicts became inevitable. Still, early Roman historians, patriotic to a fault, always describe Roman wars as "just" (i.e., in "self-defense"). Rome was very concerned with international public opinion and often formed coalitions to attack its foes and adversaries. It then typically turned on its erstwhile allies and either conquered or otherwise absorbed them into its body politic.
Roman commanders and procurators meddled in the internal affairs of these territories. Opposition - in Carthage, Corinth and elsewhere - was crushed by overwhelming force. Lesser powers - such as Pergamum - learned the lesson and succumbed to Roman hegemony. Roman culture - constructed on Greek foundations - permeated the nascent empire and Latin became the Lingua Franca.
But, as Cato the Elder forewarned, foreign possessions and the absence of any martial threat corrupted Rome. Tax extortion, bribery, political machinations, personality cults, and moral laxity abounded. Income equality led to ostentatious consumption of the few, contrasted with the rural and urban destitution of the many. A growing share of gross domestic product was appropriated for the state by the political class. Rome's trade deficit ballooned as its farmers proved unable to compete with cheap imports from the provinces.
A whole class of businessmen - the equites, later known as the equesterian order (the equivalent of today's "oligarchs") - lucratively transacted with the administration. When erstwhile state functions - such as tax collection - were privatized, they moved in and benefited mightily. The equites manipulated the commodities markets, lent money at usurious rates, and colluded with Senators and office holders.
Sallust, the Roman historian, blamed the civil wars that followed on this wealth disparity. Cato the Elder attributed them to moral decadence. Cicero thought that the emergence of the armed forces and the "mob" (the masses) as political players spelt doom for Senatorial, republican Rome.
Some are comparing the relentlessly increasing weight of the Pentagon since 1941 to the rise to prominence of the military in republican Rome. Yet, this is misleading. The role of the army in the Roman republic was enshrined in the centuriate assembly (the army as a voting collective) and the consuls, magistrates in chief were, invariably, former army generals. Though many American presidents, starting with George Washington, were former generals - the ethos of the United States is individualistic, not military.
Thus, when the tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (133 BC) embarked on a land reform, he was opposed by the entrenched interests of the nobility (the optimi). Undeterred, through a series of piecemeal, utterly legal steps, Tiberius Gracchus sought to transform himself into a despot and neutralize the carefully constructed system of checks and balances that sustained republican Rome. The Senators themselves headed the mob that assassinated him. This was the fate of his no less radical brother, Gaius, ten years later.
These upheavals gave rise to the populares - self-appointed populist spokesmen for the disenfranchised "common man" in the Senate. They were vehemently confronted by the nobility-backed Senators, the optimates. To add instability to earthquake, Roman generals began recruiting property-less volunteers to serve as mercenaries in essentially private armies. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, an impoverished aristocrat turned army commander, actually attacked Rome itself twice.
To secure popular support, Roman politicians doled out tax cuts, free entertainment, and free food. Ambitious Romans - such as Julius Caesar - spent most of their time electioneering and raising campaign finance, often in the form of 'loans" to be repaid with lucrative contracts and sinecures once the sponsored candidate attained office. Long-established, prominent families - political dynasties - increased their hold on power from one generation to the next.
Partisanship was rampant. Even Cicero - a much-admired orator and lawyer - failed to unite the Senators and equites against assorted fanatics and demagogues. The Senate kept repeatedly and deliberately undermining the interests of both the soldiery and the equites, Rome's non-Senatorial businessmen.
This clash of vested interests and ulterior motives gave rise to Gaius Julius Caesar, a driven and talented populist. Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the river that separated Gaul from Italy, and subdued a rebellious and obstructive Senate. He was offered by an intimidated establishment, the position of dictator for life which he accepted. The republic was over.
Life in Rome improved dramatically with the introduction of autocracy. Roman administration was streamlined and became less corrupt. Food security was achieved. Social divisions healed. The republic was mourned only by the discarded ancien regime and by intellectuals. Rome the city-state was no more. It has matured into an Empire.
And now, to Rome's crippled successor, Byzantium.
The modus operandi of the United States involves ad-hoc alliances with indigenous warlords, drug czars, terrorists, guerrilleros, freedom fighters, and armed opposition groups aimed at ousting unfriendly incumbent regimes, imposing political settlements or military solutions, countering other foreign influences, attaining commercial goals, or securing long-term presence and say in local affairs.
America's "exploit and discard" or "drain and dump" policies consistently boomerang to haunt it.
Both Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Manuel Noriega in Panama were aided and abetted by the CIA and the US military. Later, America had to invade Panama to depose the latter and conquer Iraq for the second time to force the removal of the former.
