This is an instructive but also disturbing video. One thing
it clearly demonstrates is that far from being liberal, PBS is firmly wedded to
the Establishment.
Robert Kaplan is actually an author I have greatly enjoyed
and benefitted from. I have at least a half-dozen of his books on my shelves.
That said, he's certainly not above criticism and this video represents his
thinking, or at least the application of it, at its very worst.
I suppose I enjoy his mind. I like how he writes, the topics
that interest him and the questions he asks, but I end up with totally
different conclusions. His 1994 book 'The Coming Anarchy' really brought that
home, for in that book he sets out the basic policy that he reveals in this
film.
His books on the Balkans, Middle East and Africa are also
worthy of criticism, but again he leaves a lot of questions open and you can
interpret things differently. His writings are a healthy challenge and that's
why I think they are worthwhile.
In this documentary he comes across quite clearly as something
of a Neo-Conservative and his subsequent affiliation with Stratfor also makes
these viewpoints and proclivities all too clear.
Kaplan believes the world is a dangerous and chaotic place
and America is a bastion of stability and order. It's not just America's moral
duty to spread its values and maintain a world order, but if it doesn't then the
chaos will be at the doors... barbarians at the gates as it were. America has no
choice but to be an Empire. She had best acknowledge it and get busy. Even
though this video is from 2007, this argument was being made by Kaplan and
others while the dust from the collapse of the USSR was still settling. It's
unspoken but there's a good dose of PNAC present in his thinking. The Project
for the New American Century was a think-tank that put forth proposals to
insure American global domination in the 21st century. To my
knowledge Kaplan never officially signed on to the project, but he shares the
worldview.
He catches a lot of flack in how he seemingly looks down on
other people and the language he uses to describe them. It comes across as
American hubris. I see why people get upset with him at times in his writings.
To be honest I haven't always taken it that way. Anyone who has traveled as
much as he has realizes American is not the center of the universe and not
everything America does is right. Yet, he does at times seem bigoted. Watching
this prompted me to start re-reading his travel book on the United States that
he wrote in the late 1990's. 'An Empire Wilderness' deals with the fracturing
of American society, envisions its possible break-up and the effects of
globalisation on our society. He discusses infrastructure, resources etc...
I must say as I've begun to re-read the book for the first
time in probably ten years I find myself being a little more critical of some
of his viewpoints... especially his seeming praise of suburbia and
decentralised urban culture. I've come to appreciate some of the withering
criticisms of someone like James Howard Kunstler when it comes to some of these
questions and Kaplan while interesting strikes me as rather short-sighted in
his analysis.
What disturbs me the most about this video is its
reductionism, and it's a reductionism to the point of just plain dishonesty.
His dilemma is a false one.
Kaplan posits that the United States is an empire, which it
surely is. I think it must be argued this did not begin in 1991 or even 1945.
Those dates represent escalations of the Imperial paradigm. The United States
has been a continental empire since independence. It never abandoned that role.
It has expanded it in several phases... the Louisiana Purchase, sundry Indian Wars, Manifest
Destiny, The Monroe Doctrine, The Mexican-American War, and it certainly took
on a new impetus in the wake of the American Civil War.
The subsequent extermination and consolidation of the Plains
Indians in the post Civil War period can only be labeled an imperial policy.
The closing of the frontier prompted a huge leap in thinking that became
manifest in the Spanish American War and its fallout. The United States was now
well on its ways to acquiring hemispheric and overseas colonies.
WWI represented an internationalist escalation and expansion
of US interests into Europe, and then on an unparalleled level in 1945. In
1991, America had become Rome in the superlative, not the Super-power, but the
Hyper-power.
Kaplan would probably agree, but in his view, the American
soldier of this new order has a task, one that some military thinkers are not
overly thrilled with. The enlisted folk are imperial grunts, the officers are a
new order of elites. They are diplomat-soldiers, social-workers,
counterinsurgent fighters, infrastructure planners, negotiators etc...
They are agents of empire.
He supports the idea of small-scale involvement in order to
keep problems from growing into large-scale conflicts.
In the video he visits, Georgia, the Philippines, Mali and
Colombia and demonstrates how American forces are fulfilling this vision which
he happens to believe in.
To Kaplan, it's either involvement or isolation and the
latter just means that every decade American will 'have' to engage in a large
war.
But this is utterly false and misleading.
The video fails to contextualize anything that's going on. It
fails to reveal (in honest terms) the long history of US domination of the
Philippines and what that has meant for them geo-strategically and culturally.
