Great Powers Role in Third World Democratic Struggles
Disjuncture between Moral Pronouncement and Political Reality
In Shakespeare’s Henry V, we find the young king and his advisors making indignant pronouncements of their moral right before setting off on one of the great English pillaging raids in France. The playwright holds a ‘mirror up to nature,’ in which we can see the great men of the West in all their civilized righteousness repeatedly subduing the rest of the world.
Their taste for successful and profitable adventures in Europe, perhaps, taught the English how to conquer India: from the victories of Clive and Wellington in the field, to the policies of Wellesley, of converting the ‘British empire in India to the British Empire of India,’ and of Dalhousie’s ‘Doctrine of Lapse,’ of absorbing under British rule kingdoms to which titles were considered not secure. After winning the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ of 1857, and exiling the already pensioned-off Mogul Emperor to Burma, and incarcerating the Burmese King in India, the British mitigated the rapacity of individual British ‘nabobs,’ the British established direct rule under the Crown. The textile manufactories of Manchester, called the ‘engine of growth’ for the Industrial Revolution, were established at the cost of the Indian textile production. Native opposition to subjugation and exploitation was mitigated by the introduction of new liberal institutions of governance, Macauley’s famous ‘empire of laws and letters.’ However, while the British accepted as allies the highly privileged group of Maharajahs, and the landed gentry of zamindars, they opposed emerging bourgeois parties, such as the Indian National Congress, which had been called into being by their own modernizing policies. Nationalists, such as Tilak, Gandhi and Nehru, were jailed repeatedly; and as national resistance grew, several ‘Black Acts’ were promulgated, and gratuitous acts of colonial oppression perpetrated, such as the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, in Amristar, in 1919, which finally alienated the loyalties of moderate leaders like Gandhi and Tagore.
When finally, exhausted by World War II, the British left India in 1947, a partition of the country was hastily engineered by the last Viceroy, Mountbatten, as a culminating act of the successful policy of divide and rule, which had helped maintain British power in India for two hundred years.
Power was passed confidently into the hands of the elite bourgeoisie, composed of the leadership of the Indian National Congress, the Indian Army, and the Civil Service. Rule by this class over the last 50 years, allied with new landed and business interests, has produced great dividends for the upper classes, but leaving the masses of people, though somewhat better off than in colonial times, still desperately poor. The history of modern India perhaps illustrates the most sophisticated instance of neocolonialism, and the stages through which the continued economic subjugation of a vast number of people has been achieved. In this history, the great power’s role as a counter-revolutionary force was in creating at very stage the conditions that prevented the emergence of social revolutionary forces. The Gandhian Non-Violent Freedom Struggle was never crushed with force, precisely because of the fear such an act would create a revolutionary force. Caste and religious divisions were maintained subtly under the guise of fair play to prevent coalescing of people against colonial oppression. The final gracious act of transfer of power at the nick of time re-established the ties of economic dependence, and neutralized any chance of explosive revolutionary energy from India destabilizing the world order of Great Powers in the times of neo-colonialism.
The moderate Nonaligned Movement, of which Nehru was a principal initiator, was vigorously opposed by the United States, imperial successor to the British, for demanding the right to be neutral in the Cold war, the right to decide development policies, and fairer global trading regimes. The Americans saw these demands as an attack on the principles of the ‘free world.’ India was punished by the CIA’s giving encouragement to mujahideen forces in Pakistan to carry out insurgency acts in India.
If Great Power policies against India are considered unacceptable, far less subtlety was used elsewhere. The Chinese Empire was subjected to great exploitation under the ‘open door’ policy of promoting ‘free trade’ in the 19th century. The British, after the horrendous Opium War when the drug was forced on the hapless Chinese to swell British profits, helped the Empire quell the nationalist Taiping rebellion with brutality in the 1860s. The victor, ‘Chinese’ Gordon incidentally burned down the Summer Palace. Several trading concessions were extracted from the dying Empire, control of ports and vast territories secured, not only by the British, but also by the French, the Russians, and the copycat imperialists of Japan. The Boxer rebellion against foreigners was put down with equal force. When the Empire fell, the Great Powers supported the war-lord Yuan, rather than democrats led by Sun Yat-Sen, and squeezed out even more concessions, and territorial control, helping plunge China into several years of war and distress.
