A Man Working Hard To Break The 'Racket'!!!

[Peter Lemkin]

Johan Galtung on "The Fall of the US Empire"

The amount of money the United States has spent on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq surpassed the $1 trillion mark last week, according to the National Priorities Project Cost of War counter. To date, over $747 billion has been appropriated for the war in Iraq and $299 billion for the war in Afghanistan. The US is spending over $136 billion on the wars this year. I’m joined now by Johan Galtung, who has spent the past half-century pursuing nonviolent conflict resolution in international relations. He’s known as a founder of the field of peace and conflict studies.

AMY GOODMAN: In these last few minutes, we’re going to talk about war. The amount of money the US has spent on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq surpassed the $1 trillion mark last week, according to the National Priorities Project cost of war counter. To date, over $747 billion has been appropriated for the war in Iraq and $299 billion for the war in Afghanistan.

We turn right now, in the last few minutes, to a man who has spent the last half-century pursuing nonviolent conflict resolution. He’s known as a father of peace studies. His name is Johan Galtung. His latest book, The Fall of the US Empire–And Then What?: Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism or US Blossoming?

We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Johan Galtung. As you survey they geopolitical landscape right now and the wars that the US is involved with, what are your thoughts?

JOHAN GALTUNG: Well, thank you so much for inviting me.
It’s an empire against a wall; an empire in despair; an empire, I would say, in its last phase. My prediction in the book that is here, that you mentioned, The Fall of the US Empire–And Then What?, is that it cannot last longer than 'til about 2020. In 1980, I predicted for the Soviet empire that it will crack at its weakest point, the wall of Berlin, within ten years, and it happened in November 1989, and the Soviet empire followed. So my prediction is a similar one for the US empire. And that could lead to the blossoming of the US.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you say ten years, that the US empire collapses in a decade?

JOHAN GALTUNG: Within ten years—well, the prediction was made in year 2000, and I actually said twenty-five years. But then Bush was elected president, and his narrow vision, his fundamentalism, made me cut it by five years, because I saw him as an accelerator, which he certainly did, launching three wars—war on terrorism, war on Afghanistan and war on Iraq. Now, this comes after the US did not win 1953 in Korea and lost 30 April, 1975 in Vietnam. In other words, we are now in war number five of major significance. That is typical for the decline of the empire that it goes like that. When you ask me why did I have that time horizon, well, I made a comparative study of quite a lot of declines of empires. I'm a little bit of an expert on that, actually. And there are certain factors that are similar. They rise and decline more quickly now. Of course, the two Roman empires, the Western and the Eastern, lasted longer. Now it’s quicker. The US started, I would say, in 1898, walking into the shoes of the dying or dead Spanish empire. And we are now dealing with a phenomenon which is about 110, 112 years old. And as I told you, I put the upper limit at 2020.

AMY GOODMAN: When you ask "And then what?" you say "US fascism or US blossoming?" What do you mean?

JOHAN GALTUNG: What we see right now is an intensification spreading, special forces increasing, let us say, from thirty to forty-five countries. And that’s exactly what you would expect. It’s an effort to try to externalize, to say that there are enemies abroad that are trying to get at us, instead of saying the obvious, namely that we have made a construction, and that construction is dying itself. If you try to dominate the world economically, militarily, politically and culturally at the same time, and then having these four support each other, it cannot last for a long time. And that’s the phase we are in now. Now, in that period, there will be fascist reactions. It’s not impossible that it could be a military coup in the US from the right, not impossible within this period. But, you see, I am much more optimistic than that: I think that the US is in for a blossoming period. Look at what happened to England when it got rid of its empire from 1965 on. Russia got rid of its empire from 1991. They took some time. There was a bad Yeltsin period. Right now Russia is rising. You see the same in France. You see it in Italy.

AMY GOODMAN: Johan Galtung, we’re going to break now and bring our viewers and listeners part two of our conversation this week. Johan Galtung is known as the father of peace studies. His latest book, The Fall of the US Empire–And Then What?:itsme:

[Peter Lemkin]

Out of Sync with the world: Some Thoughts on the Coming Decline and Fall of the American Empire

"It's a wrenching decision to think about leaving. But America is turning into a country very different from the one I grew up believing in."

24th April 2006 - Dr Zeki Ergas ~ STWR


In the Niagara of liberal angst just after Bush's victory on November 2, the Canadian government's immigration Web site reported a surge of inquiries from the United States, to about 115,000 a day from 20,000.' … Americans (are) fed up with a country they see drifting persistently to the right and abandoning the principles of tolerance, compassion and peaceful idealism they felt once defined the nation.'1

I

Will historians one day consider the American elections of 2004 -- and the country's clear division into red, or conservative, and blue, or liberal, states -- as the turning point of the American empire? Will they decide, in other words, that in November 2004 the high waters of American imperialism, having reached their peak, started to recede? History teaches us that all empires must rise and fall. There is no reason, a priori, to believe that the American empire can or will escape that global fate. The real question is then, not if, but when this is going to happen.

I shall, in this short essay, argue that the American empire -- despite its invincible army, undisputed dominance in science and technology, and powerful economy – has entered a declining phase for a variety of reasons of which three appear to be determinant: one, the shrinking relevance, or appropriateness, of the American 'model', or way of life, for the rest of the world; two, America's continued reliance on 'hard' power to resolve conflicts (as opposed to the 'soft' power solutions preferred by the European Union, for example); and three, the rise of other great powers, old and new, such as, the European Union, China, and even India. What will happen next cannot be predicted with absolute certainty. It is quite probable that a multi-polar world will emerge to replace the American empire. After that, we enter the domain of speculation. Some argue that it is inevitable that China will emerge as the next global empire. But given China's history of introversion, and even isolationism, that appears as unlikely. But, if it happens nevertheless, then, History will indeed have continued as 'eternal recurrence', and the philosopher with bushy moustache will have been proven right, once more.

