Material World: Campaigners for humanitarian intervention: “useful idiots” of militarism (2008)

The Material World column from the August 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is nothing new in governments claiming to be motivated by humanitarian concerns when they go to war. To take a couple of old examples: tsarist Russia supposedly fought the Ottoman Empire in order to rescue Armenians from massacre by the Turks, while British intervention following the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 was justified by lurid drawings of “Huns” skewering babies on their bayonets (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWatrocities.htm). The enemy atrocities might be real, as in the first example, or imaginary, as in the second, but in both cases the claim of humanitarian motivation was fraudulent. Governments decided for or against war on the basis of (sometimes erroneous) calculations of economic and strategic interest.

That remains true today. Never, however, has it been more important for governments to win public support for wars by claiming humanitarian motives. As in the past, some of the “facts” underlying the claims are fabricated. Thus, Tony Blair repeatedly claimed that 400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves, although the number of corpses uncovered was only 5,000.

But again, the claims are false even when the facts are true. Often this is obvious because the atrocity occurred long before foreign governments expressed any outrage over it. Why bring the matter up just now? Britain and the US had no objection when Saddam used poison gas on Kurdish villages in 1988 because at that time he was their ally. The weeks preceding the dispatch of British troops to Afghanistan were marked by a media campaign against the oppression of women in that country, with even Cherie Blair roped in. The issue was then dropped as suddenly as it was raised.

A public movement for humanitarian intervention

What is new is the emergence, within the broader human rights movement, of a loosely organized network that campaigns for military intervention wherever that seems to be the only effective means of halting or preventing genocidal atrocities against some ethnic group. Currently, for example, there is an international campaign for intervention in Darfur (Sudan).

During my non-socialist period, I was involved for a while in one of the organizations that makes up this network: the Institute for the Study of Genocide (ISG). My research, publicized through the ISG, helped to bring the massacres of Bosnian Moslems by Serb militias to the attention of the US media and politicians – including, notably, Bill Clinton, who at that time was campaigning for president. Later Clinton did intervene militarily in Yugoslavia, though over Kosovo rather than Bosnia.

Unlike governments, anti-genocide activists like the ISG have quite genuine humanitarian motives. They recall how “the world sat by” and allowed the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust to proceed. (Though at war with Nazi Germany, the Allied command turned down pleas to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz.) They are determined to establish humanitarian considerations as an integral part of policy making, so that “we” will not let such terrible things happen again.

Any decent person will sympathize with this line of thought. But there is a problem with it. Let us shift our focus from the moral imperative of effective action to the political forces capable of such action. Who is “the world”? Who is “we”? The only “we” capable of intervening is governments with their armed forces. But governments do not exist for humanitarian purposes. They are therefore loathe to intervene for humanitarian reasons, and it is close to impossible to compel them to do so.

Pros and cons

From the point of view of governments, the existence of a public movement for humanitarian intervention has both pros and cons. It is irritating and embarrassing to have to face down emotional public demands to intervene in places where no important “national interests” are at stake – in Rwanda, for instance, or Darfur. On the other hand, when you are inclined to intervene anyway for other, more “important” reasons it is extremely convenient to have a public movement pressing for intervention. That makes it much easier to drum up public support for war, and at the same time you can enhance your democratic credentials by “responding to public opinion.”

In the case of Yugoslavia, the demand to intervene effectively over Bosnia was resisted, but the campaign in which I participated prepared the ground for intervention over Kosovo. The evidence now available suggests that in Kosovo, in contrast to Bosnia, there was never any real danger of genocide (as opposed to the usual ethnic cleansing). In Kosovo, however, and again in contrast to Bosnia, significant interests were at stake, such as a major oil pipeline and metal-mining complex (see April 2008 Socialist Standard).

Illusory success

It may appear to campaigners for humanitarian intervention that they have a certain limited success. They “win some and lose some.” But if we look more deeply into the real interests involved we see that their success is largely illusory. It is by no means clear that their efforts have the net effect of reducing the amount of suffering in the world. In fact, by supporting and helping to legitimize brutal and devastating wars they may well increase the total of suffering.

