FROM www.ruthlesscriticism]

[Translated from Gegenargumente Vienna 20 July 2004]

The leading powers of the democratic world are on the way in a humanitarian mission with their troops from around the world: They export democracy. Of course, with violence, fire and sword, which is always considered as proof for the barbarian character of the export property Islam, as soon as one says such a thing. Its the reverse with democracy. This high value justifies each mess that is organized for it and in its name. Not only in Iraq, where the strong interest of world power number 1 in access to an important oil region is hard to overlook -- and not overlooked by the European rivals – but also in countries in which nothing economically important is to be had. In Afghanistan the NATO allies take upon themselves some possible expenses in order to pacify violent disputes between enemy national inhabitants or between the authority and armed opposition members and to introduce democratic customs.

The whole world finds this extremely decent. Also pacifists can gain much good from such humanitarian military deployments. A little thing this praise of “productive peace“ ignores: military deployments, certainly. The democratic major powers intervene into conditions which they caused, also by similarly extremely noble-minded military engagements. They considerably helped in the creation of the political conditions which prove so awkward and can only be maintained because and as long as they hold the reigns with armed force. Then with their intervention they also keep nothing else upright so much as exactly these wobbly conditions. And with humanity they have the reason for which they do this, just as they do the goal they pursue thereby, to do nothing anyway.

The NATO front at the Hindu Kush

In Afghanistan the leading powers of the democratic state world are doubly engaged. The financially strong capitalist nations invest money, the Germans and others from the “European column” of NATO support 6000 military men who are now to be supplemented by approximately 10,000 for a construction project that at any rate may fail, according to the International Conference on Afghanistan. Not because the survival of the people there is at stake there, but for the survival of NATO and “our freedom in the Hindu Kush.” Not because the strongest military alliance in the world bumped into a serious opponent there, but because the NATO alliance wants to prove its exemplary ability there and everywhere in the world where it appears necessary to the main powers to implant suitable political conditions. This is no easy task because the strongest democratic world power is still busy fighting “terrorism” with 12,000 of its own and several allied soldiers as well as the support of the Pakistani army and is thus completing the destruction of the defeated Taliban “state”, leaving everything else a clean construction site for modern “nation building“.

1. A liberal anti-terrorist work of destruction

The emergence of the pious Taliban regime was already a not quite planned achievement of western democracy: a result of NATO’s sponsoring of subversive actions by fanatical religious fighters in that partly “real-socialist“ community which had got going an internal-Afghan progressive party with the support and, finally, intervention of the Soviet Union. At the end of the successfully annihilated “nation building“ of Soviet design, a war opened between the previously allied war parties, in the largest part of the country ruled by a disciplined Muslim group that had to offer, except the miserable living conditions, above all an idealistic benefit to its people: Nobody was called upon any more to serve socialist progress, instead they vegetated in obedience before the Almighty and in subordination under family authorities – freedom instead of socialism in Afghanistan! The USA, with its destruction of the refuge for anti-American terrorists into which the Taliban regime developed, did not however only dig out a criminals’ nest. With the devastation of the form of religious mania, traditional tribal customs and uniformly commanded armed forces with which the Taliban had ensured for such a thing as a force monopoly in the country, a second wild conflict of regional rulers was set free against each other, who for their part based themselves on force of arms, pre-political family loyalty in addition to religious morality, as well as the material basis of their power, a “political economy” of opium production and a black market in weapons and humanitarian aid supplies: far from a tabula rasa for a bourgeois-democratic constitution.

In NATO a certain pragmatic clarity prevails over what would be needed in order to make a functioning commonwealth from Afghanistan. An undisputed, all-encompassing force monopoly would be required as the first thing; also, a generally recognized state power functionalized in institutions for the survival of the society and the success of the nation as well as objectified in the associated political crew. Secondly, they must also have something to organize, i.e. a political economy which makes the governed people a productive means useful to the state and the living costs of employed persons a basis for the nation and it forces. Thirdly, a people who are separated from personal and moral dependence, for without this a modern state is dysfunktional. None of any of this is present in Afghanistan; that is clear to the responsible persons of the country. Thus they put what they have left toward the re-establishment of a government authority.

