By Boaventura de Sousa Santos
May 03, 2018 "Information Clearing House"
- The
bombing of Syrian sites where chemical weapons are allegedly being
manufactured or stocked, allegedly to be used by the
Bashar al-Assad government against the rebels, has left citizens all over the
world in a state of confusion, filled with a mixture of perplexity and skepticism.
In spite of the bombing by the Western media (a particularly apt metaphor in
this case), in their attempt to persuade public opinion of the latest
atrocities committed by al-Assad’s regime; in spite of the near unanimous
opinion of political commentators that this was nothing but a humanitarian
response, a fair punishment, and one more proof of the vitality of the “Western
alliance”; in spite of all this, citizens in the West (and much more so in the
rest of the world), whenever asked, expressed their doubts about this media
narrative and for the most part spoke against the attacks. Why is that?
THE
CONSEQUENCES
Because citizens who possess at
least a modicum of information have a better memory than western commentators,
and because, although they lack expertise on the causes of such acts of war,
they have an expert knowledge of their consequences, which is something that
said commentators always fail to notice. They remember
that in 2003 the justification for the invasion of Iraq was the existence of
weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist. They remember
that the photos that were exhibited at the time had been tampered with so as to
lend credibility to the big lie. They remember that then, as now, the attack
occurred on the eve of the arrival of an independent commission of experts sent
to investigate the existence of such weapons.
They remember that the lie left
behind a million dead and a destroyed country, with fat reconstruction
contracts being handed over to US companies (such as Halliburton) and oil
exploration contracts given to Western oil companies. They remember that
in 2011 the same coalition destroyed Libya, turning it into a den of terrorists
and traffickers in refugees and emigrants, and yielding the same type of fat
contracts. They remember that so far the war in Syria has caused 500,000 dead,
5 million refugees, and 6 million displaced within Syrian borders. Above all,
thanks perhaps to that mysterious cunning of reason whereof Hegel spoke, they
remember what the media does not tell them. They remember that two genocides
are underway in the region.
They are being perpetrated by state
terrorism but they are almost never mentioned because the aggressor states are
“our” allies: one is the Yemeni genocide at the hands of Saudi Arabia,
the other is Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
These are the more visible
consequences. But there are other victims, of which the ordinary citizen
is hardly aware, her suspicions sometimes not more than a vague discomfort. I
will focus on three of those victims. The first is
international law, which has once again been violated, given that
actions of war are legitimate only in case of self-defense or under a UN
Security Council mandate. None of these conditions has been met. Bilateral and
multilateral treaties are being thrown out one after another, as trade wars
become increasingly fierce. Are we in the process of entering a new Cold War,
with fewer rules and more innocent deaths? Are we heading toward a third world
war? Where is the UN, to prevent it through diplomacy? What else can countries
like Russia, China or Iran be expected to do but move further away from Western
countries and their fake multilateralism, and come up with their own
alternatives for cooperation?
The second victim is human rights. Here
the West reached a paroxysm of hypocrisy: the military destruction of entire
countries and the killing of innocent populations has become the sole means of
promoting human rights. It somehow seems that there is no other means of
fostering human rights except by violating them, and Western-style democracy
does not know how to flourish except among ruins.
The third victim is the “war on terror”.
No person of good will can accept the death of innocent victims in the name of
some political or ideological goal, much less when perpetrated by the countries
– the United States and its allies – that over the last twenty years have given
full priority to the war on terrorism. So how can one comprehend the current
financing and arming, by the Western powers, of groups of Syrian rebels that
are known to be terrorist organizations and that, like Bashar al-Assad, have
also used chemical weapons against innocent populations in the past? I allude
in particular to the al-Nusra front, the extremist Salafist group also known as
the Al Qaeda of Syria, which seeks to establish an Islamic state. In fact, the
most frequent accusations, by US institutions, with regard to the financing of
extremist and terrorist groups point the finger precisely at that most loyal of
US allies, Saudi Arabia. What are the hidden goals of a
war on terror that supports terrorists with money and arms?
THE
CAUSES
Given that the causes elude all the news noise, it is more
difficult for ordinary citizens to identify them. Convention has it that one
can distinguish between proximate and structural causes. Among the proximate causes, the dispute over the natural gas
pipeline is the one most frequently mentioned. The large natural gas
reserves in the Qatar and Iran region can take two alternative routes to reach
the wealthy, voracious consumer called Europe: the Qatar pipeline, going
through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey, and the Iranian pipeline,
across Iran, Iraq and Syria. For geopolitical reasons, the US favors the former
route while Russia prefers the latter. Bashar al-Assad was also in favor of the
latter, as it benefitted Shiite governments only. From that moment on, the West
viewed him as a target to be taken down. Major Rob Taylor, a professor at the
US Army’s Command and General Staff College, wrote in the Armed Forces Journal
of March 21, 2014: “Viewed through a geopolitical and economic lens, the
conflict in Syria is not a civil war, but the result of larger international
players positioning themselves on the geopolitical chessboard in preparation
for the opening of the pipeline in 2016”.
