America Cares Only for Itself!
Prof. Brigitte Schulz, October 14, 2001
(Schulz is an associate professor of political science at Trinity
College in Hartford, Conn)
Special to The Hartford Courant
Striking a military blow against a country we now see as closely
allied with our new enemy, terrorism, appeals to our instinct for
vengeance for Sept. 11. But it will only make a bad situation worse.
A military response does not address the many causes that brought the
world to this new and dangerous juncture. By treating terrorism not as
a symptom of an urgent set of diseases but as the disease itself, we
are only strengthening the forces of global disintegration and chaos.
Look at the new name given by the Pentagon to this military operation:
Enduring Freedom. But freedom for whom? Does it mean freedom from
hunger, from disease, from a life of desperation in a growing number
of refugee camps? Does it give hope to a world in which inequality has
steadily increased over the past decade?
We need to hear the voices of the billions of people living on less
than $2 a day, 1.3 billion on less than $1 a day. We must understand
that what President Bush calls our American way of life is closely
linked to this deprivation and despair. Where does the gasoline come
from that we put into our cars? Who grows the bananas that we feed our
children, the coffee we drink every day to keep up the pace of our
hectic lives? What is the human cost associated with our pattern of
consumption to these people living in faraway lands? We might not
care, but our unwillingness to listen is at our own peril.
The Founding Fathers created the U.S. political system of checks and
balances, understanding that absolute power corrupts absolutely. We
need to understand that the corrupting influence of absolute power
also prevails at the global level. We like to congratulate ourselves
on being the sole remaining superpower, but we have systematically
blocked attempts of those less powerful, less rich, less visible, to
create structures of dialogue with us. The United Nations is one of
the few international organizations in which smaller and less powerful
countries are given a voice, with messages that we often don't want to
hear. Kofi Annan's award for this year's Nobel Peace Prize reflects
that world opinion stands behind the United Nations as an instrument
of global dialogue and cooperation.
But h do we treat the United Nations? The United States is perennially
behind in paying dues to the United Nations and arrogantly insists
that the organization pay more attention to what it wants. When small
and poor countries called for a new international economic order in
the 1970s, the United States crushed that effort. When, just this
year, people who feel disenfranchised by the legacy of colonialism,
slavery and racism came to Durban, South Africa, to discuss
grievances, the United States sent only a minor delegation that
departed early.
We also pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, although
we are the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. We undermined
efforts at a U.N. conference this summer to gain control over small
arms that kill and maim untold numbers of people around the world
every year.
The point is not that we are automatically wrong and most of the rest
of the world is always right. It is that we are an arrogant power,
secure in the geographic safety of our borders and trusting in the
might of our military. We vastly outspend all other countries; in
fact, we spend more on our military than the next eight big spenders
combined. Our Navstar Global Positioning System operates 24 satellites
orbiting space that can emit continuous navigational signals to our
military forces anywhere in the world.
Part of our anger, our insecurity, comes from knowing that our past
approach to guaranteeing safety has been a failure. Feeding the
military-industrial complex is clearly not the answer, yet this is
exactly what our response has been so far. The simple truth is that a
world so profoundly asymmetrical in its distribution of wealth, power
and resources will never be secure or free. We want to believe that
this "new war" is a war between Islam and the West. It is not. It is
the predictable result of a massive failure of the West to support
freedom, democracy, justice and economic development with anything
other than lip service.
Communism collapsed because the citizens inside these countries had
enough of the double-speak of their Communist parties, of the
promises, the lies, the deception. It is not enough for our government
to speak of freedom but ensure it only for ourselves, to speak of the
American way of life but only for ourselves. If we want peace, we have
to make sure that there is enduring freedom for all inhabitants of
this planet. And that means listening rather than shooting, supporting
economic development rather than feeding the Pentagon and
understanding that our present way of life is unsustainable.
The present international political and economic order systematically
empowers and enriches the few while ignoring the needs and aspirations
of the majority. That, at least, is how much of the world sees it, and
as the tragic events of the past few weeks have shown, we ignore the
voices of the disaffected at our own risk.
If we indeed want enduring peace and freedom, we must find new
structures of dialogue and cooperation rather than following our
reflex of resorting to military action. By strictly adhering to
international law, we will show a disaffected world that death and
destruction are not acceptable ways to handle fundamental
disagreements.
By adding to death and destruction ourselves, we do not contribute to
a more peaceful world. In fact, we have just contributed to an
escalating spiral of violence and despair.
Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service"
AP-NY-10-16-01 1111EDT!
