Why Uncle Sam is no global role model
November 7, 2013 <http://www.herald.co.zw/author/shingirai/> Shingirai Huni
<http://www.herald.co.zw/category/articles/opinion-a-analysis/> Opinion &
Analysis
Noam Chomsky
DURING the latest episode of the Washington farce that has astonished a
bemused world, a Chinese commentator wrote that if the United States cannot
be a responsible member of the world system, perhaps the world should become
de-Americanised and separate itself from the rogue state that is the
reigning military power but is losing credibility in other domains.
The Washington debacles immediate source was the sharp shift to the right
among the political class. In the past, the US has sometimes been described
sardonically but not inaccurately as a one-party state: the business
party, with two factions called Democrats and Republicans. That is no longer
true. The US is still a one-party state, the business party. But it only has
one faction: moderate Republicans, now called New Democrats (as the US
Congressional coalition styles itself).
There is still a Republican organisation, but it long ago abandoned any
pretence of being a normal parliamentary party. Conservative commentator
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute describes todays
Republicans as a radical insurgency ideologically extreme, scornful of
facts and compromise, dismissive of the legitimacy of its political
opposition: a serious danger to the society. The party is in lock-step
service to the very rich and the corporate sector. Since votes cannot be
obtained on that platform, the party has been compelled to mobilise sectors
of the society that are extremist by world standards. Crazy is the new norm
among Tea Party members and a host of others beyond the mainstream.
The Republican establishment and its business sponsors had expected to use
them as a battering ram in the neo-liberal assault against the population
to privatise, to deregulate and to limit government, while retaining those
parts that serve wealth and power, like the military.
The Republican establishment has had some success, but now finds that it can
no longer control its base, much to its dismay. The impact on American
society thus becomes even more severe. A case in point: the virulent
reaction against the Affordable Care Act and the near-shutdown of the
government.
The Chinese commentators observation is not entirely novel. In 1999,
political analyst Samuel P. Huntington warned that for much of the world,
the US is becoming the rogue superpower, seen as the single greatest
external threat to their societies.
A few months into the Bush term, Robert Jervis, president of the American
Political Science Association, warned that In the eyes of much of the
world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States.
Both Huntington and Jervis warned that such a course is unwise. The
consequences for the US could be harmful. In the latest issue of Foreign
Affairs, the leading establishment journal, David Kaye reviews one aspect of
Washingtons departure from the world: rejection of multilateral treaties
as if it were sport.
He explains that some treaties are rejected outright, as when the US Senate
voted against the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in
2012 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1999. Others
are dismissed by inaction, including such subjects as labour, economic and
cultural rights, endangered species, pollution, armed conflict,
peacekeeping, nuclear weapons, the law of the sea, and discrimination
against women.
Rejection of international obligations has grown so entrenched, Kaye
writes, that foreign governments no longer expect Washingtons ratification
or its full participation in the institutions treaties create. The world is
moving on; laws get made elsewhere, with limited (if any) American
involvement. While not new, the practice has indeed become more entrenched
in recent years, along with quiet acceptance at home of the doctrine that
the US has every right to act as a rogue state. To take a typical example, a
few weeks ago US special operations forces snatched a suspect, Abu Anas
al-Libi, from the streets of the Libyan capital Tripoli, bringing him to a
naval vessel for interrogation without counsel or rights.
US Secretary of State John Kerry informed the Press that the actions are
legal because they comply with American law, eliciting no particular
comment.
Principles are valid only if they are universal. Reactions would be a bit
different, needless to say, if Cuban special forces kidnapped the prominent
terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in Miami, bringing him to Cuba for
interrogation and trial in accordance with Cuban law.
Such actions are restricted to rogue states. More accurately, to the one
rogue state that is powerful enough to act with impunity: in recent years,
to carry out aggression at will, to terrorise large regions of the world
with drone attacks, and much else.
Whatever the world may think, US actions are legitimate because we say so.
The principle was enunciated by the eminent statesman Dean Acheson in 1962,
when he instructed the American Society of International Law that no legal
issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its power,
position, and prestige.
Cuba committed that crime when it beat back a US invasion and then had the
audacity to survive an assault designed to bring the terrors of the earth
to Cuba, in the words of Kennedy adviser and historian Arthur Schlesinger.
When the US gained independence, it sought to join the international
community of the day. That is why the Declaration of Independence opens by
expressing concern for the decent respect to the opinions of mankind.
A crucial element was evolution from a disorderly confederacy to a unified
treaty-worthy nation, in diplomatic historian Eliga H. Goulds phrase,
that observed the conventions of the European order.
By achieving this status, the new nation also gained the right to act as it
wished internally.
Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics and philosophy at MIT. This
article is reproduced from Alternet
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