The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism 3031265599, 9783031265594

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The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism Imad A. Moosa

The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism

Imad A. Moosa

The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism

Imad A. Moosa Department of Economics Kuwait University Shadadia, Kuwait

ISBN 978-3-031-26559-4 ISBN 978-3-031-26560-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Nisreen, Danny, Ryan, and Ivy

Preface

People talk about the West, Western civilization, Western culture, and Western values as if the West is a well-defined entity. It is not. The West is not a homogenous entity based on geography, culture, religion, politics, or economics. Several listings of Western countries are available, but no two listings produce the same group of countries. The West is not a precise, easily identifiable entity according to specific criteria. At least seven criteria have been used to define the West and identify Western countries. If anything, the common factor that characterizes the countries that satisfy all of the criteria is imperialism. Even though the term is loose, some supremacists argue that the West is better than the Rest in anything and everything—“you name it, we’re better at it”. The West is allegedly a collection of democratic countries that uphold the rule of law, have an independent judiciary, and are corruption-free. Allegedly, only in Western countries are human rights respected. Allegedly, if it were not for the West, the world would still be living in the Dark Ages. The West, according to some supremacists, has saved the world by developing science and technology without any contribution from any country, region, or civilization from the Rest. Some supremacists talk about the triumph of Western civilization because all countries of the world are, by choice, adopting Western values. We are also told that Western civilization is facing a threat from those “who do not like our way of life”, particularly the Muslim World. It is not clear how the proposition that all countries have adopted Western

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PREFACE

values can be reconciled with the presence of those who “do not like our way of life”. Another supremacist tells us that the West has triumphed because the West developed work ethics, as well as another five “killer apps”. Naturally, the proclaimed killer apps do not include two truly killer apps, concentration camps, and the machine gun. The same supremacist believes that the British Empire made the modern world, when the truth is the British Empire has spread nothing but death and destruction throughout the world. If anything, the world would have been a much better place, had the sun set on the Empire earlier. This book has been written to debunk the myth of Western exceptionalism and supremacy. It is argued that Western democracy is not really democracy and that the West does not care about democracy in the Rest. It is argued that the West does not respect human rights in the Rest or in the West. It is argued that the West does not observe the rule of law, particularly the international rule of law. It is argued that the West does not have independent judiciary—otherwise, Julian Assange would have been set free long ago. It is argued that the West is more corrupt than the Rest and that the West has actually taught the Rest how to be corrupt. It is argued that Western science and technology was built on the science and technology of other civilizations, something that Western supremacists do not acknowledge. It is argued that what is known as “rule-based international order” is a system where the West sets the rules for the Rest to follow, but Western countries do not have to follow the same rules. Western exceptionalism is effectively Western exemptionalism, as Western countries enjoy the privilege of committing war crimes and getting away with it. Western exceptionalism is also Western narcissism, a la Deutschland über alless and Amerika über alles . Writing this book would not have been possible without the help and encouragement I received from my family, friends, and colleagues. My utmost gratitude must go to my wife, Afaf, who bore most of the opportunity cost of writing this book. I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends, including John Vaz, Kelly Burns, Vikash Ramiah, Liam Lenten, Brien McDonald, and Nirav Parikh. I would like to thank my friends and colleagues at Kuwait University, including Ebrahim Merza, Anwar Al-Shriaan, Khalid Al-Saad, and Nabeel Al-Loughani. In preparing the manuscript, I benefited from the exchange of ideas with members of the Table 14 Discussion Group, and for this reason, I would like to thank Bob Parsons, Greg O’Brien, Greg Bailey, Bill Breen, Paul Rule, Peter Murphy, Bob Brownlee, Jim Reiss, and Tony Pagliaro.

PREFACE

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I have always enjoyed discussing some of the issues covered in this book with two friends holding different views of the world: Greg Bailey and Bill Breen. My thanks also go to friends and former colleagues who live far away but provide help via means of telecommunication, including Kevin Dowd (whom I owe big intellectual debt), Razzaque Bhatti, Ron Ripple, Bob Sedgwick, Sean Holly, Dan Hemmings, Ian Baxter, Basil Al-Nakeeb, and Mike Dempsey. Basil, a great economist and thinker, has been a source of inspiration as we discuss at length various issues whenever we meet somewhere in the world. I have benefited greatly from his magnificent book, The Impact of Moral Economics, and this is why it is cited repeatedly in this book. Last, but not least, I would like to thank Anca Pusca, the commissioning editor at Palgrave Macmillan, who encouraged me to write this book. Naturally, I am the only one responsible for any errors and omissions that may be found in this book. It is dedicated to my daughter, Nisreen, my son, Danny, my grandson, Ryan, and my granddaughter, Ivy. Shadadia, Kuwait December 2022

Imad A. Moosa

Contents

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1

The Ambiguous West

2

Western Exceptionalism as an Ideology

27

3

Western Exceptionalism: Democracy

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4

Western Exceptionalism: The Rule of Law, Judicial Independence and Transparency

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5

Western Exceptionalism: Human Rights

131

6

Western Exceptionalism: Contribution to Science and Technology

175

Western Supremacy: The Views of Huntington, Fukuyama and Ferguson

203

8

The Western Economic System

229

9

Further Thoughts on Western Exceptionalism

265

7

Index

293

xi

Abbreviations and Acronyms

ABC AD BBC BC BP CAR CARES CBS CCTV CEO CIA CNBC COVID CPI CRC CSE DC DHS EU FBI FDI FDR FIFA GCC GCHQ GDP

Australian Broadcasting Corporation Anno Domini British Broadcasting Corporation Before Christ British Petroleum Central African Republic Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Columbia Broadcasting System Closed-Circuit Television Chief Executive Officer Central Intelligence Agency Consumer News and Business Channel Coronavirus Disease Corruption Perception Index Convention on the Rights of the Child Communications Security Establishment District of Columbia Department of Homeland Security European Union Federal Bureau of Investigation Foreign Direct Investment Franklin Delano Roosevelt Federation of International Football Associations Gulf Co-operation Council Government Communications Headquarters Gross Domestic Product xiii

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ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

HDI IAEA ICC ICESCR IMF IQ ISIS ISS ITV KFC KPMG LIBOR MBA MNC MP NAIRU NATO NBER NDP NED NPR NSA NYPD OECD OWS PNAC POP PPP PWC RSPT RT SARS SEC SWAT TSA UAE UDHR UHC UK UN UQ US USS

Human Development Index International Atomic Energy Agency International Criminal Court International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights International Monetary Fund Intelligence Quotient Islamic State in Iraq and Syria International Space Station Independent Television Kentucky Fried Chicken Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler London Interbank Offer Rate Master of Business Administration Multinational Corporation Member of Parliament Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Bureau of Economic Research New Democratic Party National Endowment for Democracy National Public Radio National Security Agency New York Police Department Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Occupy Wall Street Project for the New American Century Publish or Perish Purchasing Power Parity Price Waterhouse Coopers Resource Super Profits Tax Russia Today Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Securities and Exchange Commission Special Weapons and Tactics Transport Security Administration United Arab Emirates Universal Declaration of Human Rights Universal HealthCare United Kingdom United Nations University of Queensland United States United States Ship

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

USSR WASP WHO WJP WMD WTO WWII

Union of Socialist Soviet Republics White Anglo-Saxon Protestant World Health Organization World Justice Project Weapon of Mass Destruction World Trade Organization World War Two

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3

Top countries in terms of GDP per capita (US dollar, PPP basis) Variation in GDP per capita of Western countries (US dollar, PPP basis) Top and Bottom 10 Countries in terms of the Democracy Index Losing winners of popular vote in US presidential elections Ranking of countries by the Corruption Perception Index Deviations of country CPI from the average and maximum values Real minimum wages (2020 prices at PPP rates, $/hour) Rule of law indicators for some western countries Top five in terms of GDP (measured at PPP rates): 1500–1980 Top five in terms of GDP (measured at PPP rates): 2010–2050

14 15 68 77 116 117 155 268 285 286

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List of Tables

Table Table Table Table Table

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 8.1

Dictionary definitions of the West Top 15 countries in terms of development indicators Huntington’s country classification in terms of civilizations Criteria of Westernness as applied to selected countries Components of the Economic Freedom Index

5 16 18 21 248

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CHAPTER 1

The Ambiguous West

1.1

An Overview

I have always been bewildered by the meaning of the widely used terms “West”, “Western”, “Westerner”, and “Westernization”. If we can define the West as a homogenous group of countries and subsequently identify these countries, it follows that Westerners are the citizens of Western countries and Westernization means the adoption, by non-Western countries and their citizens, of Western values and culture. However, it seems that Westernization does not convert a non-Western country into a Western one and does not convert a citizen of a non-Western country into a Westerner. As a matter of fact, not all of the citizens of Western countries are Westerners. Being a citizen of a Western country is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for someone to be a Westerner or at least to be perceived as a Westerner. These concepts are imprecise, even misleading. I am yet to find anyone who can tell me, with any degree of confidence, what the “West” means, which countries can be classified as “Western” and who is eligible to be called “Westerner”. I would imagine that this would be a formidable task, even for the “celebrity historian” Niall Ferguson, who is rather enthusiastic about the West versus the Rest divide, as expressed in his book Civilization: The West and the Rest. The criteria used to designate countries as Western and non-Western produce © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0_1

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vastly different listings, and the classification of countries under “the West” and “the Rest” is imprecise, yet highly divisive. Historically, the West was anything West of Istanbul. The modern equivalent of this criterion is religion, which makes the Western world equivalent to the Christian world. If religion is the criterion used to place a country in the Rest compartment rather than the West compartment, why is it that Ecuador, a Christian country, is not part of the West while Israel (which is a non-Christian country by design) is a Western country according to some classifications? Well, it could be that when religion is used to distinguish the West from the Rest, then the criterion is not Christianity but rather Judeo-Christianity, as reference is frequently made to “Judeo-Christian ethics” and “Judeo-Christian values”. If this is the case, then Israel is a Western country, but this still does not explain why Ecuador and the predominantly Christian countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia do not belong to the West, but rather to the Rest. Even more puzzling is why Russia is not part of the West, even though it is a European, Christian, and a white majority country. But then we must remember that the Russians are Orthodox Christians, and this is probably why they are not Westerners like their Catholic and Protestant cousins in white majority countries. Some supremacists go as far as thinking that the West, narrowly defined, consists of countries that have a majority of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPS) or that the WASPS are superior to other categories of Westerners. This view has been expressed by Sam Huntington (see Chapter 7). In another sense, the West encompasses European countries as well as countries of European origin in the New World. In this sense, the West includes the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. If this is the case, then Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and perhaps all countries in the Western hemisphere should be part of the West (including Cuba). These countries, however, belong to the Rest. In yet another sense, the West comprises English-speaking countries, a concept that is definitely rejected by French Canadians (an eminent American economist once told me that he got himself in trouble by describing Canada as an “English-speaking country” in a public lecture in Montreal). The criterion of language means that Germany, France, Sweden, and Norway are not Western countries, while Singapore is a Western country. The economic criterion used to distinguish between the West and the Rest is membership of the OECD, which makes Japan a Western country—never mind that it is located in the Far East. Sometimes the

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designation does not require membership of the OECD, just being a developed country would suffice. Hence, Taiwan and South Korea should be parts of the Western world, now that they are typically classified as developed countries. If the level of development is measured by GDP per capita, or by one of the well-being indices, then Kuwait and Qatar should be classified as Western countries. Sometimes the West is represented by NATO, which makes Turkey a Western country. During the first Cold War (now that we are experiencing the second Cold War, with a hitherto limited shooting war), the West was the First World—that is, NATO plus. This is why Hungary, Romania, and Poland were not Western countries, but now that they are part of the European Union, they are Western countries—or are they? Again, it makes no sense that Poland is a Western country but Russia is not, except for the difference that Poland is predominantly a Catholic country whereas Russia is an Orthodox-Christian country, which apparently matters for classifying countries under the West or the Rest. It gets even more interesting (or ridiculous), as we often hear expressions like “Western cuisine” and “Western landscape”. These expressions make me wonder which set of countries share cuisine and landscape. I cannot see anything common among Cornish pasty (England), haggis (Scotland), hot dogs (the US), Blanquette de Veau (France), EmiliaRomagna (Italy), and Pa amb tomaquet (Spain). As for landscape, no common feature can be found among the English countryside, the Canadian Rockies and the Australian desert. A related question is that if we can identify “Western cuisine” and “Western landscape”, then we should be able to identify non-Western (or Eastern or Southern) cuisine and landscape, but this will be rather difficult. One argument that can be used to defend the West-Rest divide is that the West is more homogenous than the Rest (comprising Arabs, Chinese, Russians, Latinos, Indians, etc.). This may be evident in the “homogeneity” of Western cuisine because it is arguable that the difference between American burgers and British roast beef is smaller than the difference between Indian biryani and Middle Eastern dolma. However, the difference between haggis and Pa amb tomaquet is just as significant as the difference between biryani and dolma. A common characteristic of “Westernness” is either missing or negligible. This is also true of landscape and any other criterion that is used to distinguish the West from the Rest. As an economist, I was rather amused to read what someone wrote to complain about China refusing to adopt a “Western exchange rate

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system” in reference, I presume, to free floating. I thought that it was disingenuous to complain about a country from the Rest not adopting a Western system that makes the West different from the Rest. Of course, the idea here is that non-Western countries are supposed to do things either the Western way or the wrong way. In any case, not all Western countries use free floating—as a matter of fact, the EU uses fixed exchange rates by virtue of the common currency. Moreover, nothing is Western about free floating, as countries like Japan and Korea use this system. In the 1950s, Canada was the only country using free floating while the rest of the world was on fixed exchange rates. If free floating is a criterion used to identify “Westernness”, it follows that Canada must have been the only Western country at that time. In the strict sense that free floating is a system under which no intervention in the foreign exchange market takes place, no country from the West or the Rest follows free floating. The exact scope of the Western world is somewhat subjective in nature, depending on whether cultural, economic, spiritual, or political criteria are used to classify countries under the West or the Rest. However, no matter what criterion is used, the countries defined as comprising the West, even in a very narrow sense (such as the Anglo-Saxon world), do not form a uniform entity because vast differences can be observed with respect to any of these criteria.

1.2

Dictionary Definition and Historical Origin

The definition and identification of the West and related concepts depend on some criteria such as geography, culture, politics, and economics. In geographical terms, the West may be defined as Western Europe, Western Europe plus, or countries of the North Atlantic. In terms of culture, they are defined as countries with West European heritage. In terms of politics and military alliances, the West is the group of countries that are hostile to Russia and China (NATO or NATO plus). In terms of economics, they are identified by the level of economic development. However, none of these classification schemes produces an exclusive list of Western countries. Sometimes, mixed criteria are used, which is evident in the dictionary definitions of the West displayed in Table 1.1. These definitions refer primarily to Western Europe and North America, which means that Australia and New Zealand are not Western countries. The diversity of definitions shows a lack of consensus on what the West means or encompasses. The concept of the Western World, as opposed to

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Table 1.1 Dictionary definitions of the West Dictionary

Definition

Criteria

UK dictionarya

Any part of the world to the West of one’s own region; applied specifically to the Americas and the Caribbean, or to Europe, as opposed to the Middle East and Orient Europe, North America, and other (often relatively wealthy) countries with populations of mainly European ancestry A region conventionally designated West, stemming from the Greco-Roman traditions, relating to democratic countries of Europe and America Western countries are the democratic countries stemming from the Greco-Roman traditions “Western” is used to describe things, people, ideas, or ways of life that come from or are associated with the United States, Canada, and the countries of Western, Northern, and Southern Europe The West is the Western part of the world and the people that live there, particularly Western Europe and North America (the industrial countries of the West) The non-communist countries of Europe and America North America and Western Europe

Geography Geography, Economics, Culture

Urban dictionaryb

Collins dictionaryc

Longman dictionaryd

Merriam-Webster dictionarye Cambridge dictionaryf

a https://www.lexico.com/definition/Western_world b https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Western%20countries c https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/Western d https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/the-West e https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/West f https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/West

Geography, Culture

Geography Culture

Geography, Economics

Politics Geography

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other parts of the world, was supposedly born in ancient Greece, specifically in the years 480–479 BC, when the ancient Greek city states fought against the Persian Empire to the east. The Greeks thought of themselves as freedom-loving people, as opposed to the Persians who were thought to be despotic. Hence, the West symbolized good peace-loving people while the East was where bad people came from. Membership of the exclusive club that is called the “West” has changed over time. In the twentieth century, the political definition of what constituted the West changed several times. Between 1870 and 1945, the dominant imperialist powers, Britain and France, considered Germany to be hostile to the West—hence, Germany was not a Western country despite the huge contribution of Germans to all fields of human knowledge, which is one source of the alleged Western exceptionalism. During the Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, the Iron Curtain was the de facto border separating the West from the Rest in Europe. When the Iron Curtain fell, the West expanded because the new members of the European Union and NATO somehow became Western countries. The border of the West coincided with the Western borders of Russia, which has always been denied the privilege of being a Western country, even though the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is generally considered to be Western-style music. North America was considered part of the West in the 1850s, by which time substantial colonization had occurred. Currently, no one knows what the West is, even though the word is used as if it refers to a specific, welldefined entity. If, for example, the West is defined by a certain set of values, then it is possible to argue that all the countries of the world that share the so-called Western values belong to the West, even if they are geographically not part of the West. Thus, South Korea could be considered part of the West because it maintains “Western-style” democracy, but Cuba is not a Western country because it does not have “Westernstyle” democracy and shows no hostility towards Russia or China. One can only wonder if Cuba was considered a Western country before the Cuban Revolution when the country was effectively an American colony. Hawaii is now part of the West, but only as the islands became an American state. Everyone eats McDonald’s and KFC—in this sense, the whole world has been Westernized. One definition of the West is that it comprises the countries adopting Western values, which can be traced back to the Greeks and Romans. This is the “golden nugget” theory of Plato to NATO, the passing of Western

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values from one generation to another. For some historians, Western civilization is a progressive, linear sequence (extending between Plato and NATO), meaning that the modern ideals of freedom and democracy flowed directly from classical Greece. However, Gress (2004) argues that the notion of modern political liberty took shape between the fifth and eighth centuries in a synthesis of classical, Christian, and Germanic cultures. On the other hand, Appiah (2016) rejects the proposition that the best in the culture of Greece and Rome as a civilizational inheritance, passed on like a precious golden nugget, dug out of the earth by the Greeks and transferred to Rome when the Roman Empire conquered Greece. He points out that the libraries of ninth century Baghdad contained the works of Aristotle, Pythagoras, and Euclid, translated into Arabic. In the Dark Ages, when Christian Europe made little contribution to the study of Greek classical philosophy, and many of the texts were lost, these works were preserved by Muslim scholars. Much of the modern understanding of classical philosophy among the ancient Greeks could not have evolved without the texts that were recovered from the Arabs by European scholars during the Renaissance. He also notes that Spain, which was once in the heart of the West, resisted liberal democracy for two generations after democracy took off in India and Japan despite “oriental despotism”. The West and Western world have imprecise definitions that depend on the time period and the perspective from which someone chooses to view the world. In the following sections, the criteria used to classify countries into Western and non-Western (the West and the Rest) are discussed in detail with examples. The objective is to demonstrate that no matter what criterion is used, the concept is loose.

1.3

The West as a Geographical and Cultural Entity

In a geographical sense, the terms “West” and “Western countries” are derived from the old dualism of East (Asia) and West (Europe). According to McNeill (1997), the geographical concept of the West started as the “Atlantic littoral of Europe” (the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, France, and Iberia). Subsequently, America was added, even though it is not clear what he means by “America”, whether it is the US, North America, or the Americas. In time, the West came to encompass

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Australia, New Zealand, and all other European overseas settlements, such as the Falklands and Reunion Island. Does this mean that Algeria was a Western country up to its independence from France in 1962? The geographical definitions of the West encompass a line drawn somewhere across Europe, placing Germany (sometimes), Poland and Eastern Europe (sometimes), and Russia and the Balkans (always) beyond the realm of Western civilization. Moos (2013) defines the West geographically as “Europe from 1500, and the United States from its founding to the present”. However, the fact remains that there is no geographical continuum that represents the West. How can a country located in the Far East be called a Western country if geography is the criterion used to distinguish the West from the Rest? And why is it that some countries in the Far East are Western but no country from the Middle East is Western, even though the Middle East is closer to the West than the Far East? In any case, the geographical West is relative because the planet on which peoples of the West and the Rest live is spherical (never mind what flat earthers say). Australia is west of the US from a position on the US west coast, but the US is to the west of Australia from a position on the Australian west coast. Likewise, Europe is to the west of Australia from a position on the Australian west coast but Australia is to the west of Europe from a position on the European Atlantic coast. The cultural (or cultural-religious) definition, known as the Latin West, broadly refers to all of the countries shaped by Western Christianity (Catholic and Protestant churches), have similar cultural and ethical values, and use the Latin alphabet. McNeill (1997) suggests that the West could be imagined as a civilization that is independent of locale, implying a rejection of the geographical definition of the West. These days, the West is sometimes portrayed as including not only countries populated by Europeans, but also non-European countries that have become Westernized by adopting Western values. According to this definition, Japan is a Western country, but the contradiction here is that Japan does not use the Latin alphabet. In fact, Japan does not meet the characteristics of a Western country identified by Trubetskoy (2017): Western Christianity, the Latin alphabet, and Western cultural and ethical values. Interestingly, not even Greece (presumably the source of Western culture) meets these criteria. Trubetskoy (2017) seems to reject the economic definition of the West, by stating that Western countries are not necessarily wealthy, and the political definition by suggesting that they are not necessarily politically aligned. Accordingly, he classifies

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the following as Western countries: Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, and even Cuba!! However, Greece is not a Western country according to this classification. Taylor (2020) argues that Western culture is present not just in Western Europe, North America, and Australia, but also in former British colonies such as Israel, Singapore, and Hong Kong. For Taylor, therefore, Israel, Singapore, and Hong Kong are Western countries, even though Hong Kong is a Chinese province (and China is definitely not a Western country) while Israel is a Western country even though the country is not Christian by design and where the Latin alphabet is not used. This seems to be inconsistent with what Taylor refers to as a “certain Western cultural continuum based around Christianity that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok”. He rules out the “post-Soviet countries” as Western, even though they have a similar set of cultural values rooted in Christianity, because (as he argues) the introduction of democracy has not made many post-Soviet and post-colonial nations more liberal in the true sense of the word (open markets, emphasis on free speech, strong private property rights, an independent and impartial judiciary, and the primacy of the individual over that of the group). Accordingly, Taylor suggests that a country located in Europe is not necessarily Western in any meaningful sense. Therefore, Israel, Singapore, and Hong Kong are Western but Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria are not. For Taylor (2020), Western culture is Anglo-Saxon culture and anything Western is “perhaps more accurately termed Anglo-Saxon”, suggesting that Western values are rooted firmly in the Anglo-Saxon tradition as formalized in the Magna Carta, the royal charter of rights approved by King John of England on 15 June 1215. Specifically, Taylor identifies the following social values: legal norms apply to everyone regardless of social class; the right to a fair trial by a jury of one’s peers and the right to face one’s accuser in open court; and the right to one’s own property and the right to defend that property using deadly force. He adds that in the West, “men have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that these rights can only be deprived through due process of law”. He also suggests that in the West, both national constitutions and prevailing moral attitudes prevent angry mobs or powerful oligarchs from systematically depriving unpopular and powerless minorities of their rights. Well, I cannot think of any set of countries where these values are shared. For instance, the right to bear arms is observed in some parts of the West but not in the majority of Western countries. However,

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a common feature is exactly the opposite of what we are supposed to see in the West according to Taylor. In all Western countries, and by virtue of the economic system, powerful oligarchs run the show and deprive powerless minorities of their rights. The values listed by Taylor are hardly held in the Orwellian West where the oligarchy prevails. Freedom and democracy are being degraded under a hoax called “national security”. Kangaroo courts have become the norm in the West—to mention a few examples, the International Criminal Court in the Hague (where the defendant is either a black African or a Slav, and never a Westerner); the show trial of O.J. Simpson in the 1990s; the extradition trial of Julian Assange (but not Andrew Windsor or Anne Sacoolas); the sentencing of Steven Donziger to imprisonment just because he won a lawsuit against Chevron; and the acquittal of the police officers who brutally beat Rodney King in Los Angeles. Even when murderers are prosecuted and imprisoned, they are subsequently released by a presidential pardon, like the mercenaries who shot and killed countless civilians in Baghdad in 2014 (the Nisour Square massacre, which is described as one of the lowest episodes of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq). The alleged Western countries are so diverse in terms of the alleged Western values that this sort of collectivism is invalid. Dol (2020) defines the West as a “cultural entity” comprising “Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and countries in Western Europe”. In particular, he refers to the “cultural landscape” that originally came from Western Europe. According to this definition, therefore, Poland and Greece are not Western countries. He makes the interesting remark that the US is so vastly different from Western Europe that it cannot be a Western country. He also suggests that beyond somewhat superficial similarities, the US is “an obvious cultural, political and historical odd man out in this group”, and he goes on to identify differences between the US and Western Europe. For example, the US is the only Western country that does not have a national healthcare service. It has a large civilian population armed for the explicit purpose of resisting a tyrannical government. It has virtually no social safety net, and its richest citizens are much richer and its poorest are much poorer than any other Western country. The leader of the West is vastly different from the rest of the West.

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11

The West as a Political-Military Entity

The political-military (or ideological) definition of the West pertains to the Cold War, whether it is the post-World War II Cold War against the USSR or the present Cold War against Russia and China. The West, therefore, is an alliance that is hostile to Russia and China in particular, but every now and then, an imaginary enemy emerges to justify the squandering of taxpayers money and enriching the oligarchy that runs the military-industrial complex. Trubetskoy (2017) suggests that the political definition of the West implies membership of the countries whose dominant culture is European that were aligned against the USSR during the Cold War. They were not necessarily wealthy or even politically aligned, besides being against communism (that is, being hostile to the USSR, the World War II ally). Appiah (2016) suggests that during the Cold War, the West was one side of the Iron Curtain while the east (the enemy) was on the other side. According to this definition, the following countries are (or were) not Western: Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. On the other hand, the following countries are Western according to this definition: Argentina, Barbados, Dominican Republic, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent. The political-military definition of the West implies NATO membership, which has changed. Western countries may be restricted to the 12 founding members of NATO: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, and the US. The West expanded by adding more members to the alliance: Greece and Turkey (1952), Germany (1955), Spain (1982), the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017), and North Macedonia (2020). The West could be NATO plus, including at present any country that shows hostility towards Russia and China, including Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel. By this measure, Ukraine may be a Western country or it may not be so unless it joins NATO. During Cold War I, a new definition emerged to distinguish between the West and the Rest. The planet was divided into three “worlds”: first, second, and third. The “three worlds” model of geopolitics can be traced back to the mid-twentieth century as a way of mapping various players in the Cold War. The term “third world” was coined by the French demographer Alfred Sauvy in a 1952 article entitled “Three Worlds, One

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Planet” (see for example, Wolf-Phillips, 1987). The first world was the West corresponding to NATO members plus those aligned with NATO against the USSR. The second world was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet sphere of influence, including the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries such as Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. The third world consisted of other countries, many of which were unaligned with either, including India and Yugoslavia. It is not clear whether China was in the second or third world. One description of the third world is put forward by Mutua (2000): The Third World consists of the victims and the powerless in the international economy.... Together we constitute a majority of the world’s population, and possess the largest part of certain important raw materials, but we have no control and hardly any influence over the manner in which the nations of the world arrange their economic affairs. In international rule making, we are recipients and not participants.

What is important here is that the West was the first world while the Rest was the second and third worlds. The term “second world” has become largely obsolete following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The term “third world” remains the most common of the original designations, but its meaning has changed from “non-aligned” and become more of a blanket term for the developing world. With the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, there are now two worlds: Global North (the West) and Global South (the Rest).

1.5

The West as an Economic Entity

The West is sometimes known as the “Rich West”, comprised of rich and developed countries. Richness is typically measured in terms of GDP per capita while development is measured in terms of several indicators or sometimes by membership of the OECD. These criteria do not define the West accurately. Some non-Western countries are richer and more developed than Western countries, and within Western countries these measures vary significantly. According to Trubetskoy (2017), the “Rich West” consists of all European-settled countries whose GDP per capita is over $10,000. This definition takes away many Central and South American countries that are not highly developed, even though they are part of the West on cultural

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grounds. On the other hand, this definition includes former communist countries like Poland and Latvia. Thus, Belize, Bolivia, and Brazil are not Western countries according to this criterion, even though they are Western according to other criteria. Trubetskoy does not reveal the reason for fixing the threshold at $10,000, which seems rather arbitrary—a nice round figure. An examination the GDP per capita figures leads to two observations. The first is that several non-Western countries rank highly in the list, which means that high GDP per capita is not an exclusive characteristic of Western countries. The second is that if the West is a uniform group of countries, then the levels of GDP per capita should be close and variation is small. EU member countries have to meet the convergence criteria for price stability, sustainable finance, and other indicators to make sure that individual economies do not diverge significantly. In this sense, the West as an entity should consist of countries that are close in terms of GDP per capita. In Fig. 1.1, we can see the GDP per capita of the highest 25 countries measured on a PPP basis (provided by the World Bank). A number of non-Western countries make the list, including Singapore, Qatar, UAE, Brunei, Taiwan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. In Fig. 1.2, we observe how individual Western countries fare relative to the mean value of just over $60,000. Obviously, variation is significant. Instead of using the terms “rich” and “not-so-rich” to distinguish the West from the Rest, distinction may be stated in terms of economic development. Thus the West consists of developed countries while the Rest comprises less developed, underdeveloped, or developing countries. The underdeveloped world encompasses former colonies in the Global South in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Developing countries are typically presented as backward, inferior, and in need of “rescuing” by the West. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank send “experts” to developing countries, presumably to help them tidy up their economies by pursuing Western free-market economic policies. The United Nations uses a specific country classification for the preparation of the World Economic Situation and Prospects, a publication that describes trends in various dimensions of the world economy. If we examine the list of developed countries provided by the United Nations, we will get the impression that as soon as a country joins the EU (which makes it Western), it becomes a developed economy automatically. The list of developed economies contains Croatia, Cyprus, and Malta, but not Singapore, China, or Russia. Therefore, it is not that Western countries

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Luxembourg Singapore Ireland Qatar Switzerland UAE Brunei US Norway Denmark Netherlands Iceland Austria Taiwan Sweden Germany Australia Belgium Kuwait Finland Canada Saudi Arabia France UK Bahrain 0

20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

Fig. 1.1 Top countries in terms of GDP per capita (US dollar, PPP basis)

are developed, but rather they are branded developed when they become Western. Economic development is measured by a number of indicators, apart from GDP per capita. These measures include population growth, occupational structure of the labour force, urbanization, infrastructure, literacy rate, life expectancy, infant mortality, and the human development index (HDI). In general, population growth rates are higher in developing countries. In developing countries, most of the labour force engages in primary activities such as agriculture, mining, fishing, and lumbering. In developed countries, by contrast, most of the labour force engages in tertiary activities that comprise the service sector of the economy. Urbanization is the percentage of a country’s population who live in urban areas, which is higher in developed countries. The infrastructure

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120,000 110,000 100,000 90,000 80,000 70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000

Fig. 1.2 Variation in GDP per capita of Western countries (US dollar, PPP basis)

is better in developed countries. The literacy rate and life expectancy are higher in developed countries, whereas the infant mortality rate is lower. The human development index is composed of three indicators: life expectancy, education (adult literacy and combined secondary and tertiary school enrolment), and real GDP per capita. It is higher in developed countries. Table 1.2 reports the top 15 countries in terms of development indicators. We can see that the top countries in population growth are developing countries, and the same is true for the infant mortality rate. However, life expectancy in the US is lower than in Costa Rica, the Maldives, Peru, Colombia, and Turkey. Infant mortality rate in US is higher than in Cuba. In terms of the literacy rate, most of the top countries are non-Western, with North Korea coming on top. India, which is now a developing country, had the largest economy in the world until the arrival of the British Empire and the start of massive systematic looting

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Table 1.2 Top 15 countries in terms of development indicators Population growth

Urbanization

Literacy rate

Life expectancy

Infant mortality

Human development index

Syria South Sudan Burundi Niger Angola

Kuwait Monaco

North Korea Ukraine

Japan Switzerland

Nigeria Somalia

Norway Ireland

Nauru Singapore Anguilla

Uzbekistan Azerbaijan Barbados

South Korea Singapore Spain

Switzerland Iceland Germany

Benin Uganda

Bermuda Qatar

Cuba Estonia

Cyprus Australia

DR Congo Chad Mali

Belgium San Marino Uruguay

Italy Kazakhstan Lithuania

Italy Israel Norway

Zambia Tanzania

Malta Iceland

Singapore Tajikistan

France Luxembourg

Cameroon Guinea

Israel Netherlands

Armenia Belarus

Sweden Iceland

Chad CAR Sierra Leone Guinea South Sudan Mali Benin Burkina Faso Lesotho DR Congo Liberia Guinea

Liberia

Argentina

China

Canada

Niger

Sweden Australia Netherlands Denmark Finland Singapore UK Belgium New Zealand Canada

that made it an impoverished country. The massive plunder of South America by two other Western countries (Spain and Portugal) made them rich and developed, while rendering the plundered countries poor and under-developed. The scramble for Africa and the brutality used to extract resources (particularly in the “Belgian” Congo) left the continent impoverished. Even after the end of colonization, the use of the IMF and World Bank as weapons of mass destruction sustained the status quo that African countries are impoverished and dependent on the West. It is only natural that non-Western countries do not fare well in the league of economic development.

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The Huntington Classification Scheme

In his “science fiction” Clash of Civilisations, Samuel Huntington suggested an arbitrary classification of countries into those that belong to the West and those that belong to the Rest (Huntington, 1993, 1996). According to his classification, which is based on cultural and religious criteria, the West falls under one category whereas the Rest falls under seven categories. For Huntington, the West is characterized by the classical legacy (Greek philosophy and rationalism, Roman law and Latin), Western Christianity, European languages, separation of spiritual and temporal authority, the rule of law, social pluralism, representative bodies (parliaments), and individualism. All of these characteristics of Western exceptionalism, and many more, will be discussed and debunked in Chapters 3–6. For the time being we concentrate on the classification scheme. Western Christianity covers Protestants and Catholics and excludes Orthodox Christianity, perhaps for the purpose of excluding Russia. The Huntington classification scheme, which is displayed in Table 1.3, leads to a number of head-scratching questions and issues. Why is it that most of the Philippines is Western, but Greece and Bulgaria are not Western (even though they are European countries, members of the EU and NATO)? It is likely that 90% of the Philippines is Western because that is the Christian part whereas the non-Western part is the 10% Muslim part of southern Philippines. In any case, I am yet to meet a Pilipino who refers to himself or herself as Westerner. Oceania is Western, which is understandable if we are talking about New Zealand, but what about Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Nauru, and Tonga? Surely, Huntington did not regard these as Western countries. He entertained the possibility of including Latin America and the former member states of the Soviet Union, but then he put Latin America under a separate culture. The Chinese diaspora falls under the Sinic civilization, which means that American-born Chinese are not Westerners (and the same is true of the global Indian diaspora). Japan does not appear under Sinic civilization, but the Koreas do, because Huntington considered Japan to be a hybrid of Chinese civilization and “older Altaic patterns”. It is not clear why Chad, Ethiopia, the Comoros, Mauritius, the Swahili coast of Kenya and Tanzania do not fall under African civilization.

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Table 1.3 Huntington’s country classification in terms of civilizations Civilization

Member countries

Western Civilization

The US, Canada, Western and Central Europe, Australia, Oceania, and most of the Philippines South America (excluding Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana), Central America, Mexico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Romania, great parts of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand China, the Koreas, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam India, Bhutan, and Nepal The Greater Middle East (excluding Armenia, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Georgia, Israel, Malta, and South Sudan), Northern West Africa, Albania, Pakistan, Bangladesh, parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Comoros, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, and southern Philippines Southern Africa, Middle Africa (excluding Chad), East Africa (excluding Ethiopia, the Comoros, Mauritius, and the Swahili coast of Kenya and Tanzania), Cape Verde, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone Ethiopia, Haiti, Israel, and the former British colonies in the Caribbean Ukraine, French Guiana, Benin, Chad, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Togo, Guyana, Suriname, Sri Lanka, and Sudan

Latin American Civilization

Orthodox Civilization

Buddhist Civilisation Sinic Civilization Hindu Civilization The Muslim World

Civilization of Sub-Saharan Africa

Unclassified Cleft Countries

According to Huntington, Ethiopia and Haiti are labelled “lone” countries because they do not belong to one of the major civilizations. Israel is unique, in the sense that it has its own civilization, but one which is “extremely similar” to the West. I am not sure why Israel has a civilization that is closer to the West than that of a white-Christian country like Russia. The “cleft” countries are “cleft” because they identify with separate civilizations. Therefore, Ukraine is “cleft” because it has a Catholic-dominated western section and an Orthodox-dominated eastern part, French Guiana is “cleft” between Latin America and the West, and Sri Lanka is “cleft” between Hindu and Buddhist.

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Huntington’s classification of countries into civilizations has been criticized because it falls the realm of Alice in Wonderland. For example, Egefjord (2004) writes the following: [There] are several problems with Huntington’s concept of civilizations. He fails to explain how and why cultural factors-religion, ethnicity and language-form a civilization. His explanations of why there is a fault line between the Western and Orthodox civilizations but not between Catholics and Protestants. Similarly, he claims there are significant differences between Japan and China, but less so between China and Vietnam. And why “is fragmented sub-Saharan Africa supposed to be as unitary as the single-member Japanese and two-member Hindu civilizations?

Well, the fault line between Western and Orthodox civilizations is intended to exclude Russia from the West. This is a simple but plausible explanation. Fox (2002) identifies another problem raised by Huntington’s classification of civilizations, which is the difficulty of putting minority groups (for example, Afro-Americans in the US and Black Muslims in Africa) within the frame of any of the major eight civilizations. Indigenous people do not fit any of the eight civilizations identified by Huntington. In a nutshell, Huntington’s classification scheme does not serve any meaningful purpose, it makes no sense, and it is rather arbitrary.

1.7

The Core West and Auxiliary West

We have seen that the West is a loose term that may include a large or small number of countries, depending on how it is defined and which criterion is used to classify countries into Western and non-Western. Here, the core West is defined as those countries that satisfy all of the criteria used to identify Westernness: (i) the geographical criterion of being in Western Europe and North America; (ii) the economic criteria of having a high level of GDP per capita, being a member of the OECD, and having the label of a “developed country”; (iii) the political-military criterion of being a member of NATO; and (iv) the cultural criteria of having a majority white Christian population and using the Latin alphabet. Any country satisfying these criteria is a core Western country. Table 1.4 shows how some group of countries fare in terms of satisfying the seven criteria. Out of these, only nine countries get all of the

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ticks, which makes them members of the core West. Australia, which satisfies the important criterion of having a white Christian majority, does not satisfy the geographical criterion, and it is not a member of NATO (or it is an “honorary” member, given its active participation in the invasion of Afghanistan, which was a NATO operation). Japan is not in the core West because, like Australia, it is not a member of NATO and it is an Asian country (and also because it does not have a white Christian majority). The auxiliary West consists of countries that support the core West in whatever it does and have a white Christian majority, including members of the EU, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The importance of having a white (preferably Anglo-Saxon) majority is highlighted by Appiah (2016) who argues that lumping a whole lot of extremely different societies together, while delicately carving around Australians and New Zealanders and white South Africans, implies that “Western” can look simply like a “euphemism for white”. This is a reflection of the racism and xenophobia associated with the terms “West” and “Western”. Let us now concentrate on members of the core West. One can readily see that these countries have imperialist past and perhaps imperialist activities at present. These nine countries had colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. All of them were represented at an international conference held in Berlin and organized by Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany, and Jules Ferry, Premier of France. The marathon conference was held between 15 November 1884 and 26 February 1885 to lay down the basic rules for colonizing Africa. This is why several scholars associate the West with imperialism. For example, Appiah (2016) suggests that the very idea of the “West” did not emerge until the 1890s, during a heated era of imperialism. McNeill (1997) associates the West with imperialism and refers to the era “when the British and French colonial empires bestrode the world and Germany and Italy were, by comparison, marginalized”. For McNeill, the core West was the Anglo-French alliance, with Germany and the US gaining recognition at a later stage. Appiah (2016) also refers to the association between the West and slavery, subjugation, racism, militarism, and genocide. The description of the West put forward by Beinart (2017) is consistent with the imperialist interpretation. He argues that the term contains a pejorative meaning as it is used to “describe and delineate the wealthy and dominant societies from the poorer societies—those who are subjugated economically, militarily, and otherwise, by deliberate restraints placed on

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓

✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓

✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

OECD member

High incomea

✓ ✓

✓

Western Europe/North America

✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

Developeda

Criteria of Westernness as applied to selected countries

✓ ✓ ✓

✓

✓ ✓ ✓

✓

✓ ✓

✓

NATO member

✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Latin alphabet

✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

White Christian majority

a According to the United Nations: https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wesp/wesp_current/2014wesp_country_classification.pdf

Australia Belgium Brazil France Germany Israel Italy Japan Korea Mexico Netherlands Poland Portugal Russia S. Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey UK US

Country

Table 1.4

1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST

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them by the wealthier ones”. The West, he believes, is the “Wealthy, Colonial (slave-holding), Europe-descended (or allied) societies”. Thus, the West consists of the countries that “control the world” or “those who seek to continue in domination of others and their lands”. This is done not only through colonization but also economically through international organizations (IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc.) and the notorious principles of the Washington Consensus. Moos (2013) suggests that the West has dominated the world’s nations in political influence, military might, monetary success, and cultural dissemination, thereby setting the stage and dictating the terms for international relations. Beginning in the 1500s, conquistadors and missionaries imposed the Western world onto the vulnerable “New World” in a very concrete and physical way. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the West’s political grip on their colonies loosened, but its economic and cultural power over the world remained strong as ever. International law has been used to protect Western interests. Ikejiaku1 (2013) argues that in the past, international law was used by Westerners to legitimize colonialism and all their acts of exploitation in developing countries. In modern times, international law is predominantly used to protect, project, and promote the interest of Westerners, including multinational businesses that are scattered globally. He adds that “since the eighteenth century global events, as reflected by the application of international law in the context of the people of third-world countries, have been replete with accounts of dominations, manipulations and subjugation, schemed and master-minded by the Western world”. He concludes that the reconstruction of international law in favour of Western countries has been one key instrument that perpetuates severe inequality between the West and the Rest. In short, international law has been used by the West to legitimize or justify acts of exploitation and subjugation in developing countries. Westernization, the adoption of the practices and culture of Western Europe by societies and countries in other parts of the world, has been largely done through compulsion and reached much of the world as part of the process of colonialism. Westernization began with traders, colonizers, and missionaries from Western Europe who believed that their way of life was superior to those of the peoples in the countries to which they travelled. The peoples of occupied countries were required or encouraged to adopt Western European business practices, languages, alphabets, and

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attire. They were also encouraged to assume Western European education systems, literary and artistic standards, and to convert to Christianity. Many countries had Western types of government and military practices imposed on them.

1.8

Concluding Remarks

The tendency to divide countries into two groups, the West and the Rest, gives the impression that the members of the two groups are of two different kinds and that the groups are uniform with respect to the underlying characteristics. No matter how the West is defined, member countries differ significantly on all counts. It is even more so for the Rest. However, the underlying idea is that the West is superior to any other group of countries with common characteristics, which makes the West superior to the other groups (hence, superior to the Rest). It is much more precise to use the term “Arab countries” than Western countries, at least because Arab countries use the same language, an important common denominator. It is more precise to talk about European countries than Western countries because European countries can be identified precisely in geographical terms. However, using the term “The West” to distinguish some European countries from others makes it possible to exclude Slavic Europeans, which means that the term has racist connotations. According to Beinart (2017), the West is not an ideological or economic term. For example, India is the world’s largest democracy and Japan is one of the most economically advanced countries—yet these two countries are not considered as part of the West. Beinart also believes that the West is not a geographical term. For example, Poland is further east than Morocco, France is further east than Haiti, and Australia is further east than Egypt—yet, Poland, France, and Australia are Western countries but Morocco, Haiti, and Egypt are not. The West, according to Beinart (2017), is a “racial and religious term”, which means that for a country to be considered Western, it must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white. Latin America is not Western, even though most of its people are Christian, because the population is not clearly white. Albania and Bosnia are not Western, even though the people are white, because they are mostly Muslim. Russia is not a Western country, even though the people are white and Christian, because they are Orthodox Christians.

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It remains true, however, that the universal common characteristic of the core Western countries is imperialism. For the countries of the core West, it is still business as usual, as they indulge in invasion and occupation, covert action and regime change, as well as economic intervention by unleashing the IMF and World Bank and the principles of the Washington Consensus. Even though the term “West” is loose and imprecise, the discussion found in the coming chapters pertains to the core West and auxiliary West as defined in this chapter.

References Appiah, K. A. (2016, November 9). There Is No Such Thing as Western Civilisation. The Guardian. Beinart, P. (2017, July 7). The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump’s Warsaw Speech. The Atlantic. Dol, Q. (2020, May 27). The United States Is Not a Western Country. Here’s Why. https://quintendol.com/2020/05/27/the-usa-is-not-a-Western-cou ntry-heres-why/ Egefjord, T. F. (2004, September 10) Activating Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations: To What Extent do Civilizational Differences Intensify and Prolong Conflict? Georg Sørensen. Fox, J. (2002). Ethnic Minorities and the Clash of Civilizations: A Quantitative Analysis of Huntington’s Thesis. Cambridge University Press. Gress, D. (2004). From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents. Free Press. Huntington, S. P. (1993). The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs, 72, 22–49. Huntington, S. P. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon & Schuster. Ikejiaku1, B. V. (2013). International Law Is Western Made Global Law: The Perception of Third-World Category. African Journal of Legal Studies, 6, 337– 356. McNeill, W. H. (1997). What We Mean by the West. Orbis, Fall, 513–524. Moos, E. (2013). Did the West Define the Modern World? HOHONU, 11, 76–77. Mutua, M. (2000). What Is TWAIL? Proceedings of the 94th Annual Meeting (International Law in Ferment: A New Vision for Theory and Practice), 5–8 April. Taylor, W. (2020, November 23). Cultural Superiority Isn’t Racism: Why Western Values Underpin the World’s Best Countries. The Mallard.

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Trubetskoy, S. (2017, December 7). List of Western Countries. https://sasham aps.net/docs/maps/list-of-Western-countries/ Wolf-Phillips, L. (1987). Why ‘Third World’? Origin, Definition and Usage. Third World Quarterly, 9, 1311–1312.

CHAPTER 2

Western Exceptionalism as an Ideology

2.1

American Exceptionalism

American exceptionalism is the doctrine that America (the US) is exceptional, different from (that is, superior to) other countries. America is exceptionally exceptional, which makes it superior even to its exceptional partners in the West. American exceptionalism goes hand in hand with descriptions of the US as an “empire of liberty”, a “shining city on a hill”, the “last best hope of Earth”, the “leader of the free world”, and the “indispensable nation”. It is also “the land of the free and the home of the brave”, even though one cynic puts it as “the land of the lockstep and the home of the craven” (Tant, 2020). None of these descriptions and labels fits America (apart from the “lockstep” and “craven”) because it is an Orwellian state spreading death and destruction throughout the world by using its military might, numerous spy agencies, and the resources provided by the (exceptional) European banana republics and kingdoms that obey Uncle Sam blindly. American exceptionalism, which is an ideology, is defined in several ways. In one sense, it means that the US is unique among nations with respect to its ideas of democracy and personal freedom (Tyrrell, 2016). In another sense, the US is different from other countries, where exceptionalism stems from the American Revolution, which led to the creation of “the first new nation” (Lipset, 1996). It pertains to a nation that © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0_2

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embraces liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy, and laissez-faire economics. I am not sure how to reconcile individualism and laissez-faire economics with egalitarianism. In reality, America is less democratic than its partners in the West and personal freedom is questionable, given that it is home for 25% of the world’s prison population, most of them serving lengthy sentences without trial (sentenced following plea bargains). The historian Gordon Wood describes American exceptionalism as follows (Aziz, 2012): Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the well-being of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era; so too, did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy’. This fallacious sentiment, coined ‘American exceptionalism’, has become Washington’s mantra; it has wrought death and misery on billions.

Another characteristic of American exceptionalism is that the US has a “unique mission to transform the world”. This is unquestionable as we can see America’s footprints all around the world. America has certainly transformed Iraq and Libya, among others, from prosperous countries to wastelands run by thieves and warlords. America has even transformed its European allies from sovereign nations to banana republics and kingdoms, receiving and executing orders from the CIA and going as far as forcing the presidential plane of Evo Morales to land while flying in Austrian airspace in 2013. Right now, these banana republics and kingdoms are destroying their economies and making their citizens live in misery because America decided to fight Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood. In the Gettysburg address of 1863, Abraham Lincoln stated that Americans have a duty to ensure “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. Yet another theme is that the history and mission of the US give it superiority over other countries. When the administration of George Bush Junior was in power, the term was used to refer a situation where the US is “above” or an “exception” to international law. According to Frel (2006), this phenomenon is less concerned with justifying American uniqueness than with asserting its immunity to international law. Thus, American exceptionalism became formally equivalent to Amerika über alles during the

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George Bush Junior era. The use of Deutschland über alless was rampant before and during the Nazi conquest of Europe. This is how O’Neill (2018) explains exceptionalism: Americans are expected from birth to believe in the notion of US superiority over other peoples in other nations. The daily school ritual of pledging allegiance to the flag and playing the national anthem at sporting events—whether the Super Bowl or a neighborhood swim meet—is a given. Americans are taught that they are intellectually, socially, economically, and morally superior to any other people on earth. We believe that we place a higher value on life than others do.

American exceptionalism simply implies superiority, a concept that has been attacked with charges of moral defectiveness and the existence of double standards. Ignatieff (2005) discusses American exceptionalism and human rights and identifies three forms of exceptionalism: exemptionalism (supporting treaties as long as US citizens, including military personnel committing war crimes, are exempt from them), double standards (criticizing others for not heeding the findings of international human rights bodies but ignoring what these organizations say of the US), and legal isolationism (the tendency of US judges to ignore other jurisdictions). Another cynical view of American exceptionalism is expressed by Walt (2011) who says the following: The only thing wrong with this self-congratulatory portrait of America’s global role is that it is mostly a myth. Although the United States possesses certain unique qualities—from high levels of religiosity to a political culture that privileges individual freedom—the conduct of US foreign policy has been determined primarily by its relative power and by the inherently competitive nature of international politics. By focusing on their supposedly exceptional qualities, Americans blind themselves to the ways that they are a lot like everyone else.

Walt identifies the following myths: (i) there is something exceptional about American exceptionalism, (ii) the US behaves better than other nations do, (iii) America’s success is due to its special genius, (iv) the US is responsible for most of the good in the World, and (v) God is on our side. In particular, the propositions that the US behaves better than other nations do and that it is responsible for most of the good in the world are counterfactual, the exact opposite to the truth. As for “God is

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on our side”, O’Neill (2018) says that “leaders of many militaristic and imperialistic countries have assumed that God is on their side”. American exceptionalism has been used to sell to the public the military incursions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. The Bush Junior administration used exceptionalism to legalize torture. American exceptionalism makes America a rogue state as judged by its behaviour. This is what Palermo (2017) has to say: “American Exceptionalism” plays out in the real world: Anything the US does that violates “universal” standards of international relations—such as the sovereignty of nations, respecting international borders, extrajudicial killings, torture, targeting civilians, etc.—can be brushed off by the “whoops, sorry” defense, followed by finger-pointing at adversaries, and dismissing any criticism that comes America’s way as “a stunt”.

Some scholars believe that exceptionalism is a conduit to militarism. Rojecki (2008) argues that “American exceptionalism proved to be a resonant moral catalyst for elite media support of unilateral US military action”. Shoemaker (2014) sees American exceptionalism as implying superiority to other nations and therefore has a special role to play in world history through interventions in other countries, which is perhaps why Dick Cheney believes that the US has the right to promote national interest even when that requires military force and the circumvention of international law. Richards (2016) believes that American exceptionalism can be detrimental because “believing the US is unique and ultimately better than other countries is a precursor to believing this country and its leaders are infallible, and can therefore do no wrong”. Da Costa (2016) notes that “throughout the twentieth century, American Exceptionalism has served as a powerful hegemonic discursive instrument, justifying countless interventions in Latin American foreign and domestic affairs”. Exceptionalism is typically taken to be “exemptionalism”, in the sense that the US is “above” or an “exception” to international law, which is quite evident in contemporary US behaviour with respect to international relations. In this sense, exceptionalism is less about justifying American uniqueness than asserting its immunity to international law. Frel (2006) puts the following forceful argument:

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While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.

He adds: From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn’t feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bloadsoaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis…. Most Americans firmly believe there is nothing the United States or its political leadership could possibly do that could equate to the crimes of Hitler’s Third Reich. But the truth is that we can, and we have—most recently and significantly in Iraq.

American exceptionalism has been criticized on the grounds of moral purity. Zinn (1980) argues that American history is so morally flawed because of slavery, civil rights, and social welfare issues that it cannot be an exemplar of virtue. He also notes that American exceptionalism cannot be of divine origin because it was not benign, particularly in dealing with Native Americans. Pease (2009) mocks American exceptionalism as a “state fantasy” and a “myth”, suggesting that state fantasies cannot altogether conceal the inconsistencies they mask. He gives two examples of events that expose American cruelty and incompetence: the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison (Baghdad) and the way the government dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Arguably, the US is exceptional in more than one way. It is exceptional because it dominates the world militarily, economically, and culturally. It is the country of choice for most adults worldwide who wish to relocate permanently to another country. And America is exceptional because only Americans have walked on the moon. However, America is also exceptional because, unlike other developed countries, it does not provide its citizens with universal healthcare. It is exceptional because it has the shortest life expectancy and highest infant mortality rate among developed countries. It is exceptional because it incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country on the planet. It is exceptional because income inequality far outstrips what is found in other developed countries. It is exceptional because no other country can match the death toll of gun

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violence in the US. It is exceptional in terms of the damage and misery inflicted on countries that have dared say “no” to Uncle Sam. In a moral sense, America is exceptionally ordinary at best. Its foundational document, which claims to recognize the equality of all men (not women), was written by and for slave owners who included a description of the local population they were exterminating as “merciless Indian Savages”. It was not originally conceived as a means of liberation for all but for a privileged few who sought to recreate “a romanticized colonial past”. Gathara (2019) is right in suggesting that “in much of the non-white world, even before Trump, the US has been less the beacon of hope it claims to be and more the harbinger of death and war and colonial-style exploitation and oppression”. Yes, America is exceptional, but for the wrong reasons.

2.2

From American Exceptionalism to Western Exceptionalism

The description of American exceptionalism in the previous section seems to indicate that America is exceptional even relative to its partners and comrades in arms, other Western countries. However, since America is the leader of the West, Western countries must have been blessed with some exceptionalism of their own. Because exceptional America is the leader of the West, the latter must also be exceptional relative to the Rest. In general, Western exceptionalism is the idea that the West is, somehow, superior to the Rest, which means that it has privileges that countries of the Rest should not or could not have. Aziz (2012) describes Western exceptionalism as follows: “European countries too have been bitten by the Washington bug giving rise to what can be termed as Western exceptionalism, which effectively means that the West is above all”. Some European politicians do not shy away from putting forward the idea of European superiority. On 13 October 2022, Josep Borrell described Europe as a “garden” and “most of the rest of the world” as a “jungle”, warning that the “jungle” could invade the “garden” (PIndia, 2022). This naturally means that the “garden” should take pre-emptive “defensive” action by bombing the “jungle” relentlessly. Like American exceptionalism, the West is exceptional whereas the Rest is unexceptional. And like Amerika über alless and Deutschland über alless , the West is above the Rest (Der Westen steht über dem Rest ). Western exceptionalism is symbolized by the North Atlantic Terrorist

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Organization, otherwise known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO and its member countries are exceptional in the sense that they are not subject to international law and that they can commit war crimes at will without any accountability. It is just that America is more exceptional than the exceptional West. Reasons have been presented for why America is more exceptional than the exceptional West. For example, Hartz (1991) argues that America is different from Europe because the American political tradition lacks the left-wing/socialist and right-wing/aristocratic elements that dominated in Europe because colonial America lacked feudal traditions, such as established churches, landed estates, and a hereditary nobility. As a result, American politics developed around a tradition of “Lockean” liberalism (after John Locke, the English philosopher who is regarded as the “Father of Liberalism”). Some scholars, however, dispute the proposition that feudalism was absent from America. For example, Orren (1991) notes that aspects of feudal employment law lasted in America as late as the 1930s. Kloppenberg (2001) criticizes Hartz for viewing American politics as a liberal consensus, which he regards as oversimplification of US history. Another reason for the difference between European exceptionalism and the exceptional American exceptionalism is republicanism, which refers to the values of the citizens in a republic, a form of government without a hereditary ruling class, the belief that sovereignty belonged to the people, not a hereditary ruling class. Wood (2011) argues that “our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the well-being of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era”, and “so too did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy”. Paine (1776) expressed the belief that America was not just an extension of Europe but a new land and a country of nearly unlimited potential and opportunity that had outgrown the British mother country. Those sentiments laid the intellectual foundations for the revolutionary concept of American exceptionalism and were closely tied to republicanism. According to Tucker and Hendrickson (1992), Thomas Jefferson believed that America “was the bearer of a new diplomacy, founded on the confidence of a free and virtuous people, that would secure ends based on the natural and universal rights of man, by means that escaped war and its corruptions”. Jefferson sought a radical break from the traditional European emphasis on “reason of state”, which

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could justify any action, and the usual priority of foreign policy and the needs of the ruling family over those of the people. Perhaps some (only some) of those claims were valid 200 years ago but they are not valid for post-war America. Instead of a hereditary ruling class, a ruling class defending the rich and powerful does exist in America. Equality and the well-being of ordinary people certainly do not characterize present-day America. Kamman (1993) suggests that the failure of a workers’ party to emerge in the US meant that America was not exceptionally favourable for workers. This does not mean to say that the Labour Party in Britain or the Labor Party in Australia (and labour parties elsewhere) defend the interests of workers. On the contrary, labour parties are sometimes more pro-oligarchy and pro-war than conservative parties. At best, the two are similar (look no further than the British Labour Party of Kier Starmer and the Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Anthony Albanese—even better, under the leadership of Julia Gillard. As for leading the world towards liberty and democracy, just ask the people of Iraq, Libya, and Serbia. Even the people of Okinawa would not agree with this proposition. Against Jefferson’s wishes, America is more extreme than Europe in emphasizing “reason of state”, and “reason of the oligarchy”. The usual priority of foreign policy and the needs of the ruling class and their oligarchic sponsors is a characteristic of modern America. America started well but then followed the footsteps of the British Empire. Al-Nakeeb (2022) comments on this issue by arguing that while “Thomas Jefferson had a dim view of Great Britain and what it stood for …. Alexander Hamilton and others explicitly called for mimicking the British Empire, and they prevailed”. American imperialism and the American Empire have replaced their European counterparts. Some European countries have given up their empires and abandoned imperialism, but the American Empire is still thriving. Given the similarities between the US and Europe and the fact that America has followed the footsteps of Britain, the criticism applied to American exceptionalism are equally applicable to Western exceptionalism. The problem is that exceptionalism is nothing to be proud of because Western exceptionalism amounts to chauvinism and narcissism, symbolized by the belief that “we are different and we are the best”. The West is exceptional in the sense that it is exempt from the need to obey international law, but all other countries (the Rest) are expected to do so, including super powers like China and Russia. Israel, which is an ally of the West (or an “honorary” Western country), is also exempt from

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observing international law because the West provides military, political and diplomatic protection for the rogue state. They do not obey international law because they do not fear punishment, as no Westerner has ever been prosecuted by the ICC. If we look at the names of those indicted by the ICC, we will find that they are Arabs, Africans, or Slavs. The Westerners we find in the ICC are the judges, jurors, and executioners. Kiyani (2021) notes that “the lack of accountability for Western crimes reinforces the exceptional status that Western states hold in international law” and provides an account of how the US, UK, and Canada avoid accountability for international crimes. After all, it is a “rule-based international order” where the rules are formulated by the West and applied to the countries of the Rest only. In April 2022, Gordon Brown (a former British Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer) wrote a piece in which he opined on “how we plan to indict Putin” (Brown, 2022). I am not sure what Brown meant by “we”—I assume it is the West. Brown called for putting Putin under investigation “for war crimes and for crimes against humanity including the targeting of innocent civilians through rape, torture and mutilation, the bombing of hospitals, schools and public buildings, the breach of designated humanitarian corridors and agreed to ceasefires, and if recent reports are accurate the use of banned chemical weapons”. Well, these crimes sound familiar when we recall Western wars against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Serbia, but I do not remember Brown calling for the investigation of his former boss, Tony Blair, or his former boss’s boss, George Bush Junior. Gordon himself supported every act of aggression against the people of Iraq. This is an exemplary situation of “look who is talking” and the use of double standards. I think that George Galloway is right in describing Brown and Blair as “two cheeks of the same back side”. It was presumably the white man’s burden that gave exceptional Britain the right to issue the notorious Balfour declaration whereby the land of Palestine was given free of charge to exceptional European settlers. Illegal European settlements in the countries of the Rest have been a tradition whereby European exceptionalism is exercised. At least in the case of settlements in India, South Africa, Kenya, Rhodesia, and others, the name of the country was left as it was before the arrival of the exceptional settlers. In the case of Palestine, the name of the country was changed and the original inhabitants were forced to flee by acts of terrorism and ethnic

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cleansing. It was European exceptionalism that created this problem and American exceptionalism that is maintaining the status quo. Western exceptionalism is sometimes claimed on the basis of distorted history. For example, it is often claimed that the West played a bigger role in the defeat of Nazi Germany than the Soviet Union. It is further claimed that the Soviet Union committed crimes against civilians in the liberated countries of Eastern Europe whereas the allied Western armies liberated parts of Western Europe with minimum harm to civilians. The Western view of how World War II was won is described by Tharoor (2015) as follows: In the Western popular imagination—particularly the American one— World War II is a conflict we won. It was fought on the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima, through the rubble of recaptured French towns and capped by sepia-toned scenes of joy and young love in New York. It was a victory shaped by the steeliness of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the moral fiber of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and the awesome power of an atomic bomb.

