The other day a friend, whose thoughts I take most seriously, said to me anxiously, “But what happens to the antiwar movement once the war starts? We need to begin thinking about that soon.” Paul Woodward has already been thinking about that one. The editor of www.warincontext.org, an ecumenical, oppositional website, in an essay written for www.YellowTimes.org, raises a number of important questions about the antiwar movement that we should all consider, particularly whether we should face the imperial moment at hand more fully and directly. (His comments on the role China plays in the minds of the Busheviks, by the way, are particularly astute.)
The fact is, when a war starts, as we learned from Gulf War I, the patriotic moment may be intense — and if scattered violent antiwar acts of opposition break out, if the war is brutal but brief and initially seems successful (as in Afghanistan), we may have to live through a period of eclipse. It’s important to steel ourselves for that and to be as clear as possible about what we each actually believe. On the other hand, I happen to believe that, this time around, American triumphalism — what I once called “victory culture,” when it was a more profound phenomenon — is but skin deep, if that. It lacks what might today be called a “backstory,” a history, a sense of past. It’s floating on a sea of fear, which only takes you so far, particularly if any of the many things that might go wrong in the midst of a war, do go wrong.
George Monbiot, columnist for the Guardian, has been considering similar questions of empire and movement. It’s obvious that the Bush administration has been intent on tearing down every multilateral global political institution around, but I had thought the economic ones were safe. Monbiot suggests that I was wrong, that the global rulebook is being ripped up by the U.S. across the full spectrum of institutions. He says, “Those of us who have campaigned against the grotesque injustices of the existing world order will quickly discover that a world with no institutions is even nastier than a world run by the wrong ones.” But he also suggests that with the globe’s shared institutions scaled down, sidelined, or demolished, the American imperial urge will stand in greater relief in the world — and in this there might be new possibilities for a global movement. Tom
‘It’s the empire, stupid!”
By Paul Woodward
YellowTimes.org
February 22, 2003The anti-war movement is on a roll! Millions marched in London and Rome, hundreds of thousands gathered (but were banned from marching) in New York, while countless other demonstrations large and small spanned the globe. For a movement opposing a war that hasn’t even begun, these are heady times.
As the U.S. and Britain now face major obstacles in the U.N. Security Council, the prospect that war might be averted seems tantalizingly close. Even so, the Bush administration is itching to stop talking and start fighting and we mustn’t forget that this is an administration that pays far more attention to public relations than public opinion. The warmongering may be toned down for a few days, but we can expect it to come back in full force before very long.
Paul Woodward edits The War in Context, critical perspectives on the war on terrorism, war against Iraq, and the Middle East conflict.
The anti-war movement is on a roll! Millions marched in London and Rome, hundreds of thousands gathered (but were banned from marching) in New York, while countless other demonstrations large and small spanned the globe. For a movement opposing a war that hasn’t even begun, these are heady times.
As the U.S. and Britain now face major obstacles in the U.N. Security Council, the prospect that war might be averted seems tantalizingly close. Even so, the Bush administration is itching to stop talking and start fighting and we mustn’t forget that this is an administration that pays far more attention to public relations than public opinion. The warmongering may be toned down for a few days, but we can expect it to come back in full force before very long.
Paul Woodward edits The War in Context, critical perspectives on the war on terrorism, war against Iraq, and the Middle East conflict.
To read more Woodward click here
Out of the wreckage
By tearing up the global rulebook, the US is in fact undermining its own imperial rule
By George Monbiot
February 25, 2003
The GuardianThe men who run the world are democrats at home and dictators abroad. They came to power by means of national elections which possess, at least, the potential to represent the will of their people. Their citizens can dismiss them without bloodshed, and challenge their policies in the expectation that, if enough people join in, they will be obliged to listen.
Internationally, they rule by brute force. They and the global institutions they run exercise greater economic and political control over the people of the poor world than its own governments do. But those people can no sooner challenge or replace them than the citizens of the Soviet Union could vote Stalin out of office. Their global governance is, by all the classic political definitions, tyrannical.
But while citizens’ means of overthrowing this tyranny are limited, it seems to be creating some of the conditions for its own destruction.
The Age of Consent, George Monbiot’s proposals for global democratic governance, will be published in June