The New World Disorder
After his great victory in Desert Storm, George H.W. Bush went before the United Nations to declare the coming of a New World Order.
The Cold War was yesterday. Communism was in its death throes. The Soviet Empire had crumbled.
The Soviet Union was disintegrating. Francis Fukuyama was writing of "The End of History." Savants trilled about the inevitable triumph of democratic capitalism.
Yet, in 2012, sectarianism, tribalism and nationalism are all resurgent, reshaping a world where U.S. power and influence are visibly receding.
Syria is sinking into a war of all against all that may end with a breakup of the nation along ethno-sectarian lines—Arab, Druze, Kurd, Sunni, Shia and Christian. Iraq descends along the same path.
A U.S. war with Iran could end with a Kurdish enclave in Iran's northwest tied to Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran's Azeri north drifting toward Azerbaijan, and a Balochi enclave in the south linked to Pakistan's largest province, Balochistan, leaving Iran only Persia.
The Middle and Near East seem to be descending into a Muslim Thirty Years' War of Sunni vs. Shia. Out of it may come new nations whose names and borders were not written in drawing rooms by 19th and 20th century European cartographers, but in blood.
India, too, is feeling the tremors. Ethnic violence in the Assam region has sent hundreds of thousands fleeing in panic.
In East Asia, ethnonationalism, fed by memories from the 20th century, is igniting clashes among former Cold War allies.
China's claim to the Spratly, Paracel and other islands in the South China Sea puts Beijing in conflict with Hanoi, which welcomes U.S. warships back to Cam Ranh Bay. Were not these the same people we bombed and blasted not so long ago?
Twenty years ago, Manila ordered the U.S. Navy out of Subic Bay, which had been home to the U.S. Pacific Fleet almost since the Spanish-American war. Now Manila is inviting America back.
Why? China is claiming islets, atolls and reefs 1,000 miles from the Chinese mainland, but only 100 miles from the Philippine coast.
To annex what could be a mother lode of oil, gas and minerals in the South China Sea, China is stoking the ethnonationalism of its own people.
Yet, a fear of ethnonationalism is behind Beijing's repression of Tibetans and Uighurs, whose regions are being inundated with Han Chinese, just as Josef Stalin flooded Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia with Russians after annexing them in 1940.
"All is race; there is no other truth," wrote Benjamin Disraeli in his novel "Tancred." Beijing behaves as if it believes Disraeli was right.
China now claims Japan's Senkaku islands, which Beijing calls the Diaoyu. South Korea claims Japan's Takeshima in the East China Sea, which Seoul calls Dokdo. Here history enters the quarrel.
In 1908, in the Root-Takahira Agreement, Theodore Roosevelt agreed to Tokyo's annexation of Korea in return for recognition of U.S. annexation of the Philippines.
Root-Takahira is a black page in Korean history. For Japan's occupation ran through World War II, when Korean girls were forced into prostitution as "comfort women" for Japanese troops. Tokyo and Seoul were Cold War allies, but these old wounds never healed.
The visit to Dokdo last week by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, cheered by his countrymen, represented a rejection of Japan's claim and an assertion that the islets belong to Korea.
Russia, too, has now gotten into the islands game.
Two days after the United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, the day before Nagasaki, Stalin declared war and sent Russian troops to seize the Kuril islands north of Japan and expel the population. Japan still claims the four southernmost islands of the Kuril chain.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev just stoked the flames of tribalism in both nations by visiting the Kuril island that is closest to Japan.
With China, South Korea and Russia asserting claims and making intrusions on islands Japan regards as sacred territory, Tokyo is taking a new look at rebuilding her armed forces.
On Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, two cabinet ministers visited the Yasukuni Shrine to the World War II dead. A new nationalism is rising in the Land of the Rising Sun. China and Russia may be nuclear powers, but Japan could join that club swiftly should she chose to do so.
The bipolar world of the Cold War is history. The new world order, however, is not the One World dreamed of by Wilsonian idealists. It is a Balkanizing world where race, tribe, culture and creed matter most, and democracy is seen not as an end in itself but as a means to an end—the accretion of power by one's own kind to achieve one's own dreams.
As Abraham Lincoln said in another time, when an old world was dying and a new world was being born, "As our situation is new, let us think and act anew."