This is not what history tells us. Starting in 1941, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the Nazi war machine and played the most important role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. For every single American soldier killed fighting the Germans, 80 Soviet soldiers died doing so. Four out of five dead German soldiers were killed on the Eastern front. The Red Army shot down by far more Luftwaffe war planes than Western forces. By the time the D-Day operation started, Nazi Germany had already been defeated by the Red Army. Following the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, Nazi Germany would have surrendered even without the D-Day operation. The cost: 27 million Soviet lives. In Inferno: The World at War, 1939–1945, British historian and journalist Max Hastings argues that the Red Army was “the main engine of Nazism’s destruction” and that “it was the Western Allies’ extreme good fortune that the Russians, and not themselves, paid almost the entire ‘butcher’s bill’ for [defeating Nazi Germany], accepting 95 per cent of the military casualties of the three major powers of the Grand Alliance” (Hastings, 2012). Tharoor (2015) notes that the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk (the biggest tank battle in history) “had no parallel on the Western Front, where the Nazis committed fewer military assets”. History Ireland (2008) takes a tally of the losses endured by the Nazis and their allies on the Russian front:

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Eighty per cent of all the combat of World War II took place on the Eastern Front. During the four years of the Soviet-German struggle the Red Army destroyed 600 enemy divisions (Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, Finnish, Croat, Slovak and Spanish as well as German). The Germans suffered ten million casualties (75% of their total wartime losses), including three million dead, while Hitler’s Axis allies lost another million. The Red Army destroyed 48,000 enemy tanks, 167,000 guns and 77,000 aircraft. In comparison, the contribution of Stalin’s western allies to the defeat of Germany was of secondary importance. Even after the Anglo-American invasion of France in June 1944 there were still twice as many German soldiers serving on the Eastern Front as in the West.

The West should be grateful to the heroism of the Red Army and the Soviet people for defeating Nazi Germany. As far as civilian casualties are concerned, let us just look at France. According to Dodd and Knapp (2008), Allied air forces dropped nearly 600,000 tons of bombs on France between 1940 and 1944. The death toll, of perhaps 60,000 French civilians, is comparable to that of British victims of German bombing (51,500) plus V-weapon attacks (nearly 9000).

2.3

Exceptionalism as a Conduit to Racism

Exceptionalism is effectively racism. The European plunder and destruction of African societies was rationalized in terms of European exceptionalism, which enabled Europeans to embark on “civilizing missions”. Gathara (2019) gives an example of the colonial state in Kenya, which was founded on “the twin, though contradictory, pursuits of maintaining both an extortionate white supremacist order—‘a white man’s country’—and the myth of a condescending paternalism in which British saw themselves as governing in the interests of the very people they plundered”. Donald Trump once asserted that the non-white world is composed of “countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world … totally broken and crime-infested places” (Gathara, 2019). It is exceptionalism that motivated imperialism, with the view of a barbarous and primitive external world requiring a benevolent white guiding hand. Another aspect of exceptionalism-inspired racism is double standards in the treatment of refugees, whether they are Western-looking or otherwise. Western countries are signatories to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which dictates that seeking asylum is a

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fundamental human right. Like other human rights, the right to asylum should not be based on race, religion, gender, or nationality. However, the NATO-Russian war in Ukraine has shown otherwise, with Ukrainian refugees given more preferential treatment by Western countries than, for example, refugees from Syria, even though both fled a war zone that became a war zone as a result of Western exceptionalism and exemptionalism. This is why Gathara (2022) notes that “Western moral deformities are on an open display amid the war in Ukraine”. The proxy war in Ukraine, according to Gathara (2022), “has exposed much more than the fragility of peace on the disease-ravaged subcontinent” and “has also revealed a mean streak of racist exceptionalism with which many Europeans, and people of European heritage, tend to regard themselves”. He goes on to cite some of the Western journalists as commenting on the situation as follows: . Daniel Hannan, a correspondent for The Telegraph wrote: “They seem so like us [Westerners]. That is what makes it so shocking … War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. It can happen to anyone”. . A commentator said the following on French TV: “We are in the twenty-first century, we are in a European city, and we have cruise missile fired as if we were in Iraq or Afghanistan, can you imagine?”. . Charlie D’Agata, a correspondent with CBS News said that Ukraine “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades … This is a relatively civilised, relatively European”. . The Bulgarian Prime Minister, Kiril Petkov, declared: “These are not the refugees we are used to. These are people who are Europeans, so we and all other EU countries are ready to welcome them. These are … intelligent people, educated people … So none of the European countries is afraid from the immigrant wave that is about to come”. . The Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki (whose country continues to deny entry to mostly Iraqi, Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers on its border with Belarus) said: “We will accept anyone who needs it. The Ukrainian society gets more afraid and stressed. We are ready to accept tens, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees”. . In the UK, which has contemplated pushing back non-white refugees into the English Channel, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reportedly said that Ukrainians can go in visa-free if they already have family in the UK.

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These comments are outrageous, plainly racist and show little respect for people who breathe the same air, except that they are unexceptional because of their skin colour or the continent they come from. For Daniel, the Ukranian refugee situation is shocking, only because these refugees look like him and his dad. The commentator on French TV (probably called Pierre or Jean-Claude) seems to forget the fact that both Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded and occupied in the twenty-first century, but that was fine because Baghdad and Kabul are not exceptional European cities. As far as this commentator is concerned, it is perfectly acceptable for the West to fire cruise missiles on Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is unacceptable that the Russians fire cruise missiles on Ukraine because the Ukrainians, though not Western, look like the Western people of France. For Charlie, conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan has been raging for decades and this is why the benevolent coalition of the willing (in Iraq) and NATO (in Afghanistan) went there to stop the conflict, even though Iraq and Afghanistan are not civilized countries (because they are not European or Western). It seems that Charlie has never heard of Mesopotamia, which was where human civilization started. Bayoumi (2022) comments on Charlie’s racist statement by saying the following: “If this is D’Agata choosing his words carefully, I shudder to think about his impromptu utterances”. For Krili, the Bulgarian (hence exceptional European) Ukrainians are intelligent and educated, but those coming to Europe from across the Mediterranean are barbarians and savages. This view seems to be shared by Mateusz the Polish (hence exceptional European). If this is what these people shamelessly say in public, what do they say in private? The preceding list of racist statements made by journalists and politicians is not exhaustive because more have been found by Bayoumi (2022). In an interview with the BBC (the Bush-Blair Corporation), a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine said the following: “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair … being killed every day”. Instead of questioning or challenging the racist connotation of the comment, the interviewer said: “I understand and respect the emotion”. An ITV journalist reporting from Poland said: “Now the unthinkable has happened to them. And this is not a developing, third world nation. This is Europe!”. This illiterate journalist needs some education in history to realize that Europe has always witnessed devastating wars of the West on the West, including two world wars and the numerous Napoleonic wars. And if this journalist needs more,

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then he should consider the following: the Polish-Swedish War (1600– 1629), the devastating Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), the Anglo-French War (1627–1629), the Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652–1674), the English– Spanish War (1654–1660), the Russo-Swedish War (1741–1743), the Polish-Austrian War (1809), the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the Serbo-Bulgarian War (1885), and the Polish-Ukrainian War (1918– 1919). Bayoumi (2022) comments by saying that “the implication is clear: war is a natural state for people of color, while white people naturally gravitate toward peace”. Remember that blaming the victim is rife in Western societies. What is even worse is that a Western anchor of a Middle East-based TV station, Aljazeera, said the following (Ritman, 2022): What’s compelling is, just looking at them, the way they are dressed, these are prosperous … I’m loath to use the expression … middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees looking to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a big state of war. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa. They look like any European family that you would live next door to.

In a statement, the US-based Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association condemned what it described as the “orientalist and racist” news coverage, in particular regarding how journalists have compared the conflict in Ukraine to those in the Middle East, which it says “ascribes more importance to some victims of war over others”. The Association aimed in particular at the use of words such as “civilized” to describe Ukraine, in apparent contrast to Middle Eastern countries, citing several examples of “explicit bias” from across the media. Gathara (2022) sums it up very nicely as follows: The irony of European powers taking in refugees created by Russia’s aggression while shutting out those generated by their own invasions and occupations is apparently also lost on them. As is the fact that while Russia is condemned as it should be for invading someone else’s country, the same countries shouting the loudest about international law and the UN Charter and resolutions are happy to ignore Apartheid Israel doing exactly the same thing to Palestinians. No calls for sanctions or isolation there. No celebration of the bravery of people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank in standing up for their freedom against a brutal occupier.

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One has to recall the interesting response of Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, when a journalist told him that he (the journalist) could not sleep because of the plight of the Ukrainians at the hands of the Russian invaders. Lavrov gave that journalist the following advice to calm him down and make him overcome the sleep deprivation imposed on him by Vladimir Putin: Imagine this is happening in Africa. Imagine this is happening in the Middle East. Imagine Ukraine is Palestine. Imagine Russia is the United States.

No journalist has ever experienced sleep deprivation because of the atrocities committed by the CIA in Abu Ghraib Prison or the numerous black sites where kidnapped victims are tortured. Well, I suppose that this is acceptable because it is done to preserve the “Western way of life”. When the West destroyed Serbia, no one called for sanctions or investigation of war crimes. When the West destroyed Libya and converted it to a lawless state, no one said that the NATO bombing was an act of naked aggression. When the coalition of the willing killed one million Iraqis, destroyed the infrastructure and engaged in acts of terrorism against the people of Iraq, the Iraqis who were defending themselves were called “terrorists” and no one suggested that the perpetrator of the atrocities should be accountable. When NATO raped Afghanistan for 20 years, the crimes committed by the “free world” went unnoticed. The West is exceptional and the Rest is not. This is why the West can do as it pleases in the Rest and to the Rest.

2.4

Western Exceptionalism in the Popular Culture

In the popular culture, the West represents democracy while the Rest (or most of it) represents autocracy and despotism. The current war between NATO and Russia on the Ukrainian territory is portrayed as a war between democracy and autocracy, and so is the confrontation with China. Those who feel themselves to be part of the West (who think of the West as “we’” and call themselves “Westerners”) tend to have flattering things to say about the West and Western civilization, culture, values, ethics, music, food, landscape, etc. The foreign minister of Lithuania, which was once part of the Soviet Union, invariably uses

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the phrase “we in the West….”, implying that things are done differently in the West, as a reflection of Western exceptionalism. Countries that do not say “how high” when the West says “jump” are described as “rogue states” and condemned by the “international community”, which agrees with the West and strives to be Westernized and become exceptional. The description of the West, as well as Western civilization, culture, and values can be seen clearly in the tale of an over-enthusiastic Westerner who defends the proposition that the fundamental assumptions of Western civilization are valid. He says the following (Taylor, 2020): Which countries do people want to move away from? Not ours. Which countries do people want to move to? Ours! Guess what, they work better. And it’s not because we went around the world stealing everything we could get our hands on. It’s because we got certain fundamental assumptions right—and thank God for that.

I am not sure what is included in “ours” because I do not know why Romania falls under “ours” but Russia and Serbia do not. It does not matter—let us just take “ours” to refer to Western countries classified one way or another. Yes, millions of Syrians have moved from Syria to Germany and elsewhere because of a civil war that was instigated by the West, which supported various terrorist groups, just because Assad was no longer in the West’s good books. The people residing in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 10 Downing Street, and 55 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré decided that Assad must go, just like they decided that Maduro and others must go (for the benefit of the peoples of those countries, of course). Yes, millions of Iraqis have moved away from Iraq because their country was bombed back to the Stone Age on three occasions (1991, 1998, and 2003), then invaded and occupied by the Bush-Blair (Western) coalition, with the active participation of the “international community”. In between those bombing campaigns, the people of Iraq were subjected to brutal sanctions whereby they were denied basic human rights. Dick Chaney wanted to “give them a harsh winter” by bombing the power grid. The atrocities committed in Iraq by the peaceloving West (bombing, torture, home raids, arson, rape, etc.) have made Saddam Hussein look like a tamed lamb. Yes, Afghanis are desperate to leave Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation and destruction, as well as frequent drone strikes on weddings and funerals that were ordered by George Bush Junior, and subsequently by

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the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barrack Obama. Trump and Biden kept on carrying the torch and marching relentlessly. Yes, the Cubans want to leave Cuba after 60 years of economic embargo by the leader of the West. Yes, Venezuelans want to leave Venezuela because of years of sanctions and attempts at regime change led by the US and blessed by other Western countries who gave themselves the right to elect a useful idiot, called Juan Guido, as the lawful president. Yes, Yemenis want to leave Yemen after years of war and starvation aided and abetted by the West. Yes, Africans want to leave Africa because the place was left impoverished after decades of exploitation following the notorious scramble for Africa. Is not that what happened to the Irish during the potato famine in the nineteenth century, following the annexation of Ireland by Britain and subjecting it to British feudal laws? Between 1845 and 1855, more than 1.5 million adults and children left Ireland to seek refuge in America. Most were desperately poor, and many were suffering from starvation and disease. Once a great man called Mahatma Ghandi said that “whenever you see two fish fighting in the sea, blame it on the British Empire”. And whenever you see people wanting to leave their country, then be sure that the West has inflicted severe damage on that country. Yes, Mr Taylor, these people want to move from their countries to yours because your ancestors went around the world stealing everything they could get their hands on. Your contemporaries are still going around lighting fire to other people’s homes, committing all sorts of atrocities and stealing everything they could get their hands on (including millions of dollars from the vaults of Iraq’s Central Bank, not to mention the syphoning of Syrian oil). When you go around setting fire to other people’s countries, you should not be surprised that those people want to move away from their countries to yours. Look no further than the starvation of the besieged people of Afghanistan as a result of the sanctions imposed on them by the peaceloving West and the looting of their reserves, which are held in New York under the care of Uncle Sam. Taylor seems to forget that millions of Westerners choose to leave the West for a better life in non-Western countries. Traditionally, settlements were created in Africa, Asia, and other places where Westerners lived like kings and queens (like maharajas and maharanis in India). Americans move away from America so that they do not have to choose between death and bankruptcy when they become seriously ill. They move to get free or low-cost education rather than graduating with massive debt. They

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move to get jobs that offer paid holidays. They move to avoid being the victim of one of thousands of homicides each year. Some Americans move out because they do not want to pay taxes to finance wars of aggression. In the early 1930s, thousands of African Americans, who were experiencing increasing levels of oppression and economic hardship, moved to the Soviet Union, and until now scores of Americans live and work in Moscow. Over decades, Jews living in the West migrated to Palestine in the East. Westerners live and work in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, countries that are accused by the West of not respecting women’s rights and abusing foreign workers. Australians move to Thailand because they get better value for their savings and retirement incomes there. Thousands of Westerners relocate to Turkey upon retirement for a more comfortable life. Taylor claims that people want to move from non-Western countries to Western countries because “we got certain fundamental assumptions right”. The West, according to Taylor, can distinguish itself from the Rest in terms of property rights, quality of life, the number of Nobel laureates, technological achievements, and a low level of corruption. Well, there is a dark side to property rights, in that what should be under public ownership (such as natural resources) is given to some oligarchs free of charge. Another dark side is that property rights were used in colonies to claim ownership of land and resources, not to mention slaves. The quality of life in the West was achieved at the expense of non-Western countries that were looted over centuries. In any case, high-quality life is not enjoyed by every Western citizen—in fact it is not enjoyed by most citizens. Surely, high-quality life is not enjoyed by the millions of Americans who do not have health insurance and cannot meet a $1000 dollar emergency. One of the Nobel laureates Taylor talks about is Henry Kissinger who, according to Bernie Sanders, is a war criminal and the most destructive US Secretary of State. Another Nobel peace prize winner is Barack Obama who authorized more drone attacks on weddings and funerals in Afghanistan and Iraq than George Bush Junior. Conversely, a great man who spent his life fighting for peace, Mahatma Ghandi, was not awarded the Nobel peace prize because the Swedes did not want to upset the Brits, their fellow Westerners who hated Ghandi. The Nobel Prize was not awarded to Grigori Perelman (a Russian mathematician and a genius) for solving a 100-year-old mathematical problem called the Poincaré conjecture, but instead it was given to American economists for absolute nonsense, including two who nearly caused a financial systemic

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collapse (because they did not have a clue how the real world worked), to one who invented the efficient market hypothesis to justify deregulation (in the process causing the global financial crisis and forcing millions to join the ranks of the homeless and unemployed), to those who make economics look like physics (in the process they harm the discipline), and to an economist who proved that slavery can be useful (for the one holding the whip). The Nobel economics and peace prizes have become a joke. Technological achievements in the West have been built on accumulated human knowledge, and until now, non-Westerners living in the West (Arabs, Chinese, Indians, etc.) contribute to these technological achievements. As for corruption, the West can be more corrupt than any place in the non-Western world. Taylor himself refers to corruption in America where top government officials leave public service and cash in on their expertise in the private sector, regardless of the crimes they committed while in office. All of these points will be discussed in detail in the coming chapters. I am surprised that Taylor did not boast about the superiority of Western cuisine, Western music, and Western landscape (whatever these are). I thought that he would say that Justin Bieber is a better singer than Raj Kapur (India) and Abdul Haleem Hafiz (Egypt). I thought that he would say that the Rockies and Alps are more scenic than the Himalayas and Andes. And I thought that he would say that McDonald’s burgers are more tasty and nutritious than biryani, chicken fried rice, and kebab. For the likes of Taylor, anything that comes from the West is superior to anything that comes from the Rest.

2.5

Western Culture, Civilization, and Values

Even though we all come from Africa, some supremacists consider Western values (whatever these are) to be universally superior. Taylor (2020) argues that “western cultural values have a universal aspect in the sense that they can be applied with success anywhere in the world” and that “these values are objectively superior to other value sets at maximizing human freedom, quality of life, and potential”. He also suggests that belief in this superiority has nothing to do with racism, in the sense that it is commonly understood by ordinary people. Of course, Taylor

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considers himself not to be an ordinary person, in which case his understanding of racism is the correct understanding. Another supremacist says that “Western culture and values are superior to all others” and makes the following points (Williams, 2017): Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan; is it morally equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limitations placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning. Thieves face the punishment of having their hands severed. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death in some countries. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to Western values?

Williams makes some valid points and his complaints about some of the malpractices in some non-Western countries, except perhaps for slavery, since Western civilization has produced the most skilful slave traders (the likes of Isaac Franklin and John Armfield, the founders of Franklin and Armfield, which was the largest and most powerful domestic slave trading company in the US between 1828 and 1836). Furthermore, his complaints are directed at certain parts of the Rest, the Middle East, and Africa. They do not do these things in India, China, Russia, Belarus, and Latin America. Why, then, are Western values superior to the values adopted in India, China, Russia, Belarus, and Latin America? The West is not free of malpractices, and not everything in the West is as rosy as Williams claims. Is it ethical or democratic to let someone die because they cannot pay for an expensive operation or a pill that costs $7000? Does it make any sense to put someone behind bars for using the wrong pronoun when referring to other people? Why are people in the West forced to recognize 100 genders and refrain from using the word “mother”? Is it right that politicians and people in high ranks, including Supreme Court judges, are afraid of defining what a woman is? Is it moral that people are homeless while their governments spend money on wars of aggression and bailing out failed corporate entities? Does it make any sense to sentence David Irving, a historian, to three years behind bars just for questioning a historical proposition? Is it moral to allow natural resources to be owned by some oligarchs while collecting taxes from wage earners and spending tax revenue in such a way as to benefit the

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oligarchs? Is it moral to confiscate ordinary people’s deposits to replenish the reserves of failed banks and pay the bonuses of their CEOs (that is, the bail-in legislation)? Does it make sense to sentence a lawyer (Steven Donziger) to a prison term, just because he challenged a big oil company? Does it make sense to allow a man in women’s dressing rooms and spas just because the man chooses to be identified as a woman, perhaps for an afternoon only (or whenever it is convenient)? Does it make sense to put someone behind bars for two years and fining them thousands of dollars for committing the crime of paying by cash? Is it ethical for a president to pardon and release from prison war criminals who killed civilians in Iraq? I could go on and on, but what I have listed are bad enough. These are the “ethical values” that Williams chooses or wants to forget. Williams does not seem to be aware of (or he chooses to ignore) some of the malpractices and violations of human rights in the West, such as the persecution of Julian Assange for exposing war crimes, inequality, poverty, homelessness, corporate power, and corruption. He should tell us why the West invades other countries and indulges in regime change and the imposition of sanctions that hurt mostly ordinary people. At one time, Donald Trump said that Iraq should give America free oil for 100 years in return for the “liberation” of the people of Iraq from a despot who killed them (except that the defenders of Western values killed more Iraqis than the despot). Western politicians become millionaires when they leave office after committing war crimes and/or rendering huge services to corporate interests at the expense of the average citizen. In some of the Middle Eastern countries that Williams does not like, the dead are buried free of charge, a task that falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health. In the West, a cheap funeral costs $20,000, which most people cannot afford. Huntington (1996) correctly suggests that “Westerners have reassured themselves and irritated others by expounding the notion that the culture of the West is ought to be the culture of the World”. This claim is based on two observations. First, according to those Westerners, “Western, and more specifically American, popular culture is enveloping world: American food, clothing, pop music, movies, and consumer goods are more and more enthusiastically embraced by people every continent”. Second, “not only that the West has led the world to modern society, but that as people in other civilizations modernize they also westernize, donning their traditional values, institutions, and customs and adopting those that prevail in the West”.

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Non-Westerners eat McDonald’s and McDonald’s has branches in almost every country in the world. However, I am yet to hear about Japanese who has given up sushi for McDonald’s, an Arab who has given up Musakhan (a Palestinian-Jordanian chicken dish) or Machboos Dijaj (a chicken-rice dish) for KFC, or a Turk who abandoned Ayran (a Turkish yoghurt drink) for Pepsi or Sahlab for American coffee. Some non-Western dishes have become as international as Big Mac: falafel, hummus, kebab, Chinese food, Indian food, Japanese food, Korean food, and Middle Eastern food. Anyone can make a burger, but not anyone can make curry laksa. Go to any food court in any mall, and you will find that people eat all sorts of food—it is not that the queues are longer at the counters for McDonald’s and KFC. Did the Russians feel any pain when McDonald’s left Russia? I doubt that as burger shops are easily replaceable. A popular cooking show on Australian TV is Food Safari, which takes viewers through different national dishes and recipes as each episode covers the cuisine of a particular culture or country. Other popular shows include Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam, My Sri Lanka with Peter Kuruvita, and Shane Delia’s Spice Journey (Middle Eastern food traditions). The celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, cooks food from all over the world and demonstrates how the British cuisine (which was non-existent at one time) benefited from the recipes brought by immigrants to British shores. As for clothing, I am not sure what American clothing is, apart from jeans, which is a brand rather than a generic thing. Not many people wear cowboy hats, let alone Scottish kilts. No one has conducted a survey to show that most people around the world listen to pop music in their cars on the way to work. Indians love their music and so do Arabs. Subscribers to Netflix can see how popular non-American movies are. American movies have become nothing more than the glorification of war and violence, with meaningless sex scenes in between. Again, Indians love their movies and so do Arabs. As for American goods, America no longer produces them—China does. So, when we talk about consumer goods, we should talk about Chinese consumer goods. Everything sold by Walmart is made in China. The proposition that modernization means Westernization is not necessarily true. Muslims modernize but they still do the Friday prayers— even those who live in the West do it, but this does not mean that all Muslims do Friday prayers, just like not all Christians go to church on Sunday. The wearing of hijab by Muslim women is more common now

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than in the 1960s and 1970s. The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is a practising Hindu who has not given up Hinduism as he Westernized. Many scholars highlight the persistency of traditional values in spite of economic and political changes (for example, DiMaggio, 1994; Inglehart & Baker, 2000). These scholars reach the conclusion that convergence towards “modern” values is unlikely and that traditional values will keep on having a particular influence on the cultural changes caused by economic development (and modernization). In these studies, emphasis is placed even more on the preservation of strong cultural specificities, as testified for instance by the debate on “the clash of civilizations” (for example, Chiozza, 2002). Even people in the West stick to some traditional values, as seen clearly in the Amish and Mormon communities. Galland and Lemel (2008) re-examine the modernization theories developed in the 1950s and 1960s, which suggested that societies were converging towards modern values, gradually abandoning their traditional values. They re-examine the idea of convergence within the context of European countries and find that, regardless of date and country, European values are still structured around a traditionalism axis. This result obviously contradicts the theories of convergence towards modernity. Westernization and modernization are two different things. China and India are modernizing without Westernizing. Even a firm believer in exceptionalism like Samuel Huntington admits that “modernization and economic development neither require nor produce cultural westernization” and that “they promote a resurgence of, and renewed commitment to, indigenous cultures”. The claim that Western values are universal leads to the implication that it is fine to invade other countries and force them to adopt Western values. It is also fine to use sanctions and regime change to make those countries adopt Western values (for their own good, of course). However, values are never universal and they should not be imposed on others. Western countries indulge in self-glorification when they legalize gay marriage, which is fine if the people of those countries want that, but even in the civilized West, there is significant opposition to the legalization of gay marriage. If some Westerners have the right to oppose gay marriage, why is it that the likes of Williams think that other countries should legalize it because this is a Western value? At one time, President Putin was condemned and called “homophobe” because he suggested that no one should talk about gay business in the presence of children. A trend that is emerging

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in the West is to call for the legalization of paedophile as a “sexual preference”. In the West, incest is tolerated (perhaps as a sexual preference). Are non-Western countries expected to tolerate paedophile and incest because that is what they do in the West? On the other hand, however, no country should expect its values to be imposed on the West—an example is circumcision and the wearing of hijab, even though wearing hijab is not a Muslim value but rather a personal choice, at least in most Muslim countries. The West is in the habit of condemning police brutality against peaceful demonstrators in Hong Kong, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, presumably because Western values do not allow police brutality. However, no one talks about the brutality of the militarized police in the US, and not many condemned the actions of the French police against the Yellow Vest demonstrators or the brutality shown by the British police against the London rioters during the period between 6 and 11 August 2011. No one talked about the use of rubber bullets by the police of the Australian state of Victoria to deal with those demonstrating against COVID lockdowns that went for over 260 days. This mentality of Western supremacy can be seen in many shapes and forms. At one time, Gadhafi was ordered to pay $15 million as a compensation for each victim who lost their life in the Lockerbie bombing (which was tragic). This is the valuation of a Western human life. Now compare this with the valuation of a non-Western life. The occupation authorities in Iraq came up with price for the loss life and limb among Iraqi civilians murdered or seriously wounded by those who shoot first and ask questions later (to defend the homeland, of course). The price was fixed at $1500 for the loss of life and $1000 for serious injury. The difference of course is that the Lockerbie victims were innocent civilians but the Iraqis are terrorists until proven otherwise. Innocent civilians can only be Westerners—most of the people of the Rest are suspected terrorists. Whenever the Western “coalition of the willing” invades another country that cannot defend itself, it is to protect the homeland and preserve the Western way of life, which the barbarians from the Rest do not like. When the barbarians fight back to defend themselves and their families, they become terrorists. The meaning of the notion of Western values is questioned by those who point out that Western countries are not uniform with respect to social values and even economic and political systems. Most Americans see the monarchy, which is common in Western Europe, as a system

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of the middle ages, while European countries see capital punishment, which is common in America, as a system of the middle ages. Furthermore, advocates of Western values are selective in what they include as Western, typically freedom, democracy, and free trade , but not Nazism and Fascism, both of which began in the West, or slavery, whose history in the West goes back millennia. By being selective about Western values, one can tautologically show that they are superior, since any inferior values are by definition not Western. Even if the concept of Western civilization is not inherently incoherent, some would argue that we should still be extremely cautious of it, or maybe even avoid it altogether, because of the way Western countries have engaged in various sorts of racism, war-mongering, and imperialistic exploitation. Kierstead (2019) notes that the legacy of the West is “irredeemably tainted”, suggesting that “we should either steer clear of it altogether, or, if we have to teach it, we should teach it in an openly and self-consciously critical way”. Western countries, according to Kierstead, have done some terrible things, and the list of Western depredations is long. As examples, he mentions the Spanish looting of the Inca Empire and the British massacre of Indian civilians at Amritsar. He also mentions violence within the West, and among Western countries, which he describes as “horrific”, including the eight million or so deaths caused by the Thirty Years’ War and the 60 or 70 million fatalities of World War II. Interestingly, Kierstead suggests that “only in the West was the cultural tradition intimately bound up with violence in a way that supported imperialistic ventures”. He gives examples of the West’s most foundational texts, which are relentlessly violent, like the Iliad, or openly imperialistic, like the Aeneid. Saunders (2017) refers to myriad d’algea (a “myriad of pains”) heaped on the heroes in the Iliad. He goes on to say: And there are, indeed, a myriad of ways to die in the Iliad. You can be eviscerated, brained, decapitated, or crushed. You can get stabbed, sliced, shot, or rock-pounded from any angle. Your eyeball may be torn out and hoisted on a spear, your spine cleft from your back, and your hacked-off head may fall to the dust with “mouth still speaking”.

Virgil’s Aeneid, which is an epic tale that tells of the rise of Roman hero Aeneas, is filled with acts of brutality. It is a story that encompasses significant episodes of deadly violence that results in numerous fatalities. Most

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acts of deadly violence in the Aeneid fail to achieve their goals and instead tend to produce tragedies as they unfold. This sounds reminiscent of the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by the West. Kierstead goes further by suggesting that the Spanish conquistadores found a ready justification of their treatment of native peoples in Aristotle’s doctrine of natural slavery, and British imperialists were still quoting endorsements of empire from Vergil in the nineteenth century. Yet, for Westerners, only Muslims are violent because the Koran is violent. The Crusaders or the armies of the Thirty Years’ War found support for their violence in Christianity. Some authors have attempted to compare Western and non-Western values. For example, Bell (2017) makes a very interesting point that because the West feels that its values are superior to those of the Rest, Westerners do not bother about studying other cultures and values. Wherever Americans go, they expect to eat American burgers and drink American coffee, because they are superior to anything else, even in the rest of the West. With particular reference to China, Bell argues that “we need to understand, compare, and learn from leading values in China’s political culture” with respect to meritocracy, hierarchy, and harmony. He makes the interesting comparison that while the Chinese read great texts from Western and Chinese traditions and often travel to Western countries to learn about the latest debates in political theory, Western universities, in contrast, seem “strikingly parochial” because “most departments of political science, philosophy, and law at leading Anglophone universities remain focused on academic debates in Western societies and resist serious exploration of Chinese traditions and contemporary political debates in China”.

2.6

Concluding Remarks

Even though the West does not represent a homogenous group of countries, as pointed out in Chapter 1, it is falsely described as the group of countries that hold certain values and follow certain rules, which makes them different (that is, superior) to the countries of the Rest, which do not hold the same values or follow the same rules. The fact of the matter is that Western exceptionalism represents Western narcissism, excessive self-love, and self-centeredness. Allegedly, Western countries observe human rights, cherish democracy, maintain civil liberties, guarantee free speech, allow economic freedom, adhere to the rule of law, and have a monopoly over scientific innovation.

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They are also allegedly exceptional because they enjoy economic prosperity, enforce private property rights, and have an independent judiciary. The West is the land of the free where transparency rules out corruption and where the media are free and independent. By contrast, countries of the Rest are unexceptional: they have contributed very little, or nothing, to science and technology, they violate human rights and civil liberties, and they do not follow the rule of law. The countries of the Rest do not believe in economic freedom and do not enjoy economic prosperity because of their reluctance to surrender their economic affairs to the almighty market. These views are not shared by all Westerners. For example, a great American journalist, Chris Hedges, said the following as an intro for his programme, On Contact, which he presented on RT America before its closure by the US authorities: Our culture is awash with lies, dominated by streams of never ending electronic hallucinations that merge facts with fiction until they are indistinguishable. We have become the most illusioned society on earth. Politics is a species of endless and meaningless political theatre. Politicians have morphed into celebrities. Our two ruling parties are in reality one party: the corporate party. Those who attempt to puncture this vast breathless universe of fake news designed to push through the cruelty and exploitation of the neoliberal order are pushed so far to the margins of society, including by a public broadcasting system that have sold its sole for corporate money.

Appiah (2016) casts a shadow of doubt on the very concept of “Western culture” by saying the following: The values of liberty, tolerance and rational inquiry are not the birthright of a single culture. In fact, the very notion of something called ‘western culture’ is a modern invention. I think you should give up the very idea of western civilisation. It is at best the source of a great deal of confusion, at worst an obstacle to facing some of the great political challenges of our time. I believe western civilisation is not at all a good idea, and western culture is no improvement.

In the next four chapters, we explore various aspects of Western exceptionalism. In Chapter 3, we examine the alleged adherence to democracy.

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In Chapter 4, we deal with the issues of rule of law, judicial independence, and corruption. In Chapter 5, we look at the record of Western countries with respect to human rights. In Chapter 6, we evaluate the alleged unique contribution of the West to science and technology. As we saw in Chapter 1, one point to bear in mind is that the West is not a homogenous entity. In the following discussion, ascribing something to the West does not mean that all those labelled Western countries are so, but that at least one Western country is so. For example, when we say that the West does not respect the human right of access to social services, this is definitely true of the US but not of Norway. Since the West describes itself as a homogenous entity, this will be taken to imply that the West does not respect the human right of access to social services. After all, the US is the leader of and the role model for the West.

References Al-Nakeeb, B. (2022). The Impact of Moral Economics: Improving Lives. New York (Private Publication). Appiah, K. A. (2016). There is No Such Thing as Western Civilisation, The Guardian, 9 November. Aziz, M. A. (2012). Western Exceptionalism, Countercurrents.org, 25 September. Bayoumi, M. (2022). They are ‘Civilised’ and ‘Look Like us’: The Racist Coverage of Ukraine, The Guardian, 3 March. Bell, D. A. (2017). Comparing Political Values in China and the West: What Can be Learned and Why it Matters. Annual Review of Political Science, 20, 93–110. Brown, G. (2022). How we Plan to Indict President Putin at the International Criminal Court, The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown, 14 April. Chiozza, G. (2002). Is There a Clash of Civilizations? Evidence from Patterns of International Conflict and Involvement, 1946–1997. Journal of Peace Research, 6, 711–734. Da Costa, I. D. P. (2016). The Influence of American Exceptionalism on Latin American Foreign Affairs: A Case Study of Guantánamo Bay Cuba. Encuentro Latinoamericano, 3, 34–49. DiMaggio, P. (1994). Culture and Economy. In N. J. Smelser and R. Swedberg (Eds.), The Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton University Press. Dodd, L. A., & Knapp, A. (2008). How Many Frenchmen Did you Kill? British Bombing Policy towards France (1940–1945). French History, 22, 469–492. Frel, J. (2006). Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes? AlterNet, 11 July. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/38604/

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Galland, O., & Lemel, Y. (2008). Tradition vs. Modernity: The Continuing Dichotomy of Values in European Society. Revue Française De Sociologie, 49, 153–186. Gathara, P. (2019). Trump’s Racism and American Exceptionalism, Aljazeera, 18 July. Gathara, P. (2022). Covering Ukraine: A Mean Streak of Racist Exceptionalism, Aljazeera, 1 March. Hartz, L. (1991). The Liberal Tradition in America. Mariner Books. Hastings, M. (2012). Inferno: The World at War, 1939–1945. Vintage. History Ireland. (2008). Stalin’s Victory? The Soviet Union and World War II , January/February. Huntington, S. P. (1996). The West Unique, Not Universal. Foreign Affairs, 75, 28–46. Inglehart, R., & Baker, W. E. (2000). Modernization, Cultural Change and the Persistence of Traditional Values. American Sociological Review, 65, 19–51. Ignatieff, M. (2005). American Exceptionalism and Human Rights. Princeton. Kamman, M. (1993). The Problem of American Exceptionalism, American Quarterly, 45, 1–43 (43 Kierstead, J. (2019). Is Western Civilization Uniquely Bad? Quillette, 15 January. Kiyani, A. G. (2021). Deconstructing (Western) Exceptionalism for International Crimes, Verfassungsblog, 5 October. Kloppenberg, J. T. (2001). In Retrospect: Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America. Reviews in American History, 29, 460–478. Lipset, S. M. (1996). American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged. Norton. O’Neill, G. (2018). How American Exceptionalism is Used to Sell War, 11 June. https://www.mintpressnews.com/american-exceptionalism-mythand-the-selling-of-u-s-domination/243766/ Orren, K. (1991). Belated Feudalism: Labor, the Law and Liberal Development in the United States. Cambridge University Press. Paine, T. (1776). Common Sense. R. Bell. Palermo, J. A. (2017). American Exceptionalism on Display in Syria, Huffpost, 20 September. Pease, D. E. (2009). The New American Exceptionalism. University of Minnesota Press. PIndia. (2022). Europe is Garden, Rest of the World is Jungle, 14 October. Richards, C. (2016). War and the Hypocrisy of American Exceptionalism, The Daily Utah Chronicle, 27 September. Ritman, A. (2022). Racist and Orientalist: CBS, Al Jazeera Criticized for “Explicit Bias” in Reporting on Ukraine Invasion, The Hollywood Reporter, 28 February. Rojecki, A. (2008). Rhetorical Alchemy: American Exceptionalism and the War on Terror. Political Communication, 25, 67–88.

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Saunders, B. (2017). What Should We Do with the Violence in the Iliad? 24 January. https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/what-should-we-doviolence-iliad. Shoemaker, S. (2014). American Exceptionalism and Our Newest War, The Public, November. Tant, E. (2020). Study Shows Pandemics Can Give Rise to Fascism, Flagpole, 27 May. Taylor, W. (2020). Cultural Superiority Isn’t Racism: Why Western Values Underpin the World’s Best Countries, The Mallard, 23 November. Tharoor, I. (2015). Don’t Forget How the Soviet Union Saved the World from Hitler, Washington Post, 8 May. Tucker, R. W., & Hendrickson, D. C. (1992). Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson. Oxford University Press. Tyrrell, I. (2016). What, Exactly, is ‘American Exceptionalism’? The Week, 21 October. Walt, S. (2011). The Myth of American Exceptionalism, Foreign Policy, 11 October. Williams, W. E. (2017). Why Western Culture and Values are Superior, TimeNews, 28 July. Wood, G. S. (2011). The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States. Penguin. Zinn, H. (1980). A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present. Harper & Row.

CHAPTER 3

Western Exceptionalism: Democracy

3.1 The West’s Attitude Towards Democracy in the Rest The West always invokes the phrase “democracy versus autocracy” in justification of wars of aggression, deliberate regime change, and even war crimes and crimes against humanity. After all, the Anglo-American killing machine murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians in the process of “liberating” Iraq from “autocracy” while “defending the homeland and innocent civilians back home from Iraqi terrorists”. For some, including Madeline Albright, the price was worth it because what we have today is a “democratic” Iraq. A better description of the status quo in Iraq is that it is an occupied country that is run by thieves under the very eyes of the occupation forces. In reality, the Anglo-American “liberation” of Iraq has replaced one thieve with thousands of thieves. Westerners do not seem to understand that their style of democracy may put in power some of the most depraved and incompetent leaders, if not outright war criminals. At best they are not mature enough to lead countries and take decisions on war and peace. Look no further than the young prime minister of Finland who, in August 2022, was caught on camera in a wild teenage-style drunken party. Apparently she does that regularly and threatens Russia in between. Another example is Liz Truss, the self-confessed Zionist who came up with the “great” idea that the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0_3

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cost of living crisis can be alleviated by cutting taxes for the rich and financing the tax cuts by borrowing. This was Trussonomics at its best. Eventually, she was proved so wrong that she had to give the throne to Rishi Sunak in a very undemocratic process whereby Sunak was crowned by the Conservative Party establishment rather than elected by the people. The issue of democracy versus meritocracy is discussed by Bell (2017) with respect to the West versus the Rest, based on the notion of “ideal of a vertical democratic meritocracy”—meaning democracy at lower levels of government, with the political system becoming progressively more meritocratic at higher levels of government (Bell, 2015). He explains why Western-style democracy may produce perverse outcomes compared to meritocracy and suggests that political meritocracy is a more consistent theme in the history of Chinese political culture. This is unacceptable in the West, because Western democracy puts in power people who can be manipulated easily for the benefit of the oligarchy. Bell also considers equality (which is falsely claimed in the West) versus hierarchy (which is falsely denied in the West), arguing that in reality “all complex and largescale societies need to be organized along certain hierarchies”, which is true in the West as much as it is true in China. The last issue discussed by Bell is harmony versus freedom. While freedom is supposed to be the name of the game in the West, there are two provisos. One is that freedom in the West is not the freedom of ordinary people from poverty, illness, and illiteracy, but rather the freedom of the oligarchy to do what it takes to suck the blood of the society. The second proviso is that in those Western countries bragging about freedom, someone can go jail for expressing a view, disputing a historical fact or referring to someone by the wrong pronoun. Bell (2017) argues that that what is important in China is the Confucian ideal of harmony, which aims for peaceful order. The way Western countries look at democracy in the Rest is that democracy is fine as long as long as “we” get a ruler who is sympathetic to our interests. If democracy in a particular country in the Rest produces a leader who allows Western military bases and grants Western corporate interests free access to natural resources and markets, then democracy is great. However, when democracy produces a leader who stands up for the interests of his own people, then democracy is bad and something must be done to get rid of the “despot”, such as sanctions, regime change, bombing, and eventually invasion and occupation. What the West wants from democracy in the Rest is the election of a leader who says “how

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high” when he or she is told to jump. This is why I like the motto “Be nice to America or democracy will come to your country”. Plenty of examples illustrate the attitude of the West towards democracy in the Rest. Hugo Chávez won several free elections in Venezuela because he adopted policies to divert resources from the oligarchy and multinationals to ordinary people, which is the right thing to do. For the same reason, America and the West claimed consistently that Chavez rigged the election and that he was a dictator who destroyed the country by pursuing “socialist policies”. This is strange because a former US president, Jimmy Carter, said the following in September 2012: “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world”. Carter, who observes and monitors elections around the world, praised Venezuela for “having a voting system that makes verifying results an easy task” (Business Wire, 2012). Because Chavez did not say “how high” when the West said “jump”, he was a dictator and a despot who must go. Brutal sanctions have been imposed on the people of Venezuela, just because they exercised their democratic rights the way they wanted, not the way the CIA wanted. Attempts at regime change have been frequent. Things became worse following the democratic election of Nicolás Maduro, a former bus driver, in 2013. This time the West went further and appointed a new president while the democratically elected president was still around. With the blessing of the CIA, Juan Guaidó declared himself president on 23 January 2019. Even though the United Nations recognizes the Maduro government as the legal representative of Venezuela, some 60 countries (Western countries and some members of the “international community” that support the West) recognize Guaidó as the legitimate president. Guaidó was invited to attend the 2020 state of the union speech in Washington where he was addressed as “Mr President” by Trump at the midst of his speech. Democrats and Republicans applauded as Guaidó stood when Trump described him as the “legitimate president of Venezuela” and addressed him as “Mr President”. In September 2019, a group of former Venezuelan troops who had fled to neighbouring Colombia trained and prepared for a daring mission: to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. According to the plan, American helicopters would transport Maduro to the US, where he is wanted on drug trafficking charges, allowing Juan Guaidó to take over as the country’s new president. The plot was foiled as Maduro’s forces killed eight Venezuelan members of the raiding team and arrested another 13

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members, including two Americans. The West supported Guido because he had promised US oil companies milk and honey. Reportedly, his envoy to the US conveyed a message in which he promised to allow foreign private oil companies a greater stake in joint ventures with its state-owned oil company (Embury-Dennis, 2019). Venezuela is just one example of many. Another example involves two Russian presidents: Yeltsin and Putin. Yeltsin was a “democratically elected leader” because he allowed the oligarchy and multinationals to plunder Russia like never before. Putin, on the other hand, is a dictator because he restored the dignity of Russia and put an end to its rape. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also known as Lula, was (and now he is back as) the democratically elected president of Brazil that the West does not like because he is “lefty”, since he presided over a golden period that lifted some 30 million Brazilians from poverty. Somehow, he was found guilty of money laundering and corruption in 2017 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, which prevented him from running in the elections that brought Jair Bolsonaro (Trump of the Tropics who praises military dictatorships) to power. During his term as president, Bolsonaro scaled back the enforcement of environmental laws and opened indigenous lands to commercial exploitation—and this is why the West loves him. Fortunately for Brazilians, Lula has made a comeback as he was elected president in 2022. Evo Morales is another leader from South America who was disliked by the West and forced to resign after a military coup that took place on 10 November 2019. He was the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Morales was “bad” even though during his tenure as president (2006– 2019) GDP grew by 50%, poverty went down by 42%, extreme poverty by 60%, unemployment was cut in half, and government revenue from hydrocarbons increased nearly seven-fold. According to Morgan (2019), who thinks that “American imperialism and interventionist foreign policy is a threat to democracies everywhere”, the coup against Morales “was not led by the popular demands of the people, but far-right, anti-indigenous forces”. He goes on to say that “anyone familiar with the history of Latin America will be able to see through the imperialist narrative that portrays the coup as a win for democracy”. Morales was somehow replaced by another self-proclaimed president, Jeanine Anez, the Bolivian Guido. Fortunately for the people of Bolivia, she is no longer in power as democracy appeared victorious.

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Another notorious story from South America is that of the intervention of American imperialism in Chile in 1973 when the CIA backed a military coup to overthrow the democratically elected President Salvador Allende. With American blessing, Allende was replaced by a fascist dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who placed tens of thousands in internment camps, tortured thousands of others, and violently suppressed any opposition to his rule. Pinochet was just one case of over a dozen US-backed far-right military coups throughout Latin America in the past century. Under these violent and anti-democratic conditions, free-market capitalism thrived, neoliberalism flourished, and (of course) American corporations were able to exploit the land and the people of Chile. Yet another story is that of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Lumumba was the leader of the struggle for independence, who was seen as one of the most prominent voices in Africa’s anti-colonial movement. Little Belgium, which relinquished control of Congo in 1960, viewed Lumumba as a barrier to its efforts to maintain influence and hold on to important economic interests. In a famous speech on independence day, in front of Belgian dignitaries (including King Baudouin) Lumumba castigated Belgium by saying that the Congolese had been held in “humiliating slavery”. The Belgians were stunned as a black African had never dared speak like this in front of Europeans. Lumumba was toppled as prime minister just over two months later. In January 1961, with the tacit backing of Belgium, he was shot by a firing squad. Under Belgian supervision, his body was hacked to pieces and dissolved in sulphuric acid. One of his teeth was taken as a trophy by a Belgian officer who participated in the crime. The US had plotted to assassinate Lumumba because he was sympathetic to the USSR (see, for example, Zane, 2022). From the 1950s’ Iran comes the next story. On 19 August 1953, a coup d’état led to the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh to strengthen the pro-Western monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who hardly believed in democracy. The coup was orchestrated by the Anglo-American alliance because Mosaddegh had sought to audit the documents of the AngloIranian Oil Company (a British corporation) in order to verify that the Company was paying the contracted royalties to Iran, and to limit its control over Iranian oil reserves. When the Company refused to cooperate with the Iranian government, parliament voted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry and to expel foreign corporate representatives from

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the country. In August 2013, the US government formally acknowledged the American role in the coup by releasing previously classified documents. The CIA was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security, and army high-ranking officials, as well as promoting pro-coup propaganda. It was declared that the coup was carried out “under CIA direction” and “as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government” (Merisa & Hanna, 2013; Norton-Taylor, 2013). A recent case of regime change was witnessed in Pakistan as the democratically elected prime minister, Imran Khan, was deposed in a USinstigated (or at least blessed) coup for the crime of travelling to Russia to cut oil and gas deals for the benefit of the Pakistani people. The American principle of “you are either with us or with the enemy” was invoked as a reason to oust Khan, which actually resembles the ousting of the Iranian prime minister in the 1950s. While the US did not openly condemn Imran Khan’s visit to Russia, it certainly pressurized Pakistan to condemn Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, which Pakistan never did. The removal of Khan from power was accompanied by a crackdown on all sorts of freedom, which the West is supposed to defend. In an open letter to the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Noam Chomsky described the media crackdown as “fascist in nature and against the basic tenets of any functioning democracy” and referred to “blatant acts of harassment, intimidation, and censorship against Pakistan’s media” (Chomsky, 2022). Subsequently, it was announced that Khan would not be allowed to stand for public office again. He was even shot. An “undemocratic” country of the Rest may be subjected to sanctions, regime change, bombing, and even invasion. Sometimes the label “communist”, is used to make a stronger case for intervention. Take, for example, the case of Guatemala and the rest of the “banana republics”. In 1953, the US began a covert operation to overthrow the Guatemalan government under Jacobo Arbenez. The process began by labelling the government of Guatemala as “communist”, which is (or at least was) a common pretext to launch a war of aggression. According to William Blum (2004), intervention in Guatemala was the product of lobbying by the United Fruit Company, which had significant holdings within Guatemala and felt threatened when the Guatemalan government decided to compete with the company. Numerous officials, such as President Eisenhower’s under-secretary of state (and formerly director of the CIA) Walter Beedle Smith, were candidates for executive positions in the

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company while helping to plan the intervention (Blum, 2004). The coup was successful, which enabled the United Fruit Company to keep its holdings and preserve its profits. Take also the story of how Honduras became a banana republic. In 1910, the founder of the Cuyamel Fruit Company, Sam Zemurray, bought 6070 hectares on the Caribbean coast of Honduras for use by the Cuyamel Fruit Company. In 1911, Zemurray conspired with Manuel Bonilla, an ex-president of Honduras (1904–1907), and the American mercenary General Lee Christmas, to overthrow the civil government of Honduras and install a military government that was friendly to foreign business (never mind about democracy). The campaign was successful as Miguel R. Dávila (1907–1911) was replaced by General Manuel Bonilla (1912–1913). The West, particularly the US, is notorious for intervening, covertly or overtly, against democracy in other countries. For example, Tharoor (2016) explains American involvement as follows: The United States does have a well-documented history of interfering and sometimes interrupting the workings of democracies elsewhere. It has occupied and intervened militarily in a whole swath of countries in the Caribbean and Latin America and fomented coups against democratically elected populists….. Aside from its instigation of coups and alliances with right-wing juntas, Washington sought to more subtly influence elections in all corners of the world.

The most notorious cases of American interventions, according to Tharoor (2016), were the ousting of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, the removal and assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961, and the violent toppling of socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende. These interventions have nothing to do with defending democracy and everything to do with economic and commercial interests. Defending democracy is a convenient excuse to get “our guy” in power even if “their guy” is a despot or someone who would never make it in a fair election. Defending democracy is the excuse used to subvert democracy for economic gains. Double standards are applied to issues related to democracy. Cuba, for example, has been under sanctions for over half a century on the grounds that it is not democratic. The stated purpose of the Cuban Democracy Act

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of 1992 is to maintain sanctions on Cuba as long as the Cuban government refuses to move towards “democratization and greater respect for human rights”. No one says that Cuba is a democratic country, but a country under siege, economic warfare, and a constant threat of regime change or an invasion cannot afford the luxury of democracy. British democracy was suspended during World War II (in 1945 the first general election was held since 1935). Furthermore, Cuba was not a democracy under the regime of Fulgencio Batista—it was a military dictatorship that was overthrown by the Cuban Revolution that began in July 1953. The pre-Castro era was largely characterized by a deeply ingrained tradition of corruption where political participation resulted in opportunities for elites to engage in wealth accumulation (Diaz-Briquets, 2006). Cuba was the brothel of the Western hemisphere, an island inhabited by degraded and hungry people, whose main occupation was to cater to American tourists at Havana’s luxurious hotels. American nostalgia with respect to Cuba was not about lost democracy (since there was no democracy) but rather about the loss of brothels and casinos. Israel is supported unconditionally by the West for being “the only democracy in the Middle East”. Israel is a serial breaker of international law, refusing to obey Security Council Resolutions to withdraw from the occupied West Bank where settlements are built illegally to accommodate new immigrants. It is fine for democratic Israel, which believes in the collective punishment of the Palestinians living under a brutal military occupation, to annex the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Compare this with Iraq, that was bombed back to the Stone Age for the (wrongful) invasion of Kuwait in 1990, but not for the invasion of Iran in 1980. It is fine for Israel to own a nuclear arsenal but Iran is condemned and subjected to sanctions for a peaceful nuclear programme. Israel is exempt from inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but North Korea is condemned for testing missiles that it needs to defend itself against lurking and ever present danger. It is fine for Israel to keep the population of Gaza in a concentration camp and shoot Palestinian (even American) journalists with impunity. It is fine for Israel even to attack an American naval vessel, killing 34 crew members and wounding 171 (the USS Liberty that was attacked by the Israeli Air Force on 8 June 1967). Yet, Israel has never been threatened with sanctions, neither has it been condemned by a Security Council resolution, thanks to the American Veto.

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The West uses democracy to support separatist movements in the countries that are not-Western inclined. For example, those who raise US and British flags in the Hong Kong Parliament are called “pro-democracy” activists and the Hong Kong police is condemned for being tough on them. Well, I do not believe that flowers will be thrown on anyone raising a Chinese or a Russian flag in the British Parliament or US Capitol. It is an open secret that The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is funded by the US government, provides financial aid to the Hong Kong rioters and vandalists. The NED funds are used to co-ordinate and weaponize non-governmental and social organizations with the capacity to put tens of thousands of misdirected, idealistic, and alienated youth on the streets (see, for example, Flounders, 2019). Many of the demonstrators in Hong Kong were Westerners, instructing the Hong Kong rioters on the art of destabilization. The disruptive actions involve helmeted and masked protesters using petrol bombs, flaming bricks, arson, and steel bars against the police. Among the most provocative acts was an organized break-in at the Hong Kong legislature where “activists” vandalized the building and raised the British flag. On 3 July 2019, the China Daily explained the situation as follows: The ideologues in Western governments never cease in their efforts to engineer unrest against governments that are not to their liking, even though their actions have caused misery and chaos in country after country in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Now they are trying the same trick in China.

In the 155 years it ruled Hong Kong, Britain denied rights to millions of workers. There was no elected government, no right to a minimum wage, unions, decent housing or healthcare, and certainly no freedom of the press or freedom of speech. These basic democratic rights were not even on the books in colonial Hong Kong. The British governor of Hong Kong was never elected but appointed in London, and he ruled with absolute authority. The last British governor, Chris Patten, was appointed in 1992 as “compensation” for losing his parliamentary seat in the 1992 general election, because he was high up in the Conservative Party establishment. Now Britain is complaining about the unelected person appointed by Beijing to run Hong Kong. This is hypocrisy on a monumental scale.

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In short, the West does not respect democratic outcomes in countries of the Rest, opting instead to choose the stooges who run those countries. It is not a matter of democracy versus autocracy but a good dictator versus a bad dictator. A democratically elected leader is not approved unless he or she is pro-Western. The same dictator can be good or bad, depending on the change in attitude. For example, Saddam Hussein was a good dictator, supported by the West when he fought a proxy war against Iran in the 1980s. However, he became a despot who “gassed his own people” when the attitude changed. The West dictates how other countries should govern themselves and who is allowed to govern them. It is not the rule of people, as democracy is supposed to be, but rather the rule of the West.

3.2

Western Democracy

Westerners are proud of their democracy—the motto goes as follows: “if we do not like a government we vote them out”. That is right—they get rid of Tweedledum and replace that with Tweedledee. In most Western democracies (particularly in the Anglo, Five-Eye countries), two major parties dominate the political scene: Democrats and Republicans in the US, Tory and Labour in the UK, Liberal and Labor in Australia, Labour and National in New Zealand, and Liberal and Conservative in Canada. The two major parties typically share the same view of the world and pursue similar policies, but they do quarrel every now and then about something trivial. They would, for example, disagree on whether or not a big tree in front of the Parliament Building should be removed, or where the new airport should be located, but they would not disagree on something major like a war. In Western democracies, people can vote to change faces, replacing an ugly face with another ugly face, but they cannot vote to change policies because ugly faces pursue the same policies. In May 2022, the Australian Labor party won the general election and a government led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese replaced the government of Scott Morrison. Australian wine producers were hoping that the new government would reduce tension with China, which was unnecessary to start with, so that they could sell their wine in the massive Chinese market. People were also hoping that the new prime minister would call for the release of Julian Assange, who is an Australian citizen, particularly because Albanese called for Assange’s release when he was in opposition. Alas, nothing happened. The new government is as hawkish towards China as the previous one, and the prime minister, now that

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he is in power, no longer knows Julian Assange (taking the attitude of “Julian who?”). In 2003, the then Prime minister, John Howard, held hands with the then opposition leader, Kim Beasley, as they went to see off the Australian troops departing for Iraq to take part in the brutal Anglo-American assault on the Iraqi people. Their mission was to kill Iraqi civilians in defence of Australian “national security”. In 1991, the Conservative government of John Major participated actively in the destruction of Iraq, and in 2003 the Labour government of Tony Blair participated in the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. George Bush, a Republican, ordered thousands of drone attacks on weddings and funerals in Iraq and Afghanistan. His Democratic successor, Barrack Obama, doubled the number of drone attacks. Rishi Sunak has maintained his predecessors’ policy of pouring fuel on fire in the NATORussia war. The first overseas phone call that he made as prime minister was to Zelensky to reassure him that Britain would keep on fighting Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood. It is also unlikely that Sunak would do the right thing and release Julian Assange. It is true in general that there is more democracy in the West than in the Rest, but Western democracy is not as glamorous as it is portrayed to be. The Economist Intelligence Unit has come up with the democracy index, which is calculated from 60 indicators grouped into five different categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. Accordingly, countries are classified into one of four categories: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes. Figure 3.1 displays the top ten and bottom ten countries in terms of the democracy index, which shows that the top 10 countries (all classified as full democracies) are Western countries, with the exception of Taiwan, which is a Western protectorate. All of the bottom ten countries are from the Rest. What is interesting, however, is that most of the Western countries are classified under flawed democracy, including the following: France, Spain, US, Estonia, Portugal, Czech Republic, Italy, Greece, Slovenia Belgium, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Romania. Israel, dubbed “the only democratic country in the Middle East”, is also classified under flawed democracy. The democracy index, however, is not free of flaws itself to make us believe these rankings without scrutiny. For example, the index has been criticized by Tasker (2016) as follows:

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Top Ten Norway New Zealand Finland Sweden Iceland Denmark Ireland Taiwan Switzerland Australia 8.4

8.6

8.8

9

9.2

9.4

9.6

9.8

Bottom Ten Equatorial Guinea Laos Chad Turkmenistan Central African Republic Syria D.R. of Congo North Korea Myanmar Afghanistan 0

0.4

0.8

1.2

1.6

Fig. 3.1 Top and Bottom 10 Countries in terms of the Democracy Index

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In other words, despite the appearance of scientific objectivity, the whole exercise of ranking a country’s democratic credentials is as much riddled with biases, value judgments and hidden agendas as awarding Oscars to films or Michelin stars to restaurants—which are also decided by groups of mysterious experts using criteria best known to themselves.

According to this index, Kuwait is classified as an authoritarian regime. However, anyone who knows this country realizes that it is a vibrant democracy within the confines of traditional tribal values (like respecting the elderly). In a sense, Kuwait is more democratic than most Western countries because the government cannot do anything without parliamentary approval. In most of the West, once the government is in power, they can do whatever they like, with the decision taken by one individual, the president or the prime minister. In Australia, the prime minister, who is elected for three years only, can take the country to war without parliamentary debate, and this is how John Howard committed Australian troops to the invasion of Iraq as soon as he received a phone call from George Bush Junior. Tony Blair got his war even though he needed parliamentary approval because British political parties have become dictatorships, with MPs expected to vote with their party leaders or risk being expelled from the party. Tony Blair expelled George Galloway from the Labour Party because the latter opposed the invasion of Iraq. Kier Starmer expelled Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party because he (Corbyn) is “lefty” and allegedly “antiSemite”. Starmer also expelled countless party members who opposed him or whom he did not like. In the US, Congressional approval has been waved as the power to go to war is vested in the president. Popular opposition, including massive demonstrations, count for nothing and are typically met with an iron fist under the pretext of combatting anarchy and vandalism. It is not clear how a country that can go to war because the prime minister feels like having a war is a full democracy whereas a country in which the government needs parliamentary approval to do anything is authoritarian. Prime ministers and presidents in Western democracies behave like dictators. In August 2022, a story surfaced that when he was in power, the former prime minister, Scott Morrison (dubbed ScoMo by the Australian people) held five secret ministries (health, finance, treasury, home affairs and the super-sized industry, and science and resources). This means that at one time there were two ministers of health, two finance ministers,

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two treasurers, two home affairs ministers, and two science ministers. In all cases, the sitting minister did not know that there was another more powerful minister running his or her ministry. ScoMo’s successor as prime minister described him as the “world’s first stealth bulldozer, operating in secret, keeping the operations of the government from the Australian people themselves” (Fisher et al., 2022). Morrison’s explanation for the ministerial bonanza is that he did that during “extraordinary times”, noting the combination of circumstances he faced, including the pandemic, drought, global recession, and other natural disasters. The implication, of course, is that he is the best, the only one who can deal with a combination of pandemic, recession, and natural disasters. He also said that it was necessary to have authority and to have emergency powers and that he “acted in the national interest”. The most outrageous side of the story, which is described by Massola et al. (2022) as “one of the most extraordinary events in Australian ministerial history”, is that Scott Morrison was sworn in as treasurer without the knowledge of Josh Frydenberg, the deputy leader of the governing Liberal Party who was the sitting treasurer. In a democracy, a prime minister is not supposed to give himself or herself exceptional powers—only dictators do that. Some hilarious tweets were posted following revelations of ScoMo’s behaviour. One tweet said the following: “ScoMo collecting ministries like Thanos collecting Infinity Stones”. Another tweet went as follows: “We should cut #ScoMo some slack now he’s unwell. He’s being treated for multiple personality syndrome, 5 in all. It’s actually 6 because, as with his distrust of government, he’s suspicious of doctors so he’s acting as his own psychiatrist”. Someone else said: “OMG, that explanation was extraordinary and bizarre. I think it’s time someone tapped you on the shoulder, and said, Scott, it’s time to go”. What is outrageous is that this man was in a position to drag the country to war on his own accord. He was also in a position to waste taxpayers’ money, and he did that by paying France $800 million for a breach of contract, because he had been persuaded by his masters, Johnson and Biden, to buy British-American submarines rather than French ones. Something like this could never happen in an allegedly “authoritarian” country like Kuwait, because parliament would not allow it. Casual observation of the facts on the ground leads anyone to cast doubt on the soundness of democracy in the “democratic West”. To start with, democracy is not about voting only. Even if that were the

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case, the West is not free of electoral fraud. Also known as election manipulation, voter fraud, or vote rigging, it involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favoured candidate, depressing the vote share of rival candidates, or both. It takes several shapes and forms, including artificial migration or party membership, disenfranchisement (rendering some people unable to vote), division of opposition support, voter intimidation, disinformation, vote buying, misleading or confusing ballot papers, ballot stuffing (one person submitting multiple ballots), misrecording of votes, misuse of proxy votes, destruction or invalidation of ballots, tampering with electronic voting systems, voter impersonation, manufactured results, and postal ballot fraud. These malpractices are not only found in the Rest, even though the West complains about electoral fraud in this or that country, but also in the West where everything is supposed to be “fair and balanced”. Examples of electoral malpractices in the West are plentiful. Artificial migration or party membership may have been used when British conservatives were encouraged to join the Labour Party and vote for Jeremy Corbyn in order to “consign Labour to electoral oblivion”. Young (2015) suggested that “for just a £3 membership fee you can help consign the party to electoral oblivion in 2020 - and silence its loony Left forever”. In Canada, the Wartime Elections Act disenfranchised particular ethnic groups assumed to be disproportionately in favour of the opposition Liberal Party. Intimidation and deceptive practices were reported by the People for the American Way Foundation (2006). Speel (2020) examines the US elections of 1876, 1888, 1960, and 2000, which he describes as “the most contentious in American history”. In the 1876 election, there was widespread voter intimidation against African-American Republican voters throughout the South. In 2016, during the EU membership referendum, leave-supporting voters in the UK claimed that the pencils supplied by voting stations would allow the referendum to be rigged in favour of Remain by MI5 (the domestic spy agency) erasing their votes from the ballot (Etehad, 2016). Allegations were made of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 US presidential election by busing out-of-state voters to New Hampshire (Pindell, 2018). Fraud with absentee or postal ballots has been found in the UK and US (Pickles, 2016; Young, 2016). Throughout history, electoral fraud has been rampant in the West (see, for example, Atkinson & Bierling, 2005; Campbell, 2005; Ebhardt, 2013; O’Leary, 1962; Perry, 2001; Ziblatt, 2009).

