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War and democracy
Kate Soper
Whether they welcomed the prospect of the “new” world order it would
supposedly inaugurate, or were appalled by its imperial ambitions and the
disasters it would unleash, few can have doubted the historic import of the
decision to go to war with Iraq. Those who have committed the globe to
this aggression may have done so in philistine disregard of the past, but its
impact in shaping the future will be immense, and its economic, political and
ecological consequences will resonate for decades to come. This makes it
reasonable to reflect on its democratic credentials, all the more so given that
it was trumpeted in the name of a “democracy” on which it never intended to
deliver, and in defiance of overwhelming international opposition.
One analyst who has reflected long on the first point is Milan Rai. He argues
convincingly that the very narrow US definition of the “regime” (Saddam Hussein
and family), the coup-centred war plan, and the early assassination attempt, all
indicate that the aim was not to empower the Iraqi people but rather to
stimulate a military uprising that would topple the dictator and his immediate
circle but would leave the rest of the security system intact.1 The aim, in
short, was regime stabilization rather than change. As late as March this year,
a US official in Newsweek shocked human rights activists by claiming that the
bias “would be toward forgiving as much of the past as possible”; in other
words, most of the crimes that had been used to drum up war fever in the West
were “to be forgiven”. The planned coup failed to evolve, and the invading
forces have ended up killing or dispersing more of the future “stabilizing”
personnel than they intended. The war plan has therefore only succeeded in part:
Saddam Hussein has gone, but the regime remains extremely unstable. Because of
this, the USA may, paradoxically, end up having to concede a little more in the
way of participation than it originally wanted. (But whatever arrangements get
made, one thing looks certain: they will be by the boys for the boys.)
As far as the elitism of the decision to go to war is concerned, we know that
this was taken without UN endorsement, despite a historically unprecedented
degree of dissent in both Europe and the USA, and against the wishes of the
majority of the electorate even in those countries whose governments supported
it and were to become militarily involved (notably the UK). It was a decision
made without public consultation or concern for accountability, long before any
of the rituals designed to lend it a veneer of legitimacy (renewed and “failed”
arms inspection, the processes of UN and national parliamentary debate and
mandate) were entered upon.
There are, however, some qualifications to this picture of global
disempowerment. There is the fact that the Bush administration, despite high
levels of opposition, did indeed have (and still enjoys) extensive backing from
its electorate for its war efforts. How far one can count this as a democratic
mandate is disputable, given the dubious quality of Bush’s election in the First
place (without which war might never have become an option), and its contingency
upon the highly specific and in many respects distorting impact of 9/11 on
public perceptions of threat. That electoral judgements were based on very
partial information is indicated by surveys showing that 42 per cent of the
American public believes that Saddam Hussein is directly responsible for the
September 11 attacks, and 55 per cent that he supports al-Qaida. Still, there is
no disputing the scale of enthusiasm for the war in the US itself.
From a differing point of view, we should also factor in the restraining
impact of the huge opposition to the war. This placed considerable difficulties
in the way of its smooth pursuit, and there will clearly be consequences for
those governments who have ignored the strength of public hostility to it. The
UN proved more of an obstacle to American plans than many had foreseen, exposing
the limitations of any argument to the effect that it is simply a rubber stamp
for US foreign policy. Popular resistance in Turkey proved a serious stumbling
block to the implementation of the “ideal” US war plan, and it will be a
complicating factor in the management of post-war Iraq. In Germany, the
opposition of the Social Democrats to the war has been hugely popular and
reinforced the party’s standing with the electorate. In Spain, where Aznar went
against the wishes of 90 per cent of voters, he will almost certainly have to
pay the political price by ceding power to the socialists at the next election.
So too may Berlusconi, given the nearly comparable opposition to the war in
Italy. In the UK, the strength of the anti-war movement forced the Ministry of
Defence, on the eve of the parliamentary debate, into making panicked
contingency plans for Blair’s resignation and the disengagement of British
troops from the invasion. And even though dissent was quelled in the Commons,
and there has been a surge in public support for war since the beginning of
hostilities, New Labour may still reap a bitter electoral harvest from their
agreement to go to war.
