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March 11, 2007
Now This Is Some Leftism
By Ankush
This is an interesting little artifact, though not because I agree with it: Writing in The London Review of Books, Mahmood Mamdani argues from the left against a humanitarian intervention in Darfur. In essence, Mamdani leverages the realization that there is very little the US can do about the civil war in Iraq in order to argue that we shouldn't intervene in what, according to him, is the structurally similar "insurgency and counter-insurgency" going on in Darfur. Mamdani refuses to call Darfur a genocide because he thinks the populations involved can't be reduced to two distinct identities, and he has some harsh words to say about Nicholas Kristof's writing on Darfur in particular. (Kristof responded to this line of attack, convincingly in my view, last year.)
But check out the last paragraph:
[P]eace cannot be built on humanitarian intervention, which is the language of big powers. The history of colonialism should teach us that every major intervention has been justified as humanitarian, a ‘civilising mission’. ... [T]he chronicling of atrocities had a practical purpose: it provided the moral pretext for intervention. Now, as then, imperial interventions claim to have a dual purpose: on the one hand, to rescue minority victims of ongoing barbarities and, on the other, to quarantine majority perpetrators with the stated aim of civilising them. Iraq should act as a warning on this score. The worst thing in Darfur would be an Iraq-style intervention. That would almost certainly spread the civil war to other parts of Sudan, unravelling the peace process in the east and south and dragging the whole country into the global War on Terror.
This is silly on a couple levels. No one in the US or Britain wants to colonize Africa. Also, it's somewhat unclear just what sort of humanitarian intervention he's ruling out. (One led by the US alone? By the US in concert with the UN? By the UN alone? By the UN in concert with the African Union? All of the above? The reference to an Iraq-style intervention suggests the first option, but that's not really even on the table.)
The reason I find the piece noteworthy, though, is because you never really see anything like it in the US media. To my knowledge, not even Alexander Cockburn has taken Mamdani's exact position (though Cockburn frankly doesn't seem to have thought about Darfur all that much). For all the bloviating on the right about leftists and extremists, and for all the truly inane blog posts by Joe Klein purporting to identify people who don't exist (even Mamdani doesn't satisfy Klein's silly criteria), there's no one in a prominent position in the media who you could call a foreign policy leftist -- someone, for instance, who seriously uses words like "colonialism" and "imperialism" to critique foreign policy.
So when I come across something like this -- written in earnest by a Columbia professor, no less -- I'm pretty much in awe. Maybe I'm just not reading the right stuff, but I can't think of the last time I heard someone seriously talk like this about contemporary US foreign policy outside of a particularly bad undergraduate seminar. And even then, everyone else scoffed.
Update: Below, thanks to a couple of sharp commenters, I clarify that I'm not really talking about people who use the term "imperialism" on its own, but, rather, people who use "imperialism" as part of a package of terms, including, in particular "colonialism," with all its attendant connotations about "civilizing" people and so forth. Also, it's clear that there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about how to appropriately craft an intervention, but they don't really require us to talk about colonialism.
March 11, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
to quarantine majority perpetrators with the stated aim of civilising them
That's news to me. I thought the quarantine was to keep them apart until they can guarantee they won't kill anyone.
there's no one in a prominent position in the media who you could call a foreign policy leftist -- someone, for instance, who seriously uses words like "colonialism" and "imperialism" to critique foreign policy
That's because it's not smart to talk that way if you want to be taken seriously. Some people on liberal blogs (despite the fact that such people don't exist) do sometimes use such language, but it's generally treated more as venting or extremism (oops!) than analysis to be taken seriously in a literal way. Maybe one or two such posters will come by and defend such language.
Posted by: Sanpete | Mar 11, 2007 6:15:47 PM
Well, when no-lesser person than the President of the United States himself throws around crusade analogies, I certainly think a couple of anti-imperialists should get some air-time, if only to even things out.
You can read Brad Plumer writing for Mother Jones here http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/05/darfur_intervention.html
on the difficulties and complexities of intervening in Darfur. It's free of "extremist" rhetoric.
One of the many excellent point he makes is that enforcing a no-fly zone would involve the United States or the European powers setting up (permanent?) military bases in Sudan's neighbor Chad. Is it really absurd that imperialism comes up as a worry? What if actual combat that might destabilize the Sudanese government was necessary?
Posted by: Sam L. | Mar 11, 2007 6:28:11 PM
I'm one of the people who rolled our eyes when the Intl Socialist Org. showed up at every single event with an "End U.S. Imperialism" banner, but, you know, sometimes it's the right time of day for those stopped clocks. What else do you call the Bush administration's plans for Iraq? I mean, we are planning to build a series of permanent bases there, are we not? To add to our bases in Saudi Arabia? To better ensure that we can dominate the region militarily? How is that not imperialism?