II

In every culture or civilisation a typical, or emblematic, value defines behaviour, or social relations.3 I will argue that in America, that value is guilt. I would like to illustrate that argument with concrete and practical examples. Very often, American movies or television series have a two-stage plot: in the first, the protagonists do things that they themselves know are morally wrong – like cheating on their wives, betraying a friend, or making money in shady business deals; in the second stage, these same protagonists acknowledge their guilt and try to find ways to redeem themselves – by asking the forgiveness of their wives, or mending their ways, or doing penance in one way or the other ('community service' is a popular form of penance: white-collar criminals, in particular, are, in addition to fines and, often, suspended prison sentences, condemned to, say, three hundred hours of 'community service') . So redemption does come, but at a cost, and 'culprits' are thus given a 'second chance' in life (proving wrong the famous dictum that 'There are no second chances in American lives'). In the old days, 'Hollywood', or the 'entertainment industry', called that a 'happy end'. Today, the situation is a bit more complicated, the dénouements are not so clear-cut, but the principle of guilt-redemption still applies. Quality theatre has always been different: great playwrights like Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill have written plays that reflect the reality, the tragedy and the psychological complexity of life. With respect of our guilt-redemption principle, the emblematic American play is, perhaps, Arthur Miller's The Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman is the typical 'average Joe' let down by the 'American Dream'. But, for him, there are no 'second chances', and the 'American Dream' turns into an American Nightmare. In real life America, feelings of guilt, and the need to come to terms with them, is the reason why psychoanalysis is such a popular profession. The richer and more 'successful' Americans are, the more time and money they spend on the psycho-analyst's couch. Was, then, Thoreau right when he affirmed that, in America 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.'?

Aristotle said, 'Evil is the absence of good.' Thus, it is essential to distinguish between the 'presence of evil' and the 'absence of good'. Americans, like most people in the world, try to avoid 'the presence of evil' in their lives, but, it is my contention, that they, given the very competitive capitalist milieu in which they live, suffer more from the consequences of the 'absence of good'. Jefferson, who was, in addition to being a great statesman, a noted philosopher, wrote that: 'Happiness is the aim of life; virtue is the foundation of happiness; utility is the test of virtue.' Americans, usually, have no problems with the first and third components of that maxim: the search of happiness is indeed the aim of their lives (which, of course, is the aim of the large majority of the people in the world); and Americans are, indisputably, a very industrious people, working harder and longer than the Europeans, for example (35 or even 40 hour weeks, and four or five weeks of paid annual vacations are unknown in the United States). Their problem is with the second component: (V)irtue, alas, often, is not the 'foundation of (their) happiness'; because, again, the socio-economic system in which they must live renders that very difficult. Americans, most of the time, do not feel happy because they know that many of their actions are not virtuous. That doesn't mean that they don't want to be virtuous; it rather means that they are unable to be virtuous, and that is the reason why they spend a great deal of their lives, so to speak, between the two stools of guilt and redemption. In other words, the psychological needs of American Puritanism clash with the requirements of American capitalism. Here it is important to distinguish between the 'work ethic', which the puritans embraced, and the unethical concessions that the average American must make in order to succeed in an utterly capitalist system -- which the puritans, at least theoretically, reject. After all, the main tenets of Puritanism, based on Calvinism, are, in addition to the work ethic (the only way to save one's soul), austerity and frugality -- which are not exactly the values in evidence in American society today. As Vince Lombardi, a famous American football coach put it some forty years ago, in America, 'winning' is not simply very important (as it is in Europe and elsewhere), not even 'everything', but 'the only thing.' To make things worse, winning, or success, in America is, in large part, determined by how much money one makes. And no profession appears to escape that conundrum. Not even university professors, who are given 'big contracts' (large salaries, plus very generous perquisites) by extremely wealthy private universities -- such as Harvard, Princeton or Yale. No wonder then that Americans often feel that they have no choice, but be part of what they call the 'system', or, more cynically, the 'rat race'. The alternative is being a 'loser', a most pitiful and unbearable condition in American society, that most people would do anything to avoid. So, to conclude, Americans know that, ultimately, 'Virtue is its own reward,' but the society in which they must live -- and make a living -- makes the observance of that maxim almost impossible. Immanuel Kant wrote that virtuous actions are those that are capable of universal replication, i.e., of adoption by all men. He called them 'categorical imperatives'. Unfortunately for Americans, a society essentially based on winning, success and money seldom generates actions that are 'categorical imperatives', i.e., that can be universally replicated.

III

Heidegerr wrote: 'The technological society must in the end self-destruct.'; Schopenhauer, that: 'The cosmic will is wicked, because the increase of knowledge leads to an increase of suffering.' The two aphorisms are clearly linked. Their combination, in a more or less logical order, results in the following prophecy, or prediction: 'The technological society is one in which there is an increase of knowledge. That society must in the end self-destruct because the increase of knowledge leads to an increase of suffering; which, in turn, causes the cosmic will to be wicked.' America is, undeniably, technologically the most advanced society on earth, in which, in the twentieth century at least, there has been the greatest increase of knowledge. America is then, to the extent that Heidegerr and Schopenhauer are correct : one, the society that is the closest to self-destruction; and two, the society that contributes most to the wickedness of the cosmic will. It is possible to interpret these two conclusions, in an indirect and speculative sort of way, as another indication that the American empire has entered a declining phase.

