Guardian UK: The lingering of an absurd imperial reflex

[marmar]

The lingering of an absurd imperial reflex
The west's moral didacticism now grates more than the realpolitik of China and the east

Pankaj Mishra
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 March 2010


There were chuckles and sniggers in Qatar last month when Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, warned that a military dictatorship was imminent in Iran. Threatening America's most intransigent adversary, Clinton seems to have been oblivious to her audience: educated Arabs in the Middle East where America's military presence has long propped up several dictators, including such stalwart allies in rendition and torture as Hosni Mubarak.

Of course, by her own standards, Clinton was being remarkably nuanced and sober: during the presidential campaign in 2008 she promised to "obliterate" Iran. An over-eager cheerleader of the Bush administration's serial bellicosity, Clinton exemplifies Barack Obama's essential continuity with previous US foreign policymakers – despite the president's many emollient words to the contrary. Clinton has also "warned" China with an officiousness redolent of the 1990s when her husband, with some encouragement from Tony Blair, tried to sort out the New World Order.

But the illusions of western power that proliferated in the 90s now lie shattered. No longer as introverted as before, China contemptuously dismissed Clinton's warnings. The Iranians did not fail to highlight American skulduggery in their oil-rich neighbourhood. But then Clinton is not alone among Anglo-American leaders in failing to recognise how absurdly hollow their quasi-imperial rhetoric sounds in the post-9/11 political climate.

Visiting India last year David Miliband decided to hector Indian politicians on the causes of terrorism, and was roundly rebuffed. Summing up the general outrage among Indian elites, a leading English language daily editorialised that the British foreign secretary had "yet to be house-trained". The US treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, provoked howls of laughter in his Chinese audience when he assured them that China's assets tied up in US dollars were safe. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/colonialist-foreign-policy-developing-economies

[DCKit]

1. Dog, I'm so ashamed. How clueless can they possibly be?

If Hillary was a REAL Democrat, she'd be smarter.

[glitch]

2. It is embarassing.

Real democrats aren't allowed power anymore. Not much we can do about it until we change the system itself through election reform.