When China at last ‘stood up’ under Mao Zedong, in 1949, The United States opposed it with implacable hatred and its policy of global ‘containment’ of the communist evil. It is only after Mao’s death, and Deng Xiaoping’s market-oriented policies were put in place that America reduced its hostility, attracted equally by China’s vast market and investment possibilities. The America Seventh Fleet still prevents the re-unification of Taiwan with the mainland.
If trade once again opened Chinese doors to America, it was the desire to make the Pacific an ‘American lake,’ that led the Americans under President McKinley to launch a ferocious war of destruction against the Filipino people resisting their Spanish colonial masters over a hundred years ago. An American general vowed to create a ‘howling desert’ out of the country; another said he might kill half the people to bring in ‘civilization.’ Atrocities ceased only when a pliant government was established, and American ‘protection’ continued right up to the time President Marcos was deposed, the need for such dictators vanishing with the end of the Cold War. Similarly, the Indonesian people were permitted to depose the corrupt Suharto, who had been elevated by the American-supported Army, after killing 500,000 Indonesian people, as communists. Today, America permits Sukarnoputri to be President, when her father, one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement, had been so forcibly removed under American direction in 1966.
After defeating the French colonial masters at the great battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Vietnamese were forced to accept the partition of their country along the Seventeenth Parallel. However, following the logic of the policy of ‘containment,’ the Americans unleashed a savage war on the communist Vietnamese, in support of the neo-colonial bourgeoisie of South Vietnam, using high-explosive bombs to destroy villages, napalm to burn people, and Agent Orange to destroy land and forests. Defeated in the field, they withdrew; and only now have started trade relations with the Vietnamese. President Clinton recently discovered that ‘Vietnam’ was not a ‘war,’ but a ‘people.’
Persia was another Empire over which semi-colonial control was established prior to World War I. Tsarist Russia controlled the north and in fact ruled the country in the name of an ineffective and reactionary Shah. Majlis, the people’s council, and the Anjumans, orlocal-level councils were destroyed. The British were satisfied by controlling the southeast of the country. Mossadeq, the modernizing politician, was deposed in 1953 with CIA backing, for fear that control over Persian oil would pass into national hands. The Shah was propped up till overthrown by the revolution led by the Ayatollahs. Iran since then has faced great Western hostility.
French-Soviet arms fueled Saddam Hussien’s six-year war against Iran. That dictator’s cupidity in attacking Kuwait gave an excuse to the Great Powers to launch the Gulf War in 1990, in defence of ‘little Kuwait,’ which gave them effective control over all of Gulf oil. The attack on the World Trade Centre enabled them to destroy the fundamentalist forces they had created in Afghanistan to oppose Russian inroads, and create a government that might ensure control over the great Central Asian oil and gas deposits. The desire to maintain such control over the oil of the region has led America to support the reactionary regime of Saudi Arabia, while opposing the moderniser in Qaddafi of Libya, who has even been named as ‘terrorist’ by the United States.
The Ottoman Empire was partitioned after World War I, the British breaking faith with the Arabs, and instead of granting them independence, seizing control of Iraq, Jordon, and Palestine, while the French controlled Lebanon and Syria. Further, by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a homeland for European Jews was carved out of Palestine, though only 60,000 Jews were living there at that time out of a total population of 750,000. European oppression of the Jewish people was attempted to be solved by giving them the land of other people. The European Powers and the United States have continued to support Israel with weapons and finances despite immense and unjust hardships meted to the Palestinians. The region and its resources are even more important today to the Great Powers than ever before.
No attempt was ever made to justify European conquest and partition of Africa in the 19th century since Africans were openly declared to be inferior. The Ethiopians’ victory when the Italians attacked them shocked Europeans, who saw it as a victory of ‘barbarians’ over civilized people. Hence few excuses were needed to put down African revolts. Even the horrible brutalities perpetrated by the Belgians on the Congolese in the 1890s, to force them to grow profitable rubber, and the extermination of half the population in the process, passed without notice, let alone condemnation. The seizure of land from Africans was considered justified, just as it was from Amerindians or Australian aborigines, the other ‘lesser tribes.’ Even today, British hostility to Zimbabwean land reforms is premised in that belief.