The positive aspects of the increase of knowledge are well-known and undeniable. Thanks to it, in the rich countries, people live longer and healthier lives. The quality of food, shelter, availability of clean water, transportation, communication and leisure is immeasurably higher. Medical science and technology routinely saves lives that were doomed only thirty or forty years ago. And yet there exists a point when, good things, if they cross certain boundaries, or go beyond certain limits, can become bad. Sometimes that is called 'too much of a good thing'. But it is not only that. In economic science there is a law called 'diminishing returns': one cannot hope to reap growing benefits from increasing production, at some point, they will start falling. In the ethical field, Aristotle's 'Golden Mean' extols the value of moderation. Both extremes, too little and too much, are bad. In America we are mainly concerned with the damage wrought by too much (even though its opposite, too little, also exists for a poor minority). That damage is suffered, not only internally by America, but externally by the rest of the world as well. When America, which forms less than five per cent of the world's population consumes more than a third of its fossil energy; when its cars and industries produce a quarter of the pollution in the world; when its army invades a country under false pretences, and kills more than one hundred innocent civilians; not only America, but the whole world is concerned. And things are getting worse, because they have nowhere else to go. That's the general direction. And that is, I believe, what Heidegerr meant when he wrote that 'The technological society must in the end self-destruct.' Except that 'society' in our globalised, interconnected world means the whole planet.

Americans seem to always want more, never to have enough. Bigger houses, bigger and more luxurious ('gas-guzzling') cars and SUVs, more expensive clothes and exclusive vacations, and so on. America seems to be about the absence of limits in wealth, power, status and privilege (which the expressions such as 'I want it all' and 'the sky is the limit' illustrate). One can rise very high very fast, but when the fall comes, as it does inevitably, it is also fast and very low. The reason is, I feel, the rising very fast and very fast, somehow, lacks substance and meaning. America's top people – politicians, movie 'stars', business tycoons -- often are, in the philosophical sense, mediocrities. Their 'knowledge' is often specific and technical, they know little of foreign cultures and don't speak foreign languages. In the old days, the excuse was that they didn't 'need' to learn other languages, because everybody else spoke English. That was seen as an advantage and a blessing, it has become a handicap and a curse. As for the 'average' American, the level of ignorance of things non-American can be frightening. It is the American paradox.

An other example of American extremes (in the Aristotelian sense) is the rejection of two of the most basic natural consequences of life: getting old and dying. I will limit myself to two examples: cosmetic surgery and the deep-freeze of bodies immediately after death. The former's purpose is to restore the appearance of youth. Until fairly recently, it was mainly women who resorted to that 'solution'; but not any longer, men are these days as numerous as women to seek the help of the knife to restore their youth. But worse is the refusal to die. Which is different from wanting to delay, as much as one can, the inevitable rendezvous with the Grim Reaper. No, here the goal is achieving immortality. A small but growing number of people choose -- at a cost of about $ 100,000 for the whole body, and a fraction of that for only the head -- to deep-freeze their body immediately after death. The purpose of the 'operation' is to conserve the body intact until science discovers a way to bring it back to life. The procedure used, based on cryogenics, is widely used in chemistry. There are several companies that do it. Already hundreds of bodies and heads are immersed in liquid hydrogen, close to absolute zero temperatures, in hermetically closed containers, waiting to be resuscitated in twenty, fifty, or even a hundred years. Americans are deeply religious; 90 per cent, or more, of them believe in the existence of God. That doesn't augur well for the future of the industry which, I don't believe, is destined to a great future. Nonetheless, it will probably continue to grow in the coming years, reaching perhaps an annual business of tens of thousands deep-frozen bodies and heads.

IV

For Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote in the middle of the 19th century, the 'tyranny of the majority' was the greatest danger faced by the American democracy. (4 Some fifty years earlier, , in 1787, when the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia to write the Constitution, they had not been, except for George Mason, particularly concerned by that issue. It was thanks to the insistence of the 'missing giant' of the Constitutional Convention, Thomas Jefferson (who was in Paris as Minister to France), that a Bill of Rights was included in the Constitution. These rights are about a number of the freedoms, such as: those of religion, speech, press and association; and a number of rights: like to petition the government to redress grievances, the necessity of a 'Warrant' to search one's residence, a speedy and public trial, etc. So the 'majority' here is represented by the State, and the 'minorities' are groups of individuals. In fact, the Bill of Rights applied to a minority of men who were all White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant (WASP). Women were not part of the picture. Neither were Native Americans or Blacks. In fact, slavery, racism and sexism continued in American society for a long time to come. It was very slowly, and very gradually, that the civil rights and liberties were extended to Women, Blacks and Native Americans who together form the majority of the American population.

How about today? Is the 'tyranny of the majority' still the greatest danger faced by the American democracy? The answer is a categorical yes, but the rules of the game have changed. In today's America, politics is dominated by money and the control of new technologies of communications that can, very effectively, manipulate public opinion. Today, the same 'techniques' are used to sell cars, pharmaceuticals and political messages. Public opinion polls are utilised to check if these political messages are being 'bought' by the 'majority', or not. TV spots play a big role in all of this. And it can be said that the Presidential elections of 2004 were hijacked by a neo-conservative coalition -- of business tycoons, politicians, intellectuals and journalists -- that, very successfully, packaged and sold to a large part of the public its neo-conservative political message.

So, given this sorry state of affairs, one is entitled to ask: Is America still a democracy? Or has it become an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy? I believe, the answer is both. America is certainly a democracy, owing to the reality, vibrancy and truth of its civil society. At local, grass-roots, level, tens of thousands of associations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), religious groups, self-help groups, etc. function well and make demands that the official, governmental institutions can ignore only at their own peril. But America is also an oligarchy, owing to the disproportionate influence of money in politics, and also because elections no longer have the same legitimacy that they had in the past, due to their manipulation.