2. The “international community’s" democratic work of reconstruction

As a first, a president who symbolizes that for Afghanistan the age of a civilian community under a bourgeois force monopoly has begun. Because he has no instruments of power, neither over a private army like the other ruling powers, still less over such a thing as an assertive bureaucratic rule apparatus, sworn to him, he instead gets a fearful American bodyguard as well as an international colonial force which controls the capital as well as the major city of a northern province and which represents the hopeful beginnings of a new state order. It should bring its beneficial effects into notice by taking care of one or another civilian work of reconstruction so that the Afghans see what they would gain from a general peace in the country. For a civilian development, for useful survival conditions, no resources exist for the president to command. The 5.4 billion dollars which the nice nations display under the heading “Afghanistan assistance” flows mainly into fees and expenses for assistants, advisors and construction troops.

For a work of reconstruction, as was last tried by the Soviet Union with their vasal government, all the conditions are missing: a bureaucratic apparatus which could tackle such a program; control over the country and people with whom it could be tackled; and the program itself – a planned economy – should finally not break down. What concerns the crucial authority, the “globalized” world market: it does not have the slightest interest in Afghan workers or in the commodities which could be produced in Afghan workplaces. Opium excluded -- lucrative business can be made with that; but only because it is forbidden and is not therefore a quite feasible basis for a political economy. There the political representatives of the guardians insist that the government in Kabul makes war on the cultivation of opium poppies, the only productive pecuniary resource from which the insubordinate provincial monarchs cover their instruments of power and from which a large number of the rural population lives. Because nobody counts on a serious anti-opium war - the NATO colonial force is explicitly incompetent – the funds for the fight against drugs flow, first of all, into the construction of a security cordon around Afghanistan in which the hot commodity is to get stuck. Incidentally, the “international community“ does not want to be liable for more material start-up assistance. The Afghans are to pay for “nation building“ in the long run. For this, one knows the prescription in the world of imperialism; and one that has already been specified for this long ago: Democracy!

3. The absurd ideal of free elections and the president’s real struggle for power

The friends of tidy conditions in the Hindu Kush know from their own politically strong capitalist homelands that power and rule function smoothly if the government offices are occupied on the basis of a free competition between similarly nationally-disposed parties and in accordance with a popular vote for those eligible for election. They hold it as their right and their obligation to supervise the rest of the world, they put forward the demand that it should take themselves as an example. In this sense the relevant protection powers already held a meeting of native family authorities brought together by them to decide on an election which, if it takes place everywhere on the stage of the country, is to ensure rule relations that function as they want them to.

Thus everything is posed upside down. If a free competition of ambitious political leaders over power is to go off peacefully and reliably, which is to ensure a transition from arbitrary power to independent governing as one knows it from the successful democracies, then there must already be an organized state power over whose practice the competition revolves, and an established state reason about whose optimal success the political rivals argue. Free elections are not a method to introduce such conditions, on the contrary: Without a force monopoly and a fixed national agenda the competition over electoral success turns into a struggle for power with the character of a civil war; because then it is purely about the seizure of the instruments of power by the victorious “party”; and with the conquered means it does not make their will to rule the law and the established capitalistic public interest of the nation the basis for their “organized will.” This stands out in Afghanistan. The election organizers have to do this not with tidy democratically equal party coalitions, but with competitive clans and tribes which mobilize their authority and their means of force while the electoral lists are drawn up because with it the results of the election are already initiated. For these “parties” the election is no more and no less than one scene in their struggle for extending their power, already in place anyway, which they operate against their rivals, and whom they certainly do not plan to subordinate afterwards as a loyal opposition to the government majority. The election campaign has therefore nothing with to do theme songs, “fair play” and volunteers holding up campaign signs, but is a piece of gang warfare around zones of influence and available adherents.

