Kippling’s ballad about East and West was frontal and honest. The globalization has reduced the geographical extremes and opened the possibility of bringing the former colonialists and colonially dominated spaces to some form of mutually beneficial alliance, rather than one-sided exploitation. Why does this challenge still elude us?
The words often have a longer life, while the concepts they convey keep changing. As it happened till recently in the European universities (including the Portuguese ones) the Orient was limited to the Levant, or east of the Mediterranean, which laid the foundations of the European culture. Cato, the Roman senator never ceased his political harangues with a war cry: “Carthage needs to be destroyed”. Today Carthage is replaced with Syrian Assad.
Since the formal end of colonialism, the western ambitions and aggressiveness have come home to roost. The new East is now a part of the former Soviet Union, now turning into a boiling pot and in the very near future may turn the dream of European Union into a Greek tragedy in its most literal and crude version. We are beginning to see it in the convulsions related to Syriza and in the ongoing travails of refugee crisis brought about by the creation of a new intra-European colonial empire, pompously called European Union.
Inability of nations to reign in their ambitions have usually become a prelude to their eventual decay and downfall along History since times immemorial. The tendency to overextend the area of exploitation at the cost of human dignity of less powerful nations, tends to take some time before the overfilled bellies of the imperialist exploiters result into implosion.
Over dependence upon cheap alien labour, as it happened with the “barbarians” from the outlying provinces of the Greco-Roman empire, as is now happening to the Euro-American west through the so-called “immigrant labour”, promoted through wars of colonial or neo-colonial expansion, causing waves of refugees, takes care of this process of self-destruction. That seems to be the law of decay of dominant civilizations. The old system of classic slavery retains the ambiguous distinction between the milder and more liberal version of Islamic tradition and the chattel or plantation slavery of the western Iberian expansion.
Presented by the western capitalist media as a refugee crisis assailing presently the EU and the USA, it is rarely admitted they have contributed actively to dismantle the Middle East, transforming it into a huge pool of supply of cheap labour that may take care of the western capitalist labour needs during the coming generation. What we are told is about the wickedness of Saddam, Talibans of Afghanistan, Gadaffi of Libya, and now Assad of Syria. Under the pretext of exporting democracy the West is fomenting orange, velvet and other rebellions.
It is curious to note that anti-regime rebels who do not belong to ISIL are viewed by the West as moderates and armed to fulfill western strategies of domination. What has now come as a spoke in the wheel is the Russian initiative to defend its ally, the ruler of Syria. Putin has been more logical in making no distinction between the moderate rebels and the Salafist jihadis of ISIL, threatening the American Arab allies. Any regime change should be brought about by democratic means unless the US-EU only pay a lip service to democracy, and choose to cite international law whenever convenient. The West is pissed-off with Putin for undermining their designs, and the measuring of forces may now decide the final outcome.
If a new World War follows, the consequences are likely to be incredibly more disastrous as compared with the earlier ones. The NATO has exceeded the limits of its brinkmanship in seeking to downplay the pride of Russia and its self-dignity. It helped rallying nearly 80% of Russians behind their president, despite the Western media attempts at demonize him. How would USA digest a Russian initiative to back with arms any of the proliferating groups of black resistance, calling them moderate rebels?
We need to distinguish between the legitimate pride of a people and the arrogance of the imperialists. This sort of arrogance of European powers during the past five centuries ended with decolonization, an expression that seeks to mitigate the reality that booted the colonialists out of Asia and Africa. The colonial historians like to call it a “transfer of power”, sweetening the bitter medicine.
The latest deployment of Chinese missile cruisers and military advisors alongside Russian military operations in Syria is becoming a nightmare for the Americans. Whatever the common interests behind this alliance, we are likely to see an eclipse of the “American century”, unless the arrogance respects the limits of common sense and the international law it sought to define and impose upon weaker partners in the community of nations. Frequent mention of US paying most of the bills of UN costs is not much of a compliment for someone who uses it more for its own selfish interests.
If the biblical story about the punishment of angels consigned to hell as devils for their unwillingness to serve the divine plan of God made man which they saw as infradig is to be believed, the human wisdom continues to repeat that demonic wisdom or folly in service of stupidity. Every war cloud is a repeat of wisdom in service of stupidity and self-blinding arrogance.
(Teotonio R. de Souza is the founder-director, Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa (1979-1994).