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Western countries are run by plutocracies and pro-business, pro-Israel, and pro-war parties and politicians. As things stand now, there is no way that the likes of Corbyn or Sanders could win a general election to become prime minister or president. This is because these are true reformers who want to change established policies in a system where voters can change faces but not policies. Kennard (2019) reports that following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party, officials in the UK military and intelligence establishment (members of the army, navy and special forces, as well as MI5, MI6 and ex-senior civil servants) started a campaign against him by leaking to national media stories that cast Corbyn as a danger to British security. One week after his election as the Labour leader, the Sunday Times carried a story quoting a “senior serving general” who warned that the armed forces would take “direct action” to stop a Corbyn government. The general added: “There would be mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny” (Shipman et al., 2015). Yet we are told that in Western democracies, intelligence services and the military abide by the constitutional principle of non-involvement in political affairs. The numerous instances of serving national security officials briefing against Corbyn in the media raises questions about whether this principle has been upheld. Unlike the West, the Rest has produced leaders like Corbyn, such as Lula of Brazil, Morales of Bolivia, and Boric of Chile. In Brazil, Lula came out of prison, where he did not belong, to oust the extreme right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro. This will never happen in the West. The story of the rise and fall of Jeremy Corbyn is a testament that British democracy is not only flawed but also corrupt (and so is the coronation of Rishi Sunak by the Conservative Party establishment). Furthermore, voting is not free, as it is influenced by the media, which play a dirty role in enabling the election of pro-business, pro-Israel, and pro-war leaders (after all, the media are owned by big business). Competing parties or individuals spend a fortune on media advertising financed by donations from interest groups seeking quid pro quo. Mainstream media in Western countries deprive independent candidates and small parties from making themselves known to the electorate. Most people in America think that the “donkey race” (otherwise known as presidential election) is always between two candidates, one is a Democrat and the other is a Republican, both of whom are typically pro-business,

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pro-Israel, and pro-war. Independent candidates and presidential nominees from other parties are not allowed in televized debates, which is why most people do not know about third-party and independent nominees. In the West, sitting governments control the public purse, which enables them to bribe voters with their own money to get their votes or bribe minor parties to get their supports. In 2017, Theresa May used about one billion pounds of taxpayers money to seal a “grubby deal” with Northern Irish unionists that let her cling on to power. Watts (2017) suggests that the “bribe” saved “Ms May’s premiership following her botched election gamble”. In the 2022, Australian general election, the sitting prime minister, Scott Morrison, was accused of bribing Australians with a $8.6 billion cash splash to vote for him. In an interview on ABC radio, he was asked if the cash splash was just aimed at buying votes, which was naturally denied. The radio host, however, described proposed one-off cash handouts to pensioners and welfare recipients and a cut in fuel excise as follows: “How is this anything but an electoral bribe for a government in deep trouble on the eve of the election?” (White, 2022). Joe Biden did the same by announcing student loan forgiveness just before the November 2022 mid-term election (see, for example, Friedman, 2022). Whenever a coup happens in Africa or Asia, the West cries “foul” and threatens that country with sanctions unless democracy is restored. However, coups do happen in Western democracies, except that they are not called coups because they are carried out by people wearing suits and ties, not military uniforms. The most notorious case happened in Australia when the sitting prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was toppled in a conspiracy formulated and executed by mining companies in collaboration with some of Rudd’s senior colleagues (presumably his subordinates). Rudd had threatened to impose a tax on mining companies (known as resource super profits tax) before he was swiftly removed and replaced by his deputy. O’Connor (2010) calls the ousting of Rudd the “Gillard coup”, in reference to Julia Gillard who replaced him as prime minister. He describes the episode as follows: The conspiracy in Canberra over the last 24-hours amounted to a political contract killing. Labor’s factional chiefs—acting without the knowledge, let alone input, of the majority of caucus members, who are nominally responsible for electing the party leader—switched prime ministers at the direct behest of specific business and media interests.

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He goes on to say: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard—installed yesterday through a series of unprecedented manoeuvres by a cabal of right-wing factional apparatchiks and trade union bureaucrats—has been issued with a clear set of instructions by the corporate and media interests that orchestrated her predecessor Kevin Rudd’s ousting. She is preparing to carry them out by substantially revising, if not shelving, the Labor government’s proposed 40 percent Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) on the mining industry, returning the budget to surplus by slashing public spending, and quickly moving to implement a series of far reaching “free market” economic reforms.

That was a Labor government that is supposed to look after the interest of the working class. In the West, no matter who is in power, the oligarchs call the shots. This is not democracy, but rather plutocracy. This episode shows clearly that the two major parties in the countries of the Anglosphere are indeed Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Kevin Rudd was removed from his position as prime minister by the mining and media oligarchy. Another democratically elected Australian prime minister was removed from power by the “Governor General”, the representative of Queen Elizabeth in Australia. On 11 November 1975, the Governor General handed a letter to the sitting Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, telling him that he and his ministers (also democratically elected politicians) were fired and that their services were no longer required. Without going through a general election, the Governor General handed the position of prime minister to the opposition Liberal Party leader, who was asked to form a new government. Another prime minister, Paul Keating, described the dismissal as a “coup” and suggested the idea of arresting the Governor General and locking him up (Grattan, 2013).

3.3

American Democracy

In the US, the political system is a duopoly of two major parties: Democrats and Republicans. A former governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, describes the political system in the US as a “two-party dictatorship” and Chris Hedges, a former correspondent for the New York Times, calls it a “system of one party, the corporate party”. It is ludicrous to hear that Republicans are “right-wing”, while Democrats are “left-wing”. The

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fact of the matter is that both of them implement right-wing free-market policies, at least since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) where left-wing policies were implemented as part of the New Deal. These days both parties are pro-business and pro-military adventurism, which is good for the stock market and campaign donations. While the two parties disagree on minor issues, they do not differ at all when it comes to militarism, military adventurism, and regime change, which are very expensive endeavours. In the State of the Union speech given by Trump in February 2020, Nancy Pelosi, who ripped Trump’s speech for refusing to shake her hand, was as enthusiastic as Mike Pence in applauding the self-declared, US-backed, CIA-appointed president of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, a symbol of US interventionism and regime change policies. Democracy is the rule of people, but in Western democracies people do not rule—the business oligarchy does through the politicians they help get elected. With respect to the case of the US, Gilens and Page (2014) raise the following questions: “Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless?”. These questions are relevant to the situation in other Western countries—the difference lies in the extent to which the oligarchy runs the show. After checking thousands of legislative bills and public opinion surveys of recent decades, Gilens and Page (2014) found that any policy change with little support from the upper class has about a one in five chance of becoming law, while those backed by the elites triumph in about half of occasions, even when they go against majority opinion. They note: When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

They conclude as follows: Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

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Some comments on the results of this study are interesting. Zuesse (2014) wrote the following in Counterpunch: American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it’s pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation’s “news” media….. The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious ‘electoral democratic’ countries. We weren’t formerly, but we clearly are now.

Robyn Pennacchia, who thinks that “Americans should just accept their fate”, makes this comment (BBC News, 2014): Perhaps we ought to suck it up, admit we have a classist society and do like England where we have a House of Lords and a House of Commoners instead of pretending as though we all have some kind of equal opportunity here.

In a comment on the same study, Gómez (2018) suggests that “the country [the US] that presents itself as a universal model of democracy does not meet the basic standards of a system in which the majority makes decisions”. According to Gómez, the US represents a “government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich”. He adds: “By replacing the term ‘people’ in Abraham Lincoln’s well-known phrase with those who have real power in the United States, we gain a more exact idea of how U.S. politics and society work”. In evidence, he refers to “the arrival of New York billionaire Donald Trump to the White House, and the implementation of his tax reform plan that benefits the mega-rich to the detriment of many low-income voters, who contradictorily put him in the Oval Office”. American democracy is not only flawed but also corrupt. In America, a presidential nominee could lose the election even if more people vote for them than the other person. So, it could happen that 50 million people vote for candidate A and 60 million people vote for candidate B, yet A is declared the winner who would go on to appoint unelected officials (about 3000 high-profile positions), typically cronies or those nominated by the business and financial oligarchy. In America, the winner loses because of an anti-democratic system called the “Electoral College”. Figure 3.2 displays the distribution of votes among the top four candidates in the presidential elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. In all of these elections, those who got

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most of the votes lost the election: Jackson in 1824, Tilden in 1876, Cleveland in 1888, Gore in 2000, and Clinton in 2016. The most alarming case is that of 1824 when the loser got 42.3% of the votes while the winner got 31.6%. The constitutional convention of 1787 rejected presidential selection by direct popular vote, and the winner-takes-all Electoral College system was devised instead. This system is criticized for the very reason that it is not representative of the popular will of the nation, in a clear violation of the democratic principle of “one person, one vote”. Another observation that can be gleaned from Fig. 3.2 is how little votes third-party and independent candidates get. This can be explained in terms of two factors: media bias and lack of corporate funding. Third-party candidates are ignored by the media and excluded from presidential debates. Even worse, they may be demonized and described as “socialists”, “lunies”, “greenies”, “lefties”, and even “commies” (for communists). Brichacek (2016) identifies the ways whereby the media influence elections in such a way as to favour one of the candidates of (2016) Stein Johnson Trump Clinton (2000) Buchanan Nader Bush Gore (1888) Streeter Fisk Harrison Cleveland (1876) Clay Smith Cooper Hayes Tilden (1842) Crawford Clay Adams Jackson 0

10

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30

40

50

Fig. 3.2 Losing winners of popular vote in US presidential elections

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the two major parties. The first way in which journalists get involved in elections is by choosing which candidates to cover and how much because of the importance of name recognition. The second is media bias, as major media outlets attract partisan audiences. The third is the role played by social media, which provide heavily filtered news. The fourth is that a picture is worth a thousand words, which means that images of political candidates form a lasting impression in the mind of the voting public. Number five is the presentation of poll results, which influence voter perceptions. Last, but not least, advertising does affect voter perception, but advertising is the privilege of those who get corporate funding, typically the candidates of the two major parties. In a brilliant TEDx talk on 21 October 2015, Lessig (2015) debunked the myth of American democracy by using the concept of “Tweedism”. He started his lecture by describing the Hong Kong student protests against the Chinese-proposed method for the selection or appointment of the governor. The Chinese suggested a two-step process involving (i) nomination of candidates by a small committee and (ii) a general vote on the nominated candidates. The protests were ignited by the feeling that this process would be dominated by pro-Beijing business and political elite. He went on to say that this process was “stolen” from an American politician called William M. Tweed (hence Tweedism) who once said: “I don’t care who does the electing, as long as I get to do the nominating”. In the US, the two-stage process is used in presidential and Congressional elections where the first stage is the primaries. If big funders are in control of the Tweeds, democracy becomes responsive to big funders only. Lessig (2019) describes Tweeds as follows: The “tweeds” within the political system are thus the people in that system who get to nominate the candidates who get to run in that system. They are the veto point. They are the interest that the candidates must satisfy before the candidates get the chance to persuade the voters.

Tweedism undermines the purpose of electoral systems in a representative democracy, because it undermines the idea of a government for the people and by the people. Tweedism is in full display in the US because campaign costs have risen significantly. According to Lessig (2019), “the ordinary member of Congress spends anywhere between thirty percent and seventy percent of his or her time raising money for his or her campaign from big funders primarily”. Confessore et al. (2015) suggest

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that “just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House”. These are the modern-day Tweeds. Perhaps the best evaluation of American democracy comes from Amy (2020) who makes a compelling case that the fifty five individuals who wrote the US constitution represented the political and economic elite, most of them sought to perpetuate the power and wealth of their class and impede democracy. Amy believes that a gap exists between an inferior US democracy and other Western democracies and attributes the gap and inferiority of American democracy to the constitution. The constitutions of other Western democracies, he argues, do not allow for “an Electoral College that elects the losers of the popular vote, checks and balances that routinely produce crippling gridlock, Supreme Court Justices that are appointed for life, and a Senate that grossly under-represents most of our citizens”. Amy seems to have forgotten another bizarre feature of American democracy: cabinet ministers are not elected politicians—rather, they are appointed by the president, typically drawn from the campaign staff and cronies or dictated by powerful pressure group such as the financial oligarchy. Article II, Sect. 2 of the US constitution vests in the president the power to nominate, and with the advice of consent of the Senate, to appoint ambassadors, ministers, Supreme Court judges, and other public officers. Through political capture, corporate America influences these high-profile appointments, and no firm is better at that than Goldman Sachs. This is why Rivlin and Hudson (2017) refer to “government by Goldman”. While candidate Trump claimed that Hillary Clinton was in Goldman’s pockets, as was Ted Cruz, he ended up appointing three Goldman Sachs alums in top positions inside his administration: Steve Bannon (chief strategist), who was a vice president at Goldman when he left the firm in 1990, Steve Mnuchin (Treasury secretary), who had spent 17 years at Goldman, and Dina Powell (senior counsellor for economic initiatives) who was a Goldman partner. To prove his point, that the US constitution is anti-democratic, Amy (2020) gives examples of anti-democratic rhetoric expressed by the elite who wrote the constitution, with statements such as the following: “the people who own the country ought to govern it”, “the theoretical nonsense of an election of Congress by the people”, “democracy is the worst of all political evils”, and “the turbulence and follies of democracy”. It sounds rather strange from the leaders of a country that had fought a war of independence based largely on the complaint that Americans

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had no direct say in the British laws that were governing them—hence, the slogan “no taxation without representation”. It is preposterous to suggest that the US constitution is the foundation of democracy and that its adoption signalled the birth of democracy in the world.

3.4

British Democracy

British democracy is flawed or corrupt, not only because of the unelected House of Lords, but also because of the absence of proportional representation. Let us also not forget that in British democracy, significant powers are vested in the unelected head of state, the monarch, who lives a luxury life funded by taxpayers. The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, privilege, and immunity attached to the British monarch who is regarded internally as the absolute authority and the source of many of the executive powers of the British government. The monarch is constitutionally empowered to exercise the royal prerogative against the advice of the prime minister. The royal prerogative is available in the conduct of the British government, including foreign affairs, defence, and national security. The monarch has a significant constitutional weight in these and other matters. The two-party duopoly was invented by the British plutocracy and copied by the American plutocracy by resisting proportional representation, which is intended to preserve the dominance of one or two major parties. This is what Al-Nakeeb (2022) says: The cunning British plutocracy devised the two-party duopoly to create the illusion of democracy while maintaining control over the political process. After Jefferson, US leaders walked in the footsteps of Great Britain with tragic consequences. Like the British, the US plutocracy has used the two-party duopoly to preserve its political monopoly within a democratic facade: two parties competing in its service.

Proportional representation is an electoral system intended to create a representative body that reflects the overall distribution of public support for each political party. In a majority or plurality system (such as the British system), strong parties are rewarded and weak ones are penalized by providing the representation of a whole constituency to a single candidate who may have received fewer than half of the votes. Therefore, proportional representation ensures minority groups a measure of

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representation that is proportional to their electoral support. Proportional representation is desirable, simply because it is more democratic than the alternative system used in Britain. An election is like a census of opinion as to how the country should be governed, and only if an assembly represents the full diversity of opinion within a country, can its decisions be regarded as legitimate. The plurality system used in Britain can produce unrepresentative minority government, where the two major parties govern with little more than 40% of the votes. A proportional representation system is used to avoid the possible anomaly arising under majority systems whereby a party may win more seats with fewer popular votes than its opponents. In the 2005 UK election, for example, the Labour Party of Tony Blair won a comfortable parliamentary majority with the votes of only 21.6% of the total electorate (Rallings & Thrasher, 2005). This kind of misrepresentation is not only a question of “fairness” but a violation of the basic rights of citizens. In other Western countries that emulate the British model, similar anomalies arise. In the 2015 Canadian election, the pro-business, pro-war, and pro-Israel party won 39.5% of the votes and 54.4% of the seats. The Greens, on the other hand, won 3.4% of the vote and only 0.3% of the seats. The NDP won 20% of the votes and 13% of the seats. Why does Britain resist proportional representation? The simple answer is that the two major parties do not want it. The present system guarantees that the major parties will continue to dominate, alternating who is in power according to who the public is least unhappy about, without any significant changes in policy that benefit the majority. The present system means that once in power, there is no need for negotiation, consensus, or compromise—whoever wins can push through any measure they wish, because they have the raw weight of majority numbers, and there is little that the opposition can do about it until they are back on the government benches. For all we know, Tony Blair would not have won the vote to invade Iraq in 2003 if he did not have a majority but he was in a coalition with a number of other parties. Furthermore, the British establishment is always nostalgic about the days of the Empire on which the sun would never set. Thus sticking to the present undemocratic system may be a hangover from the days when the only political parties were the Whigs and the Tories. Even with this undemocratic system, Britain is classified as full democracy according to the democracy index whereas

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some countries that have adopted proportional representation are classified under “flawed democracy”, including Belgium, Greece, Hungary, and Spain. Russia, which has proportional representation, is classified as an authoritarian regime because Putin does what he likes. However, a British prime minister with a majority in parliament also does what he or she likes. According to George Galloway, British MPs are “poodles” who get orders from the party leader. This is done by using the “chief whip”, a political leader whose task is to enforce the “whipping system”, which aims to ensure that members of the party attend and vote as the party leadership desires. The chief whip can wield significant power over their party’s MPs, including cabinet ministers. The role of chief whip is regarded as secretive, as the whip is concerned with the discipline of their own party’s MPs, never appearing on television or radio. The chief whip is assisted by the deputy chief whip, other whips, and assistant whips. Apart from using whips to discipline MPs, a party leader has the power to dismiss any MP or party member. When Tony Blair wanted to invade Iraq, he used the whips on his MPs to vote for the invasion. A brave and principled MP called George Galloway opposed the war, and even took part in the big popular demonstrations against the war. Tony Blair responded by dismissing him from the Labour Party. Even in opposition, a party leader can do the same, and no one is better at that than Kier Starmer who succeeded Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour party leader and dismissed him from the party. Starmer calls Putin a dictator while acting like one by treating his parliamentary colleagues in the Labour party with utter contempt. He has shown himself to be a five-star war monger, who competes with Boris Johnson on hostility towards Russia. Eleven Labour MPs have been forced to pull their signatures from a Stop the War statement, which criticized both Russia and NATO, after being warned to do so by the chief whip. The declaration stated that “Russia and Ukraine should reach a diplomatic settlement of the tensions between them” and that NATO should “call a halt to its eastward expansion”. It also refuted “the idea that NATO is a defensive alliance”. Starmer, who has dismissed hundreds of party members, once said the following: “We [read “I”] will not hesitate to take action— including against individual members [of the Labour Party]—where our [read “my”] rules and guidance are not adhered to” (Knnags, 2022). Starmer and Sunak are the current embodiment of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I cannot blame those who once came up with the slogan “Do not

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vote—no matter who wins, the police will be in charge”. This is British democracy.

3.5

Democracy and the Deep State

The deep state is an anti-democracy formation involving elements of the government and top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern without reference to the consent of the people as expressed through the formal democratic process. Friedman (2017) refers to “something ominous-sounding in the deep state”, implying that beneath constitutionally ordained systems and principles, a deeper and more potent power is in control of the nation. He goes on to note that the deep state implies a unified force that is embedded in the republic and has its own agenda as well as the means to undermine the decisions of elected presidents and members of Congress. Goldsmith (2018) suggests that the deep state “includes national security bureaucrats who use secretly collected information to shape or curb the actions of elected officials”. For Lofgren (2014), the deep state is “the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction”. Lofgren (2014) compares between the actual government and the deep state as follows: There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.

He explains that while Washington is “the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America”, it is not the only one, as “invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes”. One is Wall Street, which floods the town with cash and lawyers to help the hired hands remember their own best interests. Another node is the Silicon Valley, which is vital for the Deep State, even though it sells overwhelmingly to the private sector. The role of banking is emphasized by

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Brown (2018) who describes it as “an important component of the deep state”, arguing that the deep state began in the 1700s with the Rothschild banking dynasty who, by the early 1800s, had gained control over the emerging Industrial Revolution through banking and marital relationships throughout Europe. Whitehead (2018) believes that the deep state is no different from the police state, the military-industrial complex, and the surveillance state. He also believes that the power of the deep state is the reason why “corporations are getting richer, average Americans are getting poorer, the military is getting more militaristic, America’s endless wars are getting more endless, and the prospect of peace grows ever dimmer”. He attributes to the deep state every characteristic of a police state: domestic surveillance, global spying, roving TSA searches, Patriot Act, militarized police, SWAT team raids, domestic drones, school-to-prison pipeline, over-criminalization, privatized prisons, and endless wars. Brown believes that “the most profitable Deep State business by far is perpetual war”. The deep state, according to him, is the perpetrator of “false flag terrorist attacks to justify the infiltration of a foreign country” to provide business for Wall Street, the oil industry and the pharmaceutical industry.

3.6

Concluding Remarks

The West brags about democracy but actions speak louder than words. The West has no respect for democracy in countries of the Rest because what matters is having in power a leader who looks after the interests of the Western oligarchy, no matter how this leader comes to power. Lack of democracy in a country that belongs to the Rest is frequently taken as an excuse to impose sanctions on or invade that country to “restore democracy”. The restoration of democracy in Iraq, for example, has put in power a bunch of corrupt “politicians” who hitched a ride to Baghdad with the invading forces. Western democracy is not a democracy because democracy is the rule of people, but people do not rule—it is the oligarchy that rules. British and American democracies have a lot of features in common, apart from the winner-takes-all system. In both democracies, the deep state plays a vital anti-democratic, pro-war role. In both democracies, referenda are rarely used, particularly for serious matters. In both cases, the economic system of laissez faire is incompatible with democracy. And

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both derive inspiration from Roman democracy. A few words on Roman democracy may provide a proper end for this chapter. The Roman Republic, at least an idealized version, was explicitly the model that the founding fathers of America looked to when they developed their own democratic constitution. Arguing for the ratification of the US constitution, Alexander Hamilton claimed that the Roman Republic had “attained to the utmost height of human greatness”. However, Brown (2016) does not find this claim convincing, arguing instead that “although America’s founders looked to the Romans in developing our democracy, the Roman Republic, while constitutionally quite democratic, was in practice a fundamentally undemocratic society, dominated by a select caste of wealthy aristocrats”. He also argues that “in a fashion that would be unthinkable in a modern liberal democracy, the vast majority of the population was, for all intents and purposes, entirely disenfranchised from the law making process”. He goes on to say the following: The Roman Republic was never intended to be a democracy. Instead, as acknowledged by Polybius, it was an experiment that sought to fuse democracy, aristocracy and monarchy into the perfect socio-political system. On a superficial level it appears to be quite a success in this endeavor when one considers the half millennium that, according to the Roman constitution, democratic and aristocratic institutions were able to jointly govern the largest and most powerful state in the Mediterranean world. However, when put in practice, its attempts to incorporate a powerful democratic element can only be seen as a clear failure. Once put into practice, the Roman Republic’s institutions were simply too reliant on the aristocracy for structure, cohesion, and order for democracy to persevere.

Roman democracy was not about one man one vote—rather, it was a block system based on tribes with a strict voting order such that if a majority was reached, the lower class tribes never got to vote. Al-Nakeeb (2022) goes further by suggesting that the Romans taught modern Europeans “imperialism, endless wars, the enslavement of the vanquished, plunder, parasitic taxation, and collective punishment”. He goes on to say the following: Rome continues to have Western admirers and apologists. The Romans constructed expansive stadiums for their plutocracy’s entertainment to

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enjoy the depraved spectacles of gladiators slaughtering the helpless and battling for their own dear lives. They delighted in watching starved lions devour Christian children and their mothers as their horrified relatives and comrades in the arena observed helplessly, waiting for the lions to turn on them. Two hundred thousand people were reportedly butchered in the Coliseum alone, the tab for a deranged plutocracy’s grotesque entertainment.

Yes, the West should be grateful to ancient Rome for teaching them what they practiced on the rest of the world for 500 years. Rome, however, was not a democracy, which means that it could not have taught the West any democracy. Rome has certainly taught the West plutocracy and provided a manual for modern Western oligarchies on how to be in charge and call the shots.

References Al-Nakeeb, B. (2022). The Impact of Moral Economics. Private Publication. Amy, D. J. (2020). Second-Rate Democracy: Seventeen Ways America is Less Democratic than other Major Western Countries and How We Can Do Better. https://www.secondratedemocracy.com/its-undemocratic-origins/ Atkinson, M., & Bierling, G. (2005). Politicians, the Public and Political Ethics: Worlds Apart. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 38, 1003–1028. BBC News. (2014). Study: US is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy. BBC News, 17 April. Bell, D. A. (2015). The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy. Princeton University Press. Bell, D. A. (2017). Comparing Political Values in China and the West: What Can Be Learned and Why It Matters. Annual Review of Political Science, 20, 93–110. Blum, W. (2004). Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War I . Common Courage Press. Brichacek, A. (2016). Six Ways the Media Influence Elections. https://journa lism.uoregon.edu/news/six-ways-media-influences-elections Brown, K. (2018). An In-Depth Look into Who Really Controls the US Government (Deep State)—Because It’s Not the People. Exonews, 21 March. Brown, Z. S. (2016). How Democratic Was The Roman Republic? The Theory and Practice of an Archetypal Democracy. Inquiries, 8, 1. Business Wire. (2012). Carter States that the Election Process in Venezuela is “the Best in the World”. Business Wire, 21 September. Campbell, T. (2005). Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud. Basic Books.

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Chomsky, N. (2022). An Open Letter to Chief Justice of Pakistan, IslamiCity, 23 August. Confessore, N., Cohen, S., & Yourish, K. (2015). The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election. New York Times, 10 October. Dehghan, S. K., & Norton-Taylor, R. (2013). CIA Admits Role in 1953 Iranian Coup. The Guardian, 19 August. Diaz-Briquets, S. (2006). Corruption in Cuba: Castro and Beyond. University of Texas Press. Ebhardt, C. (2013). In Search of a Political Office: Railway Directors and Electoral Corruption in Britain and France, 1820–1870. Journal of Modern European History, 11, 72–87. Embury-Dennis, T. (2019). Venezuela: Juan Guaido will Open up Oil Deals to Foreign Private Companies, Opposition Leader’s US Envoy Says. The Independent, 5 February. Etehad, M. (2016). Pencil or Pen? An Unusual Conspiracy Theory Grips Brexit Vote. Washington Post, 23 June. Fisher, M., Seeber, E., & Johns, D. (2022). RECAP: Australia Reacts after Former PM Scott Morrison Defies Calls to Quit over Portfolio Scandal. The West Australian, 17 August. Flounders, S. (2019). Follow the Money Behind Hong Kong Protests. Workers World, 16 August. Friedman, G. (2017). The Deep State. Geopolitical Futures, 15 March. Friedman, Z. (2022). Student Loan Forgiveness: Biden’s Huge Political Gamble. Forbes, 28 July. Gilens, M., & Page, B. I. (2014). Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. Perspectives on Politics, 12, 564–581. Goldsmith, J. (2018). The ‘Deep State’ is Real. But are its Leaks against Trump Justified? The Guardian, 22 April. Gómez, S. A. (2018). The United States is an Oligarchy, not a Democracy. MR Online, 12 April. Grattan, M. (2013). Keating on Life, Politics, and the Day He Suggested Arresting the Governor General. The Conversation, 7 November. Hall, D. (1999). In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750–86. Macmillan. Kennard, M. (2019). Labour’s New Leader is a Threat to National Security. Daily Maverick, 4 December. Knnags, P. (2022). Starmer Condemns Russian Dictator while Acting Like a Dictator Forcing MPs to Pull Signatures from Stop the War Statement. Labour Heartlands, 25 February. Lessig, L. (2015). Our Democracy no Longer Represents the People. Here’s How we Fix it. TEDx Talks, 21 October. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=PJy8vTu66tE

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Lessig, L. (2019). They Don’t Represent us: Reclaiming our Democracy. Harper Collins. Lofgren, M. (2014). Anatomy of the Deep State. https://billmoyers.com/ 2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/. Massola, J., Visentin, L., & Crowe, D. (2022). Morrison’s Future under a Cloud over Secret Ministries. Sydney Morning Herald, 16 August. Merisa, D., & Hanna, J. (2013). In Declassified Document, CIA Acknowledges Role in ‘53 Iran Coup. CNN , 19 August. Morgan, C. (2019). Not Just a Conspiracy Theory: Bolivia President Overthrown By Military Coup. Et Online, 17 November. O’Connor, P. (2010). Australia: Big Business and Mining Companies Issue Diktats to New Prime Minister. World Socialist, 25 June. O’Leary, C. (1962). The Elimination of Corrupt Practices in British Elections, 1868–1911. Clarendon Press. People for the American Way Foundation. (2006). Intimidation and Deceptive Practices. People for the American Way Foundation. Perry, P. J. (2001). Political Corruption in Australia: A Very Wicked Place? Ashgate Publishing Limited. Pickles, E. (2016). Securing the Ballot. UK Government Publishing Service. Pindell, J. (2018). N.H. Says Once and for all that no one was Bused in to Vote, The Boston Globe, 1 June. Rallings, C., & Thrasher, M. (2005). The 2005 General Election: Analysis of the Results. Electoral Commission. Rivlin, G., & Hudson, M. (2017). Government by Goldman. The Intercept, 17 September. Shipman, T., Rayment, S., Kerbaj, R., & Lyons, J. (2015). Corbyn Hit by Mutiny on Airstrikes. Sunday Times, 20 September. Speel, R. (2020). A History of Contested Presidential Elections, from Samuel Tilden to Al Gore. The Conversation, 5 November. Tasker, P. (2016). The Flawed ‘Science’ Behind Democracy Rankings. Nikkie Asian Review, 25 February. Tharoor, I. (2016). The Long History of the U.S. Interfering with Elections Elsewhere. Washington Post, 13 October. Watts, J. (2017). Theresa May Accused of Bribing DUP with £1bn Deal Despite Claiming ‘There is no Magic Money Tree’. The Independent, 27 June. White, N. (2022). Scott Morrison is Accused of ‘BRIBING’ Australians to Vote for Him. Mail Online, 30 March. Whitehead, J. W. (2018). Trump is a Tool of the Deep State Not a Victim. Counterpunch, 27 July. Young, A. (2016). A Complete Guide To Early And Absentee Voting. NPR, 23 September.

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Young, T. (2015). Why Tories Should Join Labour and Back Jeremy Corbyn. The Telegraph, 17 June. Zane, D. (2022). Patrice Lumumba: DR Congo Buries Tooth of Independence Hero. BBC News, 30 June. Ziblatt, D. (2009). Shaping Democratic Practice and the Causes of Electoral Fraud: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Germany. American Political Science Review, 103, 1–21. Zuesse, E. (2014). The Contradictions of the American Electorate. Counterpunch. 15 April.

CHAPTER 4

Western Exceptionalism: The Rule of Law, Judicial Independence and Transparency

4.1

Introduction

The West is allegedly exceptional because Western countries follow the rule of law, they have independent judiciary and they are transparent with little corruption. It is true that Norway is better than Nigeria with respect to all of these criteria, but the West (particularly the leader of the West) frequently abandons the rule of law and allows political pressure to affect the judiciary, which may be corrupt. Western countries, or most of them, are corrupt to the core—it just that corruption takes different forms from what is found in the Rest. This is why London has deservedly won the title of “the financial fraud capital of the world”—New York is not that far behind. When the economy is left to the private sector under the pretext of economic freedom, the corporate sector accumulates so much power that it captures political and economic policymakers, leading to conditions under which the rule of law, judicial independence and transparency are compromised. As a result, all of these criteria are undermined. The rule of law is not applied to the rich and powerful, the judicial becomes biased, and corruption runs wild. Economic laissez faire leads to laissez faire in all aspects of life. When the oligarchy is given a free hand to do anything, everything will be compromised. When the laws are written in such a way as to favour the rich and powerful, there is no place for these ideals. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0_4

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While judicial independence typically means absence of influence from the executive and legislative bodies, it should also mean independence from lobbyists and bribers. Furthermore, inequality, which is widespread in Western countries, is inconsistent with the desire to uphold the rule of law and maintain an independent judiciary. The three issues discussed in this chapter are closely interrelated. Without judicial independence and integrity, the rule of law cannot be upheld. Since corruption involves criminal offences, it should be rampant in countries where the rule of law is not upheld and the judiciary lacks independence and integrity. After all, crime is deterred by potential punishment. It has also been recognized that the chance of being caught, which varies inversely with police corruption, is a vastly more effective deterrent than punishment. It follows that police corruption leads to systemic corruption.

4.2

The Rule of Law

Although the concept of the rule of law can be traced back at least to ancient Greece, it has become much more widely discussed in the last twenty-five years. Stein (2019) quotes former US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy as saying that he does not recall the term being used often when he was in law school in the 1950s. The roots of the concept of the rule of law are traced by Sklar (1987) to the ideas of Aristotle and Montesquieu. However, its emergence as an aspect of legal and political systems is attributed to the Magna Carta or to the 1688 English “glorious revolution” (Rose, 2004). The rule of law means that all authority and power must come from an ultimate source of law. It is the political philosophy stipulating that all citizens, including law makers and political leaders and institutions, are accountable to the same laws. The International Bar Association (2005) sets out some of the essential characteristics of the rule of law: an independent, impartial judiciary; the presumption of innocence; the right to a fair and public trial without undue delay; a rational and proportionate approach to punishment; a strong and independent legal profession; strict protection of confidential communications between lawyer and client; and equality of all before the law. None of these characteristics can be found in the US injustice system. The rule of law is defined in Encyclopedia Britannica as “the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality

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of all citizens before the law, secures a non-arbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power”. Another definition of the rule of law can be found in the 2004 Report of the Secretary General of the United Nations, entitled The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies (UN Secretary General, 2004). According to this report: [The rule of law] refers to a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It requires, as well, measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness and procedural and legal transparency.

The rule of law implies that both the government and citizens know the law and obey it. Walker (1988) summarizes the rule of law in two points: (i) people and the government should be ruled by the law and obey it; (ii) the law should be such that people are able and willing to be guided by it. Central to the rule of law is the proposition that no one is above the law—it is applied equally and fairly to both the government and citizens. This means that all people (regardless of their status, race, culture, religion, or any other attribute) should be ruled equally by just laws. The principal components of the rule of law are (i) all persons and organizations, including the government, are subject and accountable to the law; (ii) the law is known and accessible; (iii) the court system is independent and resolves disputes in an open and impartial manner; (iv) people are presumed innocent until proven otherwise by a court; (v) people have the right to a fair and prompt trial; (vi) no person should be arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned, or deprived of their property; and (vii) punishment is determined by a court and people can only be punished in accordance with the law. Hutchinson and Monahan (1987) describe the rule of law as follows: The Rule of Law is a rare and protean principle of our political tradition. Unlike other ideals, it has withstood the ravages of constitutional time and remains a contemporary clarion-call to political justice. Apparently transcending partisan concerns, it is embraced and venerated by virtually all

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shades of political opinion. The Rule of Law’s central core comprises the enduring values of regularity and restraint, embodied in the slogan of “a government of laws, not men.” Its very generality is the reason for its durability and contestability. Interpreted and appropriated by seemingly contradictory groups, it is the will-o’-the-wisp of political history. Although the central jewel in liberalism’s crown, its universal appeal is attested to by E.P. Thompson’s invocation of it from the political left as an “unqualified human good.”

Fallon (1997) suggests that the purpose of the rule of law is to protect against anarchy and establish public order, to allow people to plan their affairs with reasonable confidence, and to guarantee against official arbitrariness. If this is the case, then five constituent components of the rule of law can be identified: (i) the capacity of legal rules to guide people and their ability to understand and comply, allowing them to plan their affairs with advance knowledge of legal consequences; (ii) efficacy, in the sense that it should actually guide people; (iii) stability over time; (iv) supremacy of legal authority; and (iv) the need for instrumentalities of impartial justice. Two versions of the rule of law are identified by Fletcher (1996): a “modest version” that means governance by and adherence to rules, and a “more lofty ideal that incorporates criteria of justice”. He suggests that Anglo-American and European views may differ. The latter is more likely to adopt the broader view, thinking that the rule of law is “an ideal for good government”, and stress the inclusion of a dimension of right, as evidenced by the different terms for law in Continental European languages. The narrow view is procedural in nature, focusing on the prevention of arbitrary governmental action and the protection of individual rights. Posner (2002) seems to adopt this limited version and equates it with the economic theory of law, which he sees as generally consistent with Aristotelean corrective justice. The broad view contains more elements. For example, Dworkin (1985, 1986) articulates a rights’ conception focused on justice and equality that would emphasize the public recognition of individual and moral rights and the even handed use of wise and formally recognized precepts of political morality. Shklar (1987) adds the elements of representative democracy, individual rights, and justice.

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Scholars seem to hold the view that the rule of law should be upheld, no matter what. Rose (2004) argues that rule of law remains a critically and fundamentally important ideal and concept. Johnson (1999) describes the establishment of the rule of law as “the most important political development of the second millennium” and that “its acceptance and enforcement in any society is far more vital to the happiness of the majority than is even democracy itself”. The World Justice Project (2021) explains why the rule of law is important and why it should be upheld: Effective rule of law reduces corruption, combats poverty and disease, and protects people from injustices large and small. It is the foundation for communities of justice, opportunity, and peace–underpinning development, accountable government, and respect for fundamental rights. Traditionally, the rule of law has been viewed as the domain of lawyers and judges. However, everyday issues of safety, rights, justice, and governance affect us all; everyone is a stakeholder in the rule of law.

Likewise, Krygier (2006) describes the rule of law as a “greatly good thing” because “without it, at least in conditions of modernity, life is immeasurably worse than where it is secure”. Jakab (2011) rejects the paradigm of loosening the rule of law, which he describes as “unnecessary” and even “dangerous” because without it we cannot tackle the original challenge for which rule of law was developed, namely the limitation of or fight against the arbitrary use of government power. He adds that “giving up this idea, especially an integral part of it, the prohibition of torture, would also endanger the identity of Western societies”. However, Hutchinson and Monahan (1987) note that the rule of law “has been under mounting pressure in modern society.” Unfortunately, some scholars put forward justifications for a “temporary” abandonment of the rule of law under “special circumstances”. For example, Rose (2004) suggests that “it would seem that the various conceptions of the Rule of Law implicitly recognize that adherence is not always possible nor even desirable”. The special circumstances, under which the rule of law becomes a “luxury item”, are wars and emergencies, such as threats to national security. Wood (2003) argues that “the recent terrorist attacks and the resulting policies and attitudes call into question the extent to which any society can adhere to the rule of law when it perceives itself to be threatened by hostile powers or groups”. The problem is that anything

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can be construed as a threat to national security and used as an excuse to suspend or abandon the rule of law. At least three problems can be detected in the arguments for abandoning the rule of law under “special circumstances”. First of all, wars of aggression (which are illegal themselves) cannot be taken as an excuse to curb dissent at home—that is, using something illegal to justify something illegal. The term “anti-war activist” has become an adequate reason to be watched by the intelligence services because anti-war activists are portrayed to be unpatriotic, they represent national security risk, and they undermine the “heroic efforts of our men and women in uniform who defend our democracy and freedom”. The second is that what is introduced as a temporary measure lasts for ever. Western countries have learned from military dictatorships that when emergency laws are introduced, they remain for 25 years, if not for ever. The third problem pertains to the criteria used to determine the set of circumstances under which the rule of law is suspended. Consider, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been taken as an opportunity by governments to pursue their agendas by expanding mass surveillance (hence enhancing the electronic concentration camp), ruling by decree, and abusing civil liberties and human rights. Vardi (2020), who argues that crises have been exploited (by governments) to introduce dangerous policies, identifies three areas of concern: (i) criminalizing dissent, (ii) expanding legislative authorities by declaring states of emergency, and (iii) increasing technological surveillance. During the pandemic, Western countries gave more power to the police and border security personnel. In France, a controversial law preventing people from taking photos of the police, even if they are committing a criminal act, triggered massive demonstration. In Britain, hundreds gathered at Bristol’s College Green on 21 March 2021 to demonstrate against plans to give police more powers to shut down peaceful protests. Some of the demonstrators carried placards saying “Say no to UK Police State”, “Freedom to Protest is Fundamental to Democracy”, and “Kill the Bill” (Skopeliti, 2021). The pandemic has made mass surveillance justifiable on the grounds of public health. As usual, these are supposed to be temporary measures that will be dismantled when the virus has gone, but (again) governments are known to introduce abusive measures in exceptional times but exceptional times go on for ever. As Edward Snowden argued in an interview, once we abdicate certain civil

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liberties due to an emergency, it might be hard to get them back or at least fully back (Dowd, 2020). By taking terrorism or the threat of terrorism as an excuse, the US government has adopted several extreme measures, which raise serious questions of compliance with the rule of law. The same has been done by its most enthusiastic allies (particularly the Five-Eye, English-speaking countries). By reviewing many of the post-World War II developments, Wood (2003) asks the following question: “Where, if at all, does the rule of law fit into such a dangerous world?”. Her answer is clear: “the rule of law not only can, but must, continue to be the guiding star for the United States and all other freedom-loving countries”. She identifies a number of responses to international terrorism and asserts that they “pose[d] a significant threat to continued observance of the rule of law”, evaluating the propositions put forward by the government by using Fallon’s (1997) criteria. Simpson (2002) revealed that the eminent conservative jurist Lord Devlin believed that the British colonial government’s adoption in Africa of emergency measures to maintain law and order in the face of uprisings and violence violated the rule of law. Western governments abuse the rule of law, not only by using emergencies as an excuse but also by exploiting the propositions that the rule of law is vague and that it is an ideal that we aspire to, as opposed to being something that should be followed strictly. By using these propositions, governments can justify actions that violate the rule of law. The ambiguity proposition can be seen in Fletcher’s (1996) two versions of the rule of law. By adopting the narrow version, a government can violate the rule of law and claim not to because the broad version does not represent the rule of law. Ambiguity has been referred to by several scholars. Fletcher himself notes that the rule of law is “the most puzzling of all the dreams that drive men and women into the streets”, suggesting that “we are never quite sure what we mean by the rule of law”. Likewise, Fallon suggests that its meaning may be less clear today than ever before and that there is “widespread confusion and uncertainty about the ideal’s precise content”. Kahn (1997) goes further, arguing that “as a fundamental belief, the rule of law has more in common with myth than with logic”. Rose (2004) suggests that given this inherent ambiguity and the political disagreement, unanimity or consensus on meaning may be difficult. Pearlstein (2021) describes the rule of law not as being synonymous with “a list of rules”, but rather as referring to “the core principles and

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institutional structures by which any lawful action may be taken and by which any legal rule may be applied, interpreted, or changed”. Violations of the rule of law may be based on the proposition that it is an ideal to be aspired for rather than something to abide by. This proposition has been advanced by some scholars. For example, Fallon (1997) articulates a multidimensional, dynamic concept of the rule of law by identifying four rule of law ideal types: the historicist ideal, the formalist ideal, the legal process ideal, and the substantive ideal. He goes on to say: The Rule of Law is best conceived as comprising multiple strands, including values and considerations to which each of the four competing ideal types calls attention. It is a mistake to think of particular criteria as necessary in all contexts for the Rule of Law. Rather we should recognize that the strands of the Rule of Law are complexly interwoven, and we should begin to consider which values or criteria are presumptively primary under which conditions.

Likewise, Stein (2019) suggests that the rule of law is “an ideal, a goal, something to be strived for” and that “as an ideal, it is never fully achieved”. Its presence or absence, therefore, should be judged in relative terms. Another way to abuse the rule of law, as Ericson (2007) puts it, is to use “counter-law”, which involves using law against law. For this purpose, legal resources are used to erode or eliminate traditional principles, standards, and procedures of criminal law and facilitate pre-emptive policing interventions in areas such as counter-terrorism. This, Ericson argues, threatens the rule of law, defined as the principle that “police and citizens alike should know what is and is not legally authorized…. to ensure a predictable environment in which to make rational choices about rule-governed behaviour”. Edwards (2022) argues against the discounting of the image of law against law as a “polemical gesture to add weight to a liberal critique”, arguing instead that “it be grounded in a defensible theoretical model of the Rule of Law”. He goes on to outline such a model, which is contrasted with twenty-first century developments in British counter-terrorist legislation. The US has used torture, extraordinary rendition, warrantless wiretapping, and arbitrary detention in pursuit of the “war on terror”. The Patriot Act was passed by Congress just six weeks after the September 11

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attacks. Most of the changes to the surveillance law made by the Patriot Act were part of a long-standing law enforcement wish list that had been previously rejected by Congress, in some cases repeatedly. Congress reversed course because it was bullied by the Bush Administration in the weeks following the September 11 attacks. The Patriot Act, which enhanced the government’s power to spy on citizens, is unconstitutional. It violates the Fourth Amendment, which says the government cannot conduct a search without obtaining a warrant and showing probable cause to believe that the person has committed or will commit a crime. It violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech by prohibiting the recipients of search orders from telling others about those orders, even where there is no real need for secrecy. It violates the First Amendment by effectively authorizing the FBI to launch investigations of American citizens in part for exercizing their freedom of speech. And it violates the Fourth Amendment by failing to provide notice (even after the fact) to persons whose privacy has been compromised. Furthermore, the Patriot Act puts the CIA in the business of spying on Americans, giving the Director the power to identify domestic intelligence requirements. It creates a new crime of “domestic terrorism”, transforming protesters into terrorists if they engage in conduct that “involves acts dangerous to human life” to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion”. The Act gives the attorney general and the secretary of state the power to detain or deport any non-citizen who belongs to or donates money to one of these broadly defined “domestic terrorist groups”. It allows for the indefinite detention of non-citizens, giving the attorney general unprecedented new power to determine the fate of immigrants. For example, the attorney general can order detention based on a certification that he or she has “reasonable grounds” to believe that a non-citizen endangers national security. Counter-terrorism is a convenient excuse for abandoning the rule of law. In defiance of the rule of law, counter-terrorism policies have inflicted significant damage on civil liberties and human rights through mass surveillance, torture, indefinite detention, and targeted killing. A long list of prohibitive rules codified in domestic and international law are designed to limit the kinds of illegal acts perpetrated in the name of national security. Some indicators are easy to find. Tens of detainees are still languishing at Guantanamo Bay without trial or charge, more than twenty years after their kidnapping from Afghanistan. The CIA’s “black sites” and “enhanced interrogation techniques” are still used with

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impunity. Targeted assassinations around the world are rampant. The Obama (In)Justice Department failed to prosecute federal agents implicated in the torture-related deaths of two detainees in US custody, described by the New York Times as “deeply troubling” (Pearlstein, 2021). Yet another way to violate the rule of law is to allow the law to run its course, only to reverse judicial decisions sometime later, allowing people convicted of heinous crimes, even war crimes, to get away with it. This is done in accordance with an American travesty called “presidential pardons”. In December 2020, Trump pardoned four Blackwater criminals who had been convicted in a US court of law for firing on unarmed crowd in Baghdad in 2007, killing 14 people including two children (they are not called “innocent civilians” because this term applies to Westerners only). The convicted criminals, who were travelling in an armoured convoy, opened fire indiscriminately with machine guns, grenade launchers, and a sniper rifle on a crowd of unarmed people in a square in the Iraqi capital. Three of the four were convicted on multiple charges of voluntary and attempted manslaughter and sentenced to 30 years in prison, while the criminal who was the first to start shooting was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life. Interestingly, an initial prosecution was thrown out by a federal judge—this is the spirit of the rule of law! Extraordinary rendition is the practice of kidnapping or capturing people and sending them to countries where they are subjected to torture. Under the Bush administration, the US government systematically sent people off to a “who’s who” of countries where torture is used routinely, including Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. When Bush Junior was in charge, the CIA rendered hundreds, even thousands, of people to be tortured in other countries, both in facilities run by foreign intelligence agencies and CIA-run “black sites”. Extraordinary rendition is prohibited explicitly by the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which the US Senate ratified at the urging of then-President Ronald Reagan, and by a 1998 federal statute. Yet there has been no accountability for those who authorized and committed these crimes. It is not only the US that indulges in this kind of abuse. Since 11 September 2001, the Australian government has introduced more than 40 new counter-terrorism laws, which have created new criminal offences, new detention and questioning powers for police and security agencies,

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new powers for the attorney general to ban alleged terrorist organizations, and new ways to control people’s movement and activities without criminal convictions. Counter-terrorism laws can have a profound impact on fundamental human rights and freedoms, including the right to a fair trial, the right to freedom from arbitrary detention and arrest, the right not to be subject to torture, the right to privacy, the right to freedom of association and expression, and the right to non-discrimination. While these rights are protected under international human rights treaties, to which Australia is a signatory in the absence of an Australian charter of rights, some fundamental human rights receive limited protection under Australian law. Ananian-Welsh and Williams (2014) explain how the Australian counter-terrorism laws have been extended to be made applicable to the “war on bikies”: Since September 11, Australia’s federal Parliament has enacted a range of exceptional measures aimed at preventing terrorism. These measures include control orders, which were not designed or intended for use outside of the terrorism context. What has followed, however, has been the migration of this measure to new contexts in the states and territories, especially in regard to what some have termed the ‘war on bikies’. This has occurred to the point that this measure, once considered extreme, has become accepted as a normal aspect of the criminal justice system, and has in turn given rise to even more stringent legal measures.

This means that what used to be exceptional measures have been normalized and then extended to new extremes.

4.3

The International Rule of Law

Rose (2004) considers the expansion of the rule of law to cover international law, which gives the concept of “international rule of law”. According to Bingham (2011) “the rule of law requires compliance by the state with its obligations in international law as in national law”. He draws attention to the issue of whether the rule of law exists in an international context and raises the question whether countries have a duty to other countries to obey the international obligations agreed upon by them. Western countries and their allies are serial breakers of international law and serial accusers of others that they break international law because they (Western countries) believe in a “rule-based order”. After all, the

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privilege of breaking international law without being held accountable is dictated by Western exceptionalism and exemptionalism. Western countries, led by the US, have been breaking international law flagrantly by invading (typically defenceless) countries, occupying them, and destroying their infrastructure from the air. The occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have broken every clause in the Geneva conventions. A crime of aggression occurs when a country commits an act of aggression that violates the United Nations charter. Acts of aggression include invasion, military occupation, annexation by the use of force, bombardment, and military blockade of ports. Refusing to close down military bases, against the will of the people in occupied countries, is another act of aggression (two examples are the people of Iraq and the people of Okinawa). All of these sound familiar, as the “free world” led by the US has developed a taste for crimes of aggression. Under the international law precedents established in the post-World War II Nuremburg trials, war without justification in terms of self-defence constitutes a crime of aggression. Modern wars of aggression by the West against the Rest are justified on the grounds that international law empowers “any nation” to intervene with military force in the affairs of another nation for “humanitarian” purposes. Fein (2014) raises several questions in response to this proposition. First, who decides whether or not a military intervention is humanitarian? Is it the attacking country, those who get injured or killed by the attacker or a majority of all countries, based on a one-country, one-vote principle? Second, how is the decision made—for example, is it made before a tribunal? Third, who is responsible for proving a humanitarian purpose? Fourth, does the country targeted for attack have a right to notice and an opportunity to be heard? Then a question arises on the threshold of human suffering that justifies humanitarian intervention. The fact of the matter, according to Fein, is that the President of the US acts as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner in the initiation and conduct wars for “humanitarian” reasons, which he describes as “the very definition of tyranny according to the Founding Fathers”. In today’s world, American militarism is the dominant source of wars of aggression. While America intervenes in this country and that under the pretext that the incumbent dictator “kills his own people”, America’s record in killing its own people is not that glamourous—and I am not talking about native Americans. In an interview with John McMurtry, a

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Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Guelph (Canada), he said the following (Ziabari, 2018): I have travelled alone with only backpack possession through the world, and have found no state in which police forces are more habituated to violent bullying, more likely to draw a gun, more discriminatory against the dispossessed, and more arbitrarily vicious in normal behaviour. The US now leads the globe in an underlying civil war of the rich against the poor. The US can … detain, kidnap and imprison without trial or indictment any US citizen or other citizen anywhere by designating them enemies to the US.

The fact of the matter is that humanitarian military interventions are prohibited under the United Nations charter and constitute crimes of aggression. If the so-called humanitarian intervention is allowed, it would encourage the strong to attack the weak. But then these attacks happen with and without the approval of the Security Council. Serbia, Iraq, and Syria have been attacked, without Security Council authorization, either by NATO or some sort of an American-led coalition (of the willing, of course). Dick Cheney’s infamous “one percent doctrine” was (and still is) used to justify attacking any country that the US does not like on the grounds that any perceived threat to national security can be considered an actual attack on the US. Fein suggests that “the Cheney moral philosophy would justify attacking any nation that taught its citizens to read because literacy could lead to a mastery of high-energy physics, which could lead to developing a nuclear capability, which could lead to an imminent nuclear attack on the United States”. Davies (2005) deals with the illegality of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In September 2005, the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, told the BBC that the invasion of Iraq was illegal under international law and dedicated his entire annual address to the UN General Assembly to the subject of international law, arguing that “we must start from the principle that no one is above the law and no one should be denied its protection”. By saying that, Annan presumed what the world generally accepts that international law is legally binding on all countries. However, Davies (2005) suggests that “international law is spoken of as a tool that our [US] government can use selectively to enforce its will on other nations or else circumvent when it conflicts with sufficiently important U.S. interests”. This is actually inconsistent with Article VI, Clause

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2 of the US constitution, known as the Supremacy Clause, which grants international treaties the same “supreme” status as federal law and the constitution. The clause reads as follows: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Contrary to this clause, the Trump administration in particular has shown nothing but utter contempt for international treaties, effectively raising the slogan Amerika über alles . Davies suggests that without an international court system to ensure universal enforcement, the real consequences of violating international law are often political, economic, and diplomatic rather than judicial. However, the US is immune from the political, economic, and diplomatic consequences of breaking international law by virtue of its economic and military might and its ability to bully both friends and foes. The Nuremberg judgement on illegal wars of aggression is reflected in the following statement (Davies, 2005): The charges in the indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

George Bush Junior avoided citing legal principles to justify the invasion of Iraq, arguing instead that the invasion represented a pre-emptive strike in self-defence and that it was necessary for the enforcement of Security Council Resolution 1441, which threatened “serious consequences” for Iraq’s alleged failure to disarm and also for the enforcement of Security Council resolutions, going back to 1990. These justifications worked, in the sense that public opinion was supportive, thanks also to war drumbeating corporate media. Interestingly, the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg justified their invasion of Norway on grounds very similar to those cited by Bush Junior, claiming a reasonable fear that Norway would have

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become a base for an Allied attack on Germany. The court rejected the claim that Germany alone could decide whether preventive action was a necessity. Willson (1999) brings attention to the fact that the US Congress has declared war on only five occasions, the last vote being in 1941, authorizing participation in WWII. Since WWII, however, various US presidents have initiated over 200 overt military and 6000 covert interventions all around the world. None of these interventions, nor the presidents who ordered them, have been the object of serious discussions in Congress about impeachable offenses, and none of them has received serious debate, if any, about the need for declaring war as required under the US constitutional system of government. He also points out how the facts are twisted to justify aggression. For example, he writes the following: It is difficult to comprehend the arrogance of our governmental leaders. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, in addressing military combat troops on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier in the Gulf poised to attack Iraq, declared, “You are the steel in the sword of freedom. You are the tip of the sword” (Associated Press story, Feb. 12, 1998). Whose freedom? Whose sword? And who has thought about the justice, fairness, and longterm wisdom of the sword?

In the course of waging the illegal war of aggression against Iraq, the Anglo-American (Western) imperialist alliance has also violated specific provisions of other international treaties, particularly the Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in time of war, which is also known as the “Fourth Geneva Convention”. The occupation forces violated the provisions of the Geneva Convention by abusing detainees and prisoners (the Americans in Abu Gharaib and the British in the Basra Central Prison) and by indulging in reprisals, intimidation, rape, and collective punishment, as well as the destruction of property and recruitment of local armed and auxiliary forces that took part in sectarian strife. The great American thinker Noam Chomsky demonstrates that if the Nuremberg (and Tokyo) laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged (Chomsky, 1990). That was in reference to the German and Japanese war time political and military leaders who were hanged for starting wars of aggression. Starting with Truman, he should have been hanged for dropping two atomic bombs on civilian

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targets and for organizing a major counter-insurgency campaign in Greece that killed thousands and produced a huge number of refugees. Eisenhower, Chomsky argues, should have been hanged for the overthrow of the government of Guatemala, the invasion of Lebanon, and the overthrow of the government of Iran through a CIA-backed coup. Ditto for Kennedy who launched a terrorist campaign against Cuba and ordered its invasion (and when he wanted to change course, he was conveniently assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, or so we are told). Ditto for Johnson for the Indochina and the invasion of the Dominican Republic. Ditto for Nixon who bombed Cambodia and Laos. Ditto for Ford who supported the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Ditto for Carter (who was the least violent) for aiding and abetting Indonesian atrocities. Ditto for Reagan for the crimes committed in Central America and supporting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Ditto for Bush Senior who ordered the invasion of Iraq and the destruction of its infrastructure. Although Chomsky stops with Bush Senior, the dittos can be applied to William Clinton, George Bush Junior, Barrack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. Chomsky (1971) had earlier coined the term “rule of force” in international affairs. In his review of Telford Taylor’s book, Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy, he explains how Taylor, who was Counsel for the Prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, came close to suggesting that the military and civilian leadership of the US during the period from 1965 to the present are liable to prosecution as war criminals under the standards of Nuremberg. Taylor is known for having been an outspoken critic of US actions during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. The same charges can be laid upon the British and American leadership during the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The rest of the West has been at best cheerleaders for those committing war crimes. The British committed war crimes in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, which was under their occupation. Australian special forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan as described by Willacy (2021). It seems that the West has perfected the use of the “rule of force” in international affairs, a skill that has its roots in the and violence in the voyage of Columbus to the new world, the Spanish conquests of South America, the mass killings of Congolese by Little Belgium, the French massacres of Algerians, and the atrocities perpetrated by the British Empire all around the word. In his book, Genocide, War Crimes, and the West, Adam Jones

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presents a typology of transnational crimes committed by the West against humanity (Jones, 2004). One cannot talk about the violation of the international rule of law without mentioning Israel, which is sometimes labelled a “Western country”, even though it is better described as an “honourary Western country”. Irrespective of how it is labelled, Israel is consistently aided and abetted by the core West in its endless endeavours to violate the international rule of law. Western leaders take pride in declaring that they are Zionists, the most recent such a declaration came from Liz Truss while she was British prime minister. Willson (1999) points out that the US has consistently provided Israel $3–4 billion of aid each year, despite the fact that Israel is a nuclear state which has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and that US law prohibits furnishing aid to any country that has not signed this treaty. Israel has violated many international laws, including United Nations Resolutions and the Laws of War and Occupation as stated in the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel’s annexation of the land occupied in the 1948 and 1967 wars (land other than what was given by the UN according to the 1947–1948 partition plan) is a violation of the UN charter. The building of settlements on occupied land is a violation of the Geneva Conventions IV. Israel has been indulged in illegal ethnic cleansing. Israel has established an illegal apartheid system. Israel repeatedly indulges in massive violations of human rights. Israel has mastered the art of collective punishment. Israel indulges in the transformation of local laws, which is a violation of the Hague Regulations IV. Israel has violated 28 resolutions of the Security Council (which are legally binding on member-states according to the UN charter). Last, but not least, Israel has built a separation barrier, which has been ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice. We must not forget that Israel was created by the Balfour declaration, issued by the Western country that has perfected the art of taking land by force and claiming sovereignty (Northern Ireland, the Malvinas, Gibraltar, and Diego Garcia are living examples).

4.4

Judicial Independence

Judicial independence is the concept that the judiciary should be independent, which means that courts should not be subject to improper influence from other branches of government or from private or partisan

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interests. Judicial independence, which is important to the idea of separation of powers, serves as a safeguard for the rights and privileges provided by a limited constitution and prevents executive and legislative encroachment upon those rights. This is how Alexander Hamilton viewed judicial independence (Cooke, 1961): The complete independence of the courts of justice is particularly essential in a limited constitution. By a limited constitution I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority … Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice; whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.

The principle that the rule of law requires an independent judiciary has been described as the “foundation” of the rule of law (Stein, 2019). Independence may be institutional or decisional. Institutional independence describes the independence of the judicial branch from the executive and legislative branches of government. Decisional independence is the requirement that a judge must decide a particular case only on the basis of the law and the facts presented to the judge in the case. Both institutional and decisional independence are essential to governance under the rule of law. The key to fostering and establishing the rule of law is to ensure that the judiciary is not only independent but appears to be independent, in order to gain the confidence of the public. The greatest danger to independence comes from the interference (perceived or otherwise) of government institutions or political parties. This concept is enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the principles of equality before the law (Article 7), the presumption of innocence (Article 11) and the right to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent, and impartial tribunal established before the law (Article 10). These rights were further endorsed by the United Nations in its adoption in 1985 of the Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary, and of the Procedures for the Effective Implementation of the Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary in 1989. Judicial independence in the West is exaggerated. In sensitive politically related cases or cases related to “national security”, the judiciary is not independent. The ongoing case of Julian Assange is just one example.

