The hegemonic crisis

The hegemonic crisis

Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo

 

To search, claim for themselves, preserve, increase and use the highest possible capacity of actual and virtual violence within their reach, thus reducing or annulling that of the others: such is the fundamental norm of political reality among Nations, the only one that their actors – the States – know, recognize and practice. The abrupt outcome from the period of bi-cephalic hegemony and nuclear terror, as determiners of the post-war world order, has left in the hands of the sole super-Power the leading role of international relations.

The eclosion, evolution and involution of the US American democracy, and its historical and sociological ambiguities and contradictions, did announce limits and drifts that did not already escape Tocqueville’s perspicacity and insight. The current hegemonic Power hesitated since its foundation about its dilemmas; about an alternative or a complex – not devoid of vacillations and compromises – between idealism or realism; human rights or oppression of persons and Peoples; democratic will or ambition of power; humanism or Nationalism; isolationism or interventionism; balance of an international order or hegemony-Empire. In the history of the hegemonies and universal Empires, the outcome of a similar conflict has always been the same: a classic reactionary regression. Nowadays, after the misunderstandings and contradictions raised by the United Nations’ Organization (UNO) in the post-world war conditions, and once the obstacles in its way have been removed, the outcome of new universal hegemony appears as a complete and sincere return to the aforementioned classicism.

Maintained during epochs that range from the War of Independence against the European Imperialism, to the War Between the States and the conquest of the Far West; from the Cuban War, to the Fourteen Points; from the isolationist reaction, to the War against International Fascism (with Terrorism of masses in Durango, Gernika and Coventry, and in Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki); from the great tides of decolonization, to the Cold War and its accessory Warm ones; from the nuclear duopoly and the rehabilitation-exaltation of General Franco’s and his successors’ régime, to the War in Vietnam and its consequences; from the promotion and desertion of the League of Nations, to the foundation and consumption of the UNO; and from the First Gulf War, to the War in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and all that is waiting for to come, the historical hesitations of the USA hegemony towards the universal Empire seem to have finally vanished. Confronted with the practice of an increasingly widespread and uncontrolled Administration, those hesitations have once more been resolved – as it could be expected – with the fatal final victory of Lansing over Wilson, and of Mister Hyde over Dr. Jekyll. The result is George Bomber Bush Administration. (All that for this!)

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The more or less scientific and controversial approaches to history and international relations: as they had been formulated either by the classical-realistic-pragmatist schools, or by the idealistic-moralistic-optimistic-utopian ones, have not led to a great result once more. Real-policy, match-polity, power-policy, balance of power, status quo, or “peace, security and stability” to the European style, have aroused and found in the former British Colonies – that have become a universal Empire – the theoretical and practical emulation that could be expected.

It could be seen in all this the last and completed avatar of the “realistic, pragmatist, materialistic and cynical” traditional school. International relations have always been regulated by violence. Certainly, the need and efficacy of violence to resolve the social conflicts are a banality that, except among the hypocrite theoreticians of the fascist “non-violence”, does not deserve further comment. Nevertheless, the idea that unilateral violence and terrorism – even counting on the resort to the most terrible means of mass destruction – will enable to resolve all those conflicts; or that the use of such methods does mean, imply or produce a corresponding superiority of capacity in all fields, and a rapport of forces that will result in a process of total domination; in short: to keep the hope in such an idea, up to the point of going so far in the reductionism of international relations in their global reality, this is something that only an ignorant, rude, brutal, conceited, pretentious, primary and obtuse ruling team can cherish. In this way, the intended realism has led to the supreme un-realism.

No matter what the available capacity of violence of the universal Empires may be, and what military superiority it may give to them, the problems and resistance posed by humans have always shown the limits and the illusory nature of such solutions. Their promoters have always broken their necks sooner or later; and, frequently, sooner than later.

The unilateral resort to violence and terrorism, as a solution of all political problems at a universal scale, is a temptation of all Great Powers, latent also in the oscillation of the traditional USA policy between isolationism and interventionism. The current assumption by that Power of this resort has had as a consequence the arrogant and contemptuous abandonment of the international right, of the UNO, of the compromise and the balance of forces (defective though they may have been), of the political stabilization, of the juridical package-deal, and of the economic and cultural counterweights; all of which has been now resolved in the new unique universal norm of political and juridical behaviour, and in the sheer and declared instrumentalization – on a case-by-case basis – of the ideas, put at the service of the propaganda, the psychological warfare, and the ideological intoxication of masses.

International relations have always been established and modified according to the political rapport of violence. However, a long and forced coexistence had resulted into customs, norms, package-deals, and limitation and parsimony of the violence, which spared continuous, useless and destructive clashes, undesirable for all. The breaking of such customs and limitations has led to the violent confrontation, now established as a universal and preferential solution of conflicts.

Apparently, the USA have abandoned or betrayed their fickle initial vocation of freedom and democracy, so as to adopt with all cynicism that of a worldwide hegemony and domination. The young Republic has grown mature or old, giving up its original virtues or weaknesses, acquiring the cynicism and the bad habits, and adopting the methods of the Nations steeped in history that preceded and showed it the way. For better or for worse – no matter what the world may think and despite everything – the USA are already of age and a Nation like the others. Not worse than others, not even as bad as others, if one wants to remember what the Spaniards and the French have done (or to imagine what they would do, in possession of a comparable political-warlike arsenal).

And yet, a Country that – with all its limitations – did arise moved by values of freedom and that has contributed so much to the progress of democracy in the world, can it sink without resistance in fascism and imperialism? Can it willingly accept a model of bureaucratic and administrative-military “democracy”, as the old tyrannies of France or Spain? Is this the temporary effect of circumstantial fights and traumas, or it’s about a new and deep implantation of maniac and irresponsible followers of imperialism, violence, war and terrorism? The imperialistic and fascist gangsterism that has taken over the USA Government and Administration, can or cannot be curbed and rejected, and can or cannot be expected the possible reaction of the fertile Puritan, liberal and democratic traditional spirit?

An eventual and problematic “social stratum” is, according to Schumpeter, the necessary field of cultivation and selection of the “human material of a sufficient quality” in order to establish a “democratic political class”. Its absence, deterioration, weakening or disappearance have led to its replacement by the plutocracy of the East, which – since the War Between the States in 1861-5 – has continued strengthening its social and political hegemony over the Union. It counts now on a class of officials administratively created and trained: inversion or reversion of the politically induced and destabilized Administration of the former spoils system. From the administrative régime of Weimar (whose political deficit Weber and Schumpeter himself pointed out), to the bureaucratic-militarist dictatorship of the French New Régime (that Marx and Engels denounced), the various precedents are quite expressive of the orientations, implications and consequences of such solutions.