Yes, yes, I know, intervening in Darfur probably wouldn't be an example of imperialism. I'm not defending Mamdani - I'm just addressing Ankush's astonishment at even hearing the word. My point is simply that if Ankush doesn't hear anyone use the term 'imperialism' to describe any aspects of current U.S. foreign policy, perhaps he should expand the circle of people he talks to.
Posted by: The Navigator | Mar 11, 2007 6:39:20 PM
Sanpete: You're right that people say crazy things in comment threads, which makes it inaccurate for me to say that no such people exist. They're just not prominent.
Sam and Navigator: It is true that you hear "imperialism" thrown around, and that word has its place on occasion, though mostly as a way of understanding how our actions might be received -- less, I think, as a way of understanding what American foreign policy at a particular moment is actually out to accomplish. But that aside, my surprise is mostly at the conjunction of "imperialism" and "colonialism." It's those words together that, to me, signal an outmoded way of looking at things, and it's the latter in particular that folds in the terminology about "civilising" people and so forth.
Posted by: Ankush | Mar 11, 2007 6:57:20 PM
Ankush - I was just going to ask where you'd been talking about foreign policy, if you hadn't heard the word "imperialism" used. If you don't thnk "imperialism" is our goal, then certainly "hegemony" is. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
However, I agree about "colonialism" I thought that idea died when India split from Britain.
There is a legitimate debate to be had as to whether "humanitarian intervention" requires the application of military force. I'm probably not the person to do that debate, but I could recommend talking to a few Serbs about it.
The professor does take a historical view on the nature of "humanitarian interventions" - it's certainly true that expansionist military powers throughout history have used the plight of minorities as justification for their own expansion.
Posted by: RickD | Mar 11, 2007 7:09:35 PM
I'm not sure you're giving this argument enough credit. It's definitely overblown rhetoric, but it's also the conclusion of a column (the place for such rhetoric). If you ignore the word "imperial" (which I do), then it's not so dumb at all. Personally, I don't think the US is an imperial power. But, there are certainly leading lights in our foreign policy establishment that seem to have imperial attitudes. Why does using that word automatically delegitimize a person? And why should we assume our leaders are always as smart as the public (lots of evidence suggests otherwise). Let's examine some of the claims:
1) "[P]eace cannot be built on humanitarian intervention, which is the language of big powers." - This is false, but it's not entirely false - humanitarian intervention often does not lead to peace. Conservatives were telling us this 10 years ago and it was "legitimate" then.
2) "The history of colonialism should teach us that every major intervention has been justified as humanitarian, a ‘civilising mission’. ... [T]he chronicling of atrocities had a practical purpose: it provided the moral pretext for intervention." - This is true. Now, if you assume he means - therefore every intervention is equally bad and imperialistic - then he looks dumb. If you assume his point is - we should hesitate before taking action on documented atrocities - he's right. Now, I don't think intervention in Darfur would be pretextual. Notably, we haven't intervened in Darfur. Intervening in Iraq could have been pretextual (all that oil), and we did intervene in Iraq. Let's face it: I don't think the US is imperialistic, but we need to think about how we look to everyone else.
3) "Now, as then, imperial interventions claim to have a dual purpose: on the one hand, to rescue minority victims of ongoing barbarities and, on the other, to quarantine majority perpetrators with the stated aim of civilising them." - Not how I would say it, but this is true. I think the word "imperial" is bad here. But it's also true that intervention is often justified as a way of rescuing one group. And we often believe we can remake the majority.
4) "Iraq should act as a warning on this score." - Completely true. We should hesitate before assuming we can succeed at remaking a majority or saving a minority.
5) "The worst thing in Darfur would be an Iraq-style intervention. That would almost certainly spread the civil war to other parts of Sudan, unravelling the peace process in the east and south and dragging the whole country into the global War on Terror." - I'm not sure. There is an argument that it might derail the peace process. It might spread the warfare.
Is this what I think about foreign policy? No. But it's basically defendable, and it has a much better basis in empirical reality than many of the overblown claims by the NeoCons. I'm astounded that this is apparently the "scoff" worthy.
I want to emphasize - I don't agree with his thoughts or theory. But if this is scoff worthy, then the vast majority of right-wing foreign policy is scoff worthy.