The epithet “useful idiots” (or “useful fools”) was used to pillory Western pacifists who supposedly served the interests of the Soviet Union, though without intending to do so and for the best of all possible motives. Jean Bricmont borrows the expression for a different purpose, calling campaigners for humanitarian intervention the “useful idiots” of Western militarism and imperialism (Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2006). Again, this is not meant to cast any aspersions on their motives.

As socialists we would only question the stress on “Western.” In principle such people could equally well serve as useful idiots for non-Western (Russian, Chinese, Indian, etc.) militarism and imperialism, though in practice they are active mostly in Western countries.

Calls for humanitarian intervention only make sense in terms of a false conception of the nature and functions of government. They feed a delusion that obscures the reality of our capitalist world, thereby making it harder to overcome that reality.

Stefan

Material World: Dedicated to serving the rich: the reality of aid (2010)

The Material World column from the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

“CARE: Dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor.” So reads a wall poster at the Haiti offices of the “humanitarian” agency CARE International. The offices are housed in a mansion in a wealthy district up in the hills above Port-au-Prince, at a hygienic distance from the poor people they are “dedicated to serve”.

Well, you can’t expect the respectable ladies and gentlemen who administer aid to live and work down in the filth and stench of the shantytowns. Of course, you can’t blame the poor for the lack of sewers, but still…

The aid administrators realise that they need the assistance of people who do know something about the poor and are capable of interacting with them. So they hire specialists called anthropologists, who acquire the requisite knowledge and skill as trainees by living for a time among poor people (formally in order to gather material for their Ph.D. theses).

But some trainees “go native”. They come to sympathise with their temporary neighbours and feel the urge to talk about inconvenient realities that they have discovered. This annoys the administrators, who label them “idealists” and say they have “a negative attitude”. It would be quite unsuitable to appoint them to responsible positions in aid agencies.

An eye-opening book has just appeared, written by just such a chatterbox: Timothy T. Schwartz, Travesty in Haiti. No publisher would touch it, so he published it himself.

Charity for the rich

Very little aid ever reaches the poor, let alone the poorest of the poor. This is partly due to the practical difficulty that the poorest areas also have the poorest infrastructure (roads, storage facilities, etc.). But mainly it is because those who are supposed to distribute the aid sell most of it and pocket the proceeds.

In some cases, aid goes directly to the rich. Schwartz describes an “orphanage” run by an American reverend where the “orphans” have parents who could easily afford to provide for them. The place is really an elite boarding school. Meanwhile, naïve churchgoers back in the States, most of them ordinary working people, fork out to support the “poor orphans” they have “adopted”, send them gifts, and even pay for their college education. The poor in rich countries give charity to the rich in poor countries.

The more aid, the more misery

Schwartz’ most important finding is this. When the flow of food aid into Haiti increases, the overall result is that malnutrition becomes more widespread, not less. Why? The great majority of Haitians are small farmers, dependent on selling food to meet their non-food needs. Typically, natural disaster prompts the decision to send food aid, but by the time it arrives the emergency is over and the country may well be right in the middle of a bumper harvest. The effect is to drive prices down further, causing enormous misery throughout the rural areas.

It seems commonsense. If you see hungry people on TV, so you give money to buy and send them food. But capitalism has a perverse logic of its own that has nothing to do with commonsense. Reactions that ignore that logic are liable to do more harm than good.

Some experts and charities – notably, Oxfam – advocate aid in the form of cash transfers. Then food for distribution can be bought locally instead of imported, strengthening rather than undermining the local peasant economy. Local supply would also be quicker and easier to organise.

Nevertheless, most aid agencies, and especially those like CARE that are dependent on Western governments, keep on shipping in food. They even require their national affiliates to cover operating expenses by selling part of the food received locally (“monetised food”).

