One strategy, given the difficulty of directly countering US imperialism, would be to poison the sources of profit that drive it. This may be easier to accomplish both because of the reasonable arguments that can be formulated and the political allies that can be brought aboard. I am thinking things like advocating an oil tax to pay for our military costs in the middle east. (Remove the free subsidy to our energy industry that artificially lowers market prices below true costs, encourages consumption and global warming, and discourages development of alternative energy supplies.) Another tactic would be to insist that the US undo the rules that the Coalition Proivisional Authority put in place to favor US economic exploitation on the basis that they are both illegal and a cause of the insurgency. That is, argue that if we truly want to build democracy in the middle east, then we should not let our greed cripple the cause.
In a larger sense, these types of policies, it may also be argued, are also necessary to avoid the kinds of self-destructive behaviors that brought down the British empire where an imperialistic, predatory elite profited at the expense of the larger society, resulting in overall decline. Peter H Sabri Oncu wrote: > > One of the questions I have in mind is this: who will write down/define the > problem for which an optimal (not necessarily global but at times suboptimal > and indeed not necessarily exact but approximate, yet "better") solution is > to be found? Carrol Cox wrote: Under present conditions, the answer to this is the ruling class of the nation or coalition of nations with the greatest military strength. >Sabri: > And the only answer I can come up with to this question is the existing > "nation states" or rather, the citizens of the existing "nation states", > that is, their elected governments and national assemblies. Carrol: Under current conditions, the _most_ that the citizens of those states can achieve is to exert _some_ negative restraint on the actions of their governments. And those actions will _never_ be grounded in any conception of what is "optimal" for the citizens of the areas over which they exercise power. There is a reasonable chance, for example, that over the next 5+/- years a really _large_ non-electoral movement in the u.s. (combined with continuing armed resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan) could force the u.s. to withdraw its troops from those areas. But we cannot exert any influence whatever (electorally or non-electorally) over the mode of that withdrawal or over what the u.s. leaves behind as it withdraws. Whatever happens in a ravaged Iraq after U.S. withdrawal (neither will we be able to force any u.s. reparations) will depend on struggles, armed or peaceful, among the Iraqi people themselves. BUT such a movement in the u.s. might have certain reverberations and secondary effects. 1. It would make it much more difficult for the u.s. to expand the war into Iran, or to initiate new conflicts in Latin America. 2. Growing U.S. difficulties in Iraq (as perceived elsewhere in the world) might encourage other subordinated peoples in Africa, Asia, or Latin America to launch various kinds (peaceful and armed) of struggle to break free from the u.s. (and european or Japanese) hegemony. Whether such struggles were successful or not they would further embarass u.s. power and encourage reistance elsewhere, including the u.s. itself and the other imnperialist nations. 3. A large enough anti-war movement might become a center of attraction for various other struggles, local and national (e.g., living wage struggles in various cities; defense of social security; demands for control of police intransigence; etc). This would add to the general visibility of progressive causes, enspiriting, for example, women's groups to work to provide abortion to women who could not afford it and to in general make abortion a more widely recognized option. The chief burden the left carries now is it is invisibility, which discourages those whose passive attitudes are more progressive than their activity or their professed views. 4. Beyond this, who knows. But whatever strategy leftists adopt it MUST aim at making non-electoral left positions more visible, more THERE in the public eye. Above all leftists must cease the suicidal practice of subordinating themselves to the allegedly more "progressive" electoral parties in the core imperial nations. Unless we build such a non-electoral movement around a number of issues the DP & the various left parties of Europe will continue to move towards more and more vicious neoliberal policies. For example, social security is doomed unless its defenders turn loudly against the DP.