V

The American empire, having started in about 1890, is still young compared to its counterparts in the past: the Roman, Ottoman, Spanish and British empires, to name but a few. But, if we take into account the 'acceleration of History', that may not be so. The 20th century may be worth double or triple the 17th or the 18th centuries in that sense, not to mention the feudal or the classical ages. That means that the American empire has entered, if not its old age, then at least a ripe middle age. For Johan Galtung, a world-famous Norwegian pioneer of peace studies, America is both a republic and an empire. That distinction is essential, he believes, because America is loved for its republican qualities and hated for its imperialistic faults. Among the former, Galtung mentions: its work ethic and dynamism, productivity and creativity, the idea of freedom, or liberty, and a pioneering spirit; while in the latter, he includes: its aggressiveness, arrogance and violence, hypocrisy and self-righteousness, and ignorance of other cultures and extreme materialism.(5

In fact, it is well to remember that even the American republic was established very cruelly and violently. The foundation of the United States of America was associated with the systematic massacre of Native Americans. That catastrophe probably qualifies as the world's first genocide. And slavery as an institution continued in America after it was abolished in Europe. It took a very bloody civil war, in 1861-65, to extirpate it from the social fabric of the American life. Even if, the Civil War was not primarily fought over the abolition of slavery, but against the irredentism of the South, which wanted to secede from the Union and start its own republic, precisely because it wanted to continue a lifestyle based on … slavery. Abe Lincoln's overriding concern was the territorial integrity of the Union, a concern to which he later added that of the abolition of slavery. More than a moral crusade, the latter was an economic necessity for the rapidly industrializing North, which needed large numbers of free, i.e., mobile, labour. The indentured labour system of the South was thus a serious impediment for the rapidly industrialising North. The latter, in turn, gave birth to a powerful American business establishment that became the great champion of American capitalism.

And thus the close association between the American government and the American business establishment began. The former has always gone to great lengths to defend the interests of the latter. One of the C.I.A.'s main activities has always been the organization, usually with the help of corrupt and reactionary local generals, of military coup d'états, whose purpose was the overthrow or assassination of legitimate local foreign leaders whose misfortune was to have incurred the wrath of America, either because of their nationalism, or socialism, or both. There were, in the 111 years between 1890 and 2001 -- from the brutal murder of the indigenous population in Dakota, to the punitive expedition of Afghanistan – a total of 133 military interventions by the U.S., of which, about 70, took place between 1945 and 2001, resulting in between 12 and 16 million people killed.(6 Among the democratically elected leaders of their countries, either toppled or killed with the complicity of the C.I.A., were Salvador Allende of Chile and Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran. In the latter's case, that enormous blunder was the cause of the arrival to power of Khomeni and of the Mollahs. Among the revolutionary leaders killed with the help of the C.I.A., were Che Guevara and Patrice Lumumba.

VI

Galtung lists fourteen 'contradictions' that, he believes, in the next fifteen years, in 2020, will cause the 'decline and fall' of the American empire.(7 None of these 'contradictions'-- which he groups under the five headings of economic, military, political, cultural and social – are, strictu sensu, new. Galtung's merit is to have brought them together to show their global impact. In a time of economic globalisation, that is certainly the right approach. His economic 'contradictions' are those between production, on the one hand, and distribution, finance and the environment, on the other. The world has never been so rich as it is today, but, also, the gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider: the ten richest people on earth have a combined net worth of $ 255 billion – roughly 60 per cent of the income of sub-Saharan Africa; and the world's 500 richest people have more money than the total annual earnings of the poorest three billion.(8 And the rich are, increasingly, making their money in financial speculation – hedge funds, stock options, capital gains. In addition, the American trade and budget deficits are ballooning. Japan holds $ 715 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds, China more than $ 600 billion.(9 The annual U.S. trade deficit, at around $ 600 billion, represents 5 per cent of the American Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Evidently, this situation is not tolerable in the long run. Meanwhile, pollution is getting worse and climate change threatens to become one of the most dangerous problems faced by humanity. And yet, the U.S. refuses to sign the Kyoto Treaty (which is a good beginning, but not enough to deal with the problem). Military 'contradictions' comprise: those between 'state terrorism' (Galtung's definition of war) and terrorism; those between the U.S. and its allies; and the impossibility for America to invade and occupy huge countries like Russia, China and India. Peter Ustinov once defined war 'as the terrorism of the rich', and terrorism 'as the war of the poor'; 'the only difference between the two,' he said is that 'war kills far more people than terrorism'. Terrorism is a symptom. Tackling it effectively requires dealing with injustice in the world, and by giving the Arab-Islamic world respect and a true influence in world affairs. A war between the U.S. and China, or Russia, and even India is inconceivable. So world supremacy will have, in the future, to be achieved, not militarily, but economically. The political 'contradictions' between the U.S., on the one hand, and the U.N. and the E.U, on the other hand, are bound to increase. The U.N. and the E.U. have chosen to resolve international conflicts peacefully and multilaterally; the U.S., while paying lip-service to collaboration and cooperation with its 'allies', is, in final analysis, prepared to use force unilaterally, allegedly, and perhaps partly, to 'spread democracy and liberty', but, in reality, and largely, to further its imperialistic interests. As for cultural 'contradictions', Galtung sees America's Judeo-Christian values clashing with the Arab-Islamic, Chinese and Indian values, which are essentially different. The social 'contradictions', finally, between state and corporate elites, and unemployed workers, and between the older and the younger generations, are bound to increase given the business establishment's . relentless quest for maximum profits. A large part of American manufacturing industries (as well as European industries) have moved to China where labour is cheap; a second 'Silicon Valley' is booming in India. The result of this 'outsourcing' of manufacturing is growing unemployment at home. And that situation is further aggravated by the aging of the population that puts more pressure on the working-age population.

VII

W.B. Yeats', when he wrote the following two lines of his great poem, The Second Coming:

'The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.'

was thinking of the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe in the dark years preceding World War Two. Today, while it is still true that 'the worst (a)re full of passionate intensity', it is no longer true that 'The best lack all conviction.' It is my conviction and hope, as I write the closing lines of this essay, that 2005 will be the year of a new beginning, and that 'humanity', having, at last, stopped, 'like monsters of the deep, to prey on itself', will start building a better world.