The self-focused optimism and the endogenous satisfaction, the primary and simplistic interpretation of international relations, and the populist good conscience and Manichaeism that characterize the society of the North-American Union are – the same as its liberal and democratic references – logical consequences of the brief history of a colonial and peasant community confronted with exceptional economic development and planetary power; with the virtues and deficiencies of the peasant Peoples. For all his many weapons of mass destruction available, George Butcher Bush will remain a country-bumpkin; but he is so of a new generation, with the defects but without the virtues of his predecessors. In such circumstances, the propaganda of the new hegemonic gang, so that it can give the expected results, implies the prior stupefying of its patients at the hands of the modern monopolies of mass conditioning. If this condition came to be missing, the reaction could be dangerous for its pretentious agents.

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For now, the primary self-satisfaction of the newly-rich masters of the world does not suffer too much from their want of virtues, nor does raise any attempt to look for a remedy. It’s not that Bush thinks he’s pretty clever, it’s that he doesn’t mind about it because he and his team are convinced that the others – and the People of the USA to start with – are still dumber than themselves; what enables the new Administration to handle the whole world on behalf of the plutocracy of the East. Yet, like it happened to others of their kind, the balloon can burst in their hands when they least expect it.

The great charismatic leaders of the USA democracy, that – supported by the impulse of direct democracy – were capable of modifying the institutional inertias and dependencies, the perverse or inhibitory effects of parliamentary log-rolling, the administrative reductionism or the judicial ‘stare decisis’, have become a thing of the past. The pre-fabricated and programmed automata from the administrative assembly lines have taken their place. The mediocrity, the short-term view and the short-term opportunist realism: characteristic of the political-administrative establishment, are being incardinated in the power and the interests of the great national or multinational corporations, and in the primary and growing nationalism of the popular masses.

If “the U.S.A. defend all around the world the liberty, democracy, justice and the sake of Good against Evil”; if their enemy “is Terror, and those who are not with us are with the terrorists”; if invading and dominating Peoples and States by war and terror, and bombing the civilian population is – all of it – fighting against terrorism and against the Axis of Evil, as their Chief Executive proclaims Urbi et Orbi; and if, furthermore, the strongest Country of all (and also even the largest one), which has accumulated and used the largest arsenal of mass destruction of history, claims and also monopolizes for itself the capacity of supreme executive judgment to a planetary scale, as also its citizens seem to take for granted, then it is needless any other additional consideration and there is no doubt about the line to be followed or pursued: “Il suffit de leur rentrer dedans”. “Some ones believe they are in command of the world but they are wrong: it’s we who are in command of the world.” In short, it means that the human rights and the rights of self-determination and of legitimate self-defence are a monopoly of the imperial Nation and its satellites.

Once have been spread the wings of “the Archangel Gabriel over the White House”, the resort to the ideology of the illusion – whose purpose is the refusal to see the real problems – helps to reproduce the images of the dangers: copper– or yellow-coloured, Communist or Islamic; of Geronimo [a nickname also used, by the way, to designate Bin Laden in the operation mounted for his extra-judicial “execution”] and of Imam Shamil; of the “Old Man of the Mountain” and his Hashashin (Assassins) Order; of Khadafi and Bin Laden; of the Clive’s “black pit of no return” or the Drums of Fu-Manchu, combined with “terrorism” as the highest stage of Satanism. These are the dangers that are intended to be remedied with the manual of the supreme hegemonic exorcist, presented as an infallible guide to diagnosis and treatment. It little matters that the current conflict is not exactly the Redskins’ or the Dalton Brothers’, nor Germany’s, nor Japan’s, nor that of communism or the war of the stars, and that it does not allow the same treatment nor the same solutions.

The alleged or real threats: Babylonic, Lacedemonic, Punic, Arabic, Turkish, Communist or Islamist-terrorist: supreme post-Communist incarnation of Evil, have never been absent to a great hegemonic Power; and its rulers and mentors, who do also wield the most formidable means of propaganda and psychological warfare of their epoch, will always find without major difficulties the necessary or desirable alibis for keeping the romantic and humanist rhetoric that propaganda still demands, along with the obliged and blunt realism that is required by the policy of universal power.

The present strategy of the hegemonic Administration seems to be based on the development of the reports provided by its official Services of Investigation and Intelligence; and its supreme Functionary seems to believe that these can contain – as for all he is interested and concerned at – the history, the sociology and the anthropology of the weary Humankind whose destinies he does already guide with tight rein and explosive spur. Yet, it is more than doubtful that the keys of actual geo-policy can be loosely contained in the report cards of the National Security Council (NSC), FBI, CIA and Presidential Service Badge (PSB); and that the rustic ignorance on such matters as human geography or political history can be compensated by the administrative capacity and readiness to bury the world under the bombs. The postulated total coincidence between the service to Humanity, and the interests of the USA in the world, rather points to a passably agitated future.

“The excessive leaning towards the administrative side of the things” – according to the Leninist discreet euphemism – entails consequences even dangerous, in the case of a hasty strategic response. The facts do allow us at least to suspect that an over-equipped Administration can nevertheless be surprised, deceived and manipulated by an enemy invisible and unpredictable for it; and that its purported and expensive Intelligence Services might not be up to the level of the material means they control. The conditions of urgency, and the natural inertia of the administrative Services, have also favoured their natural trend to bark up either the wrong problem or the wrong war. (Of course, this applies to all Administrations, not just that of the hegemonic Power.)

The more disquieting is that, sometimes, the producers and spokespersons for the Governments’ official versions of propaganda and psychological warfare seem to believe themselves what might be expected that they say only for making others to believe it. And thus (since History is written backward by the holder of present political power), it will soon be discovered the multi-centennial antecedents of the present alliances and oppositions. The dilating effect of the psychological conditioning of masses, applied upon the gullibility of people, allows us to expect that it won’t be long before we are learned about the constant Spanish and French support in the north-American war against the Axis Powers; or “the fire of Gernika” provoked by the Basque nationalists, as it was already denounced by General Franco: a democratic founder of the current régime and an early anti-terrorist leader unjustly reviled and finally rehabilitated. We will soon discover the Spanish co-operation in the War of Liberation of Cuba and the Philippines against the Basque colonialism, and the progressive stance of Spanish judicature against Arana-Goiri’s reactionary position, in imprisoning him for his condemnation of Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy and of the struggle against colonialism in general. Once more: you live and learn, since this is just beginning.

How an Institution that began giving men such as Washington, Jefferson and Adams could ever have arrived to produce Bush and Trump, is a question that shows in itself the contingencies of the historical process of development, and the precariousness of political progress in this world. When General-President Eisenhower was riding into Madrid between acclamations – in an open car and surrounded by the Moorish Guard – accompanied by General-Dictator Franco: the last survivor of the officially defeated Nazism, he was announcing with this act of cynical and unutterable obscenity the drift that has opened now the gates to the first registered fascist occupying the White House.

The crisis of confidence, the desperation or hostility that the new reality of the hegemonic monopoly raises and spreads in the world are the result – perhaps deliberately integrated and assumed by itself – of the disappointment and frustration experienced at a world scale by the deluded or forsaken people of all species. For more than a century, a considerable part of Humanity: hungry for bread or for freedom, had tried to reach the promise land, or waited for the North-Americans to come and take them out from their sad plight. Today they only seem to wait for the bomb-curtain that does precede or condition their help for a mafia reconstruction.