The structural causes are perhaps
more convincing. It has been my contention that we are at a transitional
moment between capitalism’s globalizations. The first globalization took place
from 1860 to 1914 and was dominated by England. The second took place from 1944
to 1971 and was dominated by the US. The third began in 1989 and is now coming
to an end. It was dominated by the US, but with the growing multilateral
participation of Europe and China. In between globalizations, rivalry between
would-be dominant countries tends to increase and can give rise to wars between
them or their respective allies. At this point in time, the rivalry is between
the US, an empire in decline, and China, a rising empire. In a study titled
“Global Trends, 2030”, the US National Intelligence Council – an institution
that could hardly be viewed as biased – states that in the year 2030 “Asia is
going to be the center of world economy just as it was until 1500,” and China could
become the world’s first economy.
The rivalry escalates but cannot
lead to head-on confrontation because China already has a major influence in
the domestic economy of the US and is a major creditor of its public debt.
Trade wars are critical and they spread to the high-tech areas, because whoever
gets to dominate those areas (namely automation or robotics) will be poised to
dominate the next globalization. The US will only enter treaties that are
likely to isolate China. Since China is already too strong as it is, it has to
be confronted through its allies. The most prominent among them is Russia, and
recent agreements between the two countries provide for non-dollar denominated
transactions, especially oil-related, which poses a fatal threat to the international
reserve currency.
Russia couldn’t possibly be
permitted to boast about a victory in Syria, a victory, let it be said, against
terrorist extremists, and one that Russia has been on the verge of
obtaining, thanks supposedly to President Obama’s lack of direction when he
left Syria out of his list of priorities. It was therefore necessary to find a
pretext for returning to Syria to resume the war for a few more years, as is
the case with Iraq and Afghanistan. North Korea is also an ally and must be
treated with hostility so as to embarrass China. Finally,
there is the fact that China, like all rising empires, is pursuing (fake)
multilateralisms and therefore is responding to the trade war by fostering open
trade.
But it has also pursued limited multilateral
agreements aimed at creating alternatives to US economic and financial
dominance. The most salient of these agreements was the BRICS, formed by
Russia, India, South Africa and Brazil, besides China. The BRICS even
created an alternative world bank. They had to be neutralized. Since Modi’s
rise to power, India has lost interest in the agreement. Brazil was a
particularly strategic partner because of the country’s articulation – albeit a
reluctant one – with a more radical alternative that had emerged in Latin
America at the initiative of a number of progressive governments, notably Hugo
Chávez’s Venezuela. Mention should be made, in this regard, to ALBA, UNASUR and
CELAC, a set of political and trade agreements aimed at freeing Latin America
and the Caribbean from US century-old tutelage.
The most vulnerable of the BRICS
countries was Brazil, perhaps because it was also the most democratic.
The process whereby it was neutralized began with the institutional coup
against President Dilma Rousseff and was taken further with the illegal
imprisonment of Lula da Silva and the dismantling of every single nationalist
policy undertaken by the PT governments. Curiously enough, South Africa’s Jacob
Zuma, no doubt a corrupt leader and a BRICS enthusiast, has been replaced by
Cyril Ramaphosa, one of the richest men in Africa (not as corrupt as Zuma?) and
a staunch advocate of global neoliberalism. The Summit of the Americas, which
took place in Lima on 13-14 April and was virtually ignored by the European
media, was a most relevant geopolitical piece in this context. Venezuela’s
participation was vetoed, and according to El Pais of 15 April (Brazilian
edition), the meeting signaled the demise of Bolivarian America. The
strengthening of US influence in the region has become very clear, judging from
the way in which the US delegation criticized China’s growing influence on the
continent.
For all these reasons, the war in Syria is part of a much
broader geopolitical game, whose future looks very uncertain. May 2, 2018
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Boaventura de Sousa Santos is portuguese professor of Sociology at the School
of Economics, University of Coimbra (Portugal), distinguished legal scholar at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, and global legal scholar at the
University of Warwick. Co-founder and one of the main leaders of the World
Social Forum. Article provided to Other News by the author
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