The Universal Jurisdiction of the Fear:

Orientalism, Imperialism and International Law

Vinicius Valentin Raduan Miguel

22/03/2010

Opinión

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One year has passed since the Gaza War (2008-2009) and other seven years since the beginning of the Iraq War (2003- ). In human losses, more than 1440 Palestinians were killed and 1 million of Iraqis were dead since the beginning of the U.S. led occupation. For the purposes of the present text, the two conflicts will be analyzed together as exemplificative to the Orientalism and Imperialism. There are other reasons to consider the wars together: Both military operations were articulate in terms of a temporarily unlimited and unavoidable war. Furthermore, both wars were expressed as a battle against a faceless, loosely defined and territorially widespread, although threateningly close to us, enemy.

The adversary/other was meticulously described as oppositional to all occidental values, an evildoer in all senses having no aims but to impose the destruction of our virtues and our ethnocentrically cherished standards of liberty. Pari passu, the enemy/other was reconstructed, being carefully placed in the social imaginary as a purely oppressive regime capable of unscrupulous acts against its own people. This theatric drama is performed hiding that the colonized repressive violence was instrumentally used and has its roots at the opportunistic foreign policy of imperial lords; these same lords were benefitted by this despotic coercion, both economically and geopolitically.

I am talking about civil wars intentionally induced and social fragmentation provoked or, at least employed towards making possible a governability of the colonies by cruel lackeys to benefit the metropolitan political elites, all around the world for the last two hundred years. Also, governments of Middle Eastern countries (and elsewhere in the globe) were traditionally equipped with a view to promote Western economic interests - the hypertrophy of security forces everywhere else than Europe is explained by the needs of stability for trade prosperity, stability which could be endangered by an undisciplined horde of barbarians.

In this sense, Saddam’s crimes against its own Kurd or civilian population were raised, in spite of a shameful silence that was useful for an extended period. Similarly, in Gaza, Hamas was insistently deplored for what is portrayed as undemocratic practices, whilst other dictatorial states were created and subsidized all around the world by the currently ruling imperial masters.

Lastly, the other is coached as immeasurable human rights violator, facing our fury, the privileged caste of those who do no wrong. For these operations international law showed conveniently malleable, framing the hegemonic discourse in its sophisticated vocabulary to obediently serve legal forms of criminalizing the other and (a) absolving the imperial génocidaire ambitions at the same time as (b) deny the illegality of colonial practices. Guantanamo detentions, Abu Ghraib tortures and the bombing of Baghdad or Gaza City would be a terror campaign only if perpetrated against us.

The hegemonic discourse effaces the real peoples of those failed states and deadly focuses on their institutionalized leaderships to justify a generalized aggression impacting indiscriminately on their populations. Asymmetric wars have costlier consequences to civilians’ populations than to military apparatuses, as is well known. However, deaths of civilians belonging to the other army are described as perfectly proportional. Also damages able to permanently destroy the colonized’ economy are “unexpected” although “justifiable collateral impacts”. For those impacts, according to the imperial speeches, in spite of being justifiable, the colonial army has not dolus and therefore cannot be held accountable.

Arab and, generally, savage civilians killed are part of the game. Occasionally, their non-combatant legal status can be disputed by the loose wording of international humanitarian law. Somehow, savages’ deaths can be a posteriori reasonable. Perhaps, the existing civilians sacrifice would be a necessary price to be paid in order to overthrow their brutal regime and persistent aggression against us. “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”.

Often, a civilian definition for them is an exception ought to be proven. The rule is that they were unlawfully involved in the conflict committing perfidy and pretending to act as civilians. The others’ fighters are all cowards. Going a step further, all the nationals of the other entity are violent combatants; there are no innocents or civilians among them.

Unlike this Orientalist generalization of Arab peoples, Gaza and Iraq hold societal diversities and singularities. They are not a monolithic bloc of religiously motivated fighters intending the annihilation of the Christianity or the suppression of Israel in an apocalyptical war for the triumph of a new ultraorthodox version of monotheism. Armed conflicts do existed and are a tragic component of the historical formation of Middle Eastern region. However, it is cogent to make explicit the hidden reasons behind the civilization clash spelled out by imperial judgments. Identically, pointing out the dominant ethnocentric views does not exempt us from describing the reasons behind the demonization of entire peoples. The colonial motivations, in the last instance, an economic animus is inherent to the conflicts under analysis.