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The 20th century: a drain of illusions and utopias, has seen solved – by successive elimination of candidates and suitors – the great struggle for supremacy. The period of contradiction and duopoly of Terror, with the balance of power between the Great States, has been resolved not in distension and shared power but in monopoly and hegemony.

The League of Nations (LN) and the UNO were the results of two catastrophic World Wars and of the terrified wish of avoiding another one. The maintenance of international peace and security, the prohibition of war of aggression, and the Right of Self-Determination (RSD) of all Peoples, were also foundational “purposes” of the UNO, as they had been of the LN.

However, once the “Great War” was over, the exasperated confrontation of the Great Powers, the pacifist-isolationist abandonment of the U.S.A., the memory – or lack of memory – of the horrors in 1914-1918, and the permanence and re-launching of imperialism by its outsiders in Abyssinia and Manchuria, put in evidence the illusory character of the “international right” and the incapacity and helplessness of the LN, unable to cope with the Great or Medium-sized Powers.

It was already long ago since the States that had formally accepted it knew what to expect, with regard to positive international right either in its soft or hard version. And, as it had happened with the LN, the UNO soon showed that it lacked formally and actually any capacity to face a Great or Medium-sized Power, but not, for example, to hypocritically support the frightening and cruel genocide carried out by war and famine in Biafra. It took thirty years for that Organization to define the concept of aggression, and its endless hesitations, deficiencies and inconsistencies in the implementation of the RSD of all Peoples did reflect its contradictions and limitations, determinants of its shameful and pathetic final failure. The creation of an International Criminal Court for crimes of war, against peace and against Humanity has taken more than half a century, and the conditions that made it believable and desirable – though not possible – have now disappeared.

Things that are not done in their time, they are never done. The capacity to arrest, judge or condemn Serbs, Iraqi or Afghan military or politicians, on behalf of the hegemonic Power and its protégés, that’s one thing; the capacity to arrest, judge or condemn the leaders and performers of the north-American policy and their cronies, that’s a different one. The international criminal justice is a dependency of the judicial power of The USA. Its courts can reach a Serbian President; but who is the judge that is able to prosecute – let alone condemn – Bush or any of his protégés, great their “merits” for this though they may be? In the new international law “the King can do no wrong”; being well understood that he who reigns is the one who holds the monopoly of terror and of weapons of mass destruction.

The UNO, ambiguously balanced by means of the nuclear duopoly and the decolonization of the Third World, fades now away – as a result of inefficacy and inconsistency – faced with the lonesome advance of “the” Great Power, which no longer needs it for anything. It is not a question of an error of appraisal or calculation; it’s a deliberate and cynical capital decision to assume the leadership and the domination of the world. The wars of Manchuria and Abyssinia sealed the disrepute and ruin of the LN; the war of Iraq has brought about the same consequences for the UNO. The hegemonic Power has decided that, in the absence of a concurrent Power, there is no interest or need for it in bearing the inconveniences of a partially agreed, shared or balanced right; or in having to refer to political Bodies that be not reduced to its own and sole discretion. As a result, it has opted for a political monopoly.

The new “monistic international right”: surpassing “illustrious” theoretical and practical precedents, becomes a simple part of the national law of the USA, which has already decided to organize the world on its own. Their Administration does issue the international right, qualify violence and terrorism, judge of good and evil: it is God’s supreme representative on Earth, with a “delegated” power and means of management and domination that no Prophet or Church has ever had at its disposal.

The War of 1914 had led the USA in search of a new international order and finally to the isolationist solution. The War of 1941 led it to the duopoly of nuclear terror and to the UN; but the end of the Cold War has made it hasten the pace directly and without hesitations towards the non-shared supremacy and universal hegemony. The long period of terror balance with the U.S.S.R. has provided the field, condition, model, impulse, testing ground and pretext for the gradual implantation of the new hegemonic Power. If, at a first moment, it could have been thought that the collapse of the communist strategic base was going to release the destiny of the USA from their ideological-political ballast, however, what the disappearance of the Soviet counterweight, competition, initiative and challenge did was to clear the inhibitions and release the arrogance of the hegemonic antagonist.

(The dominant ideology has always believed or led to believe that Communism – the same as other doctrines and revolutionary movements had done before it – threatened the political and social order; in any case such as it had been established. But, in reality, what Communism et alia did was to consolidate the foundation of all régimes, that is: the very principle of stability of the social and political order, giving the Oppressed the prospect of progress in a future and better world that they would receive and that, in fact, did condition them to accept the one that they then had. That was the function of Religion when the world believed in it; and that was the function of Communism when the world did not believe any longer in religion. Now, in the world of post-Communism, it is not anymore called into question a determined political and social system: it is called into question the system and all social-political order.)

Anyway, the ending of the “communist threat” and of the duopoly of Terror has not resulted in the retreat of imperialism, the disarmament, the end of weapons of mass destruction, and the abandonment of the “necessary, required and justified” support to the “secondary” totalitarianisms: issues that were intended “inevitable evils” under the foregoing circumstances, but it has resulted in the impulse to monopolistic imperialism, the lonely and without restraint arms race of the winning Power, and the added endorsement of the fascism and imperialism of international cronies like France and Spain. The global strategic monopoly, coupled with the globalized economic control and ideological domination over the mass media of communication and propaganda, does imply – as a matter of fact – the removal and death certificate of the Charter of the UN and of the International law and order; at least as they were proclaimed and institutionalized under its protection.

The new Orbis Regulator does legislate, interpret, judge, condemn and execute by itself. The principle of efficacy is its fundamental norm of legitimacy. Its military and political capacity is virtually unlimited, its responsibility is nil, and no human institution can be opposed to its discretionary exercise.

The dependence towards the others – either in terms of decisions, interventions, reprisals or wars – is already humiliating and unbearable to the hegemonic Power, which has chosen to do whatever, wherever, whenever and the way it wants to. The UN, NATO and their components must understand as soon as possible that to shut up and cooperate is all that is allowed to them in the new hegemonic international right. The sooner they understand who is in charge here, the better it will be for everyone. After all (as they seem to say), if which is good for General Motors is good for the USA, which is good for the USA is good for the world.

“It is the threat of the use of force [against Iraq], and our line-up there, that is going to put force behind the diplomacy. But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable Nation. We stand tall and we see further than other Countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.” (Madeleine Albright, United States’ Secretary of State. Declartions to NBC’s Today Show; February 19, 1998.)

In November-2016, and on the eve of the presidential elections that put an end to his second term, President Barack Obama insisted on that same ‘leitmotiv’ reiterating: “We are the indispensable nation”.

We have there a clear, uninhibited and sincere confession that confirms the principle that only the exercise of actual violence allows the development of virtual violence, without which there is no possible political order. In this line, the absolute and total war in Afghanistan and Iraq has quickly had, as a result, the establishing of a hegemonic zone of virtual domination in which old allies and recalcitrant adversaries pay interested or forced vassalage to the beloved sons of Mars, supposed masters of the world. In Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria or Iran their formerly challenging Governments set their own houses in order, and (unsuccessfully in several cases, as it was seen later) do hurriedly try to place under cover. The Great Strategic Outsiders, such as Russia and China, look terrified and helpless the progress of things. Indeed, the “gap” of military resources existing between the Nations widens incessantly, and the supposed supreme atomic deterrence does not hide or compensate for the rapid advance of the hegemonic differential in conventional weapons; a differential sustained by an overwhelming abundance of productive and financial resources that show capacity, will and determination consistent with the objectives politically and militarily pursued.

