Global
Research, November 29, 2015
Politico and CounterPunch 27
November 2015
Interview with
distinguished Belgian Scholar Jean Bricmont. Interview with Àngel
Ferrero for the Spanish newspaper, Publico.
English Translation courtesy of Counterpunch.
Àngel Ferrero: It has been 10 years since Humanitarian
Imperialism appeared in Spanish. What made you write the book?
It started as a
reaction to the attitude of the Left during the 1999 Kosovo war, which was
largely accepted on humanitarian grounds and to the rather weak opposition of
the peace movement before the 2003 invasion of Iraq: for example, many
“pacifists” have accepted the policy of sanctions at the time of the 1991 first
Gulf war and even after it, and were favorable to inspections in the run-up to
the war, without realizing that this was just a maneuver to prepare the public
to accept the war (this became even public knowledge through later leaks, like
the Downing Street memos).
It seemed to me
that the ideology of humanitarian intervention had totally destroyed, on the
left, any notion of respect for international law, as well as any critical
attitude with respect to the media.
Àngel Ferrero: What do you think it has changed in this last
10 years?
A lot of things
have changed, although, I am afraid, not because of my book. It is rather
reality that has asserted itself, first with the chaos in Iraq, then in Libya
and now in Syria and Ukraine, leading to the refugee crisis and a near state of
war with Russia, which would not be a “cakewalk”.
The
humanitarian imperialists are still busy pushing us towards more wars, but
there is now a substantial fraction of public opinion that is against such
policies; that fraction is probably more important on the right than on the
left.
Àngel Ferrero: The role of the intellectuals in legitimizing
Western interventions and interferences is
heavily criticized, as well as their symbolic actions (signing public letters
or manifestos). Why?
The problem
with “intellectuals” is that they love to pretend that they are critics of
power, while in reality legitimizing it. For example, they will complain that
Western governments do not do enough to promote “our values” (through
interventions and subversions) which of course reinforces the notion that “our
side” or “our governments” mean well, a highly dubious notion, as I try to
explain in my book.
Those
intellectuals are sometimes criticized, but by whom? In general, by marginal
figures I think. They still dominate the media and the intellectual sphere.
Àngel Ferrero: Another of the preoccupations of your book is the
degradation of the public discourse. Do you think that the situation worsened?
How do you assess the impact of social media?
The public
discourse goes from bad to worse, at least in France. This is related to the
constant censorship, either through lawsuits or through campaigns of
demonization, of politically incorrect speech, which includes all
the questioning of the dominant discourse about the crimes of our enemies
and the justifications for wars.
The social
media is the only alternative left to “dissidents”, with the drawback that
there, anything goes, including the wildest fantasies.
Àngel Ferrero: Some commentators point that Russia is now using
their own version of the “human rights’ ideology” to justify their intervention
in Crimea or the air campaign in Syria against the Islamic State. Is it fair?
I don’t think
that Russia even claims to intervene on humanitarian grounds. In the case of
Crimea, it bases itself on the right of self-determination of a people which is
basically Russian, has been attached to Ukraine in an arbitrary fashion in 1954
(at a time when it did not matter too much, since Ukraine was part of the
Soviet Union) and had every reason to be afraid of a fanatically anti-Russian
government in Kiev.
For Syria, they
respond to the request for help of the government of that country in order to
fight foreign supported “terrorists”. I don’t see why it is less legitimate
than the intervention of France in Mali (also requested by the government of
that country) or of the more recent intervention of the U.S. in Iraq, against
ISIS.
Of course,
those Russian moves may prove to be unwise and maybe debatable from a
“pacifist” point of view. But the fundamental question is: who started the
total dismantling of the international order based on the U.N. Charter and the
premise of equal sovereignty of all nations? The answer, obviously, is the U.S.
and its “allies” (in the old days, one used to say “lackeys”). Russia is only
responding to that disorder and does so in rather legalistic ways.
Àngel Ferrero: Let’s stay in Syria.
Several European politicians demand a military intervention in Syria and
Libya to restore the order and stop the influx of refugees to the
European Union. What do you think of this crisis and the solutions proposed by
the EU?
