Martin Henry 'LADIES AND gentlemen, we've got him," announced the American Administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer. Saddam Hussein was plucked from his hiding pit 'like a rat' to be displayed in mass media all over the world.
We can be pretty certain, however, that he will not be paraded in chains through the streets of Baghdad or Washington D.C. Nor will he be crucified, beheaded or offered as a sacrifice to some deity. President Bush has already declared that he will be given a trial that will satisfy the standards of international law. Manuel Noriega, another former head of state, now languishes in an American prison after being plucked out of Panama and given a 'fair' trial in the United States. A similar fate has hung over Fidel Castro's head like the Sword of Damocles since 1961.
The United States is an occupying force in Iraq and a modern imperial power, albeit of a rather benign sort so far compared to most of its counterparts of history although the sheer magnitude of its imperial power is un-matched by anything in the past. Most of the Iraqi people have welcomed the capture of the man who told the troops who barged in on him, "I am Saddam Hussien, President of Iraq." Many Iraqis, perhaps most despite the resistance, regard the Americans as liberators.
Recorded history is largely the story of imperial powers, the strong dominating the weak and imposing their will over a larger sphere than their own original national boundaries until they are deposed by the next power to emerge in the same space. And it hasn't been all to the bad. The exercise of imperial power has reduced decimating tribal wars imposing peace, such as the famous Pax Romana and Pax Britannica, on neighbours who spent too much time and too many resources killing each other.
The exercise of imperial power has spread what is called civilisation. By definition an imperial power emerges because of superior technology, superior organisation social, political, economic, military and superior discipline. It is well nigh impossible for these things not to spread to and be copied by subjugated peoples, however slowly and despite strenuous efforts by the powerful to guard the secrets of their superior power. The people who discovered iron, for example, conquered and ruled their world with iron weapons, but then an Iron Age emerged across a broad sphere.
POWERFUL SENTIMENT
There is a powerful sentiment globally that something happened in 1945 to radically alter the general pattern of world history. The most brutal and destructive war on the largest scale and with the greatest technology in history had come to an end with atomic bombs dropped on Japanese cities. The United Nations was formed essentially to contain any possibility of another such conflagration in the future by binding nations into a system of international law with international arbitration. We have had 58 years to watch this system struggling to work.
No one in 1945 anticipated the soon and rapid meltdown of colonial empires which flooded the United Nations with new members but did not flood the world with peace. The meltdown of the Soviet empire was an equal surprise in the 1990s. That meltdown has left a sole superpower which, despite its lamb-like voice as it tries to speak softly while carrying a big stick, cannot avoid being an imperial power.
Virtually all the imperial powers of the past relied on slavery as an economic base. That's how the pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China were built and sugar produced in the Caribbean. How will imperial America respond to any significant threat to its economic power? No one anticipates new slavery, but almost certainly defensive action will be taken at the expense of economically subject peoples.
The more technologically advanced imperial Aztecs carried out a policy of having vassals supply people as slaves for lifting burdens and as sacrifices. Although they knew the wheel, the Aztecs never used it commercially. Despite the quiet omission of the point in history books, peoples subject to the Aztecs viewed the Spanish conquistadors, at least before the conquerors imposed their own oppression, as liberators in much the same way as many Iraqis view the Americans now.
MOTHER COUNTRY
Imperial powers demand tribute: the shekels of gold and silver of the Bible, guaranteed markets for the manufactures of the Mother country forbidden in the colonies, guaranteed access to raw materials like Iraqi oil. The world is going to be organised around the strategic interests of American imperial power as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow. Varying de-grees of force, diplomatic, political, economic, and, as necessary, military will be applied. Ultimately, no great power has ever sacrificed strategic self-interest to the flaccid niceties of 'international law'.
The Babylonians and Assy-rians practised a policy of deportation, particularly of the leadership, of defeated peoples to avoid uprisings. There are the Bible stories of the Jewish people being deported. The Medes and Persians followed what we would consider to be a more enlightened policy of limited self-government as to some extent the Romans did. An Iraqi Governing Council has been set up by the Americans.
The Aryan invaders of India created a racist, religion-based caste system as imperial policy. That system survives until today. We saw the same efforts made with Black New World Slavery. And the imperial Tutsis have subjugated the Hutus in the Rwanda/ Burundi region of East-Central Africa on similar racist grounds long before the Europeans arrived, although the uninitiated can scarcely tell one tribe from the other. Racism has under-girded many of the imperial powers.
Imperial powers of varying degrees of controlling power, oppressiveness and facilitation towards subject peoples have dominated human history, and not just with negative results. It is a bit much to think that we have arrived at an age when this brute historical fact of imperial supremacy will be shackled by international law.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