Making of the World a USA protectorate or an occupation zone is the pretension – but also the only way out – that is offered to the new super-Power. The cage or the jungle for everybody is the classic alternative that the hegemonic Power believes that it will be able to resolve for its own benefit. To be or not to be able, that is the question; because unilateral violence is resolved in multilateral violence without compromise nor alternative.

The hegemonic Power and its vassal States do no longer recognize international agents or laws that can limit or mitigate their own norms, actions or decisions. The new “international order”: carefully prepared, has already been effectively implanted as the basis of the political constitution of the contemporary World.

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The international political relations, like the others, are ruled by a variable, transient and recurrent combination of actual or virtual violence, of war or armed peace, and of total or partial, direct or indirect, immediate or deferred, rigid or flexible, authoritarian or transactional confrontation. “In times of peace, the States exchange diplomatic notes; in times of war, cannonballs”, but the policy continues “by different means”.

All States had reserved for themselves the right to qualify and put into effect what they considered to be their own legitimate self-defence. The nuclear Powers did include the discretionary and unilateral right of using the supreme weapon, and the right to prevent others from using it. The “ideology of the four D” – which links (Droit of) human rights, Decolonisation, Development and Disarmament – is now as anachronistic as the strategic balance that conditioned it.

The fundamental texts concerning the right of self-determination, independence or free-disposition of all Peoples; the integrity and independence of legitimate States “conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of Peoples”; the war of aggression; the legitimate self-defence and the fights of national liberation considered as international wars; the crimes against the laws of war, against peace and security of Peoples and States, and against Humanity; and – finally – the agreements on disarmament, are now little more than worthless bits of paper, even though the unavoidable two-fold ideological language de rigueur tries to hardly hide it. The ruin of a whole century of ruined efforts and attempts to establish a ‘jus cogens’: a peremptory international law, is the immediate result of the happy ending of the Cold War.

The legitimate self-defence: formerly “subsidiary, provisional, proportionate and controlled”, is now identified with the policy and the discretionary and multi-ubiquitous war of the hegemonic Power and its servants: the only agents “entitled” to qualify their own and others’ political activities. The limitation of the armaments and of the right to war is, in fact, the monopoly in the hands of the hegemonic Power and its cronies. The norms of limitation or suppression of atomic or conventional weapons have become the new international law, according to which the Great Power can and must be armed without limitation to preserve the world peace, identified with its universal domination. If other Powers do the same, they are creating by their part danger and a threat to the international peace and community. The differential criterion consists of the qualification of Countries as good or bad, friends or enemies; a determination that is supposed to be of the exclusive competence of the hegemonic Power. Faced with this, any political agent showing the scandalous claim to equip itself with nuclear or conventional arms – or just with paper cutters – without the permission given by that Power must accept the consequences. To increase and maximize one’s own armaments, and reduce or cancel the others’, is a principle of conduct old as the world; the only new thing is the dose of cynicism and hypocrisy with which this ideological mixture is now seasoned.

Even though the San Francisco Conference included the real or fictitious – such as France – victors of the Second World War, with the exclusion of the “enemies States” (the defeated ones of the Axis and their friends such as Spain), yet the recent Pact imposed by the Hegemonic Power to replace the UNO admits every State that is ready to adhere to the “war on Evil” that it has undertaken. We’ve been already warned, at least, that we are dealing now with a war that is not a conventional one but a war of a new type: a war without civil or international conventions, rules or institutions; a war whose prisoners of war are not prisoners of war; a war whose definition we can only but wait – with patience and reverence – from the ideological-political source of all definitions.

The institutions of the UNO combined idealism and realism, that is: the hegemony of the Great Powers, and preservation – at least postulated – of the freedom and equality for the smaller Nations. Similarly, the Charter of the UN was founded at least formally upon the principles of peace, democracy and self-determination of “We, the Peoples of the United Nations”. Now, instead, the universal resource to violence as the only reality and last resort: ‘ultima ratio regum’ (even if that inscription is not engraved any longer on the cannons as it was in the past), becomes immediately widespread. The new “International” organization attends to the purpose of consolidating every imperialistic, colonialist, fascist, totalitarian or terrorist political régime, on condition that it is “signatory” of the Pact. The new universal oligarchy has already excluded everyone else from the international community.

The repercussion of the new policy seems to be made – for the moment or mainly – at a unique expense and direction, that is: that of the others; but the political, economic and cultural process of external-internalization will result, for the new supreme Power and its vassals, in consequences that will be hard to underestimate. The new political order is in fact widely incompatible with the productive and commercial conditions that are attributed to the current liberalization and globalization; a system that proclaims the characteristics of the official liberalism: integrated of initiative, innovation, productivity, competition, communication, and intellectual freedom both of criticism and information, as constitutive of the paradigm or model which that political order is intended to be associated with. The sought-after “combination” of political and ideological totalitarianism, on the one hand, with “economic liberalism”, on the other, has precedents that are so dubious, limited and little-conclusive as hard transmissible to an economy and culture for “a World as a single Country”.

Protectionism, dirigisme, monopolies and tax discrimination involve political totalitarianism; now then, the political totalitarianism does not take long in developing the syndrome of economic underdevelopment in all its exponents. The – whether financial or industrial – USA “private” companies have followed or gone ahead in joining (competition obliges) the new moral and political framework in which they must operate. Enrod etc. “scandals” have not been coincidences, accidents or infringements; they are a normal part of a social system, of an order and disorder that Governments and Boards of Directors do share and understand perfectly. Indeed, if there are no rules that oblige everybody, the Corporations – as well as the States – just try to impose their particular law, with the corresponding chaos.

Social reality is controversial by nature. “War is the father and the mother of all things.” In the anthropomorphic Animal Kingdom, the conflict is reduced in conditions and by procedures that do not occur nor are applied in the human species. Isolation and war are typical of the “state of nature” among humans, only partially mitigated in the social, political and moral order. In the constant struggle between Leviathan and Democracy, the failure of Hobbes and Rousseau is the theoretical expression of the entropic involution that is the return to the state of nature: the ruin of right and moral.

In these circumstances, the rules of conduct dictated by a “utilitarian morality and right” are a unilateral, immanent, direct and immediate expression of the State or national interest narrowly considered. Yet, a purported “norm” that does not also rule the own behaviour but adapts to it so as to justify it, is not a norm of conduct; it is an ideological accessory of the behaviour thus justified: it is a simple means of unilateral conditioning of another people’s behaviour by own’s one. Thus, the norm of conduct is a simple sub-product, ideological replica, an accessory, unilateral product of the dominant power: Good “is” what it does, and Evil “is” what others do. Once any normative alterity has been evacuated, there only remain ideological wordplay, fraud and trickery in order to hide and comfort – by means of the “moral” fiction – the universal principle and real order of violence; to perhaps cultivate the own illusions of the dominant forces; and, in any case, to deceive and mislead the most underdeveloped, unwary, gullible or defenceless of those between their victims.

