OLD
POLITICS FOR NEW
November
9, 1989, marked the end of the old politics and the old alignments;
on that day, as the Berlin Wall fell, so too did the political
categories and alliances of half a century. For the end of
the Cold War meant a lot more than the end of Communism as
a viable ideology, more than the implosion of the Soviet Empire
and the breakup of the old USSR: here in the United States,
it also meant the end of anti-Communism as a viable
ideology, and the implosion of the old conservative coalition
that governed America in the eighties. It meant the breakup
of the Right, as well as the Left – since both had in
large part defined themselves in relation to something that
no longer existed.
THE
COMING REALIGNMENT
Of
course, this process did not happen immediately; it took a
while to work itself out, and it is still working itself out.
But today the great realignment has progressed far enough
so that we can begin to see the shape of the new political
landscape, or at least the broad outlines of it. I often refer,
in this space, to what I call the War Party, a phrase that
is a kind of shorthand for that complex of social, political,
and economic forces that constitute a permanent and powerful
lobby on behalf of imperialism and militarism. In my very
first column for Antiwar.com, I described it as "the war propaganda
apparatus maintained by the interventionist lobby. Well-funded
and well-connected, the War Party is such a varied and complex
phenomenon that a detailed description of its activities,
and its vast system of interlocking directorates and special
interests, both foreign and domestic, would fill the pages
of a good-sized book." I solved the problem of how to present
this material in the form of a daily column by focusing on
specific individuals, the biggest and most vocal supporters
of the Kosovo war, from Madeleine Albright to Vanessa Redgrave
and all the way round to Jeanne Kirkpatrick. These three Harpies
of the Apocalypse pretty much represented the ideological
contours of the War Party during the Kosovo conflict: Clintonian
Democrats, hard leftists, and neoconservatives.
SERBO-PHOBIA
The
hard leftists, former peaceniks like Tod Gitlin, naturally
rallied round the flag when Clinton declared that this was
a war against "racism" and for "diversity." The Clintonians,
for their part, were glad enough to divert attention away
from the fact that their leader had turned the White House
into the heterosexual equivalent of a gay bathhouse. But the
neoconservatives – that merry little band of ex-lefties
who left the Democratic Party in the 1970s and 80s over its
lack of enthusiasm for the Cold War – were the most bloodthirsty
of the whole sorry lot. Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly
Standard, openly called for "crushing Serb skulls" in
a famous editorial a full year before the bombs began to fall
on Belgrade. Opportunists like John McCain sought to climb
on the "kill the Serbs" bandwagon out of their instinct for
the main chance, but the real hardcore ideologues of the War
Party were the neocons. While the Clintonians served up some
rhetorical hash consisting of bromides about "humanitarianism"
and "diversity" to justify the war, this was at most a half-hearted
effort: after all, if you're bombing television stations,
and raining death on a civilian population, it becomes increasingly
hard to pass yourself off as Mother Theresa.
THE
NEW BARBARIANS
Only
the neocons had a clear ideological agenda, and Kristol's
remark about "crushing Serb skulls" pretty much expresses
what it means in practice. In theory, however, it is much
more high-sounding, and I must admire Kristol and his co-author
Robert Kagan, for their effort to dress up what is basically
the most barbaric doctrine ever enunciated in language that
sounds almost like it might have been written by a civilized
human being. In their article for the Summer 1996 issue of
Foreign Affairs, Kristol and Kagan enunciate the outlines
of what they call a "neo-Reaganite" foreign policy. Conservatives,
it seems, have been "adrift" in the realm of foreign policy
since the end of the cold war. Up until November 9, 1989,
the role of the US in world affairs had been defined by the
alleged threat posed by the Soviet Union. Now that the Soviets
are gone, however, the question arises: "What should that
role be?" Kristol and Kagan have an answer, and I quote:
"Benevolent
global hegemony. Having defeated the 'evil empire,' the United
States enjoys strategic and ideological predominance. The
first objective of U.S. foreign policy should be to preserve
and enhance that predominance by strengthening America's security,
supporting its friends, advancing its interests, and standing
up for its principles around the world. The aspiration to
benevolent hegemony might strike some as either hubristic
or morally suspect. But a hegemon is nothing more or less
than a leader with preponderant influence and authority over
all others in its domain. That is America's position in the
world today. The leaders of Russia and China understand this.