What does democracy mean?
These considerations illustrate the complexities surrounding any invocation
of democracy in a context such as this. The very high level of US support for
war raises important issues, for example about the relationship between
knowledge and democracy, or, to be more precise, about the extent to which votes
corresponding to professed, though profoundly ill-informed, wishes can (or
should) count as a genuine exercise of democracy. Clearly, democracy means
nothing unless it allows individuals to express their own subjective wishes
rather than those others might wish them to wish. On the other hand, since
knowledge, or belief based on it, plays so critical a role in the determination
of the will, democracy is imperilled whenever significant numbers cast their
votes on the basis of seriously inaccurate, skewed or partial information. The
range of argument brought into play by concerns of this kind is very extensive,
and by no means confined in its application to the conflict in Iraq. But the
intensification of propaganda, the control of the media, especially in the USA,
and the notoriously accident-prone nature of truth in times of war, bring these
questions into very sharp focus.
The question of the autonomy of the UN Security Council also presents its
complexities, though at a somewhat less abstract level.2 On the one hand there
is no doubting the degree to which on this, as on so many issues in the past,
the UN has been either made to serve American interests, or disregarded if it
stands against them. As the quest continues for the elusive weapons of mass
destruction (now rapidly coming to figure as a conveniently mobile casus belli),
even the ever temperate Blix has made clear his frustrations. Few can doubt now,
in the aftermath of conflict, that the UN “vital” role in Iraq will be as lively
as the US administration chooses to permit. Nor in the run-up to the war did
anyone seriously believe that the “coalition of the willing”, whose countries
include some of the most debt-ridden in the world, was anything but a creature
of US economic bullying and its blatant manipulation of aid packages. It is
clear that not one of the smaller countries was able to operate free of this
duress, and to a greater or lesser extent this has also been true in the case of
the more significant players.
On the other hand, those who insisted (like Tariq Ali in February’s Red
Pepper) that the Security Council was bound to green-light the invasion have
certainly been proved wrong. How much should one read into this? Should we hail
the resistance to a second resolution as a victory for some kind of democratic
accountability against the unilateralism of the Bush-Blair alliance? Only
in the most limited sense. Let us not forget that the privileged status of the
“gang of five” in the Security Council is hardly a compelling model of
international parity, and the UN is in this sense a grossly undemocratic
institution. One needs, too, to temper any enthusiasm for “old” European
dissidence with a large dose of realpolitik. The peace marchers” banners (“Vive
la France!”, “Blessed are the cheesemakers”) may have sung the praises of the
French, and the Germans may now be advocating “d”accord” in place of “OK” and
“tricot” instead of “T-shirt”. Yet the rationale for the French and Russian
vetos was hardly very principled, much of it being compromised by commercial
considerations and a reflex anti-Americanism. Nor has one’s faith in French
political sophistication been greatly enhanced by polls during the war showing
one in four backing the Ba’ath regime. But charges of economic compromise are
always double-edged and can be pressed both ways. Chirac was denounced for
vetoing the war because of French interests in Iraq by a Bush-Blair team that
had shown no compunction about buying the votes of a score of other nations.
Of more significance to an assessment of the relative autonomy of the UN as a
counter to US hegemony are two further factors. One is the confusion and
division that appear to reign still in Washington on whether to invoke or
repudiate UN authority. This has been very evident in the fact that the
key hawks in the Bush administration who are now, post-bellum, insisting on the
anachronism and irrelevance of the UN were the same who justified the war
precisely because the resolutions of this outdated international institution
were being flouted by the Iraqi regime. The obvious answer to this is that UN
authority (like the Geneva Convention) is invoked when it suits and not when it
does not. But an authority that is overall derided cannot continue indefinitely
to provide endorsement as the occasion demands. To the extent that the USA has
conducted the war and will manage the peace in defiance of the UN, it must
forfeit all claims to legitimacy save those that derive from the rightness of
its own might. From a dialectical point of view, this is not a very comfortable
or secure, or even necessarily a very powerful, position for the USA to be in
over the long term. The discomforts of isolationism might be reinforced were the
UN over time democratically to reform itself.