Either as an involution, as a bestial regression, or perchance as a process of ideological de-mystification, liberation and detoxification, we are apparently witnessing and attending: from its initial application once the official Fascism and Totalitarianism were allegedly – militarily – “defeated” in 1945 (to be finally adopted by the new World Hegemonic Order), to the last, regrettable, debased and degraded phase of the long but temporary incursion of the moral transcendence and law into the history of social formations and conflicts.

Yet, the crisis of identity, effectiveness and prestige of the international right, its abandonment or degradation, and the showing of the crude reality in international relations, do constitute a mechanism of immediate and prolonged action whose material and moral consequences can go much further than what their high-handed causing agents can guess. The unilateral “liberation” of the hegemonic Power and its clientele: with respect to the annoying obstacles posed by any international hindrance or procedure, does also, necessarily, lead to the corresponding “liberation” of the others. If the hegemonic Power produces its own “international” rules, the others will try to do the same. (Cfr. The return to the nationalism and to the warmongering imperialism of the Nations defeated, and forced to pacifism: Germany and Japan.) To start with and as it is natural, nobody respects a “right” of a part, in whose foundation one only appears but as an object of repression.

The time of globalization and worldwide network is, in fact, the time of imperialistic Nationalism and Totalitarianism: restored and deployed without complexes or restrictions. The Imperialism and the ruin of the right of self-determination of Peoples, that is: of the right of independence from imperialism, have as a consequence the insecurity and the fear of the worst; which are the social base of the new wave of Nationalism and Reaction that does advance on the globalized world, and whose depth and nature the traditional political Parties strive for camouflaging and caricaturing.

The fear of a new hegemonic Imperialism permeates the social base of some States and their Govenments; which, although they are themselves imperialists over other Peoples and States that they dominate or aspire to dominate because they consider them “historically their property” (or directly subject to the “Brezhniev doctrine of limited sovereignty”, as there establish those elaborated subterfuges that they have invented so as to justify their own domination), do nevertheless feel threatened by other Powers or feign to be so, and whose strategic helplessness feeds the new wave of imperialistic Nationalism that these Governments infuse into their populations and that is pervading the world. A wave easily recuperated and reinforced by the traditional Parties behind the camouflage and alibi of the new ones. This Nationalism of the Great and not so Great imperialistic Powers promotes the general and rising totalitarian tide of real Fascism, and is the foundation of the new worldwide political order that is being implanted and strengthened day by day.

                                                                             *

There still remained optimists that, after the collapse of the World Trade Centre in 2001 and as a consequence of it, did expect or wish the review of the geopolitical conceptions or strategy of the great Federation. In this way, the first liberal, revolutionary, democratic and anti-colonialist great Power of History would return to the tradition and mythology of its origins, which have aroused, encouraged or disappointed so many expectations of freedom. Yet, the real process ran in the opposite direction; which, once more, has come to show the evil and corrupting character of absolute power, and its dreadful consequences. All the advances – whether formal or real – of the international right during the last fifty years from WWII do appear, in hindsight, to be consequence of the opposition between the two Powers, which bestowed the Third World a so exceptional as provisional role. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, ten years of strategic monopoly have been enough to ruin them.

Communism, which until recently was the incarnation of the absolute evil in the world, had however certain circumscribed references that did limit its range as a supposed universal enemy. Instead, the hegemonic Power does now rate as “evil, fascism, terrorism and violence” all activity that is opposed to its own one; an example that is imitated by everyone else. Correlatively, it is now “good, just, righteous, freedom and democracy” everything that the universal Power undertakes. The truism: deliberately and widely used by the German National Socialist propaganda in the service of Fascism, has got today gifted disciples in the new Western hegemony.

It would be a lack of information, or an error of judgment, to politically under-evaluate the purported and recent international “Anti-terrorist Pact”. After having been considered in the past as a derived and limited question, the “terrorism” appears now to have been turned all of a sudden into the declared axis, the cause and the purpose, the pretext and the reference of all the worldwide “political order”; and into the “top priority aim” of the hegemonic Government and its accomplices. (The very idea of such a “priority” is, in itself, a “theoretical” absurd.) Upon that present idea of “terrorism” has been founded the new master-yardstick that decides about the universal qualification-disqualification of the political forces, and about the new global strategy of the oligarchic Powers. We do now know, in hindsight, that the populations of Coventry, London and New York were victims of terrorist bombings; whereas those of Durango and Gernika, Dresden and Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not so, nor there was any terrorist bombing in Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. When the dominant ideology leads to its supporters and patients to such extremes, one can wonder about its capacity or have doubts about its long-term viability.

The international Resolutions and Conventions of the era that has ended up adopted a concept of “terrorism” that is strictly determined and modified in constitutive connection with the fundamental human rights and the struggles of Peoples for their national liberation (achieved “by all available means, including armed struggle” [UNGAR 3070 (1973)]; “by all available means, particularly armed struggle” [UNGAR 33/24 (1978)]; “by all available means, including armed struggle” [UNGAR 35/35 (1980)] etc.), in whose connection the legitimate self-defence acquires all its meaning and legitimacy.

However, the new “international law”: ruining the former and “subversive” principles of the UN in this respect, does deceitfully and equivocally recuperate the terms and concepts of ‘terrorism’ and ‘violence’ not with a precise and respective meaning but with an amalgamation of different meanings: ideologically integrated, that occur in a combined, successive or simultaneous way – according to the demands of the propaganda, psychological warfare and political practice – so as to exclude the own activities and include those of the others. Thus, the accusation of the crime of “terrorism” is established with the help of super-extensive criteria of authorship, social responsibility and result, which reached their most notable theoretical and practical elaboration starting from the pre-war totalitarian legal system; which does illustrate, by itself, the real content of the new political order.

The terms “terrorism and violence” do now mean what, in each case, the hegemonic Power decides that they mean. The incapability to obtain a univocal definition: ideologically presentable, for really diverse concepts and that therefore are not susceptible to conceptual unification, is remedied with the preparation, publication and updating of a mere catalogue – always unilaterally revisable – of “terrorist” activities and organizations; thus escaping the theoretical and technical inconveniences of the ideological dirty war. Such an analogical, punctual, elastic and discretionary “qualification”: in accordance with the modern totalitarian model, does moreover afford the more suitable degree of normative arbitrariness for the free rein policy needed by the new rulers and constituents of the world order.

The new “anti-terrorist” Terrorism, thus established and restored, spreads already, boundless, to the whole international reality. Any resistance and any critical reserve to one of the “signatory” States of the Pact has also to face: in just and solidary correspondence, the vindictiveness and ex-communication from the new masters of the world and from the joint vassal States. And every political régime adhering to the Pact of “collective legitimate defence” has support and carte blanche for the unrestrained repression of any ideological and political opposition, and of any social reality that, somehow, sustains it. The democratic Resistance to fascism and imperialism is the main target of the new international system of political repression. Under the pretext of “fighting violence and terrorism”, all the real or fictitious barriers that were trying to curb criminal Violence, Terrorism and war of aggression have blown up.