The Kosovo Liberation Army, an American anti-Milosevic pet, provoked, to great European consternation, a civil war in Macedonia two years ago. Osama bin-Laden, another CIA golem, "restored" to the USA, on September 11, 2001 some of the materiel it so generously bestowed on his anti-Russian outfit - before he was dumped unceremoniously once the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan.
Normally the outcomes of expedience, the Ugly American's alliances and allegiances shift kaleidoscopically. Pakistan and Libya were transmuted from foes to allies in the fortnight prior to the Afghan campaign. Milosevic has metamorphosed from staunch ally to rabid foe in days.
This capricious inconsistency casts in grave doubt America's sincerity - and in sharp relief its unreliability and disloyalty, its short term thinking, truncated attention span, soundbite mentality, and dangerous, "black and white", simplism. It is also a sign of short-sightedness and historical ignorance. All major empires fell prey to rampant mercenaries, erstwhile "allies" turned bitter enemies.
At its peak, the Ottoman Empire ruled most of the Balkan, up to the very gates of Vienna, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Romania, Greece, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Egypt, North Africa including Algeria, and most of the Arab Peninsula. It lasted 600 years.
The Ottomans invaded Europe while still serving as a proxy army of mercenaries and guerilla fighters. When not at war with Byzantium, they were often used by this contemporary superpower (Byzantium) to further its geopolitical goals against its enemies - very much as the Afghan Mujaheedin or the Albanian KLA collaborated with the USA and its sidekick, the EU, during the last two decades of the twentieth century.
Not unlike the Moslem Afghani warriors of 1989, the Ottomans, too, turned on their benefactors and brought on the demise of Byzantium after 1000 years of uninterrupted existence as a superpower.
The Ottomans were named after Osman I, the Oguz (Turkmen) tribal leader, the off spring of a noble Kayi family. They were ghazis (Islamic Turkish warriors). Fleeing from the Mongols of Genghis Khan, they invaded Anatolia in the second half of the 11th century. They immediately and inevitably clashed with Byzantium and delivered to it the first of a string of humiliating and debilitating defeats in the battle of Manzikert, in 1071.
They spread inexorably throughout the fertile Anatolia, confronting in the process the Byzantines and the Mongols. They were no match to the brute efficacy of the latter, though. They lost most of Anatolia to the Mongols and maintained a few autonomous pockets of resistance in its eastern fringes. One of these anti-Mongol principalities (in the northwest) was led by Osman I.
Osman's was not the strongest principality. Its neighbour to the east, the Germiyan principality, was much stronger and more sophisticated culturally. Osman, therefore, drove west, towards the Bosporus and the Marble (Marmara) Sea. His desperate struggles against the corrupt and decadent Byzantines, made him the Robin Hood, the folk hero of the millions of urban unemployed, nomads, and dislocated peasants turned brigands - from Syria to the Balkan. Osman offered to these desperados war booty, a purposeful life, and Islamic religious fanaticism. They joined his armies in droves.
Byzantium, his avowed enemy, was no longer prosperous and powerful, but it was culturally superior and vital, Christian, and modern. But it was decaying. Its social fabric was disintegrating, corroded by venality, hubris, paranoia, avarice, inter-generational strife, and lack of clear religious and cultural orientations. Its army, much reduced and humbled by defeats and budget cuts, was unable to secure the frontier. Economic, religious, and social discontent undermined its consensus.
Gradually, it lost its erstwhile allies. The Ilhanid dynasty in Persia refused to back it against its tormentors. Byzantium, high handed and conceited, was left to fight the Islamic terrorism on its borders all by itself. Mercenaries imported by the Byzantines from Europe served only to destabilize it further. Osman's successors tore Byzantium to hemorrhaging shreds, conquering the rest of Anatolia and the Balkan. They even employed Christian mercenaries against the Byzantines.
When Orhan, a successor of Osman, secured a territorial continuum and access to the Sea of Marmara, he took on another Turkmen empire, based in Aydin.
The people of Aydin were mercenaries at the service of competing factions in Byzantium (Thrace versus Constantinople). Orhan wanted to cut into this lucrative business. He started by defeating emperor Andronicus III and his advisor, John Cantacuzenus in the battle of Pelekanon in 1329. This unleashed the Ottoman troops upon Nicaea (1331) and Nicomedia (1337).
Faced with the loss of the historic heart of their empire, the Byzantines accepted a Faustian deal. They made peace with the Moslem Turks and recruited them as allies and mercenaries against the Christian enemies of Christian Byzantium - the Serbs, the Italians, and the Bulgarians. Orhan became the principal ally of the young and dynamic Byzantine politician (later emperor) John VI Cantacuzenus, thus gaining entry, for the first time, into Christian Europe.
Andronicus III died in 1341and another civil war broke out in Byzantium. John Cantacuzenus, deprived of the much expected regency, confronted Alexius Apocaucus, the patriarch John Calecas, and the powerful and cunning empress mother Anne of Savoy.