It is here that we might bring in the other factor: the multiple levels of
interaction between governments and their electorates. This has been especially
evident recently in the case of Russia, France and Germany, where governments
that were very much in tune with their publics in opposing the war, and basked
in popular plaudits for being so, are now busily mending the diplomatic fences
and seeking to find some accommodation with the “coalition” forces. The
dialectic here is thickly pleated. The reasons for the rapprochement are in part
geopolitical. Deeply opposed as they have been throughout to any plans to
replace the Ba’ath regime by a US protectorate, these are nations that are
understandably keen to have their say in any discussions influencing the future
of Iraq, and in particular to see the UN playing the major role in the process
of political reformation. But there are also powerful economic reasons
propelling those who opposed the war to renew the dialogue with its
perpetrators, and these are indicative of the limits placed by a deregulated
global market economy on the autonomy of national politics.
It is here that we can locate the most fundamental obstacle to the
realization of any democratically mandated alternative to the bellicose politics
of the “new world order”, whether it seeks to develop a base in “old” Europe or
anywhere else. This is not simply because governments are subservient to the
elite, and admittedly greedily self-seeking, interests of transnational company
directors, but because this subservience is so thoroughly tied up with the
consumer and investment interests of the electorates upon whom they themselves
depend for power. The economic duress to which governments capitulate,
reluctantly doing business with very unpopular agencies and processes (the
furore around the US use of Shannon airport in the supposedly neutral Republic
of Ireland would be an obvious case in point) testifies not simply to the way in
which “they” defy their publics politically, but also to the compulsion of the
economic agendas upon which their publics expect them to deliver.
It is here that the calls for those opposed to the war to give up driving
their motor cars, naive as they obviously are in many respects, have a certain
logic about them - in that they bring into focus the intimate connection between
affluent consumer expectations and the politics of aggression, whether in the
form of economic pressures or through recourse to military means. And unless the
peace movements are prepared more directly to acknowledge and campaign around
that connection, then their protest, however ardent at the time, is likely to
make little headway against the countering dynamic of the military-industrial
system sustained by the mainstream parties. Resistance to war has to be yoked to
an ongoing and altogether more muscular, forward-looking and positive mode of
campaigning. This should be designed, in the First instance, to ensure that a
compelling image of an “alternative world order” everywhere shadows, and
wherever possible directly confronts and fuels, resistance to that “old-new” one
imposed under American dominance. In the second instance - and this applies with
particular urgency to the situation in Britain at the present time - it must
seek to provide those committed to an alternative of this kind with a fairer
representation in the arena of official politics.
Time to regroup?
In pressing for this in Britain at the present time, it is important to keep
in mind that opposition to the conflict even now remains extensive, that the
decisive vote for war did not represent the wishes of two-thirds of the people,
and that it only came about because many MPs directly flouted the wishes of
their constituents. This raises two questions, one about the accountability of
MPs, the other concerning the “democracy” of the behaviour of those MPs who
voted against the war but who have retained the Labour whip. On the First count,
it might be said that this is a perennial issue of representational government.
MPs, it will be argued, have a pastoral as well as a representative role; they
should be guiding public opinion as well as listening to it. They have, in
other words, been elected with an agreement, tacit though it may be, that there
will be occasions when they feel the need to vote on principle and according to
their own lights, rather than in deference to what the voters want.