Expanding export markets

US overseas food aid began in 1954. Until recently it was openly justified as a foreign policy tool and means of promoting American business interests. In particular, it has expanded export markets for US agriculture. Dumping surpluses abroad has helped the US and the EU maintain prices and profits on their domestic markets.

According to the website of the US Agency for International Development, aid was used to transform Egypt from a food exporter in competition with the US into a net importer of food with a low-wage industrial sector. Since the 1980s Western governments and financial institutions pursued the same strategy in Haiti. The country was turned from an exporter into an importer of rice, sugar, and other crops, while 100,000 peasants abandoned the land to work for $2 a day in assembly plants, mostly US-owned, making T-shirts, jeans, and the like for the American market. This new industrial sector has now also largely collapsed, leaving Haiti to depend increasingly on the Columbian drugs trade.

A striking illustration of the commercial interests underlying aid is the fate of the Haitian pig. Farmers used to rely on a small black pig well adapted to conditions in rural Haiti. USAID had these pigs exterminated under the pretext of fighting a swine fever epidemic. The Haitian pig was replaced with a large white pig from Iowa that had to be fed large quantities of imported US corn.

Do they know?

Do the aid administrators understand what they are doing? It is clear from Schwartz that they understand very well. When he “reveals” his sensational findings, they do not argue that he is wrong. They just advise him that if he wants a job he should stop saying things that the US government does not want to hear. They know who they really serve.

Stefan.

In Material World February issue we didn’t mean to write that the poll showed that people with high incomes were more likely to be favourable to the word “socialism” than those with low but the opposite, so:

“Women are slightly more likely than men to prefer ‘socialism’; people with low incomes (under $40,000 per year) more than twice as likely as people with high incomes (over $75,000); and blacks almost twice as likely as whites, with equal proportions favouring ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ (31 percent each).”

Whither Iraq? (1999)

From the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a letter last November to Sir John Weston at the Permanent Mission of the UK at the UN, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark lambasted the sanctions decimating Iraqi society as a “violation of the Genocide Convention”. Iraq, he argued posed no real threat to the region and the idea that it did was a “false fantasy created by the US to justify its vast military presence in the region, to dominate the oil resources and to contain Islam”.

Weston’s comments were not unique. He was quite simply echoing what others have been saying for some time, most notably Richard Halliday, whose high-profile resignation as head of the UN’s humanitarian relief programme in Iraq alarmed the warmongers in Washington and London.

Speaking through the Guardian in late February, Halliday voiced his belief that the military threat from Iraq was greatly exaggerated, a “cop-out”, before criticising the West for 8 years of sanctions that have crippled Iraq far greater than any aerial bombardment endured by the country.

Halliday has pointed out that the sanctions violate the Geneva Convention as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of the Child, that they have seriously disrupted the quality of life in Iraq and debased a general high standard of behaviour practised by the common Iraqi people.

If the bombing of Iraq no longer makes front-page news—the 8 March US attack, for instance, only made page 12 of the Guardian under “News in brief”—then it can well be imagined that the common people elsewhere, particularly in Britain and the US, know little or nothing of the 1.2 million children who died as a result of the UN sanctions against Iraq between August 1990 and August 1997, or of the 6,000 who continue to die each week as a result of malnutrition and disease.

While the bombing of Iraqi sites has become an almost daily occurrence for the warplanes of Globocop and its lobotomised sidekick, the UK, the sanctions are the real weapons that continue to blight the lives of the Iraqi people.

Infant mortality rates have increased six-fold since 1996. Fifty percent of the Iraqi population has no access to clean water and the majority exist on a starvation diet, while sanitation has become a luxury.

Iraq’s per capita income has dropped from $2,900 a year to $60 a year and inflation has increased to unparalleled levels. According to the FAO, the price of wheat flour, once part of the staple Iraqi diet, has gone up 1.16 million percent since 1990. The health service is in ruins with surgery often conducted in unsterile conditions and with no anaesthetic because of the embargo on supplies.

