There’s a lot of guff in the Indian papers these days.
Much of it is about the “growing closeness” of India to the United States. That’s what they call it, “growing closeness”, whatever that means.
Meanwhile the so-called Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, calls George Bush his close friend while his ambassador in Washington calls Bush the best friend India has ever had. Which is a position strongly supported by the likes of the ultra-right wing columnist, Swaminathan G Anklesariya Aiyar, a man who is still trying to cover up his initial enthusiastic support for the Iraq invasion. Nowadays he calls Iraq a “mistake” but says it shouldn’t poison our relationship with the US.
All right, so what is so wrong here? Shouldn’t we be happy to make friends with the US?
The answer, of course, is that isn’t friendship with the US that is what we’re making. It’s a relationship with the US government and the military-industrial complex. If you want to talk about friendship with the people of a country, everyone is nowadays everyone’s friend. Half the people on my contacts list here, for instance, are Americans. None of them seems to be offended enough by my anti-neocon diatribes to quit. People never really have a problem relating to other people. Besides everyone knows all about American “soft power.” Hollywood may make a horrible amount of trash, but it still rules the world’s imagination – and rewrites history while it’s about it. Personally, I prefer French, Russian, and British films, in that order, but I do admit Hollywood’s power. But that isn’t a problem. I’m not asking for American movies to be banned or something.
The problem, of course, with the whole concept of this alleged “growing closeness” is that it has nothing to do with all that soft power and people to people contact. It has everything to do with the current position of the US in the world as the leading threat to peaceful co-existence. See, if you have a bully in the neighbourhood who enjoys beating up people at random just to show who’s boss (the Ledeen Doctrine) – you can either knuckle under to him, you can try and resist him in any way you can, or you can leave the neighbourhood. Since a country can’t leave a neighbourhood, one can either resist current US policy or else join in it. Joining in it means, as the Pakistanis are discovering these days, total submission, so that one can’t even get rid of a hated dictator if his continual in office is convenient for the US. It also means joining in the US’ foreign policy misadventures, even when such joining is harmful and counterproductive, as with Britain in Iraq. This brings its own problems in its wake, like the increased likelihood of retaliatory “terrorist” attacks.
Also, no power lasts forever. America’s power is already in decline, and it has lost the constituency that belonged to it – the respect of the rank and file of the world’s people. Even the Roman Empire collapsed in the end – of its own weight. There is absolutely no reason to think that the US Empire won’t do the same. And then, my friends, other nations have long memories. Just see what happened to the nations on the losing side of the First World War if you wish to know what settling scores is all about.
As for the common dream of the middle class to aspire to American standards of living and an American lifestyle – that isn’t on either, because (except for a tiny uber-rich minority, and that too living on borrowed time) even the Americans can’t aspire any longer to the American Dream lifestyle, which probably peaked somewhere in the late fifties. If we all wanted to live like Americans, we’d need the resources of six more earths for that. Is this something that is possible?
I’m surprised hardly anyone in the media has the integrity to point these simple, well known facts out.
On second thoughts, though, I’m not surprised at all.
