Three questions about imperialism
None of the historic virtues of the old PT gaúcho can survive if they are not articulated nationally with changes in the principal vector of the party. That the organizations of the left are nevertheless directed towards a regionalistic pragmatism is a sign that they have lost during these primaries the principal (national) reference of the objectives pursued by the party. They repeated, voluntarily or involuntarily,
GILBERT Achcar teaches at the University of Paris VIII in Saintthe traditional error of reformism; to take
Denis and the American University of Paris. He has recently edited the short cut of inconsistency at a time
"The Legacy of Ernest Mandel" (Verso). This interview appeared in when the path reaches a crossroads. In this the first issue (June 2000) of the new Greek radical left monthly way, intending to take a step forward, they
Manifesto, whose editors we thank for providing it.
made two backward.
Watchdogs
INTERVIEW
An internal tendency in the PT,
Socialist Democracy (DS), to which vicegovernor Miguel Rossetto belongs, has
• CRITICS of NATO's policy of Milosevic's Yugoslavia, Iran, and so on. been identified by the media "watchdogs" of the bourgeoisie as controlling the greatest number of positions of responsibility in the state administration. That the facts contradict the assertion does not matter. Inside and outside the party, the "hegemonist intentions of the DS have been invoked to disqualify the pre-candidature of Raul Pont.
This fallacious argument pins on DS all the collective responsibility for the government of a state cut to pieces by the preceding administration of the PMDB; encircled by a media monopoly; with a majority of hostile deputies in the legislative assembly and confronted with tensions with public servants, particularly education workers. Thus the electoral defeat of DS and its allied currents has been interpreted by the media and the enemies of the popular and democratic camp as a political defeat of the government of Olivio Dutra.
The PT in Porto Alegre has opted for Tarso Genro, the candidate they consider as the most adequate to win the forthcoming ballot. He can transform into reality the fourth mandate of the PT and the Frente Popular in the capital of democracy, where around 70% of the electorate still approve of the current administration. The struggle continues! Until victory! * *Luiz Marques is deputy secretary for culture of the government of Rio Grande do Sul, of which Porto Alegre is the capital. 1. Raul Pont, currently mayor of Porto Alegre, is a member of the Socialist Democracy tendency of the Workers' Party (PT). 2. Electoral organizers paid for by the candidates are typical of the Brazilian bourgeoisie but have not until now been employed within the PT. 3. Gaucho is the term used to refer to the cowherders of southern Brazil and Uruguay. By extension the population of the whole state of Rio Grande do Sul are known as gauchos.
expansion towards the East have advanced the argument that this will lead Russia to strengthen its collaboration with China. On the other hand the partisans of enlargement have stressed the necessity of protecting eastern Europe against a resurgence of Russian imperial ambitions. What is your position on this subject ?
I am firmly in agreement with the former view. The perspective of a SinoRussian rapprochement no longer amounts to speculation on the future. Already, Russia has become China's purveyor by appointment in the area of sophisticated military material (planes, submarines, destroyers, and so on).
In fact, Moscow now provides Beijing with the kind of armaments that the Soviet Union used to refuse to its most faithful allies. This does not correspond only to an economic interest for Russia, for whom arms are, with hydrocarbons, the only immediately solvent products on the world market.
It is clear that the fact of being the purveyor by appointment to a country in high-tech arms creates strategic links wholly more significant than those that result from the sale of mobile phones. These links are strengthening on the basis of an increasingly sharp political convergence between the two countries: Moscow and Peking denounce together US "hegemonism" and the temptation of a "unipolar world"
They support each other mutually (Chechnya, Taiwan, and so on), and both have privileged links with the states that Washington qualifies as rogue states, like
This is the normal consequence of a western policy still based de facto on the containment of Russia and China.
As to the argument about Russia's imperial ambitions, I would say two things: on the one hand, that it amounts quite obviously to a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that the more Russia feels threatened, the more it will have a tendency to tighten its control on its traditional imperial borderlands.