The Serb king Dusan wavered between support and rejection for Cantacuzenus, who was crowned as Emperor John VI in Thrace in 1346. The new emperor, aided by hordes of Turkish troops, demolished the coalition set against him. A revolution erupted in Thrace and Macedonia. "The Zealots", having seized power In Thessalonica, declared an independent community which lasted till 1350.
Byzantium was reduced to penury by these events and by the Black Death of 1347. It fought with Venice against Genoa only to lose tax revenues hitherto paid by the Genoese. Foreign powers - the Turks included - manipulated the hopelessly fractured Byzantine ruling classes to their advantage.
In the meantime, Orhan was introduced to Europe's modern weaponry, its superior tactics of laying siege, and its internecine politics by his Byzantine masters. After he helped Cantacuzenus grab the Byzantine throne from John V Palaeologus, the new emperor granted him the right to ravage both Thrace and his own daughter, Theodora, whom Orhan married.
Ottoman raiding parties between Gallipoli and Thrace became a common sight. The loot was used to attract all manner of outcasts and dispossessed and to arm them. Byzantium was thus arming and financing its own worst enemy, facilitating its own demise.
In 1354, Ottoman mercenaries occupied and fortified the earthquake shattered Gallipoli. The Ottomans crossed permanently into Europe. When Orhan's son, Suleyman, transformed Gallipoli into an ominous base from which to overpower Christian Europe - the emperor (and other Christian nations) protested.
The Ottomans ignored them and proceeded with their expansionary preparations. They raided the Balkan as far as Adrianople. Cantacuzenus was toppled and denounced for his collaboration with the Turks. Europe woke up to the nightmare on its doorstep. But it was way too late.
It was the emperor John V Palaeologus who forced Cantacuzenus to abdicate and to retire to a monastery. John V appealed to the Pope, and through him, to the Western world, for help against the Turks. But the Popes were more concerned with the three centuries old schism between the Roman Church and the Church in Constantinople. John V has begged for help for more than a decade. In 1366, he visited Hungary and pleaded for assistance, but in vain.
The Ottomans embarked on three centuries of unhindered conquests, arrested only at the gates of Vienna in the 17th century. Recurrent international (read European) alliances and crusades failed to constrain them. The Serbs, the Bulgars, the Hungarians were all routed in bloody battlefields.
Cut off from its grain supplies and tax base, proud Byzantium accepted the suzerainty of the Ottomans, their former mercenaries. When emperor John V united the churches of Constantinople and Rome in a vain and impetuous effort to secure the military involvement of the West - he only succeeded to fracture Byzantium further.
Murad, the Ottoman ruler, incorporated large parts of Christian south-eastern and central Europe into his burgeoning feudal empire. Local kings and emperors were left to govern as administrators, vassals to the Ottomans. They paid annual tribute and provided contingents to the Ottoman army. These achievements were consolidated by later Ottoman rulers for centuries to come.
In 1449 the sultan Mehmed II prepared to assault Constantinople. The West wringed its hands but provided no material or military help. The union of the two churches - Rome and Constantinople - was celebrated in the magnificent church of in Hagia Sophia in 1452. But the people of Byzantium revolted and protested against this opportunistic move. Many said that they preferred the rule of the Turks to being enslaved by the Latin West. Soon their wish would come true.
On May 29, 1453 Turkish soldiers forced their way into the shattered city. Most of the commanders (among them Venetians and Genoese) were dead or wounded. Constantine, the last emperor, fought, on foot, at one of the gates and was seen no more.
Constantinople was plundered and savaged for three long days and nights by the triumphant Turks.
The Encyclopedia Britannica (2002 edition) sums it up thus:
"The Ottoman Empire had now superseded the Byzantine Empire; and some Greeks, like the contemporary historian Critobulus of Imbros, recognized the logic of the change by bestowing on the Sultan all the attributes of the emperor. The material structure of the empire, which had long been crumbling, was now under the management of the sultan-basileus. But the Orthodox faith was less susceptible to change. The Sultan acknowledged the fact that the church had proved to be the most enduring element in the Byzantine world, and he gave the Patriarch of Constantinople an unprecedented measure of temporal authority by making him answerable for all Christians living under Ottoman rule.
The last scattered pockets of Byzantine resistance were eliminated within a decade after 1453. Athens fell to the Turks in 1456-58, and in 1460 the two despots of Morea surrendered. Thomas fled to Italy, Demetrius to the Sultan's court. In 1461 Trebizond, capital of the last remnant of Greek empire, which had maintained its precarious independence by paying court to Turks and Mongols alike, finally succumbed; the transformation of the Byzantine world into the Ottoman world was at last complete."
