The enemy of the world

Over the weekend the United States mounted an unprovoked attack on Venezuela, killing a hundred people, and kidnapping its president. Since then, they have threatened further attacks, as well as similar action against Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Iran and Greenland. All of which is illegal under international law, but I think it's pretty clear by now that the US doesn't give a shit about that, or anything other than naked force. What we are looking at here is a rogue empire, using force or threats of force to extort territory, resources, or even just money from the rest of the world. And the world - and in particular the status quo coalition of countries who want peace and quiet - needs to wake up and start treating it as such.

How can the rest of the world respond to such a state? We already know part of the solution, because the US has done it to those it has deemed "rogue" before: comprehensive trade and financial sanctions. Unfortunately, this is difficult when the US is the center of so much, but personal sanctions against regime members and their supporters are eminently possible, and likely to have an impact. The US has done this to ICC judges and officials in an effort to intimidate them into dropping cases against Israel and US troops in Afghanistan; but we can do the same to them. And it will hurt. Trump's a billionaire, he has money and investments all over the world. Ditto Musk, Bezos, Thiel, and the rest of his fascist cabal. We can take it from them. They will scream like Russian oligarchs if they can't access the money they've stashed in their foreign tax havens, or holiday in their usual places. And that in turn means internal pressure on the regime.

Longer term, its pretty clear that the US can no longer be trusted as a responsible member of the international community. Even if the current regime is overthrown and things return to "normal", it might happen again. Better therefore to reduce our dependence on them as much as possible. If we want a peaceful, stable world where we can just get on with our lives without fear of random attack, that world can no longer include the US.

Bugger

As everyone already knows, New Zealand has won a term on the UN Security Council. I'm less than overjoyed by this. Why? For the simple reason that I do not trust our government to do the right thing in the position.

National has made it abundantly clear over its six years in office that its primary foreign policy goal is to crawl as far up America's arse as it possibly can. They've sent kiwi soldiers to Afghanistan to die in a pointless American war, and they're lining up to do the same for Iraq. They're fully committed to the Five Eyes mass-surveillance agenda, despite the UN finding that it violates international human rights law. They support American drone strikes, and American foot-dragging on climate change (something the US military thinks is an immediate threat to global security).

National will not change that goal simply because they have been elected to the UNSC, so rather than the independent voice the world voted for (and which they sold us as), they'll be getting an American patsy. The result will be bad for the world, and worse for our foreign policy. We've spent decades building that reputation for independence; its the only thing our mana-based foreign policy has. And National is going to piss it all away for some transitory international prestige and a chance to be a better boot-licker for their foreign masters. And we'll be paying for that betrayal for decades to come.

Shifted

Yesterday, we learned that the government was reviewing its future contribution to peacekeeping missions, with an eye to turning us into an American footstool. As I pointed out, this would be a major shift in our foreign policy, and one we need to stop. Unfortunately, we're too late: Cabinet agreed to the change last October (see ERD Min (13) 11/3). In secret, without consulting the people on behalf of which those troops will be deployed.

Reading that paper, there's also another bombshell: they want to send spies on peacekeeping missions. The new criteria ask:



Which agencies are so sensitive that their possible presence needs to be redacted for "national security"? (Hint: it is unlikely to be the Ministry for Culture and Heritage)

so, National has - in secret - completely changed our foreign policy, removed a major check on foreign troop deployments, and agreed to deploy spooks on peacekeeping missions. Given that latter bit, the UN would be wise to reject any contribution we offer as a trojan horse for US intelligence gathering.

Fiji: suspended

It's official: Fiji has been suspended from the Pacific Islands Forum. And the Forum was quite clear about why:

A regime which displays such a total disregard for basic human rights, democracy and freedom has no place in the Pacific Islands Forum.

As for the effect, this is more than just not inviting the Fijian regime to parties anymore - it will also remove them from all Forum cooperation programs and financial assistance, cutting them out of trade, technical assistance and aid programs directed at anything other than holding elections. More importantly, it sends a message to other groupings, such as the Commonwealth and EU, that they should do the same. All of which will squeeze Fiji even tighter.