The new Terrorism implemented, promoted and manufactured by the hegemonic Power and its accomplices, is the universal, fundamental and supreme Terrorism: first resource and ultima ratio of the new world policy.

*

The European imperialistic Nationalism, the American absenteeism, and the imbalance between the old and the new imperialisms, had led to the ruin of the League of Nations. Since similar causes produce similar effects, fifty years of betrayals, impotence and capitulation in the face of imperialism – of anyone who could impose it – have also ruined the UNO along with all the advances and illusions that it had aroused or disappointed, until the new hegemonic Power decided to openly ignore such an obsolete antique.

Once the balance that had been established through the Terror of the nuclear duopoly and the Cold or Hot War has been broken, the situation has passed, from that “peace of balance”, to an attempt of “hegemonic peace” that sometimes resembles the “Pax [peace] of the Empire”, and other times the “anarchy” or the law of the jungle. To an embryonic world “order”, there follows now the inevitable mess of multilateral and multi-centred violence: the currently demanded“multi-lateralism” is the imperialistic multi-lateralism of the imperialistic “Great Nations”; and it does simply consist in granting them the guarantee and respect that they demand in order to continue their domination over their “traditional hunting grounds” and their “spheres of influence”, which are the Peoples and States they are subjugating and aspire to continue subjugating.

However, the absolute terrorism in the hands of the hegemonic Power: as a solution of the disputes that imperialism incessantly gives rise to, has shown its limits even at the sight of its own actors. The pretentious and sufficient sorcerer’s apprentices, the eminent re-discoverers of a kindergarten ‘real-politik’, the sponsors of the new “New-Deal”, that is: the own protectionism to a worldwide scale while trying to impose liberalism for all the others, have once more opened Pandora’s Box, which is also the trunk of thunders.

In the new world order the “human rights”, the “humanitarian principles”, the “international right”, or the squalid “laws of war” are respected only when and insofar as they are harmless or beneficial to the side that is “obliged” by those norms. Weakened in their protective function, such principles do resist ill and yield before the demands and consequences derived from the war or the colonization: especially if they involve the loss of the war and the colonies, or if the alternative cost does exceed what has been planned or is bearable.

Declarations, Conventions, Resolutions and other International Norms of right are agreed and recognized, signed and promulgated by all the participants more easily and profusely than ever before, because nobody does seriously think nor has the slightest intention of applying and complying with them; quite on the contrary, everybody is sure of completely ignoring such Charters and other documents of that sort. These ones do thus serve the policy, the propaganda and the psychological warfare between the imperialistic Powers; which, either accuse each other of violating them, or reach an arrangement between themselves so as to hide and preserve their crimes and “hunting grounds” over other Peoples and their States in the name of what they do falsely and cynically call their “national interests”, as if these interests were not imperialistic and did not consist of crimes of war, crimes against the peace and security of the Peoples and their legitimate States (which are the crimes necessarily constituted by every war of aggression), and crimes against Humanity.

The selective denunciation of repression, terrorism and torture: a denunciation made when and where it is convenient to the “Great” Powers and their accomplices; or on the contrary the silence and denial of those same current and multi-centennial practices in the places where they are to be silenced, do show the total subordination of truthful information, to the fascist propaganda and its psychological warfare.

The “international right” of the Great Nations is the imperialistic right. After the slight advances precariously established within the framework of the duopoly of thermo-nuclear Terror, the “new world order”: a result of the end of the Cold War, is founded on the monopoly of conventional or mass destruction weapons; on the trivialization of international aggression and grand-terrorist repression; on total war and planetary thuggishness and gangsterism under supervision of the hegemonic Power; on the exasperation of the imperialistic Nationalism and hatred between Peoples; and on the destruction of the right of self-determination or independence of Peoples by the multi-polar imperialism: a destruction necessarily attached to the advance of fascism and militarism, and to the sabotage of any progress of an international right and moral, defectives though they might be.

The RSD of all Peoples – a precarious and defective right – has been established according to historical cycles of progression and regression. Each wave of liberation of Peoples carries the corresponding undertow; causing, on the one hand, the development of an imperialism adapted, mutant and resistant to the plague of the freedom of Peoples; and on the other, the “paradoxical” weakening of the liberation movement as a result of its own attainments, due to the consequent and immediate transfer of the newly “independent” States to the crowded field of imperialism and totalitarianism.

The basic condition for the accession to that “club”, as well as its result, are the denial and attack on the RSD of the Peoples that still remain subjugated; which implies the submission or joint integration – into the imperialistic hard core – of the weaker newly arrived members. These: that as for weakness have enough with their own, seek the protection of the strongest ones and avoid like the plague the fearsome and demeaning company of the weaker ones. No sooner they have been liberated, and even before, than they don’t feel any more pressing need than that of getting the official approval from the imperialistic Powers, and the prophylactic distance from the remaining filthy Peoples that have the unprecedented presumption of being as free and equal as themselves, and holders of the same RSD! The solidarity among the colonized, oppressed and damned of the Earth is an old myth, a romantic story to deceive the eternal naïve Peoples.

The struggle of the Peoples for their freedom is the greatest revolutionary force of History. The RSD of the Peoples: the right of unconditional and immediate independence against imperialism, does preside over and subordinate the whole problem of violence, peace and policy in general. Without the RSD of Peoples: “first of human rights and prior condition of them all”, the world peace, the human rights and the democracy are only words in the panoply of ideological mystification updated by the modern Nationalism, Totalitarianism and Imperialism.

Based on the aforementioned attack on the RSD of the subjugated Peoples: carried out by the Great Powers with the participation of the Medium-sized and Small ones, the agreement of the dominant Powers for the “peaceful, super-imperialistic, ultra-imperialistic or inter-imperialistic” sharing of the Globe emerges as an old “dream” that – after a century of wars, terrorism and slaughters among the Peoples – is being tried to again be made a reality. However, it’s indeed about a nightmare, now clad with all shamelessness in an aseptic and counterfeited honourableness and concern of the imperialistic States “committed with the sake of freedom in the world” and other obscene wiles. Faced with this, the only truth is that imperialism, colonialism and their institutions drip the blood of countless victims: the permanent witness of the monstrous crimes that have built them: crimes of war, crimes against peace and security, and crimes against Humanity.

The ideology corresponding to that falsification is produced by numerous agents, officials and “specialists”, and spread without contrast by the monopolies of propaganda and psychological warfare; sometimes under the venal signature of purported “intellectuals” and laureate writers; who, after having been ennobled by the established power, deem it worthwhile disown the anti-imperialistic dream of the heroes that they themselves had formerly celebrated. Heroes too often cruelly executed – either they be the two Tupac Amaru or Roger Casement – by those States that, as they say now, “are committed to the sake of freedom in the world”, such as those sold-up lackeys do affirm. By doing so, they are concealing that the true and sole commitment of those States is to ruin the freedom of Peoples subjugated by imperialism (and with it the world peace), when that freedom comes to affect directly or indirectly the National-imperialistic domination on the Peoples that these States have kept subjected over centuries.

