| |
COMMENTARY
Global peace movement still
vibrant
By Marco Garrido
Although the war in Iraq is over, the global
peace movement has not gone away. Indeed, late last
month, it went to Jakarta.
From May 18-21,
representatives of some of the largest anti-war
coalitions around the world met in the Indonesian
capital to formulate a plan of action for dealing with
the emerging postwar order in Iraq. Delegates hailed
from 24 countries and included members of the Asian
Peace Alliance, Stop the War Coalition (UK), United for
Peace and Justice (US), the Italian Social Forum, and
the Istanbul No to War Coordination-coalitions that had
succeeded in organizing massive demonstrations in their
respective countries in the months preceding the war.
The conference closed with the publication of
the Jakarta Peace Consensus. The Consensus condemns the
war in Iraq as "illegal, unjust, and illegitimate" and,
consequently, demands "an immediate withdrawal of all
foreign troops". Further, it insists that Iraq's
reconstruction be administered entirely by Iraqis, calls
on the United States to pay war reparations to Iraq, and
even proposes that the "perpetrators of war" (by this is
certainly meant US President George W Bush, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Colin
Powell) be tried as war criminals. To these ends,
signatories to the Consensus commit to organizing
fact-finding missions, constructing Occupation Watch
Centers, developing "multiple methods of engaging
directly with Iraqis", including through an information
website, and - especially for Bush, Rumsfeld, and Powell
- establishing an International People's Tribunal.
The Jakarta Peace Consensus leaves little doubt
that a good part of the global peace movement, which
mobilized so dauntingly in the months before and during
the war, intends to remain very much active in the years
following it.
The 'other
superpower'
Had there been no war or threat of
war, there would have been no movement, at least not one
of such unprecedented size and breadth. This "other
superpower", as the peace movement has been called,
exists as a direct consequence of the opposition the
United States as superpower has generated, particularly
on the question of war with Iraq. It embodied the most
cogent articulation of the other side of the global
debate over the war, effectively upping the stakes for
the governments caught in between.
While not
joining the US-led coalition carried consequences, the
movement ensured that so did joining it. Jonathan
Schell, writing in The Nation, points out that "the
question everywhere was which superpower to obey - the
single nation claiming that title, or the will of the
people of the Earth". Ultimately, the coalition of the
willing ended up little more than a coalition of
governments. "On the brink of war no public but the
Israeli one supported it under the conditions in which
it was being launched - that is, without UN support.
Public opinion polls showed that in most countries,
opposition to the war was closer to unanimity than to a
mere majority."
Clearly, the peace movement's
greatest strength is its broad base of support, a base
that extends more deeply into the United States than its
policymakers acknowledge. Fundamental US institutions
such as churches and trade unions have come out
resolutely against war. Increasing numbers of Americans
of all political stripes, not just liberal activists,
have swelled anti-war demonstrations across the country.
As Schell points out, one reason the movement
has grown so fast is that it has been extremely
effective in getting its message out. Just as there
would have been no movement without the threat of so
controversial a war, there would have been no movement
had there been no e-mail. The Internet has enabled the
peace movement to become increasingly agile and
organized. Consider the "rolling" demonstrations that
swept the globe before and during the war, erupting in
multiple cities simultaneously.
A mistake,
misguided policy, or imperial ambition?
With such
differences held together tenuously under the cover of a
broader and more immediate objective - to stop the war -
it is no wonder that the Stop the War Coalition listed
as the second item in its platform (right after "we
oppose the war") that "supporters of the Coalition,
whether organizations or individuals, will of course be
free to develop their own analyses and organize their
own actions", wisely adding: "But there will be many
important occasions when united initiatives around broad
stop the war slogans can mobilize the greatest numbers."
But now that the war is over, the one message
that managed to motivate so broad a constituency is no
longer available. And so the diversity, if not actual
incompatibility, of political allegiances and agendas
within the movement are becoming distinct. For instance,
such platforms as the Jakarta Peace Consensus, although
they purport unity, hardly reflect the full spectrum of
opinion encompassed by the movement. The Consensus
itself represents the analysis of harder-line cadres, an
analysis that, for the most part, was virulently
anti-American - or anti-imperial - to begin with.