Posted by: MDtoMN | Mar 11, 2007 7:17:47 PM
MDtoMN: "But if this is scoff worthy, then the vast majority of right-wing foreign policy is scoff worthy." Perhaps not vast, but much of right-wing foreign policy? Sure. And that of the neocons? Damn straight.
Also, the claims about what could go wrong are defensible, as are the warnings about being too ambitious with military power. But we don't need this business about the history of colonialism and imperialism -- along with the talk of pretexts and civilizing people and so on -- to tell us that.
Posted by: Ankush | Mar 11, 2007 7:31:58 PM
It is, however, encouraging that you can get a job at Columbia without being forced to grasp that:
{A entails B} does not imply that {B entails A}
That is, the fact that some imperial powers have sometime engaged in imperialist interventions under the pretext of "humanitarian intervention" therefore implies that any time anyone calls for a humanitarian intervention they are an imperial power looking to make an imperialist intervention? Say what?
(Well, no, this does not help me with getting any papers published, since I would not deliberately use such fractured logic even if I knew I could get away with it ... but it does provide psychological encouragement.)
This argument seems to ignore a major part of the contribution of "neocolonialism" (some would argue the only contribution), which is the recognition that "colonialism" in many independent medium and low income nations has shifted to a relationship between those ruling in the capital city and the rest of the country, where an ability to rely on external power bases reduces the need to worry about gaining political support within the hinterland.
And Sudan is an excellent case of that ... probably even better than the DRC at this point in time ... since those in control of Sudan are the inheritors of an "imperial" tradition that antedated the rise of European imperial powers. With the backing of the Chinese, they certainly feel empowered to engage in genocide against ethnic groups in the south ... and, of course, it is oil that allows them to tap that external power base.
Posted by: BruceMcF | Mar 11, 2007 7:34:38 PM
"there's no one in a prominent position in the media who you could call a foreign policy leftist -- someone, for instance, who seriously uses words like "colonialism" and "imperialism" to critique foreign policy. "
Mamdani uses those words because he focuses his studies on colonialism and post-colonialism. You don't hear those words thrown around in mainstream media commentary, not becasue they never apply to discussions of US foreign policy, but because using them is considered in bad taste.
I don't know enough about Darfur to weigh in on this individual article, but Mamdani is not a light weight. From reading his other works he doesn't believe that the US is engaging in colonialism/imperialism in the "classical" sense of those words. Rather, he is looking at the relationships between political modernity and political violence and the relationships between the West and the third world. If you're going to do that historically, I don't think that you can ignore colonialism or imperialism.
Posted by: Vermin Jones | Mar 11, 2007 7:38:39 PM
Matt Yglesias actually uses "imperialism" fairly regularly, and talks a lot in general about the issue of the size of the military. Take a look.
Posted by: Dan Miller | Mar 11, 2007 7:48:35 PM
Vermin: Yeah, I actually know what Mamdani works on. I didn't mention this, but I went to Columbia, though I never had a class from him.
One of the seminars I had in mind at the end of my post, incidentally, was an actual seminar I took on Marxism. You could've guessed, right? Actually, though the seminar was mostly a disaster because of some of the participants, the professor, Jon Elster, was excellent, and he spent the bulk of his time talking about how bad he thought most of Marx's ideas were. In that and other venues, I ended up learning a ton from him (Elster, that is, less Marx).
Posted by: Ankush | Mar 11, 2007 7:51:49 PM
"Also, it's clear that there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about how to appropriately craft an intervention, but they don't really require us to talk about colonialism."
Really?
Read Clifford Geertz's Islam Observed - which looks at the influenec of colonialism on the development of Islam in Indonesia and Morocco and tell me that a look at the history of colonialism and its relationship to political/religious extreemism wouldn't have been useful in planning the invasion of Iraq.
Geertz's basic point was that you didn't see what we would call fundamentalism in either society on a large scale until the height of colonial involvement where religious extreemism became a way of defining yourself against the colonizing other.
I reread the book when we were about to invade Iraq and said "Hey, if the same dynamics play out we're going to see an eruption of religious based violence in Iraq." I'm not suggesting that was a particularly brilliant observation on my part. Indeed, when you look at the history of colonialism its pretty obvious.
I think that we avoid talking about colonialism, not because its irrelevant to interventions, but because it raises questions that we don't want to answer
Posted by: Vermin Jones | Mar 11, 2007 7:52:06 PM
I haven't read Clifford Geertz's book, but I'm sure it's good. Now, the impact that colonialism has had on societies that we're dealing with is fair game. But what Mamdani is doing is using colonialism as an argument against intervention because of the way in which it was used as a pretext for nefarious purposes and what it tells us about having aims that are too ambitious. The latter is what I have in mind when I say we don't need to talk about colonialism. We have plenty of examples to talk about -- our recent foray into Iraq, for instance -- that demonstrate that military power has very real limits. But it muddies up the water to invoke colonialism -- as if any of the vocal and visible American proponents of humanitarian intervention have designs even remotely resembling those of colonialists.
