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UK marches against war - Putting foreign policy back on the agendaLast weekend, 400,000 people descended into the streets of London to plead with Tony Blair one last time, to beg him to reconsider unleashing the dogs on war upon the people of Iraq (1). "NOT IN OUR NAME!" read the banners. And for those who might be tempted to dismiss these demonstrators as a noisy minority, it might be worth considering a recent Channel 4 poll, in which only 18% supported unilateral action (with or without British support) against Iraq, and where a sizeable minority (37%) saw President Bush as the greatest threat to World peace. Another Guardian-ICM poll showed a vast majority of the British people were opposed to a war, which could bleed the Iraqi population of another 100,000 souls. The recent elections in Germany were further proof that Foreign Policy can be a major issue for voters. However, voting once every several years is not an effective means for democratic control of foreign policy. We must constantly remind our leaders who put them in power, and thus who they are serving. Worryingly, Gerhard Schröder's post-election government is already softening its stance against the war in Iraq. But at least in Germany, the voters were given a chance to express a choice in this domain. In contrast, the post 11/09 America offered no room for political dissent against the Republican government's decision to bomb Afghanistan. Beyond the political arena, other obstacles bar the way for an ethical foreign policy. The recently deceased Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, was very interested in media framing of our perceptions of reality. He criticised the mass medias' practise of diverting our attention from important events by focussing on intellectually minimal entertainment (2), a modern example of which could be "Big Brother" and other "reality" shows. Chomsky deplores the media's other bad habit of withholding important information (3), such as Annex B of the Rambouillet "peace" treaty for Kosovo (which left the Serbs no choice but to reject the accords). Many would reject the hypothesis of media framing, but how else can we explain a recent poll by the History Channel in which Britons declared Princess Diana's death to be the worst disaster of the last 100 years? Are we to think that the people of Britain were more affected by the accidental death of a divorced royal than by the Second World War? Of course not, and the emotion surrounding Diana's death can only be explained by collective hysteria induced by ceaseless media coverage of the event. In the same way, following the 11th of September attacks, channels such as CNN repeatedly showed the same images of the crumbling twin towers, over and over again, for over a month. Had CNN bombarded its viewers with images of Afghan civilians, crushed by hunger and decades of civil war, perishing under NATO bombs with the same frequency, the odds are pressure would have grown for an end to the attacks. We can only be affected by what we are aware of. Public opposition to war, when sufficiently aroused despite misinformation of all kinds, can be formidable. For example, it was popular pressure from within that eventually led to the end of the Vietnam War, although it is unclear if this pressure was in response to the large numbers of American casualties or the unbelievable horrors inflicted upon the Vietnamese people. Here in the European Union (with the exception of Germany), voters often choose between candidates on issues relating to economic policy. This is misguided, since many of the decisions affecting national economies and our daily lives in general are now taken at the European level rather than at the national level, especially since the Barcelona summit in 2002 (4). Economic issues should therefore be a more important issue for the election of our local Euro MPs. Foreign policy, however, is still in the hands of national governments (although the growing alignment of British and American foreign policies casts a few doubts on this theory), and thus should be a crucial issue in national elections. If we are still not convinced that an ethical foreign policy is desirable for purely altruistic reasons, then at the very least we should be worried about "blowback" for our actions abroad. "Blowback" is an American word representing the unwanted returns on foreign policy actions of the past decades. This theme is extensively covered by Chalmers Johnson's homonymous book (5). For example, Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organisation is the price we are paying for "our" victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan (the CIA helped to arm and train these people during the cold war). China's blowback is a separatist rebellion by the Muslim Uighours of Xinjiang, which it had trained to conduct covert operations against the Russians in Afghanistan. Even the 1990s economic crisis in Asia can be seen as blowback for US efforts to impose the American market doctrines on countries whose markets were not geared for unbridled capitalism. Blowback can take years or even decades to manifest itself, but one thing is for sure, military destruction of third world countries can only lead to waves of retaliation and counter-retaliation, ad infinitum, and with few consequences for the instigators of such violence, on the leaders who bring the ire of the West on their own people (has anybody seen Bin Laden or the Mullah Omar lately?). Whenever we think foreign policy is not an issue in elections, let us remember the 500,000 Iraqi children who have died as a result of sanctions imposed by the West. And let us ask ourselves: were those children responsible for Saddam Hussein's actions? Let us also remember the children who have been orphaned by our bombs, do we really believe they can ever forgive us? 1-Allison, R. 2002. Anti-war marchers evoke spirit of CND. The Guardian, 30/09/02. 2- Bourdieu, P. 1996. Sur La Télévision. Raisons d'Agir, Paris, France. 3- Chomsky, N. 1999. The New Military Humanism. Lessons From Kosovo. Conman Courage,USA. 4- Cassen, B. 2002. Est-il encore utile de voter apres le sommet de Barcelone? Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2002. 5- Johnson, C. 2000. Blowback. The costs and consequences of American Empire. Little, Brown & co, London, UK |
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