More about this topic here:
http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com
http://samvak.tripod.com/briefs.html
http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conflictransition/messages/
Thursday, April 08, 2004
The Beginning of History
The Clash of Islam and Liberalism
By: Sam Vaknin
Islam is not merely a religion. It is also - and perhaps, foremost - a state ideology. It is all-pervasive and missionary. It permeates every aspect of social cooperation and culture. It is an organizing principle, a narrative, a philosophy, a value system, and a vade mecum. In this it resembles Confucianism and, to some extent, Hinduism.
Judaism and its offspring, Christianity - though heavily involved in political affairs throughout the ages - have kept their dignified distance from such carnal matters. These are religions of "heaven" as opposed to Islam, a practical, pragmatic, hands-on, ubiquitous, "earthly" creed.
Secular religions - Democratic Liberalism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Socialism and other isms - are more akin to Islam than to, let's say, Buddhism. They are universal, prescriptive, and total. They provide recipes, rules, and norms regarding every aspect of existence - individual, social, cultural, moral, economic, political, military, and philosophical.
At the end of the Cold War, Democratic Liberalism stood triumphant over the fresh graves of its ideological opponents. They have all been eradicated. This precipitated Fukuyama's premature diagnosis (the End of History). But one state ideology, one bitter rival, one implacable opponent, one contestant for world domination, one antithesis remained - Islam.
Militant Islam is, therefore, not a cancerous mutation of "true" Islam. On the contrary, it is the purest expression of its nature as an imperialistic religion which demands unmitigated obedience from its followers and regards all infidels as both inferior and avowed enemies.
The same can be said about Democratic Liberalism. Like Islam, it does not hesitate to exercise force, is missionary, colonizing, and regards itself as a monopolist of the "truth" and of "universal values". Its antagonists are invariably portrayed as depraved, primitive, and below par.
Such mutually exclusive claims were bound to lead to an all-out conflict sooner or later. The "War on Terrorism" is only the latest round in a millennium-old war between Islam and other "world systems".
Such interpretation of recent events enrages many. They demand to know (often in harsh tones):
- Don't you see any difference between terrorists who murder civilians and regular armies in battle?
Both regulars and irregulars slaughter civilians as a matter of course. "Collateral damage" is the main outcome of modern, total warfare - and of low intensity conflicts alike.
There is a major difference between terrorists and soldiers, though:
Terrorists make carnage of noncombatants their main tactic - while regular armies rarely do. Such conduct is criminal and deplorable, whoever the perpetrator.
But what about the killing of combatants in battle? How should we judge the slaying of soldiers by terrorists in combat?
Modern nation-states enshrined the self-appropriated monopoly on violence in their constitutions and ordinances (and in international law). Only state organs - the army, the police - are permitted to kill, torture, and incarcerate.
Terrorists are trust-busters: they, too, want to kill, torture, and incarcerate. They seek to break the death cartel of governments by joining its ranks.
Thus, when a soldier kills terrorists and ("inadvertently") civilians (as "collateral damage") - it is considered above board. But when the terrorist decimates the very same soldier - he is decried as an outlaw.
Moreover, the misbehavior of some countries - not least the United States - led to the legitimization of terrorism. Often nation-states use terrorist organizations to further their geopolitical goals. When this happens, erstwhile outcasts become "freedom fighters", pariahs become allies, murderers are recast as sensitive souls struggling for equal rights. This contributes to the blurring of ethical percepts and the blunting of moral judgment.
- Would you rather live under sharia law? Don't you find Liberal Democracy vastly superior to Islam?
Superior, no. Different - of course. Having been born and raised in the West, I naturally prefer its standards to Islam's. Had I been born in a Muslim country, I would have probably found the West and its principles perverted and obnoxious.
The question is meaningless because it presupposes the existence of an objective, universal, culture and period independent set of preferences. Luckily, there is no such thing.
- In this clash of civilization whose side are you on?
This is not a clash of civilizations. Western culture is inextricably intertwined with Islamic knowledge, teachings, and philosophy. Christian fundamentalists have more in common with Muslim militants than with East Coast or French intellectuals.
Muslims have always been the West's most defining Other. Islamic existence and "gaze" helped to mold the West's emerging identity as a historical construct. From Spain to India, the incessant friction and fertilizing interactions with Islam shaped Western values, beliefs, doctrines, moral tenets, political and military institutions, arts, and sciences.
This war is about world domination. Two incompatible thought and value systems compete for the hearts and minds (and purchasing power) of the denizens of the global village. Like in the Westerns, by high noon, either one of them is left standing - or both will have perished.
Where does my loyalty reside?