They do not
know how to solve the problem that they have created. By demanding the
departure of Assad as a precondition to solving the Syrian crisis and by
supporting so-called moderate rebels (the label moderate meaning in practice
that they had been chosen by “us”), they prevented any possible solution in
Syria. Indeed, a political solution should be based on diplomacy and the latter
presupposes a realistic assessment of forces. In the case of Syria, realism
means accepting the fact that Assad has the control of an army and has foreign
allies, Iran and Russia. Ignoring this is just a way to deny reality, and to
refuse to give diplomacy a chance.
Then came the
refugee crisis: this was probably not expected, but occurred at a time when
European citizens are increasingly hostile to immigration and to the “European
construction”. Most European governments face what they call “populist
movements”, i.e. movements that demand more sovereignty for their own
countries. The flux of refugees could not come at a worst moment, from the
European governments’ point of view.
So, they try to
fix the problem as they can: having peripheral countries like Hungary build
walls (that they denounce in public but are probably happy about in private),
reinstall border controls, pay Turkey to keep the refugees etc.
There are of
course also calls to intervene in Syria to solve the problem “at the source”.
But what can they do now? More support for the rebels, trough a no-fly zone for
example, and running the risk of a direct confrontation with the Russians? Help
the Syrian army fight the rebels, as the Russian do? But that would mean
reversing years of anti-Assad propaganda and policies.
In summary,
they are hoisted by the own petard, which is always an unpleasant situation.
Àngel Ferrero: Why do you think that
the Greens and the new left are so adamant in defending the humanitarian
interventions?
Ultimately, one
has to do a class analysis of the “new left”. While the old left was based on
the working class and their leaders often came from that class, the new left is
almost entirely dominated by petit-bourgeois intellectuals. Those intellectuals
are neither the “bourgeoisie”, in the sense of the owners of the means of
production not are they exploited by the latter.
Their social
function is to provide an ideology that can serve as a lofty justification for
an economic system and a set of international relations that are based
ultimately on brute force. The human rights ideology is perfect from that point
of view. It is sufficiently “idealistic” and impossible to put consistently
into practice (if one had to wage war against every “violator of human rights”,
one would quickly be at war with the entire world, including ourselves) to
allow those defenders the opportunity to look critical of the governments (they
don’t intervene enough). But, by deflecting attention from the real relations
of forces in the world, the human rights ideology offers also to those who hold
real power a moral justification for their actions. So, the petit-bourgeois
intellectuals of the “new left” can both serve power and pretend to be
subversive. What more can you ask from an ideology?
Àngel Ferrero: In the conclusions of your book you recommend
a sort of pedagogy for the Western audience, so they accept the end of the
Western hegemony and the emergence of a new order in the international
relations. How can we contribute to this?
As I said
above, it is reality that forces the Western audience to change. It was always
a pure folly to think that human rights would be fostered by endless wars, but
now we see the consequences of that folly with our own eyes. There should be a
radical reorientation of the left’s priorities in international affairs: far
from trying to fix problems in other countries through illegal interventions,
it should demand strict respect of international law on the part of Western
governments, peaceful cooperation with other countries, in particular Russia,
Iran and China, and the dismantling of aggressive military alliances such as
NATO.
Àngel Ferrero: I would like to ask
you about the other book that made you known to the general public, Fashionable
Nonsense. This book, co-written with Alan Sokal, is a critique to
postmodernism. What is the influence of postmodernism amongst scholars and the
public opinion today? It fades away or is it still alive and kicking?
It is difficult
for me to answer that question, because it would require a sociological study
that I do not have the means to undertake. But I should say that postmodernism,
like the turn towards humanitarian interventions, is another way that the left
has self-destructed itself, although this aspect has had less dramatic
consequences than the wars and the damage was limited to “elite” intellectual
circles.
But if the left
wants to create a more just society, it has to have a notion of justice; if it
adopts a relativist attitude with respect to ethics, how can it justify its
goals? And if it has to denounce the illusions and mystifications of the
dominant discourse, it better rely on a notion of truth that is not purely a
“social construction”. Postmodernism has largely contributed to the destruction
of reason, objectivity and ethics on the left and that leads to its suicide.
This interview was conducted by Àngel Ferrero for the Spanish
newspaper, Publico.
Jean Bricmont teaches physics at the
University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont@uclouvain.be
The original source of this article is Politico and CounterPunch
Copyright © Jean Bricmont, Politico and CounterPunch, 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment