Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

Under the Spell of the Hegemon

Ludwig Watzal | 09.02.2007 12:56 | Anti-militarism | World

Empire-building is a blindness, delusion and false security. Since all people yearn for freedom and self-determination, imperial humbris is based on rewriting human nature and history, stylizing arrogance as a natural law and trashing international law and democratic empowerment. The empire sees the speck in her sister's eye but not the log in her own eye.

UNDER THE SPELL OF THE HEGEMON

Can Solidarity and Sustainability Prevail? Two Books about the US by Josef Joffe and Noam Chomsky expressing Gratitude and Accusation

[This article published in: Freitag 03, 1/19/2007 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,  http://www.freitag.de/2007/03/07031501.php.]

by Ludwig Watzal

These two books could not be more different. The United States of America is the theme in both. However the authors seem to be writing about different countries. With Noam Chomsky, one imagines oneself in the “evil empire.” In contrast, Josef Joffe seeks to reactivate the cliché of the “kindly hegemon.” He shows great appreciation for the US. Happily he doesn’t use the belligerent anti-Islam rhetoric as in some articles of ZEIT. Both authors are differentiated or one-sided in their own way. They do education work with different emphases.

Chomsky emphasizes the shady sides of the imperial policy of his country. Joffe describes the sunny sides of the empire and shows much understanding for the “hyper-power.” But why did Joffe choose for his book title the term “hyper-power” coined by the former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine that critically describes the hegemony of the US at the turn of the millennium?

Chomsky, one of the most famous professors of linguistics of the US, presents another political book with the characteristic title “Failed State.” Readers imagine countries like Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq or “banana republics” classified by US analysts as “failed states.” On the other hand, Chomsky regards his own land as “failed.” This has much to do with the disastrous policy of president George W. Bush. However the author also criticizes the foreign policy of the US presidents since the Second World War.

How could the author classify the US as a “failed state”? He only applied the criteria with which the diverse US “think tanks” rate other states as “failed.” These states could not protect their citizens from violence because their decision-makers subordinated these questions since they were primarily interested in their own material advantage. Their rulers did not observe international law and other international agreements. All this is true for the US, Chomsky argues.

Joffe is much more state supporting. The US is the pivot of world politics. Only the US can ensure an ambivalent “order” in the international system. No other superpower can play this ordering function for the foreseeable future. Don’t Iraq, Afghanistan and relations with the Middle East conflict contradict Joffe’s assumption?

Or is the chaos only due to the missionary zealot George W. Bush? The author takes great pains to show Bill Clinton’s policy as Bush-light, packaged more tastefully in his rhetoric for Europeans.

Chomsky points to the contradictions and double standards of US foreign policy. The Bush administration tramples on the Geneva Convention and international law in the prisoner camp in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, refused to sign the Kyoto protocol, withdrew President Bill Clinton’s signature from the statute of the International Criminal Court and torpedoes the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. In 2000 the US was committed to concrete disarmament measures. Bush unilaterally canceled these measures. Israel violates what was demanded of the Saddam regime, the exact observance of UN resolutions. Therefore the US is the greatest threat to world peace. This thesis is corroborated by the fact that the world public increasingly sets the US in this “top” position.

Joffe’s theses on “anti-Americanism” and “Americanism” are bizarre and reflect ideological bias. He dismissed the polls of the Pew Research Center and those of the German Marshall Fund of the United States together with the Council on Foreign relations in Chicago with the argument that they only evaluated US policy. Their negative result doesn’t surprise empirically oriented contemporaries. Joffe imputes a “hidden agenda” to “Americanism” and sets out on a conspiracy theory terrain that he ascribes to “anti-Americanists.” However anti-American clichés and stereotypes in the Arab world cannot be denied. The pictures from the demonstrations at the World Economic Forum in Davos show that some Europeans are not immune from this stereotyping. Still there is also a great admiration for America. His abrasive thesis of “anti-Americanism” as a “substitute nationalism” of Europeans reveals his assumptions. A common European identity is defined in opposition to the US. Has Joffe forgotten the letter of the ten European “willing” who acted more papal than the pope toward Bush?

Whether Joffe’s analyses will last in 30 years is unclear. His US-American sympathy seems to be an expression of gratitude for the gratis security in the Cold War and the indirect assistance when the wall fell. The author certainly knows Germany paid a high equalization of war burdens in all the years. In contrast, whoever reads Chomsky’s analysis of US-Middle East policy for the first time in the book “Fateful Triangle” published in 1983 and reprinted in 1999 discovers that practically nothing has changed in the conduct of the US in relation to the Middle East conflict.

His critics accuse Chomsky of “anti-Americanism.” With the same right, Joffe could be criticized for “Americanism.” Both allegations are just as sensible as reproaching Jewish citizens of being “self-hating Jews” for criticizing Israel’s oppressive policy toward the Palestinians. Why can’t German opinion and political elite deal with the criticism of politics in other states? Where criticism is necessary as in the case of the US under George W. Bush or Israel’s politics, it must be delivered without being reproached for “anti-Americanism” or “anti-Semitism.” Chomsky’s very critical, realistic book has nothing anti-American but argues only on the basis of facts that question US policy. Readers will have to decide whether the US can really be made responsible for all the “evil” in the world as Chomsky’s massive criticism suggests. His book is always exciting. Whoever sees too much “anti-Americanism” here could take up Joffe’s Hyper-Power. In this way, both sides of German society will be served, the “anti-American” and the “pro-American.”


Noam Chomsky, Failed State, 2006

Josef Joffe, Die Hypermacht. Warum die USA die Welt beherrschen, 2006, 21 EUR

Ludwig Watzal
- e-mail: mbatko@lycos.com
- Homepage: http://www.mbtranslations.com

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech