- Interview by Jonathan Reynolds, an anthropologist who
writes for spikemagazine.com and author of two books on the Maya and Guatemala
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- Q: For a work of geopolitical history, I found the book
a real 'page-turner'.
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- A: Thanks. It's gratifying that this came across. So
much of the critique of imperialism is depressing and boring, and puts
the reader off. The history is fascinating, if horrifying.
-
- Q: I was impressed by the great sweep of the argument,
and how the details of the history of imperialism as you write about it
are integrated so well into it.
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- A: Again, thanks. I couldn't have done it without the
internet. I really should have put Wikipedia in the acknowledgments, although
this must be treated circumspectly it allows you to track down hundreds
of details in seconds that are essential to making a credible argument.
Again, much of the literature is either too detail-heavy or too generalized.
In writing both my articles over the past decade, and this (and another
book) over the past four years, I developed a style where I try to include
as many relevant details as possible without sinking under their weight.
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- I really wanted to produce something that could be useful
as a textbook for an intelligent high school/university student as well
as for the general reader, and with something new for all readers. The
book covers a huge territory both in time and space, but I hope I have
touched on the most important elements. Writing it was definitely a daunting
process, but having lived in both the Soviet Union/post-Soviet space and
now Egypt, and coming from Canada, I am fortunate to have had the experience
of all these social formations. It's a bit like learning to think in different
languages. When I write about a particular topic, I try to put myself in
the common person's shoes and ask, 'What motivates the particular imperial
corner that I'm considering?'
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- Q: The book makes such a sweeping accusation about "American
imperialism", but supported beautifully by a great array of facts,
citations, references that it becomes quite clear what is what.
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- A: Why can't Americans see the imperial nature of their
relationship to the world? For a Canadian (or anyone else), this is so
obvious. A basic explanation of center/periphery makes this crystal clear
in two minutes. Yes re endnotes again, I tried to reference as many
times as possible. The internet provides an unprecedented opportunity to
do this. The book would have taken a decade without it.
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- Q: Do you see a great breakdown coming in the center
(as opposed to the periphery, perhaps, as you use Wallerstein), signaling
a movement toward a new kind of dispensationa new kind of society ultimately?
I ask this aware of the enormous power the US exerts directly and through
its networks and being myself very pessimistic that any kind of real change
in social structure and the fundamental nature of the social transaction
can occur anytime soon.
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- A: Absolutely. The breakdown is happening as I write.
The euro is doomed, as eventually is the dollar. And, yes, we must prepare
people. For all their problems, Soviet and Muslim societies provide clear
pointers about the basics of an acceptable alternative.
-
- Q: What made you decide to 'cover this story' the
great story you tell in the book?
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- A: As I say in the preface, I was struck by the injustice
of imperialism while at Cambridge after the 'first 9/11' [the US-sponsored
military coup in Chile in 1973]. Everything developed logically out of
that.
-
- Q: What's your relationship to Islam?
-
- A: I like Karen Armstrong's quip, "I consider myself
a freelance monotheist". All three are fine, though I see Islam as
the final corrective of the earlier versions. The true Torah Jews (Neturei
Karta) are wonderful, though the inherent "exilic tribalism",
as Gilad Atzmon puts it, is an inherent problem with Judaism, the results
of which we see today.
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- Q: Do you believe there are transcendent values, irrespective
of culture, time, and history? I am thinking here of transcendent values
one associates with Islamand Marxism. I think even Marx, despite the materialist
history he emphasized, saw a kind of a Hegelian 'end of History', for otherwise
he would not have supported the phantasm of communism, nor have been unaware
that all utopias are dystopias.
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- A: Marx is sorely misunderstood. Of course there are
transcendent values and his writing is imbued with them. Even in evolutionary
biology there is the nonzero sum game theory which seems to operate at
a genetic level (Robert Wright is great on this) leading to cooperation
and empathy. It seems you can arrive at such values even without faith.
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- Q: Marxists speak of the two world wars of the last century
as imperialist wars, and you cite Lenin, whose dictum was that imperialist
is the last, and highest, form of capitalism. What about WWII? Weren't
the Allies the 'good guys' against Hitler and Nazism ?
-
- A: This was in my mind writing about Great Game I. Good
people everywhere (West and East) fought Nazism as evil, but Western capitalist/imperialist
governments were the source of Nazism and encouraged it to destroy the
Soviet Union. Our history books distort the real origins of both WWI and
WWII. I hope my book is a credible compact corrective to this.
-
- Q: Do you, yourself, employ a kind of a dialectical analysis
to your history of Anglo-US imperialism? Casino capitalism certainly seems
to me to fit most aptly into Marx's analysis of the capitalism and how
it operates.
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- A: Marx is the alpha and omega in analyzing capitalism.
His inversion of Hegel's dialectic starts with the material-> theory
-> material-theoretic. My three-part theory is really a continuation,
via Marx, of Hegel's logic of being-nothing-becoming -> being-essence-notion.
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- Q: Do you worry that your support for Islam may tend
to throw doubt as to your agenda, as it were, as a journalist who writes
in such broad, and negative, terms about Israel and Jews?
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- A: As for my analysis of Israel, virtually the entire
world outside of the imperial center condemns Israel. As for Jews, I have
the greatest respect for the dynamism and intelligence that has characterized
Jewish culture from time immemorial. If it can serve the common good, it
will be a key element in finding a way out of Western civilization's current
crisis. Gilad Atzmon and Israel Shamir, Shahak and Pappe, Finkelstein and
Blankfort... The list is long and growing of Jews who have chosen to dedicate
themselves to the common good, to go beyond exilic tribalism.
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- As for Islam, I admire enormously Muslims' patience and
endurance and their stubborn adherence to a spiritual focus in their lives,
attributes which non-Muslims have long ago lost. Just consider for a moment
the incredible resilience of the Palestinians. It is a miracle that they
hang on in the face of concentration-camp conditions, decade after decade.
Just as I identified with the communist resilience in the face of imperialism,
so I do with the Muslim resilience today. Note how the anticommunism of
yesterday morphed so easily into the islamophobia of today. Though it sounds
simplistic, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' has a fundamental dialectical
truth to it.
- As for my own spiritual journey, I consider myself a
freelance monotheist. While I learned the basic prayers and pray with my
Muslim friends at the mosque, I go to church with my family when in Canada,
and would be delighted to worship with True Torah Jews if invited.
Islam is a much more demanding religion than Christianity. The grueling
30-day dry fasting each year in Ramadan is hard for me to even contemplate.
-
- Q: Is it fair to say that Israel, today, is the only
truly racist state on the planet, with its transparently clear insistence
on who its citizens can be, and on the nature of the Jewish state?
-
- A: Yes. Like the American empire why is this so
difficult to see? A perfect case of the emperor's new clothes.
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- Q: With at least one gloss of history you seem to go
quickly to the conclusion easier to fit into your overall argument
about Central Europe and the NATO (US) bombing that removed Milosevich,
saying nothing about the terrible ethnic cleansing going on (and the moral
'imperative' of the West to intervene, this latter argument one which I
acknowledge is at least somwhat flawed since everything large nations do
geopolitically is full of ulterior self-interest.
-
- A: History is complicated. The dialectic is only partial,
as Hegel and Marx well understood. The same argument for Milosevich goes
for Gaddafi, but in neither case was more western intervention the answer.
The US and Europe were behind the breakup of Yugoslavia in the first place,
as I point out: "The break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, along with
the drawn-out campaign of sanctions and 'no fly zones' against Iraq from
1990, were defining moments in establishing the new GGIII. The Clinton
administration 'saved' Bosnia and Kosovo from Serbia's attempts to hold
the Yugoslav union together, establishing NATO-sponsored Muslim statelets
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, in an eerie reversion to GGI. Bosnia is
governed by High Commissioner Valentin Inzko, an Austrian national, who
wields powers similar to a colonial administrator. It is occupied by NATO
forces, with the central bank governor appointed by the IMF. Kosovo is
nominally independent, the site of the largest US base in Europe, Camp
Bond Steel, housing 3,000 soldiers, giving the US control of the Balkans,
within easy reach of the Caspian Sea and Israel." No one else benefited
from the civil war in Yugoslavia (ok, maybe Slovenia, if you consider its
postmodern status in the EU as desirable).
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- Q: Again, for the less well-informed: Was there not ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia and Croatia that, if power existed to halt this, this
power should have been used? Rather than consider 'transcendent values'
as motives behind Anglo-American imperialism, then, and Clinton's ultimate
decision to join in the bombing of Serbia because of these values, might
you not legitimately be accused of 'streamlining' your argument to avoid
addressing this possibility?
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- A: What is 'transcendent' in Yugoslavia is Camp Bond
Steel. I make clear in all the games that there are purported aims and
real aims. I think you understand the difference.
-
- Q: Regarding the circling project of the West and other
assertions and accusations you make, is it capitalism or Anglo-American
imperialism that you decry?
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- A: By 'circling project' I take it you mean containing
Russia, China and Iran. Everything happening today has its origins in capitalism.
The whole dialect derives from Kapital, Volume 1, Chapter 1, since imperialism
is inherent in the logic of capital. Even the rise of Zionism has its own
logical source there. Given an 'exilic tribe', its natural activity in
the broader community is the profane usury, etc.
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- Q: Would you call yourself a Marxist?
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- A: I like Marx's retort to his son-in-law: "If that
is Marxism then I am not a Marxist". I respect and use Marx as the
basis of my thinking about capitalism and society. I prefer to dispense
with -isms and labels given their many distortions. My title of PostmodernGreat
Games is a bit tongue-in-cheek as these terms can mean whatever you define
them to mean.
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- Q: Did Marx underestimate hugely the enduring
power of capitalism to adapt, to transform itself, in order to survive?
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- A: He would surely be disappointed that it's still alive
and torturing/ enchanting us today, but he admired it, too as he wrote
in the Communist Manifesto.
-
- Q: Also on Marx: do you consider class warfare a more
or less transcendent dynamic in the history you narrate from Disraeli and
Victorian England the British Empire through to today?
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- A: Yes. The iPod revolutions today in Egypt and now on
Wall Street only got their backbone when the workers joined in. The intellectuals
and frustrated middle class have the obligation to reach out to the workers,
just as they do to the Islamists today in the Arab revolutions.
-
- Q: In other words, would you include in an analysis of
class warfare, an 'ethnicity of elites' with regard to the leaders of banking
and finance capitalism, who are 'at war' per Leo Strauss, with a middle
class and worker/poor class?
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- A: If you mean Jewish/ non-Jewish, it's no longer of
much relevance. Quoting myself: 'With the decline of Christianity, for
proponents of western civilization, "we are all Jews"'. I go
on to quote Vice President Joe Biden: 'You don't have to be Jewish to be
a Zionist'.
-
- Q: Isn't it true to say that, dialectically, what is
sought by Marx and by communism is something opposite to materialism, a
utopia that has as its defining meaning a kind of spiritual quality, in
the sense that human beings, and human society, are what is important,
rather than capital?
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- A: See what I said about Marx's dialectic earlier: material
-> theory -> material-theoretic. It's oversimplifying to accuse him
of utopianism.
-
- Q: What should be the nature of social transaction, in
an ideal world? On what should it be based? What is the good society?
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- A: See Robert Wright's <http://www.nonzero.org/>non-zero
sum argument. Definitely, a good society should get rid of interest, or
at the very least, interest and money should be controlled by a truly broad-based
popular government. The logic of anti-capitalism follows from that.
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- Q: Economists who write about causative factors behind
the ups and downs, bubbles, crises, and so forth we have seen and are seeing
do not mention at least in what I have read this insistence
on the dollar as a profound strategy by American imperialists (e.g., the
bankers). You have a degree in economics from Cambridge. Did you study
this phenomenon as you describe it at Cambridge?
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- A: I did a thesis for my BA/MA on financial intermediaries
in Canada from the Depression to the 1960s. Whatever independence the Canadian
government had with respect to economic policy was lost as US banks took
control. Re the collapse of the dollar, many economists write about the
coming demise of the dollar as world reserve currency. See <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/27/global-recession-reform>Stiglitz.
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- Q: You describe again, well-sourced and referenced
how American imperialism not only has condoned but participated or
directed drug smuggling.
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- A: Shocking but true. But then the Brits promoted opium
in China and no one seems to care much. The evidence is overwhelming throughout
the Great Games.
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- Q: Your assertion about hedge fund attacks on Greece
[p 111]. I had not heard of before. Is this not a big enough story to warrant
insisting, if possible, that major media like the New York Times take a
look at this?
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- A: I quote the Wall Street Journal on this (endnote 37):
"Some heavyweight hedge funds have launched large bearish bets against
the euro in moves that are reminiscent of the trading action at the height
of the US financial crisis. It is impossible to calculate the precise effect
of the elite traders' bearish bets, but they have added to the selling
pressure on the currency and thus to the pressure on the European
Union to stem the Greek debt crisis." You just have to put the pieces
of the puzzle together.
-
- Q: How do you reconcile your defense of Islam with your
Marxism?
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- A: I think I've made my position as a freelance monotheist
and someone who uses Marx but dislikes slots and -isms clear above. Islam
is the only monotheism that firmly rejects imperialism in practice, which
is why it is targeted today and why anti-imperialists must understand and
defend it. It provides a vision of a coherent alternative to imperialism.
As for whether Islam and Marx are compatible, in my conclusion, I point
out: "The Judaic prophets, followed by Jesus and Muhammad, and the
nineteenth century secular prophet of revolution Marx, rejected usury and
interest, as representing ill-gotten gain, with good reason. Marx condemned
this mode of extraction of surplus as the highest form of fetishism, based
on private property and exploitation of labor. They all rejected this exploitation
on a moral basis as unjust, insisting that morality be embedded in the
economy, a principle which was abandoned when capitalism took hold. While
Judaism and Christianity adapted, Islam did not.
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- "Interest, and today's money based on US military
might alone, are the root cause not only of the current world financial
crisis, but, as a corollary to Rothschild's dictum about money and politics,
and Clausewitz's dictum about politics and war, the primary instrument
facilitating (and benefiting from) the wars in the Middle East and Central
Asia, and the world political crisis."
- So Marx seems to have rediscovered the wheel. Marx is
a joy to read, full of spirit and humanism, very moral.
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- You can reach Eric at http://ericwalberg.com/ Postmodern
Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games is available at http://claritypress.com/Walberg.html
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