Andre Glucksmann, mistaken as he often may be, is still always interesting to read. His recent essay Vietnamisation or Somaliasation?, at signandsight is a good example of his typical combination of hard-headed, almost apocalyptic, realism and naive optimism.
Reflecting on early June’s events across the Third World, with signs of a quickening slide back into chaos is Afghanistan, East Timor and Somalia, along with the seemingly interminable blood-letting in Iraq, he refutes the Iraq-is-another-Vietnam argument of the anti-war left and then warns:
The Somali model is spreading over the planet. Populations are taken hostage, frightened and sacrificed, becoming the war booty of lawless local chiefs. Brandishing volatile concepts – religion, ethnic group, a slapdash racist or nationalist ideology or a falsified memory – the commando units scramble for power on the strength of their Kalashnikovs. They fight less amongst themselves than against the civilians, who account for 95 percent of the victims, women and children first….
Between 1945 and 1989, the date of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the inter-bloc war was cold, as much in Europe as in North America. Everywhere else revolutions and counter-revolutions, coup-d’etats and massacres erupted with millions of victims. Never in history have human societies been so shaken up as in that short half-century when the unjust colonial empires collapsed, and wars of liberation, uprisings and insurrections all too often gave birth to new, more or less totalitarian despotisms. In the turmoil, regimes, customs and secular ties were systematically destroyed. At the end of this worldwide historical earthquake, two thirds of humankind has lost its bearings and cannot live like it used to, nor can it live (or not yet, say the optimists) like the peaceable citizens of Western constitutional states.
Ultimately, Glucksmann’s argument is that, in contrast Clinton’s evacuation of US troops from Somalia following the “Blackhawk Down” affair, the Bush administration must stay the course in Iraq:
Even the most anti-American governments like France are crossing their fingers and hoping that they won’t [withdraw from Iraq], and that the coalition won’t abandon the terrain to the throat-slitters.
And, further, the West must massively increase its international commitments in order to role back the tide of Third World chaos. Unfortunately, however, Glucksmann has no real solution beyond vague exhortation:
We must choose. Either we accept a general Somaliasation and take refuge in an illusionary Eurasian fortress, or we revive a democratic, military and critical European-Atlantic alliance.
The notion that if only Europe will really stand with the US this revitalized Euro-American will be able to control the world, intervening from the South Pacific, to the Middle East, to Africa to maintain order and civilization, seems bizarre. After all, if Europeans, for their part, aren’t even willing to make the sacrifice to have enough children to avoid utter demographic collapse and national extinction, why would anyone think that they will risk their lives to, say, impose democracy on the East Timorese?
100 years ago, Glucksmann’s proposal might have made sense. Today, exhausted by the 20th century, corrupted by hedonism, atmoized by pathological individualism, the West lacks the stomach for such a crusade.
Filed under: Clash of Civilizations
