A
Curious reversal of alliances
André Glucksmann
Translated by Douglas
French original: "L'étrange renversement d'alliance"
(Le Monde, 2003/04/04)Barely had the war begun when the debate flared up about... the day after. What role for the UN? Who will pay for the broken china? Who will win the reconstruction contracts? The controversy would be surreal if it didn’t hint at a fundamental uncertainty: what of the gulf separating the West from the West? An ordinary rift in transatlantic solidarity or the harbinger of an unexpected reversal of alliances?
Swinging through Paris on 11 February, Valdimir Putin, the new archangel of peace, called this “a red-letter day” and greeted Jacques Chirac as the leader who “has freed himself from bloc strategy.” The Communist bloc having disappeared in 1990, Vladimir Putin greets the man who, he thinks, has broken the democratic bloc and brought the transatlantic alliance to an end. NATO is a relic. Europe is unchaining itself from American tutelage. There is no longer a common enemy to unite the wine drinkers and those who appreciate Coca-Cola. In Paris and Berlin, it seems more fitting to side with the post-modern Putin than the fundamentalist Bush.
France-Germany-Russia-China-Syria, the “peace camp” intoning the grand aria of “law” over force. The only State with the distinction of having completely razed a capital, Moscow breaks out the kettledrum of hypocrisy. Beijing lays Tibet waste. Syria occupies Lebanon. A merry band that, under cover of the name of “international law,” sing the praises of a State’s limitless right to do what it pleases within its own borders. Every man’s home is his castle. To every butcher his own flocks and abattoirs. Reduced to the principle of absolute sovereignty, international law essentially means giving permission to Saddam to gas his own, to Putin to push his “antiterrorist operations” in the Caucasus to the point of genocide. And why not retroactively recognize the right of the Hutus (the majority in Rwanda) to exterminate the Tutsis?The prophets of a “multipolarity” that is supposed to keep “the empire” in check seem to be resurrecting Carl Schmitt, albeit unwillingly. During his time as a Nazi, the latter bestowed so-called “totalitarian” or “decision-ist” powers upon the State. The essence of “sovereignty” being in the privilege of suspending laws and taking decisive action without written or unwritten rules, one comes to understand that this semi-divine privilege, devolved to central authority, is seducing the Chinese, Russian or Iraqi autocrats. One is much surprised at seeing democrats participate in this cult of guaranteed sovereignty “über alles” against all interference despite the crimes this may nurture.
The good apostles, who are legion against Bush, expect to save the authority of the UN and of the Security Council who are the law and its prophet. Get serious! The five permanent members, given the right of veto, are above the laws that the Council decrees. They can block their declaration and their implementation. France, Russia and China proclaim the UN to be the guardian of the law in order to sanctify the extraordinary privileges of their sovereignty: no decision can be taken without their assent, no dictator killed without their blessing.
The Security Council has allowed the most criminal failures to act. With China’s help, the temple of “international law” could find nothing to say during the Khmer rouge’s massacres in Cambodia (1975-1978). Did it prevent the Tutsis’ genocide in Rwanda (1994), ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, in Kosovo (1999) and the current martyrdom of the Chechens? When it became necessary — after such a delay! — to stop Milosevic, NATO, with Chirac and Fischer in the lead, happily made do without its okay (the Russians would have said “Niet!”).
Oftentimes, party officials and diplomats dive into conflicts with superannuated plans and ideas. As for the “anti-war,” they’ve entered the fray one war behind. The demonstrators are rehashing the campaigns against the American intervention in Vietnam. It is enough to glance at the television to see that the operations in Iraq in no way resemble the massive napalming of the Vietnamese. In the wake of the anti-colonial struggles, without illusion, the students of yesteryear — of which I was one — could shout “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!” However, it is difficult to praise the tyrant of Baghdad, who tortures and massacres before the eyes of everyone. The pacifists would rather forget this. Going out into the street to boo and hiss at Bush and Blair is comforting to the Iraqi Stalin and risks inflicting 20 more years of terror on his subjects. Nothing to be proud of: they shout, “down with war!” The echo answers, “Long live dictatorship!”
I worry for my friend Joschka Fischer who once had the courage to oppose the Greens several years ago. He said, worse than war, “Auschwitz.” By Auschwitz, he did not mean the repetition of extermination but the symbol of an endless terror and servitude. He concluded that it was urgent to nip the Belgrade tyrant’s inhuman violence in the bud, manu militari. Now that he is foreign minister, does he feel that Saddam is more humane and less dangerous?
I worry for my president Jacques Chirac, whose derringdo when faced with Milosevic has now deserted him. Today he thinks that disarming the reis will bring about his demise ipso facto “for disarmament supposes transparence. And dictatorships cannot withstand transparence for long.” This is true but the reasoning must be pursued: this common sense does not elude the subject who knows that in laying down his arms he signs his death warrant. Unless we suppose he has a death wish, which he has never seemed to have, we must conclude that he is doing everything to maintain his destructive potential and to prolong the game of hide-and-seek at which he has excelled for 12 years. If disarmament brings about the fall of the regime, then the reverse is also true: for Iraq to disarm, we must smash its totalitarian shell. Which the promised Franco-Russo-Chinese veto forbids! It is a curious “peace camp” that refuses to disarm a recognized war criminal.
The West divided? Anti-Americanism one one side and contempt for old Europe on the other have been around for three centuries. They did not stop the western alliance from winning the Cold War. For the first time ever, this West-West split is cleaving global politics, threatening European construction, ruining NATO and paralyzing international bodies. Stereotypes are flourishing. Illiterate. Cowboy. Religious fanatic and conniving cynic. Governed by a pea-brain and a gang of hawks, America, born of childish idealism, thirsts for oil. It is an hegemony at its zenith and a parasitic empire in its dying days... No matter that the arguments are contradictory, Bush is the number one danger and Saddam, however deadly we may concede he is, passes for butter.
A paradox. This volcano of hatred has been simmering since 11 September, 2001. First reaction: compassion. Second reaction: denial: the Americans have been punished where they have sinned; “arrogance,” “imperialism,” they’re being repaid in kind. Worse yet, they take it out on the first thing they see... Baghdad is burning to console Manhattan. The delirium of anti-Americanism is older than war. It is born of suppressed panic.
The Anglo-American initiative unites against it those who are nostalgic for 10 September, 2001. Once revealed, the protector’s vulnerability is frightening. The power for devastation was, for an entire half century, held and also held in check by the nuclear powers. On the 11th, it passed into the hands of the many. Not only did terrorism attain an unprecedented scale, but the home manufacture of biological, chemical and even atomic weapons allows the predators to consolidate their power.In the caves of Tora Bora, bin Laden seems rustic. With his nuclear silo, Kim Jong-il’s solution is more promising. Saddam could neither have imagined nor achieved a coupling of bin Laden’s terror with Jong-il’s sanctuary — the man is far too scrupulous! He is possessed with love for his neighbor and all picrotoxic ambitions are foreign to him! As ostriches, let us bury our heads in the sand and avoid seeing what may come.
André Glucksmann is a philosopher and essayist
[Posted 2003/04/05]
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