Such an ideology does by all means try to deny, recuperate, review, limit, undermine, confuse, falsify, distort and – ultimately – evacuate and destroy the very concept of the RSD. The theoretical expression of this right: in itself simple and unambiguous, comes to be replaced by the more inextricable undergrowth spread by work of the official services of ideological pollution. The United Nations’ legal texts themselves undergo the revisions and interpretations, upgrades and discharges of waste necessary so as to make them say the opposite of what they say, and thus ruin half a century of repeated and unequivocal Resolutions and decisions of their General Assembly. The resulting and falsified “right of self-determination of all Peoples” thus becomes reconcilable, harmless, recuperable and assimilable for the States and Nations that violate it, and unusable for the National Liberation Movements. The ideological incapability in which are kept the Peoples that are still the prey of the imperialism does favour the clumsiest wiles to the effect. The political consequences of it are difficult to exaggerate: there is no possible strategic processing of a right whose nature is being kept unknown, hidden or distorted.

With the current “elevation” of the imperialistic status quo up to a fundamental right, the correlative “subordination” of the freedom and the RSD of Peoples means their pure and simple destruction, since there are no freedom and RSD unless they are fundamental ones. Indeed, an accesory and subordinated “RSD” is simply the denial of that right and of the national freedom that it entails. And along with the abandonment of the authentic RSD of all Peoples: “first of human rights and precondition of them all”, the human rights have, in general, become a matter of fascist derision, recuperation and propaganda. Their traditional guarantees do everywhere blow up under the totalitarian onslaught. The long struggle for human rights has taken a long leap back of whose nature, scope and consequences its victims cannot or do not want to realize.

*

The freezing of the political history of the oppressed Peoples, by the locking of their national freedom, has always been the “big dream” of the dominant Powers; an always disappointed dream as long as the Sun keeps warming and the Earth spinning. Those imperialistic Powers are now imposing the status quo at all costs in order to solidify the Empires and annul the right of self-determination of all Peoples; yet, the real results of the international policy – cases of Cuba, Philippines, Hawaii, Mexico, Germany, Baltic States, Yugoslavia etc. – remind us of the functional, provisional, variable and flexible character of the official imperialistic principles, and the faded clichés of the imperialistic political geography. In spite of all the mechanisms implemented for the purpose to maintain them, the national oppression and the denial of the right of self-determination, free disposition or independence of the subjugated Peoples is the weakest point of the international totalitarian order.

However, the Great Power has already expressed repeatedly its decision to bury the right of freedom of Peoples, for the benefit of the consolidation of the imperialistic status quo: which is supposed to be adjustable to its convenience and subject to exception, whenever its maintenance is not appropriate to the interests of the hegemonic Power or when the political reality imposes its modification. In Yugoslavia, Palestine, Kurdistan etc. the differential criteria of the hegemonic Power show the gritty cynicism with which the new imperialism intends to organize the world in its image and likeness.

Except for purposes of ideological manipulation, it is of no use to still invoke the rights of self-determination and legitimate defence of the Peoples and their States legitimately and historically constituted – such as those of the Basque People and the Kingdom of Nabarre – against the aggression of imperialism, if the “International Law” is interpreted, qualified and put into practice by the mere unilateral decision and according to the simple interest of the hegemonic Power and its vassal States; or if they can subdue at their discretion any part of the Globe, without any real or formal Resistance being able to even insinuate itself to prevent it. It scarcely matters at all the rights of the Peoples, if the cruelty without risk against them ensures the support of efficient clientele formed by the despotic Governments throughout the World.

The right of free disposition or self-determination of all Peoples: first of human rights and prior condition to them all according to the International Law, is logically also the first one in passing under the guillotine of the new International Convention. Since the historical condition of its development – that is: the irruption of the Third World and the Soviet pressure in the scene of the Cold War – has ceased to exist, the imperialistic reaction against it has not been long in coming.

The containment of any Movement of National Liberation: which motivates and integrates the ideological and political strategy of the Nationalist, imperialistic, reactionary and totalitarian worldwide forces, is therefore a master guideline of the general policy ruling nowadays over the destiny of the world; is the condition that determines its concrete and co-ordinated strategy: the current bargaining chip among the vultures of the new global structure. The Nationalist, imperialistic and fascist cancer does maliciously extend in this way: under the shelter of the governmental, administrative, bureaucratic and police-military structure, which does increasingly weigh without limits nor control over the Peoples.

Those who believed that, after the last War, Fascism would no longer have a place in the “new Europe”, do now discover at their own or other’s expense that it is Democracy that has less and less place; and along with it and above all, the right of all Peoples’ freedom: “first of fundamental human rights and prior condition of them all”, as recognized by the UNO.  The ideological-political context, in the times of “globalization”, is of such a nature that it is speeding up the duel which will decide about the inevitable alternative between freedom and its liquidation, between the right of free disposition and the imperialism. (But the official “historians” of the Pnv-Eta collaborationism are not concerned with those things. The important thing for them is the fabrication and exaltation of the suicidal “institutional path” and “armed struggle”.)

The efforts of the Conferences and Commissions of the European Imperialistic Union in order to give “juridical” appearance to the ideological falsification and practical liquidation of the right of self-determination of Peoples; the recent express disqualifications made by the USA Government on the national personality and the consequent right of self-determination or free-disposition of the subjugated Peoples that continue to be victims of imperialism; and the persistent help of them all to the status quo of national oppression, are pieces of evidence of a consistent and institutionally pursued goal.

The support to the imperialism and fascism, against the RSD of Peoples, is the first bargaining chip of the hegemonic order: the Russian collaboration is purchased with the condemnation of Chechnya; and the French-Spanish collaboration, with the condemnation of the Basque People. Curiously enough, the Basque People has played an objectively significant international role in Yugoslavia and Iraq, where it has determined – negatively – the principle and the attitude of the French-Spanish and European imperialism.

The hegemonic Power has soon understood that it could not count on the complicity of the imperialistic and fascist régimes all throughout the world without recognizing their criminal “historic rights” over their “traditional” hunting preserves, which are the Peoples and Countries that they keep subjugated; “rights” that the agents and leaders of those régimes: from Putin to Erdogan and from Macron to Sanchez, do shamelessly describe as “our national interests”. The consequence of the recognition of those criminal interests is the consolidation of colonial reserves, where the fundamental human rights – and first and foremost the first one and precondition of all of them: the RSD or independence of all Peoples – have no citizenship card or tourist permit; as well as the renewal or stabilization of “Zones of influence, Protectorates, Living spaces/Lebensraum/Spazio Vitale, Co-Prosperity Spheres, Security Zones”, and other old acquaintances of the imperialistic expansion, underlying in the “Brezhnev Doctrine of limited sovereignty”.

