One of the consequences of the geopolitical division
of the world in the second half of the 20th century
was that the role of policing the ''free world'' and expanding
market democracies, was largely left to the United States
by the other major capitalist powers. This in turn meant
that the military industrial complex, which was always
important, could play an even more significant role
in the economy. There are some estimates that the military
industries have prevented unemployment from rising up
to Depression levels through direct and indirect effects
on demand as well the positive technological impetus.
After
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the apparent absence
of the ''other'' against whom to direct military energies
could have created a problem and generated the seeds
of heightened inter-imperialist rivalry, especially
in the context of the decline in US economic competitiveness.
But the void has been speedily filled by the discovery
of the huge threat to freedom and democracy apparently
posed by small bands of terrorists, supposedly supported
by ''rogue states'' forming an axis of evil. The American
use of Islam today can be usefully compared to the earlier
demonisation of Communism, and to a lesser extent with
the belittling and undermining of other nationalist
aspirations in the South. To the extent that this allowed
the US continued and unfettered exercise of its military
supremacy and increases in levels of its military expenditure
well beyond those of the Cold War period, the ''war
on terror'' has clearly served the particular interests
of US power rather well.
Of all the various arguments that have been advanced
regarding the war on terror, those referring to the
clash of civilisations'' must be among the most foolish.
This comes particularly from the work of two American
professors, Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, who
argued that there is an innate civilisational conflict
between the values of ''western democracy'' and Islam.
According to them, such a clash is not the product f
a particular historical circumstance that can change
according to different contexts and conditions, but
more fundamental and unchanging. In this perception,
Islam is inherently violent in nature, and therefore
the essence of Islam is antithetical to the core supposedly
''humanist'' values of the West.
In fact, as we know, US empire had and continues to
have an ambiguous relationship with various backward
looking and reactionary tendencies in different parts
of the world, whether Islamic or otherwise. At different
times and places, such tendencies have been encouraged
and allowed to spread, and at other times they are seen
as threats to the system, to be rooted out and destroyed.
It is well known that most of those currently seen as
enemies of the US and therefore as the objects of attrition
in the current ''war against terror'' - Osama bin Laden
and Al Qaeda, the Taliban, even Saddam Hussein – had
been at one time or the other overt or covert darlings
of the US administration, used against other perceived
enemies or simply to destabilise regions.
Even now, in clientelist regimes such as that in Saudi
Arabia, reactionary forces have been allowed to grow.
Elsewhere, US imperialism turned a blind eye or even
implicitly encouraged the growth of semi-fascist movements
(such as the Hindutva tendencies in India) as well as
separatist forces, which encourage the disintegration
of large nations. Of course, there has been a general
tendency of imperialism all through its history to foster
ethnic or religious divides for perpetuating its hegemony.
(Consider, for example, the role of the British in Malaya
and India in the 19th and early 20th centuries.)
The problem of course, is that many of these movements
threaten to spin out of control and to destabilise the
system itself, even if only partially. The terrorist
attacks of September 2001 marked a watershed only insofar
as they forced a realisation of this tendency towards
destabilisation; they did not mark any major changes
in basic organisation of the system itself, which is
still run as cynically as before in terms of the use
of reactionary cultural forces as and when required.
A recent book edited by Emran Qureishi and Michael Sells
(''The new crusades'', New York: Columbia University
Press 2003) brings out how the cynical use of the concept
of ''clash of civilisations'' has nevertheless been
successful in capturing the imagination of a significant
part of western intelligentsia, constructed a popular
perception of ''the Muslim enemy'' and thereby allowed
for the justification (if not legitimisation) of the
most appalling and unlawful activities by the western
powers.
John Trumpbour’s interesting article in this volume
examines the role of this concept in remaking the post-Cold
War international geopolitical order. He notes that
the operative concept that is used is that of ''aggressive
fanaticism'' which is used to link Islam with other
stereotypically presented horrors such as totalitarian
communism. More significantly, Trumpbour points out
that the requirement of hegemonic regimes such as those
of the Bush administration actually require a ceaseless
search for enemies, so that the current apparently binary
opposition between so-called ''western democracy'' and
Islamic terror will be eventually replaced by yet another
opposition.
However, the legacy of this particular created opposition
will still unfortunately continue to haunt us even after
it is discarded for another by those seeking greater
international power. As Trumpbour points out, ''the
relative absence of resistance to Islamophobia in Western
cultures renders its practice tantalising for demagogues
of all political stripes. They should ensure that the
world will revisit these nightmares, a hellish prospectus
for the twenty-first century upon us.''
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