Dr Zeki Ergas is a writer, scholar and social activist. Founder of Millennium Solidarity Geneva Group, Secretary general of PEN International's Swiss Romand Center

1) The title of this essay was inspired by Johan Galtung's, On the Coming Decline and Fall of the U.S. Empire. TFF, Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (2004)

2) Rick Lyman, 'Some in U.S. voting with their feet', in International Herald Tribune, Monday, February 7, 2005, pp. 1 and 6

3) In the Orient it is shame. In Confucian China, a patriarchal society par excellence, family relations were based on its members' position within it. Rights and obligations, well-defined, were unquestioned and observed meticulously. A child's disrespect of his, or her, parents was not tolerated. Something of that authoritarian system or model remains in contemporary China. With the penetration of Western liberalism and capitalism, Confucian values are eroding in China, but that doesn't mean that they are on their way out. Deep down, they will always be part of the Chinese psyche. In Japan, in the old imperial days, the Samurai Code of Honour was very important. During World War II, many young pilots committed suicide, called kamikaze, by deliberately slamming their planes full of explosives on American warships. The prospect of having to lose up to two million men in the invasion of Japan was what made the Americans decide to drop the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1970, Yukio Mishima, a literary genius and the author of the The Sea of Fertility, a four-part novel that is a masterpiece, committed hara-kiri, a ritual suicide, when he was only 45 years old. He had felt ashamed that his country had, by adopting Western materialism, abandoned the noble traditions of its imperial past. In Islam -- or Arab Islam, to be precise (Asian or African Islam may be different) – it is humiliation In the PEN Congress of 2004, in Tromsö, Norway, Amin Maalouf, the celebrated Lebanese author and winner of the prestigious French Goncourt Prize, gave a remarkable keynote address on that subject. He also developed that theme in his book: In the Name of Identity. Violence and the Need to Belong (2001). The book was written prior to September 11, but it explains a great deal of the psychology behind that terrorist attack, and behind terrorism in general. Make the Arab-Islamic world feel that they 'belong', and that they are 'respected', and their humiliation, hatred and anger will vanish, as if by a magic wand.

4) Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian and diplomat who was a great admirer of the American democracy, as well as being one of its most perceptive critics. He published the two tomes of his famous masterpiece, Democracy in America, in 1835 and 1840.

5) Johan Galtung is the founder of Transcend Peace University. Among his numerous books are: Transcend and Transform. An Introduction to Conflict Work; and, with Carl G. Jacobsen and Kai Frithjhof Jacobsen, Searching for Peace.

6) Johan Galtung, Decline and Fall of the U.S. Empire by 2020 (2000); and On the Coming Decline and Fall of the U.S. Empire, TFF, Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (2004). See also, William Blum, Rogue State. A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, 2000

7) Galtung, Decline and Fall ... op.cit.

8) Georges Monbiot, ‚Sweden Proves the Neo-liberals Wrong about how to Slash Poverty', in The Guardian (London), January 11, 2005

9) Daniel Altman, 'U.S. Debt: Watch for the Domino Effect', in the International Herald Tribune, February 12-13, 2005

Copyright: Peace Media

[From a very interesting website I just discovered: http://www.stwr.org/

[Peter Lemkin]

"I Love the US Republic, and I Hate the US Empire": Johan Galtung on the War in Afghanistan and How to Get Out

We turn now to the second part of my interview with Johan Galtung. Known as a founder of the field of peace and conflict studies, he’s spent the past half-century pursuing nonviolent conflict resolution in international relations. His latest book is The Fall of the US Empire – And Then What?: Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism or US Blossoming? I spoke to him last week about his prediction of the collapse of US empire in ten years, by 2020. In this second part of our interview, Galtung discusses his assessment of President Obama, the US corporate media and more. But we began with the war in Afghanistan, where he has worked extensively in attempts at conflict resolution.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to part two of my interview with Johan Galtung. Known as the founder of peace studies, he spent the past half-century pursuing nonviolent conflict resolution in international relations. His latest book is The Fall of the US Empire–And Then What?: Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism of US Blossoming?

I spoke to him last week about his prediction of the collapse of the US Empire in ten years, he says, by 2020. In the second part of our interview, Galtung discusses his assessment of President Obama, the US corporate media and more. But we began with the war in Afghanistan, where he’s worked extensively in attempts at conflict resolution.

JOHAN GALTUNG: Now let’s look at it from a Washington point of view: pursuing a victory which will never happen. I’ll say why: 1.56 billion Muslims are dedicated to the idea of defending Islam when trampled upon. Some of them are traveling to Afghanistan. Some of them are doing it somewhere else in other ways. Those ways can become quite disagreeable, as you know.

Point two, there is no capitulation in Islam to infidels. It doesn’t exist. To fight against Christians and Jews—you take the mini-empire of Israel, the regional empire—is not an invitation to a violent confrontation that will end with a capitulation. In other words, the time perspective of the Muslim community is unlimited. I don’t think the time perspective of Washington is unlimited. So you can say, of course, who has the longer time perspective will win. There may be some local capitulation, a white flag somewhere, but by and large the usual scenario of a tent, maybe, with a camping table, somebody diligently typing a couple of copies of a capitulation document and "please sign on the dotted line," forget about it. Forget about it. That’s not the way it happens these days.

So, having said that, victory is out. Of course, the US will not be available for defeat, as, in a sense, it was in Vietnam in April 1975. So withdrawal is the likeliest thing, hoping desperately that the Afghan national army and the Afghan national police will take over the job, which they will, with my knowledge of the situation, not do. They will be aligning themselves with the next stage in Afghan history.