I am a Westerner, so I hope the West wins this confrontation. But, in the process, it would be good if it were humbled, deconstructed, and reconstructed. One beneficial outcome of this conflict is the demise of the superpower system - a relic of days bygone and best forgotten. I fully believe and trust that in militant Islam, the United States has found its match.
In other words, I regard militant Islam as a catalyst that will hasten the transformation of the global power structure from unipolar to multipolar. It may also commute the United States itself. It will definitely rejuvenate religious thought and cultural discourse. All wars do.
Aren't you overdoing it? After all, al-Qaida is just a bunch of terrorists on the run!
The West is not fighting al-Qaida. It is facing down the circumstances and ideas that gave rise to al-Qaida. Conditions - such as poverty, ignorance, disease, oppression, and xenophobic superstitions - are difficult to change or to reverse. Ideas are impossible to suppress. Already, militant Islam is far more widespread and established that any Western government would care to admit.
History shows that all terrorist groupings ultimately join the mainstream. Many countries - from Israel to Ireland and from East Timor to Nicaragua - are governed by former terrorists. Terrorism enhances social upward mobility and fosters the redistribution of wealth and resources from the haves to haves not.
Al-Qaida, despite its ominous portrayal in the Western press - is no exception. It, too, will succumb, in due time, to the twin lures of power and money. Nihilistic and decentralized as it is - its express goals are the rule of Islam and equitable economic development. It is bound to get its way in some countries.
The world of the future will be truly pluralistic. The proselytizing zeal of Liberal Democracy and Capitalism has rendered them illiberal and intolerant. The West must accept the fact that a sizable chunk of humanity does not regard materialism, individualism, liberalism, progress, and democracy - at least in their Western guises - as universal or desirable.
Live and let live (and live and let die) must replace the West's malignant optimism and intellectual and spiritual arrogance.
Edward K. Thompson, the managing editor of "Life" from 1949 to 1961, once wrote:
"'Life' must be curious, alert, erudite and moral, but it must achieve this without being holier-than-thou, a cynic, a know-it-all or a Peeping Tom."
The West has grossly and thoroughly violated Thompson's edict. In its oft-interrupted intercourse with these forsaken regions of the globe, it has acted, alternately, as a Peeping Tom, a cynic and a know it all. It has invariably behaved as if it were holier-than-thou. In an unmitigated and fantastic succession of blunders, miscalculations, vain promises, unkept threats and unkempt diplomats - it has driven the world to the verge of war and the regions it "adopted" to the threshold of economic and social upheaval.
Enamored with the new ideology of free marketry cum democracy, the West first assumed the role of the omniscient. It designed ingenious models, devised foolproof laws, imposed fail-safe institutions and strongly "recommended" measures. Its representatives, the tribunes of the West, ruled the plebeian East with determination rarely equaled by skill or knowledge.
Velvet hands couched in iron gloves, ignorance disguised by economic newspeak, geostrategic interests masquerading as forms of government, characterized their dealings with the natives. Preaching and beseeching from ever higher pulpits, they poured opprobrium and sweet delusions on the eagerly duped, naive, bewildered masses.
The deceit was evident to the indigenous cynics - but it was the failure that dissuaded them and others besides. The West lost its former colonies not when it lied egregiously, not when it pretended to know for sure when it surely did not know, not when it manipulated and coaxed and coerced - but when it failed.
To the peoples of these regions, the king was fully dressed. It was not a little child but an enormous debacle that exposed his nudity. In its presumptuousness and pretentiousness, feigned surety and vain clichés, imported economic models and exported cheap raw materials - the West succeeded to demolish beyond reconstruction whole economies, to ravage communities, to wreak ruination upon the centuries-old social fabric, woven diligently by generations.
It brought crime and drugs and mayhem but gave very little in return, only a horizon beclouded and thundering with vacuous eloquence. As a result, while tottering regional governments still pay lip service to the values of Capitalism, the masses are enraged and restless and rebellious and baleful and anti-Western to the core.
The disenchanted were not likely to acquiesce for long - not only with the West's neo-colonialism but also with its incompetence and inaptitude, with the nonchalant experimentation that it imposed upon them and with the abyss between its proclamations and its performance.
Throughout this time, the envoys of the West - its mediocre politicians, its insatiably ruthless media, its obese tourists, its illiterate soldiers, and its armchair economists - continue to play the role of God, wreaking greater havoc than even the original.
While confessing to omniscience (in breach of every tradition scientific and religious), they also developed a kind of world weary, unshaven cynicism interlaced with fascination at the depths plumbed by the locals' immorality and amorality.
The jet-set Peeping Toms reside in five star hotels (or luxurious apartments) overlooking the communist, or Middle-Eastern, or African shantytowns. They drive utility vehicles to the shabby offices of the native bureaucrats and dine in $100 per meal restaurants ("it's so cheap here").