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Frequently reported cases of judicial lack of independence indicate that the judiciary can be easily placed in the pockets of criminal gangs and the oligarchy. Let us start with the case of Julian Assange, which shows that the judiciary is not free of political influence in both the UK and US. This case is described eloquently by the Australian human rights activist John Pilger. Pilger (2021) argues that “a British High Court’s decision to extradite imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, where he has been charged with espionage for his journalism, ignored crucial evidence and was patently biased towards delivering a judgment favourable to US interests”. He describes as “grotesque” the decision of Britain’s High Court to extradite Assange for the crime of “authentic, accurate, courageous, vital journalism”. The British judge decided to ignore the confession of a crucial FBI informant and prosecution stooge, a fraudster and serial liar, that he had fabricated evidence against Assange. The revelation that the Spanish-run security firm at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange was granted political refuge, was a CIA front that spied on Julian’s lawyers, doctors, and confidants. The judges also ignored the disclosure, repeated graphically by defence counsel before the High Court, that the CIA had planned to murder Assange in London. Judicial independence and integrity are violated when corrupt judges prosecute whistle-blowers. According to Sirohi (2019), a war has been launched by the corporate-government alliance, with the help of a judiciary that accommodates their wishes. This is how Sirohi puts it: Corporations are working their way into the media – slowly, deliberately and in cahoots with governments all over the world. Whistleblowers, fighting fearlessly to expose untethered government intrusions within and outside the country and to strengthen individual liberties and human rights, now face a very real threat to their lives from a formidable corporate-government machinery intent on using all the power in its hands to hide damaging information and to break the back of those disseminating this information to the public at large.

A less high-profile case where there was miscarriage of justice perpetrated by a less than independent judge was that of human rights lawyer and environmental activist Steven Donziger who served 993 days under

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house arrest, as a punishment for his decades-long fight against the global oil industry and Chevron’s industrial poisoning of the Amazon rain forest. Donziger has been subjected to a vindictive campaign by the US District Court in Manhattan, including disbarring him in New York State and sentencing him to 45 days in jail and home confinement on trumped-up contempt of court charges. According to Reed (2022), two New York City federal court judges, who have close ties to the US oil industry, retaliated against Donziger for his legal victory over Chevron in an Ecuadorian court in 2011. Amnesty International, along with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called Donziger’s arbitrary detention a “violation of international law”. Following Donziger’s release, Daniel Joloy, senior policy adviser at Amnesty International, said that Donziger “should have never been detained for even one day, as it has been clear that the whole process against him has been in retaliation for his human rights work that exposed corporate wrongdoings” (Reed, 2022). Another factor that undermines judicial independence in the West is bribery. Pahis (2009) compiles a data set of discovered incidents of judicial bribery in the US. His analysis suggests that institutions are particularly ineffective at preventing and uncovering judicial bribery in civil disputes and traffic hearings. Of the thirty-eight judges examined by him, thirty had engaged in corrupt acts other than the ones that led directly to their removal or conviction. Even if these judges were assumed to comprise a large share of a very small group of “bad apples”, the many instances in which they were able to indulge in corruption without consequence indicate deficiencies in US anti-corruption institutions. The study reveals that the most common types of judicial bribery that are discovered and punished are bribes related to traffic violations and criminal prosecutions. He points out that at least 12 judges accepted bribes in traffic violation, drunk driving, or ordinance violation cases and that at least 16 judges accepted bribes related to criminal cases. At least 11 judges received kickbacks from attorneys whom the judges had appointed. Another judge was removed for receiving kickbacks from a bail bondsman, while yet another was convicted of accepting bribes in a licensing court. Judicial independence and the rule of law are also undermined by plea bargains and mandatory sentencing. Plea bargains are the reason why most people languishing in US dungeons are put behind bars without trial. These people are encouraged or compelled to plead guilty to go

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behind bars for five years rather than risk going to court and sentenced for 20 years for a crime they have not committed. Neily (2019) refers to “a streamlined process for transforming millions of suspects into convicted criminals quickly, efficiently and without the hassle of a constitutionally prescribed jury trial”. He calls the process “coercive plea bargaining”, describing it as “the secret sauce that helps us maintain the world’s highest incarceration rate”. The figures are alarming. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center (2019), of the roughly 80,000 federal prosecutions initiated in 2018, just 2% went to trial. More than 97% of federal criminal convictions are obtained through plea bargains— the states are not far behind at 94%. The study concludes that “trials are rare in the federal criminal justice system, and when they happen, most end in convictions”. Because they typically end up in convictions, most of those accused plead guilty to avoid longer sentences. Neily (2019) describes graphically how prosecutors extract confessions and guilty pleas. Though physical torture remains off limits, American prosecutors are equipped with a fearsome array of tools they can use to extract confessions and discourage people from exercising their right to a jury trial. These tools include charge-stacking (charging more or more serious crimes than the conduct really merits), legislatively-ordered mandatory-minimum sentences, pre-trial detention with unaffordable bail, threats to investigate and indict friends or family members, and the so-called trial penalty [the difference between the sentence offered prior to trial versus the sentence a defendant receives after a trial].

Mandatory sentencing requires that offenders serve a predefined term for certain crimes, such that judges are bound by law to give these sentences, which are determined by the legislature, not the judicial system. They are typically instituted to expedite the sentencing process and limit the possibility of irregularity of outcomes due to judicial discretion (which gives the impression that judges may be corrupt). This is inconsistent with the independence of the judiciary, which governs the sentencing process. Under judicial independence, Parliament legislates the maximum sentence for each crime but the judge determines the appropriate sentence for each offender according to the law and the facts of the case. Instead of a judge deciding on a punishment that fits the crime, a judge must sentence the offender to at least the minimum mandatory sentence dictated in legislation.

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4.5

Transparency and Corruption

Corruption is related to the rule of law and judicial independence because it involves criminal offences. Therefore, corruption tends to flourish when the rule of law and judicial independence are weak, so that the perpetrators of corruption know that they can get away with it. Defining corruption is certainly not an easy task, but in general it involves the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting, directly or indirectly, of anything of value to influence improperly the actions of another party. Apata (2019) suggests that the term “corruption” “has become a catchall term for all kinds of practices, attitudes and behaviour, all of which imply deviation from a standard or convention”. The underlying conduct typically involves the use of improper means (such as bribes and kickbacks) by someone to induce another person to act or to refrain from acting in the exercise of his or her duties, in order to obtain or retain business, or to obtain an undue advantage. A concise definition is that corruption is “an abuse of entrusted powers for private gains”, where abuse is any conduct that deviates from the formal or informal rules generally accepted by the society (Boehm, 2007). The entrusted powers subject to abuse may be acquired by merit or by delegation (that is, administration in the public sector, management in the private sector, and election in the case of politicians). Corruption takes place via several channels and by employing different means. The first is the use of bribes and kickbacks, which involves the exchange of gifts and favours for personal gain. The second consists of embezzlement, theft, and fraud. Embezzlement and theft involve someone who takes control of funds and assets that they have access to, whereas fraud involves using deception to convince the owner of funds or assets to give them up to an unauthorized party. Graft occurs when funds intended for public projects are intentionally misdirected to maximize the benefits to private interests of the corrupt individuals. Unlike bribery, which is the use of positive inducements for corrupt aims, extortion and blackmail involve the use of threats. Influence peddling is the illegal practice of using one’s influence in government or connections with persons in authority to obtain favours or preferential treatment, usually in return for payment. Networking (both business and personal) can be an effective way for job seekers to gain a competitive edge over others in the job market. Abuse of discretion refers to the misuse of one’s powers— for example, a judge improperly dismissing a criminal case or a customs

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official using their discretion to allow a banned substance through a port. Favouritism, nepotism, and clientelism involve the favouring of not the perpetrator of corruption but someone related to them, such as a friend, family member, or member of an association. Corruption is typically portrayed as a third world, non-Western phenomenon. Khera (2001) explains this attitude as follows: Advanced [Western] countries often take a stereotypical view of the governments, organizations, business, and institutions in developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America as being corrupt, uninformed, incompetent, and just plain ignorant, while their views of their own businesses, governments, institutions, etc., are those of hardworking, knowledgeable, ethical, well-governed, efficient, productive, etc.

We always hear about corruption in India, China, Russia, Brazil, the Middle East, South America, and Africa as if corruption is limited to some parts of the world but not others. Corruption is portrayed to be found in the Rest but not in the West. In reality, corruption is a global phenomenon—it is found in every corner of the globe, including the West. The difference lies is in the scope of corruption. In the poor countries of the Rest, corruption typically takes the form of exchanging favours for an envelope containing few hundred or thousand dollars. In the West, it is exchanging favours for millions of dollars paid in an offshore account. Kaufman (2009) describes as a myth the proposition that “corruption is a challenge mainly for public officials in developing countries and that it is unrelated to the current global crisis”. He argues strongly that “corruption is not unique to developing countries, nor has it declined on average”. While petty corruption is widespread in third world countries, grand corruption and systemic corruption involving the government and organized crime flourish in the West. The very economic system in the West that allows the oligarchy to run show is corrupt because it is conducive to political capture, which leads to corruption on a massive scale involving the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich and super rich through privatization, deregulation, bail-ins, and bail-outs. A twisted tax system puts the majority of the tax burden on wage and salary earners while allowing big earners and corporations to get away with massive tax fraud. The tax code contains loopholes that are intended to allow the rich and powerful to pay less tax than what they ought to pay. The

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economic system adopted in the West has encouraged financialization, thus expanding the scope for financial fraud. Even petty corruption can be found in the West as we saw in the previous section with highly paid judges receiving bribes and kickbacks. Corruption is where the money is—so it has to be more rampant in the West. People in the poor parts of the Rest indulge in corruption for survival. In the West, the rich and powerful indulge in corruption to boost their already massive net worth and to accumulate an amount of money that they cannot spend in ten life times. They indulge in corruption just because they compete for the title of the richest person in the graveyard. The corruption perception index (CPI) is not an accurate measure of corruption and by design it is biased against countries of the Rest, showing them relatively more corrupt compared to the countries of the West. Hough (2016) identifies three flaws in the index: (i) a single number cannot represent a complex phenomenon like corruption; (ii) the index measures the perception of corruption, not corruption itself; and (iii) the index is a measure of public sector corruption, ignoring corruption in the private sector. It is biased against countries of the Rest because it does not take into account the nature of corruption (petty corruption versus grand and systemic corruption), because it reinforces existing stereotypes and clichés by measuring perception, and because the massive corruption in the private sector (particularly the finance industry, which is infested with corrupt people and institutions) is not covered by the index. The index should be adjusted downwards in countries with high GDP per capita, and vice versa, because poverty drives petty corruption and because corruption by the affluent should be taken more seriously than corruption by the poor who strive to survive economic hardship. It is strange that corruption in the private sector is ignored when Transparency International (2015) suggests that corruption in the banking sector has manifested itself in many scandals involving money laundering, rate rigging, and tax evasion, all of which undermine the public’s trust in financial institutions. These are kinds of massive corruption perpetrated by the (private) finance industry and enabled by governments in the name of deregulation and economic freedom. Cobham (2013) argues that the CPI should be dropped because it “embeds a powerful and misleading elite bias in popular perceptions of corruption, potentially contributing to a vicious cycle and at the same time incentivizing inappropriate policy responses”. Hence, he goes on, “the index

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corrupts perceptions to the extent that it’s hard to see a justification for its continuing publication”. Western countries that are highly ranked in terms of the CPI show unmistakable signs of corruption. Rodriguez (2005) makes the following interesting and alarming statement on corruption in the West, which is supposed to be exceptional in terms of transparency and the absence of corruption: In the United Kingdom, members of parliament earn up to 95 percent of their income from second, third, and fourth jobs and outside interests. In France, the head of state initiated parliamentary proceedings to reaffirm his immunity against prosecution for crimes committed during and prior to his term in office. In Germany, politicians and lobbysits colluded to earn millions of dollars for themselves and their parties in kickbacks by building a garabage incinerator that was massively oversized for the city it was to serve. In the United States, the president’s father received sizeable fees from a company earning millions of dollars in defense contracts as his son took the country to war.

Rodriguez points out that “these countries are not the poor or nondemocratic nations that languish at the bottom of surveys on corruption”, but rather “countries that ranked among the top 20 cleanest countries”. Moreover, these countries do not hold a “monopoly on corrupt practices in Western established democracies” because “similar examples exist in most, if not all, of the countries consistently rank among the world’s least corrupt nations”. An indicator of corruption in the West, as Rodriguez argues, is low voter turnout because of political mistrust. If anything, the CPI shows that the West is not a uniform entity as big divergences can be seen in Figs. 4.1 and 4.2, which shows deviations from the average and maximum values of the CPI for the countries typically labelled “Western”. If Western countries follow Western culture and values, which reject corruption, then the CPIs of individual countries should be close to each other. However, we can see significant dispersion about the mean value, with Denmark (the least corrupt country) 25% above average while Hungary (the most corrupt country) is 40% below average. Hungary is more than 50% below Denmark, which means that it is twice as corrupt as Denmark. This, of course, is better than, say, South Sudan, which is 88% below Denmark. According to the rhetoric, however, the Rest is much more corrupt than the West.

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Top 15 Finland New Zealand Denmark Norway Sweden Singapore Switzerland Netherlands Luxembourg Germany UK Hong Kong Estonia Austria Canada 70

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Bottom 15 Chad Sudan Nicaragua Haiti Turkmenistan Burundi Libya Equatorial Guinea Yemen North Korea Afghanistan Venezuela Syria Somalia South Sudan 10

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Fig. 4.1 Ranking of countries by the Corruption Perception Index

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Deviation from Average (%) 30 20 10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40

Deviation from Maximum (%) 10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50 -60

Fig. 4.2 Deviations of country CPI from the average and maximum values

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Corruption in the West takes several shapes and form, but it always runs on a grand scale. The first is campaign donations, which represent a high-return investment for the donors. A large number of alarming corruption scandals involve the financing of political parties and electoral campaigns. Rodriguez gives examples from Canada, the US, Germany, and the UK. In the UK, for example, Tony Blair was forced to give back a donation of one million pounds from racing car impresario, Bernie Ecclestone, after the public interpreted it as payback for Blair’s decision to exempt Formula One racing from a ban on tobacco advertising at sporting events. The second form is lobbying, as lobbyists stand between the public and private sectors to broker corrupt transactions. One example mentioned by Rodriguez is that of a French court sentencing a German lobbyist to 15 months in prison for accepting bribes. The court also ordered the lobbyist to repay $28 million in “consultation fees” for arranging the sale in 1992 of the Leuna oil refinery to French oil company Elf Aquitaine. The third form is having two sets of rules, one for the rich and powerful and one for the poor. This point is related to the rule of law and judicial independence. After all, it is corrupt politicians who legislate to protect themselves, their cronies and their carers and financiers. This is why cases of clear political corruption are typically difficult to prosecute. In both Europe and the US, politicians have reacted to increasingly active judiciaries by changing the law, strengthening immunity, and further insulating themselves from prosecution. They have enriched themselves by indulging in corruption with immunity. Police corruption is rampant in the West. Reported cases of police corruption are just the tip of the iceberg because whistle-blowing is not common in law enforcement for fear of reprisal (for example, Al-Gharbi, 2020). Furthermore, when civilians become witnesses to police brutality, officers are often known to respond by harassing and intimidating the witnesses as retribution for reporting misconduct (for example, Miller, 2021). Police corruption takes many shapes and forms, including the acceptance of bribes in exchange for not reporting illegal activities. A particular form of police corruption in the US is observed when white supremacist groups, such as Neo-Nazi Skinheads or Neo-Confederates (such as the Ku Klux Klan), recruit members of law enforcement into their ranks or encourage their members to join local police departments to repress minorities and covertly promote white supremacy (for example, Schulkin, 2020). Other forms of police corruption involve the

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use of surveillance abuse, false confessions, police perjury, and/or falsified evidence. These practices are not restricted to American police. In the Australian state of Victoria, where the police shoot first and ask questions later, police corruption has been documents in a 768 page book that the Victorian police did everything within their power (and beyond) to stop it from being published (Hoser, 1999). Another form of corruption that is widespread in the West is corruption in higher education and academia. The extent of corruption in higher education (both in the West and the Rest) is revealed in a collection of case studies (Myklebust, 2020). One of the case studies is that of the 6000 former students of the Trump University who agreed to a settlement of $25 million, having been the victims of an alleged scam. In the process, the victims recovered half of their money, leading to a tweet from the owner of the University, who happened to be the US president. The tweet said: “I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country”. Admission to university is traditionally considered one of the most corrupt areas of the education sector. Take this story from the University of Queensland, Australia, as told by Kidd and Thompson (2013). The Vice Chancellor of the university got his daughter admitted to medical school in preference to 343 better-qualified students. He called the then head of the medical school to ask “what could be done to get her in despite her failing the entry requirements?”. In September 2011, nine months after the enrolment decision had been made, a formal complaint was made to Chancellor John Story, the first time he had heard of the fiasco. The Vice Chancellor was forced to resign. Another Australian university invited a group of Chinese executives to attend a tailor-made MBA programme. Even though none of them could speak (let alone write) English, they all got their MBAs, including the security person who was accompanying them to make sure that no one defected. Some high-profile Western universities give PhDs to the sons and daughters of rich people in return for generous donations. This kind of corruption is encouraged by the Western economic system that is based on the free-market doctrine. The system has transformed universities from being conduits of intergenerational knowledge to financialized, corporatized, profit-maximizing firms, where the CEO (formerly known as vice chancellor or president) and their entourage receive bonuses and perks exactly like bankers. Apart from illegal and immoral activities, like distributing certificates to those who can afford

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them, the system has also led to the rise of the publish or perish (POP) culture, which is an American invention that has found its way to the rest of the world in the process of Westernizing the Rest. Under publish or perish, pressure is put on academics to publish in scholarly journals rapidly and continually as a condition for employment (finding a job), promotion, and even maintaining one’s job. Incidentally, the spread of this toxic culture is hailed as yet another contribution of the West to human welfare. Deem et al. (2008) point out that the quest for “best practices” and “more advanced systems” leads to “policy copying” through which nonWestern higher education systems have been strongly influenced by the Anglo-American standards and ideologies. In reality, the POP culture has led to the rise of publication-related corruption and misconduct, which are described in detail by Moosa (2018). In general, publication-related misconduct falls under several headings: plagiarism, self-plagiarism, salami slicing and multiple publications, biased reporting and manipulation of results, misconduct with respect to authorship, and the reporting of fake results that cannot be replicated. In response to the challenge posed by POP, academics have become more inclined to indulge in research misconduct that takes various shapes and forms. One key indicator of the rise in research misconduct is the number of retracted papers. According to Wanjek (2015), “there has been a tenfold increase in the percentage of scientific papers retracted because of fraud since 1975”. These papers were retracted because of misconduct involving “lying, cheating and/or stealing”. Fang et al. (2012) conduct a detailed review of all 2047 biomedical and life-science research articles indexed by PubMed as retracted on 3 May 2012 and find that only 21.3% of retractions were attributable to error. In contrast, 67.4% of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4%), duplicate publication (14.2%), and plagiarism (9.8%). Interlandi (2006) writes an interesting account of the case of Eric Poehlman who, in the United States District Court in Burlington (Vermont), pleaded guilty to lying on a federal grant application and admitted to fabricating more than a decade’s worth of scientific data on obesity, menopause, and ageing. Much of the fraud was committed while he was conducting clinical research as a tenured academic at the University of Vermont. He presented fraudulent data in lectures and in published papers and used the same data to obtain millions of dollars in federal grants from the National Institute of Health. Barbour (2015) refers to an

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article that was retracted by the Journal of the American Medical Association because the lead author reportedly admitted that she had fabricated data. Academics, both in the West and the Rest, have become so desperate for publications that they started preying on students, research assistants, and junior colleagues. One of those victims posted the following question on Quora (https://www.quora.com/): “My PhD advisor asked me to add his friends as co-authors or he will delay my graduation. What are my options?”. This is a classic case of authorship-related misconduct. One respondent advised him not to fight and calmly agree to put “whosoever’s name they want”—the rationale being that failure to agree would leave the student without a reference for a future job. But then the respondent went on to say that once the student got a job, he should blow the whistle. Apparently the respondent found himself in a similar situation when he had to put his supervisor’s name on a paper he had written, only for “saying that figure should start with F and table should start with T”. There is no doubt that the Rest outperforms the West in terms of almost all kinds of corruption, but when it comes to financial corruption the West is far ahead, because the West is where the money is and financial corruption occurs where the money is. The gold and silver medallists in financial corruption are the UK and the US, where the largest international financial centres are to be found. Roberto Saviano, an Italian investigative journalist, is quoted by Carrier (2016) as saying that “the financial services industry based in the City of London facilitates a system that makes the UK the most corrupt nation in the world”. He adds: If I asked what is the most corrupt place on Earth, you might say it’s Afghanistan, maybe Greece, Nigeria, the south of Italy. I would say it is the UK. It’s not UK bureaucracy, police, or politics, but what is corrupt is the financial capital. Ninety per cent of the owners of capital in London have their headquarters offshore.

In reference to the secretive offshore markets of Jersey and the Caymans, Saviano describes them as the “access gates to criminal capital in Europe and the UK is the country that allows it”. These offshore financial centres serve what he calls “criminal capitalism”, arguing that most financial companies that reside offshore are exactly like the Mafia and organized crime that do not abide by the rule of law. The extent of corruption on Wall Street is best described by Snyder (2010) as follows:

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If you ask most Americans, they will agree that the financial system is corrupt. It is generally assumed that just like most politicians, most big bankers are corrupt by nature. But the truth is that the vast majority of Americans have no idea just how corrupt the U.S. financial system has become. The corruption on Wall Street has become so deep and so vast that it is hard to even find the words to describe it. It seems that the major financial players will try just about anything these days – as long as they think they can get away with it. But in the process they are contributing to the destruction of the greatest economic machine that the planet has ever seen.

Insider trading, based on insider information, has been a common hobby for politicians ever since. Hall (2022) starts by talking about Paul Pelosi’s skills in buying and selling stocks, most likely based on tips provided by his wife, the Speaker of the House, who (according to Hall) “has access to confidential intelligence and the power to affect — with words or actions — the fortunes of companies in which her husband invests and trades”. He quotes Senator Josh Hawley as saying the following: “Year after year, politicians somehow manage to outperform the market, buying and selling millions in stocks of companies they’re supposed to be regulating”. Then he goes on to say: Wall Street and Big Tech work hand-in-hand with elected officials to enrich each other at the expense of the country. Here’s something we can do: ban all members of Congress from trading stocks and force those who do to pay their proceeds back to the American people. It’s time to stop turning a blind eye to Washington profiteering.

One form (perhaps the worst and most damaging form) of corruption in the West is regulatory capture, which occurs when powerful companies (or individuals) bend the rules for their private benefit by using highlevel bribery, lobbying or influence peddling. Banks and major financial institutions fit this description more than other firms. Green and Nader (1973) suggest that capture is enhanced by the exchange of personnel, arguing that “a kind of regular personnel interchange between [regulatory] agency and industry blurs what should be a sharp line between regulator and regulatee, and can compromise independent regulatory judgment”. Baxter (2011) emphasizes the “revolving door” as follows:

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As both our need for expert regulators and the skill of regulators increase, the doors between regulators and the industry will spin faster. If we are to engage in technical regulation at all, this is not only unavoidable, but sometimes even desirable. But revolving doors are also dangerous: many current examples vividly highlight the unseemly appearance, if not reality, of an incestuous relationship between regulators and industry that must surely risk fostering an improper influence of industry over the regulators.

In an interview on his article “Why isn’t Wall Street in Jail”, Matt Taibbi (2011) describes the SEC as a classic case of regulatory capture. The SEC has also been described as “an agency that was set up to protect the public from Wall Street, but now protects Wall Street from the public” (Bauder, 2011). On 17 August 2011, Taibbi reported that in July 2001, a preliminary fraud investigation against Deutsche Bank was stymied by Richard Walker, a former SEC enforcement director, who began working as general counsel for Deutsche Bank in October 2001. Darcy Flynn, an SEC lawyer and the whistle-blower who exposed this case, revealed that for 20 years, the SEC had been routinely destroying documents related to thousands of preliminary inquiries that were closed rather than proceeding to formal investigation. The term “legal corruption” was invented in the West to justify bribery when dealing with the Rest. In most industrial countries, foreign corruption is legal. Corrupt practices range from simple, through governmental subsidization (tax deduction), up to extreme cases as in Germany where foreign corruption is fostered, whereas domestic corruption is legally prosecuted. Bribe payments are generally tax deductible as business expenses if the name and address of the beneficiary is disclosed. These malpractices are so common that the OECD has launched a campaign to deal with it. The Secretary General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, once said the following: “The fight against bribery of foreign public officials is a core element in our drive to tackle all forms of corruption, and a shared value that unites all 44 parties to the anti-bribery convention” (OECD, 2018). The bribing of foreign officials in impoverished countries is so common that economists have come up with the “helping-hand” theory in relation to foreign direct investment (FDI) (for example, Beck & Marher, 1986; Lui, 1985; Saha, 2001). This theory states that rather than being an obstacle for business, corruption represents an efficient “lubricant” for rigid economic regulation and red tape. By bribing host governments,

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MNCs could get around regulation and potentially obtain benefits in terms of profitable contracts, privileged access to markets, and subsidies. Tanzi (1998) points out that decisions to authorize major FDI projects often provide MNCs with monopoly power in the host country, which would be extremely profitable, making it worthwhile for MNCs to bribe host government officials. As a result, a corrupt host government would be preferred by an MNC over an honest one. It follows that the West has taught the Rest how to be corrupt. Even though the West accuses the Rest of rampant corruption, the contribution of the West to corruption in the Rest is undeniable. Two cases will be discussed here: (i) how the West taught Africans to be corrupt and (ii) rampant corruption in Iraq following the Western invasion of the country. We start with corruption in Africa, an issue that has been dealt with comprehensively by Apata (2019) who explains how the West invented African corruption. Apata does not deny corruption in Africa and suggests that “African corruption is viewed as causative of the continent’s existential problems of poverty, economic stagnation, political instability, institutional failure and social unrest”. However, he correctly makes the point that “there is corruption everywhere”. Apata argues that “the idea of African corruption as an endemic practice did not happen by accident”, but rather it was “the result of Western invention that has embedded itself within the Africanist discourse”. This is the culture of blaming the victim, which is rampant in the West (for example, the homeless are homeless because they love being homeless). Apata further argues that “the corruption prototype (its invention) emerged out of Western neo-liberal capitalist tradition and its exploitative tendencies, a system that was exported to Africa and which in turn became Africanised”. In pre-colonial Africa, the concept of corruption did not exist but by the end of the colonial period, the phenomenon had become firmly rooted as though it had grown organically from within African traditions. By the 1960s and 1970s, corruption had become part of the sociopolitical and economic language in Africa as Africans learned some tricks from Western colonialists. Corruption has always been used by Western colonial forces as a distraction for the people under their colonial rule to maximize the duration of the colonial rule and extract as much as possible from the colonies. Before the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq, there was one thieve plundering the wealth of the people, together with his inner circle. After the invasion, thieves on a grand scale are in their thousands.

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Iraq has become one of the most corrupt countries in the world in a wave of US-made corruption. US-backed government officials have been engaged in plunder in a system of crony capitalism inspired and blessed by the occupation forces. Davies (2019) tells a story about a taxi driver in Baghdad who told a Western reporter the following: “most of the people ruling Iraq today are still the former exiles that the US flew in with its occupation forces in 2003, coming to Iraq with empty pockets to fill”. Davies (2019) brings attention to the UN Security Council Resolution 1483, which established a $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq, using previously seized Iraqi assets, and to the audit by KPMG and a special inspector general which revealed that “a huge proportion of that money was stolen or embezzled by US and Iraqi officials”. He also gives some examples. Lebanese customs officials found $13 million in cash aboard Iraqi-American interim Interior Minister Falah Naqib’s plane. Paul Bremer, whom Davies describes as “occupation crime boss” maintained a $600 million slush fund with no paperwork. An Iraqi government ministry with 602 employees collected salaries for 8206 employees. A US Army officer doubled the price on a contract to rebuild a hospital, and told the hospital’s director that the extra cash was his “retirement package”. A US contractor billed $60 million on a $20 million contract to rebuild a cement factory, and told Iraqi officials that they should just be grateful the US had saved them from Saddam Hussein. A US pipeline contractor charged $3.4 million for non-existent workers and “other improper charges”. In May 2003, a high-ranking British officer took delivery of $8 million in cash as the amount was transported by air from Baghdad to Basra to pay the salaries of teachers, nurses, etc. The cash was kept in a container and the officer had the only key (this author witnessed this incident first hand).

4.6

Concluding Remarks

The business oligarchy in the West has done well, operating within the alleged rule of law and judicial independence. The scandalous practices that the corporate sector gets away with are identified by Khera (2001) who argues that “the systematic abuse of power [by the oligarchy] has been made practically invisible”. So, let us look at these malpractices or, as Khera (2001) calls them, “devices”.

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The first is the principle of “do not enrich just yourself, enrich an entire select group”. As an example, Khera (2001) refers to the American Medical Association, which managed to convince the US government to relax its oversight of doctors’ billing practices as a quid pro quo for endorsing Medicare. The result was a skyrocketing cost of healthcare. The second is that of having the powerless buy into your designs, typically achieved via intensive misleading advertising campaigns. The third principle is the following: steal small amounts from many, not large amounts from a few. When a dictator steels large sums from the state resources, it is corruption in the Rest. When the Western business oligarchy steal small sums from millions of customers, by using monopolistic/oligopolistic power and false advertising, these are legitimate business practices. The most wicked principles followed by Western oligarchy are the privatizing of profits and socializing of losses, that of using a national interest issue to loot the public purse, and that of getting the right legislation. In the first case, the business oligarchy reaps huge profits in good times and pays hardly any taxes, but when things go wrong, they demand and get bail-out. The use of a national interest issue to loot the public purse is practiced primarily by military suppliers on the grounds that they provide goods and services that are necessary to defend the nation. Getting the right legislation is made possible by political capture and campaign donations. The West is certainly not exceptional in terms of the rule of law, judicial independence, and transparency.

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CHAPTER 5

Western Exceptionalism: Human Rights

5.1

Introduction

In 1948, member countries of the United Nations came together to agree on a code of rights that would be binding on all of them, giving birth to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Since then, other documents that specify human rights have been agreed upon, such as (among other) the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights and the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The formulation of these documents is based on an identification of basic human needs and the establishment of standards that ensure a dignified life. Human rights are about equality, dignity, respect, freedom, and justice. The UDHR is “universal”, in the sense that human rights should be the same for all and in every country. They are complementary—for example, the right to free elections depends on freedom of speech. Western countries are hypocritical and schizophrenic with respect to human rights, using the violation of human rights as a geopolitical tool to attack countries run by people they do not like because those people do not say “how high” when the West says “jump”. It is always the violations of human rights in China, Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran, and never about the violation of human rights in the US where someone can go to prison for 20 years without a trial by accepting a plea bargain. Furthermore, the West is very selective about © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0_5

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the human rights it observes: gay rights are observed but the rights to housing, education, and healthcare are ignored, at least in some Western countries, most notably the leader of the “free world”. Western countries treat human rights as their “privilege”, something on which they have a copyright, and think that human rights can only be determined by Western values, which unveils the colonial mentality of Western imperialism. The fact of the matter is that human rights are violated by Western countries in the West and more brutally in the Rest. Allegations of violation of human rights in the Rest are typically used by the West as a pretext to justify the imposition of sanctions, regime change, and ultimately invasion and occupation. Libya was bombed, allegedly to protect the human rights of civilians, which is ludicrous because the destruction of infrastructure deprives people from a number of human rights such as the rights to housing, education, and healthcare. The same goes for Serbia. In reality, Western acts of aggression have nothing to do with the preservation of, and everything to do with the destruction of, human rights. Acts of aggression are initiated when they do not like the person running a country, because he or she does not give privileges to multinationals and does not align with the West in any international dispute. This is why they hate Putin but they loved the corrupt Yeltsin, for the very reason that he was corrupt. Under Yeltsin, the Russian people lost all of their human rights, including the right to a dignified burial. Once George Bush Junior made it quite clear: “you are either with us or with the terrorists”, and this is why the West has endeavoured to push all countries of the world to join the West in its war against Russia. In October 2022, Sleepy Joe (Biden) started to threaten Saudi Arabia for taking a sovereign decision to cut oil production and for not being hostile to Russia. The UAE did not escape American criticism around the same time because the President of the UAE “dared” to visit Russia and meet with Putin. Western leaders, led by the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and aided by the resident of 10 Downing Street (the sheriff and deputy sheriff, respectively), start by citing allegations of human right abuses in a country that takes the side of the “terrorists” and not the side of the Pentagon, CIA, and MI6. Typical allegations are made about the dictator who “kills his own people”, the dictator who “gases his own people”, the dictator who “oppresses the Muslim minority in the east of the country”, and the dictator who “assassinates opposition leaders” (as if they care about “his own people” or the Muslim minority in the west of the country).

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Once the allegation has been established as an undisputed fact of life, they impose sanctions that hurt mostly the people whose rights have been abused, without hurting the alleged abuser. By taking such action, they hope that by depriving people of what they need to live (and their human rights), those people will revolt against the ruler and put in place a person that has been pre-selected by the West (such as Juan Guido in Venezuela). When this does not work, the country is invaded to topple the “despot” and instal “democracy”. In the process, they end up killing more people than the despot himself. Naturally, the last resorts of bombing and invasion are reserved for countries that cannot defend themselves. This is why the West invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and bombed Serbia and Libya, but it will not do that to Russia, China, or North Korea. Examples of Western violation of human rights abroad are numerous. Look no further than the criminal behaviour of the CIA and US army personnel in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and the violation of human rights by the British occupation forces in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Australian Special Forces took part in competition killing in Afghanistan as admitted by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force in his Afghanistan Inquiry Report. Israel, allegedly a Western (or honorary Western) country and the only democracy in the Middle East, is the worst violators of human rights in the occupied West Bank. As for the violation of human rights at home, examples are not difficult to find. Police crackdown against protests in the US, UK, and France are worse than the alleged violation of the human rights of protestors in Hong Kong by the Chinese police. The oppression of indigenous people in Australia and Canada is known to everyone. In these two Western countries, children were kidnapped and sometimes killed in the process of Westernizing them. In one Western country in particular, the police shoot first and ask questions later. That same country is home to the largest prison population in the world, with a large proportion put there without trial and employed as slave labour. However, human rights are not only about killing, torture, and detention. Human rights include the rights to housing, healthcare, and education, which are denied to a large segment of the population, particularly in the leader of the West. Even though politicians in “Western democracies” brag about the freedom of speech and expression and the right to protest peacefully, the police state was in action against the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement right from the beginning of its inception in 2011 when the

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US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began keeping tabs on protesters. A DHS report entitled Special Coverage: Occupy Wall Street, dated October 2011, observed that “mass gatherings associated with public protest movements can have disruptive effects on transportation, commercial, and government services, especially when staged in major metropolitan areas” (Hastings, 2012). On 21 December 2012, Partnership for Civil Justice (2012) obtained and published US government documents revealing that OWS was monitored by FBI field offices, DHS, and other federal agencies, despite labelling it a “peaceful movement” (see also, Wolf, 2012). In May 2014, the New York Times reported on declassified documents showing extensive surveillance of OWS-related groups across the country (Moynihan, 2014). Human rights are about living a life free from fear, harassment, and discrimination. They are rights because no one is expected to “earn” them—rather, people are born with their rights intact. In the following sections, we look at specific human rights and see how they are violated by the West in the West and the Rest.

5.2

The Right to Life

The right to life means that no one (including individuals and the government) can take anyone’s life. It is the government’s responsibility to protect this human right, which means that the government must put in place laws that safeguard human life and protect those whose lives are in danger. The right to life is often invoked in discussions surrounding war, police brutality, and capital punishment. The US in particular is a big violator of this right via wars, police brutality, and capital punishment. In fact, the violation of this right has been a Western hobby for a long time. Al-Nakeeb (2022) mentions some facts and figures about the violation of the right to life by six Western countries: the US, UK, Italy France, Spain, and Belgium. In 1491, about 145 million people lived in the western hemisphere, but by 1691, the population of indigenous Americans had declined by around 130 million people. Between 1885 and 1908, the king of little Belgium, Leopold II, butchered half the population of Congo, killing an estimated ten million people for no reason other than the desire to enrich himself as he claimed ownership of the “Belgian Congo”. The British Empire exterminated the natives of America and Australia. One of the worst tragedies in human histories happened when the first colonists set foot in Tasmania in 1803. They surrounded and

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slaughtered the Tasmanian aborigines until the last one died in 1876. The US followed the footsteps of Britain by committing similar atrocities. The French Empire butchered a million people in Algeria alone, in a process that continues until this day in its former colonies (under the pretext of fighting terrorism). The death toll of the Spanish conquest of South America is estimated to have been eight millions. In the modern era, the Western coalition of the willing, led by the US, continues the Western tradition of depriving people of other countries from the right to life, in the name of freedom and democracy. One has to add that Western violation of the right to life is a tradition that goes back to the depraved Roman Empire where the plutocracy enjoyed drinking and watching gladiators slaughter each other or eaten by starved lions. This is Western exceptionalism at its best, or worst, depending on one’s view of the world. The right to life is denied to poor Westerners in the modern-day West. When people are denied access to healthcare because they cannot afford it, they are effectively denied the right to life. When they are denied the right to decent living, the tenure of their right to life is reduced significantly. The privatization of public hospitals, and allowing private hospitals, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies to do as they please, explain why life expectancy in the US is lower than in Cuba. People have to make the hard choice between surviving a health issue, by paying for it, or getting bankrupt. In an interview with Matthew Rozsa, Richard Wolff makes the following comments on the healthcare industry in the US (Rozsa, 2020): There are four industry groups: doctors, number one, hospitals, number two, drug and device makers, number three, and medical insurance companies, number four. Those four together operate a conjoint monopoly. They are the only way to get the healthcare, one or another dimension of it, that is available. They operate as a monopoly. They help each other, coordinate their political and commercial lobbying advertisements, and they have succeeded dramatically in the United States, particularly since World War II, in boosting the price of medical care far beyond what it would have been had there been genuine competition.

These four industry groups deny people the right to life with the blessing and support of the government and the oligarchy. The West, symbolized by its leader, has no respect for the right to life, neither at home nor

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abroad. The right to life is a privilege of the rich and powerful. Most of the one million plus Americans who died after catching COVID-19 met their fate because they could not afford treatment. A prominent patient called Donald Trump survived because taxpayers had to foot the bill for his seven-star treatment, which cost over one million dollars. The right to life is denied by police shooting, capital punishment, and by dragging young people to wars of choice. In 2021, the US police denied 1055 people the right to life by shooting them dead. During the period 2019–2020, 24 people were denied the right to life by the Australian police, either because they died in custody or got shot. In the US, 1549 men and women have been denied the right to life since the 1970s as a result of execution. In the Vietnam War, 58,220 Americans were denied the right to life as they were dragged to an imperialist war. A total of 4424 and 2401 Americans were denied the right to life by dragging them to wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. The numbers of British soldiers who were denied the right to life as a result of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan are 179 and 457, respectively. Those who died and their comrades in arms who survived managed to deny the right to life of three million Vietnamese, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and about 176,000 Afghanis.

5.3 The Right to Freedom from Torture and Inhumane Treatment The UDHR states that no one should be subject to “torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment”. It specifically states that the government needs to protect people with disabilities because they are at an increased risk for degrading treatment. The Americans describe what they used in the Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad and in the dungeons of Guantanamo Bay as “enhanced interrogation techniques”. An interrogator, Eric Fair, said in an interview with NPR that what he did as an interrogator in Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq was torture. Fair, who had previously served in the military and worked as a police officer, was employed by a private company under contract to the military. In the interview, he said the following: “We hurt people, and not just physically…We destroyed them emotionally, and … I think at the very least it’s a just punishment for us that we suffer some of those consequences, too” (NPR, 2016). That was not the case of “one bad apple”. The Brits did

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just as well in the southern City of Basra, which was under British occupation. And the other members of the Western coalition of the willing approved or failed to condemn those brutal acts. Napolitano (2022) explained how the George Bush Junior administration suspended the rule of law and judicial independence to deprive the 9/11 suspects of their right to freedom from torture and inhumane treatment. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Bush opened a military prison at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to accommodate persons arrested for 9/11-related attacks and other acts in what he called the “war on terror”. Bush believed that since Cuba is outside the US, the constitution would not restrain the government there, federal laws would not apply there and federal judges could not interfere with the government’s behaviour there. The CIA began a programme of systematic torture of detainees, most of which was inflicted on people who knew nothing of value to the CIA. The Bush administration argued that the judicial branch had no jurisdiction over the government’s behaviour at Gitmo, because Gitmo is outside the US. The administration also argued that, even if federal courts did have jurisdiction over the government at Gitmo, the detainees had no valid claims to present to the courts because the constitution only protects Americans. British brutality has been known throughout modern history. During the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule in Kenya in the 1950s, the colonial authorities imprisoned suspected insurgents in concentration camps where they were frequently subject to brutal mistreatment, including torture, by camp wardens and prison guard. These included methods such as rape, mutilation, and stuffing detainees’ mouths with mud and stamping on their throats. Instances of the wardens and guards intentionally denying medical aid to detainees were widespread, which compounded the effects of torture at the camps. A former British prison official in Kenya described a detention camp in 1954 as follows: “Short rations, overwork, brutality, humiliating and disgusting treatment, flogging—all in violation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights”. According to Canon Bewes, a British missionary in Kenya, there was a “constant stream of reports of brutalities by police, military and home guards”. Some of the people had been using castration instruments and two men had died under castration (see, for example, Elkins, 2005). In 1971, as part of Operation Demetrius in Northern Ireland, detainees were subjected to a programme of “deep interrogation” at a secret interrogation centre. The interrogation methods involved sensory deprivation

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and were referred to as the “Five Techniques”. The European Court of Human Rights defined them as wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, sleep deprivation, and deprivation of food and drink (see, for example, McGuffin, 1974). In more recent times, the use of torture by the US and UK military has been documented. On 23 February 2005, British military personnel were found guilty of abuse of Iraqi prisoners in May 2003. The judge at the military court said the following of photographs depicting the soldiers’ behaviour (Business Live, 2005): Anyone with a shred of human decency would be revolted by what is contained in those pictures. The actions of you and those responsible for these acts have undoubtedly tarnished the international reputation of the British Army and, to some extent, the British nation too, and it will no doubt hamper the efforts of those who are now risking their lives striving to achieve stability in the Gulf region, and it will probably be used by those who are working against such ends.

At the court martial, the prosecution said that in giving the order to “work [the prisoners] hard”, the commanding officer had broken the Geneva Conventions. During the period of time between the offence and trial, the offenders were not sanctioned—on the contrary, some of them were promoted. I am not sure what international reputation the British army and nation were tarnished by those events. Throughout history, the British army and nation have been spreading death and destruction throughout the world. There was no reputation to tarnish. While the US is a signatory to international conventions against torture, a proponent of human rights treaties and a critic of torture by other countries, torture has taken place within its borders and on its government’s behalf outside of its borders (the rendition programme). Examples are numerous, and it is not a case of a “few bad apples”—it is intrinsic to the violent culture that accompanied the formation of the country by European settlers. And it is not only Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and the numerous torture chambers located all around the world but also prison cells in police stations in New York, Chicago, and other American cities. For example, on 13 December 1999, an NYPD officer was sentenced to thirty years in prison for sodomizing a detainee with the handle of a bathroom plunger (Parascandola et al., 2012).

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The concentration camp is a Western invention. One would tend to think that concentration camps were first used by the Nazis to deprive people of freedom from torture and inhumane treatment, most notably the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In reality, concentration camps were invented before Auschwitz, by the Spaniards in Cuba and perfected by the British in South Africa. Pitzer (2017) notes that “before Arbeit macht frei appeared on the gates of Auschwitz, before the twentieth century had even begun, concentration camps found their first home in the cities and towns of Cuba”. In 1895 Arsenio Martínez Campos, the Spanish governor-general of Cuba proposed to relocate hundreds of thousands of rural inhabitants into Spanish-held cities behind barbed wire, a strategy he called reconcentración. The creation of concentration camps was made possible by the technology of barbed wire and automatic weapons, which enabled a small guard force to manage mass detention. In 1900, during the Boer War, the British put more than 200,000 civilians, mostly women and children, behind barbed wire where they endured the horror of polluted water, lack of food, and infectious diseases. This is how Lonsdale (2020) describes British concentration camps in South Africa: The conditions inside one of the concentration camps were horrific. Disease and starvation killed thousands of innocent civilians inside the camps, with the British neglecting those trapped inside of them. The lack of food, poor sanitation, and overcrowding led to malnutrition and multiple outbreaks of diseases; measles and dysentery struck the children worst of all.

Lonsdale (2020) shows a picture of a malnourished Boer child, photographed by Emily Hobhouse, which on a first impression looks like a picture taken in Auschwitz. The decedents of the detainees of Auschwitz are currently managing a huge concentration camp called Gaza. Concentration camps represent a “great” Western invention. One cannot talk about cruelty to fellow human beings without mentioning a great British invention—this is not fish and chips wrapped in page three of The Sun, but rather “Derby’s Dose” as described in the personal diary of a Thomas Thistlewood, who assumed the position of overseer at a major Jamaican plantation in April 1750 (see, for example, Gladwell, 2008). Thistlewood claimed the right to own other human beings and treated them with sheer cruelty. In 1756, a slave named Derby

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was caught eating young sugar cane stalks. Thistlewood had him flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, dispose of his solid human waste in Derby’s mouth, a punishment that became known as “Derby’s Dose”. A similar incident occurred subsequently, involving a slave called Punch who was flogged and then treated with salt pickle, lime juice, and bird pepper. Negro Joe was ordered to dispose of his liquid human waste in Punch’s eyes and mouth. As tragic as both events were, it seems that Negro Punch was lucky compared to Negro Derby. For a long time, the authorities in Australia and Canada denied the right of indigenous population to freedom from torture and inhumane treatment. In Australia, thousands of aboriginal children were removed forcibly by government officers, churches, and welfare bodies to be raised in institutions, fostered out or adopted by non-indigenous families, nationally and internationally. This atrocity became to be known as the “Stolen Generations”. The forcible removal of aboriginal children from their families was part of the policy of forced assimilation, which was based on the racist assumption that the lives of those children would be improved if they became part of the white society. They were not allowed to speak their traditional languages or refer to themselves by the names that they were given by their parents. This abuse of human rights took place from the mid-1800s to the 1970s. In Canada, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, launched by the government in 2016 to address endemic levels of violence against indigenous women and girls, released its final report, which concluded that acts of violence against indigenous women and girls amount to “genocide”. In July 2022, the Pope apologized for abuse of indigenous children in church schools. Between 1881 and 1996, more than 150,000 indigenous children were separated from their families and brought to residential schools. Many children were starved, beaten, and sexually abused in a system that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide” (The Guardian, 2022).

5.4 The Right to Equal Treatment Before the Law The right to equal treatment before the law means that individuals must be treated in the same manner as others in similar situations. Different treatment under the law based on considerations such as race, gender, and

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wealth is a violation of human rights. In the UDHR, equal protection is described in Article 7, which stipulates that “all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law”. The Bible says the following: “You and the foreigner shall be the same before the Lord: The same laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the foreigner residing among you”. Even in the presence of one set of laws, they are not applied in a homogenous manner to all citizens. For example, black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons across the country at nearly five times the rate of whites, and Latinos are 1.3 times as likely to be incarcerated as non-Latino whites (Nellis, 2021). In Australia, the total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population aged 18 years and over as of June 2018 was approximately 2%, while indigenous prisoners accounted for just over a quarter (28%) of the adult prison population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2018). Equality in front of the law is impossible in the presence of income and wealth inequality. A rich person charged with a serious offence can hire a team of lawyers who know how to work the legal system and get an acquittal verdict or a mistrial. Those who do not have the money get a public defender. The not-so-rich and poor (the majority) get public defenders who have no incentive to get an acquittal verdict or a mistrial (in the US, funding for public defenders is lacking and they are over worked). The wealthy and powerful are above the law until or unless a majority of those equally wealthy and powerful turn against them. In America, in particular, the defendant gets the outcome he or she can afford. With legal corruption ever present, equality in front of the law is a mirage. O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder in 1995, even though he was widely believed to be guilty, because he had a “dream team” of attorneys, including Robert Kardashian and Robert Shapiro, who convinced the jury that the evidence to convict OJ was insufficient. In 1997, OJ was found financially liable for the deaths in a civil trial. The poor typically go to prison without trial by pleading guilty, even if they are not, for fear of lengthy sentences if they choose to go to trial. Similar stories are told in a discussion on Quora.com of this very issue. One participant told a story about a 16-year-old young man who in 2013 wrecked his car and killed 4 people and injured 9 while driving under the influence of alcohol. The judge gave him 10 years of probation because his lawyer pleaded that the accused had “affluenza”, as he grew up rich and did not know right from wrong because his family taught him that he could buy his way out of everything. Another participant tells the story

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of the “Stanford rapist”, who was allowed to escape with little punishment other than to register as a sex offender. The judge gave him the benefit of the doubt by taking into account his family background, his athletic achievements, and the potential negative effects of prison on the accused. One of the participants in the Quora online debate summarizes the status quo succinctly as follows: “Unfortunately, the laws in America are so screwed up there are such things as protected classes, diplomatic immunity, and certain people who are presumed guilty and expected to prove their innocence”. In the West, if you steal one dollar because you are hungry, you go to jail, but if you rob a bank and you are too big to jail, then you get away with it. In London, the financial fraud capital of the world, a series of massive scandals produced only one prosecution of a junior trader in August 2015 for his role in the LIBOR manipulation scandal (Finch & Vaughan, 2015). As the judge handed in the sentence, he said: “a message needs to be sent to the world of banking”. None of the big guns was prosecuted and no message was received as it is still business as usual. In his book Too Big to Jail, Brandon Garrett (2016) notes that while American courts routinely hand down harsh sentences to individual convicts, a very different standard of justice applies to corporations, and argues that the government that bailed out corporations considered too economically important (or politically connected) to fail also negotiates settlements permitting giant firms to avoid the consequences of criminal convictions. The press is full of stories about the immunity of bankers from prosecution. Stories have been published under the headings “Why Corrupt Bankers Avoid Jail” (The New Yorker), “Why Aren’t Any Bankers in Prison” (The Atlantic), “How Wall Street’s Bankers Stayed out of Jail” (The Atlantic), and “Why Don’t Bankers Go to Jail?” (The Guardian). Frequent questions are posted on Quora, such as the following: “Why didn’t any Wall Street CEOs go to jail after the financial crisis”, “Why were not there more bankers in prison during the financial crises of 2007 and 2008”, “Why didn’t any bankers go to jail after the economic meltdown in the years after 2008?”, and “Who or what failed to bring those responsible to justice?”. The answer is simple: governments turn a blind eye to wrong-doing when it is committed by rich and powerful financiers. It is no wonder that those governments allowed the financial sector to grow unnecessarily big and outrageously powerful.

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The Right to Privacy

The right to privacy is intended to protect people from government or corporate overreach and surveillance. In Article 12 of the UDHR, this right is described as freedom from “arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home, or correspondence”. The right to privacy frequently comes in discussions on advancements in technology, the power of intelligence agencies when dealing with terrorism, and data collection from organizations such as Facebook and Google. Under the pretext of national security, almost every Western country has become a surveillance state where the government engages in pervasive surveillance of large numbers of its citizens and visitors. Such widespread surveillance is usually justified as being necessary for national security and for preventing crime or acts of terrorism. It may also be used to stifle criticism of and opposition to the government. Governments even exchange and share information on their citizens via partnerships such as the notorious “Five-Eye” partnership of a sub-set of the West, English-speaking countries. Surveillance is typically carried out by local and spy agencies, such as the NSA, but it may also be carried out by corporations (either on behalf of governments or at their own initiative). It has been criticized for violating privacy rights, and for being illegal under some legal or constitutional systems. In 2013, the practice of mass surveillance was called into question following Edward Snowden’s global surveillance disclosure on the (mal)practices of the NSA. Reporting based on documents that Snowden leaked to various media outlets triggered a debate about civil liberties and the right to privacy in the Digital Age. Let us see what they do in Western countries to spy on their citizens, an activity that is financed by the tax money collected from the very people who are spied on. In Australia, mass surveillance takes place in several network media, including telephone, internet, and other communication networks, financial systems, vehicle and transit networks, international travel, utilities, and government schemes and services including those asking citizens to report on themselves or other citizens. In Canada, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada’s signals intelligence agency, uses (without a warrant) free airport Wi-Fi service to gather the communications of all travellers using the service and to track them after they had left the airport. In the UK, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) participates in programmes such as the

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Five-Eye collaboration of English-speaking countries. Similar capabilities exist in other European countries, such as France (The Guardian, 2015). According to a 2011 Freedom of Information Act requests, the total number of local government operated CCTV cameras in the UK was around 52,000 (Big Brother Watch, 2012). In the US, billions of dollars are spent by intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems designed to intercept and analyse the huge amount of data that traverses the Internet and telephone system every day (McCullagh, 2007). As a result of the digital revolution, many aspects of life are now captured and stored in a digital form. Concern has been expressed that governments may use this information to conduct mass surveillance on their citizens. Commercial mass surveillance often makes use of copyright laws and “user agreements” to obtain (typically uninformed) “consent” to surveillance from consumers who use their software or other related materials. This allows the gathering of information that would be technically illegal if performed by government agencies. The collected data is often shared with government agencies, thereby defeating the purpose of such privacy protection. Governments have used the COVID-19 pandemic to spy on people through contact tracing. Measures are unlikely to be reversed, now that the pandemic has relatively eased. Governments are notorious for introducing extraordinary measures in crises, but these measures remain in place when the crises are over.

5.6

The Right to Marry and Have a Family

The right to marry and have a family is another human right that is recognized by the United Nations. This right states that everyone of “full age without any limitation due to race, nationality, or religion” has the right to get married and start a family. In the West, a tendency has been established for couples not to get married, choosing instead to live in a de facto relationship, which is fine if that is what they want to do. This kind of arrangement is not acceptable in some countries, particularly in the Muslim World. Naturally, the West thinks that this is wrong and tries to impose this Western “value”, of living like married couples without being married, on those countries. What should be the case is a mutual respect for cultural differences such that neither party imposes its values on the other. This does not hold in a world where the West is right and the Rest is wrong.

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The right to have a family with or without marriage is another issue because children have become so expensive. Most of the West follows the free-market ideas of deregulation, liberalization, and privatization— as a result, essential services such as health and education have become commodities that are priced according to supply and demand and paid for by individuals out of their after-tax incomes. By failing to provide these services, which are essential for starting families, the governments of the West (or at least some of them) violate the right of its citizens to have a family. The same is true of the commodification of housing, which has made the acquisition of a house (another essential for starting a family) beyond the ability of wage and salary earners. This right cannot be held for most people without the right to access social services, which will be discussed later on.

5.7 The Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression Western countries brag about the right to freedom of speech, thought, opinion, and expression. This right also protects a person’s right to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media”. In many countries, this right is considered the most important right, but in reality it may or may not be observed. Furthermore, whether this right is observed or not is subject to double standards. It was fine, and in accordance with this right, that the French Magazine, Charlie Hebdo, published cartoons of Prophet Mohammad, in the process provoking millions of Muslims around the world. It was justified by Emanuel Macron on the grounds of free expression. On the other hand, when David Irving, a British historian, questioned some aspects of the Holocaust, he was arrested and jailed for three years. You can criticize the British or American governments, but criticizing the government of Israel, which has committed countless atrocities in the occupied West Bank, is taken to be anti-Semitic, a charge that would, in a best case scenario, destroy the career of the accused. Aziz (2012) gives examples of the violation of freedom of speech under the pretext of Holocaust denying, which is a crime in many Western countries. Apart from David Irving, who was mentioned earlier, a number of intellectuals have been labelled “Holocaust deniers” and paid a very heavy price for expressing a different opinion or questioning some historical propositions. German author and historian, Ernst Zundel, spent seven

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years behind bars as a result of expressing his opinions about the Holocaust. Zundel’s home in Canada was burned to the ground in 1995 and he received a parcel bomb that was diffused by the Toronto police. Dr. Nicholas Kollerstrom of the University College, London, was fired from his fellowship in April 2008 because he denied the Holocaust. Robert Faurisson, aged 83, is a French academic who was prosecuted, fined, and, in 1991, dismissed from his academic position. Germar Rudolf, a German chemist, was hounded, arrested, and convicted for presenting scientific findings that negated the Auschwitz deaths. Gerd Honsik, who authored 33 Witnesses against the Gas Chamber Lie, was convicted in Austria and Germany, forcing him into exile in Spain. Fredrick Toben, a German Australian who ran an Australian-based website in which he questioned some aspects of the Holocaust, served three jail sentences. In 1999, he was sentenced to seven months in Germany for breaching Germany’s Holocaust Law. In 2008, he was sentenced to 50 days in the UK following his arrest while he was transiting through Heathrow airport. In 2009, he was sentenced to three months in South Australia for contempt of court. Freedom of speech is exercised when one denies the very existence of the Palestinian people, which is typically expressed as follows: Israel was created by giving land without people to people without land. Conversely, freedom of speech is curbed if it involves less than one hundred per cent conformity to the story of Israel. Freedom of speech is welcome if one denies the existence of God or global warming but it is punishable by time behind bars, or at best demonization and termination from work, if any aspect of the Holocaust is questioned. Fredrick Toben, who was denied freedom of speech once wrote the following: “If you wish to begin to doubt the Holocaust-Shoah narrative, you must be prepared for personal sacrifice, must be prepared for marriage and family break-up, loss of career, and go to prison” (Simpson, 2008). Conversely, anyone can say anything about Muslims in the name of freedom of speech. Norman Finkelstein, who is a Jewish American, does not deny the Holocaust, but he refers to the “Holocaust Industry”, arguing that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain and to further Israeli interests (Finkelstein, 2003). In 2007, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul and placed on administrative leave. On 5 September 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement, but by that time his academic

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career was destroyed as he could never find a job in the US. These stories tell a tale on Western hypocrisy on a monumental scale. Freedom of speech is observed if you support the prevailing narrative, but it is denied to people expressing another view or those who question the prevailing narrative. If you object to allowing trans-gender people to share showers with women or competing with them in sporting events, then you are discriminating against them and denying their human rights. In Canada, one risks a prison sentence by using the wrong pronoun to refer to people who prefer he/him to she/her or they/them. If you say “boys and girls” or “father and mother”, you may be in trouble on the grounds of discrimination and not using “inclusive” or “gender-neutral” language. Employees in both the private and public sectors are compelled to attend workshops to use “gender-neutral language” where they are told not to use the pronouns “he” or “she” or to remember how to refer to each individual according to their preferences. You are denied the right to freedom of speech if you say what a woman is. During a Senate hearing in April 2022, Australia’s top health bureaucrats baulked at being asked to define a “woman”. Senator Alex Antic asked: “Can someone please provide me with a definition of what a woman is?”. Secretary of the Department of Health, Professor Brendan Murphy, responded by saying that there were “a variety of definitions”! When he was asked to provide a “simple one”, he said that he would be taking the question on notice, meaning he would respond to the question at a later date. He also said: “I mean there are obviously biological definitions but there are definitions in terms of how people identify themselves, so we’re happy to provide our working definition on notice” (Seven News, 2022). These bureaucrats learned not to answer this question honestly from the US Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson. When she was asked the same question in her confirmation hearing, she replied: “Can I provide a definition? No. I can’t. I’m not a biologist”. Ketanji was afraid that she would not be confirmed if she gave an honest answer. Brendan was afraid he might lose his job. Obviously, both were denied freedom of speech, and both showed an incredible lack of courage. Conversely, a brave man called Tucker Carlson, an anchor at Fox News, commented on Ketaji’s response to the question by defining a woman as follows (Carlson, 2022):

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A woman is a human being with two X chromosomes…Women have wider pelvises and different bone structures from men, not to mention different genitalia…. Women are built differently because their bodies are designed to do different things…Women menstruate, give birth and breast-feed— men do not do these things because they can’t… Not a single man in all human history has ever had his period or delivered a baby…..

He is right, and this is why he has always been in trouble for expressing his views fearlessly. What kind of freedom of speech is this when one cannot say that men and women are different? And what purpose does this oppression serve? These days, you are expected to believe the official government narrative on current affairs or else. This is no different from the freedom of speech in the Iraq of Saddam Hussein where citizens had absolute freedom to express views that glorify the foresighted president and the father of the nation. You could be in trouble for expressing a view on the war in Ukraine that questions the official narrative, which is peddled by the mainstream media. You cannot exercise your human right to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media”, because Western governments, which allegedly believe in free speech and the right of individuals to seek any information through any media, have closed down RT studios in Washington, London and elsewhere. Even the privately owned social media have cracked down on views that do not agree with the official narrative. Free media have become a thing of the past. Thanks to the brave men and women like George Galloway, Max Blumenthal, Jimmy Dore, Abbey Martin, and Gonzalo Lira that we can still hear the other side of the story. An attempt has been made by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation to confiscate the freedom of speech of some high-profile American citizens by compiling a (black) list of politicians, academics, and activists who allegedly promote “Russian propaganda”. The list includes, among others, Senator Rand Paul and former member of the House of Representative, Tulsi Gabbard. The list also includes political scientist John Mearsheimer and journalist Glenn Greenwald. Military analyst Edward Luttwak was placed on the list for suggesting that referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions concerning their relation to Ukraine (Dean, 2022). Even though the freedom of speech, expression, and opinion has become of a thing of the past, it is still claimed as a Western value that

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is practised in the West, but not in the Rest. Ivens (2022) quotes the leading civil rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson who once said that “Britain is not a land of free speech” but rather “it is a land of expensive speech”, meaning that money talks and that the haves can speak freely but the have-nots cannot for fear of defamation lawsuits. That was said in relation to the questions raised about the source of the wealth that the Russian oligarchs brought to London, which they obtained from a corrupt privatization programme overseen by a drunken and corrupt leader known as Boris Yeltsin (the darling of the West). Ivens points out that “few asked hard questions about the origins of the oligarchs’ wealth, and those who did were silenced by the U.K.’s archaic and expensive libel laws, which place the burden of proof on the defendant”. Freedom of speech is incompatible with political correctness, which has been taken too far in the West. It has made it very difficult for anyone to say anything without offending someone, somewhere, somehow. It has also made life difficult for comedians who make a living by telling jokes. The concept of political correctness is based on the belief that speech or behaviour that somehow offends various groups should be eliminated by introducing regulation, which may involve the imposition of penalties. The problem here is determining who decides what is offensive. Another problem is that not all groups are treated equally—for example, it is fine to say or do anything that offends Muslims, but criticizing Israel for atrocities against the Palestinians is non-admissible because it is allegedly anti-Semitic. Political correctness is intended to put boundaries on offensive speech and behaviour, but these boundaries are likely to be determined by the personal beliefs and values of those in power. This means that the definition of what is offensive depends on who is in power at the time. The contradiction between freedom of speech and political correctness is that while freedom of speech allows one to express themselves freely, political correctness is intended to avoid offensive forms of expression. When political correctness is taken too far, which is what has happened in the West, it makes the discussion of certain topics near impossible, thereby clamping down on free speech. In the US, in particular, this is troublesome because the First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech”, which means that enforcement of political correctness in the US is not backed by legislation. I have seen a nice cartoon that describes the current situation by a conversation between a daughter and a mother. The daughter asks:

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“Mommy what is political correctness?”. The mother replies by saying the following: “Dear, that’s giving up your own opinion to please a****oles”. Phillips (2020) summarizes the current situation succinctly as follows: In today’s society, it seems you can’t say anything or have an opinion without fear of offending someone. Censorship isn’t coming just from institutions, the government, and media, but everywhere. A lot of people are too scared to speak up and say what they really think and feel, it’s much easier to comply with oppressive systems than be labelled uptight and too sensitive. In most forms of Western media, you’ll find that any opinion which falls outside of the dominant set of principles is silenced, meaning you’ll have to look elsewhere to be educated.