Medical necessities are not all that is prohibited by Security Council export restrictions. The list also includes children’s clothing, adhesive tape, books, dolls, spectacles, bags and footballs—the kind of everyday items the more ingenious Iraqis could use to knock US F16s out of the skies!

Meanwhile the aerial bombardment of Iraqi targets continues apace. Missile attacks are now almost daily occurrences and have been since Operation Desert Fox back in December of last year—incidentally the biggest USA/UK joint attack in the region since the Gulf War eight years ago and one that even the less cynical could not fail to notice came as we were expected to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As he accepted his presidential nomination in 1988, George Bush had this to say:

“This has been called the American Century because in it we were the dominant force for good in the world. Now we are on the verge of a new century and what country’s name will be bear? I say it will be another American Century.”

These words, better than all the cant that has been used to justify US aggression has against Iraq, best sum up the real US mission in the Gulf. The US, and Britain for that matter—which never got used to losing its world power status after World War II—are defending no moral high ground. They police the no-fly zones on behalf of no neighbour of Saddam and certainly do not defend us from someone who threatens global peace.

The US attacks are being carried out to remind us of their military prowess and at the bequest of their corporate elite. They are bombing Iraq to remind anyone watching that the 21st century—like the one we are witnessing coming to a close—will be ruled by force and that it will be they, the US, who will be calling the shots.

You don’t have to read many books by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and ES Herman to realise the US has been, and still is, the number one rogue state this century, bullying its way across the international stage, imposing their will on anyone not tough enough to stand their corner. A cursory look at the black eyes dished out in the past 50 years by the US and its sidekick is enough to tell us which foot the boot will be on in the coming century.

Why Iraq? Well in place of the “Communist threat” what other propaganda framework best serves US interests and kills two birds with one stone? Saddam, as the unpredictable madman the US has conditioned us to believe he is, has to be punished. He thus provides the US with a perfect pretext for keeping the military machine alert on “our” behalf and to further condition us to accept similar US-led responses in the future. Moreover, the US presence gives Washington tighter control over the region’s oil supplies—something the US state department refers to as the “greatest material prize in world history”.

With a world shortage of not only oil but also water predicted for the 21st century, and with both resources high up on the agenda of all Middle East countries, it’s a certainty the coming century will see, if anything, an increased US presence in the region and a more aggressive stance on the international stage.

John Bissett

World View: Death and destruction in Dili (2000)

From the April 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1996 (Socialist Standard, March) we reported, and commented upon, Indonesian repression in East Timor and Australian interest in, and control of, the vast oil deposits under the sea between Australia and East and West Timor. Much has happened since then.

East Timor is now “independent”. The Indonesians have gone. But not before they had killed thousands of Timorese and largely reduced the capital, Dili, to a burned-out ruin. Much of this has been levelled against Eurico Gutterres, a former Indonesian militia leader, now living under an assumed name in Jakarta. According to the West Australian (18 December), “the Indonesian military recruited and trained Guterres who commanded a paramilitary group called Aitarak, or Thorn, which was given the responsibility for security in Dili”. He ordered the destruction of East Timor, “carrying out his threat to turn East Timor into a wasteland if the Timorese voted to rejected Jakarta’s rule”. He now says that he does not feel guilty. He was only carrying out orders, he said.

In what the West Australian (15 January) calls “the razed capital” of Dili, “thousands of the deeply religious East Timorese Catholics turn out for Mass to thank god for delivering them from the horror of 24 years of Indonesian occupation”. But just outside Dili there are hundreds of children starving. Of the situation, reports the West Australian of the same date:

“Stagnant pools of sewage lay nearby, mixing with the regular afternoon rains, virtually ensuring that all open wounds would become infected. A girl, aged about five, stands half-naked except for a skin of massive, infected lesions which stretch from under her jaw to her waist.”

Yet,

“A blackmarket for food and goods has sprouted in Dili, with tonnes of rice and noodles being imported and held under guard in warehouses in the razed capital.”