In between kebab and hummus they bemoan and grieve the corruption and nepotism and cronyism ("I simply love their ethnic food, but they are so..."). They mourn the autochthonous inability to act decisively, to cut red tape, to manufacture quality, to open to the world, to be less xenophobic (said while casting a disdainful glance at the native waiter).
To them it looks like an ancient force of nature and, therefore, an inevitability - hence their cynicism. Mostly provincial people with horizons limited by consumption and by wealth, these heralds of the West adopt cynicism as shorthand for cosmopolitanism. They erroneously believe that feigned sarcasm lends them an air of ruggedness and rich experience and the virile aroma of decadent erudition. Yet all it does is make them obnoxious and even more repellent to the residents than they already were.
Ever the preachers, the West - both Europeans and Americans - uphold themselves as role models of virtue to be emulated, as points of reference, almost inhuman or superhuman in their taming of the vices, avarice up front.
Yet the chaos and corruption in their own homes is broadcast live, day in and day out, into the cubicles inhabited by the very people they seek to so transform. And they conspire and collaborate in all manner of venality and crime and scam and rigged elections in all the countries they put the gospel to.
In trying to put an end to history, they seem to have provoked another round of it - more vicious, more enduring, more traumatic than before. That the West is paying the price for its mistakes I have no doubt. For isn't it a part and parcel of its teachings that everything has a price and that there is always a time of reckoning?
More about this topic here:
http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com
http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conflictransition/messages/
The Clash of Islam and Liberalism
By: Sam Vaknin
Islam is not merely a religion. It is also - and perhaps, foremost - a state ideology. It is all-pervasive and missionary. It permeates every aspect of social cooperation and culture. It is an organizing principle, a narrative, a philosophy, a value system, and a vade mecum. In this it resembles Confucianism and, to some extent, Hinduism.
Judaism and its offspring, Christianity - though heavily involved in political affairs throughout the ages - have kept their dignified distance from such carnal matters. These are religions of "heaven" as opposed to Islam, a practical, pragmatic, hands-on, ubiquitous, "earthly" creed.
Secular religions - Democratic Liberalism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Socialism and other isms - are more akin to Islam than to, let's say, Buddhism. They are universal, prescriptive, and total. They provide recipes, rules, and norms regarding every aspect of existence - individual, social, cultural, moral, economic, political, military, and philosophical.
At the end of the Cold War, Democratic Liberalism stood triumphant over the fresh graves of its ideological opponents. They have all been eradicated. This precipitated Fukuyama's premature diagnosis (the End of History). But one state ideology, one bitter rival, one implacable opponent, one contestant for world domination, one antithesis remained - Islam.
Militant Islam is, therefore, not a cancerous mutation of "true" Islam. On the contrary, it is the purest expression of its nature as an imperialistic religion which demands unmitigated obedience from its followers and regards all infidels as both inferior and avowed enemies.
The same can be said about Democratic Liberalism. Like Islam, it does not hesitate to exercise force, is missionary, colonizing, and regards itself as a monopolist of the "truth" and of "universal values". Its antagonists are invariably portrayed as depraved, primitive, and below par.
Such mutually exclusive claims were bound to lead to an all-out conflict sooner or later. The "War on Terrorism" is only the latest round in a millennium-old war between Islam and other "world systems".
Such interpretation of recent events enrages many. They demand to know (often in harsh tones):
- Don't you see any difference between terrorists who murder civilians and regular armies in battle?
Both regulars and irregulars slaughter civilians as a matter of course. "Collateral damage" is the main outcome of modern, total warfare - and of low intensity conflicts alike.
There is a major difference between terrorists and soldiers, though:
Terrorists make carnage of noncombatants their main tactic - while regular armies rarely do. Such conduct is criminal and deplorable, whoever the perpetrator.
But what about the killing of combatants in battle? How should we judge the slaying of soldiers by terrorists in combat?
Modern nation-states enshrined the self-appropriated monopoly on violence in their constitutions and ordinances (and in international law). Only state organs - the army, the police - are permitted to kill, torture, and incarcerate.
Terrorists are trust-busters: they, too, want to kill, torture, and incarcerate. They seek to break the death cartel of governments by joining its ranks.
Thus, when a soldier kills terrorists and ("inadvertently") civilians (as "collateral damage") - it is considered above board. But when the terrorist decimates the very same soldier - he is decried as an outlaw.
Moreover, the misbehavior of some countries - not least the United States - led to the legitimization of terrorism. Often nation-states use terrorist organizations to further their geopolitical goals. When this happens, erstwhile outcasts become "freedom fighters", pariahs become allies, murderers are recast as sensitive souls struggling for equal rights. This contributes to the blurring of ethical percepts and the blunting of moral judgment.
- Would you rather live under sharia law? Don't you find Liberal Democracy vastly superior to Islam?
Superior, no. Different - of course. Having been born and raised in the West, I naturally prefer its standards to Islam's. Had I been born in a Muslim country, I would have probably found the West and its principles perverted and obnoxious.
The question is meaningless because it presupposes the existence of an objective, universal, culture and period independent set of preferences. Luckily, there is no such thing.
- In this clash of civilization whose side are you on?
This is not a clash of civilizations. Western culture is inextricably intertwined with Islamic knowledge, teachings, and philosophy. Christian fundamentalists have more in common with Muslim militants than with East Coast or French intellectuals.
Muslims have always been the West's most defining Other. Islamic existence and "gaze" helped to mold the West's emerging identity as a historical construct. From Spain to India, the incessant friction and fertilizing interactions with Islam shaped Western values, beliefs, doctrines, moral tenets, political and military institutions, arts, and sciences.
This war is about world domination. Two incompatible thought and value systems compete for the hearts and minds (and purchasing power) of the denizens of the global village. Like in the Westerns, by high noon, either one of them is left standing - or both will have perished.
Where does my loyalty reside?
I am a Westerner, so I hope the West wins this confrontation. But, in the process, it would be good if it were humbled, deconstructed, and reconstructed. One beneficial outcome of this conflict is the demise of the superpower system - a relic of days bygone and best forgotten. I fully believe and trust that in militant Islam, the United States has found its match.
In other words, I regard militant Islam as a catalyst that will hasten the transformation of the global power structure from unipolar to multipolar. It may also commute the United States itself. It will definitely rejuvenate religious thought and cultural discourse. All wars do.
Aren't you overdoing it? After all, al-Qaida is just a bunch of terrorists on the run!
The West is not fighting al-Qaida. It is facing down the circumstances and ideas that gave rise to al-Qaida. Conditions - such as poverty, ignorance, disease, oppression, and xenophobic superstitions - are difficult to change or to reverse. Ideas are impossible to suppress. Already, militant Islam is far more widespread and established that any Western government would care to admit.
History shows that all terrorist groupings ultimately join the mainstream. Many countries - from Israel to Ireland and from East Timor to Nicaragua - are governed by former terrorists. Terrorism enhances social upward mobility and fosters the redistribution of wealth and resources from the haves to haves not.
Al-Qaida, despite its ominous portrayal in the Western press - is no exception. It, too, will succumb, in due time, to the twin lures of power and money. Nihilistic and decentralized as it is - its express goals are the rule of Islam and equitable economic development. It is bound to get its way in some countries.
The world of the future will be truly pluralistic. The proselytizing zeal of Liberal Democracy and Capitalism has rendered them illiberal and intolerant. The West must accept the fact that a sizable chunk of humanity does not regard materialism, individualism, liberalism, progress, and democracy - at least in their Western guises - as universal or desirable.
Live and let live (and live and let die) must replace the West's malignant optimism and intellectual and spiritual arrogance.
Edward K. Thompson, the managing editor of "Life" from 1949 to 1961, once wrote:
"'Life' must be curious, alert, erudite and moral, but it must achieve this without being holier-than-thou, a cynic, a know-it-all or a Peeping Tom."
The West has grossly and thoroughly violated Thompson's edict. In its oft-interrupted intercourse with these forsaken regions of the globe, it has acted, alternately, as a Peeping Tom, a cynic and a know it all. It has invariably behaved as if it were holier-than-thou. In an unmitigated and fantastic succession of blunders, miscalculations, vain promises, unkept threats and unkempt diplomats - it has driven the world to the verge of war and the regions it "adopted" to the threshold of economic and social upheaval.
Enamored with the new ideology of free marketry cum democracy, the West first assumed the role of the omniscient. It designed ingenious models, devised foolproof laws, imposed fail-safe institutions and strongly "recommended" measures. Its representatives, the tribunes of the West, ruled the plebeian East with determination rarely equaled by skill or knowledge.
Velvet hands couched in iron gloves, ignorance disguised by economic newspeak, geostrategic interests masquerading as forms of government, characterized their dealings with the natives. Preaching and beseeching from ever higher pulpits, they poured opprobrium and sweet delusions on the eagerly duped, naive, bewildered masses.
The deceit was evident to the indigenous cynics - but it was the failure that dissuaded them and others besides. The West lost its former colonies not when it lied egregiously, not when it pretended to know for sure when it surely did not know, not when it manipulated and coaxed and coerced - but when it failed.
To the peoples of these regions, the king was fully dressed. It was not a little child but an enormous debacle that exposed his nudity. In its presumptuousness and pretentiousness, feigned surety and vain clichés, imported economic models and exported cheap raw materials - the West succeeded to demolish beyond reconstruction whole economies, to ravage communities, to wreak ruination upon the centuries-old social fabric, woven diligently by generations.
