|
Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran, and Syria MIM can't recommend this book, except as a quick substitute for reading the last two years of the New York Times or Foreign Affairs. It contains some factual tidbits, many showing how the United $tates fostered the very regimes President Bush now calls "evil." But these tidbits don't make up for the authors' rather superficial analysis and bourgeois internationalist biases. For example, readers interested in Korea would do better to skip Bruce Cumings' essay and instead read MIM Notes' coverage over the last two years; we cover the same material, but better.(1) Readers interested in the limitations of the bourgeois internationalist opposition to Bush and his neo-conservative coterie might want to dwell on the Cumings essay, however. Cumings falls into the "mistakes were made" school of history, along with former Secretary of defense and war criminal Bob McNamara.(2) Both Cumings and McNamara do a pretty good job exposing Amerika's leading role in some of the 20th century's worst atrocities, especially the Korean and Vietnamese wars. But both blame these crimes on Amerikan leaders' mistaken ideas, not the economic system of imperialism. Cumings thinks that if the Amerikan government had only shown a little more patience, it could have avoided the Korean and Vietnam wars and other fiascos--and still have come out on top of the struggle against "communism." There were good, socio-historical reasons Koreans and other oppressed nations adopted radical land reform and anti-colonial programs, Cumings argues, and this made them sympathetic to communism. If, instead of waging overt and covert anti-communist wars, the Amerikans had been patient and supported their just anti-feudal and anti-colonial struggles, then these former oppressed nations would eventually have gotten over their radical phase and embraced liberal capitalism. Aside from overestimating the allure of liberal capitalism--look at the decline in life expectancies in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union--Cumings overestimates the imperialists' ability to abstain from conquest. He approvingly quotes former diplomat and architect of the post-WWII "containment" doctrine George Kennan: "I considered that if and when we had succeeded in persuading the Soviet leadership that the continuation of the[ir] expansionist policies... would be, in many respects, to their disadvantage, then the moment would have come for serious talks with them about the future of Europe. But when... this moment had arrived--when we had made our point with the Marshall plan, with ... the Berlin blockade and other measures--when the lesson I wanted to see us convey to Moscow had been successfully conveyed, then it was one of the greatest disappointments of my life to discover that neither our government nor our Western European allies had any interest in entering into such discussions at all. What they and others wanted from Moscow, with respect to the future of Europe, was essentially 'unconditional surrender.' They were prepared to wait for it. And this was the beginning of forty years of Cold War."(3) Kennan and Cumings fail to understand that the cold war was an imperialist war. On the one hand, the Amerikans (and eventually the social-imperialist Soviets) fought to preserve and expand their colonial empire; on the other, oppressed nations fought for liberation. The Amerikans couldn't do anything but "kick them while they were down." As Lenin taught us in "Imperialism," the economic pressures of monopoly capitalism drive imperialist powers to divide and re-divide the world; they cannot rest content with their little piece of the world, they have to try and take way their neighbor's piece--or die. This is the key point that people working to eliminate war and colonial exploitation have to understand: it's the economic system of imperialism that drives nations to war, not leaders' persynalities. Measures that do not challenge this underlying system--clever diplomacy or well-meaning reforms--cannot prevent war or end exploitation. In fact, the more likely such "pragmatic" measures are to change something fundamental the less likely they will ever be adopted by the powers-that-be--unless they are under duress from more radical forces. The Kennans, McNamaras and Cumings of the past 150 years have shown us that it is impossible to reform imperialism, no matter how clever one is. If we want to keep the humyn race from blowing itself up with its latest hyper-deadly invention, we have to attack the capitalist system, and fight for socialism, which eliminates economic competition among nations and makes true cooperation possible.
Notes: *See also,
"Global anti-Amerikkkanism is just and necessary for eventual world peace"
|