The democratic godfathers of the new Afghanistan see this casually or at least they act like it they do. They only want to know about “organizational problems”; and if President Karsai, enthroned by them, shifts the elections planned for the autumn, then they hold to the fiction that this is only because of the delayed voting lists. They are set on a struggle for power which in reality keeps to their screenplay in no respects. The president, whom they inserted into his office, whom they hold in power and on whose success they set, step by step takes up the fight to subject the regional and local power holders; not under an Afghan reason of state, which does not exist at all, but under his authority. For it he calculates with “free elections”; above all, however, he sets on the fact that he is worth enough in armed forces and billions to his democratic protection powers that they will not let him fail. They calculate, vice versa, with him. But not so that the employment of international troops fights to make Karzai the supreme power in the country, let alone superfluous.

Instead the NATO troops, between urban rubble deserts and selective construction, forbidden opium growing and the rivalries of all ambitious ruling powers in the country, are directed at themselves. Because what the public imagines here under “nation building“, let alone what the president enthroned by the West in Kabul expects from his European and American godfathers, is not that simple.
4. The struggle of allied imperialists for mutual functionalization

The major powers which defend their “freedom in the Hindu Kush” with their military deployment follow an imperialistic calculation of the highest kind in that Afghanistan functions only as an exemplary scene and the nominal head of state as a chess piece. The USA leads their anti-terror war against the remnants of the Taliban regime and the anti-American “network” in the country; what else happens there they treat as a condition for their combat missions and their success. From their creature in Kabul and from the ISAF colonial force they expect obedience.

For the European Union powers which essentially put up the ISAF troops, their purpose is not to concern themselves with inter-Afghan struggles for power, but rather to interfere in America’s anti-terror war. They do not want to stand aside while the USA opens a front in central Asia in its century-long campaign against terrorism. However, they do not want to submit as "willing helpers” to the command of the superpower and allow their importance to wear thin. Therefore they support the military action of “Operation Enduring Freedom” with only minimal forces and concentrate on establishing alongside it a state-initiative with independent European responsibility over relations in central Asia with its own, UN-defined and blessed mission. From their relative military weakness they make a political virtue. They do not try to match themselves against the USA in leading the war and the "pacification" of the country, in this respect they leave to exclusive command to the USA, thus also the whole burden – and profit at the same time from the combat mission of their ally’s troops. Because what they position themselves for as independent tasks and tackle with their scarcely 6,000 men is no joke, and can only be held out because America is present with its guerilla war against the wrong fundamentalists to prevent an open riot against the regime in Kabul and, with a mixture of threats and promises, keep the provincial lords and crowds quiet to some extent. “Pax americana“, which the USA imposed over the first episode in their century-long campaign against “terrorism”, is provoked to military intervention by the Europeans - and makes possible for them at the same time a mixture of their own calculations and visible force engagement; an engagement in which they do not come into conflict with the US war and, in addition, do not make themselves serviceable; an engagement that saves little for the Americans in their guerilla war and which nevertheless represents a contribution - an interesting new edition of the useful relationship between NATO’s leading power and its European partners as practiced over 40 years of “cold war”.

The USA is not at all satisfied with this German-European policy of maximum imperialistic yield with minimal expenditure. They open the opposite calculation with their allies: What they carry out in Afghanistan has too little of the character of a respectable emergency service, is too low and arbitary and does not relieve the leading power of NATO as it desires. It pushes in the context of its alliance for more respectable European contributions and would like its allies’ Afghanistan engagement to develop and become a model for a new strategy of the alliance - for an Iraq enagegement, e.g. ultimately Washington has announced and introduced a world war for the 21st century.

So the defense of western freedom in the Hindu Kush gets an acid test for American-European cooperation in their alliance. It is not only about the very impressive practical proof that the alliance is able to eliminate anti-American partisans and terrorists and at the same time bring a devastated, divided country under the control of a to-some-extent durable and completely pliant – even democratic - central government. It concerns an exemplary whether and how, from whom and for whom that NATO lets itself be used as an instrument for “peace creating” wars all over the world. In exactly this contradictory sense it concerns the USA on one side, and the representatives of the “European column” on the other side, over the usefulness and the continual “to be or not to be” of the alliance: America wants the pact as a means to assign tasks to its ambitious co-imperialist and to impose burdens; the Europeans, vice versa, want to use America’s supremacy for themselves, i.e. as a basis for their own interventions; absolutely with the goal of gradually freeing themselves from their dependence on the USA.