But having mentioned this, there is of course a fourth possibility: United States participating in conflict resolution. So what we have been discussing here, Amy, in Washington in these sessions, have been the details of these five points and other points. And here I would like to enter with a basic point about mediation, we who mediate. I’m an NGO mediator. I’ve done this more than 120 times around the world, sometimes with some success, sometimes not, or to put it more optimistically, not yet success. OK, what we are trying to find out are the goals of the parties. What do they want? I mentioned the Taliban are dead against secularization. I find that legitimate. The US goal of a base, I find it illegitimate. The US goal of an oil pipeline and controlling it, I find it illegitimate, by means of war. But the US goal that no attack should come from Afghanistan, I find completely legitimate.

I don’t think that’s what happened 9/11. I don’t think the attack came from Afghanistan, nor do I think Osama bin Laden’s role was very much important. I think it was essentially Saudi Arabian. It was a revenge for the oil treaty of March 1945, because it was totally against Wahhab perspectives on reality, that a good life is the life as lived at the time of the Prophet and, as the Prophet said when he expired in 632, "In this country there shall be no two religions." I’m, of course, in no way saying that all Saudi Arabians are of this opinion, but many are, even the royal house are divided down the middle. And if you then add to this, from 1990 onwards, staging US wars in the region, be it against the Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait, or be it against the Saddam Hussein—that was in 1991, February—the Saddam Hussein of 2003, 20 March, by Iraqi reckoning, staging it from Saudi Arabia, from the sacred land of the chosen people. Now, the US should know something about sacred land and chosen people, the metaphor that I took from Judaism, because at the time in 1620, at the time of the Mayflower, there was not much Zion on the eastern end of the Mediterranean.

So, having said that, conflict resolution is the way. But that can only happen if you understand what the people want, legitimate goals in Afghanistan, and taking into consideration what, to my mind, is an absolutely legitimate goal from Washington—no attack shall emerge from Afghanistan. Even if it didn’t do so, and to best of my knowledge, in 2001, it could do it today, because the US has produced quite a lot of people who have reasons for hating the country. Now, having said that, I am not sure that the US is going to do this. And the reason for it is a limited US ability to see a conflict from the outside or from above, to take your intellectual helicopter and getting up above the conflict, see your own legitimacy and illegitimacy and the other side’s legitimacy and illegitimacy, starting thinking that maybe he has a point and then trying to see if there’s some reality that could accommodate all of it. Well, 243 military or political interventions since Thomas Jefferson—we are now perhaps at 245—this is not a US foreign policy talent, in spite of the fact that there are so many wonderful Americans in this fantastic country, where I have lived much of my life, that have a fabulous ability to handle conflicts well.

So, having said that, we come to alternative five for the US: to become irrelevant. Neither victory nor defeat, nor withdrawal, nor conflict resolution—becoming irrelevant. And that, of course, leads us to the question, who then is relevant? Countries in the region, Turkey. Turkey is led today by three people—the President, the Foreign Minister, and of course the Prime Minister—Davuto?lu, Erdogan, Gül—of an exceptional quality, I will call a team more in tune with what happens in the world than the people leading the United States of America at present. I’m not talking badly about Obama and Hillary Clinton; I’m just saying that those three, it’s very hard to come up to that level. Now, they are not becoming a regional power. They are now very high up on world diplomacy. They are not, as Washington Post is saying, turning against the West; they’re turning against the United States and Israel, turning against the US empire and the Israeli mini-empire after 1967, forty-three years ago, after the occupation, after the June War. You see, all over the region you find people saying that we can tolerate, we can live with—I mean, I talk with Hamas people, and I ask them, "Is there an Israel you can acknowledge, you can recognize?" And they say, by and large, 4 June, 1967, with some revisions. Well, Turkey is on that side, and they are making contacts now with Iran, with Afghanistan, Iran with Afghanistan, Iran with Turkey. So there you have a quite interesting triad coming up. Add to that Russia and China, not India. India is outside this game; it’s an unimportant country for the time being, in spite of its size, also now involved in a very deadly war and unable to find good solutions for the Naxalites—should learn from Nepal, although Nepal is also in difficulty of another kind. You can look at this, and then you can draw the conclusion: increasing US irrelevance. Well, you see, that’s how empires die. They die with a whimper, and usually not with a bang, as T.S. Eliot said.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Johan Galtung, whose latest book is called The Fall of the US Empire–And Then What? He is known as the father of peace studies, a mediator around the world. Johan Galtung, I wanted to ask you about your assessment of President Obama, but first play a clip for you. This was President Obama speaking months ago at the US Military Academy at West Point, where he unveiled a plan to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. He gave this speech a week before he received the Nobel Peace Prize in the city, in the capital you were born, in Oslo.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Now, the people of Afghanistan have endured violence for decades. They have been confronted with occupation by the Soviet Union and then by foreign al-Qaeda fighters who used Afghan land for their own purposes. So tonight, I want the Afghan people to understand: America seeks an end to this era of war and suffering. We have no interest in occupying your country. We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens. And we will seek a partnership with Afghanistan grounded in mutual respect, to isolate those who destroy, to strengthen those who build, to hasten the day when our troops will leave, and to forge a lasting friendship in which America is your partner and never your patron.


AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama. Your response?

JOHAN GALTUNG: Totally unrealistic and extremely badly informed, and that from such an intelligent, such a charming man with such a brilliant rhetoric. Look, to be realistic here, one has to understand that almost all Afghans, after having been invaded five times in recent history—three times by the English, once by the Soviets, Russians, and once by the Americans—are sick and tired, absolutely, of being invaded. The idea that the Taliban should lay down their arms before the Americans withdraw is outside reality. The idea of a partnership in a country fundamentally, and to some extent fundamentalist, Muslim, that you can have a partnership and you can come with technical assistance projects, development projects that have not been blessed by Allah, is a great misunderstanding. You will cater to a small group of Westernized people in Kabul and a couple of other places. That’s the only thing you will reach.