Meanwhile, thousands of Timorese are starving in West Timor refugee camps. President Clinton is said to be concerned about a possible military coup, and the spread of religious violence in Indonesia; and Richard Holbrooke, the US Ambassador to the UN, “accused pro-Jakarta militias of blocking the return of about 125,000 East Timorese remaining in camps in West Timor. Responsibility for this lies primarily with the Indonesian military who continues to support the militia in the camps, he said” (West Australian, 17 January).

By last September, 75 percent of East Timor’s population had been displaced, and 70 percent of its houses, public buildings and essential utilities had been destroyed by the Indonesian-backed militias and military (West Australian, 8 January). However, Australian companies “have a chance to grab a slice of the $800 million which will be spent on rebuilding on East Timor over the next three years”. Indeed, more than £300 million will have been pumped into reconstruction by June this year.

There are, of course, problems for Australian capitalists, if not exactly the same as for Timorese workers and peasants. Land ownership was a problem, as records had been destroyed; and it was impossible to know who owned what. ” Conditions in Dili were tough, but foreign businesses were working there,” said Malcolm Murray, the international projects team leader with the Australian Department of Trade and Commerce. Nevertheless, Australian construction businesses have moved into Dili “with gusto”. There were many unemployed Timorese workers; but “the Australian Council for Overseas Aid also warned that pay rates for local workers could lead to gross inequality in wealth” (West Australian, 17 January).

Meanwhile, reported Agence France-Press (17 January), Australian, international and East Timorese officials held a conference to discuss a new Timor Gap oil treaty to replace the “illegal” treaty signed in December 1989, between Australia and Indonesia over the oil-rich waters between northern Australia and East Timor (see Socialist Standard, March 1996). However, Indonesia said that it would “accept a review or a cancellation of the treaty with Australia”, presumably as it now has little choice.

The UN made it clear in 1979 that the Indonesian invasion of the former Portuguese colony, and its subsequent occupation, was illegal and that therefore so was the so-called oil treaty. But “the Australian government has always maintained that the treaty is legal”, reports the West Australian of 18 December. As of December last year, Australian companies BHP, Santos and Petroz had already extracted 32,500 barrels of oil daily from three wells in the zone jointly controlled by Australia and Indonesia. BHP, however, have since sold its assets to the US company, Phillips Petroleum. There have been, it would seem, disputes over a number of as yet unstarted fields, including the Woodside’s Laminaria field and BHP’s Buffalo field which “would fall into an area which might be claimed by East Timor as well as Australia” (West Australian, 18 December).

East Timor has now replaced Indonesia as Australia’s partner in the Timor Gap oil treaty, according to the West Australian (12 February). The official ceremony was held in Dili at the beginning of the month, James Batley, Australia’s resident consul in East Timor, who signed the new treaty, said that “there are important investment prospects here, and this has smoothed the path for those to go ahead”. Of course! And the United Nations secretary-general, who recently visited Dili, said how pleased he was at Australia’s quick response to the UN’s call for troops to go to East Timor. Yes; of course, of course!

Meanwhile, the poverty-stricken, propertyless, often starving workers and peasants of East (and West) Timor watch, sometimes pray, and hope that things will get no worse.

Peter E. Newell

The Review Column: Another Crisis (1969)

The Review Column from the January 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another Crisis

Ever since the Labour government came to power they have mounted a continual campaign to persuade the British working class that their belts must be tightened because the pound sterling is under attack by international currency speculators.

At the same time Labour ministers, not reluctant to dabble in nationalism, have contrasted the sickliness of the pound with the indecent health of other currencies like the franc and the deutsch- mark.

When the latest currency crisis broke the official story had to be rearranged. Now it was the franc and the mark which were under pressure; new arguments had to be used to explain away the latest round of restrictions.