At their April summit meeting, Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin
joined in denouncing "hegemonism" in the post-Cold War world.
They meant this as a complaint about the United States. It
should be taken as a compliment and a guide to action."
BEYOND
HUBRIS
This
vision of world domination goes way, way beyond hubris,
and crosses over the border into outright megalomania. It
reminds me of all those terrible science fiction movies, where
the goal of the mad scientist or the evil space beings is
always to conquer the world. For the authors of this manifesto
of Empire, however, what most normal people would consider
villainous is, instead, virtuous. As the great architects
of "national greatness conservatism," Kristol and his cabal
naturally want to export that "greatness" to the rest of the
world. It is the old Marxism, turned inside-out, in which
the "democratic revolution" must be exported to the far corners
of the globe.
BEATING
THE WAR DRUMS
While
the neocon theoretician Francis Fukuyama deploys the Hegelian
dialectic to show that history has ended in the birth of what
he calls the "universal homogenous state," the Weekly Standard
and the cadre of neocon columnists and editorial writers beat
the war drums continuously and ever more loudly: they want
an all-out war against Serbia, Iraq, Russia, China, North
Korea, and who knows how many other so-called "rogue states"
out there. I think Austria may very well be next. Of course,
by the neocon definition, any state that does not recognize
American supremacy, that doesn't kowtow and surrender its
sovereignty to the West, is a "rogue state." Neoconservatism
is an ideology that has to mean perpetual war.
DIFFERENT
BRANDS OF THE SAME POISON
The
War Party is not a unitary party: it is riven into various
factions, with ostensibly "left" and "right" wings. Some,
like Kristol and Kagan, want the US to assume a frankly imperial
stance, and act unilaterally to achieve global dominance.
Others, the "left"-imperialists, see the US acting through
the United Nations, or some other multilateral institution.
Both see the emergence of a global state, centered in the
West, as inevitable and desirable. The only argument is the
means to bring this about, and their differences are almost
purely stylistic. There are other differences, such as the
regional preferences each wing has in terms of the enemies
it chooses, with the "left" concentrating on Europe while
the "right" wing of the war party has always been focused
on the Asian theater of operations. But that is a whole other
subject, that we don't have sufficient space to explore in
this column. Suffice to say that we are talking about two
versions of essentially the same poison. The dwarfish Bill
Kristol likes to affect a macho stance, and is enraptured
by his vision of "crushing Serb skulls," while Clinton and
his enablers pose as great "humanitarians" – even as
they are bombing one of the oldest cities in Europe from the
cowardly height of 50,000 feet.
ON
THE FRINGE
And
so we have a War Party that spans the very narrow spectrum
of the politically permissible, from the neo-liberal "left"
to the neo-conservative "right" – with anything and everything
that falls outside of these parameters exiled to the so-called
"fringe." Of course, when the so-called "mainstream" is defined
so narrowly, we get to the point where millions of Americans
are considered to be so-called "fringe elements." This is
the great dream of the neocons: to lop off the fringes and
institute the rule of the Eternal Center, where dissent is
nonexistent – especially in the realm of foreign
policy.
MOBILIZING
FOR PEACE
It's
very clever how they've gone about it, in a deliberate campaign
to marginalize any and all opposition to the globalist idea.
But any attempt to suppress opposition is bound, instead,
to stimulate it – and that was the reason for the recent
Antiwar.com conference, and all the conferences to come: to
mobilize the party of peace. The first step of that mobilization
is to recognize who were are, and where we're coming from.
The Peace Party, though less organized – and far less
generously funded – represents a far greater number of
Americans, most of whom are instinctual isolationists. The
American people have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming,
into virtually every war in their history, and the post cold
war trend has been to encourage this natural isolationism.
ON
THE LEFT
But
this opposition to foreign adventurism is normally activated
only after we actually go to war. Active opposition
to interventionism in between wars is therefore limited
to the "far" left and the "far" right. We have the remnants
of the Old Left, whose best elements are represented by a
man like Alexander Cockburn – and whose worst aspects
are exemplified by the neo-Stalinist robots of the Workers
World Party, whose "International Action Center" has marginalized
the opposition to the Kosovo war as a wacko sideshow far better
than the War Party ever could.