Most people feel that it is their right to speak freely in the workplace on the grounds that by doing so, they exercise their right to free speech. In the US, this argument works in the public sector by invoking the First Amendment but it does not work in the private sector. The US constitution gives private sector employees no protection against job loss on the grounds of violating the rules of political correctness. This means that a private-sector employer can fire any employee at will, just for saying something that is considered (by the employer) to be politically incorrect, and anything can be considered to be politically incorrect. This is convenient for private-sector firms to deprive people from the right to work, which is considered next. Freedom of speech is also curbed by the fear of lawsuits for defamation, which is a Western invention. Gray and Martin (2006) suggest that “the standard perspective on defamation law is that it is an attempt to balance the protection of two contrary values, reputation and free speech”. Defamation laws, they argue, “must not be so restrictive that they restrain free speech, including public debate and investigative journalism that are essential for a well-functioning democracy”. The whole profit-making business of lawsuits has become ridiculous. A man sues Budweiser for failing to help him attract beautiful women. A graduate school student sues teacher over a C+ grade. A man sues himself and asks the state to pay. A $10 dry cleaning bill turns into a $67 million civil lawsuit. A man sues Michael Jordan for facial resemblance. A high school student sues for being woken up in class. Although these are not defamation lawsuits, the latter are not less ridiculous. Gardner (2011) describes some “crazy defamation lawsuits”. Fear of being subject to a defamation

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lawsuit has forced people to refrain from exercising their right to freedom of speech. Freedom of speech has not only been confiscated from ordinary people in the West. Even elected politicians, the representatives of people in parliament, cannot express different views to those of the leader of the party without risking getting expelled from the party. In August 2022, 71-year-old Audrey White (who was secretary of the Merseyside Pensioners Association) was expelled from the British Labour Party following a confrontation with Keir Starmer, the leader of the party, in Liverpool where she denounced his right-wing policies and ongoing purge of left-wing party members. In May 2022, the same Starmer threatened to expel any Labour MP who did not declare “unshakeable support for NATO”. Starmer had repeatedly declared that Labour was the “party of NATO” and that support for the military alliance was at “the root of the Labour Party” (Marsden, 2022). Well, the Labour Party is supposed to be the party that defends workers, not NATO and, by necessity, the military-industrial complex. This is also the same Starmer who expelled his former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, from the Labour Party because Corbyn is a man of peace. In Starmer’s Labour Party, criticism of the leader is forbidden, while thousands of members have been expelled or left in disgust. Loach (2021) expresses the situation as follows: In recent weeks, I have been wearing a badge of honour. I have joined the ranks of those expelled or suspended from the Labour party. My crime? To have supported a group, recently proscribed, who oppose unjustified expulsions from the party. This is the reality of Keir Starmer’s purge.

Starmer is following the footsteps of his role model, Tony Blair, who expelled George Galloway from the Labour Party, just because Galloway did not share Blair’s vision of bringing democracy and freedom of speech to the people of Iraq. The West is no position to lecture the Rest on freedom of speech. The clamp down on freedom of speech may be justified on various grounds, including political correctness, which is fine, even though expelling party members because they do not share the opinion of the leader cannot be justified on any grounds. The West should not condemn countries for not allowing people to curse the head of state, because those countries may have different reasons for banning free speech in certain cases. One such reason is harmony, but whatever the reason is, the West is not a role model for freedom of speech.

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5.8

The Right to Work

The right to work is a human right that encompasses a variety of workrelated concerns. Everyone has the right to work under “favourable conditions” and protection against unemployment. This is one of the least observed rights in the West, where economies are run according to the free-market doctrine that gives employers the right to confiscate the right of workers to work. Justification is provided by neoclassical economic theory, which is the brand of economics that is used to formulate economic policy in Western countries. In neoclassical economics, we find the notion of the “natural unemployment rate”—apparently it is “natural” because it is dictated by God, in which case nothing can be done about it. Natural unemployment is the sum of structural unemployment (resulting from the lack of skills sought by employers) and frictional unemployment (which occurs as workers move between jobs). This means that we should only care about cyclical unemployment, which is the difference between total unemployment and the sum of structural and frictional unemployment. The concept of “natural unemployment” is used to justify unemployment and blame it on the unwillingness of the unemployed to work at the going wage rate, in the spirit of blaming the victim, which is common in the West. The concept of the natural rate of unemployment has killed aspiration for full employment. The natural rate keeps rising to justify acceptance of unemployment as being unavoidable. At one time, the natural rate was 3%, now it is 4.4% according to the Congressional Research Service (Weinstock, 2022), which means that unemployment would only be a problem if it is more than 4.4%. On the other hand, Crump et al. (2022) estimate the natural rate of unemployment to have risen from 4.5% before the onset of the pandemic to 5.9% by the end of 2021. Depending on the size of the labour force, this could mean hundreds of thousands of unemployed. If the natural rate of unemployment is 5% and given that the US labour force is about 164 million, it follows that US policymakers should not be alarmed by 8.2 million unemployed because that is natural. And because it is natural, the unemployed should not obtain unemployment benefits and manage to survive somehow. Some of them will resort to petty crime, caught and sentenced to 20 years behind bars as a result of a plea bargain. Farmer (2013) comments on the natural rate of unemployment by saying that it is “an idea past its sell-by date”. Gordon (1987, 1988)

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describes the rate as “un-natural”, arguing that a 6% unemployment rate in the US is not natural, thus demystifying the idea of a rising natural rate of unemployment. He also argues that the concept was developed by Milton Freidman (1968) who was “a person rarely noted for his irresistible sympathies for the downtrodden and jobless”. Pollin (1998) notes that Freidman’s restatement of the classical labour market gave new life to the proposition that unemployment is the fault of workers themselves and trade unions, which was predominant among mainstream economists before Keynes. Robert Lucas and the likes of Lucas, who are into the rational expectations “revolution”, suggest that the labour market clears instantaneously, which means that government intervention by boosting aggregate demand cannot reduce unemployment. Pollin argues that new classical economists like Lucas suggest that workers massively chose leisure over labour during the Great Depression, yet another example of blaming the victims. According to Pollin, the most devastating effect of the notion of the natural rate is the effect on public policy by “giving the stamp of scientific respectability to all sorts of attacks on working people”. Employers in the West violate the human rights of workers by not paying a minimum wage or by paying a minimum wage that is below a living wage, or even a subsistence wage. A living wage is defined as the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs (essential items such as food, housing, and clothing). This is not the same as a subsistence wage, which refers to a biological minimum. Essentially, while the minimum wage is intended to set a bare minimum, the living wage is seen as a socially acceptable minimum, the wage level that keeps workers out of poverty. In the US, the federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009, still standing at $7.25 an hour. It was last raised from $6.55 to $7.25 in July 2009. The Economic Policy Institute (2021) believes that the minimum wage in the US should be set at $15/hour. According to Amadeo (2022), if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity, the inflation-adjusted rate would have been $24 in 2020. She points out that people making the minimum wage cannot afford health insurance and refers to estimates by the Department of Health and Human Services putting the federal poverty rate at $13.34 per hour for a full-time worker, which means that the living wage must be at least greater than the poverty level. A worker making the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would be below the poverty level. A household of four would need two people earning minimum wages to reach a living wage.

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In Australia, the living wage is estimated to be 60% of the median wage of $42/hour, which gives $25/hour, compared with the minimum wage of $21.38. According to Healy and Pekarek (2017), an employed single adult currently needs $597 per week (before tax, and including housing costs) to experience a healthy life. A couple with two young children need almost twice as much: $1173. The national minimum wage is currently $695 for a full-time worker, which means that a single worker living alone already earns enough for a healthy life. However, a worker with a family would struggle to survive. Employers get away with paying too little because Western governments are typically pro-business (hence anti-workers). Academic economists following the principles of neoclassical economics help by providing “intellectual” reasoning for why the imposition of minimum wages is a bad idea. Figure 5.1 shows OECD data on real minimum wages (measured at 2020 prices) in a number of countries converted from local currencies into US dollars at the PPP exchange rates (to take into account differences in purchasing power across countries). Minimum wages in real terms have barely changed, and in some cases (the US in particular), the minimum wage has declined. A minimum wage is morally desirable, but the Western economic system (which is based on neoliberalism) is divorced of morality. A minimum wage set at a reasonable level is beneficial for workers and the whole economy. It provides employee satisfaction and may boost productivity. It reduces the risk of conflict between employers and employees. It reduces income inequality. It may boost consumption and therefore GDP. It may also boost tax revenue. It reduces government spending on welfare. It gives poor families a better chance of getting out of poverty. It leads to improvement in health. It reduces crime. More importantly perhaps is that the absence of a minimum wage is a violation of human rights. The hired guns would argue that minimum wages reduce competitiveness and lead to potential job losses and perhaps foreign outsourcing. More generally, the opponents of minimum wages (typically employers and their hired guns) argue that increasing minimum wages too fast could cause a rise in business costs, a rise in unemployment, and higher prices for consumers. However, the evidence on the relationship between minimum wages and unemployment shows otherwise. For example, Cengiz et al. (2019) find that “the level of minimum wages that we study—which range between 37% and 59% of the median wage—have yet to reach a

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13.0 12.0 11.0 10.0 9.0 8.0 7.0 6.0 5.0

Australia

Belgium

Canada

France

Greece

Ireland

US

UK

Fig. 5.1 Real minimum wages (2020 prices at PPP rates, $/hour)

point where the job losses become sizable”. Furthermore, the Low Pay Commission (2019) concludes as follows: Since 2000, we have commissioned over 30 research projects… overall none of the research that we have commissioned has shown strong evidence that minimum wages have led to falling employment.

It is not that the minimum wage is unaffordable, because it is. It only requires the reversal of the trend towards falling labour income as opposed to capital income, which still leaves a lot for corporate profit. What makes things even worse is that business firms rarely pay the full amount of tax they ought to pay because they have the lawyers and accountants who know how to reduce taxable income by legal and illegal means. The employees of Amazon.com earn so little that they qualify for food stamps, which means that American taxpayers subsidize the boss of Amazon, the richest or the second-richest man on earth with a net worth that is greater than the GDPs of most countries. Surely, he can afford to pay a living wage, but he chooses not to, thus violating a human right.

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The right to work has been undermined by the systematic dismantling of the trade union movement by Western governments in the name of labour market flexibility and efficiency. In reality, the motive was rendering services to the business oligarchy. In the US, 20.1% of employees belonged to a union in 1983, but as of 2020, that number has fallen to 10.8%. Hartmans (2021) attributes declining union membership in the US to opposition from government leaders and businesses and to the move of manufacturing jobs overseas where labour is cheaper. He quotes Wilma Liebman (who served on the National Labor Relations Board under Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton) as saying that “the business community has typically had a total allergy to unionization”. Employers hate trade unions. They always strive to reduce labour costs and avoid spending on improving working conditions, so that the biggest portion of revenue goes towards profit. The portion of national income going towards corporate profit has been increasing at the expense of the portion going towards labour income since the campaign to demolish trade unions started in earnest in the 1980s. In Australia, for example, the share of total income paid to workers in wages and salaries (the “labour share”) rose over the 1960s and 1970s but has gradually declined since then (Cava, 2019). This phenomenon is not limited to Australia. Manyika et al. (2019) find that labour’s share of national income in the US (which they define as the amount of GDP paid out in wages, salaries, and benefits) has been declining since the 1980s. Likewise, a 2015 report presented to the G20 Employment Working Group in a meeting that was held in Antalya (Turkey) refers to a body of evidence suggesting that labour shares have seen a secular downward trend with important negative consequences. In the absence of trade unions and collective bargaining, an employer can fire at will and replace the fired workers with those accepting lower wages and poor working conditions. If employees join a union, then they do not come to the negotiating table as individuals but as a group, which makes them powerful. They can negotiate pay, terms, and work conditions, and if companies deny listening to them, then together they can strike. Hence, workers strive to join unions for many reasons pertaining to job security, negotiated pay and benefits, working in a healthy and safe environment, and fair treatment by employers. According to the Economic Policy Institute (2020), union workers are paid 11.2% more and have greater access to health insurance and paid sick days than their non-union counterparts.

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In recent times, cases of employer opposition to the formations of unions surfaced between Amazon and its workers. Amazon warehouse workers in New York’s Staten Island made history in April 2022 by voting for and creating the first labour union at the e-commerce giant. The company opposed the formation of a union by 6000 workers in Bessemer, Alabama. Some of the measures taken by the company to convince workers that it was a bad idea include anti-union advertisements and signs placed in bathrooms. On this occasion, Amazon won as the Alabama workers voted decisively against forming a union. Amazon, according to Weise and Corkery (2021), “has repeatedly quashed labor activism”. While Amazon brags that it pays workers above the minimum wage, those workers still qualify for food stamps, which means that they do not earn a living wage. Jennifer Bates, a Bessemer warehouse employee, said the following during her testimony at a recent Senate hearing: “What they don’t tell you is what those jobs are really like” and “they certainly don’t tell you what they can afford” (Hartmans, 2021). Surely, Amazon can afford to pay a living wage.

5.9

The Right to Education

The UDHR states that education must be free through elementary school and that higher education, as well as technical and professional education, should be available and accessible. However, the commodification of education seems to be the order of the day. In most English-speaking countries, many parts of Europe, Latin-America, and Southeast Asia, the free-market philosophy has entered the educational sphere in a big way. Privatization is increasingly seen as the solution to the problems and failings of public education, which is a nice excuse for allowing “foresighted entrepreneurs” to indulge in a profitable business by providing service for which demand is inelastic. In reality, privatization has destroyed education as a human right. Private schools, which charge exorbitant fees, attract the best teachers, leading to deterioration in the quality of education in public schools. Governments starve education of funding, leading to further deterioration. Higher education, in particular, has been delivering products of rapidly declining quality while fees are skyrocketing. At one time in the UK, highquality higher education was delivered free of charge, without the blessing of the free market. The corporatization of universities has produced lowquality educational services commanding ever-rising prices—the name of

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the game (from the corporate perspective) is less for more. As a result, higher education is no longer an effective process for inter-generational transfer of knowledge. Once upon a time, when governments viewed higher education as an investment rather than a cost, universities were well funded by taxpayers’ money. At that time, academics ran the show and a vice chancellor was typically a brilliant scholar who got paid a salary loading of no more than 10% of the professorial salary. The standard of graduates was extremely high and the academic staff enjoyed job satisfaction. With the corporatization of universities, a vice chancellor became a CEO with a seven-figure salary, a bonus for the performance of those who actually do the work, and a big entourage of suit-and-tie bureaucrats with fancy job titles. On a more junior level of the bureaucracy, there has been a significant increase in the number of employees called “senior managers”. Students have become customers and the customers are always right, so the standard went down to make customers happy. A massive amount of wasteful advertising is used to attract customers, irrespective of whether or not they are qualified to be customers. The fees charged for a piece of paper that does not enhance employability have been skyrocketing. In the US, tuition accounts for about half of public college revenue, while state and local governments provide the other half. A few decades ago, the split was significantly different, with tuition providing just about a quarter of revenue and state and local governments picking up the rest. Over the 30 years between 1991–1992 and 2021–2022, the average tuition fees in the US more than doubled, increasing to $10,740 from $4160 at public four-year colleges, and to $38,070 from $19,360 at private institutions, after adjusting for inflation. The steady increase in tuition fees has outpaced growth in income, forcing families to rely on student loans to help foot the bill. Dickler and Nova (2022) think that “outstanding student loan debt [in the US] could topple $3 trillion by 2035”. Right now, around 44 million Americans owe a combined $1.7 trillion for their education. Average student debt balances among parents was over $35,000 in 2018–2019, up from around $5000 in the early 1990s. The growing problem of student debt has led to the emergence of the Occupy Colleges and Occupy Student Debt movements, which merged in 2012 in an effort to gain support from students around the US. In April 2019, Senator Elizabeth Warren added a proposal to her presidential platform to cancel student debt. In June 2019, Senator Bernie Sanders

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offered a plan for the cancellation of outstanding student debt, which would be paid for with a tax on Wall Street speculation. In August 2022, President Biden announced a plan to cancel up to $10,000 in federal student loans for millions of Americans who earn less than $125,000 a year. While this is a step in the right direction, it falls below what had been suggested by Senators Warren and Sanders. Furthermore, political analysts suggest that this plan was announced “to drum up support ahead of the November midterm elections, and increase young voter turnout” (Levinson-King, 2022). More than half of the Americans who have student debt are under 35, an age group that Biden was keen to win over. Student debt is not limited to the US—it is a Western phenomenon that is observed particularly in the Americanized English-speaking countries. In the UK, where higher education was traditionally financed by taxpayers’ money, student debt is following the American trajectory. This has resulted from cuts in public spending on education and social services, to divert more resources to “defence”. Nissen et al. (2019) present some interesting facts and figures on student debt in other Western countries. In New Zealand, $15.9 billion is owed by 730,000 New Zealanders where students leaving study with a bachelor’s degree in 2016 had a median student loan of $32,300, up from $19,000 a decade ago. These levels of student debt are the seventh highest in the OECD, and are similar to rates in Australia and Canada. The propagandists think that student debt is a good idea. Student loans are described as “good debt”, providing individuals with the opportunity to invest in themselves as human capital (Akers & Chingos, 2016; Baum, 2016). The rise of tuition fees and student loans is portrayed to be “fair” because it allows greater numbers of students to attend higher education, while ensuring that it remains affordable for the taxpayer (for a discussion, see Dean, 2015; Shermer, 2017). Others, however, have expressed unease about the effects of student debt. Studies have examined the proposition that aversion to debt erects a barrier to student participation in higher education (Callender & Mason, 2017). Another issue is that of how student debt affects the life-course of graduates after study (Goldrick-Rab, 2016). There has been interest in the consequences of debt for academic achievement (for example, Antonucci, 2016) and for physical and mental health (Richardson et al., 2017). Another issue is the inequalities student debt may perpetuate or accentuate for people

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of different genders, ethnicities, or classes (for example, Despard et al., 2016; Grinstein-Weiss et al., 2016). The fact of the matter is that Western governments have been denying people who cannot afford to pay the right to education by reducing taxfinanced spending on education, justified on elusive grounds provided by immoral economic principles. Governments do that for two reasons. The first is that spending less on social services in general makes it possible to spend more on the military for the benefit of the military-industrial complex (with all the benefits conveyed by corruption related to the acquisition of military hardware). The second is that the corporatization of educational establishments and commodification of education provides lucrative business opportunities for the oligarchy. In the process, the right to education is violated.

5.10

The Right to Housing

The provision of social services is intended to ensure that everyone has a certain standard of living. Article 25 of the UDHR defines this standard as “adequate” for the well-being and health of an individual and their family. That includes clothing, housing, food, water, medical care, and security in case someone is unable to earn income due to illness or unemployment. The right to housing is violated in the West because of unaffordability as a result of the financialization of the housing sector (Moosa, 2023). The financialization of housing refers to the expanding and dominant role of financial markets and corporations in the provision of housing, leading to unaffordable and insufficient housing. Sisson and Rogers (2020) describe the concept of the financialization of housing in terms of “the increasing presence of a range of actors and organizations that are creating or using real estate management, mortgage processes, and financial instruments to profit-seek”. As a result of the financialization of housing, a home has been converted from a roof over heads and a place to live to a leveraged capital asset. The financialization of housing is seen by Leijten and de Bel (2020) as a violation of a human right, a proposition that can be found in many international documents and national constitutions. In addition to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) refers to “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate […] housing”. The (revised)

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European Social Charter requires states to take measures “to promote access to housing of an adequate standard”, “prevent and reduce homelessness with a view to its gradual elimination”, and “make the price of housing accessible to those without adequate resources”. In reality, the situation is exactly the opposite as the financialization of housing has resulted in massive evictions and widespread homelessness. Housing affordability typically refers to the relationship between expenditure on housing (prices, mortgage payments, or rents) and household incomes. Access to good quality, affordable housing is fundamental to well-being. The very nature of the neoliberal Western economic system, coupled with flawed policies (such as low interest rates), make housing affordability a thing of the past. Both the system itself and the flawed policies are designed and implemented specifically to benefit the oligarchy at the expense of Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary. In a financialized economy, a house (like anything else) becomes a speculative asset, rather than a place to live in. Social housing, in a true sense of the word, has become a thing of the past as everything has been privatized to be run by profit-maximizing firms that are only interested in filling the pockets of their directors and senior executives. Keen (2022) gives an example of what has been happening in the “Land of the Fair Go”, Australia, where a drastic slide in home ownership, mirrored by an equally dramatic rise in mortgage debt and renting, is a direct result of failed government policy. In the 1998 Census, 43% of Australians owned their houses outright, 29% had mortgages, 18% rented from private landlords, and 6% from the government (the remainder were in hotels, homeless, etc.). Twenty years later, only 30% owned their houses outright and 37% had mortgages, while 27% rented from landlords and 3% from the government. He suggests a radical solution involving stronger lending standards, but this does not suit banks, which are in the business of creating money out of thin air and earning interest on it. The homeless are by definition deprived of the right to housing. Housing the homeless is impeded by the issue of affordability (real or imaginary) or the other issue that no one should get anything for nothing. However, it has been found that it is significantly cheaper for governments to provide housing than to have people continuing to sleep on the street. For example, the cost of homelessness in the Australian state of Victoria has been estimated at $25,615 per person per year, covering health, crime, and other factors. The annual cost of 7600 Victorians living on the street is $194 million, which would produce savings of $10,800

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per year when calculated over 20 years (Stayner, 2017). This is because when the homeless are provided with a roof over their heads, the demand for emergency services will decline as a result of the consequent reduction in crime. As Skinner and Carnemolla (2020) put it, “beyond the human tragedy, what most passers-by fail to see is the cost of homelessness to us all”, which includes “the bills for police and ambulance call-outs, prison nights, visits to emergency departments, hospital stays and mental health and drying out clinics”. It would also improve the quality of life of the people involved. For the US, it is estimated that the cost of eradicating homelessness is $20 billion, which is slightly less than what Americans spend on Christmas decoration. It is less than taxpayer subsidies for the oil industry. It is much less than the savings realized by responsibly cutting spending on nuclear weapons. It is about one-third of the amount that can be saved by eliminating corporate meals and entertainment write-offs. And it is by far less than the amount that can be saved by eliminating capital gains tax cuts (Kavoussi, 2012). Skinner and Carnemolla (2020) tell a story of two Nevada police officers who spent much of their time dealing with homeless people. The bills of one particular homeless person were so legendary that it would have been cheaper to put him in a hotel with a private nurse. The conclusion they reach is that “the kind of money it would take to solve the homeless problem could well be less than the kind of money it took to ignore it”. Failure to house the homeless, which is affordable, is tantamount to the violation of a human right in countries that allegedly respect human rights.

5.11

The Right to Healthcare

According to the World Health Organization (2017), “understanding health as a human right creates a legal obligation on states to ensure access to timely, acceptable, and affordable healthcare of appropriate quality as well as to providing for the underlying determinants of health, such as safe and potable water, sanitation, food, housing, health-related information and education, and gender equality”. The WHO specifies core components of the right to health as availability (the need for a sufficient quantity of functioning public health and healthcare facilities), accessibility (health facilities, goods, and services must be accessible to everyone), acceptability (health facilities, goods, services, and programmes are people-centred and cater to the specific needs of diverse population groups), and

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quality (facilities, goods, and services must be scientifically and medically approved). The right to healthcare requires universal healthcare (or health coverage), which means that all people have access to the healthcare services they need, when and where they need them, without having to endure financial hardship. According to the United Nations (2020), UHC is intended to provide equity in access, in the sense that everyone who needs healthcare services (and not only those who can pay for them) should get them. It is also intended to provide healthcare services that are good enough to improve the health of those receiving the services without undue financial risk. The concept of UHC captures a common set of values, irrespective of the ability to pay: equity, shared responsibility, and quality healthcare delivery. Since the 1970s, there has been a near consensus among the public health community that UHC should be a fundamental objective that countries must strive to accomplish. At the 1978 Conference in Alma-Ata, and subsequently in Ottawa in 1986, commitments were made to pursue equitable healthcare systems, which would provide access to all for pointof-entry healthcare services. Unfortunately, progress has been elusive, as the prevailing tendency is to promote “selective healthcare models”, with substantial private-sector involvement—all in the name of the free market and the alleged efficiency of the private sector. Achieving UHC is one of the targets set when adopting the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. UHC is implemented through legislation, regulation, and taxation for the purpose of directing the services to be provided, to whom, and on what basis. The case put for UHC by the World Health Organization (2019) is that “protecting people from the financial consequences of paying for health services out of their own pockets reduces the risk that people will be pushed into poverty because unexpected illness requires them to use up their life savings, sell assets, or borrow—destroying their futures and often those of their children”. When people have to pay most of the cost for health services out of their own pockets, the poor are often unable to obtain many of the services they need, and even the rich may be exposed to financial hardship in the event of severe or long-term illness. The decision to adopt UHC or otherwise is primarily political. In the absence of severe financial constraints, the adoption of UHC is more likely in the presence of strong social democratic parties and labour movement. While poverty may act as an obstacle, political commitment is conducive to

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UHC. Militarism is an obstacle in countries allocating huge proportions of their financial resources to the military, which deprives the healthcare system from the financial resources required to commit to UHC. The hidden reason for opposing universal healthcare is that healthcare is a very profitable business, since we are talking about the provision of goods and services with very low price and income elasticities of demand. Naturally, this is not what free marketeers and the private healthcare industry say. Some 20 years before he became president, Ronald Reagan (who is famous for saying that the government cannot solve a problem because the government is the problem) argued against any role for the government in the provision of healthcare. In a radio address on the socalled “socialized medicine”, he suggested that “one of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine”. He described the move towards universal healthcare as the “most imminent threat to the American people” and insisted that the free enterprise system had it all: “the privacy, the care that is given to a person, the right to choose a doctor, the right to go from one doctor to the other” (Reagan, 1961). In 2012, Mitt Romney argued that healthcare should “act more like a consumer market, meaning like the things we deal with every day in our lives: the purchases of tires, of automobiles, of air filters, of all sorts of products” because “consumer markets tend to work very well—keep the costs down and the quality up” (Romney, 2012). The use of expressions like “socialism” and “statism” is meant to instil fear in the community. How can UHC be a threat to the American people when thousands of them die every year, either because they do not have health insurance or because they are refused coverage on a technicality? How can it be a threat when the alternative is to choose between bankruptcy and death, except for a minority? Yes, someone who can afford a private suite in a private hospital will get five-star care, but how many people can afford that? Who says that under UHC, you cannot choose a doctor? The rich Romney advocates the commodification of healthcare like anything else in the free-market system. It seems that Romney has not seen any statistics on the rising costs of healthcare, which is why he makes the heroic statement that private healthcare costs are going down. Remember that this market is characterized by oligopolistic competition for goods and services with low elasticity of demand. Consider the contrast with respect to the right to healthcare between a country from the Rest, Thailand, and a country from the West, the

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US. The World Health Organization (2010) tells a story about a motorcycle accident that took place somewhere in Thailand on 7 October 2006. The accident involved Narin Ointalakarn, an ordinary citizen earning $5 a day, whose life was saved even though he sustained horrific injuries. As he struck a tree, his unprotected head took the full force of the impact. Passing motorists found him some time later and took him to a nearby hospital. Doctors diagnosed severe head injury and referred him to the trauma centre, 65 km away, where the diagnosis was confirmed. A scan showed subdural haematoma with subfalcine and uncal herniation. Pintalakarn’s skull had fractured in several places, and his brain had bulged and shifted. He was taken to an emergency department where a surgeon removed part of his skull to relieve pressure. A blood clot was also removed. Five hours later, the patient was put on a respirator and taken to the intensive care unit where he stayed for 21 days. Thirty-nine days after being admitted to hospital, he had recovered sufficiently to be discharged. And he did not have to pay anything. He received the treatment because Thai legislation demands that all injured patients be taken care of with standard procedure, no matter what their status is. He would have most likely died (or left to die), had the accident occurred in a country where healthcare is financed by private insurance. Now consider the following story as told by Beaumont (2020). In mid-March 2020, American comedian Baten Phillips tested positive for COVID-19. He fought for his life in the intensive care unit for six weeks, at which point the hospital gave him a choice: stay longer and add to his bill, or leave and pay for oxygen at a lower cost. Phillips has diabetes, making his COVID-19 infection more severe, and with no health insurance, he pays for medication and hospital costs out-of-pocket. He chose to leave, but he still incurred $14,000 in medical bills even though that hospital had received $145 million through the CARES Act that was supposed to provide aid to hospitals hit hard by COVID-19 (not sure what this means because COVID-19 is a blessing for a profit-maximizing hospital seeking paying customers). The hospital claimed that the aid did not cover its entire financial gap. Beaumont (2020) also tells the story of a COVID-19 survivor who was billed $1.1 million by a hospital in Seattle. It is no wonder then that the US holds the world record for the number of COVID-related deaths (for details, see Moosa, 2021). A study conducted by Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance reveals that working-age Americans have a 40% higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts (Cecere, 2009). Nearly

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45,000 annual (preventable) deaths are associated with the lack of health insurance. The study finds that deaths associated with lack of health insurance exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease. An increase in the number of uninsured and an eroding medical safety net for the disadvantaged may explain the substantial increase in the number of deaths, as the uninsured are more likely to go without needed care. Even worse, people with insurance die because they are refused coverage on some technicality. An industry that has not been dealt with in these studies is funeral services. In the West, it is a private-sector activity involving a small number of operators in a market characterized by oligopolistic competition where competing oligopolists advertise their services in the spirit of the free market. These services can be expensive, costing $20,000, or more (and rising by far ahead of the inflation rate). For a family that cannot afford a $1000 emergency, it would be problematical if a member of that family died without a contingency plan to cover the cost of the funeral. In a compassionate society, a concept that is vehemently rejected by free marketeers, the funeral may be paid for through donations. Otherwise, I would imagine that the Russian syndrome of the 1990s would be relevant—that is, the bodies are disposed of somehow. This “efficiency” of the private sector is to be compared with the “inefficiency” of the public sector in providing funeral services. In Kuwait, where mineral resources are owned by the public sector, the Ministry of Health is responsible for the provision of funeral services free of charge. The “less efficient” public sector treats the dead with dignity whereas the “efficient” private sector treats with dignity only the dead who can pay for the funeral, such that the degree of dignity in death is a positive function of the ability of the dead person to pay.

5.12

Concluding Remarks

The UDHR proclaimed global recognition of fundamental human rights principles and standards seventy years ago—further strengthened by the Vienna World Conference almost fifty years later—and declared these rights to be universal, indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated. The Western narrative is that respect for human rights lies in Western heritage, which means that human rights cannot be enjoyed by people from other cultures. This is convenient because it provides a weapon of cultural hegemony or a new form of imperialism. To preserve human rights in the Rest,

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the West has to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries to make sure that they observe human rights. The facts on the ground paint a different picture. The West has been abusing human rights in other countries for more than 500 years by obliterating indigenous populations in Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Atrocities go back to the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World and extend to the present-day invasion and occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, as well as intrusion on other countries including Venezuela, Cuba, Libya, and Iran. Furthermore, human rights are violated in Western countries because the economic system is designed to serve the rich and powerful and oppress the poor and vulnerable. History is full of examples of the violations of human rights within Western countries. During the Industrial Revolution, children as young as six worked up to 18 hours a day for little pay in appalling conditions. Slavery is tantamount to an extreme form of the violation of human rights. For a long time, Africans were kidnapped and taken to the American colonies where they were stripped of human rights, brutally treated and considered inferior to their fellow human beings. The discrimination and violation of the human rights of African-Americans did not come to an end following the abolition of slavery. Furthermore, the West is selective in defending human rights in nonWestern countries, which sometimes amounts to defending the oppressor rather than the oppressed. The West condemns the Chinese leadership for violating the human rights of the Uighurs Muslims, yet the same West shouts “foul” at the arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi by the generals of Myanmar, even though she defended those same generals when they were accused of committing crimes against the Rohingya Muslims. And no one says anything about Modi’s India, which has become a very dangerous place for Muslims to live in, thanks mainly to his Hindu nationalism. For Uncle Sam, the Sunni are the bad guys and the Shiite are the good guys in Iraq—in Syria, however, the Sunni are the good guys and the Shiite are the bad guys. Putin, Xi, and Maduro are condemned for violating human rights, but no one says anything when Netanyahu abuses human rights in occupied Palestine. The “defence of human rights” by the West (sometimes by bombing and torturing the same humans) is the very reason for the rise of the slogan “Yankees go home”, which is an anti-globalization slogan. Nothing is more hypocritical than the claim that the West condemns the inhumane treatment of the Chinese Muslims and want to go to war

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with China in defence of those poor Muslims. Aziz (2012) gives some examples of how the US treats the Muslims of North America, let alone those who were dealt with by using drones, bombers, and missiles in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is how he describes the Western attitude towards Muslims as motivated by Western exceptionalism: What we, in the Muslim world, fail to understand are the dual standards followed on this issue by the Washington led West. European countries too have been bitten by the Washington bug giving rise to what can be termed as Western exceptionalism. It may take a voluminous book to enumerate cases in which the misnomer of free speech has been castigated and punished in the West. Post 9/11 laws have become an enabling guise to perpetrate extreme excesses at will. The dichotomy too is brazenly blatant if one denies the Holocaust.

Perhaps one should say something about the latest confiscation of human right in the US, the right of women to abortion. In June 2022, the US Supreme Court ruled that there was no constitutional right to abortion, upending the landmark Roe v Wade case from nearly 50 years ago. One can only conclude that when it comes to human rights, Western hypocrisy is unparalleled. The West is not in a moral position to lecture other countries on human rights, given its history and contemporary abusive and criminal practices, both at home and abroad. The only human right that is fully respected in the West is the right of the oligarchy to rape the society.

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CHAPTER 6

Western Exceptionalism: Contribution to Science and Technology

6.1

Introduction

An aspect of Western exceptionalism that is used to support the claim that the Rest is inferior to the West is that, unlike the Rest, the West has contributed significantly (if not exclusively) to human welfare by advancing science and technology. Ordinary people, both in the Rest and the West, truly believe that science and technology are a monopoly of the West because people in the West are smarter than people in the Rest. This can be seen by looking at some of the questions put on Quora. For example, the following questions can be found: Why did science advance more quickly in the West over the course of human history? Why are people in the West so intelligent and smart compared to people in the East? Why are most scientific discoveries and inventions originated in the West? Why is Western society more successful than the East? Why are Western countries more developed than Eastern countries? Why did the West develop faster than the East? Why has the West been so successful over time? How did Western civilization come to be more advanced than the rest of the world? These questions involve what seems to be undisputable facts of life: science advanced more quickly in the West over the course of human history and people in the West are smarter than people in the Rest (which means that the Portuguese, Greeks, and Latvians are smarter than the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0_6

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Indians, Chinese, Arabs, and even the Japanese and Russians). This of course is a travesty and a claim that is quite offensive. Some of the answers to these questions are more stupid than the questions themselves, and some of them are plainly racist and exhibit superiority complex and colonial mentality. Take, for example, the question why most scientific discoveries and inventions originated in the West. One answer reads as follows: It has to do with the philosophy of “western individualism”. Thanks to western individualism, the west has produced the greatest artists, writers, inventors, entrepreneurs, politicians, philosophers, economists, mathematicians, physicists, etc.

Western individualism amounts to a rejection of the society, glorification of selfishness, and condemnation of altruism. The West has produced some of the most depraved politicians, some of whom were and are war criminals. At best, the West has produced the most incompetent politicians. I will believe the claim that the West has produced the greatest politicians if someone can give me the name of one Western politician who is comparable to Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, or Patrice Lumumba. Some Western politicians, who were elected democratically, inflicted so much damage on humanity, including Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. I am sure that Noam Chomsky would beg to differ with the view that the West has produced the greatest politicians— after all, Chomsky thinks that “if the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged” (Chomsky, 1990). A famous British politician named Winston Churchill is known for expressing, without any reservations, racist views about the Rest (perhaps always after a few shots of good whisky). Talking about depraved Western politicians, one should say something about George Bush Junior who is described by Judge Andrew Napolitano as follows (Napolitano, 2022): The fanaticism of George W. Bush—under whose incompetent watch the attacks of 9/11 occurred and who killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to produce regime change because Saddam Hussein “tried to kill my daddy”—continues to haunt and demean the American judicial system.

As for mathematicians, the Arabs invented Algebra when Europe was living in the Dark Ages. In recent times, Russia has produced a larger

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number of brilliant mathematicians than all Western countries put together. The allegedly great Western economists have been defending and providing intellectual justification for an immoral economic system that will be dealt with in a separate chapter. I could go on to talk about the great Western artists, writers, inventors, entrepreneurs, philosophers, physicists, footballers, casino managers, gangsters, and con artists. However, I will stop here to look at another answer to the same question, which reads as follows: Science developed in the western culture because the God of Christianity behaves in a predictable manner. And if He has created a world that also follows logical laws, then we can discover these laws and try to take control of the events around us. The gods of the other religions are capricious and unpredictable.

Well, no one has seen the God of Christianity or any other God (at least the Gods of the main religions), so how do we know that the Christian God behaves in a more predictable manner than the Muslim God or the Jewish God? In this chapter, a history of science and technology is presented to show that the development of science and technology is an evolutionary (sometimes a revolutionary) process propelled by scientists and scholars from the East, West, North, and South and that no particular country or continent or ethnic group has a monopoly over the process. At any point in time, there is a dominant player, but that does not last as it has been in the natural world. The dinosaurs dominated the planet for 165 million years, only to be replaced by mammals 65 million years ago. The dominant player in the field of science and technology has changed, as the position has been assumed by the ancient Egyptians, the people of Mesopotamia, the Chinese, the Indians, the Arabs, and lastly the people of the West (Europe first, then the US). This will change in the future. It will also be demonstrated that while the West has contributed significantly to science and technology, the Rest has done so, even in recent times. The history of technology is longer than and distinct from the history of science because technology and science are two different things even though they are closely related and have implications for each other. Technology is the study of the techniques used for making and doing things. Science, on the other hand, is an endeavour to understand the world around us. While technology is intended to produce things that

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we need or want, science is intended to understand the surrounding by using sophisticated skills of literacy and numeracy. There is also a chronological difference between science and technology: science began with the rise of civilizations, some 3000 years BC, whereas technology is as old as humankind. Our ancestors made tools and used them for hunting—that was technology without science. The same is true of the early use of fire for cooking, lighting, and heating.

6.2 Debate on the Superiority of the West in Science and Technology Westerners brag about the service rendered to humanity by inventing the things we use these days: watches, cars, computers, modern medicine, etc. For example, Taylor (2020) claims that contributions to science and technology is an exclusive “Western tradition”, which means that the Rest should be grateful to the West for the inventions and discoveries that have made our lives so pleasant. The evidence that he presents is in the list of “The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs since the Wheel” as compiled by The Atlantic (Fallows, 2013). The list was compiled from the views of a panel of 12 scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, historians of technology, and others to assess the innovations that have done the most to shape the nature of modern life. Taylor suggests that nearly all of the items appearing on the list were invented somewhere in Europe and that many of them were created in the West, the countries that hold “Western values”. The Atlantic list contains some marvellous inventions and discoveries. These include the printing press (1430s), electricity (late nineteenth century), Penicillin (1928), semiconductors (mid-twentieth century), the internal combustion engine (late nineteenth century), vaccination (1796), the steam engine (1712), sanitation systems (mid-nineteenth century), refrigeration (1850s), the airplane (1903), the personal computer (1970s), the car (late nineteenth century), the telephone (1876), the radio (1906), photography (early nineteenth century), the steam turbine (1884), television (early twentieth century), and anaesthesia (1846). This is why we have to be grateful to the great Western men and women who came up with these inventions and discoveries. We should be grateful to the likes of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Orville Wright, Johannes Gutenberg, Guglielmo Marconi, John Logie Baird, Samuel Morse, James Watt, Wilhelm Rontgen, George Stephenson,

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Rudolf Diesel, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and many more Western scientists, inventors, and discoverers. We also have to thank the great Western women who contributed to human welfare, including Marie Curie, Tiera Guinn, Katherine Freese, Vera Rubin, and Rosalind Franklin. While the list contains some inventions that emerged before the advent of Western science and technology in the fifteenth century, they are not attributed to anyone. For example, among the greatest 50 inventions as listed by The Atlantic are paper, gunpowder, and the compass, but nothing is said about where they were invented, which was China. The printing press is listed as having been invented in the 1430 s by Johannes Gutenberg, even though the Chinese had invented the printing press one thousand years earlier. China is known for the “four great inventions”: the compass, gunpowder, paper, and printing. The problem is that the likes of Taylor do not recognize the fact that science and technology represent a human, not a Western, endeavour. The development of science and technology is like a relay race where every member of the team contributes to its performance, and not only the last player. Furthermore, those who play the role of the last player change over time. When Europeans were painting their faces in blue and hiding in the bush, the Arabs were doing Algebra. Western contribution to science and technology is undeniable but it was built on previous human achievements. Just like we have to thank the great men and women of the West listed above, we have to thank the great non-Western scientists, discoverers and inventors, going back to the scholars of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, through to the present time when a young Russian mathematician, named Grigori Perelman, solved a mathematical problem (the Poincare Conjecture) that was identified by a French mathematician in 1904. Just like we have to recognize the achievements of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Newton, as well as those of Marie Curie and Tiera Guinn, we also have to recognize the achievements of and thank non-Western scientists, discoverers and inventors such as Dmitri Mendeleev, Zhuge Liang, Cai Lun, Shuji Nakamura, Abbas Ibn Firnas, Yuan Longping, Ismail Al-Jazari, Mikhail Lomonosov, Izumo Okuni, and Duan Zhengcheng (and many, many more). Buchanan (2022) suggests that the contribution of Renaissance scholars to mathematics was the translation of the works of ancient scholars.

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Unfortunately, the belief that only the West has contributed to science and technology is widespread. For example, Rosenberg and Birdzell (1990) attribute economic prosperity in the West (what they call “Western miracle”) to science and technology, which means that the absence of prosperity from other countries can be attributed to the lack of technology. They reject the proposition that imperialism was a source of prosperity (for the imperialist countries), using as examples Switzerland and Norway. However, the country where the industrial revolution started, Britain, was the biggest imperialist power. Spain, Portugal, and Belgium contributed nothing much to science and technology, yet they became extremely rich and prosperous by looting their colonies in South America and Africa. This does not mean that science and technology do not lead to prosperity, but what does not make sense is that Western countries, unlike countries of the Rest, became prosperous because they and they only contributed to science and technology. In fact, science and technology enabled imperialism as spears and arrows were no match for muskets, machine guns, and cannons. Those who believe that the West has a monopoly over science and technology choose to ignore the historical fact that following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages, also known as the Dark Ages, in which Europe was living in scientific and cultural darkness. That was the early medieval period of Western European history between about 500 and 1000, which was marked by frequent warfare and a virtual disappearance of urban life. That period witnessed the movement of the “barbarian peoples” (the Huns, Goths, Vandals, Bulgars, Alani, Suebi, and Franks) into what had been the Western Roman Empire. During that period, classical scientific treatises, written in Greek, were lost. Things, however, became different during the Renaissance of the twelfth century when Europeans sought and translated the works of Hellenic and Islamic philosophers and scientists. This was made possible by increased contact with Byzantium and with the Islamic world in Spain and Sicily, the Crusades, and the Reconquista (a series of campaigns by Christian states to recapture territory from the Muslims, who had occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula in the early eighth century). The Muslims had kept and translated the work of the ancient Greeks. Those who believe in the superiority and unique contribution of the West to science and technology fail to recognize the role played by “indigenous science” in boosting Western science. Popp (2018) argues that approaches to gathering knowledge are culturally relative and

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distinguishes between indigenous science, which incorporates traditional knowledge and indigenous perspectives, and non-indigenous scientific approaches. She suggests that “together, they contribute substantially to modern science”. For centuries, indigenous people’s lives depended on their knowledge about the surrounding environment. In search for such technologies, traditional (or local) knowledge provides a pointer, which is why Western criteria should not be the sole benchmark by which non-Western cultural knowledge is evaluated. The West has marginalized the term “traditional” by portraying any other culture or scientific contribution as being “pre-modern”, “primitive”, and “outdated”. However, traditional sciences and technologies were quite advanced by “modern” standards and better adapted to unique local conditions and needs than their later substitutes (look no further than the engineering marvel of the pyramids). Pingree (2003) suggests that “while science has always travelled from one culture to another, each culture before the modern period approached the sciences it received in its own unique way and transformed them into forms compatible with its own modes of thought”. Many plant species including three-fifths of the crops cultivated and enjoyed across the globe (such as corn, squash, beans, potatoes, and peppers) were domesticated by indigenous peoples in North, Central, and South America. Indigenous knowledge about the medicinal properties of plants has been instrumental in pharmacological development. For example, as settlers arrived in North America, indigenous people helped newcomers cure life-threatening scurvy by using conifer-needle tonics that were rich in vitamin C. Acetylsalicylic acid, the active ingredient in Aspirin, was first discovered by indigenous people who extracted it from the bark of the willow tree. By sharing their knowledge, indigenous people allowed invaders from the West to identify medicinal plant properties. Those who believe in the scientific superiority of the West reject the value of non-Western knowledge. Mazzocchi (2006) suggests that despite differences between Western science and traditional knowledge, different forms of knowledge can benefit from each other. He questions the widespread assumption that only Western science holds the criteria used to determine the truth. As Feyerabend (1987) points out, any form of knowledge makes sense only within its own cultural context. Bateson (1979) compares knowledge about the material world to a map and the terrain it describes and concludes that “the map itself is not the terrain,

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but only one representation of it” and goes on to say that “just as different maps can give accounts of the same territory, so too can different forms of knowledge about the material world”. We saw in Chapter 1 how the West is represented by the slogan Plato to NATO, which suggests that the West started with the Greek-Roman civilization. Some enthusiastic Westerners believe that the contribution of the West to science is not restricted to the last 500 years, suggesting instead that it is a continuum that goes back to the ancient Greeks and that this contribution never stopped—it only stalled during the Dark Ages. For example, once I came across a question posted on Quora that goes as follows: Has the West been more successful at science than the East? One answer was categorical: The West INVENTED science. It got started with the Greeks, then stalled during the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages. However, starting around 1100, Christendom began a process that eventually led to science. It was a long, complicated process, beginning with St. Thomas Aquinas’ attempt to reconcile theology with Aristotelian logic. His belief was that, by applying Aristotelian logic, they could put an end to the endless theological disputes that tore Christendom apart. We’d just stuff truths from the Bible into the Aristotelian logic machine, turn the crank, and out would come the answers.

So, it is simple—the West invented science (written in upper-case letters to emphasize the point) and no one else contributed anything to this human endeavour. This is why we have to thank the West and Western empires that looted all corners of the globe. We should not complain about Little Belgium butchering the people of Congo and looting their natural treasures because that was Belgium, a Western country, taking its rightful dues for contributing to science and technology. The “scramble for Africa”, which witnessed the rape of the Black Continent, was “legitimate” because Western countries deserved compensation for helping the rest of the world with science and technology. All of the atrocities committed by the West against the Rest can be justified in the same way. The stealing of Syrian oil by the US is legal and moral because Syria is paying its dues to a big inventor of science. A more truthful answer to the same question is the following:

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As every nation got developed along with other nations, they have their own contribution to science and technology from time to time. Once Europe/West was inhabited by Nomads, people in East were successfully running their own universities, industries and writing mathematical theorems. Then came a time during 14th -15th Century with the advance of European colonialism and imperialism, developed countries like India, China went into abysses of poverty and slavery. I think this will give a glimpse on.

Yes, India and China were once developed countries when Europe was in the Dark Ages, and at that time they made significant contributions to science and technology. For a long time, China and India swapped positions as the number one and number two largest economies in the World. Western imperialist countries invaded, occupied, looted, and raped the two countries. During the age of imperialism and colonialism, the West, particularly the British Empire, performed better in plunder than in science and technology. According to Hickel (2018), Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938, and this is why India was impoverished for years while Britain was prospering, allegedly because of its science and technology. Some observers respond to the alleged solo contribution by the West to science and technology by listing non-Western inventions and discoveries. For example, India invented or discovered the zero, modern numerals, heliocentric theory (centuries before Copernicus), and trigonometry. India contributed to medicine, surgery, and chemistry as far back as 5000 years ago. The Arabs invented algebra. China, Ancient Egypt, and Persia contributed to chemistry for millennia. Paper, ink, and the printing press were invented in China (before Gutenberg). East Asia in general produced wood pulp paper, compass, gunpowder, printing press, cannon, rocket, stirrup, ship compartment, natural gas piping, foundry, crossbow, seed-drill, and others. However, ideology of ingenuity and monopoly of boon, superiority complex, and a sense of entitlement make Westerners forget about all of those inventions’ origins. On the other hand, the big European invention was the accumulation of capital, which allowed Europeans to disrupt the intellectual communities of Africa, India, China, the Middle East, and the rest of the world.

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Not only the peoples of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and India contributed to science and technology in ancient and more recent times. Take, for example, Persia, which contributed significantly to science and technology. Many of the West’s systems and processes were known to ancient Persians, including agriculture, the use alcohol in medicine, anaesthesia, refrigeration, the battery, the windmill, and so on. Take also Mexico as a representative of Latin America. In the pre-Hispanic past, the Mexicans invented or discovered chocolate, chewing gum, and corn (as well as popcorn). The earliest known Vulcanization process (for rubber) was introduced in pre-Hispanic Mexico. In more recent times, a Mexican by the name Angel Lascurain was a prolific airplane designer who kept pace with his American counterparts in the “mushroom phase” of early aviation. He built the “Villasana Helicopter” in 1920, a bomber in 1923, and one of the first monoplanes in 1916, and he was eventually killed while testing his own prototype of the airliner “Aura” in 1957. The Mexicans have contributed to technology in several ways, including the synthetization of the compound that makes oral contraceptives possible, the modern floating valve mechanism (which is required for modern toilets as well as the auto-fill stop and fuel gauge in cars). The Mexicans invented translucent concrete (a steel–concrete lightweight lattice that is three times stronger than flagstone, yet it floats on water), the indelible ink used in voting, catalytic nano-medicine, anti-graffiti paint (a twolayer polymer that goes on top of paint microscopically and rejects water) and control pilings for earthquakes. A Mexican, Juan Manuel Lozano, invented the “rocket belt” used by James Bond in movies and shown in the 1984 Olympics. Africa has contributed to science and technology despite the horror inflicted on the content by European imperialism. Blatch (2013) starts her description of the scientific achievements of Africa as follows: Despite suffering through the horrific system of slavery, sharecropping and the Jim Crow era, early African-Americans made countless contributions to science and technology. This lineage and culture of achievement, though, emerged at least 40,000 years ago in Africa. Unfortunately, few of us are aware of these accomplishments, as the history of Africa, beyond ancient Egypt, is seldom publicized.

She hints at (Western) racism when it comes to scientific contributions by suggesting that “the vast majority of discussions on the origins of science

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include only the Greeks, Romans and other whites”. She then goes on to describe ancient contributions of Africans to mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy, architecture, engineering, medicine, and navigation. The outrageous claims go further as some enthusiastic Westerners suggest that the inventions of the West were developed without reference to the preceding civilizations. For example, a claim is often made that Gutenberg invented the printing press without having any knowledge that the Chinese had come up with the same invention one thousand years earlier. Even if he did not know, this does not mean that the role of China should be ignored. They claim that while empires in regions like China, India, Persia, Turkey, South America solved many day-today problems well, they contributed almost nothing directly to the most innovative period in history which many people see as the Victorian era (1840–1900) despite having many advantages over Europe in terms of manpower, wealth, and resources. These Westerners expect us to accept Western superiority and uniqueness in the field of science and technology as an undisputed fact of life. Unfortunately, some people in the Rest believe these allegations and repeat them, even though they are baseless and motivated by the perception of Western exceptionalism.

6.3

More on the Contribution of the Rest

Buchanan (2022) points out that prehistorical developments in science and technology took place over a long period of time, compared with the 5000 years of recorded history, and that they took place first in those parts of the world with an unusual combination of qualities: a warm climate, encouraging rapid crop growth, and an annual cycle of flooding that naturally regenerated the fertility of the land. For example, on the Eurasian-African landmass such conditions are found in Egypt, Mesopotamia, northern India, and some of the great river valleys of China. Hence, he suggests that “it was there, then, that men and women of the New Stone Age were stimulated to develop and apply new techniques of agriculture, animal husbandry (raising animals for meat, fibre, milk, etc.), irrigation, and manufacturing”. Other parts of the world had to wait for the spreading of the influence of “the great world civilizations” (the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations) westwards through the Mediterranean and Europe. The other great civilizations of India and China were limited by geographical barriers, and that is why they were largely isolated from the mainstream of Western technological progress.

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Starting in around 3000 BC, the ancient Egyptians developed a decimal numbering system and used their knowledge of geometry for the purpose of solving practical problems such as those of surveyors and builders. Subsequently, they developed an official calendar that contained twelve months, thirty days each, and five days at the end of the year. Their development of geometry was a necessary outgrowth of surveying to preserve the layout and ownership of farmland, which was flooded annually by the Nile River. The 3–4–5 right triangle and other rules of geometry were used to build rectilinear structures, as well as the post and lintel architecture of Egypt. For much of the Mediterranean, Egypt was a centre of alchemy research. Furthermore, not many people realize that the ancient Egyptians invented toothbrushes, toothpaste, and ornamentation on furniture. Perhaps, nothing indicates the brilliance of ancient Egyptians more than the great temples and monuments that continue to fascinate and amaze people in the modern day. The sheer size and scope of structures like the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Temple of Amun at Karnak, and the Colossi of Memnon are literally awe-inspiring and naturally encourage questions regarding how they were built. All across the Egyptian landscape rise immense structures, thousands of years old, which have given rise to many different theories as to their construction. The technological skill required to build the Great Pyramid still mystifies scholars in the present day. Egyptologists Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs comment on this (Brier & Hobbs, 2013): Because of their immense size, building pyramids posed special problems of both organization and engineering. Constructing the Great Pyramid of the pharaoh Khufu, for example, required that more than two million blocks weighing from two to more than sixty tons be formed into a structure covering two football fields and rising in a perfect pyramidal shape 480 feet into the sky. Its construction involved vast numbers of workers which, in turn, presented complex logistical problems concerning food, shelter, and organization. Millions of heavy stone blocks needed not only to be quarried and raised to great heights but also set together with precision in order to create the desired shape.

The ancient Mesopotamians had extensive knowledge of the chemical properties of clay, sand, metal ore, bitumen, stone, and other natural materials. This knowledge was applied to the manufacturing of pottery, faience, glass, soap, metals, lime plaster, and waterproofing. In medicine,

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the earliest medical prescriptions appeared in Sumerian during the Third Dynasty of Ur (2112 BC–2004 BC). The most extensive Babylonian medical text, The Diagnostic Handbook, was written by the Ummân¯ u (chief scholar) Esagil-kin-apli of Borsippa during the reign of the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina (1069–1046 BC). In mathematics, the Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet Plimpton 322 (dating to the eighteenth century BC) records a number of Pythagorean triplets such as (3,4,5) and (5,12,13), which means that the Mesopotamians were aware of the Pythagorean theorem over a millennium before Pythagoras. Records of the motions of the stars, planets, and the moon can be found on thousands of clay tablets, providing evidence for vibrant Babylonian astronomy. Even today, astronomical periods identified by Mesopotamian proto-scientists are still widely used in Western calendars such as the solar year and the lunar month. According to the historian A. Aaboe, “all subsequent varieties of scientific astronomy, in the Hellenistic world, in India, in Islam, and in the West—if not indeed all subsequent endeavour in the exact sciences—depend upon Babylonian astronomy in decisive and fundamental ways” (Aaboe, 1974). The Mesopotamians had some influence on the development of mathematics in India, and there were confirmed bidirectional transmissions of mathematical ideas between India and China (Joseph, 2011). The earliest traces of mathematical knowledge in the Indian subcontinent appear with the Indus Valley civilization (roughly 4th millennium BC–3rd millennium BC). The Indian astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata (476–550) introduced the sine function in trigonometry. In 628 AD, Brahmagupta suggested that gravity was a force of attraction. He also explained lucidly the use of zero as both a placeholder and a decimal digit, along with the Hindu–Arabic numeral system now used universally throughout the world. In the Tantrasangraha treatise, Nilakantha Somayaji’s updated the Aryabhatan model for the interior planets, Mercury, and Venus and the equation that he specified for the centre of these planets was more accurate than the ones in European or Islamic astronomy until the time of Johannes Kepler in the seventeenth century (Joseph, 2011). Ancient Chinese scientists and engineers made significant scientific innovations, findings, and technological advances across various disciplines, including natural sciences, engineering, medicine, military technology, mathematics, geology, and astronomy. Among the earliest inventions were the abacus, the sundial, and the Kongming lantern. The Four

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Great Inventions (compass, gunpowder, paper, and printing) were not known in Europe until the end of the middle ages, 1000 years later. Among the engineering accomplishments of early China were matches, dry docks, the double-action piston pump, cast iron, the iron plough, the horse collar, the multi-tube seed drill, the wheelbarrow, the suspension bridge, the parachute, natural gas as fuel, the raised-relief map, the propeller, the sluice gate, and the pound lock. The list goes on and on. By the seventh century, the Islamic world had become a civilization of colossal expansive energy. From the point of view of technological dissemination, the importance of Islam lay in the Arab assimilation of the scientific and technological achievements of Hellenic civilization, to which it made significant additions, and the entire output became available to the West through the Moors in Spain, the Arabs in Sicily and the Holy Land, and through commercial contacts with the Levant and North Africa. Islam also provided a transmission belt for some of the technology of East and South Asia, particularly that of India and China. The ancient Hindu and Buddhist cultures of the Indian subcontinent had long-established trading connections with the Arab world to the west and came under strong Muslim influence themselves following the Mughal conquest in the sixteenth century. Most of the achievements of Islamic scholars in the heyday of Islamic civilization were in mathematics. The earliest surviving Arabic treatises were written in the ninth century by Abu Ishaq Al-Kindi, Qusta Ibn Luqa, and Ahmad Ibn Isa. In the eleventh century, a mathematician and astronomer called Ibn Al-Haytham, synthesized a new theory of vision based on the works of his predecessors. His new theory included a complete system of geometrical optics, which was set in great detail in a book that was translated into Latin and used as a principal source on the science of optics in Europe until the seventeenth century. Islamic science began its decline in the twelfth–thirteenth century, before the Renaissance in Europe, due in part to the Christian reconquest of Spain and the Mongol conquests in the East in the eleventh–thirteenth century. The Mongols destroyed Baghdad, which had been the world capital of scholarship. In China, civilization flourished from about 2000 BC. From the beginning, technological skills in the field of hydraulic engineering were valued because survival depended on controlling the enriching but destructive floods of the Yellow River. The links between China and the West remained tenuous until modern times, but the occasional encounter,

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such as that resulting from the journey of Marco Polo in 1271–95, alerted the West to the superiority of Chinese technology and stimulated a vigorous westward transfer of Chinese techniques. Western knowledge of silk working, the magnetic compass, paper-making, and porcelain were all derived from China. In the latter case, Europeans admired the fine porcelain imported from China for several centuries before they were able to produce anything of a similar quality. Perhaps an indication of the contributions made by non-Westerners to science and technology can be provided by the number of scholars who are described as the “father of” or “mother of” a certain field. The following are some examples. Élie Metchnikoff (1845–1916) is the father of Gerontology (the study of the social, cultural, psychological, cognitive, and biological aspects of aging). He is also the father of natural immunity. Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran (1922–2001) is the father of molecular biophysics. Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) is the father of the periodic table. Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765) is the father of physical chemistry. Al-Biruni (973–1050) is the father of Geodesy (the Earth science of accurately measuring and understanding Earth’s figure, orientation in space, and gravity). Leonid Brekhovskikh (1917–2005) is the father of acoustical oceanography. Ibn Al-Nafis (1213–1288) is the father of cardiovascular physiology. Ibn-Sina (980–1037) is the father of early medicine. Sushruta (sixth century) is the father of plastic surgery and early surgery. Abu Al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi (936–1013) is the father of modern surgery. The list goes on and on. Nikolai Zhukovsky is the father of aerodynamics. Ibn Al-Haytham is the father of experimental physics and the father of optics. Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi is the father of algebra. Madhava of Sangamagrama is the father of classical analysis. Al-Kindi is the father of cryptanalysis. Nikolai Lobachevsky is the father of nonEuclidean geometry. Alexander Lyapunov is the father of stability theory. Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni is the father of anthropology and indology (the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent). Ibn Khaldun is the father of demography, sociology, and early economics. The list of “fathers” we have been through contains Arab, Persian, Indian, and Russian names. If this list is not enough to show that the Rest contributed to the human endeavour of science and technology, I do not know what it would take to convince the true believers that they are

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wrong in thinking that only the West has contributed to human knowledge and that the West has a monopoly over intellectual power. Nothing could be further away from the truth.

6.4

Contributions to Mathematics

Of particular importance to the development of science and technology is the development of mathematics. Vazquez (2001), who describes mathematics as “an autonomous intellectual discipline and one of the clearest exponents of the creative power of the human mind”, argues that mathematics forms the conceptual scheme on which modern science is based and which supports technology, with close interaction among them. Rajiv (2018) points out that mathematics plays a vital role in all physical sciences and contributes significantly to the biological sciences, medicine, psychology, economics, and commerce. Without mathematics, it would not have been possible to make advances in semi-conductor devices, bio-technology, digital image technology, nanotechnology, satellites, and rockets. NASA’s Mars Rover is also based on mathematics. After all, mathematics is the language of science, and science produces technology. The development of mathematics has not happened over night but over centuries and millennia, with contributions from scholars all over the world. From 3000 BC, the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria (followed closely by Ancient Egypt and the Levantine state of Ebla) began to apply arithmetic, algebra, and geometry for purposes of taxation, commerce, and trade. They also used mathematics to study natural patterns and astronomy, and for the purpose of recording time and formulating calendars. The earliest available mathematical texts are from Mesopotamia and Egypt. Plimpton 322 (2000–1900 BC) is a Babylonian clay tablet that contains an example of Babylonian mathematics. This tablet, believed to have been written about 1800 BC, lists two of the three numbers in what are now called Pythagorean triples. From a modern perspective, a method for constructing such triples is a significant early achievement, known long before Greek and Indian mathematicians discovered solutions to this problem. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (1800 BC) is one of the best known examples of ancient Egyptian mathematics, containing a collection of arithmetic, algebraic, and geometric problems, as well as more complicated tables of data. The Moscow Mathematical Papyrus (1890 BC) is an ancient Egyptian mathematical papyrus containing several problems in arithmetic, geometry, and algebra.