In the process, Roy Jenkins joined the list of Labour Chancellors whose catch- phrased promises have*been exposed. Only a year ago, Jenkins was talking about “two years’ hard slog” to see us through. Now, as James Callaghan snidely indicated, the two years have been extended indefinitely.

Jenkins was applying measures which have already failed. They have failed while he has been Chancellor, they failed when Callaghan held the job and they failed under the Tories who were at the Exchequer before October 1964. The problems of British capitalism, in other words, are long term and fundamental, not to be cured or even affected by short term tinkering with taxes, exchange rates and the like.

Long term, too, are workers’ problems. Soon after Jenkins' cuts the House of Lords discussed poverty—no mean feat, since most of them have had no personal experience of it. Lord Beaumont, for example, told us that one person in every ten in this country falls into what he called “the general poverty bracket”.

Problems like that are not caused by currency difficulties, nor by an imbalance in a country’s trade. Poverty is an inescapable curse of capitalism and to eradicate its needs a fundamental change in society. That may be some way off but we can start by discrediting the politicians and their persistent, futile efforts to manage capitalism.

Powell Again 

Nobody should have been surprised at Enoch Powell’s second outburst on immigration. He was bound to try to repeat the success of his Birmingham speech in another, equally well timed and stage- managed.

This time the opposition were readier for him and within a few hours the counter attack had started. Powell had changed his figures on the predicted level of immigration; he had refused the chance to speak on the subject in the Commons a few days before; his evidence was dishonestly selective.

Of course most of this was true but it ignored one vital fact Powell was not addressing the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor workers in race relations, nor his fellow politicians.

He was playing the old trick of speaking over the heads of his opponents, to the people with the votes. He was stimulating the smouldering racialism of the Midlands and of places like Brixton and Southall.

In these places the frustrations and restrictions of working class life are acute and have in some cases seem to have been accentuated by the arrival of the immigrants who, because they are so easily identifiable, make the perfect scapegoat for a demagogue.

Powell is bidding for power and, having chosen his path, he will probably stick to it. His Eastbourne speech must surely be followed by others, in the same evil vein.

At the moment, he is having no perceptible success; the working class show no sign of voting for an openly racist party. But if conditions change — if Labour’s unemployed pool should grow any larger — the resentments which now smoulder could burst into fire.

The workers, unaware of their class standing and interests, bewildered by the continual crisis of capitalism, disillusioned at their leaders' failures, are inflammable material. The threat is always there. Had Enoch Powell never been born, some other politician would be doing the same work, blowing on the embers of panic and prejudice.

Biafra Tragedy

The pitiful victims of Nigeria’s civil war are the latest in a long line, preceded by such as Palestine, Algeria, Korea, Vietnam . . .

One estimate is that about one million children alone will die each month in Biafra unless they are evacuated or given proper food and medical attention.

The civil war has roused compassion all over the world and to many people, concerned at the death and suffering, the situation is full of perplexing questions.

Why won’t the Nigerian Federal government, as an act of simple humanity, allow food and medical supplies into the surrounded and shrinking Ibo land?

Why does the Labour government, which assured us that moral grounds caused them to prevent the sale of arms to South Africa, not take a similar stand over Nigeria, and stop sending weapons to the Federal forces?

Why can’t both sides simply call off the war?

These questions, and many others, are valid enough, except that they all assume capitalist states are guided by concern for human welfare.

When we realise that this is not so— that capitalist governments act as the property interests of their ruling class demand—the questions are not so perplexing.

The civil war in Nigeria, for example, is partly a struggle to flatten the tribal structure which was a part of the old society and to replace it with a national unity which is so essential for a modern developing capitalist state.

This is a ruthless struggle. Everyone is in the firing line; the Nigerian government are deliberately starving children because such tactics are an accepted and necessary part of modern war. The British government, for example, did it in both world wars.

It is futile, then, to wring our hands over Biafra. War is an inescapable part of capitalism and it cannot be removed by charity, no matter how sincere. The killing will not stop and Biafra will not be the last great tragedy.