Afghanistan is the venue, the president and his population the material for the competition of the imperialistic nations on both sides of the Atlantic, which increasingly controls world events freed from the former Soviet Union “troublemaker“.
Summary: Cynicism and single-mindedness of imperialism today

The leaders of the powerful capitalist nations, which feel themselves destined to control the world of states, have never particularly respected foreign sovereignty. They define what they, or the parties and leaders they have supported, have caused in other countries in some cases as “failed sates“. With this designation they write off a heap of members from their honourable “family of peoples” as state structures and partners of their capitalistic world order who can be taken seriously; at the same time they push back the blame for the disaster of the countries in question on the local potentates together with their footsoldiers; and leave the devastating collateral damage of their world order and its global economic mode - the raging misery, the neglect of whole peoples and the collapse of whole states - to the television cameras of go-getting reporters and charity groups. With this presupposition, those countries which always keep the whole world in view as a field of deployment for their capital and force become active as soon as they feel the need, and order national reestablishment for a desolate country – “nation building“.

If they determine on it, then they connect the complete access to the relevant state structure with the most determined refusal of any responsibility for its survivability - to be completely silent of the population: They install a state authority, equip it with a little military and financial start-up capital because these countries can’t do it themselves, and then they require the impossible of their creature: the “failed state“ has to ensure in principle from its own power that it functions nevertheless and without any further means; at least to the extent that disturbing activities are suppressed and that the misery does not become a refugee problem. With the imperious desire for democracy the sponsors intensify their demand that the required service to order has to function smoothly and free of charge; because the God-devoted people gets the opportunity to elect its overseers again and again in all freedom. This cynicism of a foreign rule, i.e. of a rule in foreign interest but in the name of the people, enjoys public applause because the honorable title “democracy” kills every thought about reality - even where it calls for nothing other than foreign rule without colonial costs.

Modern “conditions” hold “case-specific” challenges for the modern world order. A demand can possibly be wrongly understood by its own creatures, and the Europeans must give a lesson to the “exaggerated” nationalism of the Kosovo Albanians. Elsewhere the state order completely dissolves into gang warfare, and a small colonial army must put a stop to the threatening stream of refugees from Haiti at the source. Afghanistan is one case; where a successfully promoted anticommunist God’s war of control slipped out of the control of its sponsors; a violent recall was necessary; now the rubble is to be joined again so that a repeat of the danger is impossible. What the expenditure will be remains up to the free discretion of the guardians of the world order in each case, just like the decision to define one of the continuously resulting disasters as a challenge to their authority over the world order – e.g., black Africa is not worth that much to them. For their appropriate resolutions they take measure: How they “position themselves” in comparison to their equals if they do or do not do this; how much influence on the force budget of the world they are able to wring from each other - these are the criteria which determine the transition from the diagnosis “failed state“ to “nation building.“ If America defines the facts for interventions and permits itself to intervene, then it primarily follows the requirements of its campaign for a world purified of anti-Americanism; it has above all its most important business partner and rival allies in mind and attempts to integrate them as auxiliary workers and keep them away from a competiting controlling influence. In reverse, the EU decisively and increasingly turn to alternative maneuvers to their superpower ally in order to define their clear differences in these problem cases and to establish responsibilities for itself.

Whether a “failed“ state is appreciated as a charity case depends on what importance is attributed to it and how veered off course it goes, and ultimately on how much and how far it is perceived by the USA and the leading powers of the EU as a case for their competition and their use. That is not coincidentally reminiscent of the way in which the well-intentioned “west” fought its “cold“ world war against the Soviet Union with “proxy wars.“ At that time, however, emerging “third world” countries, from their value within this large confrontation, could sometimes hope for support protecting them from the fate of “failed states“. The rival imperialists of the 21st century are not so generous anymore with the benefits of the world-political “peace dividend” of their common victory over the Soviet power.