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All of these texts mention the Pythagorean triples, which means that the Pythagorean theorem seems to be the most ancient and widespread mathematical development after basic arithmetic and geometry. An analysis of early Chinese mathematics indicates its unique and independent development compared to other parts of the world (for example, Boyer, 1991). The oldest Chinese mathematical text is the Zhoubi Suanjing, variously dated to between 1200 and 100 BC. The high-water mark of Chinese mathematics occurred in the thirteenth century during the latter half of the Song dynasty (960–1279), with the development of Chinese algebra. The most important text from that period is the Precious Mirror of the Four Elements by Zhu Shijie (1249–1314), dealing with the solution of simultaneous higher-order algebraic equations using a method that is similar to Horner’s method. Japanese mathematics, Korean mathematics, and Vietnamese mathematics are traditionally viewed as stemming from Chinese mathematics and belonging to the Confucian-based East Asian cultural sphere. Korean and Japanese mathematics were heavily influenced by the algebraic works produced during China’s Song dynasty, whereas Vietnamese mathematics was largely indebted to popular works of China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The oldest mathematical records from India are the Sulba Sutras, appendices to religious texts which gave simple rules for constructing altars of various shapes, such as squares, rectangles, parallelograms, and others. The next significant mathematical documents from India after the Sulba Sutras are the Siddhantas, astronomical treatises from the fourth and fifth centuries AD (the Gupta period) showing strong Hellenistic influence. They are significant in that they contain the first instance of trigonometric relations based on the half-chord, as is the case in modern trigonometry, rather than the full chord, as was the case in Ptolemaic trigonometry. It has been suggested that the advances of the Kerala school, which laid the foundations of calculus, were transmitted to Europe in the sixteenth century via Jesuit missionaries and traders who were active around the ancient port of Muziris at the time and, as a result, directly influenced subsequent European developments in analysis and calculus (for example, Almeida & Joseph, 2011). In 832 the beginning of Islamic civilization was marked by the establishment in Baghdad of a study centre called the House of Wisdom (Bait Al-Hikma), which was intended to promote research and the translation of works originally written in Greek into Arabic. Although most Islamic texts on mathematics were written in Arabic, most of the authors were

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not Arabs, since much like the status of Greek in the Hellenistic world, Arabic was used as the written language of non-Arab scholars throughout the Islamic world at the time. Persians contributed to mathematics alongside Arabs. Muhammad Ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi used the knowledge acquired from research and reading the translated works to write his first book on algebra in Arabic in which he offered a systematic procedure of solving mathematical problems (the word algorithm is derived from the Latinization of his name). The book turned out to be among the most influential books in Europe as records reveal that it was in use until the sixteenth century (Armour, 2005). Modern algebra (which is an Arabic word) and other mathematical concepts are founded on the findings and experimentation of traditional Muslim mathematicians (see also Ahmed, 2003; Spielvogel, 2014). Important contributions were made by other Arab and Muslim scholars. Abu Kamil extended algebra to the set of irrational numbers, accepting square roots and fourth roots as solutions to quadratic equations. His works formed an important foundation for the development of algebra and influenced later mathematicians, such as Al-Karaji and Fibonacci. In the late eleventh century, Omar Khayyam wrote a book about what he perceived as flaws in Euclid’s Elements, particularly the parallel postulate. He was also the first to find the general geometric solution to cubic equations. In the thirteenth century, Nasir Al-Din Tusi made advances in spherical trigonometry. Other achievements of Muslim mathematicians during this period include the addition of the decimal point notation to the Arabic numerals, the discovery of modern trigonometric functions, Al-Kindi’s introduction of cryptanalysis and frequency analysis, the development of analytic geometry by Ibn Al-Haytham, the beginning of algebraic geometry by Omar Khayyam, and the development of an algebraic notation by Al-Qalasadi. European contribution to mathematics appeared with the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution and continues until the present day, and no one can deny that. Early contributions were made by Piero della Francesca (1415–1492) who wrote books on solid geometry and linear perspective. In Italy, during the first half of the sixteenth century, Scipione del Ferro and Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia discovered solutions for cubic equations. Gerolamo Cardano published them in his 1545 book Ars Magna, together with a solution for quartic equations, discovered by his student Lodovico Ferrari. In 1572, Rafael Bombelli published his

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L’Algebra in which he showed how to deal with the imaginary quantities that could appear in Cardano’s formula for solving cubic equations. Subsequently, significant contributions were made by Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) and by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855). Other notable names include George Cantor (1845–1918), Isaac Newton (1643–1727), Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), Arthur Cayley (1821–1895), and George Boole (1815–1864). No one denies the great contributions of these great mathematicians. In the twentieth century, mathematics became a major profession. In a 1900 speech to the International Congress of Mathematicians, David Hilbert set out a list of 23 unsolved problems in mathematics. These problems, spanning many areas of mathematics, formed a central focus for much of twentieth-century mathematics. Today, ten have been solved, seven are partially solved, and two are still open. The remaining four are too loosely formulated to be stated as solved or not. In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced the seven Millennium Prize Problems, and in 2003 the Poincaré conjecture was solved by a young Russian mathematician, a genius called Grigori Perelman. In 1990, Perelman made significant contributions in Alexandrov spaces and in 1994, he solved the Soul conjecture in Riemannian geometry which had been unsolved for 20 years. He also solved Thurston’s geometrization conjecture in 2002. Since Russia is denied the privilege of being regarded as a Western country (even though it is a European, Christian, and white country), the contribution to mathematics made by Perelman and other great Russian mathematicians are not Western contributions but rather contributions of the Rest (which is great for the Rest). Even though it is claimed that the West dominated mathematics since 1500 or so, the contributions of Russian mathematicians are rarely mentioned. Until now, Western mathematicians observe very closely what Russian mathematicians produce, to the extent that during the period 1973–1993, Kluwer Academic Publishers published the Journal of Soviet Mathematics, which provided English translations from Russian-language publications of authoritative reports on current mathematical advances. Russia has produced more great mathematicians than probably all Western countries combined. Plenty of examples can be given. Sergey Bernstein developed the Bernstein polynomial, Bernstein’s theorem on monotone functions and Bernstein inequalities in probability theory. Boris Delaunay invented the Delaunay triangulation. Sergei Godunov

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developed Godunov’s theorem and Godunov’s scheme in differential equations. Mikhail Gromov developed geometric group theory, invented the homotopy principle, and introduced Gromov’s compactness theorems. Leonid Khachiyan developed the ellipsoid algorithm for linear programming. Andrey Kolmogorov made multiple contributions to probability axioms, Chapman-Kolmogorov equation, and Kolmogorov extension theorem in probability. Nicolay Vasilyev invented non-Aristotelian logic and contributed to the forerunner of paraconsistent and multi-valued logics. Andrey Markov invented the Markov chains, proved Markov brothers’ inequality and developed the hidden Markov model, Markov number, Markov property, Markov’s inequality, Markov processes, Markov random field, and Markov algorithm. His son, Andrey Markov Junior, developed Markov’s principle and Markov’s rule in logic. Lev Pontryagin, a blind mathematician, developed Pontryagin duality and Pontryagin classes in topology, and Pontryagin’s minimum principle in optimal control. And there is more where these came from.

6.5

The Past, Present, and Future

Empires rise and fall. At its greatest extent, early in the twentieth century, the British Empire comprised nearly a quarter of the planet and an equal percentage of its population. Even though the sun was not supposed to set on the British Empire, it did set eventually. Species rise and fall. The dinosaurs ruled the planet for some 165 million years, only to be replaced by mammals as the dominant species some 65 million years ago. Economies, in terms of size, rise and fall. China and India had the largest economies in the world for a long time, before they were looted systematically by Western imperialist powers. Some economies rise, fall, and then rise—currently, China has the largest economy in the world in PPP terms (which is the right way to make international comparisons). India is not far behind. It is, therefore, plausible to suggest that that Western dominance in science and technology will not last for ever, just like it did not last for the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chinese, Indians, and Muslims. An Arabic proverb says it all: “If it had lasted perpetually for others, it would not have reached you”. Some historians have come up with reasons why previous scientific powerhouses lost their lead for others to take over. For example, Fallows (2013) suggests that some societies closed themselves off and stopped inventing altogether, most notably China after its pre-eminence in the

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Ming era, and much of the Arab-Islamic world starting just before the European Renaissance. China was once a superpower in science and technology, a status that came to an end as a result of the constraints of the shut-the-door isolationism of the feudal social system that was in place for more than 2000 years. Some would attribute the fall of Chinese science and technology to the rise of Mongols. Several explanations are put for the demise of Arab-Muslim science and technology, as suggested by Ekinci (2016). The first is the land structure as Islamic regions are typically in barren or semi-barren, steppe or desert with few habitable areas. The second is the natural disasters that occurred in Islamic cities in the Medieval Age, which caused social and economic depression. For example, the drop in the Nile’s water level in 968 resulted in serious drought and the death of 600,000 people. The third is that the geographical position of Islamic cities made them the targets of external assaults and interference from the Crusades which represent a separate reason for the demise of Muslim science and technology. A total of seven Crusades were organized between 1096 and 1291, a period during which Muslims in the captured towns were massacred (by the peace-loving West). In essence, the Crusades were the first experience of imperialism. While the Muslim world was in struggle with the Crusaders, another terrifying occupation came from the east as Genghis Khan united nomadic Mongolian tribes and attacked Islamic power centres, destroying Baghdad in 1258. A related factor is European intervention as the Europeans orchestrated internal coups in various ways, including military interventions (regime change is an old habit). Due to the adoption of progressive ideas, Western countries have made remarkable progress in science and technology since the Renaissance. However, this situation is beginning to change. Over the past 50 years, and particularly during the past 20 years of social and economic reform, the Chinese government has attached great importance to the development of science and technology, adopting policies intended to rejuvenate scientific and technological innovation. This radical change has promoted economic growth and social development, and encouraged scientific and technological exchange between China and the West. If the social and intellectual climate for innovation deteriorates, what has happened before can happen again. Support for this view comes from Robert Gordon who argues that America’s history as a nation happens to coincide with a rare moment in technological history that is now on the verge of coming to an end. Gordon (2012) argues that “there was

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virtually no economic growth before 1750”, which left open the possibility that “the rapid progress made over the past 250 years could well be a unique episode in human history rather than a guarantee of endless future advance at the same rate”. Cowen (2011) suggests that America’s long centuries of rapid growth amounted to harvesting the “low-hanging fruit” of open land, cheap energy, and industrial-era breakthroughs. This may not be sustainable. Within the West, the contribution made to science and technology by individual countries changes over time. At one time, Britain dominated. Subsequently, dominance moved to continental Europe, and since the end of World War II, America has been the leading country in terms of contribution to science and technology. How did that happen? One explanation for the shift from Europe to America is that during the first half of the twentieth century, Europe was busy tearing itself apart in episodes of the West versus the West. That happened while the US was busy selling weapons, figuring out how to build better weapons, and taking home obscene amounts of money for their trouble. It is widely believed that America has moved to the top of the pyramid of science and technology because of the brain drain inflicted on Europe and the rest of the world. America would not have put a man on the moon without the brilliance of a German engineer. That particular German engineer was one of 1,600 Nazi German scientists, engineers, and technicians who were shipped to the US and naturalized when other countries would not touch them because some of their discoveries had been made using illegal experiments on unwilling human subjects. The list of naturalized American scientists is extensive. According to Weisberger (2017), immigrants were awarded 31 of the 78 Nobel Prizes won by Americans since 2000 in the fields of chemistry, medicine, and physics. She lists 11 immigrants who made great contributions, including John James Audubon, John Muir, Albert Einstein, Gerty Cori, Albert Claude, Maria Goeppert Mayer, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Elizabeth Stern, Rita Levi-Montalcini, and Chien-Shiung Wu. If just for the entertainment value, I quote someone who replied to a question posted on Quora: Why do most scientific discoveries come from the US? This is the reply: Because most of the discoveries made in USA were stolen from India/Europe and other parts of Asia. They came, learnt those discoveries, went back and claimed that it is their’s [sic]. And plus they patented

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it on their name as well, so that Easterns [sic] cannot claim back and it would become a legal process if they do so. Small example: Marconi stole Tesla’s Long distance radio waves discovery. From India, they stole: Brahmagupta’s Finite Difference Interpolation, Pasca’s triangle, Atom’s theory, Sign convention, plastic surgery, cataract surgery, value of pi and so on…..

Some people argue outright that it is a myth that the US leads in science and technology. Some of the most important inventions came from outside the US even though the US has a significant industrial complex, and large companies that do R&D funded by economic wealth. Examples of inventions that are wrongly believed to have come from the US are the following: cellular communication was invented in England, heart transplants in South Africa, the electric drill in Australia, anti-radar stealth coatings in China, velcro and celephane in Switzerland, the loudspeaker in Denmark, automatic transmissions in Brazil, and the ballpoint pen in Hungary. There are more where these came from. A view that holds wide acceptability is that the US, and hence the West, has already lost its dominance of science and technology as a result of the rise of Asia. Jonathan Buttall, a retired professional in behavioural health, responds to the question why big inventions come out the US by wondering why a question that belongs in the 1950s is being asked in 2019 (Buttal, 2019). For Buttall, the US is already out of the big league in science and technology. This is what he says: The US fell behind in nonmilitary technology a long time ago. The most advanced computers, communication devices, advanced and innovative architecture, bridges and tunnels, high end and super fast transportation, etc., come from Asia, not the US.

In a way, Buttall believes that US superiority in science and technology is a myth that has resulted from indoctrination: When I was a child in elementary school, we were taught that every great invention ever made in every category was made in the US. We naive children believed this and many Americans never lost that belief. But the world has greatly changed and the US’s only superiority is military hardware. Heck, we aren’t even top in space anymore since 2010.

He even presents explanations as to why the US has declined:

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Visit Japan, France, Switzerland, China, Singapore and you’ll see what looks like scenes in a futuristic science fiction movie. Other than making wars nastier, we’re just not on top anymore, and our already fragile economy is now sinking from the failed trade wars and disastrous tax cuts. Not helping this is horrendous weather that has crippled our already weakened farming sector. With Hurricane season just around the corner now, expect things to get even worse.

The adoption of a destructive economic system based on the ideology of neoliberalism is a major reason for the gradual decline of the US and the West in general. It is often suggested that China grew rapidly by adopting capitalism. However, Chinese capitalism is different from Western capitalism where the public sector is demonized. The state plays a major role in Chinese capitalism, and this is a big difference. In a neoliberal economy, health and education take a big hit, leading to deterioration in the quality of human capital, which is the source of innovation. Neoliberalism has produced financialization and killed off manufacturing industry, which is where innovation originates. This reminds me of a story told by Krugman (2011) who quotes a Russian immigrant, an engineer by profession, as saying that “America seems very rich... but I never see anyone actually making anything”. Krugman comments that this statement became increasingly accurate over time, which led him to suggest that “Americans made a living by selling each other houses, which they paid for with money borrowed from China”. With respect to manufacturing industry, Krugman asserts that “manufacturing, once America’s greatest strength, seemed to be in terminal decline”. In the past, science and technology was dominated by the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and India. At one time, science and technology were dominated by the Arab-Muslim world. Since about 1500, science and technology have been dominated by the West. In every one of these episodes, the rise of countries or regions was built on the knowledge provided by their predecessors. This applies to the present where the leading West is in a decline as Asia rises. By the end of this century, climate change will have transformed most regions of the world into uninhabitable desert. Russia will be the only super power left as Siberia becomes suitable for agriculture. Russia will rise, not only because of climate change but also because it has endless natural resources of all kinds and great mathematicians. Furthermore, Russia has a population

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that can endure absolutely anything, including brutal acts of aggression led by a Western leader called Napoleon Bonaparte and another Western leader called Adolf Hitler. Russia, which is not regarded as part of the West, has already contributed greatly to science and technology and produced more great mathematicians than all Western countries put together. Perhaps, nothing serves as an end to this section than the remarks made by the great American astrophysicist, Neil Tyson, who said the following in an interview with Bill Moyers (Tyson, 2014): It is not a for ever thing….. I read history…. I look to countries that rise up and contribute to eradicating ignorance and to making discoveries about our place in the universe…. By a change of force, a change of vision by short-sighted leadership, the entire operation collapses…. One thousand years ago, Baghdad was the intellectual capital of the world while in Europe they were disembowelling heretics… Our numerals are called Arabic numerals because they [the Arabs] pioneered the use of these numerals and invented algebra, which is an Arabic world, and so is algorithm. Two thirds of the stars in the night sky have Arabic names…. They had navigation devices… That culture of discovery ended and has not arisen since…. As a scientist I don’t care who does the work next if it is not America. I want to see good scientific results no matter where they are done, but as an American I feel it. I feel the fading of our lustre… the fading of our vision as a nation.

These are words of wisdom from a respected contemporary scientist who is not consumed by supremacy and exceptionalism.

6.6

Concluding Remarks

One of the alleged aspects of Western exceptionalism is that the West has done humanity a favour by advancing science and technology like no other nation or region. No one denies the contribution of the West to science and technology, and no one should deny the contribution of others, because the development of science and technology is an evolutionary process that started thousands of years ago. It is like a relay race where the winning team wins because of the effort of all team members and not only that of the last athlete to hold the baton. History tells us that scientific and technological innovation has moved westwards from the long-established civilizations of the ancient world.

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Even today, the contribution of the West to science and technology relative to other countries is overblown. The contributions of Russia, China, and Japan are ignored and not acknowledged. China, in particular, has emerged as a new science and technology powerhouse as indicated by spending on R&D, which has grown remarkably over the past two decades. China is now the second-largest performer in terms of R&D spending, on a country basis, and accounts for 20% of total world R&D expenditure. It is also increasingly prominent in industries that are heavily dependent on scientific and technological knowledge (Veugelers, 2017). Until now Western astronauts hitch a ride to the International Space Station (ISS) with the Russians. Without the technological contribution of Russia, the ISS would not have been feasible. On 26 July 2022, Russia announced that it would withdraw from participating in the ISS by 2024, opting instead for building its own orbiting outpost. To say the least, the operation of the ISS without Russian technology will be rather complex. The ISS propulsion manoeuvres are directed by Moscow’s mission control, which would make it difficult for other partners to take over from the ground control segment. Simply put, the station needs Russian modules to stay in orbit. More specifically, Russia operates six of the 17 modules of the ISS, including Zvezda, which houses the main engine system. This engine is vital for the station’s ability to remain in orbit and also for moving out of the way of dangerous space debris. Those who regard Russia as a second or third class technological nation will have something to think about as a result of Russia’s decision to leave the project. Two more remarks are worthwhile. The first is that within the West, scientific innovation is concentrated in a few countries, so why is it that reference is made to Western technology and Western dominance? The second is that the dominance of the West in science and technology is not meant to last for ever as history tells us. At one time, the Muslims dominated, but no longer. At one time, the Chinese dominated, but no longer, even though China is re-emerging as a science and technology superpower. If we talk about contribution rather than dominance, other people and civilizations have contributed and paved the way for others to hold the torch. Nothing is exceptional about the contribution of the West to science and technology.

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References Aaboe, A. (1974). Scientific Astronomy in Antiquity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 276, 21–42. Ahmed, A. S. (2003). Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise. New York: Routledge. Almeida, D. F., & Joseph, G. G. (2011). Kerala Mathematics and its Possible Transmission to Europe, Muslim Heritage, 8 July. Armour, R. S. (2005). Islam. Christianity and the West: A Troubled History, Conversations in Religion and Theology, 3, 64–84. Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Dutton. Blatch, S. (2013) Great Achievements in Science and Technology in Ancient Africa, ASBMB Today, 1 February. Boyer, C. B. (1991). A History of Mathematics (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. Brier, B., & Hobbs, H. (2013). Ancient Egypt: Everyday Life in the Land of the Nile. New York: Union Square & Co. Buchanan, R. A. (2022). History of Technology, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 16 June. Buttall, J. (2019). Why Do Big Inventions Come out from USA?, Quora. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-big-inventions-come-out-from-USA Chomsky, N. (1990). If the Nuremberg Laws were Applied… https://chomsky. info/1990____-2/ Cowen, T. (2011). The Great Stagnation. New York: Dutton. Ekinci, E. B. (2016). Why the Islamic World Fell Behind in Science, Daily Sabah, 29 January. Fallows, J. (2013). The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel, The Atlantic, November. Feyerabend, P. (1987). Farewell to Reason. London: Verso. Gordon, R. J. (2012). Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds. NBER Working Papers, No. 18315. Hickel, J. (2018). How Britain Stole $45 trillion from India and Lied about it, CADTM, 31 December. www.cadtm.org/How-Britain-stole-45-trillion-fromIndia Joseph, G. G. (2011). The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Krugman, P. (2011). Making Things in America, New York Times, 19 May. Mazzocchi, F. (2006). Western Science and Traditional Knowledge: Despite Their Variations. Different Forms of Knowledge Can Learn from Each Other, EMBO Reports, 7 , 463–466. Napolitano, A. P. (2022). Bush and his Torturers, New Jersey Herald, 2 April.

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Pingree, D. E. (2003). The Logic of Non-Western Science: Mathematical Discoveries in Medieval India. Daedalus, 132, 45–53. Popp, J. (2018). How Indigenous Knowledge Advances Modern Science and Technology, The Conversation, 3 January. Rajiv, P. (2018). Role of Mathematics in Science and Technology. Deliberative Research, 37 , 77–81. Rosenberg, N., & Birdzell, L. E. (1990). Science, Technology and the Western Miracle. Scientific American, 263, 42–55. Spielvogel, J. J. (2014). Western Civilization. Stamford: Cengage Learning. Taylor, W. (2020). Cultural Superiority Isn’t Racism: Why Western Values Underpin the World’s Best Countries, The Mallard, 23 November. Tyson, N. D. (2014). Interview with Bill Moyers on Science, Religion and the Universe Moyers and Company, 22 January. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xRx6f8lv6qc Vazquez, J. L. (2011). The Importance of Mathematics in the Development of Science and Technology, Working Paper, Department of Mathematics, Univ. Autonoma de Madrid. Veugelers, R. (2017). China is the World’s New Science and Technology Powerhouse, Bruegel, 21 December. Weisberger, M. (2017). 11 Immigrant Scientists Who Made Great Contributions to America, Live Science, 7 February.

CHAPTER 7

Western Supremacy: The Views of Huntington, Fukuyama and Ferguson

7.1

The Huntington Thesis

Samuel Phillips Huntington (1927–2008) was an American political scientist who argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures, and that Islamic extremism would become the biggest threat to Western domination of the world. In 1993, Huntington provoked debate among international relations theorists by publishing a frequently cited article in Foreign Affairs, in which he argued that, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Islam would become the biggest obstacle to Western domination of the world (Huntington, 1993). He predicted that the next big war would inevitably be with Islam. The article was followed by a 1996 book entitled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Huntington, 1996). I must say at the outset that I am puzzled why Huntington’s work is taken seriously even though it has zero intellectual content and that it is no more than rhetoric about Western supremacy. Well, some might say that he correctly predicted the wars between the West and the Muslim world in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. In reality, however, these wars were unprovoked attacks by the West, which had nothing to do with civilizations. If anything, Huntington provided a convenient excuse to launch pre-emptive strikes against countries that had nothing to do with the

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9/11 attacks, and everything to do with regime change for one reason or another. The underlying proposition posited by the article and the book is that post-Cold War conflict would occur because of cultural rather than ideological differences. While conflict during the Cold War occurred between the capitalist West and the Communist Bloc (hence on ideological grounds), it is now most likely to occur between the world’s major civilizations, of which he identified eight: (i) Western, (ii) Latin American, (iii) Islamic, (iv) Chinese, (v) Hindu, (vi) Orthodox, (vii) Japanese, and (viii) African. The main battles, however, would be between Western and Islamic civilizations. One can only say that Huntington had a wild imagination, but the prevailing conditions and perceptions were conducive for people to believe the necessity of modern-day crusades against the Muslim world, or at least parts of it (the parts run by people who are not regarded by the West as “good guys”). Recall that George Bush Junior used the word “crusade” in reference to his campaign to brutalize the people of Iraq. Huntington took the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, in Chechnya, and between India and Pakistan as evidence of intercivilizational conflict. However, none of these wars were between the West and Islam. We have actually not seen any war between Islamic and Western civilizations in the post-Cold War period. It is not that Muslim countries ganged up and attacked America or Europe, and this is unlikely to happen. The last time we saw the Muslims and Christians ganging up against each other was during the Crusades when Europeans armies invaded the Muslim world specifically for religious reasons. The 9/11 attacks do not represent an attack by Islamic civilization on Western civilization but rather a criminal act perpetrated by a group of individuals (or indeed they were false-flag attacks, as it is widely believed). This was taken as an excuse for Western countries to gang up and launch wars of aggression against two Muslim countries. According to Huntington, the two alliances that attack each other are the Western alliance and the Muslim alliance. The Western alliance includes the US and Canada, Western and Central Europe, Australia, Oceania, and most of the Philippines (no one knows why some parts of the Philippines fall under Western civilization). The Muslim alliance, on the other hand, includes the Greater Middle East (excluding Armenia, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Georgia, Israel, Malta, and South Sudan), northern

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West Africa, Albania, Pakistan, Bangladesh, parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Comoros, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, and southern Philippines. I would imagine that it would be a monumental task to assemble such an alliance. Let us examine the validity of the Huntington proposition, that shooting wars in the post-Cold War period would be fought on cultural not ideological grounds, by looking at the wars one by one and see if he was right. Most of the wars, he said, would be between a coalition of Muslim countries and a coalition of Western countries, but this has not happened. All the wars (including actual invasions with boots on the ground, bombing campaigns, sanctions, and regime change) have been launched by the West (NATO or some “coalition of the willing”) on Muslim and non-Muslim countries. The bombing of Iraq and the slaughter of conscripts in Kuwait in 1991 was launched by a coalition that contained Western and non-Western countries, including some Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the following occupation, had nothing to do with culture and civilization but had a lot to do with Dick Chaney’s plan to plunder Iraqi oil. The bombing of Libya by NATO had nothing to do with culture, but rather with the desire to replace Gadhafi with a more obedient leader. The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan had nothing to do with culture, neither had the criminal bombing of Serbia, allegedly to save Muslim Serbs from Christian Serbs. The same goes for the sanctions imposed on Cuba and Venezuela (which represent an act of war) and attempted regime change, which were launched by Christians on Christians. The sanctions imposed on North Korea represent an act of war that has no Muslim side. The war between NATO and Russia, which is taking place in Ukraine, is between Christians and Christians. The aggressive stance against China, and any future war will be fought between Christians and Buddhists, allegedly to save the Chinese Muslims and the Taiwanese non-Muslims. The war launched by the military authorities of Myanmar on the Muslim community in the country involves no Western civilization. Unlike the case of the Chinese Muslims, however, the plight of the Muslims of Myanmar is ignored by the West because it was supported by Aung San Suu Kyi, the darling of the West. The war of aggression against the secular people of Iraq was totally unprovoked. Diab (2013) describes the Western assault as “blooddrenched invasion of Iraq”, suggesting that it unleashed “a wave of

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destruction not seen in that part of the world since at least the Mongol sacking of Baghdad in the mid-thirteenth century”. That invasion of Iraq by Western civilization produced a brutal war between two sects of Muslims, Sunnis and Shias, which was encouraged by the occupation forces. The sectarian strife in Iraq was (and is) a war between a coalition of Western civilization and Shia civilization (a subset of Islamic civilization) against Sunni civilization (another subset of Islamic civilization). In Syria, a coalition between Western civilization and Sunni civilization (Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra Front, ISIS, etc.) has been at war against the Shia civilization represented by Assad (who must go because the West says so). According to Huntington’s thesis, these wars should have been between a coalition of Sunni and Shia civilizations against Western civilization. Does not this sound ludicrous? With reference to Muslims, the phrase “they don’t like our way of life” is often used to explain why the Muslims attack the West and why the West is justified in taking pre-emptive action by bombing Muslim funerals and weddings. It is true that Muslims, and even some Westerners living in the West, do not like some Western values and traditions, such as the culture of recognizing 100 genders. However, this is no reason to launch a war against the militarily superior West. It is the West that wants values like these adopted by Muslims and others who do not approve of them. Most Muslims believe that if it is up to the West to approve gay marriage, put people behind bars for using the wrong pronouns to refer to others, etc., provided that these rules are not imposed on them. The critics of Huntington’s theory that justified wars of choice on Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen has been criticized, and it is not that difficult to criticize because the facts on the ground show otherwise. Critics would argue that the clash of civilizations is simply the symptom of an empire (Pax Americana) in search of justification for its imperial aspirations in the post-Cold War period. Diab (2013) suggests that clash of values is “just a clash of interests parading as something less selfish than it actually is” and that “although culture and ideology can, on rare occasions, lead to conflict, for the most part, societies enter into conflicts due to clashes of interests”. But it is more than that. The wars launched by the US-led West in the Post-Cold War period had nothing to do with culture or values but rather with the desire to fill the pockets of war profiteers, which are classified by Moosa (2019) as the providers of guns (military hardware), providers of butter (civilian or hybrid goods and services needed for the war effort), and providers of logistical support

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and mercenaries, the looters, and politicians and government officials who take part in the plunder. Diab makes the valid point that “over the centuries, Christians and Muslims have gone to war and killed more of their coreligionists than each other, as the carnage of two world wars in Europe shows all too clearly”. He makes another good point by wondering why the US “decided to invade Saddam Hussein’s secular Iraq, even though it was a sworn enemy of Al-Qaeda and jihadist Islam, yet is bosom buddies with Saudi Arabia, the hotbed of reactionary Wahhabism, which it exports around the region and the world, and the home of most of the hijackers who took part in the September 11 attacks”. Wars between the West and the Rest or between Western civilization and one of the other civilizations from the Rest requires alliances along these lines. In reality, alliances cut across the lines separating civilizations—this has been observed throughout history. For example, the Arab Muslims took the side of the British and the French against the Muslim Turks in World War I. The Muslim Turks, in turn, took the side of Germany. In World War II, the Americans, British, and French (Western countries) were allied with Russia (a non-Western country) to fight another Western country (Germany). The friendship between the West and Saudi Arabia is based on money rather than culture. The alliance between the US and the terrorists fighting against Assad in Syria is not based on culture. On the contrary, the terrorists of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, who do not represent Islam or Islamic civilization, have killed more Arabs and Muslims than Westerners, probably by a factor of 10 (if in doubt, ask the living people of Mosul, which was occupied by ISIS for some nine months). In the liberation of Mosul, ISIS, the Iraqi army, and Western air forces were effectively in a coalition to exterminate the people of Mosul, which they did with flying colours. What America and the West seek is to have countries (particularly those rich in resources), irrespective of culture, run by people who say “how high” when America says “jump”. If it takes war to accomplish this objective, then let it be. For the West, war is a profitable enterprise. The major wars, or potential wars, are currently between the West, on one side, and the Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans, on the other. Yes, they belong to different cultures but the cultural issues are not important here. America decided to put its wars against the Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan on the back burner and concentrate on Russia, China, and North Korea because the “war on terror” does not justify spending on

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big-ticket military hardware, which is more profitable for the providers of guns. Internal wars are potential in the West because of racial tension, grotesque inequality, and an immoral economic system that works for the benefit of the 1% at the expense of the 99%—cultural values are not a factor here. I am therefore puzzled why a piece of rhetoric, written by a supremacist, is described as being “influential” (in an intellectual sense). It was useful, however, for those in charge of the war machine. Huntington’s thesis does not pass the test of reality on any grounds. This is why it has been criticized and challenged empirically, historically, logically, and ideologically. Even worse for Huntington, it has been ridiculed. Paul Musgrave suggests that Huntington’s work “enjoys great cachet among the sort of policymaker who enjoys name-dropping … but few specialists in international relations rely on it or even cite it approvingly”. He concludes that “clash has not proven to be a useful or accurate guide to understanding the world” (Fujii, 2019). Berman (2003) suggests that (i) distinct cultural boundaries do not exist in the present day, (ii) there is neither “Islamic civilization” nor “Western civilization”, and (iii) that the evidence for a civilization clash is not convincing. Ash (2000) dismisses “extreme cultural determinism” and makes a mockery of “Huntington’s idea that Catholic and Protestant Europe is headed for democracy, but that Orthodox Christian and Islamic Europe must accept dictatorship”. Edward Said argued that Huntington’s categorization of the world’s fixed “civilizations” omits the dynamic interdependency and interaction of culture and that the clash of civilizations thesis is an example of “the purest invidious racism, a sort of parody of Hitlerian science directed today against Arabs and Muslims” (Said, 2004). Noam Chomsky has criticized the concept of the clash of civilizations as being a new justification for the US “for any atrocities that they wanted to carry out” (Trystan, 2007). The non-Western perspective of the clash of civilizations is summarized by Algeriani and Mohadi (2018). Huntington’s thesis is both simplistic and reductionist because it ignores the complex dynamics of conflict and neatly reduces them to his formula of cultural civilizational clash. The fact of the matter is that conflicts take place more out of economic and sociopolitical injustice, deprivation, disempowerment, geopolitics, and so on. Most of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth century took place within civilizations rather than between them. Huntington was selective in his approach to history. He viewed civilizations as monolithic, overlooking intra-civilizational diversity, and even conflict. This is why

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he refrained from discussing cases of conflict within civilizations because they are inconsistent with his thesis. He failed to highlight the numerous commonalities and essential similarities between civilizations and refused to see the interacting, overlapping, mingling, and merging of cultures and the evolution of civilizations through the debt they owe to each other. Huntington was a fascist and a war monger who had never heard the expression “peaceful coexistence”. He had Henry Kissinger as a long-time pal. He has been called a war criminal and xenophobic. In March 2004, he warned that a tide of Mexican immigration to the US was undermining “our Anglo-Protestant culture”. At one time, Huntington said the following (Hemel, 2004): Would America be the country that it had been and that it pretty much still is today if in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish and Portuguese Catholics? The answer is, no, it wouldn’t. It would be Quebec, Mexico or Brazil.

It is obvious why Huntington did not mention Nepal and Kenya where the British Protestants were in charge for a long time. Surely, Quebec is a more pleasant place to live than Nepal. Huntington, therefore, had a very narrow view of the West. A Westerner is a WASP and a WASP is a Westerner. Still, he did very well as an adviser to the Pentagon. I can only wonder why his “scholarly” work was taken seriously at all, let alone making him a celebrity. I wonder why a supremacist like him was raised to intellectual stardom and treated with the respect he did not deserve for his xenophobic rhetoric.

7.2

The Fukuyama Thesis

Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is known for his book The End of History and the Last Man, in which he suggests that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle indicate a triumph of Western values (Fukuyama, 1992). He suggests that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy following the end of the Cold War in 1991, humanity has reached “not just … the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such”. We have, he suggests, reached the “end-point of mankind’s ideological

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evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”. Fukuyama’s view is even more extreme than that of Huntington. For Fukuyama, Western culture has achieved victory and become dominant, a status quo that will be maintained for ever, whereas Huntington thought that Western civilization was still threatened. While Fukuyama thinks that Western democracy is universal, Huntington believed that Western civilization was unique, not universal. This makes both of them wrong because Western civilization, if there is such a thing, is neither universal, nor unique. However, they share passion for hostility to the rest of the world. In 2014, Fukuyama was less enthusiastic about his original thesis, suggesting that the biggest problem for the democratically elected governments in some countries was not ideological but “their failure to provide the substance of what people want from government: personal security, shared economic growth and the basic public services … that are needed to achieve individual opportunity” (Fukuyama, 2014). This is interesting because the Western economic system, a component of Western civilization, does not provide personal (economic) security, shared economic growth, or public services. In fact it is intended to be that way. Is this an acknowledgement from Fukuyama that the Western economic system is inferior? Or does it show some contradiction between his defence of free-market capitalism and his acknowledgement of the deficiencies of this system? More likely, Fukuyama tends to indulge in right-wing imperialist rhetoric without even thinking about the cohesion of his arguments. A question that crops up immediately is the following. If the socalled liberal democracy is as good as Fukuyama claims it to be, why is it imposed on other countries under a barrel of a gun or through regime change that is accomplished by the imposition of sanctions, covert operations, bombing, or an outright invasion? And if free-market capitalism is a system that leads to prosperity, why is it imposed on other countries through the principles of the Washington Consensus and IMF conditionality? If he is right about the triumph of free-market capitalism, why is it that in November 2022 Brazil became the latest Latin American country to replace a right-wing neoliberal president with a socialist president, following the footsteps of Chile and Colombia? Why did the CIA orchestrate a bloody coup in Chile in 1973 to install a military

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dictatorship that adopted free-market capitalism, replacing a democratically elected socialist government? That was certainly not an evolutionary change a la Fukuyama. In any case, free-market capitalism is incompatible with democracy, because it leads to the rule of the oligarchy. Fukuyama certainly does not believe in a peaceful transition to Western democracy and free-market capitalism and he is a supporter of interventionism and militarism. He was active in the Project for the New American Century think tank that called for endless wars and regime change in a dozen countries in the Middle East. He co-signed the 1998 letter recommending that President Bill Clinton supports Iraqi insurgencies in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein (other signatories include a notorious selection of characters, the Who is Who in war mongering, such as John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and James Woolsey) (PNAC, 1998). He was also among forty co-signers of William Kristol’s letter to George Bush Junior following the 11 September attacks, in which it was suggested that the US not only “capture or kill Osama bin Laden”, but also embark upon “a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq” (PNAC, 2002). Saddam was by no means a “good guy”, but he was less brutal than the Anglo-American occupation forces and less corrupt than the kleptocracy that has been appointed by the democracy-loving West to run and loot Iraq. Like Huntington, the book that made Fukuyama famous was an extension of the ideas expressed in an earlier article entitled The End of History in which he predicted the global triumph of political and economic liberalism (Fukuyama, 1989). This is what he said in the article. What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

In response, Dahrendorf (1990) argued that the essay gave Fukuyama his 15 minutes of fame, which would soon be followed by a slide into obscurity. Derrida (1994) argued that the public-intellectual celebrity of Fukuyama and the mainstream popularity of his book were symptoms of right-wing, cultural anxiety. He further said the following:

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For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neoevangelize in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realized itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious, macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable, singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth.

Following the 9/11 attacks, some commentators described The End of History as a symbol of the supposed naiveté and undue optimism of the Western world during the 1990s, in thinking that the end of the Cold War meant the triumph of the “McWorld”. In the weeks after the attacks, Fareed Zakaria called the events “the end of the end of history”, while George Will wrote that history had “returned from vacation” (Fukuyama, 2001). Another challenge to the Fukuyama thesis is the rise of China and resurgences of Russia. For example, Gat (2007) saw the success of these two countries as signalling “the end of the end of history”. He considered the challenge of China and Russia to be the major threat to American hegemony, because China in particular presents a viable rival model that could inspire other countries. In international economic relations, China deals with developing countries on the principles of the Beijing Consensus as an alternative to the destructive policies inspired by the Washington Consensus. This view is shared by Robert Kagan as exposed in his 2008 book The Return of History and the End of Dreams (Kagan, 2008). In his book, Kagan argues that greater economic prosperity, notably in China and India, and the various inter-dependencies that globalization has forged, failed to result in the steady convergence around liberal democratic values predicted by Francis Fukuyama. It is only superiority complex that motivates a person, supposedly intellectual, to declare that twentiethcentury America is the final culmination of human achievement. Just imagine someone celebrating the triumph of feudalism over slavery and suggesting that feudalism represents the end of history.

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The Ferguson Thesis: the British Empire

Niall Ferguson is a British historian and prolific writer who uses his intellectual power to glorify the notorious and criminal British Empire and reaffirm Western exceptionalism. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which he supported wholeheartedly, he described himself as a “fully paidup member of the neo-imperialist gang” (Jeevan, 2012). That was the most accurate statement that he has ever made. In the leftist circles, Ferguson is known as a “right winger”, even a “super-conservative”. The Wikipedia’s entry on neo-conservatism includes him as one of its proponents. He seems to be bothered by the lack of assimilation of Muslims in Europe, and the key role being played by Islamic centres at universities and elsewhere. In his Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Ferguson presents a provocative reinterpretation of the British Empire. It is provocative, not because of its intellectual content but because it glorifies the criminal acts committed by the British Empire against humanity. He does that shamelessly and with total disregard to the victims of the crimes committed by the British Empire in all corners of the world, far away from the shores of a small island off the Atlantic coast of Western Europe. Ferguson describes the British Empire as “one of the world’s great modernising forces” because the empire produced durable changes and globalization with steam power, telegraphs, and engineers (Ferguson, 2003). This is the same British Empire on which the sun would never set because (as George Galloway puts it) God does not trust the British in the dark. Wilson (2003) responds to Ferguson’s outrageous allegation as follows: Niall Ferguson is the Leni Riefenstahl of George Bush’s new imperial order. Just as Riefenstahl’s photography glorified the violence of fascism and sold it to the middle classes, Ferguson’s Channel 4 series and book on the British Empire presents the acceptable face of imperial brutality.

For those who have not heard of Leni Riefenstahl before, she was a German film director, photographer, and actress known for her role in producing Nazi propaganda. Wilson adds the following: From hawks within the Bush administration to their cheerleaders on the Mail and Telegraph, the invasion of Iraq is justified in the name of a new benevolent colonialism. Just as the world is preparing for a fresh western war of conquest, Ferguson arrives to convince us that imperialism can be a Good Thing”.

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Ferguson claims that “no organisation has done more to impose western norms of law, order and governance around the world”. Britain, according to Ferguson, introduced the rule of law, democracy, and Western civilization across the globe. In defence of the nineteenthcentury British Empire, Ferguson wrote the following: The 19th-century empire undeniably pioneered free trade, free capital movements and, with the abolition of slavery, free labour. It invested immense sums in developing a global network of modern communications. It spread and enforced the rule of law over vast areas. Though it fought many small wars, the empire maintained a global peace unmatched before or since. In the twentieth century too the empire more than justified its own existence. For the alternatives to British rule represented by the German and Japanese empires were clearly—and they admitted it themselves—far worse. And without its empire, it is inconceivable that Britain could have withstood them.

Ferguson is a supporter of Western imperialism because he believes that the West is always best and that the rest of the world needs the “compassionate” intervention of Western imperialism because the Rest (including Asians, Africans and Arabs) are not capable of creating prosperity and order on their own. As many of his critics note, Ferguson’s emergence as an advocate of empire coincided with the rise of neo-conservatism in the US and the drive to displace Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. As a “member of the neo-imperialist gang” (as he once described himself), Ferguson was a vocal supporter of the Anglo-American brutal assault on the people of Iraq. Let us evaluate the contribution of the British Empire to the countries plundered and brutalized by Britain. To start with, any invading and occupying force cannot be benevolent or altruistic. Britain and other European imperialist countries did not invade the rest of the world to improve living conditions for the indigenous population but to kill, dominate, and loot. That is what Britain did in India. That is what Belgium did in Congo. That is what Spain did in South America. And that is what the Anglo-American Empire did in Iraq. For the likes of Ferguson, however, the world (including former colonies) should be grateful to the British Empire for many things, most notably free trade, free capital movement, and free labour, not to forget teaching the colonies the English language (which is emphasized by another empire glorifier, Nigel Farraj). How could anyone take this “celebrity historian” seriously when he writes

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shamelessly that the British Empire was good because it was slightly less brutal than the Japanese and German Empires? He sets the bar too low jut to prove a point that is not even remotely related to reality. Let us consider free trade, to start with. Britain, the inventor of free trade, did not practice free trade during the heyday of the empire on which the sun has set. Chang (2002) describes Britain as being a “pioneer” of activist policies intended to promote its industries through protectionism. British politicians opposing free trade, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, criticized the liberal free trade policies adopted by the Ottoman Empire. In the 1846 Corn Laws debate, Disraeli described the free trade of the Ottoman Empire as “an instance of the injury done by unrestrained competition”, arguing that it destroyed what had been “some of the finest manufactures of the world” (Bairoch, 1995). Trade in colonial America was regulated by the British mercantile system through the Acts of Trade and Navigation. However, one has to be fair and say that Britain did fight two wars with China to enforce free trade: the first Opium War (1839–42) and the second Opium War (1856–60). For many years, Britain shipped Indian cotton and British silver to China, in exchange for Chinese tea and other goods, which were shipped to Britain. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the balance of trade was heavily in China’s favour because British consumers had developed a taste for Chinese tea (as well as other goods like porcelain and silk) whereas Chinese consumers had no taste for British goods. In the late 1700s, Britain tried to alter this balance by replacing cotton with Indian-grown opium. By the 1820s, the balance of trade was reversed in Britain’s favour, and it was the Chinese who had to pay for opium with silver. The Chinese government recognized opium as a serious social problem, forcing it to ban both the production and importation of opium in 1800. In 1813, China went a step further by making the smoking of opium illegal and imposing a punishment of beating offenders 100 times. For the British East India Company and the British Empire at large, China was out of touch with “civilized” nations that practiced free trade. In June 1840, 16 British warships arrived at Guangzhou to start a twoyear bombardment of Chinese coastal cities. The first Opium War came to an end in 1842, when Chinese officials signed, at gun point, the Treaty of Nanjing, which provided extraordinary benefits to the British, including Hong Kong and a huge compensation to be paid to the British

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government and merchants. The Treaty of Nanjing provided no benefits for China as the imports of opium resumed rapid growth. In 1856, a second Opium War broke out and continued until 1860, when the British and French captured Beijing and forced on China a new round of unequal treaties, indemnities, and the opening of 11 more treaty ports. By the power of the gun, the British imposed empire-style free trade on China and insisted on the “legal right” of British citizens to do what they wanted, wherever they wanted. The British advocated “free trade” and “individual rights”, while they were pushing an illegal product (opium) in China. Let us not forget the implicit “free trade agreement” involving Britain, Africa, the Caribbean and America, in a pattern that lasted until the abolition of slavery in 1833, which Ferguson hails as a great achievement of the empire. Beginning in the last decade of the 1400s, free trade involved the kidnapping of Africans, cramming them in ships, and taking them to the British colonies in the Western hemisphere. The lucrative “triangle of trade” between the west coast of Africa, the Americas, and Britain (involving slaves and the goods they were forced to produce) created the first lords of modern capitalism such as John Hawkins, a slave trader, who made a massive fortune in the 1560s. Manjapra (2018) presents a graphic description of the slave trade, which goes as follows: From the 15th to the nineteenth centuries, more than 11 million shackled black captives were forcibly transported to the Americas, and unknown multitudes were lost at sea. Captives were often thrown overboard when they were too sick, or too strong-willed, or too numerous to feed. Those who survived the journey were dumped on the shores and sold to the highest bidder, then sold on again and again like financial assets.

According to Eric Williams, a historian of slavery who also became the first prime minister of independent Trinidad in 1962, slavery in the British Empire was only abolished after it had ceased to be economically useful (Manjapra, 2018). Spreading the English language is not a British invention—all imperialists spread their languages because that facilitates the plunder. The French spread the French language in Africa and the Spaniards spread the Spanish language in South America. This is done because it is easier for imperialist powers to manage their colonies if the local population speak their language. Imperialist powers do not share ideals—they impose what they

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claim to be ideals, which may not be ideals for the population of the colonies. The British Empire allegedly benefited the local population of the colonies by building communication and transportation infrastructures. The fact of the matter is that imperialists build infrastructure that facilitates the looting of their colonies. They typically build roads and railways that link mines to ports and those that facilitate the transportation of troops to quell a revolt swiftly. After 300 years of British rule, Indian roads are still run down—and forget about Nepal. However, the Indians should be grateful to the British for teaching them not only English but also cricket. The British Empire kept law and order in colonies, typically by using lethal force, only when disorder threatened their rule. This point is made by another imperialist sympathizer, Robert Kaplan, who claims that “empires can ensure stability and protect minorities better than any other form of order” (Kaplan, 2014). Kaplan is mentioned here because he and Ferguson are neocons who share enthusiasm for the British Empire. McGowan (2007) refers to “two frank neoconservatives”, whom he calls “Ferguson, the Brit” and “Kaplan the American” who propose imperialism as the alternative to liberal internationalism. Wherever the British went, they left behind them a tragedy that is felt until now. In 1917, the Balfour Declaration gave the land of the Palestinians free of charge to European settlers, thereby creating the Arab–Israeli “conflict” and a huge refugee problem that started in 1948, let alone the concentration camp known as Gaza. In India, they created a situation that is being felt until now, resulting from the partition of the country. British colonial power could only be sustained by the large-scale use of brutal force across four continents. In the dying days of imperial rule, the British maintained their rule by acts of terror like the Amritsar massacre and the frenzy of colonial violence that followed the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. In neither case does one find much sign of the “rule of law”. Until today, imperialist powers do not keep law and order in the occupied countries—rather, they create chaos and lawlessness to facilitate plunder. After all, a great British invention is the principle of “divide and rule”. The British occupation forces did not protect religious minorities in Basra following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The American occupation forces did nothing to prevent the looting of the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad. The Americans did a great job of divide and rule by encouraging sectarian killing and recruiting militias to do the job. The formation

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of death squads in Iraq took place under the watchful eyes of the occupying forces, who were aware but indifferent towards kidnapping, often followed by extreme torture and execution-style killings. For the sake of argument, let us agree with Ferguson that the British Empire did a lot of good for the colonies (free trade, law and order, infrastructure, English, cricket, etc.). What was the cost to the population of the colonies of rendering these services? To start with, the British Empire got paid very well for rendering services to the colonies. The British, like the Spaniards, indulged in plunder on a massive scale. Hickel (2018) rejects the proposition that the British colonization of India was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. The likes of Ferguson claim that the administration of India was a cost to Britain, which shows “Britain’s benevolence”. Some facts and figures about how much Britain plundered from India can be found in the work of Chakrabarti and Patnaik (2019) where it is estimated that the British stole nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765–1938. Hickel explains how the heist worked: The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods … It was a scam—theft on a grand scale. Some of the stolen goods were consumed in Britain, and the rest were re-exported elsewhere. The re-export system allowed Britain to finance a flow of imports from Europe, including strategic materials like iron, tar and timber, which were essential to Britain’s industrialisation. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution depended in large part on this systematic theft from India. On top of this, the British were able to sell the stolen goods to other countries for much more than they “bought” them for in the first place, pocketing not only 100 percent of the original value of the goods but also the markup.

Bhambhri (2015) reaffirms this point by suggesting that the East India Trading Company and its British owners “indulged in the collective loot of India”, under the banner of the “land revenue system”, identifying Robert Clive and Warren Hastings as “exploiting plunderers”. This is what led Dadabhai Naoroji to develop the “drain of wealth theory”, which he used to explain the development of Britain and underdevelopment and backwardness of India (for example, Kaur, 2013). As if the plunder was not enough, the British Empire indulged in massive acts of brutality against the population of the colonies. As a matter of fact, the British Empire deserves the gold medal for cruelty, barbarism,

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and brutality. The stories are numerous but a few will suffice. Dalrymple (2007) tells the story of Edward Vibart, an officer of the British East India Company who witnessed the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (called by the British the “Sepoy Mutiny”). On 14 September 1857, at the height of the great uprising against the British in India, British forces attacked Delhi and proceeded to massacre not just the combatants but also ordinary defenceless citizens. Vibart described what he witnessed as follows: It was literally murder … I have seen many bloody and awful sights lately but such as I witnessed yesterday I pray I never see again. The women were all spared but their screams, on seeing their husbands and sons butchered, were most painful … Heaven knows I feel no pity, but when some old grey bearded man is brought and shot before your very eyes, hard must be that heart that can look on with indifference …

During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), the British rounded up approximately a sixth of the Boer population (mainly women and children) and detained them in concentration camps, which were overcrowded and prone to outbreaks of disease, with scant food rations. Of the 107,000 people kept in those camps, 27,927 of them died, along with an unknown number of black Africans. On 13 April 1919, peaceful protesters defied a government order and demonstrated against British colonial rule in Amritsar, India, where they were blocked inside the Walled Jallianwala Gardens and fired upon by Gurkha soldiers. Under the orders of Brigadier Reginald Dyer, the Gurkhas kept on firing until they ran out of ammunition, killing and injuring hundreds of Indians within ten minutes. Between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation while it was under the control of the British Empire, as millions of tonnes of wheat were exported to Britain at a time when famine raged in India. In 1943, up to 4 million Bengalis starved to death when Winston Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal (see, for example, Rickett, 2017). Talking about the Bengal famine in 1943, Churchill said that he hated Indians, describing them as “beastly people with a beastly religion” and the famine as “their own fault for breeding like rabbits”. The British partitioning of India along religious lines uprooted over 10 million people, as Hindus in Pakistan and Muslims in India were forced to escape their homes while the situation was descending quickly

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into violence. Some estimates indicate that up to one million people lost their lives in sectarian killings. Naturally, it was all worthwhile for the Indians who got to know the magnificent British sport of cricket. And then we have the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya during the period 1951–60, where thousands died, let alone those who were systematically tortured and suffered serious sexual assault in camps described as “Britain’s gulags”. It is interesting that the Kenyan rebels were called “terrorists”, and perhaps so were the Irish demonstrators who were shot in Londonderry on Bloody Sunday 1972. Kaplan and Ferguson will tell you that these are exaggerations, but Rickett (2017) dismisses the notion of exaggeration with respect to the atrocities committed by the British Empire. This is what he says: Over 35 million Indians died of famines caused by British misrule … 5.5 million African slaves were taken to the Caribbean colonies by British slave traders. Concentration camps were created by the British Empire during the Boer War. Up to 100,000 Kenyans were killed by the British during the Mau Mau uprising, which demanded freedom from British rule. I could go on. The costs of empire are not just counted in dead bodies. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, before British rule, India’s share of the world economy was 23%. By the time the British left, it was a little over 3%. Across the world, Britain destroyed local economies in the name of serving her own, a legacy that endures to this day.

Gregoire (2017) summarizes the legacy of the British Empire succinctly as follows: “Under the policies of British colonialism, people around the globe were subjected to mass famines, atrocious conditions in concentration camps, and brutal massacres at the hands of imperialist troops”. Through plunder and brutality, the population of the colonies paid a heavy price for learning English and cricket. It was a magnificent deal for the British Empire but a very bad deal for the victims of the empire. Yes, Britain made the modern world, including the problems in Palestine and Kashmir. On the other hand, the ancient world made the British Museum where thousands of priceless stolen artefacts are kept. Ferguson started his propaganda book on the beauty of the British Empire by telling a story of how as a child who was brought up to love the empire without realizing the horrors that came with it. One would assume that as he grew up to become a “celebrity historian”, he would break out of that pro-Empire tradition. However, the book was an attempt to justify the crimes of the British Empire. At best he implied that the empire was

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bad, but it was not that bad, because the Brits were not as brutal as the Germans and Japanese. In general, he tried to pass the message that the atrocities committed by the British Empire were a price worth paying for the role of Britain in “modernizing” the world and “enlightening” the natives, not to mention the role played in combatting “nationalism” and “terrorism”.

7.4 The Ferguson Thesis on Western “Killer Apps” In his book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, Ferguson (2011) sets out to answer a question that he identifies as the “most interesting” facing historians of the modern era: “Why, beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western end of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world?”. Yes, it is true that a small number of European countries dominated the world, but making that sound as a good thing is a different matter. Ferguson answers this question by attributing the success of the West in enslaving the Rest to six “killer apps”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and work ethics, which the Rest did not have. I first came across this explanation when I was writing my book, The Economics of War: Profiteering, Militarism and Imperialism (Moosa, 2019). My immediate reaction went as follows: “I agree with Ferguson that the West overtook the Rest by developing six powerful ‘killer applications’, but these are greed, violence, ruthlessness, superiority complex, a sense of entitlement and disregard for human life”. He actually forgot a literally killer app, the machine gun that was used to subjugate people who used spears to defend themselves. He also forgot another (literal) killer app: concentration camps. These two apps are complementary: without the machine gun, it is difficult to keep the residents of concentration camps under control. Ferguson explains the role of competition by demonstrating the difference between Europe and China. In the fifteenth century, China was more advanced than Europe, but Europe overtook China because, according to Ferguson, Europe’s fragmented political structure led to competition and encouraged Europeans to seek opportunities in distant lands. China, by contrast, stagnated. Another way to describe what happened is that European countries engaged in imperialism and the subjugation of people in distant lands but China did not. Therefore,

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what Europe did was commendable, whereas China remained backward by not invading other parts of the world. Subsequently, China itself was subjugated by European countries that employed the glamorous app of competition. One must say that European countries engaged in cut-throat competition for colonies—the most conspicuous episode was the scramble for Africa where Little Belgium excelled (and so did Little Portugal). The second killer app was science, as a good Westerner like Ferguson denies any role for other civilizations in the development of science. He is, however, right about the role of science and technology because superior technology and improved medical knowledge gave a big boost to imperialism. Quinine enabled Europeans to survive tropical diseases and venture into the mosquito-infested interiors of Africa and Asia. A combination of the steam boat and the telegraph made it possible for the imperialist powers to enhance their mobility, putting them in a position where they could respond quickly to any situation that threatened their dominance. The rapid-fire machine gun also gave them a military advantage and was helpful in convincing Africans and Asians to accept imperialist control (after all, spears and crossbows are no match for machine guns and cannons). Apparently, China did the wrong thing by not invading and subjugating Europe when it was advanced technologically while Europeans were painting their faces in blue and hiding in the bush. Using science to enslave and kill other people is nothing to be proud of. The same goes for the fourth app of modern medicine, which he describes as “the west’s most remarkable killer application”. It is ludicrous and scandalous to claim that the colonial forces used medicine for the benefit of the subjugated people of the colonies. Ferguson uses the third app, property rights, to distinguish between British imperialism and Spanish imperialism. He argues that the empire established by the English in North America in the seventeenth century ultimately proves to be much more successful than that established by the Spanish in South America a century earlier because English settlers brought with them a particular conception of widely distributed property rights and democracy. Well, there is a dark side to property rights. European imperialist powers have historically used property rights to “legalize” their forceful acquisition of assets and resources in the countries they invaded. The indigenous population was never protected by property rights. Let us look at some examples of how Western imperialism used property rights, which were maintained by sheer brutality. Wherever the

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imperialists landed, they confiscated property from the indigenous population and claimed property rights of their own. King Leopold of Belgium personally held the property rights to rubber plantations, as a private enterprise, in the so-called Free State of Congo, which could not have been further away from being free. Columbus claimed the new world to the Spanish crown. The Spaniards claimed property rights to the gold and silver of South America while butchering the original holders of the same property rights. The same happened in Australia. The same happened in North America. The same happened in Africa. And the same happened in East Asia and the Middle East. In an act of illegal transfer of property rights, the British Empire granted Palestine to private settlers in accordance with the Balfour declaration of 1917. Britain and France used the Sykes-Piccot Agreement of 1916 to grant themselves property rights in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. By the power of the gun, Britain granted itself property rights in the Malvinas and Hong Kong, choosing to keep the former and abandon the latter only because they knew that they could win a war against Argentina but not against China. Apps five and six are consumerism and work ethics. Ferguson claims that the West’s dominance of the Rest was not achieved by force only, but (in addition) by the power of the market. This means that the colonies accepted the colonial forces with open arms because the West provided the consumer goods that the population of the colonies wanted to buy, such as suits and ties (this is what Ferguson means by referring to the way that the Western style of dressing has swept the globe). The expansion of imperialism was motivated by the quest for raw materials and markets as domestic markets became saturated. Invading another country to sell goods in the occupied land is hardly commendable. One has to remember what kind of market transactions used by Britain in India and China. In India, they taxed people and bought their goods at low prices, sometimes at gun point. In China, they sold Indian-grown opium, aided by the power of gunships, and bought the much desired Chinese goods. The opium trade helped Britain avoid a persistent trade deficit with China because the Brits had developed a taste for Chinese goods while the Chinese were not desperate for British goods. With respect to killer app number six, work ethics, Ferguson seems to be under the belief that only Protestants work hard because Protestantism was a form of Christianity that encouraged hard work. He goes as far as claiming that China’s embrace of hard work is partly attributed to the spread of Protestantism. This idea is taken from Max Weber who

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expressed it in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber, 1905). Weber asserted that Protestant ethics and values enabled the rise and spread of capitalism. However, this idea is rejected by Schumpeter (1954) who argued that capitalism began in Italy in the fourteenth century, not in the Protestant areas of Europe. It is also rejected by Stark (2016) who notes that “Weber’s entire thesis was nonsense”, which “should have been obvious to all competent scholars from the start”. Massey (2015) relates the notion of Protestant work ethic to racist ideals. Martin Luther King had the following to say on this issue: We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor—both black and white, here and abroad.

It follows that Ferguson’s sixth app is based on a racist notion involving not Muslims versus Christians and Indians versus Westerners, but rather Catholics versus Protestants—the notion that Protestants are more hard working than Catholics. I am sure that WASPS will be pleased to hear that.

7.5

Concluding Remarks

In this chapter, we examined the views put forward about the supremacy of the West by Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, and Niall Ferguson. Although they share the sentiment of Western supremacy, they tell us different things. Huntington’s thesis is that the West is still dominant but it has to be ready to fight the intrusion of other (inferior) civilizations, particularly the Islamic civilization. Fukuyama, on the other hand, thinks that the West has already appeared triumphant because everyone in the world is adopting Western values, eating Western food and wearing Western clothes. Ferguson believes that the West has dominated because it has a monopoly over the downloading of six apps, which means that if the West keeps on monopolizing these apps, it will remain in control of the planet. In reality, the Muslims are not such a unified group that they can threaten the West—on the contrary, the Muslim world wants to coexist with the West in a world where countries and peoples mind their own business while co-operating as equal partners. In

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reality, the Rest has not followed the West and yielded to its will in the sense (for example) that the Indians have given up biryani for McDonald’s. In reality, the West no longer has a monopoly on the downloading of Ferguson’s six killer apps, certainly not work ethics. The trio ignore the historical fact that civilizations rise and fall. If Western civilization has been dominant since 1500, this does not mean that the status quo will be perpetual, as we already see a change represented by the rise of Asia. In the words of Kupchan (2012), who refers to the “coming global turn”, “it is no one’s world”. Referring to Fukuyama’s proclaimed end of history, Kupchan says the following: The end of George W. Bush’s presidency, talk of the end of history was history. Instead, leading voices were proclaiming the onset of the postAmerican world and the beginning of the Asian century.