In this sense, the war in Chechnya is the natural consequence of Kosovo war! On the other hand, are those who oppose Russia's imperial ambitions motivated by noble and humanitarian feelings? Only simpletons could believe such balderdash. The imperial ambitions of the one are no more legitimate than those of the other. All are equally execrable, and they feed off each other.
Can we fight these contradictory imperial ambitions by rejecting them equally? Isn't it necessary to exploit the contradictions between them, supporting the weaker against the strong?
That would amount to supporting Russia and China against NATO. I think that this type of argument, the famous argument of the main enemy and the secondary enemy, is particularly pernicious.
To identify with one of the existing camps by considering its aims as legitimate, to support a policy pursuing illegitimate goals under the pretext that it was opposed to other illegitimate aims of a bigger power, would be completely wrong. To identify with the victims of the two
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Brazil / Imperialism *
Tony Blair: central to EU military strategy
* Imperialism camps, as much with the Iragi and Serb peoples (the peoples not the governments) as with the Chechnyan and Tibetan peoples, is the only attitude that can form the basis of a consistent policy of opposition to all world hegemony. It is necessary, against all imperial ambitions of every kind, to defend the progressive principles of international law: the right of peoples to self-determination, sovereign equality of states, prohibition of any use of force in violation of international law, and so on.
And to promote these principles, it is necessary to defend a policy of world disarmament and the elimination of tensions. It is in this framework that it is necessary not only to oppose the enlargement of NATO to the East, but also to demand the dissolution of NATO, all the more so in that it has been reconverted from a defensive alliance into an interventionist organization.
It is true however that the most dangerous policy for world peace today is that of the USA, which should on those grounds be the main but not the exclusive target of the international peace movement.
We only have to see how the US seeks, at present, to revise or abrogate the ABM treaty limiting the deployment of antimissile networks, at the very moment that the Russian Duma has ratified the START-II treaty for the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons.
The US plans for the deployment of anti-missile networks on US territory and in Northeast Asia are likely to considerably heighten tensions between 26 International Viewpoint #323 July-August 2000
Washington on the one hand and Moscow and Peking on the other.
• The creation of a European army is now on the agenda of the European Union. Do you believe that western Europe is ready to "free itself" from the military tutelage of the United States? What is the US attitude on this subject?
We should first get things in their correct proportions. The European summit at Helsinki decided to establish a European capacity for the deployment of 60,000 soldiers in 60 days and to maintain this strength for a duration of one year, which implies the mobilization of more than 60,000 soldiers taking rotations into account.
This is certainly not negligible, but it is far from being a "European army" which would suppose in the first place air strike capabilities. It amounts only to a force of intervention in the framework of operations of the "peacekeeping" type, in the manner of the troops currently deployed in Kosovo.
The experience of Kosovo was moreover one of the main motivations for the decision taken at Helsinki: the European members of NATO can hardly provide the contingents that they had committed themselves to deliver, at the very moment when pressure is growing in the US for a withdrawal of US troops from Kosovo.
This is also what explains why Washington is pleading constantly for the reinforcement of the European capacities of intervention: the whole experience of
Bosnia was already there to show the serious consequences of European impotence in a situation where US intervention was blocked by a Congress which was hostile to it.
That is why Washington wants its European partners to increase their mil tary expenditure and their capacity of autonomous intervention. Nonetheless, for Washington, this autonomous capacity should be exerted in the framework of NATO, as the "European pillar" of the Alliance, and should only intervene with the blessing of the US.
And it is there that the tensions are felt between Washington and some European capitals, Paris in particular, who would like to supplement their technical autonomy with an independence of political decision-making, by which the European Union could decide on certain interventions without reference to Washington.
But as yet things are far from that. A lot more would be needed for the European armies to be able to emerge from the US infrastructure available in the framework of NATO. And moreover it is quite difficult to believe that someone like Tony Blair, who has been completely central to the decision to set up this EU force, is motivated by a desire for "emancipation" from the military tutelage of the United States
Those who believe they can combat US hegemony by calling for the strengthening of the European power only contribute to the strengthening of the global Weste power against the rest of the world. *