In preparation for a final paper in my Intellectual History of Modern Europe class, I just started reading the first pages of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. In the preface to the second part, “Imperialism,” Dr. Arendt writes eloquently about the concerns of her day (specifically, the days of 1967), but there is something prescient in them too, for they comment equally well on the days we face today.
Dr. Arendt writes:
The process of nation-building in backward areas where lack of prerequisites for national independence is in exact proportion to a rampant, sterile chauvinsm have results in enormous power vacuums, for which the competition between the superpowers is all the fiercer… Not only does every conflict between the small, undeveloped countries in these vast areas, be it a civil war in Vietnam or a national conflict in the Middle East, immediately attract the potential or actual intervention of the superpowers, but their very conflicts, or at least the timing of their outbreaks, are suspect of having been manipulated or directly caused by interests and maneuvers that have nothing whatsoever to do with the conflicts and interests at stake in the region itself.Nothing was so characterized by this shift of power politics in the imperialist era than this shift from localized, limited, and therefore predictable goals of national interest to the limitless pursuit of power after power that could roam and lay waste the whole globe with no certain nationally and territorially prescribed purpose and hence with no predictable direction.
This backsliding has become apparent also on the ideological level, for the famous domino-theory, according to which American foreign policy feels committed to wage war in one country for the sake of the integrity of others that are not even its neighbors, is clearly but a new version of the old “Great Game” whose rules permitted and even dictated the consideration of whole nations as stepping-stones, or as pawns, in today’s terminology, for the riches and the rule of a third country, which in turn became a mere stepping-stone in the unending process of power expansion and accumulation.
It was this chain reaction…of which Kipling said, “When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before”; and the only reason his prophecy did not come true was the constitutional restraint of the nation-state, while today our only hope that it will not come true in the future is based on the constitutional restraints of the American republic plus the technological restraints of the nuclear age. (p. xviii - xix, paragraph breaks added)
Three questions come to mind. First, what happens when the leader of the American republic no longer respects the restraints of its constitution? Second, what changes when the imperialist forces are not the nation-states themselves, but the multinational corporations? And third, is the vision of a democratic Middle East flowering from the blood-stained sands of Iraq little more than the Cold War domino-theory as played in reverse?
7 Comments
In regards to not respecting the restraints of the constitution, it would be almost impossible to do in regards to going to war. Needing congress to approve would be the major problem unless they just started launching nukes or some shit.
There should be some sort of check in place to make sure companies do not aquire that much power. I do not have an answer for that.
The third is a tad different because iraq was not an empty vacuum waiting to be filled by the good guys or bad guys, it was already filled by the bad guy.
I think the constitutional restraints she was talking about were not the war-making powers, but the war-continuing powers, specifically the constitutional restraint that says the people get to decide every couple of years whether they want their government to keep doing what it’s doing. It was this restraint that would prevent the American republic from becoming a world-dominating power: the American people simply would not want to do it.
My question about a president disregarding constitutional restraints obviously come from the wiretap scandal, but they’re inspired also by the way the Executive branch abuses its power, refusing to allow Congress the right to oversee its actions (refusing perhaps not in voice, but definitely in deed). The fact that we went to war on false pretenses is evidence one (and until you’re ready to address the neocons’ wholesale takeover of the intelligence gathering agencies in the lead up to the war — which is a point I don’t think you have EVER addressed in this forum — don’t say nothing about everyone thinking Hussein had WMDs).
As for the second, I’m with you, but I’m wondering why I haven’t heard much talk of corporate totalitarianism, although I’m sure that it’s out there if you search for it.
On the third, the power vaccuum is not within a state, but between other states. She was talking about the communism/democracy power-vaccuum, whereby any movement of one precipitates movement of another: hence the domnio-theory. Now that Saddam has been removed from power, the United States has created a power vaccuum that is sucking in the insurgents and the non-Iraqi combatants, all of whom are fighting for power in a place where it is currently up for grabs.
My question, though, transfers the concept of a power vaccuum to a power explosion. The president’s vision of democracy spreading outwards from Iraq is the reverse of the communist threat that us children of 80’s were taught to fear (until the events of 1989 taught us to laugh).
Is it any wonder that those who would oppose American hegemony — and that is what they fight; they don’t kill Americans to oppose democracy; why wouldn’t they attack the Swiss [unless, of course, the Swiss pissed them off by drawing funny little pictures of their prophet]? — is it any wonder that those who would oppose American hegemony would see Iraq as their great stand?
They fight us for the same reason we fought the communists. To protect a way of life. And it is a way of life, like it or not, that is threatened by the continuing expansion of American hegemony. Is it any wonder they fight? And is it any wonder that they will continue to fight?
“the people get to decide every couple of years whether they want their government to keep doing what it’s doing”
Wow that is bad. Lets have a group of people who are uninformed and easily swayed by the media supercede people whose job it is to win wars.
Secondly the people we are fighting in Iraq are fighting to protect what way of life? These people are fighting for money/power which is what most people fight for. Whoever controls iraq and the billion doallr a day oil reserve wins. Don’t try to turn this into anything but that.
It’s not that it is bad, necessarily, but that the process has become corrupted. There is a reason why democracies make bad empires. Even in Civilization III, democracies make bad empires. You can’t be too overstretched without your populace rising up and biting you in the ass.
And with Iraq, are you telling me that the people who are blowing themselves up in the streets and in car bombs are fighting for money or power?
You have to remember that actual, living and breathing individuals are conducting this war, and not all of them are in it for the money. The leaders: maybe, but not necessarily. Just because our culture will only go to war for economic reasons doesn’t mean it is that way everywhere else. Some people actually believe in things.
They would of put up a bigger fight in afghanistan if this was true. If they are fighting against the big bad america, they would of stood and fought next to osama and the taliban. There is only one thing worth money there and that is poppy seeds and as much money as that makes it does not even come close to the oil.
I do mean the people in charge because they are the ones brain washing the people to do the car bombings. So maybe the “soldiers” are doing it for those reasons but in reality they are doing it for money. The leaders know what is at stake.
While skimming through old posts today, I found this one and read through the comment thread.
Granted, it’s now two years later, but I’d like to just point out that we are still fighting in Afghanistan and that the Taliban is increasing its offensive…which is to say, they haven’t given up the fight and its getting bigger every day. Just today, the Taliban killed 60 people and damaged a weapons manufacturing plant.
This happened in Pakistan because the government made some progress in rooting out the taliban in the tribal regions.