The high-sounding Monroe Doctrine not only protected Latin Americans from European colonial control, it laid them open to American exploitation. Guatemala became the classic ‘banana’ republic, with the United Fruit Company exercising control. The United States, indirectly through its agents, and directly by landing troops, interfered with monotonous regularity in the political control of these independent countries, installing dictators, toppling populist leaders. President Allende of Chile was killed in 1973, and the murderous General Pinochet installed in his place. Americans supported ‘Contras,’ guerillas against the popular Sandinista government and forced it to vacate power. Bloody conflicts were engineered in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador to maintain or install right-wing governments. Even Haiti, which experienced the first successful slave revolt in the western hemisphere in the 19th century, was awarded a long period of dictatorship under ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier after World war II. Having aborted the almost successful Cuban bid for independence from the Spain, early in the 20th century, America ruled by proxy, making the island the playground of sugar barons and gamblers. Fidel Castro, who threw out the dictator Batista, on New Year’s Day 1959, and who has enabled Cuban society to reach very high levels of education and public health, has earned the deep hatred of all powerful Americans. Every attempt, from outright invasion at the Bay of Pigs, to economic blockade, to trying to assassinate Castro, has been tried to bring Cuba back into neocolonial rule.
There is cohesive consistency in all these political actions, by several governments of these powerful countries, and reaching back almost two hundred years. Behind all the cruelties lies the interest of the elites of the Great Powers to maintain and extend their power, privilege, and wealth. It is hence strange to hear an American President saying that ‘ military force should not be used to settle political disputes.’
Bibliography
Books
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Fisher, Michael H. The Politics of the British Annexation of India 1757-1857. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999
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Judge Edward H. and Langdon, John W. A Hard and Bitter Peace. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996
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Keylor, William R. The Twentieth-Century World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001
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Stavrianos, L. S. Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1981
Articles
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Agha, Qamar. "The U.S. and Central Asian Oil," The Hindu, Jan. 28. 2002
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Bigwood, Jeremy. "Toxic Drift: Monsanto and the Drug War in Columbia," Corpwatch, June 21, 2001
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Hiro, Dilip. " The Cost of an Afghan Victory," The Nation, Feb. 15, 1999
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Shire, George. " The Struggle for our Land," The Guardian, Jan. 24, 2002
Newspaper Reports and other Media
Bush, George W. The BBC Broadcast, Feb. 18, 2002.
Granma, July 4, 2001.
Samuel Lucas, “Dacoitee in Excelsis,” The Politics of the British Annexation of India 1757-1857 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 263-292.
L.S.Stavrianos, Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age ( New York: William Morrow and Company, 1981), 271.
Stavrianos, 263.
Stavrianos, 712.
William R. Keylor, The Twenthieth-Century World ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 296-297.
Dilip Hiro, “The Cost of an Afghan Victory,” The Nation, Feb. 15, 1999. Hiro, detailing the links between the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI in establishing terrorists camps, asks: Did the founders of US policy in Afghanistan during the Carter Administration (1977-1981) realize that in spawning Islamic militancy with the primary aim of defeating the Soviet Union they were risking sowing the seeds of a phenomenon that was likely to acquire a life of its own, spread throughout the Muslim world and threaten US interests?
Stavrianos, 315.
Stavrianos, 321-324.
Stavrianos, 407-408.
Edward H. Judge and John W. Langdon, A Hard and Bitter Peace (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996), 100.
Keylor, 380.
Stavrianos, 385.
Stavrianos, 383-384.
Keylor, 348.
Keylor, 367-368.
Jeremy Bigwood, “Toxic Drift: Monsanto and the Drug War in Columbia,”Corpwatch, June 21, 2001. “The application of Agent Orange and TCDD not only deforested large areas of Vietnam, but it also caused over 50,000 birth defects and hundreds of thousands of cancers both in Vietnamese civilians and soldiers, as well as in former U.S. troops serving in South East Asia. The effects of Agent Orange are still being experienced, 26 years after the end of the war.” See also Stavrianos, 726.
Stavrianos, 393-396.
Keylor, 388.
Keylor, 395.
Keylor, 523.
Qamar Agha, “The U.S. and Central Asian Oil,” The Hindu, Jan 28, 2002. Agha points out: Now the Americans are spread all over Central and South Asia and the American "war against terror" has also become a battle to control the energy resources of the Central Asian region.
Keylor, 421.
Keylor, 60.
Stavrianos, 420.
Stavrianos, 302.
George Shire, “ The Struggle for our Land,” The Guardian, Jan. 24, 2002.
Keylor, 21-22.
Keylor, 311-312.
Keylor, 542-543.
Keylor, 400-401.
Keylor, 539.
Stavrianos, 381-383.
Keylor, 314.
Granma, July 4, 2001.
George W. Bush, speech in Tokyo, broadcast by The BBC, Feb 18, 2002