Certainly not everyone in the peace movement
shares this view. For most people, it took the war
itself, or its imminence, to drive them into the
movement's fold. They may not even consider themselves
as part of a movement per se but are simply protesting
out of conscience. Had there been no threat of war,
there would have been no reason for them to protest.
The various elements that make up the peace
movement differ significantly on how deeply they cut
faith with the United States. In an approximate way, one
can divide the movement's range of politics into three
categories: those who oppose the war, those who oppose
the Bush administration, and those who oppose the
general drift of the American state. The first category
is by far the largest, but since its opposition was
specifically directed against war with Iraq, now that
the war is over, its numbers have receded. This category
includes, for example, the US trade unions that came out
against war with Iraq but generally supported the war on
terror, including the campaign in Afghanistan. The
latter two categories - roughly, the liberal
internationalists and the anti-imperialists - have
developed political analyses that sustain them well
beyond the war. They have come to dominate the terms of
debate within the peace movement.
Liberal
internationalists and anti-imperialists share a vision
of the world with less militarism and greater
multilateralism and adherence to international law. They
disagree on whether they believe the United States can
contribute meaningfully to this vision. Liberal
internationalists consider much of the foreign and
domestic policy of the Bush administration to be
disastrous. On the other hand, to an extent, some
anti-imperialists welcome Bush's brazenness because it
serves to expose imperial designs that are much larger
than himself; indeed, that, in their view, have become
an underlying imperative for the American state.
Arundhati Roy writes in The Guardian: "[Bush] has
exposed the ducts. He has placed in full public view the
working parts, the nuts and bolts of the apocalyptic
apparatus of the American empire."
Even when
they agree, they seem to disagree. David Cortright,
author and founder of the Win without War Coalition,
identifies "removing the Bush administration from office
and electing a new political leadership dedicated to
international cooperation and peace" as the peace
movement's immediate goal.
Hampshire College
Professor Michael Klare frames the same goal in
anti-imperialist terms: "The next step is to expand the
movement into a permanent opposition to the
administration's imperial design." His call sounds more
ominous because the rhetoric of anti-imperialism is
informed by a more comprehensive, and darker, vision of
world dynamics, where such phenomena as globalization
and militarization go hand in hand and international
institutions such as the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and even the United Nations serve to
perpetuate imbalances of power in favor of the world's
elite, led by the United States. For liberal
internationalists, however, international institutions
such as the UN figure centrally in their vision of a
preferred world order.
A different kind of
power
For all its internal fractures and seeming
fragility, the global peace movement has made the world
wonder whether the United States is as powerful as it
seems. William Pfaff, writing in the International
Herald Tribune, notes that since Bush was elected,
assertions of military "hard" power have diminished
America's "soft" power. Soft power includes a country's
capacity to influence or persuade or simply to command
respect and legitimacy. This is due, in no small part,
to the exuberance of peace campaigning around the globe.
Perhaps more significant, the peace movement has
succeeded in making the US doubt itself. Speaking before
the National Press Club in Washington, DC, actor Tim
Robbins describes a US that has grown "bitterly divided"
since September 11, 2001, that has had its democracy
compromised as civil liberties have been stripped, and
that has incurred the wrath and rancor of the world
population. James Carroll, writing in the Boston Globe,
complains about how the war in Iraq has contributed to
"the bad weather over America": "America was not meant
to be like this. We are no longer ourselves."
Even Harvard history Professor Charles Maier,
who has long qualified America's imperial forays in the
past as undertaken reluctantly or with legitimate cause,
finds little to defend in this latest war. Maier writes:
"If an empire, post-World War II America was the empire
that dared not speak its name. But these days, on the
part of friends and critics alike, the bashfulness has
ended ... Eventually, I fear - if not this year or even
this decade - historians will have fateful consequences
to narrate if we persevere in this myopic option."
With the aid of the peace movement, this growing
self-doubt may yet prove transformative.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