ON
THE RIGHT
It
is on the right, however, that the most interesting developments
have taken place: for, until the end of the cold war, there
were very few antiwar rightists. Up until recently, the long
tradition of anti-imperialism on the Right was completely
forgotten, especially by conservatives. Yet it was the old
America First Committee, founded by rock-ribbed conservatives
and opponents of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940, that was
the biggest and best-organized antiwar movement in American
history. The fight to keep us out of the European war was
led by such Roosevelt-haters as John T. Flynn, and such editorial
bastions of mid-Western middle Americanism as the Chicago
Tribune and the Saturday Evening Post. Their analysis
that we would win the war against national socialism in the
trenches but lose the battle for liberty on the home front,
was largely borne out by events. Garet Garrett, chief editorial
writer for the Saturday Evening Post, warned in 1950
that "we have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic
and Empire" – but by then not many were listening. Only
a few, notably Murray N. Rothbard, the libertarian economist
and theoretician, carried on the Old Right tradition. By the
mid-sixties the so-called "New" Right of William F. Buckley,
Jr., and National Review had taken over the conservative
movement almost completely, along with a crew of ex-leftists
such as James Burnham (a former leader of the Fourth International)
and a whole coven of ex-Commies of one sort or another, who
were hell-bent on destroying their ex-comrades in the Kremlin.
PARALLEL
HISTORY
If
we look at the parallel histories of the War Party and the
party of Peace, we can see a whole series of such realignments,
starting with the First World War and its aftermath. The crusading
spirit of the War Party of 1917 was animated by Wilsonian
liberalism, a militant internationalism of the left. These
same liberals, however, were cruelly disillusioned by vengeance
of Versailles and the subsequent redivision of Europe by the
Great Powers. This great betrayal gave rise to a new, noninterventionist
liberalism, which found political expression in the midwestern
populists of both parties (but primarily the Republicans).
Exemplified by Senator William C. Borah, the great orator
known as "Lion of Idaho, this group constituted the Midwestern
leadership of the antiwar movement of the 1930s. These progressive
Republicans were initially friendly to Franklin Roosevelt,
but were alienated by the Mussolini-esque National Recovery
Act, horrified by the court-packing scheme, and bitterly opposed
to getting into the European war, which they saw as a war
between empires in which the republican US had no interest
and no stake. US intervention in the war, they saw, was a
scheme by the President to increase his power, and plant his
foot firmly on the neck of the nation.
WAR
IS THE CATALYST
In
this suspicion they had plenty of company in conservative
businessmen such as Colonel Robert E. Wood, the head of Sears
and Roebuck, and a group of Yale undergraduates led by R.
Douglas Stuart, the son of the first vice president of the
Quaker Oats Company. This working alliance, based on opposition
to a common enemy, soon evolved into a common analysis of
America in the 1930s: that Roosevelt was a warmongering would-be
dictator who was taking the country down the path to perdition.
While opposition to the President's domestic policies formed
some basis for the alliance, it was the war question that
was the real catalyst of the 1930s realignment – as it
has been throughout American history.
REALIGNMENT
ON THE LEFT
Over
on the left, another sort of realignment was taking place,
with the formerly antiwar Communist Party turning on a dime:
the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact had motivated their
opposition to intervention, but when Hitler turned on his
twin brother in the Kremlin, Stalin's American agents changed
their line in mid-sentence – and without missing a beat.
Suddenly, the Commies were the biggest warmongers on the block,
stridently demanding that the US open up a "second front"
and save the Soviet Union, and demanding that all opponents
of the war be jailed as "traitors" – this from
a party funded and directly controlled by a foreign power,
a party that now billed Communism as being the living incarnation
of "twentieth century Americanism"!
KARMA
IN HISTORY
The
Communists had been on the outs with their liberal friends
and potential fellow travelers on the war question, but just
as soon as the Commies were pro-war they were let into the
government and the seats of power without question. The Communists
hailed the passage of the Smith Act, which criminalized opposition
to the war, and cheered when Roosevelt jailed some 30 members
of the Socialist Workers Party, which opposed the war. A few
years later, the same law was used to jail leaders
of the Communist Party – which demonstrates how the principle
of karma in operates in history.