For some 1000 years following the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe lagged behind as power shifted to the East, and Rome lost to Constantinople, the centre of the Byzantine Empire. India and China enjoyed an extended period of economic growth to be the two largest economies in the world. At the same time, Islamic civilization flourished. Between 1500 and 1800, Europe went from the back to the front of the pack, surpassing in economic and military strength the Ottoman Empire, India and China. Since then, the West has dominated but this dominance is coming to an end as the West loses its monopoly over the six apps and as alternatives to the Western way of doing things emerge. The developing world is gradually abandoning the Western way of doing things, as enshrined in the Washington Consensus, and adopting the Beijing Consensus. By the end of this century, the West will be a thing of the past as climate change will produce one super power: Russia.

References Algeriani, A. A., & Mohadi, M. (2018). Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and its Influence on the US Foreign Policy. Journal of Global Business and Social Entrepreneurship, 4, 1–9. Ash, T. G. (2000). History of the Present. Penguin. Bairoch, P. (1995). Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes. University of Chicago Press. Berman, P. (2003). Terror and Liberalism. Norton.

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Bhambhri, C. P. (2015, March 12). The Plunder that was Colonialism. Business Standard. Chakrabarti, S., & Patnaik, U. (2019). Agrarian and Other Histories: Essays for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri. Tulika Books. Chang, H. J. (2002). Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective. Anthem Press. Dahrendorf, R. (1990). Reflections on the Revolution in Europe. Transaction Publishers. Dalrymple, W. (2007, April 26). Plain Tales from British India. The New York Review. Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx: State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Routledge. Diab, K. (2013, March 21). The Invasion of Iraq and the Clash Within Civilizations. Huffpost Blog. Ferguson, N. (2003). Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. Penguin. Ferguson, N. (2011). Civilization: The West and the Rest. Allen Lane. Fujii, G. (2019, November 6). H-Diplo/ISSF Teaching Roundtable 11–6 on The Clash of Civilizations in the IR Classroom, H-Net Humanities and Social Sciences Online. Fukuyama, F. (1989). The End of History? The National Interest, No. 16 (Summer). Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. Free Press. Fukuyama, F. (2001, October 5). History is Still Going our Way. Wall Street Journal. Fukuyama, F. (2014, June 6). At the ‘End of History’ Still Stands Democracy. Wall Street Journal. Gat, A. (2007, July/August). The End of the End of History. Foreign Affairs. Gregoire, P. (2017, July 2). Crimes Against Humanity: The British Empire. Sydney Criminal Lawyers. Hemel, D. J. (2004, March 16). Critics Claim Huntington is Xenophobic. The Harvard Crimson. Hickel, J. (2018, December 31). How Britain Stole $45 Trillion from India and Lied about it. CADTM . Huntington, S. P. (1993). The Clash of Civilizations. Foreign Affairs, 72, 22–49. Huntington, S. P. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon & Schuster. Jeevan, V. (2012, June 18). Niall Ferguson: Admirable Historian, or Imperial Mischief Maker? The Guardian. Kagan, R. (2008). The Return of History and the End of Dreams. Vintage. Kaplan, R. (2014, April). In Defense of Empire. The Atlantic. Kaur, R. (2013, June 14). Dadabhai Naoroji and His Drain of Wealth Theory. MyIndia.

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Kupchan, C. (2012). No One’s World: The West, the Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. Oxford University Press. Manjapra, K. (2018, March 29). When will Britain Face up to its Crimes Against Humanity? The Guardian. Massey, A. (2015, May 27). The White Protestant Roots of American Racism. The New Republic. McGowan, J. (2007). American Liberalism: An Interpretation for our Time. University of North Carolina Press. Moosa, I. A. (2019). The Economics of War: Profiteering, Militarism and Imperialism. Edward Elgar. PNAC. (1998, January 26). Letter to President Clinton. http://www.newame ricancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm PNAC. (2002). Letter to President George W. Bush. http://www.newamericanc entury.org/Bushletter.htm Rickett, O. (2017, March 13). Politicians are Trying to Rewrite History with Their “British Empire 2.0”. www.huckmag.com/perspectives/inglorious-emp ire-brexit/ Said, E. W. (2004). From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map. Pantheon. Schumpeter, J. A. (1954). History of Economic Analysis. Psychology Press. Stark, R. (2016). Protestant Modernity. In Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History. Templeton Press. Trystan, C.J. (2007). Noam Chomsky on the “Clash of Civilizations”. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT64TNho59I Weber, M. (1905). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Dover. Wilson, J. (2003, February 8). False and Dangerous. The Guardian.

CHAPTER 8

The Western Economic System

8.1

Introduction

The Western economic system is based on the intertwined and overlapping concepts of neoliberalism, laissez faire, free market, and economic freedom. It is typically dominated and driven by the financial sector, which commands the lion’s share of corporate profit while accounting for only a small fraction of employment. The Western economic system is preached or imposed on the developing world by using the carrots and sticks implicit in the IMF and World Bank conditionality provisions. It is also preached by right-wing economists who are under the illusion (or pretend to believe) that this system leads to prosperity. A country that needs IMF or World Bank loans for development purposes, or because it is experiencing a crisis, will be told to do “certain things” as a pre-condition for receiving funds. These “certain things” are implicit in the conditionality provisions, the list of conditions that the applicant must meet to be eligible for a loan, which resemble the conditionality provision demanded by Shylock from Antonio in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (a pound of Antonio’s flesh in the case of default). The conditionality provisions of the IMF and World Bank include privatization, liberalization, and deregulation, which represent the pillars of the Western economic system and the sources of wealth for the oligarchy. The rationale used to justify the imposition of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0_8

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these conditions and adoption of the Western economic system is that they are conducive to the common good, when in fact they are only good for the ability of a small group of oligarchs to accumulate wealth beyond imagination. Under the Western economic system, the majority languish in poverty or at best experience daily struggle for economic survival as they are squeezed by taxes, bills, and expenses made bigger by adopting market prices and commodifying social services. The Western economic system is typically hailed as the only viable economic system, a claim that is made to maintain the privileges and preserve the power of the one percenters. The public sector is demonized while the private sector is allowed to take the driving seat, on the assumption that only the private sector produces innovation and growth. Some outrageous claims are made to justify the leadership of the private sector— for example, that people who work for the private sector are smarter, more productive, and more innovative than those low-IQ people who work for the public sector. Parasitic (but highly profitable) operations prevail, the economy becomes increasingly financialized, and economic performance is measured not in terms of macroeconomic indicators or social welfare but in terms of the performance of the stock market. Economic pride comes not from the production of consumer and capital goods but from the production of financial assets and the ranking of the country in the league of international financial centres. The motto “who needs manufacturing industry when we have the City” has become a symbol of change of emphasis from manufacturing industry to financial services in a process that involves deindustrialization. This process is regarded as a natural transmission, when in fact nothing is natural about it. In the following two sections, the concepts of neoliberalism, laissez faire, free market, and economic freedom are discussed. Effectively, they mean one thing, unfettered capitalism, where the corporate sector runs the show and the state is a neutral spectator. More accurately, however, the state is a partner in a coalition with the oligarchy against ordinary people, as symbolized by a menu of pro-business policies including a twisted tax code, subsidies, bail-outs, bail-ins, lax regulation, etc. Other features of the Western economic system, which are products of the philosophy guiding the system, are described in the remaining parts of this chapter.

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Neoliberalism and Laissez Faire

Neoliberalism refers to the twentieth-century resurgence of nineteenthcentury ideas associated with free-market capitalism that flourished in Victorian England. A French economist, Charles Gide, introduced the term “neoliberalism” in 1898 in an article published in the Economic Journal and used it to describe the economic beliefs of the Italian economist Maffeo Pantaleoni (Gide, 1898). The term is generally associated with policy actions that involve privatization and deregulation, as well as a drastic reduction in government spending for the purpose of boosting the role of the private sector in the economy. This is why neoliberalism is associated with austerity. On an international level, neoliberalism is associated with the drive towards globalization and free trade. Monbiot (2016) argues that the anonymity of neoliberalism is “both a symptom and cause of its power” and suggests that it has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the global financial crisis, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, and even the rise of Donald Trump. He goes on to say the following: So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

In the 1938 Colloque Walter Lippmann, the term “neoliberalism” was proposed, and ultimately adopted, to describe a set of economic beliefs. On that occasion, neoliberalism was defined as involving “the priority of the price mechanism, free enterprise, the system of competition, and a strong and impartial state” (for example, Mirowski & Plehwe, 2009). A strong state is needed for the oligarchy to expand in foreign countries through military aggression. It is a myth, however, that the state is impartial under neoliberalism because this system would not have arisen in Victorian England to start with if it were not for the role played by the state in support of the oligarchy. The worst feature of the Western economic system is that it is conducive to imperialism, military

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adventurism, and international interventionism because these activities are profitable for the oligarchy of military powerful countries. Since the Western economic system is designed to work in such a way as to boost the profit of a minority rather than the welfare of the majority, the link between the system and imperialism becomes obvious. The oligarchy seeks cheap or free natural resources and new markets, which are provided by the military on the directions of a “business-friendly” government. The term “business-friendly” is applicable to the state at large and to political parties and politicians, as they compete to show their commitment to business friendliness and swear allegiance to the almighty market. This competition is seen clearly in the Anglo-world where the two major parties go out of their way to demonstrate how business-friendly they are and engage in a “donkey derby” to serve the business oligarchy on the grounds that what is good for the oligarchy is also good for the whole economy and society as implied by the infamous “trickle-down” effect. In a fair system and pluralistic society, a strong state is needed to regulate the economy and look after the vulnerable. In the Western economic system, a strong state is needed to tax wage and salary earners to finance the activities of the armed forces and spy agencies, which support the corporate sector in its insatiable ambition for more profit by expanding abroad (and this is why unfettered capitalism eventually leads to imperialism). As for competition, the system actually leads to monopolies and oligopolies because small producers are crushed by big enterprises that enjoy economies of scale and scope and access to financial resources, let alone favourable legislative action. The 1930s witnessed an attempt to salvage the ideology, which had been dented by the Great Depression when a myth was debunked, the myth that the economy tends to go back to full-employment equilibrium if left alone. A group of 25 liberal intellectuals organized the Walter Lippmann Colloquium to celebrate the publication of the French translation of Lippmann’s pro-market views that were expressed in his book An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society. Those intellectuals included a number of prominent academics and journalists such as Walter Lippmann, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Wilhelm Röpke, Alexander Rüstow, and Louis Rougier. The Colloquium convened in Paris in August 1938, where the participants called for a new liberal project, floating “neoliberalism” as a name for the fledgling movement. They further agreed to convert the Colloquium into a permanent Paris-based think

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tank called the Centre International d’Études pour la Rénovation du Libéralisme. The establishment of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, which was financed by some millionaires paying for “hired guns”, led to the re-birth of neoliberalism. Those millionaires had come across the work of Hayek and von Mises, and saw in it an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises’s book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. The objective of the founding members (including the usual suspects, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Karl Popper, George Stigler, and Ludwig von Mises) was to propose a neoliberal alternative to the laissez faire economic consensus that had collapsed as a result of the Great Depression. They also set to oppose the ideas implicit in the 1930s New Deal, which was introduced by the administration of Franklin Roosevelt in response to the devastation inflicted by the laissez faire-driven Great Depression. Those pundits saw the New Deal and the gradual development of Britain’s welfare state, as “manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as Nazism and communism” (Monbiot, 2016). The “usual suspects” also opposed any collectivist trends that, according to them, posed a threat to individual freedom. For them, however, individual freedom did not include the freedom of ordinary people from illiteracy, disease, and poverty. For them, what threatens individual freedom are the welfare state, universal healthcare, environmental regulation, progressive taxation, anything that undermines the freedom of the oligarchy to accumulate wealth, anything that is conducive to the common good, and anything that is done to help the poor and vulnerable. Milk and honey are promised under a system of free private enterprise unhindered by regulation. Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, and sell toxic financial assets. Freedom from tax means freedom from the obligation to contribute to the society for the purpose of providing a social safety net that lifts people out of poverty. Selfishness is the name of the game whereas compassion and altruism are rejected because somehow they are conducive to economic efficiency, the efficiency by which the oligarchy rapes the society and controls the economy.

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Laissez faire is a French term that means “leave us alone”, where “us” refers to the oligarchy or corporate interests. The term emerged in an answer that Jean-Baptiste Colbert (Comptroller General of Finance under King Louis XIV) received when he asked the oligarchs what the government could do to help them. The doctrine of laissez faire became increasingly popular in the nineteenth century as the Industrial Revolution gained momentum. John Stuart Mill (1848) put forward arguments for and against the role of the government in economic activity. The popularity of laissez faire reached its peak around 1870, but by the late nineteenth century, the fundamental changes that occurred as a result of industrial growth and the adoption of mass production cast some doubt on the soundness of laissez faire as a guiding philosophy. In the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s, laissez faire was largely replaced by Keynesian economics, which calls for a big role for the government in the economy on the grounds that the economy does not have the tendency to return automatically to full employment (which is a presumption of neoclassical economics). Interestingly, Keynes was by no means a socialist who hated capitalism—on the contrary, he wanted to save capitalism from self-destruction. He recognized the problems of unfettered capitalism and how it leads to boom-bust cycles, and realized that only government intervention can save a capitalist economy following a major shock. This is exactly like the need for the intervention of a surgeon to save the life of someone who has just been shot. For decades after the establishment of the Mont Pelerin Society, the ideas that the founding members sought to disseminate were largely confined to a small number of think tanks and universities. That was the case until the advent of the stagflation of the 1970s when neoliberal policy proposals were taken seriously, even though there was nothing in the neoliberal policy prescriptions that would allow policymakers to avert or alleviate the effects of a major crisis. The stagflation of the 1970s was a convenient excuse to abandon Keynesian economics and put in place a neoliberal agenda that progressively made the rich richer and the poor poorer. Beginning in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration and Thatcher government implemented a series of neoliberal policy prescriptions that involved the privatization of everything under the sun as well as wholesale deregulation. In the process, some people with connections to the ruling elite got very rich, while the ability of ordinary people to be free of illiteracy, disease, and poverty was eroded, all in the name of the

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alleged efficiency. Long before he became president, Ronald Reagan had expressed strong neoliberal views and he found the perfect partner in Margret Thatcher on the other side of the Atlantic as she embarked on dismantling manufacturing industry, mining and any meaningful productive activity in preference for parasitic activities involving transactions in financial assets and real estate. The Thatcher-Reagan package also involved massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, outsourcing, and competition in public services. Neoliberalism has since become the dominant paradigm, thanks in particular to American hegemony and the Americanization, McDonaldization, and Westrenization of the world economy. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht Treaty, and the World Trade Organization, neoliberal policies have been imposed (typically without democratic consent) on much of the world. Most remarkable was the adoption of neoliberalism by parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Stedman-Jones (2012) notes, “it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised”. Monbiot (2016) argues that when neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating “investor-state dispute settlement”: offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. Whenever parliaments vote to restrict sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills, or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations sue, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre by a judiciary that lacks independence. Under the Western economic system, there is no place for democracy, rule of law, and judicial independence. The neoliberal recipe for a sustainable state of affairs rests on a self-regulating market and management of the money supply by an independent central bank, which means that the power of the public sector should be curtailed significantly through privatization and budgetary constraints, in what amounts to a policy that is intended to “starve the beast”. All elements of this recipe are wrong. A self-regulating market means an unregulated market, but the term “self-regulating” is used to give the impression that the market can impose a limit on the insatiable appetite of the oligarchy to accumulate wealth. One example of selfregulating market pertains to the regulation of fraud. According to the neoliberal thought, fraudsters are eventually exposed and no one will deal

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with them. Well, a fraudster who has just made $100 million by scamming people would not mind people not dealing with them any longer. This fraudster will be happy to retire in an Island resort and live a happy life at the expense of the victims who can do nothing but complain to the almighty market about their losses. In the spirit of blaming the victims, the market conveys the message that it was their fault because fraudsters play by the market rules. An independent central bank serves the interest of the banking oligarchy. It is immune from public scrutiny, which enables some unelected bureaucrats and technocrats to pursue banking-friendly policies such as negative interest rates and preference for anti-inflationary as opposed to employment-growth policies. It is ludicrous and scandalous that one particular central bank, which is supposed to supervise and keep commercial banks on leash, is actually owned (as a private company) by the very banks it is supposed to supervise and keep on leash. An independent central bank is supposed to be better at controlling inflation, to the extent that some central bankers receive bonuses that depend on their performance with respect to inflation. In reality, central bankers can, to a certain extent, control the inflation produced by excessive monetary expansion but they cannot control the cost-push inflation emanating from rising raw materials or imported goods. The inflation produced by excessive monetary expansion can be controlled “to a certain extent” only because under the Ponzi scheme of fractional-reserve banking, commercial banks rather than the central bank “manufacture” most of the money stock in the form of bank deposits. This is so much the case in the absence of enforceable restrictions such as reserve and liquidity ratios. Even worse, in recent years Western central banks indulged heavily in a destructive policy known as “quantitative easing” that led to an explosion in the money supply, both in the US and across the Atlantic. Cost-push inflation cannot be controlled by raising the level of interest rates, because the source of inflation is beyond the control of the central bank. Following the outbreak of the proxy war in Ukraine in February 2022, inflation became rampant as a result of skyrocketing energy and food prices. Central banks reacted by raising interest rates, which should not have been taken to extremely low levels to start with. The underlying idea is that when interest rates are high, people find it expensive to borrow and spend, which forces them to spend less, thereby relieving pressure on the general price level. This is ludicrous because people do not finance spending on food and energy by borrowing. They would

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reduce spending on less essential items or consume less food and energy. Interest rate hikes do not alleviate inflationary pressure—rather, they tend to be associated with rising numbers of sick and dead people. The fact of the matter is that, unlike what central bankers tell us, interest rate policy cannot be used to combat inflation or revive the economy when it is in recession. In a neoliberal world, an independent central bank is independent of public scrutiny, so that it can pursue policies that boost the welfare of the financial oligarchy—go no further than the destructive policy of ultra-low/negative interest rates. Starving the beast implies a rejection of the welfare state and the notion of income redistribution through taxes and subsidies. Personal taxation is regarded as evil, even for the wealthiest, on the grounds that personal income is nothing but the result of personal success stories, which means that taxing the rich is an illegitimate confiscation mechanism. Effectively, “starving the beast” boils down to starving the masses. It is interesting to note that those calling for starving the beast do not mind feeding the beast as long as the feeding is financed by middle and lower middle class wage and salary earners, and as long as the beast engages in military adventurism to boost the wealth of the wealthy. Taxing the rich is unfair but taxing the poor and middle class to finance wars of aggression is fine, even necessary to “defend the nation”. In a neoliberal world, redistribution of wealth is rampant but it goes in the wrong direction, from the poor and middle class to the rich and super rich. In the contemporary neoliberal world, taxes are levied on wage and salary earners to finance wars for the benefit the military-industrial complex. A young couple buying their first home pay a heavy stamp duty and an annual levy based on the market value of the home, even if their equity is small. Conversely, someone with a stock portfolio of $50 million does not pay stamp duty on transactions and does not pay a levy based on the market value of the portfolio. Furthermore, several loopholes are provided to minimize the payment of capital gains tax, which is typically imposed at a lower rate than that of income tax. Therefore, the Western economic system is characterized by a twisted tax code that encourages the accumulation of debt for the benefit of the financial oligarchy and enables a reverse-Robin Hood redistribution of income and wealth. Anyone who would dare mention wealth tax will be met firmly with character assassination and accused of being “lefty”, even “commy”,

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when in fact wealth tax is levied on the middle class in the form of property tax. This is one reason why the middle class is shrinking as wage and salary earners are squeezed financially and pushed into poverty. Neoliberalism can be viewed as an economic philosophy, as a set of principles guiding macroeconomic and public policy, as a development model, and as an ideology. As an economic philosophy, neoliberalism emerged as a result of an attempt to revive classical liberalism, which became less appealing when the Great Depression made it necessary to do something about the volatility of free markets and mitigate the negative economic and social consequences of market tyranny. As far as policy making is concerned, neoliberalism refers to the paradigm shift that followed the alleged failure of Keynesian economics to deal with the stagflation of the 1970s, even though neoliberalism has not provided a policy that can deal with stagflation. In 2022, neoliberal policymakers found themselves unable to deal with rampant inflation, let alone stagflation. All they could do was to raise interest rates and hope for the best under the illusion that central bankers can control inflation, which is a myth on the scale of Alice in Wonderland or Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The only thing central bankers can do about inflation is to lie about it as they did repeatedly before the breakout of the proxy war in Ukraine. As a public policy tool, neoliberalism is used to justify the privatization of public sector entities and services, the deregulation of economic activity, and the attainment of a balanced budget (with minimal taxation) by reducing public expenditure. Attaining a balanced budget while reducing taxation can be problematical as former British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, found out soon after the announcement of the suicidal policy of cutting taxes and balancing the budget by borrowing from capital markets. The tax cuts were intended to help people pay their energy bills, which makes one wonder why the rich and super rich were covered by the planned tax cuts, since they could afford to pay their bills, drink expensive Champaign, and eat caviar. In reality, the intention was to make the rich richer, not to boost economic growth because tax cuts do not boost economic growth (yet another neoliberal Ali Baba myth). Balancing the budget in this case would be even more difficult, given that the hawkish Ms Truss wanted full-scale wars with both Russia and China, which means expansion in military expenditure. Eventually, she was forced to take a series of humiliating U-turns and eventually resign.

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As a development model, neoliberalism refers to the rejection of the assumption of structuralist economics that the price mechanism fails, as an equilibrating mechanism, to deliver steady growth and to produce the desired income distribution. As an ideology, neoliberalism denotes a conception of freedom as an overarching social value associated with reducing state functions to a bare minimum. Freedom in the neoliberal sense is the freedom of the rich and powerful to do what it takes to be super rich and exceptionally powerful, not the freedom of Mr and Mrs Ordinary to have a decent life and enjoy the human rights that Western governments are supposed to be custodians of. The term “neoliberalism” is used as a pejorative by critics. In The Handbook of Neoliberalism, for instance, it is suggested that the term has “become a means of identifying a seemingly ubiquitous set of marketoriented policies as being largely responsible for a wide range of social, political, ecological and economic problems” (Springer et al., 2016). One missing item in this list of problems is public health problems because it is evident that a system based on neoliberalism is not only incapable of dealing with a pandemic but reinforces its severity and adverse consequences. This statement can be substantiated by considering the devastation inflicted by SRAS-Cov-2, the neoliberal virus (Moosa, 2021, 2022). Likewise, Stedman-Jones (2012) notes that the term “is too often used as a catch-all shorthand for the horrors associated with globalization and recurring financial crises”. Mark Bittman wrote the following in The New York Times (Bittman, 2014): The progress of the last 40 years has been mostly cultural, culminating, the last couple of years, in the broad legalization of same-sex marriage. But by many other measures, especially economic, things have gotten worse, thanks to the establishment of neo-liberal principles—anti-unionism, deregulation, market fundamentalism and intensified, unconscionable greed— that began with Richard Nixon and picked up steam under Ronald Reagan. Too many are suffering now because too few were fighting then.

In his introduction to Noam Chomsky’s (2011) book, Robert McChesney wrote:

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Instead of citizens, it [neoliberalism] produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.

Loïc Wacquant (2003) makes an interesting comment about how the government preserves and reinforces the gains of the oligarchy, which he expresses as follows: The invisible hand of the market and the iron fist of the state combine and complement each other to make the lower classes accept desocialized wage labor and the social instability it brings in its wake. After a long eclipse, the prison thus returns to the frontline of institutions entrusted with maintaining the social order.

Neoliberalism involves the twisting of facts for the benefit of the oligarchy. This proposition is best explained by Monbiot (2016) who opines: Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency…. Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions…. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive…. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit…. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

He also makes the very interesting point that it may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been promoted with the slogan “there is no alternative”. He goes on to argue that “the freedom that neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows”. In short, neoliberalism (which provides the blueprints for the Western economic system) is a destructive and an immoral doctrine designed to

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benefit the rich and powerful. Neoliberalism has enabled the commodification of everything under the sun and the privatization of schools, hospitals, prisons, natural resources, utilities, child care, and even war, for the benefit of corporate interests. It has remained the dominant doctrine, despite a number of mishaps such as the global financial crisis, because it has spread in such a way as to engulf academia, policymaking, political agenda, and even popular culture, encouraged by dishonest corporate media. Destructive and immoral policies are pursued and become dominant because of the presence of a minority of powerful beneficiaries.

8.3

The Free-Market Doctrine

The free-market doctrine provides the “intellectual” rationale for unfettered capitalism, which guides economic thinking in the West. Advocates of the free-market doctrine base their arguments on the concept of efficiency, implying always that the private sector is more efficient and less corrupt than the public sector. In his introduction to the 2020 edition of the Heritage Foundation’s annual publication on economic freedom, James (2020) writes the following: While we have clearly seen what happens when people and economies are unleashed from the chains of excessive government control, we must practice constant vigilance so that our nations do not fall prey to the false promises of the ever-present statists. Statists push bigger government and socialist and collectivist policies that are wrapped in deceptive emotional appeals to things like social justice and equality—yet their policies deliver none of it.

This is right-wing rhetoric at its best. Blind belief in a destructive philosophy and way of organizing economic life must be motivated by the interest of a powerful minority. Those who indulge in this rhetoric seem to forget about evidence from conjectural history that collectivist policies do work and boost general welfare. The claim that those who promise justice and equality deliver nothing is not true. In the West, no one who promises justice and equality is allowed to be in power, and this is why the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders never had a chance to deliver. On the contrary, those who promise injustice and inequality (for example, by cutting taxes for the rich) are put in power by the oligarchy,

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sometimes without election. In Latin America, on the other hand, the likes of Evo Morales and Lula da Silva promised and delivered justice and equality, at least to a certain degree. President Franklin Roosevelt was opposed to the then prevailing philosophy of laissez faire, which prescribed minimum governmental interference in the economy. When the Great Depression produced suffering of so many Americans, Roosevelt did not see a better solution to the immediate problem than swift executive intervention. Despite resistance from business and the conservative elite to the alleged “socialistic” ambitions or purposes of the New Deal, many of its reforms gradually achieved national acceptance. Banks were in crisis, and nearly a quarter of the labour force was unemployed. Wages and salaries declined significantly, as did production. The New Deal was intended to provide immediate economic relief and to bring about reforms to stabilize the economy. It put people back to work. It saved capitalism. It restored faith in the American economic system. It revived a sense of hope in the American people. The New Deal improved the lives of the working class and was followed by some 50 years of financial stability, which came to an end as a result of the return of free-market policies in the 1980s. It produced not only positive economic but also social consequences by overcoming the mistreatment of neglected, excluded, and marginalized people in America. For free marketeers, everything is about the individual and nothing about the society or any kind of collective. For them, everything is about private costs and revenues and nothing about social costs and benefits. There is no place for compassion and altruism, and selfishness is considered a virtue. In the name of efficiency, a polluter may pollute to maximize profit and those who cannot afford the free-market prices of healthcare, education and housing should be condemned to death, illiteracy, and homelessness. Free marketeers reject the notion of a social safety net, which consists of non-contributory assistance that is used to improve the lives of vulnerable families and individuals experiencing poverty and destitution. A free market implies a structure whereby the production, distribution, and pricing of goods and services are co-ordinated by the market forces of supply and demand, unhindered by regulation, and this is why free marketeers believe that the government has no place in economic activity. In a free market, the maestro is the “invisible hand” that slaps and punches us every now and then. Bailey (2000) uses the following description of the free market:

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A minimum definition of a free market is that it embodies an imaginary structure consisting of the combined flow of desires and decisions of a collection of buyers and sellers operating at any given time, of the commodity about which these intellectual attitudes are held and of an institutional arrangement (either formal or informal, or both) facilitating the exchange of information required of the buyers and sellers.

According to free marketeers, we should be guided by market forces and accept the tyranny of the invisible hand because the market is the best co-ordinator, that it is a producer of growth, that it reduces coercion by decentralizing power, and that market-determined prices are related to costs. The market is allegedly the best co-ordinator because it operates by the “law” of supply and demand, and just like we cannot mess around with the law of gravity, we should not mess around with the “law” of supply and demand. Yes, the market has a role to play in the economy but we should not accept every market outcome and refrain from doing anything about it. We cannot refrain from doing anything about homelessness and inequality just because the market says these are by products of the drive to achieve efficiency. We cannot accept, just because the market dictates, the practice of paying incompetent CEOs thousands of times the amounts paid to the actual producers of goods and services, the bakers, janitors, and health workers. Yes, the market is a producer of growth, but it is also a producer of economic crises as well as poverty, inequality, unemployment, and homelessness. The market decentralizes power but only in the sense that power moves from elected officials, who are (to a certain extent) accountable to voters, to oligarchs who are not accountable to anyone. Market-determined prices are related to cost—more specifically, private cost because the social cost of production is not taken into account (given that decisions should be motivated by individualism and selfishness). The social costs of unemployment are not taken into account when workers are laid off. If market prices are related to costs, how come that in the US the price of one pill could reach $10,000? Market-determined prices are not related to the costs of production because they are set in such a way as to extract as much consumer surplus as possible. Only fair prices are related to costs, but fair prices are rejected in the Western economic system because “they do not promote innovation”. The market does not lead to a situation where no one can be made better off without simultaneously making

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someone else worse off (the so-called “Pareto optimum”). How much does it cost to house all of the homeless as a fraction of the net worth of any member of the 1%? The homeless can be made better off with the loose change of the 1% that will not make them worse off. In an interview with American philosopher and author Cornell West, he referred to “dogmatic arguments” for free-market fundamentalism, suggesting that those arguments come from a mentality that “trivializes the concern for public interest” and “makes money-driven, poll-obsessed elected officials deferential to corporate goals of profit—often at the cost of the common good” (The Globalist, 2005). Sandel (2013) contends that the US has moved beyond just having a market economy and has become a market society where everything is for sale, including aspects of social and civic life such as education, access to justice, and political influence. McNally (1993) notes that the logic of the market inherently produces inequitable outcomes and leads to unequal exchanges, arguing that Adam Smith’s moral intent and moral philosophy espousing equal exchange was undermined by the practice of the free market he championed. According to McNally, the development of the market economy involved coercion, exploitation, and violence that Smith’s moral philosophy could not countenance. Under a free market, we are under constant bombardment of ads intended to make us consume things that we do not need, even things that are harmful to us. This is how Akerlof and Shiller (2015) put it: Free markets, as bountiful as they may be, will not only provide us with what we want, as long as we can pay for it; they will also tempt us into buying things that are bad for us, whatever the costs. Just as free markets can serve the public good “by an invisible hand” (as Adam Smith saw more than two centuries ago, and is the foundation of the field of economics), free markets will do something else. As long as there is a profit to be made, they will also deceive us, manipulate us and prey on our weaknesses, tempting us into purchases that are bad for us. That is also a fundamental feature of market equilibrium, in which supply and demand balance each other out.

Free marketeers believe that advertising for alcohol and tobacco should be allowed and that making teenagers feel that it is “cool” to drink and smoke is a normal business practice. Warning labels on cigarette packets saying things like “smoking kills” should not be allowed because they represent government intervention that prevents a voluntary market

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transaction. Morality is lost completely in the name of the alleged efficiency. Fraud is fine because the market takes care of it. Criminal offenses such as insider trading should not be prosecuted as long as they are produced by market-consistent behaviour. The market rules the roost in an environment where facts are twisted and turned upside down for the benefit of the oligarchy. In short, we should not trust the market with our lives and livelihoods. The free-market system produces grotesque inequality and enhances monopoly power, leading to high prices and abnormal profit for the monopolists. Under a system of free-market economy, merit goods with positive externalities (such as health and education) are underproduced. Even though it is alleged that the private sector is more efficient in the provision of goods and services, it is certainly less efficient in the provision of public services such as healthcare (which is regarded as a commodity in a free-market system). The free-market system is unstable, characterized by boom-bust cycles and long periods of mass unemployment. Under this system, financial markets are inherently unstable due to forces of irrational exuberance. Negative externalities are overproduced (such as environmental pollution and congestion). Advertisement and mediacreated images lead to an over-consumption of demerit goods, such as smoking and alcohol. In free markets, business enterprises are concerned with the present moment and ignore implications for long-term ecological stability (this is sometimes known as short-termism). The whole system exhibits inherent contradiction, arising from the fact that consumers who buy the goods and services produced by business firms also provide the labour required for the production of goods and services. Profit-maximizing firms endeavour to reduce the costs of production, including the cost of labour, by reducing wages and minimizing the labour force. By doing so, the purchasing power of labour (hence consumers) declines, which means that firms will fail to sell the goods from which it generates revenue. This is the contradiction that leads to the rise of imperialism as business firms look for foreign sources of cheap resources and new markets.

8.4

Economic Freedom

The concept of “economic freedom”, which is a pillar of the Western economic system, is often invoked in discussions of the merits and demerits of regulation. The right-wing Heritage Foundation produces an

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annual publication reporting updates of the index of economic freedom, taking the opportunity to demonstrate how economic freedom is the means of salvation and the conduit to prosperity and happiness. The Foundation expresses the view that economic freedom makes an economy grow and prosper and that the free-market system, which is rooted in economic freedom, “has fuelled unprecedented economic growth and development around the world” (Miller et al., 2020). On the other hand, Peet (1992) sees a myth in the concept of freedom as envisaged by those holding “mainstream market liberal politicaleconomic viewpoint” who believe that freedom is entirely an economic construct, which exists in an unfettered market. In this sense, freedom is related to choice, the availability of alternatives. For the Heritage Foundation, freedom is the freedom (of the privileged) to do things without being hindered by government intervention. It is freedom from restrictions that prevent the oligarchy from doing what it takes to accumulate wealth. The opposite view put forward by Peet (1992) is that for most people, freedom has entirely different meanings, such as freedom from hunger, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom from arbitrary constraints, and freedom to be creative and artistic. While deregulation is conducive to freedom, as the Heritage Foundation sees it, it has led to deterioration in freedom from poverty, freedom of speech and association, freedom from arbitrary constrains, and freedom to be creative and artistic. The economic freedom index of the Heritage Foundation (reported in Miller et al., 2020) is calculated from scores assigned to 12 criteria. Table 8.1 displays the criteria, how they are described and justified by the Foundation and how they can be interpreted in such a way as to show how they can be used to benefit the oligarchy at the expense of the society at large. These freedoms impinge upon human rights, as we saw in Chapter 5. The word “freedom” in these criteria refers to the freedom of the oligarchy in abusing the society at large. Labour freedom is supposed to cover the freedom of both employers and employees, but this is a contradiction because the freedom of employers to fire employees at will is incompatible with the freedom of employees to find and maintain decent jobs. These kinds of freedom can only be exercised by people or entities that have power, particularly power backed by law. Ordinary people do not have this kind of power and employees earning wages and salaries are just better off than their counterparts in a feudal system or a system of slavery.

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Yes, they have the freedom to leave their jobs, but they cannot survive for long because the human rights of having access to healthcare, other social services, and work are denied in the Western system.

8.5

Privatization and Deregulation

Privatization and deregulation are integral components of the Western economic system, which are preached to or imposed on the rest of the world and portrayed as “reform”. The objective behind them is to reduce the size of the public sector and give more “freedom” to the private sector because (allegedly) only the private sector generates wealth and innovation. In reality, the objective is to create more avenues for the business oligarchy to generate profit out of activities that pertain to some human rights, such as health and education. The real objective is to allow the oligarchy to be in charge of the provision of goods and services that are characterized by low elasticity of demand and to give them free access to natural resources, which (in a fair society) should be owned publicly. Privatization is a (great) Western invention that allegedly boosts economic efficiency and propels growth. It involves the transfer of publically owned businesses, operations, or assets to the private sector, typically at bargain prices, in a process that involves corruption and cronyism. The first mass privatization programme of the twentieth century occurred in Nazi Germany during the period 1933–1937, covering a diversified set of sectors, including steel, mining, banking, public utilities, shipyards, ship-lines, and railways. Even though Nazi Germany was hardly a role model to be followed, privatization became very popular in the 1980s as a result of the triumph of neoliberalism. Kagami and Tsuji (2000) argue that the 1980s and 1990s are characterized by the great crusade of market forces against large governments when the notion of “small government” was introduced by the Anglo-American alliance and preached to the rest of the world by the World Bank and IMF, two international financial institutions that represent the interests of the US Treasury and Western multinationals. A crusade of market forces against large governments is an act of aggression perpetrated by the oligarchy against the society at large. Privatization is typically an exercise in large-scale corruption as those with political connections accumulate wealth by buying high-value public assets at bargain prices. The proponents of privatization suggest that daily petty corruption is larger without privatization and that corruption is

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Table 8.1 Components of the Economic Freedom Index Criterion

Description/Justification

Interpretation

Property Rights

The ability to accumulate private property and wealth in a functioning market economy is a “central motivating force for workers and investors” Judicial effectiveness is needed to create an honest and fair system that puts an end to discrimination and leads to improving human conditions The Foundation warns of the detrimental effect of the systemic corruption of government institutions by practices such as bribery, nepotism, cronyism, patronage, embezzlement, and graft The government should retain the smallest possible amount of private-sector income by reducing tax rates Government spending involves a lot of waste

Property rights enable the oligarchy to seize public assets and natural resources for free or at bargain prices

Judicial Effectiveness

Government Integrity

Tax Burden

Government Spending

Fiscal Health

The government must take some action to plug the budget gap and keep the lid on public debt

By design, the free-market system is conducive to dishonesty, unfairness, discrimination, and deteriorating human conditions Nothing is said about the ultimate form of corruption, which is regulatory capture, perpetrated by powerful corporate interests against the public at large. Nothing is said about corruption in the private sector Most of the tax burden is borne by wage and salary earners. Tax cuts are intended for the 1% The biggest wasteful types of government spending are desired by the private sector, particularly military spending and spending on bailing out failed too-big-to-fail firms. Private sector firms indulge in wasteful spending, such as advertising and lavish perks for incompetent executives For the oligarchy, fiscal health should not be restored by reducing military spending because this action has an adverse effect on private-sector war profiteers

(continued)

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Table 8.1 (continued) Criterion

Description/Justification

Interpretation

Business Freedom

Regulation hinders business productivity and profitability

Labour Freedom

The ability of individuals to find employment opportunities and the ability of businesses to contract freely for labour and dismiss redundant workers when they are no longer needed A stable currency and market-determined prices require an independent central bank

Business freedom leads to the emergence of monopolies and boom-bust cycles The ability of individuals to find employment is at odds with the ability of businesses to fire at will

Monetary Freedom

Trade Freedom

Absence of restrictions on international transactions including tariffs, export taxes, trade quotas, and outright trade bans, as well as non-tariff barriers such as licensing, standard-setting, and other regulatory actions

Investment Freedom

Dismantling of capital controls and abolishing restrictions on foreign ownership

Financial Freedom

No restrictions on financial transactions for efficiency

Some unelected bureaucrats and technocrats can do whatever they like (for the benefit of the financial oligarchy) without being held accountable Free trade may not be suitable all the time everywhere, particularly for developing countries. Historically, the concept of free trade is associated with British imperialism, aiding and abetting corporate Britain to find overseas markets and sources of cheap raw materials Abolishing restrictions on foreign ownership is convenient for multinationals to acquire privatized public assets in a developing country forced by the IMF to privatize Since the financial sector is the epicentre of corruption and fraud, financial regulation is needed to protect ordinary people from predatory financiers

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more prevalent in non-privatized sectors (for example, Nellis & Kikeri, 2002). This proposition is not supported by the facts on the ground as we observe the massive fraud committed by privately owned financial institutions against ordinary people. It is common to observe the capture of the political elite by large private-sector corporations that indulge in lobbying with impunity and expect favours in return for their campaign donations (let alone bribery, intimidation and blackmail). Privatization involves collusion between corrupt politicians, aspiring for lucrative private-sector jobs post public service, and the oligarchy (domestic and foreign) that wants to accumulate wealth at the expense of depriving people of their right to tax-funded public services. Consider, for example, the public inquiry into the consequences of privatization in Australia. The inquiry identifies eight sectors where things have become worse as a result of privatization: electricity, aged care, child care, hospitals, child protection, disability, prisons, and vocational education and training. The case of private prisons is rather interesting as the report identifies the consequences of privatizing prisons as (i) diminishing quality and performance of contracted prison services; (ii) contracts that fail to secure the effectiveness and efficiency of private prisons, (iii) cost to the public sector when rectifying problems created by private company failures, (iv) reduction in prison education to assist in rehabilitation, and (v) reduction in staffing numbers and pay conditions. It is even worse because the inmates are forced to provide slave labour. Shahshahani (2018) tells the story of a 24-year-old inmate of a private detention centre in Georgia (US) who was placed in solitary confinement because he complained about the delay of his $20 pay cheque. He was paid 50 cents an hour, which is the market price of inmate labour, and this is why the business oligarchy loves free-market pricing. In a magnificent speech, Chris Hedges (2017) said the following about private prisons in the US: Our system of mass incarceration is not broken—it works exactly the way it is designed to work. The bodies of poor people of color do not generate money for corporations on the streets of our deindustrialized cities but they generate 40 or 50 thousand dollars a year if we lock them in cages and that is why they are there…. One million prisoners now work for corporations inside prisons as modern day slaves, paid pennies on the dollar without any rights or protection. They are the corporate state’s ideal workers.

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This is why US prisons are homes to 25% of the world’s prison population. It is why conviction in the US carries with it lengthy prison terms. And this is why prisoners are produced on a fast-moving conveyor belt propelled by the corrupt system of plea bargains. The fact of the matter is that no civilized society should have private schools or private hospitals, let alone private prisons. However, these are now facts of life, the result of what Hedges calls the “corporate coup”: Corporations are legally empowered to exploit and loot. It is impossible to vote against Goldman Sachs and Exxon Mobile. The pharmaceutical and insurance industries are legally empowered to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves trying to save their sons or daughters. Banks are legally empowered to burden people with student loans that cannot be forgiven by declaring bankruptcy. The animal agricultural industry is legally empowered to charge those who attempt to publicize the conditions in the vast factory farms where diseased animals are warehoused for slaughter, with a criminal offence. Corporations are legally empowered to carry out tax boycotts.

Privatization is supposed to be good for all of us because it is conducive to economic growth, assuming of course that the benefits of growth are realized by everyone, which is hardly the case. Take, for example, the Russian privatization programme of the 1990s (also known as “the heist of the century”), which had dire consequences for the Russian economy. The seizure of assets by the oligarchs at bargain prices deprived the government of the financial resources that could have been used to jump-start a rapidly deteriorating economy. The oligarchs refrained from putting money into the privatized enterprises, which could have stimulated the economy and created jobs. Instead, they realized their profits by selling off what they had just claimed property rights to and smuggled billions of dollars out of the country (mostly to London, the world centre of financial fraud) thereby depriving the Russian economy of growth-spurring financial resources. Joseph Stiglitz, as quoted by Hays (2016), identified the following effects of privatization on the Russian economy: (i) the economic incentives encouraged asset stripping rather than wealth creation; (ii) Russia’s human capital in technical and scientific areas was wasted; and (iii) the large, relatively equal middle class had its livelihood taken away. By 1998, the Russian economy (measured by GDP) had shrunk by 44%. Yet, the propagandists claim shamelessly that privatizations boosts growth.

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Privatization has negative consequences for growth because it produces unemployment, as newly privatized firms’ fire workers to reduce costs while offering the CEO a salary package that is 500 times the earnings of the average worker. Privatization is corrosive for human capital (as well as social capital and social cohesion in general), and it leads to the concentration of wealth. None of these consequences is conducive to growth. Furthermore, privatization deprives the government of the sources of revenue needed to finance investment in infrastructure and human capital. Privatization intensifies the financialization of the economy, which is bad for growth. Last, but not least, when the oligarchs smuggle funds abroad, they divert away financial resources that can otherwise be used to finance capital formation. Claiming that privatization boosts economic growth is ideological rhetoric that is counterfactual and implausible. Common sense tells us that privatization leads to poverty, joblessness, lower wages and benefits, and products with inferior quality (look no further than the corporatized higher education establishments). Dagdeviren (2006) finds results that do not lend much support to the arguments that privatization contributes to the efforts of poverty alleviation through various channels such as efficiency, employment creation, and revenue generation for the government. A published report concludes that in most cases, privatization leads directly to cutbacks in government investment in skill development and to reductions in workers’ pay and benefits (ITPI, 2014). In turn, workers have less income to invest in their households, their children, and their neighbourhoods, leaving individuals and their communities poorly served in the present and ill prepared for the future. Holland (2014) dismisses the promises made by the advocates of privatizing public services that “the magic of the free market will result in better services for fewer tax dollars”. Time and again, he argues, those ideological claims run headlong into reality because private companies have to turn profit, which means cutting corners, paying lower wages, and often failing to provide quality goods and services. The worst kind of privatization is the privatization of war, which is yet another great Western invention. In a privatized war, contractors and mercenaries are hired to do the killing of people in defenceless countries invaded by the very (civilized) countries that preach privatization and human rights. This trend has led to the emergence of enormous opportunities for private military and security companies to thrive and prosper and for the bosses of those companies to enrich themselves. The hazard of privatizing violence in war zones has been illustrated clearly by the

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repeated human rights abuses perpetrated by mercenaries, including the indiscriminate killing of civilians and torture. In 2007, contractors from Blackwater (an American company) massacred 17 civilians in Baghdad. The British company ArmorGroup was the focus of a US Senate inquiry in 2010 because of its operations in Afghanistan, facing allegations that their recruits threatened to attack Afghan Ministry of Defence personnel. In Somalia, security company Saracen International was supposedly training anti-piracy forces, but according to the UN, the company violated arms embargoes in 2011 while arming and training militias. Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, wants to go even further, suggesting that the war in Afghanistan should be led by an American “viceroy” who would report directly to Trump (Prince, 2017). Surely, Eric is rather disappointed that the Biden administration decided to run away from Afghanistan. In almost any human endeavour, striking a balance is the name of the game. No one wants to see the private sector disappear, but the extreme of surrendering everything to profit-maximizing firms hurts the society and creates misery as people are deprived of essential services that should never be considered in market terms. The private sector should be kept away from healthcare, education, utilities, natural resources, and any product with a low elasticity of demand. This leaves a lot for the private sector to make money out of, such as the production of fancy handbags that sell for $10,000 each. The private sector should be left to organize sporting events and charge $7000 for admission to the Super Boul or $1000 for the privilege of seeing a golfer miss the hole from a distance of 60 centimetres. The private sector can make a lot of money in the restaurant business by charging $300 for a steak with three pieces of asparagus and some drops of sauce. Willing customers can always be found, even though these products are characterized by a high elasticity of demand. What is important is that these products are not essential, which means that those who cannot afford them will not die, get seriously ill, or suffer financial hardship as a result. Deregulation goes hand in hand with privatization as a package that enables the oligarchy to milk the society. Privatization and deregulation are served to the oligarchy in the same way as serving steak and pepper sauce, strawberry and cream, and apple pie and custard. Privatization provides cheap assets and means of production, while deregulation enables the oligarchy to reduce costs and maximize the profit generated by privatized enterprises. Deregulation allows the oligarchy to reduce labour cost by abolishing minimum wages and by not observing labour

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laws. Deregulation allows the oligarchy to charge unaffordable prices for goods and services with low elasticity of demand and indulge in price discrimination to extract as much consumer surplus as possible. Environmental deregulation allows the oligarchy to reduce costs by polluting the air we breathe and water we drink. Financial deregulation allows the financial oligarchy to indulge in fraud and generate fees and commissions by selling toxic assets that eventually blow up the financial system, in which case taxpayers are expected to foot the bill. Regulation in general is needed to preserve social values and environmental standards—otherwise, the law of the jungle will prevail in a polluted environment. Pollution is good for profit maximization because when firms are allowed to dispose of their toxic waste, they will save on the cost of waste treatment and become “more efficient”. However, this kind of efficiency is socially undesirable, at least from a public health perspective. Regulation is needed in cases of market failure caused by monopoly, externalities, public goods, asymmetric information, etc. Regulation is required for the attainment of collective desires as judged by a significant segment of the society. Regulation is required to deal with the problem of irreversibility that a certain type of conduct from current generations can result in outcomes from which future generations may not recover at all. Regulation is needed to maintain quality standards for services (for example, by specifying qualification requirements for service providers). In the absence of regulation, profit maximization can be achieved by cutting corners and swindling consumers, and this is why regulation is needed to protect consumers from fraud.

8.6

Financialization and Deindustrialization

The terms “financialization”, “finance-dominated capitalism”, and “finance-led capitalism” imply that a dominant and central role is played by the financial sector in the economy, which is a feature of the Western economic system. Typically, the extent of financialization is reflected in the extent of deindustrialization. The two most financialized economies in the West, those of the UK and US (which have the largest international financial centres in the world), are also the most deindustrialized. The move from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism, which eventually brings with it the finance curse, is supposed to be a sign of progress—hence “who needs manufacturing industry when we have the City?”.

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Although some policymakers believe that financialization occurs naturally as the economy moves away from manufacturing industry to services, it is far away from being a “natural development”. Rather, as Witko (2014) argues, it is a consequence of public policy choices that occur when large financial firms are active in politics, not for the sake of politics but by using politics as a means to an end. Financialization, therefore, represents regulatory and political capture, a situation where the financial oligarchy has the power to extract concessions from politicians and public policymakers. David Stockman, a former director of the US Office of Management and Budget, once described financialization as “corrosive”, arguing that it had turned the economy into a “giant casino” where banks skim an oversize share of profits (Bartlett, 2013). Financialization represents a shift in the way wealth is accumulated. In years gone by, when the financial sector existed to support physical production, profits were generated primarily from the mass production and sale of the goods that people wanted to consume (hence, industrial or production capitalism). In a financialized economy, on the other hand, a large (if not the dominant) portion of profits comes from the trading of financial assets and from the fees and commissions charged on mostly parasitic operations that produce zero value added. In a financialized economy, the oligarchy makes money out of ordinary people and naïve investors seeking the “American Dream” by pumping and dumping financial assets, even those that have no intrinsic values such as cryptocurrencies. Fine (2012) argues that mortgage finance is just one aspect of financialization, specifically attached to housing, but symbolic as a major representative of the more general penetration of finance into ever more areas of economic and social life such as pensions, education, health, and the provision of economic and social infrastructure. He refers to the increasing extent to which finance has gained presence in areas where it had previously been relatively absent (hence expect financiers to launch joint ventures with traffickers to create futures, options and swaps on or in human organs, slaves, prostitutes, and asylum seekers). Financialization has adverse effects on the household sector by making households more dependent on credit and addicted to debt. In a financialized economy, households indulge in unsustainable levels of consumption and become holders of financial assets, which makes them exposed to financial risk and the risk of being caught in a scam or becoming the victim of fraudulent behaviour. The adverse effects extend to non-financial firms, which become involved in parasitic financial activities. As far as

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financial firms are concerned, financialization leads to the expansion of the shadow banking system and consumer credit as households indulge or over-indulge in debt-financed consumption. Commercial banks become active in more-risky investment banking operations. The adverse economic effects of financialization pertain to consumption and investment and consequently aggregate output and productivity. Consumption becomes unsustainable in the long run as a result of dependence on debt. Investment in real capital is subordinated to the buying and selling of financial assets and the allocation of funds to interest payments. Income distribution becomes increasingly skewed as a result of the rise in top management salaries and the decline of labour income share. The effects on external transactions include foreign indebtedness, speculative capital flows, exchange rate volatility, currency crises, and persistent current account deficits. The adverse effects of financialization go beyond the economy as it hurts democracy and human rights and provides support for imperialism. The connection between financialization and imperialism was recognized long ago by thinkers of the early twentieth century such as Rosa Luxemburg and John Hobson. Deindustrialization is a process that involves social and economic changes caused by the reduction or disappearance of industrial capacity and activity, which is replaced by services, including financial services. The process is characterized by (i) a long-term decline in the output and employment of manufacturing industry; (ii) a shift to the service sectors, so that manufacturing output has a lower share of total GDP and employment; and (iii) a persistent trade deficit. These features are quite evident in the US and UK. The link between financialization and deindustrialization has been highlighted by a number of economists. Svilokos and Burin (2017) argue that financialization encourages deindustrialization and detect a significantly negative impact of financialization on value added and employment in manufacturing industry. They conclude that “the process of deindustrialization of the EU countries can be characterized as a financialization-led process”. Krippner (2005) thinks that both elements are fundamental to understanding the transformation of the US economy. Boyer (2000) identifies the shift from manufacturing to services as elements of the emerging “finance-led growth regime”. Ülgen (2019) refers to a “system-wide financialization” that “prevailed and provoked expansive deindustrialisation”. Friedman (2002) is justifiably sarcastic when he points

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out that “it’s hard to imagine how service-sector expansion can play a role in wealth creation if growth in, say, manicurists exceeds that of engineers”. This is exactly what has been happening under the Western economic system, which encourages parasitic activities and discourages meaningful and productive economic activity. As a result, YouTubers and TikTokers become more important than engineers and technicians.

8.7

Implications and Ramifications

The Western economic system has adverse consequences. This section contains a discussion of what the Western economic system means for democracy, morality, and peace, as well as inequality, poverty, and homelessness. The system is immoral because it works for the benefit of the few who have money and power. It is a system that produces oligarchs who are more powerful than elected politicians. As a matter of fact, the oligarchs “appoint” elected politicians. The Western economic system is incompatible with democracy, because democracy is about the rule of people whereas the Western economic system leads to the rule of the oligarchy. Democracy has been weakened by unfettered capitalism because corporate interests invest ever greater sums in lobbying, public relations, and even bribes and kickbacks, seeking and extracting favourable laws, in the process muting the voices of ordinary citizens. While free marketeers claim that democracy and the free-market system are intertwined, we often observe support for fascist regimes when they adopt free-market capitalism. According to Meadowcroft (2019), three pioneering free marketeers (Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek and James Buchanan) supported the 1973 coup d’etat in Chile that saw the toppling of a democratically elected government and its replacement by a military dictatorship. Contradiction between the free-market system and democracy was recognized a long time ago by Rothschild (1947) who wrote the following: When we enter the field of rivalry between [corporate] giants, the traditional separation of the political from the economic can no longer be maintained… Fascism…has been largely brought into power by this very struggle in an attempt of the most powerful oligopolists to strengthen, through political action, their position in the labour market and vis-à-vis their smaller competitors, and finally to strike out in order to change the world market situation in their favour.

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An essential feature of a democratic system is the notion of choice. Since free markets allow choice, the argument goes, they must inevitably lead to a democratic form of government. This claim is easy to refute, as many authoritarian countries allow free markets to exist. As a matter of fact, the free-market system enables an authoritarian regime to remain in power for a long time because it gives multinationals a free hand in return for the protection offered by the governments of the multinationals. A major contradiction between the free-market system and democracy is that the free market gives political power to corporate interests and a minority of oligarchs. This cannot be compatible with democracy as the “rule of people”. The protection of corporate power and suppression of labour power indicate that the free market goes hand in hand with fascism, not with democracy. Reich (2009) argues that while free markets are supposed to lead to free societies, “today’s supercharged global economy is eroding the power of the people in democracies around the globe”. He describes the current state of affairs as a “world where the bottom line trumps the common good and government takes a back seat to big business”. Let us turn to morality. Unlike the claim made by Clark and Lee (2011) that markets promote morality, Falk and Sczech (2013) suggest that markets erode morality. What is moral about considering inequality and homelessness as non-issues? What is moral about blaming the poor and homeless for being poor and homeless? What is moral about refusing to treat an injured person because he or she cannot pay up-front? What is moral about allowing the oligarchy to attack labour laws and the rules providing protection for the majority? What is moral about the empowerment of corporations to exploit and loot? What is moral about allowing the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to hold sick children hostage while their parents bankrupt themselves trying to save their sons or daughters? What is moral about allowing banks to burden student with loans that cannot be forgiven by declaring bankruptcy? The list of “what is moral about …” goes on and on. What is moral about bailing out failed corporations by using taxpayers’ money, some of which is used to pay bonuses to the CEOs and their cronies? What is moral about bailing in failed banks by confiscating depositors’ money for no fault of the latter? What is moral about loan sharks charging double or triple-digit interest rates on cash advances to those in desperate need of cash? What is moral about price gouging in the midst of a pandemic and rampant unemployment? What is moral about charging consumers extortionist prices because these prices are determined by the almighty

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market? What is moral about paying workers less than subsistence wages? Free marketeers claim that immorality and the injustice envisaged by asking “what is moral about…” are prices worth paying for efficiency, the efficiency by which the oligarchy rapes the society. Even some forms of criminal activity (such as insider trading) can be justified in terms of the free-market doctrine because moral considerations are irrelevant. It follows, therefore, that drug/sex trafficking, which involves consensual exchange at market-determined prices, must be considered legitimate market transactions. Jeffrey Epstein was conducting market transactions when he took advantage of children to satisfy his insatiable appetite for young girls. I suppose that Jeffrey Epstein would have described his dealings with “service providers” as victimless free-market transactions because no coercion was involved. The Western economic system has implications for peace. Some free marketeers argue that the free-market system leads to peace while alternative systems lead to war, a proposition that is inconsistent with the history of imperialism. Energized by the free-market doctrine, Biddle (2014) identifies the factors that lead to war and those that lead to peace by contrasting two states of the world: statism versus capitalism, collectivism versus individualism, and altruism versus egoism. For Biddle, war is caused by statism, collectivism, and altruism whereas peace is produced by capitalism, individualism, and egoism. He argues that capitalism is a cause of peace and that “on the premise of capitalism, initiating war is immoral and absurd”. However, capitalism has nothing to do with morality and it goes hand in hand with imperialism and wars of aggression. Langness (2016) argues that “self-interest is at the bottom of every war”. Dictators and emperors are egoistic, yet they start wars. The military-industrial complex is egoistic, yet the people behind it love war. War profiteers are egoistic but for them war is a means whereby they can boost their net worth. The Western economic system is conducive to poverty and inequality. While the number of billionaires has been rising and their wealth accumulating at an accelerating rate, the poor (in rich countries) are getting poorer. The governments of Western countries fuel the inequality crisis by deliberate policy choices, including low income tax rates for corporations and the rich while underfunding public services that benefit the poor, such as healthcare and education. Features of the Western economic system are conducive to inequality. Globalization is conducive to inequality because of competition from foreign low-wage workers and

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the relocation of industry. Rapid policy changes in favour of the corporate sector and the rich are bound to aggravate inequality. Other drivers include the rise of the “superstars”, who are promoted by the corporate media and the culture of superstardom, and financialization, which has produced billionaires out of salaries and bonuses (the most notorious example being Jeffrey Epstein). Ideology is also a driver as right-wing neocons take hold of governments, resulting in less progressive tax laws, anti-labour policies, and slower expansion of the welfare state. Homelessness in the West is a direct result of reduction in the welfare state in the process of “starving the beast”. Housing the homeless permanently is impeded by the issue of affordability (real or imaginary) or the other issue that no one should get anything for nothing. However, it has been found that it is significantly cheaper for governments to provide housing than to have people continuing to sleep on the street. For the US, it is estimated that the cost of eradicating homelessness is $20 billion which is slightly less than what Americans spend on Christmas decoration. It is less than taxpayer subsidies for the oil industry. It is much less than the savings realized by responsibly cutting spending on nuclear weapons. It is about one third of the amount that can be saved by eliminating corporate meals and entertainment write-offs. And it is by far less than the amount that can be saved by eliminating capital gains tax cuts (Kavoussi, 2012).

8.8

Concluding Remarks

The pundits tell us that there is no alternative to the Western economic system, which is efficient because of the adoption of the principle of privatize, liberalize, and deregulate. This, however, is not true. Capitalism is a substantial improvement on the preceding systems of slavery and feudalism, but it still has some features of the preceding systems. Wolff (2012) debunks the myth of unavailability of alternatives as follows: Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism’s recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require resignation and acceptance—because there is no alternative?

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Wolff (2020a) explains why capitalism is not dissimilar to feudalism: Capitalism serves capitalists first and foremost. That minority occupies or selects the occupants of most of the dominant positions in society. In this they are like the masters and lords in slave and feudal societies. In those societies, the self-justification of their dominant minorities concerned their physical, mental, or moral superiority and/or their special relationship to God or Gods. Capitalist societies that broke from slave and feudal predecessors also rejected those systems’ self-justifications. Capitalism had to find a different kind of self-justification.

Wolff (2020b) elaborates on the similarities between capitalism, on the one hand, and feudalism and slavery on the other. Under slavery, the key relationship is that of master and slave, where the slave is the property of the master. Under feudalism, the key relationship links lord and serf by their sworn acceptance of specific obligations, loyalties, and duties to one another. Unlike capitalism, wages do not exist in slave or feudal economic systems. Capitalism is different in that no person is another person’s property, but the three systems share the characteristic that they all operate in the form of “private” or “free” enterprises in “free” or “unregulated” markets. He suggests that “the dualistic employer/employee definition of capitalism implies affinities with the parallel dualisms of slavery (master/slave) and feudalism (lord/serf)”. The Western economic system leads to the violation of all of the alleged aspects of Western exceptionalism: democracy, the rule of law, independent judiciary, human rights, and transparency. Even worse, it is conducive to imperialism in its conventional or modern form, by using armies or international financial institutions, respectively. It is arguable that one should not generalize these features to cover a system that is adopted by all Western countries, because the economic system in Sweden and Denmark is more moral and altruistic than the economic system in the US and UK. This shows that the West is not a homogenous entity, as argued in Chapter 1. However, since Western politicians like to see the West as a uniform entity and use the phrase “we in the West”, it becomes plausible to consider the worst case as the Western case. After all, the worst case is found in the leader of the West, the US.