Now, where is the Obama plan for canceling the Bagram base? Where is the plan for giving the pipeline back to the people it should belong to? And that is not Unocal. I hear nothing of the kind. Now, this is just a part of imperial politics.

What I do hear, with sympathy, is the idea of parity. But, you see, parity, with so-and-so-many soldiers in one of the lands, with no soldiers from that land in your own land, is not parity. I find—when I talk with Afghans, I find three motives, and I mentioned them already: number one, anti-secularization; number two, anti-Kabul, in favor of a much more decentralized country; number three, and very importantly, anti-being-invaded. So we have so-and-so-many million Afghans, and you have three motivations. You have very many of them with plus-three. I think you have very few with zero motivation.

Dear Obama, out of touch with reality.

AMY GOODMAN: We have just—in Afghanistan, the war in Afghanistan has just entered its 104th month. I believe the Vietnam War, the US involvement in the US war in Vietnam, was 103 months, making this now, Afghanistan, the longest war in US history. Johan Galtung, how can it end now? And I also want to ask you about Iraq and the media’s coverage and the role the media plays in all of this.

JOHAN GALTUNG: John F. Kennedy sent the first US military specialists in 1961, and it ended 30 April, '75. If you take fourteen years and multiply by twelve, you get a little bit higher figure, but let's leave that outside.

I think it will end, by and large, the same way as Vietnam. That means United States becoming irrelevant. That means that others will, behind the scene, play important roles. There will be negotiations. We are probably coming into a period where Taliban, at some point, will meet Americans. They will not go to a place—the Taliban—where they can easily be captured. To find that place where they can meet will not be so easy. There will be something similar to the talks between North Vietnam and the Americans. And to quote one important exchange of words in that remark, one of the last commanders in Vietnam on the American side said to the top person in North Vietnam, "You were never able to beat us in any open battle." And the North Vietnamese response was "Correct, but it is irrelevant." You can be a superpower as much as you want. You’re up against a force, incidentally, which has enormous amounts of world support. That simply is superior. So, instead of playing it with a ladder up to a helicopter on top of the embassy, I would guess that the Obama double plan—on the one hand, 30,000 more in; on the other hand, withdrawal, an invitation for the Taliban to look at their watch and wait, of course—will play itself out in a way very similar to Vietnam.

And in the meantime, others will be working. There were lots of non-governmental people working—Pugwash, for instance. I was a member of that one. I know a little bit about what happened. France played a certain role, no doubt about it. Russia played a role. China played a role. And what happened then, when the 30 April, 1975, was all over, was that the two Vietnams came together like that, and the thing handled itself. Afghanistan will handle itself. United States will have to receive a relatively high number of people who, after this is over, will find themselves on the wrong side of the divide. Many of them will, like good chameleons, change color in the meantime.

I think much of the key to the solution is in a conference for the security and cooperation of Central Asia, modeled, if you will, on the Helsinki Conference that led to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. United States played a role in that one, but also sabotaged it by deploying its, I would say, ridiculous missiles back starting in the mid-’70s, and by the mid-’80s they had been deployed, thereby postponing the end of the Cold War, by the insight of most of the people that I know, by at least ten years. Well, there could still be sabotage actions from the US side. Could be. But this is more or less the scenario I would have. Vietnam is the model.


AMY GOODMAN: We’ll come back to our interview with peace studies founder Johan Galtung in a minute. This is Democracy Now!

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to my interview with Johan Galtung, the father of peace studies. He was born in Oslo. When the Nazis occupied Norway, his father—a physician, prominent politician, vice mayor of Oslo, and a member of the resistance—was sent to a concentration camp. I asked Johan Galtung for his assessment of the US media’s coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

JOHAN GALTUNG: I would wish that Al Jazeera could be visible in the USA in a more prominent way than as channel 275 on Comcast. You see, what Al Jazeera does is the following. It is not left-wing, not at all. I’ve been interviewed a couple of times, three times. I know how they operate. It’s multi-angular. You don’t present anything unless you have that Afghan position, that Afghan position, that US position, that Iranian position, or that Turkish position. You present that. And it comes, and all the people who are being interviewed are grilled by very talented people—that also happens in other channels—and it is then left to the viewers to draw their conclusion.

So what I find is that the discourse, as it’s cut by the US, is almost infantile. For instance, the figure terrorist. Look, I’m approaching eighty. The Germans came and occupied our country in 1940. I was nine. I still remember how our resistance movement was referred to as terrorist, Goebbels. Terrorist, terrorist, terrorist.

AMY GOODMAN: The Norwegians.

JOHAN GALTUNG: Yes, it was people not in uniform attacking him. That is true. It was our resistance. It’s very hard to see it otherwise.

AMY GOODMAN: The Norwegians referred to as terrorists by the Nazis.

JOHAN GALTUNG: Precisely. And, of course, it was true that some used tactics—it’s a tactic, terrorism is a tactic—that sometimes was unnecessarily violent. It’s also true that some of them were extremist communists. Very, very true. And they were hoping for the reward after the war that the people enthusiastically would vote them into government. No, they didn’t get that. But at the same time, they were respected for what they had done. So, that is one, if you will, stupidity that should stop.

The other one is this inability to see the other side. Let us just look for a second into what happened on 9/11. I’ll give you in one sentence what about 100 dialogues around the world have led me to believe, including of course in countries very central to this. It was an extrajudicial execution of two buildings, probably heading for a third one—Langley, Virginia, CIA. Probably. Why? For having insulted Saudi Arabia, insulted economically by a pattern totally contrary to Wahhab visions of what is a valid economy, by having insulted the country militarily by the presence of nationals of totally different religions, infidels, and in the same time using the country for attacking another country, also Arab, also Muslim, a country that one can critique and criticize, but still a part of the ummah, the Muslim community.