MASKS
The
War Party, as we have seen, has worn many guises throughout
American history. Sometimes it is left-wing, at other times
it is a creature of the Right. The party of peace is likewise
prone to switch polarities. If you live long enough, you can
start out your life as a liberal, and wind up a right-wing
reactionary without undergoing any fundamental change of views.
That is what happened to H. L. Mencken, who was considered
the guru of the freethinking "flaming youth" of the 1920s
and early 30s – and later consigned to the fever swamps
of "right-wing extremism" for his opposition to the war and
his visceral hatred of Roosevelt. The same was true of Albert
Jay Nock, and John T. Flynn: their views did not change so
much as the perception of them did. Opposition to war, imperialism,
and the centralized State was "left" at the turn of the century
and "right" by the 1930s. In the 1960s it was considered"radical"
– that is, radical left – to oppose our policy of
global intervention, whereas the noninterventionist of today
is far more likely to be a conservative Republican or a member
of the Reform Party than a liberal Democrat.
THE
LONG ARM OF THE GLOBAL HEGEMON
The
idea of an alliance between the antiwar Left and the anti-imperialist
Right is a concept rooted in more than just the opposition
to war. For out of the struggle against the Empire will arise
a whole new way of looking at the world, a common analysis
of how the few use the State to rule the many. Naturally,
there will be disagreements, and competing analyses, and a
lot of initial confusion: but over the long haul, the two
sides in the battle for hearts and minds in the post-millennial
world will sort themselves out. A movement in opposition to
imperialism must, in this day and age, necessarily become
a struggle against globalism, against the idea of a world
state. In the era of enforced globalization, the Peace Party
is the greatest defender of national sovereignty as a bulwark
of resistance to the emerging transnational tyranny, while
the War Party is the great champion of a world without borders
– or, indeed, any place to evade the long arm
of the Global Hegemon. Now that the epic battle between Communism
and capitalism has been decisively decided in favor of the
latter, a new struggle of "isms" is breaking out, this time
between globalism and nationalism – and Kosovo was just
the beginning.
COCKBURN
WOWS CONFERENCE
This
year's Antiwar.com conference was a great success, in terms
not only of publicizing the idea of a "Left-Right" alliance
against interventionism, but also in the more concrete sense
of making the links between people that really forges
an effective movement. Alexander Cockburn thrilled and delighted
an audience made up primarily of conservatives (and even outright
reactionaries like myself). They cheered at his scathing expose
of the Army "psyops" infiltration of CNN during the Kosovo
war, enthusiastically applauded his denunciations of Waco-like
police assaults – imaginatively and convincingly linking
David Koresh and Amadou Diallo – and gave him a standing
ovation. Left and Right meet – and it was love (at least
on our part) at first sight!
PAT
The
media was naturally attracted by the presence of Pat Buchanan,
who has now emerged as the focal point of populist rebellion
against the twin hand puppets put up by the two "major" parties
– although I like to think that my clever little news
release that said, "Buchanan and Cockburn at the same antiwar
conference – what's up with that?" had something to
do with attracting the media spotlight to our obscure little
corner of California. Buchanan's speech, posted here almost
as it was being delivered, was magnificent: clearly
he intends to make opposition to global intervention the main
theme of his campaign. All I can say is, God help the globalists.
They will never recover from the blow we are about
to deal them.
TAKING
IT TO A HIGHER LEVEL
The
conference was an attempt to bridge the gap between left and
right, to bring the fight against war and globalism to a higher
level – and to begin to organize the first real opposition
to the War Party since the 1960s. There were many voices of
protest at this year's gathering, from Tom Fleming and Srdja
Trikovic, editors of the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles,
to old-fashioned Marxists like Alexander Cockburn – and
virtually everything in between. As the rule of the acronyms
– WTO, NATO, EU, UN – replaces the self-rule of
sovereign nations, a broad opposition is sure to arise. Who
can say whether it is "right" or "left" – and, in the
end, what does it matter? Such labels no longer describe anything
meaningful – and that, really, is the whole point.
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