THWACK!
Rana Bose
I have been following and watching a lot of cricket lately. This is a game that’s always been associated with slow moving, quaint colonial traits. White trousers, bowler-like hats, tea breaks, scant continuous excitement on the field, except for an occasional quick run between the two stumps in the centre, as pigeons and crows strut around, carefree, in the outfield. The play proceeds languorously and could go on for four days and end in a draw. And once in a while there is a well-rehearsed and contained applause rising from the audience, when there is a crafty googly or a yorker bowled by a cunning bowler or a curt square cut dispatched to the boundary by a deft batsman.
But, now it’s all changed. Because, whacko entrepreneurs from the third world have taken over with a sacrilegious zeal. The players now don the most colorful, bright uniforms, there is loud bollywood rock pounding out at well-timed intervals, floodlit games are on late into the night like in baseball games, cheer-leaders breaking with laser lights and fog machines on the sidelines, large TV screens, ball-by ball annotations everywhere, and there are at least three variants of the game. There is the one day-er with 50 overs and then there is the 20/20, where each side plays 20 overs only and then there is the old Test Match variant. The rules are different and very swift. Cameras, electronic eyes on the wickets themselves, a fully computerized third umpire and a total run fest. Sixes are happening almost every few minutes and even the strokes have changed. And there are no draws. Even if you tie, you must play a sudden death 6 ball in the 20/20 variant.
And this is where I picked up the sound “THWACK”. It is the sound of the ball hitting the wickets at 140kph. A microphone and a camera placed inside the wicket transmit the sound resoundingly and graphically to TV screens all over the world. Thwack is the sound of being bowled out, being bedeviled, being beaten and leaving the game, going back to the pavilion. Innings finished. Yes it is the sound of the “end”. Of course, the old game of test cricket is still being played with white drills and it goes on for 4 days these days. And of course there is still an audience.
But the game has changed and it has signaled also the end of the old empire and as well, the new, for the purposes of this issue. The Anglo-American extended empire, despite its best apologists and defenders is not a winning proposition any longer. The English speaking world of America and UK, has ruled the world with their inventions, their industry, their soldiers, their tanks, their bases and their hunger for energy resources. When England packed its bags and left India and Africa, the pretenders to the next empire had already set themselves on a different course to become the next Emperors. American exceptionalism, the right to be judged separately, differently, to be seen above the law and be judged only by their own definitions of “freedom and independence” created an aura of “different-ness” from the old staid Empire. America thrived and still does, on its exceptional scientific achievements, enormous adventurous spirit, pioneering entrepreneurial zeal and a sure-fire pride in its own self-esteem. But “thwack” remains the point of departure, the alarm sound, if you will, that signals the critical point in time, when all the “others” have become more competitive, America’s economy is in shambles, its military adventures abroad make it a totally discredited force and most of all the present regime in power has discredited America and its people in the worst way possible, even worse than at the time of Vietnam. It is time to go. Back to the pavilion. In this issue of Serai, we have collected a series of well discoursed articles, reviews and essays on the decline of the American Empire, economically and culturally. Some say, it was never an Empire. Some say, but it is only the regime and not the people. America remains a powerhouse in technology and the business world. Americans remain the friendliest and most assertive people in the world. But Empire has its own effects and Americans have become narcissist, self-absorbed, deniers of abuse and provincial in outlook. And worst of all American people have lost the energy to change their evil regime that has been in power. And it will not make a difference if Obama or Hillary replaces George. Herein below is a series of quotations from various well-known Americans and others that may set the tone for this issue of Serai.
"I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land." - Mark Twain, New York Herald, Oct. 15, 1900.
Writer /activist Arundhuti Roy, says- "Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with - and bombed - since the second world war:" China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), Vietnam (1961-73), the Belgian Congo (1964), Laos (1964-73), Peru (1965), Cambodia (1969-70), Nicaragua (the 1980s), El Salvador (the 1980s), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99, 2003-07), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999), and Afghanistan (2001-07). From this, one can see that the years 1947-49, 1955-57, 1974-79, 1990 and 2000 were the only peaceful ones. Furthermore, one can count 73% of the years, from World War II's end until 1989, the U.S. was militarily intervening somewhere. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 (not counting conflicts like Colombia where governing elites request help against rebellious subpopulations) the U.S. was actively militarily intervening in a foreign country at least 88% of the years into 2007.”
The excessive influence and unified interests of the US business-military elite make it imperative that the United States establish a military presence in areas of strategic interest. This is not any longer an issue of debate. Americans believe that their patriotic interests are in congruence with the interests of their business-military elite. You do not need a social democratic bleeding heart to point this out to you.
Smedley Butler, a retired general in the United States Marine Corps, took this view when he said that his job had been to be a "muscle man for big business." And you do not need a Bolshevik to tell you that. He goes on to state "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism." - Simultaneously as the highest ranking and most decorated Marine (including two Medals of Honor ) Major General Smedley Butler also ran as a GOP primary candidate for Senate in 1935.
Then there are a new brand of “empire loyalists” who readily acknowledge that the US has been an Empire. From Wikipedia –“British historian Niall Ferguson, a professor at Harvard University, argues that the United States is an empire, but believes that this is a good thing. Ferguson has drawn parallels between the British Empire and the imperial role of the United States in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, though he describes the United States' political and social structures as more like those of the Roman Empire than of the British. Ferguson argues that all these empires have had both positive and negative aspects, but that the positive aspects of the US Empire will, if it learns from history and its mistakes greatly outweigh its negative aspects. “
Edward Said, the departed Palestinian philosopher, writer, who taught at Columbia University--"So influential has been the discourse insisting on American specialness, altruism and opportunity, that imperialism in the United States as a word or ideology has turned up only rarely and recently in accounts of the United States culture, politics and history. But the connection between imperial politics and culture in North America, and in particular in the United States, is astonishingly direct."
"Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?" - Woodrow Wilson, September 11, 1919, St. Louis
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." – President Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell Address, Jan. 17, 1961.
So, without a doubt, America’s plan for an imperial dominance has been well constructed and well intellectualized since the beginning of the previous century. And after the Second World War and the emergence of America as an economic powerhouse, the needs of expansion have been supplemented by a remarkable acceleration of military presence in areas of strategic interest. However, by a wizardly application of textile brilliance, read spin, the media and America’s spokespersons have carefully obliterated the usage of Empire and imperial attributes when analyzing American interventionism.
Now, there are those who believe that the US will collapse very soon. This is folly. The US remains one of the most industrially advanced, basic-research oriented economies in the world. It also has the world’s best technical universities as well as some of the best social science institutions in the world. Not a year passes by without US citizens being awarded Nobel Prizes in the sciences. It is US patents, standards and innovations, for the most part, that initiate fundamental industrial development elsewhere. Of course Russians and Japanese are good in Chemistry and Metallurgy and a host of nations like France, Germany are also good in special technical disciplines. But, all said and done, the engines of American success, since the great depression have been fuelled by the construction and highway building boom, which fuelled the steel, cement, fabrication sectors, which in turn fuelled the power, automotive industries. American engineering skills and engineering research have remained the hallmarks of industrial development. America climbed out of the great depression by essentially “constructing” its way out. The technology and benefits from that boom are no longer protectable. Everyone can have it and any other economy can quadruple their growth rates by following the “infrastructural construction” mode of development. The issue then was that no one had the money before. And the world was living out of closets. Everyone stayed in their national closets and envied each other. Now economies and cultures are becoming transnational, whether we accept it or not. And no one is servile to anyone, as far as technology and acquisitions go. No one has an altar where the high priest calls the shots and decides who can get in. Countries and governments need less and less of IMF benevolence. Alternative banking institutions are also being set up. So America’s traditional groin-hold on developing nations by the loan pathway is also less. Meanwhile America has also chosen to farm out its manufacturing base to Asian and other nations.
The “Collapse” of the “Empire” will essentially be an economic and cultural collapse. Unlike the retreat the British had to literally make from foreign shores. Those who think that the US will be “defeated” in Iraq are sorely mistaken. If the Democrats get elected they will simply find ways and means to extend American bases in Iraq. Because very simply, if America does not control Iraqi oil, then petrodollars, which is already an anachronistic term, will become petro-euros. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He says “Hubris and arrogance are too ensconced in Washington for policymakers to be aware of the economic policy trap in which they have placed the US economy. If the subprime mortgage meltdown is half as bad as predicted, low US interest rates will be required in order to contain the crisis. But if the dollar’s plight is half as bad as predicted, high US interest rates will be required if foreigners are to continue to hold dollars and to finance US budget and trade deficits. Which will Washington sacrifice, the domestic financial system and over-extended homeowners or its ability to finance deficits? The answer seems obvious. Everything will be sacrificed in order to protect Washington’s ability to borrow abroad. Without the ability to borrow abroad, Washington cannot conduct its wars of aggression, and Americans cannot continue to consume $800 billion dollars more each year than the economy produces.”
This then is the stark reality of the US economy. It is facing imminent dissipation. China, Japan and the Middle East countries have held dollar reserves, because they earned interest out of it. The US dollar has lost 60% of its value during the reign of George Bush. Who will want to peg themselves to the US dollar? Who will want to hold reserves in US dollars? Who will want to buy US bonds with low gains?Paul Craig Roberts goes on to say” Superpower America is a ship of fools in denial of their plight. While offshoring kills American economic prospects, “free market economists” sing its praises. While war imposes enormous costs on a bankrupt country, neoconservatives call for more war, and Republicans and Democrats appropriate war funds which can only be obtained by borrowing abroad. “ Culturally? What is happening to America? Americans, as they like to call themselves, to the chagrin of the rest of the inhabitants of the continent who do not appreciate the highjacking of the name they share in common, are refusing to accept the fact that the changes surreptitiously introduced and abetted by an accepting media can permanently damage the very cultural ethos they are so proud of.
Despite widespread opposition to the war in Iraq, resolutions in city councils and boroughs, Americans are getting comfortable with widespread snooping on their personal lives, their telephone records, their health data, their job records, their travel records and every day goes by with furtive resolutions and acts passed innocuously that give the neocons the right to arrest and detain without warrant, to bug lines and to force internet server companies to divulge on demand. For the first time the President of the US can declare martial law with relative ease after the passing of the 2007 Defense Authorization Act. The mainstream media, as well as the not-so-mainstream media are all sold out to a policy of limited engagement, as far as depicting the Iraq war and its apologists. One can sink into Lou Dobbs style daily ultranationalist, xenophobic rants about “outsourcing” and “illegals.” Or, one can give up and accept the coup d’etat that has happened. America has become a Pakistan. Coups go on, one after the other and then comes an intimidating, lulling period following which everyone scrambles to protect, patriotize and put the seal of approval on what is essentially a neocon overthrow of the American constitution.