Imperialism Takes New Look

29 December 2006
Posted to the web 29 December 2006

Reason Wafawarova
Harare

IT is now 50 years since the fall of most colonial empires with analysts agreed that colonialism was both ill-conceived and unsustainable.

While it is clear that imperial supremacy through the primitive colonial philosophy of territorial expansion backfired on all colonial empires then led by Britain, France, Portugal and Spain -- it is equally important to look at the new-look imperialism spearheaded by American capitalism in the 21st century.

That the US's sabre-rattling foreign policy is receiving the same discrediting, criticism, resistance and abhorrence as did colonialism after World War II is not deniable as the mounting condemnation of the entire US system is gaining momentum even among Washington's avowed allies.

At the moment, there is no tougher task in international relations than being asked to come up with just two good reasons why the Iraqi war can be deemed reasonable or justifiable.

At the same time, even the most incompetent political commentators have had to check the lengths of their articles when it comes to outlining criticisms of the Afghan and Iraqi wars.

The best that pro-American journalists and commentators have done in defence of the US is either to shun the debate altogether or employ diversionary tactics by embarking on creating axes of evil, tyrants, despots, dictators or any other epithets their imaginations can master.

In an address at an educational conference, Doug Lorimer, an Australian political activist quoted Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to US president Jimmy Carter and chief architect of Washington's anti-Communist policies as having said: "The three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together."

The quote reads more like an official extract from the ancient Roman imperial bureaucracy than an extraction of a 1978 document from the White House, that veritable self-proclaimed centre of civilisation and democratic purity.

This quote is all there to the 21st century imperialism we see today, the three "grand imperatives" of the US imperial policy give a candid insight into how the US ruling elite views the rest of the world.

The "vassals" among who it is necessary to "prevent collusion and to maintain security", are the other imperialist powers like Australia, Britain, France, Italy, Spain and largely all those deemed to qualify to join the imperialist club of the European Union.

It is in the interest of Washington to ensure that it's hegemony, built on the power of the spread of capital and profiteering from the weaker states, is protected by ensuring that its allies do not collude or conspire against it.

This explains why the Iraqi war has made France a bad ally and the US has given up on New Zealand and Canada for continued non-compliance to the American-led initiatives of invading other countries. Like the vassals of medieval Europe, these other imperialist powers hold sovereignty in their own right but they are required to render general support and particularly military service to the supreme lord in Washington.

This is precisely why troops from Australia, Britain, Italy, and Spain were deployed in Iraq against public opinion resulting in all but the Australian political leadership paying a heavy political price for ignoring public opinion.

The "tributaries" who are kept "pliant and protected" are the semi-colonial puppet administered capitalist regimes of Asia, Africa and Latin America among them Obasanjo of Nigeria, Ramos Horta of East Timor and other countries like the rebellious Chinese province of Taiwan.

Zimbabwe even has some neighbours who are viewed as "transitional tributaries" shifting fast towards compliance to Washington.

These are the countries from whom the imperialist powers freely extort tribute in the form of corporate super profits, debt service payments and cheap raw materials, oil and minerals in particular.

The "barbarians", who it is necessary to keep "from coming together", are the oppressed and exploited mass of humanity, who if left to "come together", can act collectively in their own interest posing a threat to the very existence of "civilisation" as conceived by the Americans.

This is why the coming together of Zimbabwean landless peasants to repossess their stolen land from descendants of white settlers invited so much anger from London and Washington.

London described the land reforms as lawlessness and primitive actions while Washington, through Condoleeza Rice was more direct describing the Third Chimurenga as 'an unusual threat to the foreign policy of the United States'.

She could not have been blunter, could she?

There is no doubt that the view she outlined is the same perspective shared by imperialist statesmen and their strategists over the property-less mass of humanity -- the workers and poor peasants of the world.

How can we doubt it when the US ambassador is captured celebrating an anti-people Chavez coup in Venezuela in 2002?

Can we doubt it anymore when archives show us documents by Robert Lansing advising then US president Woodrow Wilson in wartime 1918 saying?

"The Bolshevik government (of Soviet Russia) seeks to make the ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth; they are appealing to a class and not to all classes of society, a class which does not have property but hopes to obtain a share by process of government rather than by individual enterprise. This is of course a direct threat at existing social order in all countries."

This writing outlines why America outlaws communism within its borders and has used every dirty trick in the devil's book to fight socialism and communism. Successive American administrations are after the spread of imperial capital in order to acquire super profits under the guise of individual enterprise and property rights.

They seek to expand individual fortunes and empires by protecting a few hundred American and western-owned multinational corporations from the rest of humanity, whom they view as nothing but consumers and sources of cheap labour.

The decision by Zimbabwe to give its poor access to property by "process of government" as that of Venezuela in its land and oil field reform policies is what the Americans and their so-called liberal sympathisers view as "draconian policies."

They equate such decisions to barbarism and totalitarianism, not for the meanings of the words but as a means to keep afloat the sinking ship of an American-led age of capitalist imperialism.

That the American Empire is falling is inevitable and apparent but imperialism might just be there a lot longer, albeit assuming a different ethos and model.