Posted by: Ankush | Mar 11, 2007 8:28:07 PM
No one in the US or Britain wants to colonize Africa.
Well, except for the parts of Africa that have oil.
Posted by: Brautigan | Mar 11, 2007 9:01:14 PM
If you recognize, which I presume you do, that the United States has an awfully long history spanning centuries and continents of imperialist policy, I think the burden of proof of good intentions is on you. Russia is threatened by our military bases and NATO expansions in Eastern Europe, Japan and Korea have serious issues with military bases as well, Israel and Iraq send a pretty terrible message, China worries about us arming Taiwan and trying to start an arms race... The list goes on. So I don't think the US has so reformed our foreign policy that we are immune from having our motives questioned.
But, when the we're building military bases next to and threatening military conflict with one of the chief suppliers of China's oil, our man is muddying the waters by, rightly, pointing out that we are using the same excuse as has been used for countless imperialist and colonial interventions? His point, I think, is not that intervening in Darfur is colonialist. It's that looking at the history of US interventions, the "humanitarian" excuse just isn't convincing by itself. I think that's a legitimate point.
Posted by: Sam L. | Mar 11, 2007 9:26:25 PM
Even the term colonialism has some problems when looked at in historical context. It was not all the same, by any means. British Colonialism, in India, for example, was largely executed by small numbers of Brit subjects from various places in their empire exercising mostly patron's control over a government and bureacracy that was indigenous. Even the military forces were largely local, although officered by Brits.
On the other hand, Belgian or Dutch colonialism was quite different in structure, so the general label obsures as much as it enlightens.
I agree with those above who argue that knowing the impact of colonialism has had on various nations is crucial, but reference to colonialism as a method of control has little to offer in the current world. Economic means, mostly in the private corporate sector are the current drivers of external control.
Humanitarian intervention has the same problems of varying widely in terms of the actors and actions. Some nations can pull this off with greater grace (France, for instance in former French colonies) and effect than others. The UN has a pretty good record for peacekeeping, if not peacemaking.
Saying that humanitarian intervention doesn't work is just as unhelpful as saying 'we don't talk to countries that support terrorism'. It all depends....
Much more helpful is a specific proposal on who should do what in cooperation with who to achieve some set of objectives that a wide variety of countries can agree upon. The labels aren't needed, and obstruct viewing the problems in the details.
Darfur is a mess and an international scandal, but as long as the recognized government of Sudan refuses outside aid and assistance that would truly help the victimized people, it really isn't going to get better until it is realized that intervening means military action (war) against the government - an no one seems to want to do that.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Mar 11, 2007 9:38:56 PM
"Now, the impact that colonialism has had on societies that we're dealing with is fair game."
Well, not just the historical impact of colonialism is relevant. A large amount of the history of the West invading and occupying non-Western countries happened under the context of colonialism. Thus, if you want to get an idea of any trends that happen in such instances, when a powerful nation controls a less powerful through force, imposing a political regime on them, etc. it might be good to look at the history of colonialism. That isn't to say that every instance of Western powers occupying or controlling non-Western countries through force will match the history of colonialism in every respect. Or to suggest that there is a History of Colonialism, instead of multiple histories. But to ignore it is to refuse to learn from history.
Beyond Mamdani's use of the words colonialism and imperialism, what do you think of his argument? Is Sudan being stripped of all complexities and reduced to a good vs. evil story that is politically decontextualized? What about his take on Rawanda?
Posted by: Vermin Jones | Mar 11, 2007 9:50:42 PM
Back in 1991, freshly unified to its Eastern poor portion, Germany looked for a quick new source of cash needed for rebuilding the Eastern Germany. It laid its eyes on the Slovenian and Croatian factories, some still state-owned, some in the process of privatization. There was a lot to buy cheaply, cheap labor to utilize and easy loot to be had. So, Germany encouraged Slovenia and Croatia to secede, despite the warning that this would lead to war (especially if the artificially-drawn administrative borders were not changed to better reflect the ethnic compositions of the regions). Germany pressured the EU, the UN and the US to recognize Slovenia and Croatia (often in exchange for various concessions, i.e., signing a particular treaty, allowing the UK to keep the pound instead of adopting the EURO, etc.). Lo and behold, the war broke out. What did Germany do? Went in and bought 51% of every company they could find and shuttled all the profits back to Germany.
That is called "economic colonialism".
When the USA/NATO intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo, it was under the pretext of "humanitarian action". It took sides (for its own geopolitical reasons) and faught on one side against the other. As a direct result of the intervention in Bosnia, the war there lasted about 5 years longer than it otherwise would, killed thousands of people more than otherwise woudl have died, and ended with a stalemate and an unviable country. The same goes for Kosovo.
That is called imperialism.
I have no idea what is the true state in Sudan, but when I hear the phrase "humanitarian intervention" I shudder. That is unlikely to be what it seems, and certainly not going to be anything nice to anyone on the ground there - except for the US domestic consumption and the next electoral cycle here.
Posted by: coturnix | Mar 11, 2007 10:10:35 PM
I have no idea what is the true state in Sudan, but when I hear the phrase "humanitarian intervention" I shudder.
How do feel about "genocide"?
That's a curious history of Slovenia and Croatia. Seems to leave out most of we usually hear are the relevant facts about why they became independent. I didn't realize Germany now basically owned them and took away all their profits.
Posted by: Sanpete | Mar 11, 2007 10:54:31 PM
Never trust the US media. On anything. No matter who's the President at the time. All of it has been documented - in other countries and other languages but could not make its way into the US press to this day. Try to dig early 1990s Japanese press, or Israeli, Ukrainian, French or Swiss press. Or Usenet.
Posted by: coturnix | Mar 12, 2007 1:11:55 AM
It really doesn't matter if you roll your eyes when you see America referred to as a "colonial" or "imperialist" power. That's how the rest of the world sees us, and that's a lot more important in terms of international action than how we see ourselves. We are certainly colonizing Iraq right now, no matter what you yourself thinks. We are setting up a puppet regime and draining that nation of it's resources to further our own position.
The fact of the matter is that nobody trusts us right now and nobody should. That's not going to change when George Bush is no longer president. For too long, we've allowed our citizens to believe that they are superior to the rest of the world. That we can do whatever we want, and nobody has the right to criticize us. Those beliefs won't end at the end of the Bush administration, and it's no longer possible for the rest of the world to ignore that. If we want to be viewed as something other than a colonial and imperial power, we really have to stop acting like one.
Posted by: soullite | Mar 12, 2007 5:48:51 AM
Soullite: ruling, not colonising. There are not thousands of Americans moving to Iraq to set up home.
Posted by: ajay | Mar 12, 2007 7:15:14 AM
But we don't need this business about the history of colonialism and imperialism -- along with the talk of pretexts and civilizing people and so on -- to tell us that.
I'm sorry, this is just Higher Broderism, and nothing more.
We oh-so-smart moderates wouldn't use those nasty words that socialists use. They may describe quite well the actual US colonial enterprise in Iraq, but surely we all know really the US's power is sweetness and light. One misstep in Iraq, that's all. Why can't the rest of the world understand?
Ok, fine, maybe we can talk about "colonialism" in terms of how we're viewed by the rest of the world, but surely those foreigners don't really understand that we just want to help them! Sweetness and light, a misstep in Iraq. Those foreigners would understand if they were as civilized as us... oops, sorry, wasn't supposed to say that, of course everyone knows that US policy treats other peoples as equal, with valid interpretations of the world situation. Just wrong interpretations, of course [strokes chin] because surely everyone knows that nothing hte US does can be understood as colonialist or imperialist, such nasty words.
I don't know nearly enough about Darfur to speak to the actual problem. But I can be damn sure that such Higher Broderism has no place in a real conversation about the topic.
Posted by: DivGuy | Mar 12, 2007 7:45:19 AM
I'm one of the people who rolled our eyes when the Intl Socialist Org. showed up at every single event with an "End U.S. Imperialism" banner...
It seems the Socialists and Communists, in their many iterations, have been a part of the anti-war movement since Vietnam and they show up at every rally. The American left seems to welcome them with open arms and because of this, has been associated with them. If the left were smart instead of simply opportunistic, they would start rejecting these groups, even when they play the same tune.
Posted by: Fred Jones | Mar 12, 2007 10:02:20 AM
Posted by: ajay | Mar 12, 2007 4:15:14 AM
Soullite: ruling, not colonising. There are not thousands of Americans moving to Iraq to set up home.
Except of course for the armed forces and the private contractors.
And, indeed, in the days of Anglo-Egyptian condominium, there were not large numbers of English moving to Sudan to set up home either. Mostly officials (now often subcontracted out) and military.
Posted by: BruceMcF | Mar 12, 2007 5:24:15 PM
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