Now, if you look at this, look at it that way, then you suddenly start understanding why Osama bin Laden said in one of his famous speeches in October, after 9/11, said, "You are now suffering the humiliation we suffered more than eighty years ago." You take 2001, you subtract eighty, you come to 1921. But he said "more than," so let us subtract five more, as a maximum—1916, '17, ’18. Sykes-Picot; 1917, Balfour Declaration; 1918, the occupation of Istanbul. I remember I was eating in my apartment in Manassas, close to Washington, where my wife and I live in much pleasure much of our lives. I was hitting Googling to find out how many US media had picked up what happened more than eighty years ago. Amy, I found zero.

Now, the US is not very good at history. So that ridiculous formula, that we were attacked because people are envious and they're envious our democracy and so on, was the one that went all over in the media and has been intoxicating and, I would say, making for the highly unintelligent analysis.

Now, what do you do? Imagine that what I say now is correct. Imagine that is more or less what happened and that it is consistent with what we have been told, that fifteen out of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi Arabians. Let’s imagine that’s correct. What do you do then? Maybe you go back to March 1945, and you look at the treaty. Maybe you have an Arabian-US commission to discuss it. Maybe at some point you don’t apologize. That is a tradition, which I don’t think so important. But maybe you say, for instance, that I wish it could be undone. Maybe you say that this was not the wisest thing we could have done onboard the aircraft carrier in the Suez Canal, with Ibn Saud, on the one hand, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on the other—one of the last things before he expired on the 12th of April, 1945. Amy, you will now ask how can I remember that. That was the day my father was released from concentration camp, so it was a day with one shiny light and a very sad day. We admired and we loved Roosevelt, like most of the world loves America, but not US imperialism, you see.

And since you asked me about the US media, look, this is a country with so many universities, so many educated people, brilliant people, charming people, wonderful people. I don’t understand why the mainstream media have to market that much stupidity.

AMY GOODMAN: Johan Galtung, you dedicate this book, your latest book, The Fall of the US Empire–And Then What?, "to a country I love, the United States of America." You write, "You will swim so much better without that imperial albatross around your neck. Drown it before it drowns you, and let a thousand flowers blossom!" How—

JOHAN GALTUNG: I mean every word of it. I can even tell you that when I give talks about this, many places in the US, I put hand on heart and say, "I love the US republic, and I hate the US empire." You see, to many people, this doesn’t make sense. It’s called anti-American. No, no, no. I’ve had, I’ll tell you, people coming up to me saying that that remark relieved them of an enormous problem, namely, "I have so much difficulties with our foreign policy, our economic penetration, our cultural arrogance, our political maneuvering and arms twisting, and yet I love my country." And what I try to say is that these are two different things, and the albatross is around your neck. Get rid of it. Give it up. Do the following four things. Very quickly.

Economically, trade for mutual benefit, fine, but equal benefit. And that means to examine the impact of your economic deals down to the last bottom, not only in a third world country, but maybe also in your own. Maybe you need some retraining of your economists to do that.

Militarily, pull your bases back. Eight hundred in 150 countries is madness. And instead of all that, conflict resolution, conflict resolution, conflict resolution. There are so many places in the US now where the young generation is being trained in it. They’re doing brilliant steps forward. A Department of Peace was suggested by Dennis Kucinich, and I think about sixty-four congressmen and women are behind it, something like that. A brilliant conception. And I’ll tell you one thing. If the US had that one and even permitted it to shine, as the famous castle up on the hill, all the love for the US around the world would return. It would be just fabulous.

Now, third thing, politically, no more arms twisting. Negotiation with the cards on the table, no threats, no nothing. No secret call by the US ambassador to UN, or whatever it is, to call in somebody and tell them that "if you do this and that, if you insist on this as your bargaining position, we will do something," and so on. I know so many such stories.

Point four, get down from the idea of having a separate mandate from God, even a mandate to kill. The word is dialogue. The word is simply to say we have something that we can contribute—and do you have from this marvelous, generous country. But others also have something. For instance, it seems that the Muslims have some good ideas about banking, like not lending more than 30 percent of your capital. Well, if your upper limit is 2,400 or something like that, then you’re a little bit high. And if that limit is considered too high and is abolished in 2004, and the sky is the limit, down it came. And it’ll come down again. US is today probably heading for a rather important crash and, in all probability, for a major devaluation of its currency.

Well, let us leave that aside. Let us just say a new economic relations to other countries; conflict resolution instead of bases and invasions and interventions and Special Forces all around the world; negotiations with open cards, without tricks; and dialogue. Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. All of the Americans I know very well, and many of them Jewish Americans, have extremely good talents for this. Why couldn’t that be more the tone and the tenor of US policy?

AMY GOODMAN: We have two minutes before the satellite ends. Johan Galtung, as you leave the United States, what do you want to leave US—people here in the US with? Your thoughts?

JOHAN GALTUNG: We’re making the distinction between the empire and the republic and that the republic could do beautifully without the empire, like so many others have done before them. I can give you general public opinion studies around the world, let us say, in Muslim countries. About 85 percent love the United States of America, like I and my Japanese wife do. About 85 percent hate US foreign policy. You see, take that seriously. Just have a look at your military, economic, political and cultural foreign policy. They can be changed. It’s even relatively easy. Make yourself a normal country. No exceptionalism, please. A normal, wonderful country. Maybe you will find it in your interest to make North America a region, a Mex-US-Can, a Mexico, United States, Canada. That could also be a shiny light, with Mexico as a bridge to a Latin America which is now finding its own ways outside the Organization of American States, a Latin American region. Well, put your fingers in the earth, find out where you are, and you will find marvelous rounds forward for an ever-better American republic.


AMY GOODMAN: Johan Galtung, founder of peace studies. His latest book is called The Fall of the US Empire–And Then What? You can get a DVD of today’s broadcast at democracynow.org.