Re: <nettime> The War to come ...

[Ted Byfield <tedbyfield@gmail.com>]

On 19 Mar 2022, at 13:42, I wrote:

> I read Streeck's essay when it first appeared, and my sense was that you could string together many of the points he makes and arrive at very different conclusions.

Someone pointed me to this FAZ piece on Streeck's essay:

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wissen/geist-soziales/wolfgang-streeck-zum-imperialismus-im-ukraine-krieg-17859748.html

tl;dr: Its argument is similar to what I said, but far better — more thorough and with context.

Maybe Streeck was widely known and cited before this essay, but I wouldn't be surprised if he shares one thing in common with John Mearsheimer, who was all over the ~news in the US a few weeks ago: someone who, among leftists, and almost overnight went from almost entirely unknown to near-viral (let's say 'bacterial'), in that disposable social-media way. Unsurprisingly, it turned out Mearsheimer is a bit of a theoretical turd, with a history of blaming 'liberals' for pretty much anything and everything. In US political rhetoric, 'liberal' has two, often overlapping meanings: a fairly neutral description of a mainly postwar international political project and a sort of ritual-hippy-punching dogwhistle — so it was a bit odd to see leftoids citing his work as if it were gospel.

The essay by Yassin al-Haj Saleh that Dave Mandl sent several days ago, ostensibly about Chomsky on Syria, is relevant in this context — partly why Dave sent it, I'm sure:

> His [Chomsky's] scattered comments reveal that he views the Syrian struggle — as with every other struggle — solely through the frame of American imperialism. He is thus blind to the specificities of Syria’s politics, society, economy and history.
>
> What’s more, his perception of America’s role has developed from a provincial Americentrism to a sort of theology, where the U.S. occupies the place of God, albeit a malign one, the only mover and shaker.

https://newlinesmag.com/review/chomsky-is-no-friend-of-the-syrian-revolution/

The essay does a good job of laying out the structural weaknesses of anti-imperialist discourse from within the (supposed) empire: first and foremost it's a de facto *intellectual* isolationism. No one in 'the West' can be faulted for a systemic ignorance of the Syrian intellectual scene. New Lines bills the author as "a leading Syrian intellectual," and I have no earthly idea if that's true, or even what it means in context, so maybe he's a theoretical turd too — but, based on this essay, I doubt it.

The same holds true for Ukraine: one thing I haven't seen in the anti-imperialist arguments is many, or even *any*, citations of Ukrainian thinkers making similar arguments. That silence would make sense now, at a time when making those arguments would be untimely to say the least. But How about 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago, in less pressured circumstances? There must be some, right? Have at it, people.



These wars are a learning experiences for pretty much everyone who isn't directly involved (for those directly involved too, but that's a different 'curriculum'). Aside from the handful of people who happen to have a deep and specific understanding of regional and national politics, we're all pretty much winging it on the basis of what we thought we knew. ~Liberals who support efforts to challenge Russian expansion have their own issues to sort out — very serious issues — but what strikes me about anti-imperialists is a kind of willful know-nothingism. They don't say: "Wait wait wait, military intervention is premature and insanely risky, so give us a little time to think things through." Instead they just say: "You're fucked up."

If your argument relies on casting those who disagree with you as hopelessly benighted and *unable* to grasp the truth of what you're saying — as if there were really no difference between a money-grubbing televangelist, a crazy hawk in the US DOD, and someone who's skeptical about Russia's justifications for invading Ukraine — you maybe need to work on it a bit more. In particular, you might consider where the left (however you define it) fits into the overall structures you're advocating. Is it condemned to anti-statist margins? If so, it seems like you're consigning yourself to purely reactive position WRT an implicitly rightist meta/state (that's legit but also problematic). If not, though, it might be good to imagine — what an idea, *imagine* — what a more leftish ~state might look and act like. Brass tacks included: all those things you say *should be* more fair / free / open / transparent / equal / etc. Sooner or later, actually achieving those ideals will require the use of force in some form. A leftism that, most of all, eschews the use of force anywhere in any form is a politics of toilet paper packaging: kittens, fuzzy bears, and butterflies romping around luminous cotton clouds. It feels good, but there are bigger issues.

Pacifism and conscientious objection are absolutely legitimate stances, and no one needs me to acknowledge that. But they do have consequences. Let's say a similar logic had been applied to Spain during its revolution: non-Spanish communists, anarchists, antifascists, leftists, and all the rest said "Fuck it, Spain's just the rump of a failed empire, let them fight it out themselves. And, anyway, just look at where all those rifles are coming from!" Or Palestine: "You call 'Palestine' a country?! LOLZ, whatevz, it's their problem." How about France during WW2? Or Germany after it? If those examples seem biased, feel free to propose your own rather than grousing about mine. If you're committed to nonintervention *as such*, go ahead and make those arguments openly, affirmatively, and systemically.

Make sure to acknowledge that you're almost certainly doing so from a very particular position, that of a stable country whose integrity isn't directly threatened. My hunch: a lot of self-styled anti-imperialists would change their tune pronto if their own worlds were under attack. If so, then some of this anti-imperialist boils down to self-interested NIMBYism — and, implicitly, a kind of convenient statism — dressed up in leftist finery.

Internationalism is an absolutely legitimate leftist stance too: anti-imperialist I'm seeing here and elsewhere seems to be, more than anything else, not just intellectually isolationist in its origins but practically isolationist in its consequences. And when it consigns other differently minded leftoids to oblivion as it does to Ukrainian thinkers, it isn't clear to me what's left of its leftism at all. But let's shed that label for now. What positive vision is this anti-imperialist grounded in? What constructive change is it proposing? And how does telling others they can't possibly understand what you're saying lead in hat direction?

Cheers,
Ted
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