It brought crime and drugs and mayhem but gave very little in return, only a horizon beclouded and thundering with vacuous eloquence. As a result, while tottering regional governments still pay lip service to the values of Capitalism, the masses are enraged and restless and rebellious and baleful and anti-Western to the core.
The disenchanted were not likely to acquiesce for long - not only with the West's neo-colonialism but also with its incompetence and inaptitude, with the nonchalant experimentation that it imposed upon them and with the abyss between its proclamations and its performance.
Throughout this time, the envoys of the West - its mediocre politicians, its insatiably ruthless media, its obese tourists, its illiterate soldiers, and its armchair economists - continue to play the role of God, wreaking greater havoc than even the original.
While confessing to omniscience (in breach of every tradition scientific and religious), they also developed a kind of world weary, unshaven cynicism interlaced with fascination at the depths plumbed by the locals' immorality and amorality.
The jet-set Peeping Toms reside in five star hotels (or luxurious apartments) overlooking the communist, or Middle-Eastern, or African shantytowns. They drive utility vehicles to the shabby offices of the native bureaucrats and dine in $100 per meal restaurants ("it's so cheap here").
In between kebab and hummus they bemoan and grieve the corruption and nepotism and cronyism ("I simply love their ethnic food, but they are so..."). They mourn the autochthonous inability to act decisively, to cut red tape, to manufacture quality, to open to the world, to be less xenophobic (said while casting a disdainful glance at the native waiter).
To them it looks like an ancient force of nature and, therefore, an inevitability - hence their cynicism. Mostly provincial people with horizons limited by consumption and by wealth, these heralds of the West adopt cynicism as shorthand for cosmopolitanism. They erroneously believe that feigned sarcasm lends them an air of ruggedness and rich experience and the virile aroma of decadent erudition. Yet all it does is make them obnoxious and even more repellent to the residents than they already were.
Ever the preachers, the West - both Europeans and Americans - uphold themselves as role models of virtue to be emulated, as points of reference, almost inhuman or superhuman in their taming of the vices, avarice up front.
Yet the chaos and corruption in their own homes is broadcast live, day in and day out, into the cubicles inhabited by the very people they seek to so transform. And they conspire and collaborate in all manner of venality and crime and scam and rigged elections in all the countries they put the gospel to.
In trying to put an end to history, they seem to have provoked another round of it - more vicious, more enduring, more traumatic than before. That the West is paying the price for its mistakes I have no doubt. For isn't it a part and parcel of its teachings that everything has a price and that there is always a time of reckoning?
More about this topic here:
http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com
http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conflictransition/messages/
Monday, July 08, 2002
EUROPE / BALKAN AND CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
LINK #1
After the Rain - How the West Lost the East
http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com
The history, societies, cultures, politics and economies of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkan.
LINK #2
Central Europe Review Author Archive
http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html
Author Archive of Political Columns in "Central Europe Review".
INTERNET HISTORY
Internet- a Medium or a Message?
http://samvak.tripod.com/internet.html
The future of the Internet as a medium in light of the history of other media.
ISLAMIC HISTORY / RELIGION
The Crescent and the Cross - Religious Co-existence in the Balkan
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp59.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp59a.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp59b.html
PSYCHOHISTORY
Narcissists, Group Behaviour, and Terrorism
http://samvak.tripod.com/12.html
Collective Narcissism
http://samvak.tripod.com/14.html
TERRORISM
Terrorists and Freedom Fighters - Profiles of Four Terrorist Organizations
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp52.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp53.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp54.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp55.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp56.html
Money laundering
http://samvak.tripod.com/nm104.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp96.html
WOMEN
Women under Communism and in Transition
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp70.html
LINK #1
After the Rain - How the West Lost the East
http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com
The history, societies, cultures, politics and economies of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkan.
LINK #2
Central Europe Review Author Archive
http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html
Author Archive of Political Columns in "Central Europe Review".
INTERNET HISTORY
Internet- a Medium or a Message?
http://samvak.tripod.com/internet.html
The future of the Internet as a medium in light of the history of other media.
ISLAMIC HISTORY / RELIGION
The Crescent and the Cross - Religious Co-existence in the Balkan
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp59.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp59a.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp59b.html
PSYCHOHISTORY
Narcissists, Group Behaviour, and Terrorism
http://samvak.tripod.com/12.html
Collective Narcissism
http://samvak.tripod.com/14.html
TERRORISM
Terrorists and Freedom Fighters - Profiles of Four Terrorist Organizations
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp52.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp53.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp54.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp55.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp56.html
Money laundering
http://samvak.tripod.com/nm104.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp96.html
WOMEN
Women under Communism and in Transition
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp70.html
