"Half a century ago, in July 1955, Bertrand Russell and Albert
Einstein issued an extraordinary appeal to the people of the world,
asking them "to set aside" the strong feelings they have about many
issues and to consider themselves "only as members of a biological
species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance
none of us can desire." The choice facing the world is "stark and
dreadful and inescapable: shall we put an end to the human race; or
shall mankind renounce war?"
The world has not renounced war. Quite the contrary. By now, the
world's hegemonic power accords itself the right to wage war at
will, under a doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense" with unstated
bounds. International law, treaties, and rules of world order are sternly
imposed on others with much self-righteous posturing, but dismissed as
irrelevant for the United States—a long-standing practice, driven to new
depths by the Reagan and Bush II administrations.
Among the most elementary of moral truisms is the principle of
universality: we must apply to ourselves the same standards we do to
others, if not more stringent ones. It is a remarkable comment on
Western intellectual culture that this principle is so often ignored
and, if occasionally mentioned, condemned as outrageous. This is
particularly shameful on the part of those who flaunt their
Christian piety, and therefore have presumably at least heard of the
definition of the hypocrite in the Gospels.
Relying solely on elevated rhetoric, commentators urge us to
appreciate the sincerity of the professions of "moral clarity" and
"idealism" by the political leadership. To take just one of
innumerable examples, the well-known scholar Philip Zelikow deduces
"the new centrality of moral principles" in the Bush administration from
"the administration's rhetoric" and a single fact: the proposal to increase
development aid—to a fraction of that provided by other rich countries
relative to the size of their economies.
The rhetoric is indeed impressive. "I carry this commitment in my
soul," the president declared in March 2002 as he created the
Millennium Challenge Corporation to boost funding to combat poverty
in the developing world. In 2005, the corporation erased the
statement from its website after the Bush administration reduced its
projected budget by billions of dollars. Its head resigned "after
failing to get the program moving," economist Jeffrey Sachs writes,
having "disbursed almost nothing" of the $10 billion originally
promised.
Meanwhile, Bush rejected a call from Prime Minister Tony
Blair to double aid to Africa, and expressed willingness to join
other industrial countries in cutting unpayable African debt only if
aid was correspondingly reduced, moves that amount to "a death
sentence for more than 6 million Africans a year who die of
preventable and treatable causes," Sachs notes.
When Bush's new ambassador, John Bolton, arrived at the United Nations
shortly before its 2005 summit, he at once demanded the elimination of "all
occurrences of the phrase 'millennium development goals'" from the document
that had been carefully prepared after long negotiations to deal with
"poverty, sexual discrimination, hunger, primary education, child mortality,
maternal health, the environment and disease."
Rhetoric is always uplifting, and we are enjoined to admire the
sincerity of those who produce it, even when they act in ways that
recall Alexis de Tocqueville's observation that the United States
was able "to exterminate the Indian race . . . without violating a
single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world."
Reigning doctrines are often called a "double standard." The
term is misleading. It is more accurate to describe them as a single
standard, clear and unmistakable, the standard that Adam Smith called the
"vile maxim of the masters of mankind: . . . All for ourselves, and nothing
for other people." Much has changed since his day, but the vile maxim
flourishes.
The single standard is so deeply entrenched that it is beyond
awareness. Take "terror," the leading topic of the day. There is a
straightforward single standard: their terror against us and our
clients is the ultimate evil, while our terror against them does not
exist—or, if it does, is entirely appropriate.
One clear
illustration is Washington's terrorist war against Nicaragua in the
1980s, an uncontroversial case, at least for those who believe that
the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council—both
of which condemned the United States—have some standing on such
matters. The State Department confirmed that the US-run forces
attacking Nicaragua from US bases in Honduras had been authorized to
attack "soft targets," that is, undefended civilian targets.
A
protest by Americas Watch elicited a sharp response by a respected
spokesman of "the left," New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, who
patiently explained that terrorist attacks on civilian targets
should be evaluated on pragmatic grounds: a "sensible policy
[should] meet the test of cost-benefit analysis" of "the amount of
blood and misery that will be poured in, and the likelihood that
democracy will emerge at the other end"—"democracy" as defined by US
elites, of course.
The assumptions remain beyond challenge, even perception. In 2005,
the press reported that the Bush administration was facing a serious
"dilemma": Venezuela was seeking extradition of one of the most
notorious Latin American terrorists, Luis Posada Carriles, to face
charges for the bombing of a Cubana airliner, killing seventy-three
people. The charges were credible, but there was a real difficulty.
After Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison, he "was hired by US
covert operatives to direct the resupply operation for the
Nicaraguan contras from El Salvador"—that is, to play a prominent
role in Washington's terrorist war against Nicaragua. Hence the
dilemma: "Extraditing him for trial could send a worrisome signal to
covert foreign agents that they cannot count on unconditional
protection from the US government, and it could expose the CIA to
embarrassing public disclosures from a former operative." A
virtual entry requirement for the society of respectable
intellectuals is the failure to perceive that there might be some
slight problem here.
At the same time that Venezuela was pressing its appeal,
overwhelming majorities in the Senate and House passed a bill
barring US aid to countries that refuse requests for extradition—US
requests, that is. Washington's regular refusal to honor requests
from other countries seeking extradition of leading terrorists
passed without comment, though some concern was voiced over the
possibility that the bill theoretically might bar aid to Israel
because of its refusal to extradite a man charged with "a brutal
1997 murder in Maryland who had fled to Israel and claimed
citizenship through his father."
At least temporarily, the Posada dilemma was, thankfully, resolved
by the courts, which rejected Venezuela's appeal, in violation of a
US-Venezuelan extradition treaty. A day later, the head of the FBI,
Robert Mueller, urged Europe to speed US demands for extradition:
"We are always looking to see how we can make the extradition
process go faster," he said. "We think we owe it to the victims of
terrorism to see to it that justice is done efficiently and
effectively."
At the Ibero-American Summit shortly after, the
leaders of Spain and the Latin American countries "backed Venezuela's
efforts to have [Posada] extradited from the to face trial" for the
Cubana airliner bombing, but then after the US embassy protested the
action. Washington or merely ignores, extradition requests for
terrorists. the tool of presidential pardons for acceptable crimes.
Bush pardoned Orlando Bosch, a notorious international terrorist and
associate of Posada, despite objections by the Justice Department, which
urged that he be deported as a threat to national security. Bosch resides
safely in the United States, perhaps to be joined by Posada, in communities
that continue to serve as the base for international terrorism.
No one would be so vulgar as to suggest that the United States
should be subject to bombing and invasion in accord with the Bush II
doctrine that "those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the
terrorists themselves," announced when the government in Afghanistan
asked for evidence before handing over people the United States
accused of terrorism (without credible grounds, as Robert Mueller
later acknowledged) The Bush doctrine has "already become a defacto rule of international relations," writes Harvard international
relations specialist Graham Allison: it revokes "the sovereignty of
states that provide sanctuary to terrorists." Some states, that is,
thanks to the exemption provided by the single standard.
The single standard also extends to weapons and other means of
destruction. US military expenditures approximate those of the rest
of the world combined, while arms sales by thirty-eight North
American companies (one of which is based in Canada) account for
more than 60 percent of the world total. Furthermore, for the world
dominant power, the means of destruction have few limits.
Articulating what those who wish to see already knew, the prominent
Israeli military analyst Reuven Pedatzur writes that "in the era of
a single, ruthless superpower, whose leadership intends to shape the
world according to its own forceful world view, nuclear weapons have
become an attractive instrument for waging wars, even against
enemies that do not possess nuclear arms."
When asked why "should the United States spend massively on arms and
China refrain?" Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, provided a simple answer: "we guarantee the security of the
world, protect our allies, keep critical sea-lanes open and lead the war on
terror," while China threatens others and "could ignite an arms
race"—actions inconceivable for the United States.
Surely no one but a crazed "conspiracy theorist" might mention that the
United States controls sea-lanes in pursuit of US foreign policy objectives,
hardly for the benefit of all, or that much of the world regards Washington
(particularly since the beginning of the Bush II presidency) as the leading
threat to world security. Recent global polls reveal that France is "most
widely seen as having a positive influence in the world," alongside Europe
generally and China, while "the countries most widely viewed as having a
negative influence are the US and Russia." But again there is a simple
explanation.
The polls just show that the world is wrong. It's easy to understand why.
As Boot has explained elsewhere, Europe has "often been driven by avarice"
and the "cynical Europeans" cannot comprehend the "strain of idealism" that
animates US foreign policy. "After 200 years, Europe still hasn't figured
out what makes America tick." "
