Gwynne Dyer, Contributor
THEY GAVE British playwright Harold Pinter the Nobel Prize for Literature last Wednesday, and the committee that awarded it made particular note of his lifelong opposition to "oppression". So Pinter, 75 and ailing, sent his acceptance speech to Stockholm by pre-taped video link, and at its heart, as everybody expected, was yet another anti-American rant.
It was probably Pinter's last public attack on the United States, and it was to be savoured, in a perverse sort of way, because such performances, a staple of global political theatre for the past 50 years, are coming to an end. They were fuelled by impotent rage at the often selfish and sometimes brutal ways in which the United States has wielded its great power, but that, too, is coming to an end. Soon the music will change - although Americans may like the new tune even less.
ACCEPTANCE SPEECH ATTACKED AMERICA
After some preliminary remarks about playwriting, Pinter's acceptance speech attacked America not just for the invasion of Iraq, the misdeed of the moment, but for every sin it has committed since the Second World War: "The United States supported, and in many cases engendered, every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile ... Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries ... and they are attributable to U.S. foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it."
"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.
"Manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."
You could make Pinter's list of countries even longer, if you wished, but the striking thing about it is that over half the countries he names are in Latin America, although only a tenth of the world's population lives in that region. In Latin America, its own 'backyard', the United States has usually behaved as an unapologetic imperial power, showing no more concern for local interests or desires than the traditional European empires did elsewhere (though it does a better job of dressing up its policies in democratically acceptable language).
In other parts of the world, however, the U.S. record is less dark, and the dark bits are more forgivable. American support was vital in shepherding defeated Japan and the shattered nations of western Europe into a prosperous and democratic future. America and the Soviet Union were the only two great powers that actively supported decolonisation in Asia and Africa - and although both had their strategic motives for doing so, they were also activated by genuine idealism. And it was the American strategy of 'containing' the Soviet Union, but not seeking to destroy it, that got the world safely through 40 years of living on the brink of a nuclear war.
SENSE OF HELPLESSNESS
And why are rants like Pinter's about to go out of style? Because what fuels them is the sense of helplessness in the face of great power, and America's power has gone into irreversible decline. It is only dwindling relative to the rapidly-growing economies of the rising new Asian great powers, China and India, but economic power is the foundation for all other forms of power, and 'relative' is the only word that counts in such calculations.
The debacle in Iraq may ultimately hasten America's dethronement as the sole superpower, but the inexorable GDP numbers say that it was coming anyway within the next 20 or 30 years. And once the U.S. is off the throne, people elsewhere will simply lose interest in the knee-jerk, Pinteresque style of anti-Americanism. After all, people used to talk about Britain like that a 100 years ago, when it was still top dog. Even Pinter can't be bothered with that nowadays.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