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The column is excellent, and Mr Buchanan's entire contribution to America is inestimable. However, lately, Pat's sister Bay Buchanan joined the Romney team and I am alarmed that Pat seems to be following suit. I have no use for Barak style liberals, but is putting the Neocon thugs and the ATTACK IRAN mob back in the saddle really so much better? To me, this looks like supporting Leon Trotsky to keep out Stalin in Soviet Russia. The two lame stream parties are the problem not the solution.
Beijing's repression of Tibetans and Uighurs?
It's the Tibetans and Uighurs who are hostile and violent towards other members of their republic. Such an one-sided picture - all Western media outlets speak of Chinese crackdown in minority regions, but they rarely speak of the terrorism, the killings, and the unprovoked assaults by Tibetans and Uighurs that caused these crackdowns.
I can not imagine why Patrick Buchanan thinks "fear of ethnonationalism" caused these crackdowns. It's merely a matter of enforcing the law of their own land. In UK, US, France, or Germany, similar criminal behaviour would provoke a similar response from authorities, irrespective of political agenda.
And why do some Tibetans want the Chinese to leave? It's because the Chinese abolished time-honoured Tibetan traditions like slavery and execution for "heresy". And the reactionary Tibetans want to go back to the stone age, to the days when they owned other people as property, when a social hierarchy ensured that those on the beneath got no protection of the law, and those above remained above the law. Tibetan separatists do not deserve their own nation, as they would turn it back into the same nightmare-ish place that Tibet was before 1960. It's less to do with solidarity with members of one's own ethnicity, or more to do with protecting privileges like owning slaves.
Prateek Sanjay,
You gotta be kidding me! During Chairman Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward," Tibetans suffered through the Tibetan Cultural Revolution experiencing some of the worst abuses known to man, under the slogan "Smash the Four Olds:" old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits. Before the Chinese occupation, there were 6,000 Tibetan monasteries in Tibet. After the Cultural Revolution, there were six. Hundreds of thousands of Monks, Nuns and civilians were imprisoned or killed for wearing traditional hairstyles and clothing, engaging in traditional song or dance, or voicing their religious beliefs. Anything representing the cultural identity of the Tibetan people was eradicated. Sure, I guess it resembles something along the lines of what we Americans call nowadays "leaning forward" but the world is a very very old place and I am not sure Mao's vision of "liberation" has always been universally shared.
While I understand Disraeli's comment quoted by Mr. B., I'd like to believe that some (and I am not claiming much, please) American experience demonstrates the possibility of living above this biological reaction, and employing some rational effort to the situation. It would seem we'll be involved in a century of wars if we can't. What are other's reactions to this?
"All is race; there is no other truth," wrote Benjamin Disraeli in his novel "Tancred."
What are other's reactions to this?
My reaction is "there is more under heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy, . . .!"
Nature, nurture, amazing grace -- it is all there --- but only one brief glimpse per life!
"All is race; there is no other truth," wrote Benjamin Disraeli in his novel "Tancred."
What are other's reactions to this?
In the movie Bloody Sunday, after the British soldiers opened fire on Irish Catholic Civil Rights protesters, leader Ivan Cooper says to the press: "I just want to say this to the British Government... You know what you've just done, don't you? You've destroyed the civil rights movement, and you've given the IRA the biggest victory it will ever have. All over this city tonight, young men... boys will be joining the IRA, and you will reap a whirlwind."
Cooper himself had opposed the legitimacy a ridiculous extremist force as a combatant against what he regarded as an encroaching power*, but now the heat had risen so hot that the rise of that force was inevitable. Asked by the journalists whether he had anything to say to those young men now joining the IRA, he replied something along the lines of:
"I'm not sure I'm in a position to say anything to you regarding that decision.
And that is about the kind of reaction I have when I hear people quote such phrases as Disraeli's.
"All is race; there is no other truth," wrote Benjamin Disraeli in his novel "Tancred."
What are other's reactions to this?
In the movie Bloody Sunday, after the British soldiers opened fire on Irish Catholic Civil Rights protesters, leader Ivan Cooper says to the press: "I just want to say this to the British Government... You know what you've just done, don't you? You've destroyed the civil rights movement, and you've given the IRA the biggest victory it will ever have. All over this city tonight, young men... boys will be joining the IRA, and you will reap a whirlwind."
Cooper himself had opposed the legitimacy a ridiculous extremist force as a combatant against what he regarded as an encroaching power*, but now the heat had risen so hot that the rise of that force was inevitable. Asked by the journalists whether he had anything to say to those young men now joining the IRA, he replied something along the lines of:
"I'm not sure I'm in a position to say anything to you regarding that decision."
