The US Empire And Popular Sovereignty

The US Empire and Popular Sovereignty by Gordon Laxer Talk given to an IFG Forum at the Fifth World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil Jan 29, 2005 The 95% of humans who do not live in the United States can be thankful to George W. Bush. He pledged to free us all. “Bomb us into freedom.” Look at how well American-style freedom is working in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and for Palestinians. I remember the stirring democracy declaration pushed by the United States government at the Organization of American States meetings in Quebec City in 2001. A few of us – 60,000 to 100,000 - were on the streets behind police barriers breathing tear gas, while government leaders met behind closed doors to plan how to give transnational corporations the right to rule through the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The OAS democracy charter promised to sanction all coups in the Western Hemisphere. This was the US govt’s way to exclude Cuba and Castro from the meetings and say that street demonstrators are undemocratic. The Cuba tactic backfired around the first coup after the OAS democracy charter - the overthrow of Hugo Chavez’s democratically-elected government in Venezuela in April 2002. The coup leaders dissolved Venezuela’s Congress, Supreme Court, and constitution. After mass demonstrations by the poor of Caracas, Chavez retrieved his presidency. There could not have been a clearer violation of the OAS Democracy Charter. Latin American officials quickly condemned the coup. Canada did the chicken run - remained silent throughout the 48-hour coup. But the US recognised the dictatorship and called it a ‘change of government.’ The coup leaders had met regularly with US officials beforehand, who later denied they recommended a coup. Hard to believe. A few months earlier, Colin Powell said the US would support a transitional government in Venezuela. So did World Bank head James Wolfensohn. A transitional government with a president who, unlike George the lesser, won a landslide election victory? That could only mean a coup. The US had a force on standby to provide ‘logistical support’ to the coup. Big oil was ecstatic. Eventually the OAS condemned the "alteration of the constitutional order," no thanks to the US government. What can we learn from this story? First, the "value" of US government promises of freedom and democracy. Second, optimism - the effectiveness of popular resistance by Venezuelans and sections of the army, and the value of having a citizen-oriented state. Defeat of the coup strengthened Chavez’s regime, which, along with Bolivarian revolutionary circles, is making major transformations. Third, Chavez, who was elected as a popular - or left - nationalist, has been much more independent of the US Empire and made much greater social transformations of wealth and power than the government of Lula da Silva in Brazil. Lula had had excellent anti-corporate globalization and socialist credentials. Venezuela shows the radical potential of left nationalism/internationalism in defying and weakening the US Empire. We should harness it. It is true that Venezuela’s oil wealth allowed Chavez to subsidize capitalists and pay debts and also fund programs for the poor. Lula’s govt has no such spare revenues. But with Venezuela massive oil and leadership in toughening OPEC, Washington was very determined to force Venezuela’s compliance. It failed. Venezuela’s case goes against what I call the Battle in Seattle-era imagery; that euphoric 21-month period that ended on Sept 11, 2001. Battle in Seattle imagery saw 2 main actors in the world – activists vs. the corporate state. Venezuela showed there are instead 3 main actors – citizens, corporations and the state. Citizens are central to democracy, including the 95% who don’t demonstrate. We need to conceive and build citizens' democracy, not just activist democracy. Our main battle is to win the state away from serving transnationals and the US Empire, to serving citizens. The Washington-backed coup did not jar world opinion into recognizing this as the era of the US Empire. But illegally occupying Iraq has. Talk about US imperialism is back. In the 1960s, the left branded US imperialism as the major enemy of social justice in the world. Such talk faded after the war against Vietnam and almost disappeared after communism’s end in the Soviet Union. Thanks to Bush, talk of US imperialism has roared back. But America’s informal empire never disappeared. The discourse changed, however. It raged around the cleansed term for imperialism - globalization. In 1999, Henry Kissinger said “...[W]hat is called globalisation is really another name for the dominant role of the United States.” I don’t often agree with war criminals. The movements should use the language of imperialism more. It suggests a project of breaking away, of popular sovereignty. In contrast, the language of globalization forecloses possibilities for democratic sovereignties. Since 1945, the great appeal of the US empire has been that it has not looked like an empire. US leaders condemned European colonialism and supported formal independence for developmentalist states in the south. Rather than occupying and ruling directly for long, the US mainly rules indirectly by influencing and coercing other states. Governments which look to be domestic appear legitimate to their people. The US influences other states in two ways. First, US corporations so penetrated ruling classes in most countries that they became part of domestic business circles. This is why bourgeois nationalism is dead almost everywhere outside the US. Corporate elites often look to the US for property protection as much as to their own states. For this reason, we do not see inter-imperial rivalry like before the First World War. Second, the US state and US dominated institutions - World Bank, IMF - strongly influence/coerce other governments. But ruling indirectly through other states is also the Achilles heel of the US Empire. This is the opportunity point for popular forces outside the US. To gain support at home for imperial ventures abroad, US leaders appeal to a version of American nationalism. They demonize, in muted racist tones, the ‘other’ as evil, and thus spread fear. Their problem is that US nationalism does not extend beyond the 5% of humanity who live in the US. The American Empire is spawning its antidote by reinvigorating contestations for sovereignty around the world. Iraqis are fighting a war of national liberation. US officials have long seen economic nationalism, popular national democracy, or regionally supportive groupings of independent states as their most effective adversaries. First, US governments use strong pressures to defeat