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References Akerlof, G. A., & Shiller, R. J. (2015, October 21). The Dark Side of Free Markets. The Conversation. Bailey, G. (2000). Mythologies of Change and Certainty in Late Twentieth Century Australia. Australian Scholarly Publishing. Bartlett, B. (2013, June 11). Financialization as a Cause of Economic Malaise. New York Times. Biddle, C. (2014, October 2). The Causes of War and Those of Peace. https:// www.theobjectivestandard.com/2014/10/causes-war-peace/ Bittman, M. (2014, December 13). Is it Bad Enough Yet? New York Times. Boyer, R. (2000). Is a Finance-Led Growth Regime a Viable Alternative to Fordism? A Preliminary Analysis. Economy and Society, 23, 111–145. Chomsky, N. (2011). Profit over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order. Seven Stories Press. Clark, J. R., & Lee, D. R. (2011). Markets and Morality. Cato Journal, 31, 1–25. Dagdeviren, H. (2006). Revisiting Privatization in the Context of Poverty Alleviation: The Case of Sudan. Journal of International Development, 8, 469–488. Falk, A., & Szech, N. (2013). Morals and Markets. Science, 340, 707–711. Fine, B. (2012). Financialisation on the Rebound? Actuel Marx, 51, 73–85. Friedman, D. (2002). No Light at the End of the Tunnel. http://www.newame rica.net/publications/articles/2002/no_light_at_the_end_of_the_tunnel Gide, C. (1898). Has Co-operation Introduced a New Principle into Economics? Economic Journal, 8, 490–511. Hays, J. (2016). Russian Privatization and Oligarchs. http://factsanddetails. com/russia/Economics_Business_Agriculture/sub9_7b/entry-5169.html Hedges, C. (2017). Speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycuw9C vh6W4 Holland, J. (2014, July 17). How a Bogus, Industry-Funded Study Helped Spur a Privatization Disaster in Michigan. Moyers on Democracy. ITPI. (2014, June 3). Race to the Bottom: How Outsourcing Public Services Rewards Corporations and Punishes the Middle Class. James, K. C. (2020). Introduction. In T. Miller, A. B. Kim, & J. M. Roberts (Eds.), 2020 Index of Economic Freedom. The Heritage Foundation. Kagami, M., & Tsuji, M. (2000). Privatization. Edward Elgar. Kavoussi, B. (2012, December 12). U.S. Could End Homelessness With Money Used to Buy Christmas Decorations, Huffington Post. Krippner, G. (2005). The Financializaiton of the American Economy. SocioEconomic Review, 3, 173–228. Langness, D. (2016, March 21). Greed, Commerce and Self-Interest: The Real Causes of War. https://bahaiteachings.org/greed-commerce-and-self-int erest-the-real-causes-of-war

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McNally, D. (1993). Against the Market: Political Economy. Verso Books. Meadowcroft, J. (2019, May 30). The Economists and the General, Features Magazine. Mill, J. S. (1848). Principles of Political Economy with Some of their Applications to Social Philosophy. John W. Parker. Miller, T., Kim, A. B., & Roberts, J. M. (2020). 2020 Index of Economic Freedom. The Heritage Foundation. Mirowski, P., & Plehwe, D. (2009). The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Harvard University Press. Monbiot, G. (2016, April 15). Neoliberalism—The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems. The Guardian. Moosa, I. A. (2021). The Economics of COVID-19: Implications of the Pandemic for Economic Thought and Public Policy. Edward Elgar. Moosa, I. A. (2022). SARS-CoV-2: The Neoliberal Virus. Real World Economics Review, 101, 27–37. Nellis, J., & Kikeri, S. (2002). Privatisation in Competitive Sectors: The Record to Date (World Bank Policy Research Working Papers, No. 2860). Peet, J. (1992). Myths of the Political-Economic World View from Energy and the Ecological Economics of Sustainability. Island Press. Prince, E. D. (2017, May 31). The MacArthur Model for Afghanistan. Wall Street Journal. Reich, R. B. (2009, October 12). How Capitalism is Killing Democracy. Foreign Policy. Rothschild, K. W. (1947). Price Theory and Oligopoly. Economic Journal, 57 , 299–320. Sandel, M. (2013). Why We Shouldn’t Trust Markets with Our Civic Life. https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_why_we_shouldn_t_trust_ markets_with_our_civic_life Shahshahani, A. (2018, May 17). Why Are For-Profit US Prisons Subjecting Detainees to Forced Labor? The Guardian. Springer, S., Birch, K., & MacLeavy, J. (2016). An Introduction to Neoliberalism. Routledge. Stedman-Jones, D. (2012). Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. Princeton University Press. Svilokos, T., & Burin, I. (2017). Financialization and Its Impact on Process of Deindustrialization in the EU. Zbornik Radova Ekonomskog Fakultet Au Rijeci, 35, 583–610. The Globalist. (2005, January 24). Cornel West: Democracy Matters. Ülgen, F. (2019). Innovation Dynamics and Financialisation: Is Another Regulation Possible to Re-Industrialise the Economy? Journal of Innovation Economics and Management, 29, 133–158.

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Wacquant, L. (2003). Labour Market Insecurity and the Criminalization of Poverty. In L. Roulleau-Berger (Ed.), Youth and Work in the Post-Industrial City of North America and Europe. Brill. Witko, C. (2014). The Politics of Financialization in the United States, 1949– 2005. British Journal of Political Science, 46, 349–370. Wolff, R. D. (2012, June 25). Yes, There is an Alternative to Capitalism: Mondragon Shows the Way. The Guardian. Wolff, R. D. (2020a, July 9). COVID-19 Exposes the Weakness of a Major Theory Used to Justify Capitalism. Counterpunch. Wolff, R. D. (2020b, July 28). Many Terms That are Frequently Used to Describe Capitalism Simply Don’t Hold up Under Scrutiny. Counterpunch.

CHAPTER 9

Further Thoughts on Western Exceptionalism

9.1

Recapitulation: The West as a Uniform Entity

When you hear the rhetoric, you would tend to think that the West is a homogenous entity, one way or another, consisting of easily identifiable countries according to certain criteria. After all, a collective name is given to a group of people, countries, companies, animals, etc. when they have common features that make the collective name a precise description of the group. For example, the collective name “Arab countries” refers to the countries located in West Asia and North Africa that are members of the Arab League and where people speak Arabic. Another precise collective name is NATO countries, which defines members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. However, the terms “West” and “Western countries” do not describe a group of countries with common features. One gets the impression that the West is a precise collective name that describes a homogenous entity by hearing or reading things like “we in the West do this and that”. The same impression one gets from terms such as “Western cuisine”, “Western landscape”, “Western music”, “Western names”, and “Western languages”. In reality, however, the West consists of a master country and subservient banana republics and kingdoms in Europe, as well as three English-speaking “kingdoms”, one in North America and two in the Far East. Western countries are vastly © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0_9

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different in every respect. One would tend to think that the term “West” implies some cultural commonalities, but these cannot be obtained just because a non-Western country becomes a Western country by joining the European Union. The West is roughly defined to include North America (minus Mexico, of course) plus the European Union plus the two English-speaking kingdoms in the Far East. If a Western country is identified by having a population with a white Christian majority, this begs the question as to why Russia and Belarus are not Western countries. If it is because Vladimir Putin and Aleksandr Lukashenko are dictators, why is Hungary a Western country when it is governed by a similar dictator called Viktor Orbán, and why is it that Russia was not considered a Western country when the darling of the West, Boris Yeltsin, was running the show in Russia? Even though Ukraine has a white Christian population it is not a Western country, but only for the time being because (like the Baltic republics) it will become a Western country if and when it joins the EU and/or NATO. The foreign minister of Lithuania started repeating the phrase “we in the West …” only after his country joined NATO. How does membership of NATO or the EU change culture, if the West is a cultural entity? Why is it that the foreign minister of Lithuania is entitled to say “we in the West …” but the foreign minister of Turkey is not, even though both countries are members of NATO, and given that the West is allegedly a continuum spanning Plato to NATO? Surely membership of these clubs cannot change people from non-white, non-Christian to white Christian. In Chapter 1, we saw that Western countries differ significantly in terms of income per capita. They also differ significantly in terms of other indicators. Consider, for example, some components of the WJP rule of law index prepared by the World Justice Project (https://worldj usticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/). In Fig. 9.1 we can see how some Western countries fare in terms of the absence of corruption, fundamental rights, civil justice, and criminal justice. Each one of these indicators assumes values ranging between 0 (the worst) and 100 (the best). We can see that differences are significant and that there is no convergence to give the impression that the West is a uniform entity. Some nonWestern countries have higher scores than some Western countries that brag about values including the rule of law. For example, on the four indicators of absence of corruption, fundamental rights, civil justice, and criminal justice, Uruguay, a non-Western country, scores 73, 79, 73, and

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56, respectively. These scores are significantly higher than the scores for Hungary at 49, 54, 45, and 46. The so-called “Western values” are neither unique, nor universal. However, the West tries to make Western values universal, one way or another. For example, gay marriage has become accepted and legal in the West and gay rights are recognized and respected. That is fine, but what is not fine is that the West, formally or otherwise, tries to impose this change on the rest of the world. Look no further than the campaign against Qatar, in the run up to and during the 2022 World Cup, for “failure to observe gay rights”. When FIFA decided not to allow players to wear rainbow armbands, outrage mounted. Why is it that these players do not wear armbands to protest against poverty and homelessness, which are serious problems in the West, but not in Qatar? Will the players wear black life matters or “I can’t breathe” armbands to protest against police brutality in the US where the 2026 World Cup will be held? Will they wear armbands in Israel to protest against the killing of PalestinianAmerican journalist Shereen Abu Akleh, who was murdered by Israeli snipers? Will they wear armbands to protest the collective punishment of Palestinians? By insisting on wearing the armbands, Western players showed utter contempt for the host country and indulged in an exhibition of Western narcissism. Long before the outbreak of the proxy war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was demonized for suggesting that gay people should not talk openly about homosexuality in the presence of children. In response, calls were made to boycott the Sochi Winter Olympic Games of 2014, just like the calls to reverse a decision to grant Qatar the privilege of organizing the 2022 World Cup. Given that the West is “progressive”, it may be possible at one time that paedophilia becomes acceptable as a “sexual preference”. Incest may also be recognized as legitimate consensual sex, if it has not been already. If that happens in the West, it should not be expected to be the norm in other countries, with vastly different cultures and values. The West should not expect other countries to follow suit and adopt these “values” as a sign of “social progress”. The right thing to do in a world encompassing various cultural differences would be to acknowledge these differences and recognize that what is acceptable in one culture is not acceptable in another. The guiding principle should be “when in Rome, do what the Romans do”, not “when in Rome do what the Romans do not do” or “when in Rome, tell the Romans to do things your way, not the Roman way”. No one country

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Fundamental Rights

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should impose or recommend a certain custom, practice, or value on another country. The West should not expect the Rest to embrace its values and customs, neither should it accept the imposition of imported values and practices, such as circumcision and the wearing of hijab. Therefore, I hope that in the next meeting between the Gulf Co-operation Council and the EU, GCC countries will not be told to change passports, so that more than two categories appear under “Gender” or be urged to allow the trans into women’s showers as a gesture of human rights. I also hope that next time Justin Trudeau visits a Muslim country, he would not urge officials in that country to recognize 70 different genders, or to put behind bars anyone who uses the wrong pronoun to refer to someone else. When in Rome, do not tell the Romans what to do. One Western value that will never be adopted by Middle Eastern countries is disrespect for the elderly. In the West, the elderly are addressed or referred to by the young as “Jim” and “Julie”. In the Middle East, the young address or refer to the elderly as “uncle” and “auntie”. The in-laws in particular are addressed or referred to as “uncle” and “auntie” by the sons and daughters in law. I hope that Middle Eastern countries will not be put under sanctions or bombed until they adopt the Western value of disrespecting the elderly and start addressing the in-laws as “Abdulla” and “Mariam”. The West retaliates firmly against any country that does not observe Western values. In its mildest from, retaliation takes the form of boycotting the sporting events held in countries of the Rest. In early October 2022, Paris became the latest French city to announce that it would not be setting up giant screens and fan zones, where they could watch World Cup matches, because of “human rights and environmental concerns”. Apparently Qatar abused human rights because some foreign workers (tragically) died while working on the construction of eight giant stadiums. Qatar is allegedly hostile to the environment because the stadiums are equipped with outdoor air conditioning. These French cities belong to the same France that murdered one million Algerians during a long, brutal occupation. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a French historian, refers to “hundreds of thousands of instances of torture” by the French military in Algeria (Vidal-Naquet, 2022). This is the same France that had until recently kept the skulls of 24 Algerian resistance fighters (“terrorists”, in Western terminology) that had been lying in storage in a Paris museum since they were taken as “war trophies”. Algeria was not the only place were France committed crimes against humanity. I wonder if

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Paris, Lille, Marseille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, and Reims would boycott a sporting event held in the US or Israel for the killing and torture of Iraqis and Palestinians, respectively. I wonder if these French cities will boycott an American-staged sporting tournament to protest against police brutality, particularly against African Americans. Unfortunately, this will never happen. After all, when the West and its friends do something wrong, it is done for a noble cause and any excesses are unintended mistakes. Criticism of Qatar kept on coming from Western politicians and players less than a month before the start of the tournament. In late October 2022, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that Qatar’s hosting of the tournament was “very tricky” and that “it would be better that tournaments are not awarded to such states” (TRT World, 2022). The use of the phrase “such states” shows how contemptuous these supremacists to anything non-Western (particularly if it is Arab). Well, Nancy, I do not think that Qatar has abused human rights the same way that your ancestors did in the heyday of Nazi Germany. Your compatriot Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, is as hostile to Russia as you are hostile to “such states” because of the annihilation of Hitler’s Wehrmacht by the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War of 1941– 1945. Interestingly, Nancy decided to travel to Qatar, not only to watch Germany lose, but also to lecture Qatari officials on respect for human rights. In the spirit of the World Cup, the Qataris were kind enough not to declare her persona non grata. Around the same time, the Australian team criticized openly “Qatar’s human rights record”. In a video message, several players voiced their opposition to the country’s treatment of migrant workers and the LGBTQ+ community. Well, look who’s talking, considering Australia’s disgraceful history of abuse and killing of the aborigines, the original inhabitants of Australia. Soon after the award of the tournament to Qatar in 2010, Australia objected to FIFA’s decision, arguing that it should have been awarded to Australia. Well, Australia is a Western country but Qatar is not, and this is a good enough reason to reverse the decision! In Chapter 1, it was explained why talking about Western cuisine and Western landscape is ludicrous. The same is true of “Western music” and “Western names”. Let us consider the term “Western names”. One may say that a Western name is the English name Carl, because it has German and Italian equivalents (Karl and Carlo, respectively). What about Adam, Abraham, Jason, Jacob, Joseph, and Isaac? All of these names have

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Arabic equivalents, which may sound exactly the same, while others sound slightly different (just like Carl and Carlo). The corresponding names in Arabic are Adam, Ibrahim, Yasin, Yacoub, Yousif, and Ishaq. How come that the Arabs, who are certainly not Westerners, have Western names? The answer is simple—these are not Western but rather Biblical names. The fact of the matter is that there are English names (Ben, Dick, Bob), Italian names (Giuseppe, Flavio, Giovanni), French names (Addy, Achille, Basile), German names (Tobias, Jonas, Adelheid), Greek names (Acastus, Hermes, Triton), Estonian names (Arri, Eduk, Jaagup), etc. There is no such thing as a “Western name”. It has occurred to me that when or if Ukraine joins the EU, then Volodymyr becomes a Western name. This name, however, is equivalent to Vladimir, which means that when the Ukraine joins the EU, Putin will have a Western first name! Now we turn to Western music, which must include the classical music of Beethoven and Mozart, as well as the more modern music of the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and jazz. Is Greek music Western, given that Greece is a Western country? What about Romanian music, given that Romania is a member of the EU, which makes it a Western country? Naturally, the music of Tchaikovsky, which is close to the music of Beethoven and Mozart, is not Western music because Russia is not a Western country. Do the patriotic songs of Nazi Germany fall under Western music? May be not, because Nazi Germany was not regarded as part of the West, but occupied West Germany was granted membership following the end of the Nazi regime. Interestingly, the Western superiority complex extends to music even though no one knows what Western music includes. Becker (1986) discusses what she describes as the “doctrine that Western European art music is superior to all other musics of the world”, which for some Westerners is a truism. Becker refers to “otherwise intelligent and sophisticated scholars” who continue to use the word “primitive” when referring to the music of Africa, American Indians, aboriginal Australians, and Melanesians, among others. For the supremacists, Western music is “intrinsically interesting and complex, while other musical systems need their social context to command our serious attention”. A related term that is used frequently is “international community”, which (like the West) is ambiguous and has time-varying membership. Rocard (2013) argues that a precise meaning of the phrase “international community” (like its origins) is difficult to discern and that “this ambiguity lies at the root of many of today’s most urgent foreign-policy

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problems”. He suggests various definitions such as “all countries when they decide to act together” and “all countries with international influence”, but he also notes that a definition may not be available because there is no such thing as “international community”. For me, the definition is easy: the international community encompasses the West and members of the Rest that observe the rules set by the West and follow them blindly, even though the West does not follow the rules set by the West. In the “rules-based international order”, where the West sets the rules, countries that follow the rules are members of the international community and those that do not are “rogue states” and “pariah states” that should be subject to sanctions and attempts at regime change. When these actions fail, the use of bombing and invasion becomes legitimate in a rules-based international order. Thus, Russia is not a member of the international community, but Kosovo is. Iraq was not a member of the international community when it was intact before the bombing campaigns, but occupied Iraq was granted membership. Israel, a serial breaker of international law and the biggest violator of human rights, has always been and will remain a member of the international community. The exceptional West determines the countries that deserve and those that do not deserve to be members of the international community. John Pilger thinks that the governments of the West regard themselves as the international community (Pilger, 2013).

9.2 Exceptionalism of the West and Exceptionalism of the Rest The West is supposedly exceptional because it is different (read superior) in everything to other regions, countries, and races. In reality, every country is exceptional in some sense. This proposition is similar to the propositions of absolute and comparative advantage used by economists to explain international trade. If only the West was exceptional, it would not need to trade with the inferior countries of the Rest. Even within the West, individual countries are exceptional in one way or another. America is exceptional in making Big Macs, Canada is exceptional in making poutine, Spain is exceptional in making paella, Italy is exceptional in making pizza, England is exceptional in making fish and chips, Scotland is exceptional in making haggis, and Greece is exceptional in making souvlaki. In the Rest, Iraq is exceptional in making “pacha” (boiled head of lamb), Palestine is exceptional in making falafel,

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Lebanon is exceptional in making hummus, India is exceptional in making vindaloo, China is exceptional in making Szechwan chilli chicken, and Russia is exceptional in making pelmeni. It seems, however, that the producer of Big Macs is exceptionally exceptional, which gives it the right to bomb back to the Stone Age, the producer of pacha. But then we have to bear in mind that pacha is greasy and hostile to the human heart, which means that the benevolent producer of Big Macs bombed the production centres of pacha to protect the people of Iraq. The same argument goes for booze. America is exceptional in making Jack Daniels, Russia is exceptional in making vodka, Germany is exceptional in making beer, England is exceptional in making gin, Scotland is exceptional in making whisky, France is exceptional in making pernod, Greece is exceptional in making ouzo, and Iraq is exceptional in making arak. In this case, however, it is arguable that the Iraqi arak is more exceptional than Jack Daniels. Why is it then that the country that produces a less exceptional drink (America) has the right to bomb back to the Stone Age a country that produces a more exceptional drink (arak)? Well, because America is the leader of the West, while Iraq is a defenceless member of the Rest that once entertained the idea of deviating slightly from the rules set by the West. On the other hand, it could be that America and its Western allies bombed the arak factories to protect the people of Iraq from the hazardous consumption of a drink with a high concentration of alcohol. An interesting comparison is presented by Al-Nakeeb (2022) between an exceptional country from the West, A, and an unexceptional country from the Rest, B. Naturally, A is a democracy whereas B is a dictatorship. Country A imprisons (per million people) six times as many people as country B. Country A has impoverished tens of millions, while country B has lifted nearly all its people from poverty. Country A squanders its resources on wars, while country B uses its resources to build and upgrade its infrastructure. Country A takes from the poor to give to the rich, but country B does not. Country A is generous to bankers and big corporations and stingy with its citizens, but this is not true in country B. Education in country A is prohibitively expensive, but it is free in country B. Country A has dysfunctional healthcare—as a result, its COVID-19 fatalities (per million people) are 550 times those of country B. The police of country A kill unarmed citizens for no reason in broad daylight, which does not happen in country B. The growth rate of country A has fallen to a third of what it used to be sixty years ago, while the growth rate of

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country B has risen more than three-fold over the same period. Periodic banking crises and recessions plague country A, while country B has not experienced a single recession in over forty years. Well, the exceptional Western country (A) is America, whereas the unexceptional country from the Rest (B) is China. Surely, both countries are exceptional. America is exceptional in terms of impoverishing and shooting its citizens while China is exceptional in taking its people out of poverty. The Chinese development miracle was not realized by adopting the Western economic system but a system of mixed economy in which the state plays a vital role in the presence of a vibrant private sector.

9.3 Western Exceptionalism as a Source of Privileges Western exceptionalism allows the West certain privileges and powers that countries of the Rest are not allowed to have. The West can set rules that it does not observe—exceptionalism grants exemption from the rules. The West is exceptional, and this is why it can use double standards. For example, when Iraq invaded Kuwait (which was an act of aggression) it was bombed back to the Stone Age, but whenever Israel invades Lebanon and Gaza and bomb Syria, such an act is regarded as self-defence, and the American Veto is used in the Security Council to shield Israel from condemnation. When Russia annexed the Donbas, outrage was expressed, but when Israel annexed the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, it was only reclaiming the “Land of David”. Even worse, a country that does not condemn Russia does not belong to the international community, but anyone condemning Israel is labelled anti-Semite, which means the end of his/her career, with a possible prison sentence (if in doubt, ask Jeremy Corbyn and some other former members of the British Labour Party). The West is so exceptional that it takes an attitude that “you are either with us or with the terrorists” as George Bush Junior once said. These days, if you do not agree with the Western narrative on the proxy war in Ukraine, you are (at best) a “Putin apologist”. Western exceptionalism has important implications. The first is that the West can do things that the Rest is not allowed to do. If any member of the Rest does anything that the West does not like, this country will be put under sanctions, even though Western countries are not put under sanctions for doing the same thing. The second is that exceptionalism provides privileges that the countries of the Rest do not enjoy. The third

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is that the West enables its friends to get away with murder by providing military and diplomatic protection. This leads to implication number four, which is that friends of the West (both countries and individuals) are “good guys” but those who are not so friendly to the West are “bad guys”. Number five is that even if the West does something bad to another country (such as invasion, bombing, and regime change), that country must be grateful and welcoming. Friends of the West are given special privileges because they embrace Western values and face a common enemy emanating somewhere from the Rest. The privileges include committing illegal acts and crimes against humanity. In early October 2022, the British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, was speaking at an event of the Conservative Friends of Israel when he described Israel as “a beacon of democracy, liberalism, openness, tolerance in a part of the world where that has not been the history” (Harpin, 2022). In response, one can only say the following: “you cannot be serious, Jim, at least about tolerance because Israel believes in and practices collective punishment”. The following are some factual examples of events that demonstrate the special privileges assumed and exercised by the West and its friends: . In March 2022, the International Criminal Court ordered Russia to stop the war in Ukraine. When Russia did not, Putin was accused of disrespecting international law. When Bush and Blair launched a brutal assault on the people of Iraq in 2003, the ICC did not call on them to stop the war—presumably because they were defending their countries against “Iraqi terrorists”. . If you have a “Western name” (such as George, Tony, and John, in reference to the leaders of the US, UK, and Australia who launched the 2003 assault on the people of Iraq), you will never be indicted by the ICC, even if you commit a horrendous act. It would be a different story if you were called Mohammed, Slobodan, or Abayomi, in reference to the fact that those indicted by the ICC are exclusively Arabs, Slavs, and Africans. I must say, however, that you could be called Charles and be sentenced by the ICC if you are a black African with a fake Western name (in reference to Charles Taylor, a Liberian politician who was sentenced to 50 years behind bars).

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. Russia is committing war crimes by bombing civilian targets in Ukraine. America and its Western allies did not commit war crimes by bombing weddings and funerals in Iraq and Afghanistan. . As tragic as it was, the death of a young woman while in the custody of Iranian police triggered outrage and fresh sanctions on the people of Iran. For the West, that was a violation of human rights. However, no one called for sanctions to be imposed on America for the numerous fatal shootings by a brutal police force of mostly unarmed African Americans. No one called for the imposition of sanctions on America following the killing of George Floyd. The UN did not call for an international investigation into the murder of George Floyd but called for an international investigation into the death of Masha Amiri while she was in the custody of the Iranian police. . In Iran, China, Russia, etc., police crackdown on protestors is a violation of human rights. Similar (perhaps more brutal) action in the US, and elsewhere in the West, is necessary to preserve law and order and protect property. . When America and its allies conduct provocative military exercises not far away from the North Korean borders, this is an act of selfdefence. When North Korea tests a missile, it is an act of aggression for which it should be punished. North Korean missiles and nuclear capabilities are keeping it safe from facing the same fate as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and indeed the same fate as North Korea in 1950–1953 when it was raised to the ground by the US Airforce. . Russia committed a war crime by targeting and destroying a bomb shelter in Ukraine. America did not commit a war crime by bombing the Amiriya shelter in Baghdad on 13 February 1991, incinerating over 300 civilians. That was a mistake committed in the process of defending the motherland. . Russia has been accused of looting Ukrainian wheat. It is fine, however, for America to loot Syrian oil and wheat, and this is the main reason why US troops are present in the oil rich part of Syria. America’s looting of the Central Bank of Iraq was also an acceptable act in the process of defending America. . Russia annexed parts of Ukraine after “sham” referenda, which should be condemned and the annexation never recognized. However, Britain annexed the Argentine Malvinas Islands (otherwise known as the Falklands) a long time ago. During the period 10–11 March 2013, a referendum was held where the Islanders were asked

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whether or not they supported the continuation of their status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom in view of Argentina’s call for negotiations on the islands’ sovereignty. On a turnout of 92%, 99.8% voted to remain a British territory, with only three votes against. That was not a sham, even though the voters were British settlers. According to the West, the Crimea is not part of Russia and Taiwan is not part of China. However, the Malvinas, Gibraltar, Diego Garcia, and Northern Ireland are parts of the UK, whereas Hawaii and Guam are parts of the US. Likewise, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank are parts of Israel. Russia should not object to Ukraine joining NATO. America objected to Cuba joining the Warsaw pact in the 1960s. A nuclear war nearly broke out in the 1960s because the Russians put missiles in Cuba, in America’s backyard. At the same time, America had missiles in Turkey, Russia’s backyard. America and its Western allies intervene in, bomb, and invade other countries on the grounds of “national security” and “defending the homeland”, in accordance with the notorious Chaney doctrine, even though those countries pose no threat whatsoever to the West. Russia, on the other hand, has no right to express concerns about the westward expansion of NATO, even though Russia was raised to the ground twice by attacks from Western Europe, led by two Western dictators: Napoleon and Hitler. It is fine for the West to supply weapons to Ukraine, but Iran and North Korea (two enemies of the West) are condemned for allegedly supplying weapons to Russia. Just imagine the fate of any country that would have helped Iraq defend itself against unprovoked attack by the coalition of the willing (of course, the Russian attack on Ukraine was unprovoked, but the Anglo-American attack on Iraq was provoked). We all recall how Laos and Cambodia were bombed during the Vietnam War just because the US military accused the two countries of harbouring Viet Kong fighters (terrorists, of course). It is fine for America to surround China with military bases located in Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and elsewhere. When China struck a deal with the Solomon Islands to allow Chinese naval vessels to dock there, America, Australia, and New Zealand shouted “foul” and the last two claimed that the agreement was a threat to national

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security. However, it is fine for Australian and American naval vessels and planes to patrol the South China Sea very close to the Chinese territorial waters. Just imagine if China or Russia decided to send vessels to patrol the Gulf of Mexico, or if they put troops in Cuba or Venezuela. America has the Monroe Doctrine whereby no country is allowed to mess around with the Western hemisphere, America’s backyard. Russia should not complain about the expansion of NATO eastwards. China has no right to change the law in Hong Kong, even though Hong Kong is part of China that was taken away by British imperialism for 150 years at gun point. Whatever a Western country does within its territory (or the annexed territories such as the Malvinas) is an internal matter that no other country has the right to interfere with. For example, Argentina has no right to express a view on what Britain does in the Malvinas, but Britain has the right to tell China how to behave in Hong Kong. Those who raise British and American flags in the Hong Kong Parliament and use Molotov cocktails against the police are “prodemocracy activists”, and the same goes for those who demonstrated in Tiananmen Square in 1989. These “pro-democracy activists” are supported, financed, and given asylum when necessary. The people of the Donbas, on the other hand, are “pro-Russian separatists” who deserve to be shelled by the Ukrainian army for the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Friends of the West can commit crimes against humanity, but this privilege is denied to the people who are not in the good books of the West. In fact, if the West does not like a leader, they will manufacture evidence of some atrocity. Remember that the West has the divine right to determine who rules every country in the Rest. Therefore, the Chinese authorities are committing genocide against the Uyghur Muslims but the generals of Myanmar did not commit genocide against the Rohingya Muslims when Aung San Suu Kyi was in power (she defended the oppression of Muslims by the military before they turned against her). Now that she is no longer in power, the Muslims of Myanmar story has become a crime against humanity. The BBC (the Bush-Blair Corporation, according to George Galloway) and other Western media outlets have been exposing numerous war crimes committed by Russia against civilians in

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Ukraine. Not a single war crime was exposed in Iraq by the same media outlets. Jeremy Bowen, a BBC correspondent, reported from both Iraq and Ukraine. He saw war crimes in Ukraine, but not in Iraq. No one called for putting the US, UK, and other partners in crime (including Ukraine) on sanctions for the brutal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The West can impose sanctions on other countries, but those countries should not respond. Russia has been subject to a devastating set of sanctions, but when Putin decided to reduce or cut gas supplies to Europe (or demand payments in rouble) Russia was accused of “weaponizing gas supplies”. The West is in the habit of assigning labels to people in other countries. The Ukrainians fighting against the Russian invasion are “heroes” and “freedom fighters”, but the Iraqis who fought against the Anglo-American invading forces were “terrorists”. Those who terrorized Iraqi women and children by breaking doors at dawn (and the torturers of Abu Ghraib) were the “men and women in uniform who fought brilliantly to defend the homeland”. The West behaves as if it has the right to decide who runs which country for how long. Thus Gadafi had to go because all of a sudden he was no longer in the good books. This is why one of the favourite hobbies of the West is regime change. However, the West has been accusing Russia of interfering with national elections in the UK, US, France, etc. According to the Western narrative, Gadafi had to go because no one should be in power for that long. However, it is fine for the head of state of one Western country (and its former colonies) to remain in that position for 70 years, living lavishly at the expense of taxpayers. When the West invades another country, it expects to be met with flowers and gratitude for the “liberation”. Even worse, the invaded country is expected to be pay for the “liberation”. Donald Trump once said that the Iraqis should supply the US with free oil for 100 years. In May 2003, the occupation forces started to pay the salaries of Iraqi teachers and civil servants out of what had been Iraqi frozen assets. One American “patriot” commented by saying that we (America) should not pay those guys (the Iraqis) because “they fought against us”. For the West, the good guys and bad guys change over time and across space. Saddam was a good guy when he launched a war on

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Iran in 1980, but he became a bad guy when he invaded Kuwait in August 1990. In Iraq, the Sunnis are the bad guys and the Shias are the good guys. In Syria, the Sunnis are the good guys and the Shias are the bad guys. In Syria, Assad is a bad guy (hence he must go), which makes Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Syria good guys because they fight against Assad. When American and British military personnel committed atrocities against Iraqi civilians in Abu Ghraib Prison and the Basra Central Prison, respectively, that was a case of “few rotten apples”. Russia, on the other hand, is accused of committing atrocities in Ukraine in which everyone, from the foot soldiers to the top leadership, is complicit. The West uses double standards with respect to terrorism. On 21 August 2022, the daughter of Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin was killed by a car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow. The West did not condemn that act of terrorism because she was a Putin supporter. However, the West made a big deal of the attack on Salman Rushdie and the alleged poisoning by Russian agents of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Iraq was bombed back to the Stone Age because of WMDs that it did not have (as confirmed by weapon inspectors). Iran has been under sanctions because the Iranians are allegedly trying to make nuclear weapons. North Korea is condemned for testing missiles. Israel, on the other hand, has 200 or so nuclear weapons, yet it is not even subject to inspection by the IAEA. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, it was (correctly) put on Chapter VII of the UN charter, which empowers the Security Council to take coercive action to reverse an act of aggression. Israel has been occupying Arab land and illegally building settlements since 1967. Yet, no action has been taken because Israel was put on Chapter VI, which requires states to settle their disputes by peaceful means. Friends of the West are begged to correct wrongdoing. Countries that the West does not like are forced to correct wrongdoing by using lethal force. The West has an attitude of ambivalence towards the occurrence of coup d’etat, depending on the deposed and replacement. The 2014 coup d’etat in Ukraine was engineered and blessed by the West. When something like this happens in Africa and the replacement tries to curtail Western influence in that country, the West calls for

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the “restoration of democracy” and the use of sanctions towards the achievement of that objective. America has been using its Veto power in the Security Council to shield Israel from international condemnation. When Russia used its Veto power to shield Russia from condemnation, Russia was accused of “abusing its Veto power”. The Nobel Prize for peace is typically given to “peace activists” and “pro-democracy opposition figures” who fight against the tyrannical governments of the Rest. Otherwise, it is given to war criminals from the West. The Prize was not awarded to Ghandi but to Henry Kissinger and Menachem Begin. It will never be awarded to the likes of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange for exposing war crimes and violations of human rights committed by Western governments. I hope that I will not see the day when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded jointly to Tony Blair, George Bush Junior, and Dick Chaney for promoting peace in the Middle East. When the USS Cole was attacked in 2000, while it was on its way to blockade Iraq and kill more Iraqis, that was an act of terrorism. When Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty in 1967 and killed scores of American sailors, that was “an honest mistake”. In 2013, the presidential plane of Evo Morales was forced down while en route from Moscow to Lapaz. Just imagine what would happen if the plane of a Western leader is forced down in Latin America. This is how John Pilger describes what the reaction would be: “Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America …. Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the ‘international community’, as the governments of the west call themselves. To a chorus of baying indignation from Whitehall to Washington, Brussels to Madrid, heroic Special Forces would be dispatched to rescue their leader and, as sport, smash up the source of such flagrant international gangsterism. Editorials would cheer them on, perhaps reminding readers that this kind of piracy was exhibited by the German Reich in the 1930s” (Pilger, 2013). When someone called Abdulla drives a bus through a crowd, that is (correctly, I must say) described as an act of terrorism. If the same act is committed by a John or a James (even Tobias), it would not be a “terror-related attack” but rather an act committed by someone with mental issues. Even worse, when a US president wearing a tuxedo and sipping Champaign (or being entertained by a female intern in

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the Oval Office) orders the bombing of a milk factory in Sudan or a wedding in Afghanistan, this is an act that falls under a legitimate “war on terror”. These examples, which are undisputable and widely documented, show that the West gives itself and its friends, most notably Israel, special privileges. Western countries, led by the US, think and behave as if they are above international law, which is used selectively to serve their interests. The supremacist behaviour of the West has always produced benefits at the expense of damage inflicted on countries of the Rest. The criminality of the West is seen in, amongst others, invasions, bombings, regime change, rendition, and intervention in domestic affairs. The motivation for the West to indulge in various acts of aggression against the Rest is potential financial and strategic gains, while the true explanation lies in racism and social Darwinism. The violation of other countries’ sovereignty is a hobby of the West. Even though the Iraqi parliament has voted unanimously to demand “Yankees go home”, American bases are still there. Even worse, the Americans use those bases to assassinate foreign dignitaries arriving in Iraq on official visits. This kind of criminal behaviour is not consistent with respect for international law, which the West brags about. The West is exceptional in its ability to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity and indulge in plunder on a massive scale. Over the past 500 years, Western imperialist countries committed horrendous acts of aggression in all corners of the world. The master imperialist country, Britain, has invaded 171 of the world’s 193 countries that are currently UN member states, or nine out of ten of all countries. This is quite a record. In all of these countries, including America, atrocities were committed and plunder ran on a massive scale. British imperialism masterminded the art of invading other countries by using soldiers from other countries. For example, the initial British invasion of Iraq in 1914 was carried out mostly by soldiers recruited from India and Nepal. France did the same by using conscripts from its African colonies to fight its colonial wars in Asia and elsewhere. This is truly exceptional. For the past 500 years, the West has been involved in plunder and war crimes against the Rest. Mattei and Nader (2008) deal comprehensively with Western plunder and how it relates to the alleged rule of law. They explore how the rule of law has been used as a powerful political weapon by Western countries in order to legitimize plunder, which they define as

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“the practice of violent extraction by stronger political actors victimizing weaker ones”. The book provides global examples of plunder, arguing that neoliberalism has been used as an “economic engine of plunder”, which is certainly true of the rape of Russia in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advent of a drunken Western puppet called Boris Yeltsin. Kallio and Norton (2022) talk about a meeting that was held in Switzerland in July 2022 in which representatives of Western governments and corporations planned a series of harsh neoliberal policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, with the intension of putting the country on sale. They even suggest that, starting in 2017, representatives of Western governments and corporations quietly held annual conferences in which they discussed ways to profit from the civil war they were fuelling in Ukraine. Therefore, plunder has not stopped. These days, the West does not use armies for plunder (even though this has not stopped completely) but uses the IMF, World Bank, and other international financial institutions for this purpose. The secret weapon is neoliberalism applied in the form of IMF and World Bank conditionality provisions. In September 2022, Vladimir Putin summarized Western plunder succinctly as follows (Hindustan Times, 2022). The West … began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages, and then followed the slave trade, the genocide of Indian tribes in America, the plunder of India, of Africa, the wars of England and France against China … What they did was hooking entire nations on drugs, deliberately exterminate entire ethnic groups …. For the sake of land and resources, they [the West] hunted people like animals. This is contrary to the very nature of man, truth, freedom and justice.

The genocide committed by Little Belgium in Congo is only one case of a very long list of Western crimes against humanity. Jones (2004) presents a comprehensive review of genocide and war crimes committed by the West, mostly against the Rest, but sometimes against other parts of the West. These include German genocide in Southern Africa, North American Indian Residential Schools, the Anglo-American bombardment of German cities, atrocities committed by the French army in Algeria, American massacres from the plains wars to Indonesia, American crimes in Vietnam, the US intervention in Chile, the West’s role in human

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rights violations in the Bangladesh war of independence, American genocide in Iraq, and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Even little Holland committed war crimes during the 1948–49 repression of the Indonesian Revolution. In short, you name it, they have done it.

9.4

The Rise of the Rest

The rise of the Rest is, as Zakaria (2008) puts it, is the third great power shift in modern history. The first was the rise of the West in the fifteenth century, which produced the contemporary, Western-dominated world. The second shift was the rise of the US, which took place in the closing years of the nineteenth century. This shift meant a change in the leadership of the West from Britain and France to America. Inspired by the Enlightenment, France was the dominant imperialist power in the eighteenth century, but in the nineteenth century Britain took over, thanks to the Industrial Revolution. In the twentieth century, America assumed the leading role, thanks to two major wars. The third great power shift, which we are witnessing today, is the rise of the Rest. Two observations can be readily made about Zakaria’s identification of the three great power shifts. The first is that he attributes everything good in the contemporary world to the rise of the West, thus neglecting the contributions of other civilizations, as he refers to “science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the industrial and agricultural revolutions”. The second is that even following the first shift, countries from the Rest (most notably China and India) had by far larger economies than those of Western countries. Figure 9.2 shows the five largest economies in terms of GDP (converted at the PPP-consistent exchange rates) in 1500, 1700, 1820, 1890, 1930, and 1980—the figures were obtained from Cox (2015). Until 1820, either India or China had the largest economy in the world. Britain, the biggest imperialist power before the rise of America, did not appear in the top five until 1820 despite the plunder of India. By 1890, the US appeared as having the largest economy in the world, but China and India remained in numbers two and three, respectively. By 1930, India was so impoverished by British plunder that it had a smaller economy than that of Britain. By 1980, China and India were no longer in the top five. In Fig. 9.3, we can see the five largest economies in selected years between 2010 and 2050, the period that coincides with the rise of China—the figures for 2030 and 2050 are forecasts from PWC (2017).

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economy; in 2016, it was 1.1 times the US economy, but this number is expected to rise to 1.6 in 2030 and 1.7 in 2050. China’s economic superiority to the US is not only reflected in the size of the economy because China outperforms the US in terms of almost every economic indicator. China is a bigger exporter and importer, both in dollar amounts and as a percentage of GDP. China has a bigger sector of manufacturing industry and produces more than twice as many cars as the US. China surpasses the US in the production and export of electricity. China has a lower degree of indebtedness and by far less people below the poverty line (Moosa, 2020). This is why Zakaria (2008) argues that “along every other dimension—industrial, financial, social, cultural—the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance”. The West, particularly the leader of the West, cannot accept a change in the status quo (just like the refusal of Trump and his Brazilian version, Bolsonaro, to admit electoral defeat). This is why the West has 2016

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been hostile to China economically, diplomatically, and militarily. Donald Trump sees China as a major economic adversary. In an interview, Trump described China as “an economic enemy” that has “challenged American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity” (Stracqulursi, 2017). Gros (2019) suggests that what is happening is a “struggle for technological and geo-strategic dominance”. Based on this proposition, a plausible explanation for the standoff can be found by invoking the notion of the Thucydides trap, which holds that war breaks out when the incumbent power is challenged by a rising power (for a detailed analysis, see Moosa, 2020). Zakaria (2010) describes the act of launching a trade war on China as being “at best pointless posturing and at worst dangerous demagoguery”, arguing that the trade war is “part of growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the US that misses the real challenge of China’s next phase of development”. He goes on to say that the real challenge is that “China is beginning to move up the value chain into industries and jobs that were until recently considered the prerogative of the Western world”, suggesting that this challenge “is not being produced by Beijing’s currency manipulation or hidden subsidies but by strategic investment and hard work”. The rise of the Rest brings with it a better model for international co-operation and development as represented by the Beijing Consensus, which stands in direct contrast to the Western Washington Consensus whereby the West preaches its destructive economic system and prescribes the privatize, liberalize, and deregulate doctrine. Instead of prescribing rigid recommendations for the problems of distant nations, the Beijing Consensus is pragmatic (much like China in the post-1979 world) and recognizes the need for flexibility in solving multifarious problems. It is inherently focused on innovation, while simultaneously emphasizing ideals such as equitable development and a “peaceful rise” (Ramo, 2004). In this respect, Harper (2019) says the following: The Chinese economic model, commonly known as the ‘Beijing Consensus’, has been seen by many developing nations as an alternative to the more established model of the Washington Consensus. It is the Chinese model and its wider appeal that has played a notable role in furthering China’s influence in the African states.

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Harper also points out that the Chinese economic model represents the latest phase of the East Asian model of state capitalism. Overall, therefore, the rise of the Rest is a positive development that should be accepted by the West for the benefit of both, the West and the Rest.

9.5

Closing Remarks: Is the West Exceptional?

The West is allegedly exceptional because Western countries cherish democracy. In reality, Western countries do not care about democracy but rather about capitalism and the power of the oligarchy. Capitalism erodes democracy because democracy is the rule of people whereas capitalism is the rule of the oligarchy. A two-party system is not democratic, and a system without proportional representation is not democratic. There is no democracy in a system where an individual (an elected politician) can take the country to war without parliamentary approval and against the wishes of the masses. The West does not care about democracy at home or abroad in the countries invaded or tampered with. The West has repeatedly undermined or conspired to overthrow democratically elected leaders who do not say “how high” when the West says “jump”. The West is allegedly exceptional because Western countries follow the rule of law, they have independent judiciary, and they are transparent with little corruption. In reality, the rule of law applies only to the poor and vulnerable, not to the rich and powerful. The judiciary is not independent—if in doubt, ask Julian Assange, a political prisoner who has been held in a London dungeon since April 2019. Corruption exists in the West on a grand scale, particularly in the financial sector. Political and regulatory capture is corruption. When politicians use their positions to enrich themselves, that is corruption. When MPs claim overblown expenses, that is corruption. Corruption is clearly visible in the revolving door between the government and the private sector (particularly finance, the military industry, and the pharmaceutical industry). The West is allegedly exceptional because it observes human rights. In reality, Western countries are hypocritical and schizophrenic with respect to human rights, using the violation of human rights as a geopolitical tool to attack countries run by people they do not like, then proceed to abuse human rights in those countries on a massive scale. The West has been violating human rights in other countries for the last 500 years. This does not mean that the West observes human rights at home because the Western economic system hinges upon the abuse of human rights.

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Western countries have abused every right in the international declaration of human rights. There is no place for human rights in an Orwellian state using mass surveillance against its own citizens. The West is supposedly exceptional because of its unique contribution to science and technology—even worse, the West is supposedly the only contributor to science and technology. This allegation is often made by bigots and ignorant people (from both the West and the Rest) to convey a racist message that is refuted by the history of humanity. In reality, the development of science and technology has been more like a relay race in which the team members include Arabs, Persians, Indians, Chinese, Russians, Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans. Western science and technology would not have reached the level where it is now if it were not for the contribution of migrants from the Rest. Is the West exceptional? It is, but for the wrong reasons. The West has perfected imperialism, militarism, racism, slavery, subjugation, social Darwinism, plunder, false flag attacks, regime change, collective punishment, interventionism, exploitation, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity—the victims being countries of the Rest. Domestically, Western countries, to varying degrees, have adopted an economic system that produces poverty and grotesque inequality. Western countries have created an Orwellian environment by using the pretext of national security to undermine civil liberties. Is the West narcissistic? Yes—just read what the EU Foreign Policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on 13 October (PIndia, 2022): Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Aggregate works are the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity, and social cohesion that humankind has been able to build. There are three things together and here bridges may be the representation of the beautiful things intellectual life and well-being. The rest of the world is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden. The gardeners should take care of it.

I wonder if he meant that the non-European parts of the West are also jungles. The Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, strongly condemned Borel’s statement, saying that the “garden” of Europe was

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built by looting the “jungle” of the rest of the world during the colonial regime. She also said that “Europe built that ‘garden’ through the barbaric plundering of the ‘jungle’”. On the spot, Maria! The dominance of the West is being eroded by the rise of the Rest and because Western ideas and guiding philosophy have reached their use-by date. Spinney (2018) argues that history tells us that all cultures have their sell-by dates and that political strife, crippling inequality and climate change mean that the West’s time is now up. She suggests that the West might already be living on borrowed time. Western ideas and the very concept of the West are narcissistic and racist. Those who identify the West as countries with white Christian majorities and call themselves Westerners (not British, American or Australian) are both narcissistic and racist, even if they may not realize that. After all, D’Souza (1995) argues that racism is “so deeply ingrained in Western consciousness that it is now ineradicable”. The W-word is as racists as the N-word, and this is why it should be outlawed or at least assigned to the dustbin of history.

References Al-Nakeeb, B. (2022). The Imapct of Moral Economics: Improving Lives, Democracy and Humanity’s Future. New York (private publication). Becker, J. (1986). Is Western Art Music Superior? Musical Quarterly, 72, 341– 359. Cox, W. (2015, September 21). 500 Years of GDP: A Tale of Two Countries. New Geography. D’Souza, D. (1995). Is Racism a Western Idea? https://www.aei.org/researchproducts/speech/is-racism-a-western-idea/ Gros, D. (2019). This is Not a Trade War, it is a Struggle for Technological and Geo-Strategic Dominance. CESifo Forum, 20, 21–26. Harper, T. (2019, August 27). The Chinese Model in Africa and its Wider Challenge. https://theasiadialogue.com/2019/08/27/the-chinesemodel-in-africa-and-its-wider-challenge/ Harpin, L. (2022, October 3). Liz Truss: ‘I’m a Huge Zionist and Huge Supporter of Israel’. Jewish News. Hindustan Times. (2022, September 30). ‘The Plunder of India’: Putin Slams West as Russia Annexes Ukraine’s 4 Regions. Jones, A. (Ed.). (2004). Genocide, War Crimes and the West: History and Complicity. Z Books.

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Kallio, J., & Norton, B. (2022, August 1). West Prepares to Plunder Post-War Ukraine with Neoliberal Shock Therapy: Privatization, Deregulation, Slashing Worker Protections. Multipolarista. Mattei, U., & Nader, L. (2008). Plunder: When the Rule of Law is Illegal. Wiley. Moosa, I. A. (2020). The Thucydides Trap as an Alternative Explanation for the US-China Trade War. Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies, 12, 42–55. Pilger, J. (2013, July 4). Forcing Down Evo Morales’s Plane was an Act of Air Piracy. The Guardian. PIndia. (2022, October 14). Europe is Garden, Rest of the World is Jungle. PWC. (2017, February). The Long View: How will the Global Economic Order Change by 2050. Ramo, J. C. (2004). The Beijing Consensus. Foreign Policy Centre. Rocard, M. (2013, May 30). What is the International Community? Project Syndicate. Spinney, L. (2018, January 17). End of Days: Is Western Civilisation on the Brink of Collapse? New Scientist. Stracqulursi, V. (2017, November 9). 10 Times Trump Attacked China and its Trade Relations with the US. ABC News. TRT World. (2022, October 28). Qatar Summons German Envoy over Interior Minister’s World Cup Remarks. Vidal-Naquet, P. (2022, April 5). Les Crimes de L’armée Française en Algérie. LDH Toulon. Zakaria, F. (2008). The Rise of the Rest. https://fareedzakaria.com/columns/ 2008/05/12/the-rise-of-the-rest Zakaria, F. (2010, October 7). The Real Challenge from China: Its People, Not its Currency. Time.

Index

A Abu Ghraib Prison, 31, 41, 133, 136, 280 African civilization, 17 Algebra, 176, 179, 183, 189–192, 199 American democracy, 74, 76, 78, 79 American Dream, 255 American Empire, 34, 214 American exceptionalism, 27–34, 36 American imperialism, 34, 60, 61 American Revolution, 27 Amerika über alles , viii, 28, 32, 104 Anarchy, 69, 94 Ancient Egypt, 179, 183, 184, 190 Ancient Greece, 6, 92 Arbitrary detention, 98, 101, 110 Aristotle’s doctrine, 52 Auschwitz, 139, 146 Auxiliary West, 19, 20, 24 B Babylonian astronomy, 187

Bail-in, 113, 230 Bail-out, 113, 126, 230 Balfour declaration, 35, 107, 217, 223 Banana republics, 27, 28, 62, 63, 265 Basra Central Prison, 105, 280 Beijing Consensus, 212, 225, 287 Boer War, 139, 219, 220 Bribery, 110, 112, 122, 123, 248, 250 British democracy, 64, 72, 80, 83 British East India Company, 215, 219 British Empire, viii, 15, 34, 43, 106, 134, 183, 194, 213–220, 223 Buddhist civilization, 18 Business freedom, 249 C Campaign donations, 75, 118, 126, 250 Capitalism, 61, 121, 125, 198, 209–211, 216, 224, 230–232, 234, 241, 242, 254, 255, 257, 259–261, 284, 288

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0

293

294

INDEX

Chief whip, 82 Chinese civilization, 17 CIA, 28, 41, 59, 61, 62, 99, 100, 109, 132, 133, 137, 210 Civilization of Sub-Saharan Africa, 18 Civil rights, 31, 149 Clash of civilizations, 49, 206, 208 Classical legacy, 17 Cleft Countries, 18 Coalition of the willing, 39, 41, 50, 135, 137, 205, 277 Cold War, 3, 6, 11, 204, 205, 209, 211, 212 Collective punishment, 64, 85, 105, 107, 267, 275, 289 Colonization, 6, 16, 22, 218 Commodification, 145, 157, 160, 164, 241 Communism, 11, 233 Concentration camp, viii, 64, 96, 137, 139, 217, 219–221 Conditionality, 210, 229, 283 Consumerism, 221, 223 Core West, 19, 20, 24, 107 Corruption, vii, 44, 45, 47, 53, 54, 60, 64, 91, 92, 95, 110, 112–115, 118–124, 126, 141, 160, 247, 249, 266, 288 Corruption perception index, 116 Cost-push inflation, 236 Counter-law, 98 Counter-terrorism, 99–101 COVID-19, 96, 136, 144, 165, 273 Crimes against humanity, 35, 57, 269, 275, 278, 282, 283, 289 Crusades, 180, 195, 204, 247 Cuban Democracy Act, 63

D Deep state, 83, 84 Defamation, 149, 150

Deindustrialization, 83, 230, 254, 256 Democracy, viii, 6, 7, 9, 10, 23, 27, 28, 33, 34, 41, 51–53, 57–67, 69, 70, 73–76, 78–81, 84–86, 94, 133, 135, 151, 208–212, 214, 222, 235, 256–258, 261, 273, 275, 288 Democracy index, 67, 68, 81 Derby’s Dose, 139, 140 Deregulation, 45, 113, 114, 145, 229, 231, 234, 238, 239, 246, 247, 253, 254 Deutschland über alless , viii, 29, 32 Dictatorship, 60, 64, 69, 96, 208, 211, 257, 273 Domestic surveillance, 84 Domestic terrorism, 99 Double standards, 29, 35, 37, 63, 145, 274, 280 E Economic freedom, 52, 53, 91, 114, 229, 230, 241, 245, 246 Economic freedom index, 246, 248 Egalitarianism, 28 Election manipulation, 71 Electoral College, 76, 79 Electoral malpractices, 71 Environmental regulation, 233 Ethnic cleansing, 36, 107 European Court of Human Rights, 138 European exceptionalism, 33, 35–37 Exemptionalism, viii, 29, 30, 38, 102 Extraordinary rendition, 98, 100 F Fascism, 51, 213, 257, 258 Ferguson Thesis, 213, 221 Feudalism, 33, 212, 260, 261 Finance-dominated capitalism, 254

INDEX

Finance-led capitalism, 254 Financial freedom, 249 Financialization, 83, 114, 160, 161, 198, 252, 254–256, 260 Financial risk, 163, 255 First Amendment, 99, 149, 150 First Opium War, 215 Fiscal health, 248 Flawed democracy, 67, 82 Fourth Amendment, 99 Fourth Geneva Convention, 105, 107 Fractional-reserve banking, 236 Freedom of expression, 101, 133, 145, 148 Freedom of speech, 65, 75, 99, 131, 133, 145–151, 246 Free-market capitalism, 209–211, 231, 257 Free-market doctrine, 119, 152, 241, 259 Free trade, 51, 214–216, 218, 231, 249 Free world, 27, 41, 102, 132 Fukuyama thesis, 209, 212 Full democracy, 69, 81

G Geneva conventions, 102, 138 Genocide, 20, 140, 278, 283, 289 Gettysburg address, 28 Gillard coup, 73 Globalization, 167, 212, 213, 231, 239, 259 Global North, 12 Global South, 12, 13 Great Depression, 153, 232–234, 238, 242 Great Patriotic War, 270 Greco-Roman traditions, 5 Guantanamo Bay, 99, 136, 137

295

H Harmony, 52, 58, 151 Heliocentric theory, 183 Helping-hand theory, 123 Hindu civilization, 18, 19 Homeless, 45, 46, 124, 161, 162, 244, 258 Housing affordability, 161 Human development index, 14–16 Human rights, vii, viii, 29, 38, 42, 47, 52–54, 64, 96, 99, 101, 107, 109, 110, 131–134, 138, 140, 141, 144, 147, 148, 152–155, 157, 160, 162, 166–168, 239, 246, 247, 252, 253, 256, 261, 269, 270, 272, 276, 281, 284, 288, 289 Huntington Thesis, 203 I IMF, 16, 22, 24, 210, 229, 235, 247, 249, 283 Imperialism, vii, 20, 24, 34, 37, 132, 166, 180, 183, 184, 195, 213, 214, 217, 221–223, 231, 232, 245, 249, 256, 259, 261, 278, 282, 289 Incest, 50, 267 Indigenous science, 180 Indispensable nation, 27 Individualism, 17, 28, 176, 233, 243, 259 Infant mortality, 14–16, 31 Insider trading, 122, 245, 259 International Atomic Energy Agency, 64 International community, 42, 59, 271, 272, 274, 281 International Congress of Mathematicians, 193 International conventions against torture, 138

296

INDEX

International Criminal Court, 10, 275 International law, 22, 28, 30, 33–35, 40, 64, 99, 101–104, 107, 110, 272, 275, 282 International rule of law, viii, 101, 107 Investment freedom, 249 Iron Curtain, 6, 11 Islamic civilization, 188, 191, 204, 206–208, 224, 225

J Judeo-Christian ethics, 2 Judeo-Christian values, 2 Judicial independence, 54, 91, 92, 107–112, 118, 125, 126, 137, 235

K Keynesian economics, 234, 238 Kickbacks, 110, 112, 114, 115, 257

L Labour freedom, 246, 249 Laissez-faire, 28 Latin American civilization, 18 Legal corruption, 123, 141 Liberty, 7, 9, 27, 28, 33, 34, 53 LIBOR manipulation scandal, 142 Life expectancy, 14–16, 31, 135 Literacy rate, 14–16 Living wage, 153–155, 157 Lobbying, 62, 118, 122, 135, 250, 257 Lockean liberalism, 33

M Maastricht Treaty, 235 Magna Carta, 9, 92

Mandatory sentencing, 110, 111 Mathematics, 179, 185, 187, 188, 190–193 Mau Mau rebellion, 137 McDonald’s, 6, 45, 48, 225 Meritocracy, 52, 58 Mesopotamia, 39, 177, 179, 184, 185, 190, 198 Militarism, 20, 30, 75, 102, 164, 211, 289 Minimum wage, 65, 153–155, 157, 253 Modernization, 48, 49 Monetary freedom, 249 Money laundering, 60, 114 Monroe Doctrine, 278 Mont Pelerin Society, 233, 234 Morality, 94, 154, 245, 257–259

N National Endowment for Democracy, 65 National security, 10, 67, 72, 80, 83, 95, 96, 99, 103, 108, 143, 277, 278, 289 NATO, 3, 4, 6, 11, 12, 17, 19–21, 33, 39, 41, 67, 82, 103, 151, 205, 265, 266, 277, 278, 284 Natural unemployment, 152 Nazi Germany, 36, 37, 247, 270, 271 Nazism, 36, 51, 233 Neoliberalism, 61, 154, 198, 229–233, 235, 238–241, 247, 283 New Deal, 75, 233, 242 Nisour Square massacre, 10 Nobel Prize, 44, 196, 281 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 107 Nuremburg trials, 102

INDEX

O Occupy Student Debt, 158 Occupy Wall Street, 133 OECD, 2, 12, 19, 21, 123, 154, 159 Oligarchy, 10, 11, 34, 58–60, 74–76, 79, 84, 91, 109, 113, 125, 126, 135, 156, 160, 161, 168, 211, 229–237, 240, 241, 245–250, 253–255, 257–259, 288 One percent doctrine, 103 Oriental despotism, 7 Orthodox Christianity, 17 Orthodox civilization, 18, 19 Orwellian West, 10 P Panama Papers , 231 Pariah states, 272 Patriot Act, 84, 98, 99 Pax Americana, 206 Persian Empire, 6 Plato to NATO, 6, 182, 266 Plea bargains, 28, 110, 111, 131, 152, 251 Plunder, 16, 37, 60, 85, 125, 183, 205, 207, 216–218, 220, 282–284, 289 Plutocracy, 74, 80, 85, 86, 135 Poincaré conjecture, 44, 193 Police corruption, 92, 118 Political capture, 79, 113, 126, 255 Political correctness, 149–151 Presidential pardons, 10, 100 Privatization, 113, 135, 145, 149, 157, 229, 231, 234, 235, 238, 241, 247, 250–253 Profit maximization, 254 Progressive taxation, 233 Project for the New American Century, 211 Property rights, 9, 44, 53, 222, 223, 248, 251

297

Proportional representation, 80–82, 288 Proxy votes, 71 Publish or perish, 120 Q Quantitative easing, 236 R Racism, 20, 37, 45, 51, 184, 208, 282, 289, 290 Reconquista, 180 Regime change, 24, 43, 47, 49, 57–59, 62, 64, 75, 132, 176, 195, 204, 205, 210, 211, 272, 275, 279, 282, 289 Regulatory capture, 122, 123, 248, 288 Renaissance, 7, 179, 180, 188, 192, 195 Republicanism, 28, 33 Resource super profits tax, 73, 74 Revolving door, 122, 288 Right to education, 157, 160 Right to equal treatment before the law, 140 Right to freedom from torture and inhumane treatment, 136, 137 Right to freedom of speech and expression, 145 Right to healthcare, 162–164 Right to housing, 160, 161 Right to life, 9, 134–136 Right to marry and have a family, 144 Right to privacy, 101, 143 Right to work, 150, 152, 156 Rogue states, 30, 35, 42, 272 Roman democracy, 85 Roman Empire, 7, 135, 180, 182, 225 Roman Republic, 85

298

INDEX

Rule-based international order, viii, 35, 272 Rule of force, 106 Rule of law, vii, viii, 17, 52–54, 91–101, 108, 112, 118, 121, 125, 126, 137, 214, 217, 221, 235, 261, 266, 282, 288 Rule of law index, 266 S Sanctions, 41–43, 47, 49, 58, 59, 62–64, 73, 84, 132, 133, 205, 210, 269, 272, 274, 276, 279–281 Scientific Revolution, 192 Scramble for Africa, 16, 43, 182, 222 Second Opium War, 215, 216 September 11 attacks, 99, 207 Sinic civilization, 17, 18 Slavery, 20, 31, 45, 46, 51, 52, 61, 167, 183, 184, 212, 214, 216, 246, 260, 261, 289 Social Darwinism, 282, 289 Socialized medicine, 164 Student debt, 158, 159 Subsistence wage, 153, 259 Surveillance, 84, 96, 99, 119, 134, 143, 144, 289 Sykes-Piccot Agreement, 223 T Tax evasion, 114 Third World, 11, 12, 39, 113 Thirty Years’ War, 40, 51, 52 Thucydides trap, 287 Torture, 30, 35, 42, 95, 98–101, 111, 133, 136–140, 218, 253, 269, 270 Trade freedom, 249 Trade unions, 74, 153, 156, 233, 235, 240

Transparency, 53, 91, 93, 112, 115, 126 Transparency International, 114 Trickle-down effect, 232 TSA searches, 84 Tweedism, 78

U Uncle Sam, 27, 32, 43, 167 United Fruit Company, 62, 63 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 37, 108, 131 Universal healthcare, 31, 163, 164, 233 Urbanization, 14, 16 US constitution, 79, 80, 85, 104, 150

V Veto, 64, 78, 274, 281 Voter fraud, 71 Vote rigging, 71 Voter impersonation, 71 Voter intimidation, 71

W Wall Street, 83, 84, 121–123, 159 Walter Lippmann Colloquium, 232 War crimes, viii, 29, 33, 35, 41, 47, 57, 100, 104, 106, 276, 278, 279, 281–284, 289 War on terror, 83, 98, 137, 207, 282 Warrantless wire-tapping, 98 Washington Consensus, 22, 24, 210, 212, 225, 287 Welfare state, 233, 237, 260 Western Christianity, 8, 17 Western civilization, vii, 7, 8, 18, 41, 42, 46, 51, 175, 204–208, 210, 214, 225 Western cuisine, 3, 45, 265, 270

INDEX

Western culture, vii, 8, 9, 45, 53, 115, 177, 210 Western imperialism, 132, 214, 222 Western individualism, 176 Westernization, 1, 22, 48, 49 Western landscape, 3, 45, 265, 270 Western languages, 265 Western miracle, 180 Western music, 45, 265, 270, 271 Western names, 265, 270, 271, 275 Western supremacy, 50, 203, 224

299

Western values, vii, viii, 1, 6, 8–10, 45–47, 49–52, 132, 148, 178, 206, 209, 224, 267, 269, 275 White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, 2 Work ethics, viii, 221, 223–225 World Cup, 267, 269, 270 World Justice Project, 95, 266 World Trade Organization, 235 Y Yellow Vest, 50