Will it work? Probably not - Bainimarama has resisted all other diplomatic attempts to restore democracy, and seems disinclined to listen to anyone but himself (and especially not the "people of Fiji" in whose name he constantly claims to be acting). But this isn't just about trying to pressure Fiji's illegal regime - it's also about who we are. And by defining ourselves as people who don't talk to dictators, the Pacific Forum has just taken a strong step to reinforce democracy in the region.

A South American Union

Something I missed: on Friday, South American leaders got together and signed a treaty founding a South American Union along the lines of the EU. Like the EU, this has developed out of earlier regional integration - the Andean Community and Mercosur trade pacts, the Latin American Parliament, the Banco del Sur - which have been combined and given political direction. The new union will work towards economic development, a single market and common currency, the free movement of peoples and deeper political integration, with full union expected by 2019. Meanwhile, the US's proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas rots on the sidelines. South American governments want economic integration, but they want it on their own terms, rather than being dictated to by the US.

Whether this project is successful or not remains to be seen. But its a good start, and it will be interesting to watch.

How to promote freedom

While I think the Powers article (discussed below) is interesting becuse it lays out the biggest problem facing the left at the moment, Sock Thief seems more interested in using it as ammunition to support his perpetual claim that the left has turned its back on those suffering under tyranny, approvingly citing this section:

One of the left’s glories has been its tradition of heroic internationalism, still alive in the anti-globalization movement’s insistence on workers’ rights around the world. (Typically, though, "anti-globalization" sounds negative rather than positive.) But when it comes to foreign policy these days, the left appears lost. I get depressed hearing friends sound like paleocon isolationists or watching them reflexively assume that there’s something inherently tyrannical about the use of American power. It’s not enough to mock Norman Podhoretz’s insistence that the battle with Islamic terrorism is World War IV. Just as the left lacked a coherent position on what to do with murderous despots such as Milosevic and Saddam - it won’t do to say, "They’re bad, but . . ." The left now needs a position on how best to battle a Muslim ideology that, at bottom, despises all the freedoms we should be defending. America should be actively promoting the freedom of everyone on the planet, and the key question is, how would the left do it differently from the Bush administration?

Timothy Garton Ash provides the answer: by using the Ukranian model, rather than the Iraqi one. Ultimately, freedom has to come from the grassroots. We can help by providing ideological support, international monitors, and pressure on governments to respect human rights and open themselves to change, but we must always be careful to ensure that we are not supplanting the goals of local activists with our own, or trying to impose freedom rather than letting it evolve. Because while Bush is right in saying that everyone wants to be free, an important part of this freedom, sometimes even more important in people's minds than the freedom from tyranny, is the recognition of independence and self-government it brings. To the extent that imposed freedom undermines this recognition, it is counterproductive - something Isaiah Berlin noted in "Two Concepts of Liberty":

It is this desire for reciprocal recognition that leads the most authoritarian democracies to be, at times, consciously preferred by its members to the most enlightened oligarchies, or sometimes causes a member of some newly liberated Asian or African state to complain less today, when he is rudely treated by members of his own race or nation, than when he was governed by some cautious, just, gentle, well-meaning administrator from outside.

Berlin was writing in 1958, before people realy realised just how "rude" some of those new rulers could be, but his underlying point remains. And it poses a serious problem for attempts to impose freedom from outside. In Iran, the mere threat of US intervention caused people to flee the nascent democratic movement and turn to the Mullahs overnight (and who can blame them, given the sordid history of US intervention in their country?) But OTOH, Ukraine and Georgia showed that the problem is not insurmountable.

As for what to do about Islamic terrorism rather than freedom in general, I've said it before many times: treat it as a law-enforcement problem. Track down, arrest and try terrorists for their crimes, while fighting a battle of hearts and minds to win over their support base. The latter involves addressing some of the Muslim world's problems - poverty, injustice, and the results of all those sordid interventions, for example - while showing that Islam is not incompatible with western democracy. Unfortunately, rather than showcasing their Muslim citizens as examples of how freedom need not mean giving up your values, many western governments seem to be doing their utmost to make them feel unwelcome.

This strategy isn't flashy, and doesn't produce many photo-opportunities, but it is likely to be far more effective than America's present ham-fisted efforts.