them. When those fail, attempts at ruthless suppression usually follow. The great danger to indirect rule is for US client states to look like puppets. That is our task: expose servile, junior partners like Blair, Berlusconi and many others. It worked in Spain when voters threw out the conservative government of Aznar and Spain withdrew its troops from Iraq. It is not enough to win office. We must radically transform the state, dismantle its capitalist-supporting institutions and develop its ability and practices to support “citizens' capacities for deep democratic participation.” The success of national or regional sovereignty struggles depend on others taking up similar struggles, building strong ties and supporting each other. What will delegitimizing client govts outside the US do to the struggle in the US? Allies’ support for invading Iraq greatly helped legitimate it in the US. Withdrawal of such support should help US opposition. It’s very important for American progressives to say that the US is acting like an empire. Founded as a revolutionary republic by gaining independence from the British Empire, most Americans reject the idea that their country is, or should be, an empire. Empires undermine democratic republics at home. Nationalism scares many. Racist nationalism is the worst scourge. But nationalisms are not necessarily racist. In Canada there is a weak racist right, but they are not nationalist. They tend to support Canada integrating with the US because their affinity is with white American Protestant fundamentalists. Anti-colonial nationalisms for popular national sovereignty are very different from imperial nationalisms. Gandhi was an anti-colonial, Indian nationalist. Nationalism appears in such variety that it is facile to be categorically for or against ‘it.’ There is no IT. There are only THEM. ‘Nationalism’ is not an ‘ism’ like liberalism or socialism. It has no set of theoretically coherent propositions nor a universal vision. Nationalisms associated with the political right are often profoundly racist, exclusionary, authoritarian and expansionist, while left, inter-nationalist nationalisms tend to seek deep democratic transformation through close ties to anti-imperial, socialist, feminist, ecological, anti-racist and union movements and in conjunction with similar movements abroad. Nationalism is a form without content. It gets its content from the friends it keeps. Like the meaning of democracy, the content of nationalism is contested space. Exclusivist nationalisms are best counteracted, not through disengaged cosmopolitanism or abstractions called global civil society, but through positive, inter-nationalist nationalisms that provide a sense of belonging to a citizens’ community. Inter-nationalist nationalisms are inclusive, embrace deep diversity - including recognition of the rights of minority nations within the country - are substantively democratic, refrain from expansionism and support inter-nationalism from below. People to people inter-nationalism. This is happening in many countries. The main struggles in each country or union of countries involve turning corporate-oriented, pro-US empire states into citizen-oriented, anti-imperial states and to support popular sovereignty for other nations or popular democratic regions. The 95% of us outside the US state cannot influence the US state directly. We can act only to delegitimate our own states when they support US capitalist imperialism. "Think Globally – Act Locally" discourse neglects popular national sovereignty. This is a mistake when confronting the US Empire. Solidarity ties are strongest at national and local scales. Also, citizens movements have greater leverage at national and local levels, if some democracy exists. Governments tend to respond to pressures from their own citizens, especially before elections, and ignore foreign citizens. I’ll make this less abstract. Corporate elites in Canada, many of whom work for foreign-owned transnationals, no longer want Canada to be a separate country in North America. They continually pressure Canada to support US aggression abroad, so they can maintain access to the US market. Corporate elites and their political allies pressure Canada to adopt US-style, private-for-profit health care, US immigration and refugee policies, and guaranteed exports of Canadian energy resources to the US, even when Canadians face shortages. But Canadians very much want an independent, more ‘caring and sharing’ country than they perceive the US to be. In Edmonton, people spontaneously sang the national anthem to stop US-style privatized health care. When the national anthem is sung as a protest song against the schemes of domestically-based elites, it is clear that this is nationalism from below. Canadians want Canada to be a peace keeper, not deputy sheriff to the American empire. These elements are what popular nationalism in English-speaking Canada is, representing the most inter-nationalist and anti-racist voices. Elites in Latin America are anti-nationalist, too. The real nation is widely perceived to be the poor, while the cosmopolitan rich belong elsewhere. If most Canadians oppose continental integration, many South Americans support it, but for similar reasons to Canadians. South Americans do not want the US capitalist empire dictating what happens in their countries. If united in a popular democratic way, South America could be more independent from the US. Gilberto Gil, Brazil’s Minister of Culture, said an integrated South America would be a sovereign nations community. “We need sovereignty so we can interact with other people,” he said, “to maintain cultural diversity and share our distinct cultures with the world. In constructing the new society we want, we must maintain in tension two contradictions, sovereignty and dependency, on all of humanity. Both must be held up at the same time. The new sovereignty is a beautiful thing.” We should use Bush’s rhetoric to our advantage. Every time Bush opens his mouth or drops more bombs, he recruits millions around the world to oppose the things popularly associated with the United States – neoliberalism, free trade and the US Empire. Deep democracy is the ultimate goal for all peoples. Popular national sovereignties, whether national or regional, are necessary means. There is no real democracy if the people to do have the sovereign power to decide their own collective and individual lives. I want to finish with a quote from Walden Bello: “Empires are temporary, resistance is permanent.” Gordon Laxer is a Political Economy Professor at the University of Alberta and the Director and co-founder of Parkland Institute, a non-corporate research institute in Edmonton, Canada. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on February 20, 2005]