It’s Imperialism, Stupid
CILLIAN DOYLE

‘The man with the boots cares not where he places his feet’ – Jonathan Swift

Manifest Destiny, the Whiteman’s burden, Mission Civilisatrice, the Chosen people and American exceptionalism. Different ideologies espoused by different nations at different times, yet what do they all share in common? They all betray the same inherent moral solipsism that is conducive to empire. The belief that the elementary rights of people can be trodden upon when the ‘greater good’ is at stake. During the Cold War communism was constantly said to be antithetical to human rights with the not so subtle corollary that U.S opposition to communism was therefore a crusade in the name of human rights. But was it? It costs nothing to invoke the cause of human rights to lend credibility and legitimacy to imperial ventures, in fact there are often significant and manifest payoffs for doing so. However it is vital to separate words from deeds, action from rhetoric. The fall of communism led some to proclaim that U.S foreign policy had entered a new ‘noble phase’ one with a ‘saintly glow’. That is of course before the events of 9/11. However was there any discernible shift in U.S foreign policy, one that moved to bring human rights in from the cold and give it a place at the table? In this authors opinion, no. Policies tend to be rooted in domestic institutions and embody a fundamental distribution of power, these are stable and face small change so it should be of little surprise if policy choices continue within a narrow spectrum. Oh the rhetoric can change and new doctrines can be proclaimed, but with regard to U.S policy there has been a remarkable continuity, so as the old saying goes ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’.

The events of 9/11 led the U.S to re-declare a ‘War on Terror’(it had already been declared by much of the same people then in the Reagan administration two decades previous). Thus a brief look at the historical record confirms the assertion of the esteemed IR scholar Kenneth Waltz that ‘September 11^th would at most further trends that were already in motion’. So in effect there would be a continuation of long standing policies only with new pretexts. The new pretext – as Falk alludes to – being that in a global ‘war on terror’ the world is a battlefield and every human regardless of nationality is a potential combatant.

One of the most fundamental human rights enshrined in the founding documents of the United Nations, indeed arguably the gold standard, is the protection from the ‘supreme international crime’ of aggression. There are no grounds for self-serving moral ‘relativism’ or ‘exceptionalism’. But if article 2(4) was to hold any real authority then every post-war U.S president could theoretically be tried for violations of the Nuremberg principles. To the casual reader this may seem at best preposterous and at worst incendiary, so let’s take a look at the historical record. Leaving aside one of the more obvious examples of post-war U.S violations of international law – the Vietnam war with the government fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a pretext for invasion – let us turn to a lesser known but equally illegal war, that in Nicaragua. The Reagan government’s campaign of state terror to overthrow a democratic government fell well within the realms of ‘aggression’ as codified at Nuremberg. So much so that Nicaragua brought its cause against the U.S before the International Court of Justice. While the court ruled in favour of Nicaragua the case failed as the U.S rejected the World Court decision and then vetoed two Security Council resolutions supporting its findings thereby making it the only country to ever completely reject a World Court decision leaving it really and truly in ‘splendid isolation’ on such matters of international law. The U.S has since 1979 been quick to point out the human rights abuses in Iran, indeed it was one of the so called ‘Axis of Evil’, yet what is rarely mentioned is that it was the U.S in 1953 who helped stage a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh who had nationalised the British oil companies. Some scholars, particularly Donnelly (Donnelly p.130) in his discussion of U.S support for Apartheid South Africa, have attempted to portray U.S support for despotic regimes as ‘moral’ but ‘misjudged’, in this author’s opinion that in itself is a misguided judgement for they exhibit all the amoral qualities of neoliberalism. The actions taken above often invoked the name of human rights but were rarely ever in accord with their principles.

But back to the present. While the U.S government sees fit to constantly deride the human rights policies of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba it is her regional allies who are by far the worst human rights abusers. Just look to her number one ally in the hemisphere, Colombia – one of the largest recipients of U.S military aid – to see a horrendous record of abuses. Thanks to the actions of the Colombian military and its privatised paramilitaries    (see neoliberalism) the country has the largest displaced population in the world standing at over 5 million. Turning to Mexico, another U.S regional ally, who in conjunction with the U.S has prosecuted the so called ‘War on Drugs’ which has to date killed over 47,000 civilians. Shifting now to the Middle East where the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq* – a euphemistically termed ‘war of choice’ as Richard Falk notes – although made in the name of democracy and nation building, have produced a plethora of the most serious human rights abuses. Barack Obama may have ran for election on a platform of closing torture prisons such as Abu Ghraib, Bagram Airbase and Guantanamo Bay but the post Bush era has produced a continuation of the policy of its predecessor, albeit with softer rhetoric. The counterinsurgency programs which have been instigated in the above countries, among others, raise serious ethical and legal questions. The Army counterinsurgency field manual 3-24 pioneered by General David Petraeus, now head of the CIA, utilises embedded civilian anthropologists to help track insurgents.

Despite the ethical questions this raises (a breach of a Hippocratic oath of sorts) there is a peculiar and disheartening irony given that anthropology was at one time referred to as the ‘handmaiden of colonialism’. While the increasingly common use of drone attacks – once every four days in Pakistan according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism – are made in the name of defence and the war on Al Qaeda despite their direct violation of the country’s sovereign territory. Furthermore these drones are operated by the CIA a civilian institution very often outside designated combat zones. This has serious implications, for such a civilian organisation is not governed, unlike the military, by the Law of Armed Conduct with all its rules and restrictions, so we simply do not know by what procedures they operate on and what restraints they are under. Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law School writes ‘At the very time we are trying to win hearts and minds to respect the rule of law, we are ourselves failing to respect a very basic rule: remote weapons systems belong on the battlefield.’ What’s more the indiscriminate killing of civilians at the hands of these drones has been one of the most controversial aspects of the policy. While there is widespread disagreement over the number of deaths caused to non-combatants the Brookings institute estimates that for every one militant killed 10 civilians die. Richard Falk correctly highlights the shameful ignorance around the number of Iraqi civilian deaths, now more than 1 million, perhaps an equally distressing display of ignorance is the fact that 92% of Afghans have never heard of 9/11, the very reason for the U.S occupation of the nation. A damning indictment of the notion of nation building.

The U.S can continue to preach to other nations about human rights but so long as she fails to adhere to her own standards those words will be demonstrably vacuous. The suspension of habeas corpus at home, the utilisation of torture and extraordinary rendition, the unconditional support for the Israeli occupation, the propping up of corrupt Arab dictators and the breaching of other sovereign nations territories equates to a policy of do as I say not as I do. Edmund Burke once wrote that ‘Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.