From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Mar 29 2003 - 22:20:16 MST
Steve Davies wrote
> [Lee wrote]
> > Yet in all the cases I can think of from 1878 on, European powers
> > ruled over others' lands for the primary purpose of enriching
> > themselves (i.e. economic advance), or for military gain (e.g.,
> > the conquest of the Turkish possessions). I would be willing to
> > admit that a secondary consideration might be the welfare of the
> > ruled, at least after, as you suggest, 1878.
>
> Not so. You have to make a distinction between practice and justificatory
> theory (as I did en passant) and also between practice and motive. In other
> words there is both Empire (the institutional/policy reality) and
> Imperialism (the ideology that justifies the policy and inspires it).
Splendid. You contrast the reality of what finally
obtains vs. the ideology that inspired it. All right.
> It is simply not true that Europeans and people of European origin such as
> Americans ruled over others for reasons of material gain. This was a motive
> in the earlier phase of Empire in the 18th to early 19th century but is
> mainly absent in the post 1878 period. Colonial empires lose money big time
> and (contrary to the Hobson//Lenin view) there is not a substantial group
> that gains economically at others' expense.
There are of course, exceptions. King Leopold's rule over
the Congo up till when? maybe 1920? seemed to have no goal
but to extract the maximum amount of rubber with the least
trouble. But I'll defer to your more global claim in
general.
> The main motives, as spelt out by the advocates of Empire are
> (a) Glory
> (b) national power
> (c) the 'uplifting', 'civilising mission' as the French call it.
> This last is very important for the great colonial administrators
> such as Cromer, Lyautey, and Lugard.
Okay. So we turn now to the current event:
> [The main motive of the present Iraqi excursion is]
> to realise a set of values and to ensure American
> safety and predominance by doing this.
Seems to fit. The Americans are sincere in wanting to
remove WMD from tyrannical regimes hating the U.S., and
would probably want to do that anywhere they had the
strength to, and secondly, maintaining or extending
world predominance is hardly going to be seen as an
unfortunate side-effect.
> > Then the irony is, the more effort that is made on behalf of
> > the Iraqi people, then the more imperialistic the U.S. role
> > will become!
> > ...to establish a non-authoritarian or less repressive regime
> > in Iraq would require an extended stay by the Coalition (or
> > at least U.S.) forces. But the longer the stay, the more this
> > is a case of liberal imperialism.
>
> This is exactly right. As you say paradoxical. BTW the 'beneficiaries' of
> the is policy are likely to resent it, even if they do actually benefit.
Well, putting aside for the moment the real motivations behind the
U.S./U.K., one then wonders what course would indeed in fact benefit
the Iraqis the most (or hurt them the least). Ramez Naam on this
list, and perhaps one other person from the Middle East, has weighed
in heavily to suggest that the U.S. stay for a very long time.
Evidently his intuition is that Iraq could become democratic, were
the occupying power sufficiently idealistic and willing to pay what
ever is required to achieve that goal.
Yet many others demur, including you, from studying the remainder
of your post, where you write
> if the US adopts a minimal approach of removing WMDs and
> the Baathists, replacing them with clients (a Hashemite
> King perhaps?) and then withdrawing most of its military
> presence, and doesn't try to actually administer or set
> policy for post Saddam Iraq, then Empire has got the thumbs
> down.
So I infer that in this case you're opposed to liberal
imperialism because it won't work. You seem to believe
that this particular Arabic country at this particular
time cannot be other than it is; basically, a backward
nation mixing ancient and modern, which will be ruled
by someone with an iron hand for a long time to come.
Is that the only reason you're opposed to the current
U.S./U.K. plans?
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Mar 29 2003 - 22:20:44 MST