It whitewashes the US record with record to Ferdinand Marcos and the
brutalization of the Filipino people. Many American Imperialists don't actually
believe in the universality of American values, a problematic position to take
if one truly believes as Jefferson did that these rights we supposedly possess
are self-evident.
Many Imperialists seem to have no problem embracing an
internationalist consequentialism... 'our' values work here, but don't work
other places. Since we're superior they should be willing to be subjugated and
eventually hope their societies will become like ours. In the meantime we'll
occupy them and put them under authoritarian regimes.
As a Christian who seeks to shape my epistemology by
Scripture, I personally do not believe in the universality or self-evident
nature of American values, but neither am I trying to advocate for America as
some sort of paragon for the rest of the world to follow or submit to.
With regard to Mali the colonial history and the question of
resources are not being treated in an honest fashion. Mali's recent history and
French involvement demonstrate these factors have by no means disappeared. Mali
cannot be discussed with considering its resources, namely gold as well as its
history with the IMF and Western Corporations. West Africa in general cannot be
discussed apart from Uranium and the oil present in Nigeria. There are resource
rich states along the littoral and until recently, there have been the long
simmering tensions over the questions of Algeria and especially Libya. It's not
really possible to treat any country in isolation and Kaplan himself knows
this. He's written about the fictitiousness of maps, especially in West Africa.
Lines drawn by colonial masters do not create nations.
Kaplan just assumes the United States has the 'right' and
obligation to involve itself in these countries. It reminds me of a discussion
I had with a Reservist awhile back who had just spent several months in
Paraguay. They were just there to bring security to the region and establish
relationships with the Paraguayan government and military.
That's a big part of how the empire works.
Of course after US machinated coup attempts in Bolivia and
Paraguay, the contest over natural gas drilling and the attempt to threaten and
destroy Morales, I find myself less than convinced of America's moral 'right'
let alone obligation.
Imperialism is simply a rationalisation of theft and murder
and this video is no different. It's morally repugnant, but Kaplan wouldn't
really argue with that either. His ideas about power are realistic, honest and
frankly brutal. He's a lost person who understands quite clearly the idea of
principled exercise of power is fool's errand.
The treatment of Colombia is especially outrageous. While the
FARC wandered the well-traveled revolutionary path that blends guerilla warfare
with criminality, the video wholly ignores the brutality of the US backed
Bogota administrations let alone the bloody and brutal record with regard to
para-military groups and what can only be described as low-grade chemical
warfare, the same thing we saw in Vietnam. The US has directly and indirectly
through corporate proxies supported private militias which are just a deadly
and destructive as the FARC. Kaplan knows this full well but in his mind...
it's just a messy world and the end justifies the means.
The treatment of Georgia was also superficial. China and
Russia are thugs and enemies to be blocked.
Blocked? That's rather an outrageous thing to say as the
United States is beating down their doors, encircling them and threatening them
with missile systems and new bases.
I understand full well Georgia doesn't want to be dominated
and there are certain neighbourhoods like the Caucasus that are tough. Little
countries are caught in the middle. But it's one thing to advocate for small
nations and for their governments to try and resist outside influences. It's
another to provoke and move against Russia. When Putin perceived that Georgia
was moving toward NATO, he took action, but how quickly American Conservatives
have forgotten. Bush backed down. They justified him. If it had been Obama, the
screams would have been deafening. The same thing happened with Reagan and
Lebanon back in the 1980's.
Kaplan doesn't even discuss US aggression toward Russia and
even if you don't agree that the United States has provoked Russia since the
1990's, to be honest you have to at least allow for the fact that the Russians
as well as many others see things that way.
Altogether this was a dismal video but like I said there are
lessons to be learned from it. Kaplan opened up the Balkans to me and piqued my
interest back in the 1990's. Inadvertently he helped to contextualize what I
was part of (as an Imperial Grunt) and yet I took away a different message. I
was convinced the United States had no business being there and became
convinced that I was part of NATO expansion and consolidation rather than any
genuine humanitarian concern.
He's an intelligent journalist but I'm afraid as the years
pass I'm losing my respect for him. Kaplan was my teacher but I categorically
reject him. In the years subsequent to this video he has turned to overt evil
and openly works for the Military-Industrial Complex. No longer a journalist,
he has become a propagandist for the empire.
We are idol factories and it is no surprise lost people grant
their nations sacramental status. If you're an agnostic (functionally or
otherwise) what other hope is there but to try and build something transcendent
and self-justifying?
Here's a link to an older article referencing Kaplan and some
of writings regarding the future conflict with China.