And that is about the kind of reaction I have when I hear people quote such phrases as Disraeli's.
It seems to me that rather than take for granted our involvement in a troublesome world and cogitate over how to manage it, we ought to rethink the whole business of why we need to be so involved with other countries anyway. The problem is that in the late 19th century our rulers realised that they had great power and began to flatter themselves by exercising it in the world in contradiction to all the wisdom and warnings of the best of the Founders. Essentially it was an exercise of greed and a power trip covered by puritan claptrap about special virtue and democracy. Once one enters the realm of empire, then there are endless, often bewildering, entanglements. In empire it is normal for friends of one year to become enemies of another, and vice versa. And it is normal for the health of the state to become the only concern while the health of the people is lost from sight. Our rulers manage their empire for its and their sake, without reference to the welfare of the society on which their power is based. So we are reconciled with Vietname. Remind me why we went there to begin with? So China, Japan, and Vietname are quarreling over islands. Remind me why we should care as long as we can defend our people and their essential needs?
Apologies for the double-post; something went weird. I'll appeal to the webmaster to correct...
Buchanan quoting Disraeli: "All is race; there is no other truth,"
Mr. Hyams: " While I understand Disraeli's comment quoted by Mr. B., I'd like to believe that some (and I am not claiming much, please) American experience demonstrates the possibility of living above this biological reaction, and employing some rational effort to the situation."
Agreed! But aren't we prone to one extreme or another? Drawing and imposing artificial lines and boundaries having nothing to do with a peoples' natural affections and loyalties (e.g. "Iraq", an artificial construct if there ever was one!), and the leveling of all distinctions under the rubric of a New World Order, globalism, radical egalitarianism, or whatever serves the corporatist/mercantilist's ends, seems to be the culprit here that may well produce the chaotic opposite extreme of ethnic and tribal violence (i.e. the proverbial pendulum swinging back the other direction - AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!).
I seem to recall toward the end of the film, "The Outlaw Josey Wales", where Josey is speaking to Ten Bears (?) and says that people, not governments, can get along. While that hasn't always worked out well in this fallen world either, one can also appreciate that tyrannical, top-down imposed "order" isn't desirable. America used to assimilate its folks; now, the government and its corporate cronies impose Third Worlders en masse with no natural loyalties to the founding ideals and traditions that made for cohesion and societal harmony. This kind of ethnic chaos will likely happen here as well.
Anyway, my $0.02.
There's a saying we in the Army have sometimes used, Dr. Wilson, that runs something like this:
"Common sense is authorized, but it is highly discouraged!"
Of course that's been most often applied to the mundane and often inexplicable nonsense in military life, but it fits here regarding our true "interests" in any nation's extra-territorial acquisitiveness that has nothing to do with us.
Thank you for these words of wisdom, Dr. Wilson. I tried to communicate these same ideas to a co-worker today, but did so not nearly as well as you have. I fear that we will never have leaders who place as much importance on the nation's (and our) welfare as they do on promoting their own interests.
Wise words from Professor Wilson that echo the wisdom of the Founders. Unfortunately they are impossible to follow in our present system of government in which policy is bought and sold to the highest bidders without regard for the ruled from whom those funds are confiscated in the first place.
Dr. Wilson,
Your words:
"Remind me why we should care as long as we can defend our people and their essential needs?"
As you know, for you have taught us this, those who control the empire have cloaked themselves in a "propositional" nation which enables them, in paradox, cynically as profiteers but simultaneously as passionate ideologues of the Puritan/Jacobin ilk, to claim to be progenitors as well as the apologists and the protectors the abstract rights which have fallen out of the ether onto all men, all men in the abstract, as "human rights," making all men "our people" and all "essential needs" rights. "All men" have become "our people."
Those of us - whose ancestors braved the Atlantic from the British Isles, established European beachheads of the East Coast from Jamestown, to Wilmington, to Charleston, to Savannah and who spilled out of those beachheads with Bible, gun, ax and plow to take the West as settlements and prosperous yeomen farms deep into the American wilderness - are the enemies of these imperial elites. "Those people" neither defend us or our essential needs; they have been trying, and quite successfully, to destroy us for over one hundred-fifty years. Our ancestors were a struggling vanguard in a natural wilderness; we are a struggling remnant in a spiritual wilderness. In this struggle, I look to the same Hope to which they looked over four hundred years ago.
Mr. Peters,
A well said response to Dr. Wilson's well said comment. Amen to Hope.