Thursday, January 30, 2014

Non-intervention: Learning to Look the Other Way



Folks I know seem to really appreciate countries like Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and  the Czech Republic.  In our hemisphere, Chile and Argentina often get a shout out.  What’s something that these places have in common?  One thing is that they usually aren’t on the imperialist running dog list of foreign intervention.  That means that they prefer diplomacy to boots on the ground, and can in most cases spend what would be a military budget on social welfare programs.  In other words, when some wild and crazy civil war breaks out in the latest failed state, they largely look the other way.

As does China, Japan, and all the other Asian Tigers.  As does most of the world.  For when it’s UN Humanitarian Intervention time, anything passing above the token contingent is often the same players, France, Britain, often Canada, and of course the US.   All but Canada are old hands at empire, though the US never got into the colonial aspect of it, instead preferring bombs and briefcases of cash.  Complexity and nuance are not America’s strong suits.  

The problem with modern imperialism is that it doesn’t resemble that of, say, Genghis Khan’s Mongols, who erased any moral qualms they might have had by annihilating and enslaving its victims. For us, it’s always a mixture of brute calculation and naïve idealism.  Bombing people into modernity and liberal democracy is the peculiar heritage of our Jacobin era.  And guilt, guilt, guilt. 

So, let’s close those bases.  Let’s withdraw those troops.  Tell those petty dictators, no more briefcases or bitcoins: we’re out of the empire business.  

But can “we” do it?  Can you do it?  Can you look the other way?  Can we mind our own business? 
Our own business. Is there really any such thing anymore?  With all that global, interconnectedness, this neo-feudal web of obligations and ties.  Not very sexy is it, isolationism.

Of course, we can’t.  Part of Jacobin morality is, “you break it, you own it.”

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