Unfortunately, although persuasive on such issues as capital punishment, it
cannot be in the present instance where it is starkly obvious that the Labour
MPs in question were looking more to protect the prime minister and the
stability of the Labour Party than they were to the rights and wrongs of
perpetrating an illegal and devastating war. Better pastoral guidance was
provided by schoolchildren at the anti-war rallies than by many of our New
Labour MPs.
On the second count, it does indeed now seem difficult to endorse the
retention of the Labour whip by MPs who voted against the war and have since
campaigned against it, at times expressing themselves very polemically at the
various anti-war demonstrations. They themselves, no doubt, will argue that they
remain an altogether more effective influence by remaining with New Labour. Why,
then, we have to ask, was the opposition they did offer from this favoured
position so little and so late? Why did they prove so feeble in what should have
been the moment of their ascendancy? Given how precarious Blair’s position came
to be on the eve of the critical vote in the Commons, and the impact his
resignation might have had on Bush’s options, there was surely more of a
responsibility to themselves, the electorate, and indeed the world at large,
than they managed to discharge. Nor in truth can they claim to have been
very loud over the years in their canvassing against the party’s militarism: its
policies on the renewal of Trident, the continued presence of American bases,
and the arms trade.
Perhaps, then, as some, including myself, have recently been arguing, the
time has finally come to regroup, to make a definitive break with New Labour,
and to work for a political formation that can better respond to the needs of
the newly mobilized youth against the war, and of all those who are motivated by
a vision of an alternative order of global coexistence, and have felt so acutely
their disenfranchisement over recent weeks. This, at any rate, is the stance
adopted by the recently launched “Start the Peace” initiative, which aims to use
electoral politics as a focus for a positive long-term project. Its strategy is
threefold: (1) to ensure that in forthcoming local, European and parliamentary
elections, New Labour pays the maximum political price for taking Britain into
the war with Iraq; (2) to encourage anti-war coalitions to organize locally in
support of parties who have opposed the war and seek the elimination of British
weapons of mass destruction and the closure of US bases here; (3) to build a new
political formation committed to anti-militarism, social and global justice, and
sustainability.3
If it succeeds, this project may in places advantage the Conservatives, given
the British electoral system (which New Labour decided not to change). The
arithmetic certainly gives disproportionate influence to any anti-militarist
candidate winning significant support: defection of even a small proportion of
Labour voters to, say, the Green Party, the Socialist Alliance or the
nationalist parties, puts some Labour MPs at risk. But any Labour MP who intends
to canvass anti-war votes in 2005/6 should resign the Labour whip now and seek
backing to stand as an Independent Labour candidate next time round. Nothing, in
any case, would more help what remains of the Left inside Labour than a serious
anti-war electoral challenge outside. As for the danger of helping the
Conservatives, this is a nettle that has now to be grasped. Moments to
check the current drift towards a de-democratizing of American-style clientele
politics have been few and far between. This is one to seize.
Notes
1. See Milan Rai”s analysis in “Partial Victories”, Arrow Anti-War
Briefing 42, 11 April 2003, and the extended treatment in his book War Plan
Iraq: Ten Reasons Against the War on Iraq, Verso, London, 2002. (Briefings can
be downloaded from the ARROW website www.j-n-v.org.)
2. In this
connection, see the interesting and wide-ranging debate on cosmopolitanism
between Bruce Robbins and David Chandler in recent issues of Radical Philosophy
(Bruce Robbins, “What’s Left of Cosmopolitanism?” RP 116, November/December
2002, pp. 30-37; David Chandler, “The Cosmopolitan Paradox: Response to
Robbins”, Bruce Robbins, “Reply to Chandler”, both in RP 118, March/April 2003,
pp. 25-30 and 31-2, respectively). On the specific issue of war in Iraq and the
UN role, see Perry Anderson, “Casuistries of Peace and War”, London Review of
Books, 6 March 2003, pp. 12-13.
3. “Start the Peace” is not an
organization, but is designed to foster discussion on the issues outlined above.
For more information on the initiative, see the April issue of Red Pepper, or
join the discussion list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/startpeace
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