Present in both aforementioned wars (Iraq invasion and Gaza massacre), is a pattern of the imperialist regime, firstly, to extend its domains in cultural and territorial terms, and secondly, to reinforce the apparent incontestability of its military supremacy. These practices precede the September 11 catastrophe; indeed colonial rule is much earlier, having as its objective the preservation of the social organization of the capital. The territorial expansion is assured by military structures deeply installed at the heart of culturally diverse states.

It aims for geopolitical control and pillage of natural resources for the benefit of the colonial center whilst impoverishing the colonized people. The colonized territory is perceived as terra nullius - the inhabitants of the land does not matter at all, they are not entitled to sovereign polities and its land belong to no one - and, therefore ought to be legitimately taken by the universal jurisdiction of civilized nations (although the arguments are different, note that the recent militarization of Colombia and Haiti shows that this technique of usurping Third World’ sovereignty promoted by U.S.A. troops is not restricted to Middle Eastern peoples)

Concurrently, the self-declared cultural superiority of the imperialist nation is structured around the arguments of an inevitable clash of civilizations. Thus, the involved actors are conditioned to seek other’s destruction in an endless struggle. The racist construction of this argument impedes the conception of peace, perceiving it as an unattainable compromise where mutual respect and multicultural coexistence are unfeasible.

The only viable logic for the Western imperial project is the one which allows the flow of a war economy, permitting accumulation of wealth in the colonial countries by the reconstruction (ironically called post-conflict rebuilding) of occupied states. To this, add the looting of natural resources and the necessary governmental investment in non-productive sectors of the economy in order to preserve this unequal system of exploitation. A military solution for an economic problem… And the under-accumulation crisis is postponed at the imperial center.

The continued occupation of Iraq and Gaza (which is part of Palestine, still entirely occupied) reveals that the alleged initial casus belli was a lie. The plan was not striking to halt and contain an immediate and unjust threat of aggression. The fact is that both wars (and a lot of other wars between) were long-term planned as part of a grand colonial strategy for domesticating the savage other; the Just War phraseology was only a form of debating the theme and not real juridical/moral preoccupations. The concept of “uncivilized” other may have been substituted by a appealing/scaring term such as “terrorist” or by the legal definition of “illegal combatant” - as if the use of “legal” violence was a privilege to the “civilized” us. However, the intents are still the same and are not legal issues: they are political-economical matters.

Seven years has passed since the start of Gulf War II and lots of other peoples will be declared natives to be democratized, inevitably manu militari by a benevolent civilisé leader in his quest for unlawful enemies – where the sole crime is being from a different culture in a wealthy territory. Against them, war is normal and accepted phenomenon. Against them, punitive expeditions, torturing, and killing are not imperialism.

In such cases, imperial violence is not perceived as use of force, but it is praised for promoting its “human rights standards” and modernizing vast non-European/non-American areas - all parts of a great civilizing project. Colonial language can draw arguments from different self-declared scientific sources. International humanitarian law or human rights discourse, as the current language of power are effective methods of obfuscating other cultural-political factors and economic determinants.

Liberal-internationalists advocating “humanitarian” interventions all over the world are ideologues of colonial expansion. Using others’ “brutality” amongst themselves denying legal capacity to them is part of this new protectorate policy. Convincing outsiders’ populations to submissively accept imperial tutelage can be made possible only via punitive expeditions, which only perpetuate the violence-spiral.

Struggling against this universal jurisdiction of fear and intolerance is the challenge of our time.

- Vinicius Valentin Raduan Miguel is Brazilian. He holds a master degree in Human Rights and International Politics from the University of Glasgow. Contact: v.miguel (at) uol.com.br ;

This text would not be possible without Andy Blunden’ (from Marxists Archive) insightful comments.

https://www.alainet.org/es/node/140203