The results have not been made to wait. In fact, without the slightest delay or hesitation, all the adhering States have understood the “anti-terrorist” Pact as the international licence, authorization and warrant for the discretional criminal Violence and Terror; and as the free hands for the unlimited repression and for the denial of all fundamental human rights: which explains its joyful acceptance on the part of the fascist and imperialistic traditional reaction.

The democratic overheating in the world of post-world war has already been controlled and countered by the conservative, imperialistic and fascist backlash reaction, which has managed to establish the general cooling-down of democracy and the freezing of the right and the process of self-determination of subjugated Peoples as an inglorious result. This is accompanied with the permanent military occupation and ruin of the subjugated Peoples; with the consequent cut and drastic retreat of human rights in general that such freezing does precede and condition; and with the emergence, dissemination and perpetuation of new conflicts, as a “bright” and inevitable implication of peace, stability and security thus guaranteed. There is no better way to degrade and destroy rights and freedoms in general.

The new hegemony has already resulted in the apology and open perpetration of crimes of war, against peace and against Humanity; and in the “solution” of international conflicts through the extension of “new type” wars in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. It implies the subsequent multiplication of the territories of permanent “international” occupation, the return and extension of the “international” protectorates and mandates, the inflation of military budgets and the militarization of the economy, the liquidation of the disarmament agreements, the globalization and free competition established through new combinations of crisis and protectionism, the increasingly authoritarian regulation of civil relations, the administrative control-fabrication of the information, and its identification – already officially and openly proclaimed – with the propaganda, the psychological warfare, and the conditioning and ideological intoxication of masses. It has also resulted in the consolidation of totalitarianism and State Terrorism under concocted cover of “democracy and counter-terrorism”, and in the securitizing support of so liberal Governments such as those of Spain, France, Russia, China and other birds of a feather. Comforted now by the resolute and unconditional protection of the contemporary world’s super-Power, Nationalism and Totalitarianism do not deprive themselves already of showing more and more openly their repugnant face that they had shamefully tried to disguise during some time.

*

Even though the new hegemonic Power does not already accept in principle more associates than those ratified through their unconditional support or submission to it, yet a modulated and studied inclusion is being gradually implemented – the same as in all Central Empires – according to the diverse conditions, myths and sociological and historical affinities. The inclusions do range from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: comfortably settled now under the benevolent protectorate of its erstwhile rebel and terrorist colonies and today plethoric hegemonic Power, up to the historical fascists and the last-minute self-seeking and opportunists. Along with them, a whole à la carte string of historical friends: protected or privileged, of protectorates, satellites, secure or insecure allies, friendly enemies, steady or temporary accomplices, fellow-travellers and useful fools fulfil the strategic and tactical network of the War and Peace scene of the USA. The task of consolidating and promoting useful dictatorships, establishing new ones, liquidating them when they become problematic, adapting and preserving in the whole world the imperialism and fascism: this is the work of the universal geo-policy, the new destiny of the Sisyphus of the present hegemonic Power.

As for non-institutional oppositions: decimated, infiltrated, cornered, divided and confused, they’re taking up the marginal space that the de facto power lets them to. The retracement or abolition of the juridical guarantees, the abandonment of the acquired and established principles for the control of the procedure in the penal sanction, and the significant “restoration” of the torture and terrorism of masses: cynically, mutually and generally accepted, exalted, applied and recognized by the hegemonic States, are now justified by reference to what they call “terrorism”, that is to say: all opposition to the hegemonic Terrorism. Only hypocrites can argue that it is possible to maintain fascist or colonialist oppression over the Peoples, without resorting to the procedures that it does necessarily entail.

It is thus shown the extent of the contemporary totalitarian backlash: either by a cynical denial of such crimes, or by their hypocrite condemn uttered by the “official defenders” of human rights; some rights that, to the peace of mind of the imperialistic Powers, leave out the right of self-determination or independence of all the subjugated Peoples: first of fundamental human rights and precondition of them all.

At the international level, and in the confrontations that currently exist within international law (used as a weapon between the Powers), one of the fronts of that offensive campaign, developed by the ideological agents of imperialism against fundamental human rights in general and against the RSD of all Peoples in particular, consists in reducing the reach of these fundamental rights to the realm – revealingly differentiated and carefully detached – of what they call “humanitarian rights”: which do fraudulently supplant and replace the former. And this on condition – in any case – that guarantee, security and satisfaction are afforded to the sensitive and almighty Governments that violate fundamental human rights and above all the Self-Determination or Independence of Peoples: a unique and equivocal way for the NGOs and the like to obtain the generous, benevolent and interested indulgence or these Governments. Thus, the limit between possibilist efficacy, on the one hand, and recognition-collaboration with the imperialistic totalitarianism, on the other, does immediately appear; and shows the dangers and the drifts towards collaborationism so many times verified and suffered.

“An assembly was therefore at once called; and – after many expressions of opinion upon both sides – Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, the same who had carried the former motion of putting the Mitylenians to death, the most violent man at Athens and at that time by far the most powerful with the commons, came forward again and spoke as follows: ‘I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire, and never more so than now by your present change of mind in the matter of Mytilene’.” Etc. (Thucydides, ‘History of the Peloponnesian War’.)

Nowadays as in the past, the new dominant ideology and policy take their starting point from the ending of the preceding illusions, and from the affirmation of the unfeasibility of democracy as a mode of organization capable to arrange and solve the national and international relations: “the desire to dominate [...] is a constitutive element of all human associations”. “Domestic and international politics are but two different manifestations of the same phenomenon: the struggle for power. [...]. The difference between domestic and international policy [...] is one of degree and not of kind”. (Hans J. Morgenthau.)

It is precisely from the abandonment of what are considered as ineffective and dangerous illusions and attempts of democratic progress, from where there emanates the worldwide totalitarian order, which by means of war and repression is being installed: insidiously or openly, piece by piece, in the face of the impotence or incompetence of its globalized patients. The advance of totalitarianism, of the endemic or irreducible armed conflicts, and of the classic or renewed reactionary forces, is already verifiable as a general phenomenon.

However, in a geopolitical perspective, reaching from hegemony to total domination implies a greater distance than that the protagonists of the “Central” empires tend to believe. If we consider the rapport of forces in its general form, all hegemonic Power seeks the destruction or neutralization of the main concurrent Power as well as the cooperation of the medium-sized Powers: whose limitations – either original or arisen – prevent them from playing or seeking a hegemonic role.

Old as the World itself, the belt of satellites or vassals is a logical consequence of the dominant Power’s supremacy, and of the will of its clients for retrieving and monetizing it in their own profit; at the relatively modest, uncomfortable and indigestible price of some snakes to swallow and retrosculating homages to lavish. It is as well a starting point for the unavoidable defections and reactions that follow every crisis of power in the central Power, also since the World is World. The multi-national peripheral clientele of security does not found the hegemony or the Empire; the hegemony and the Empire make possible and necessary the peripheral clientele.

“Athenians: ‘Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do.’ [...]

“Melians: ‘Our resolution, Athenians, is the same as it was at first. We will not in a moment deprive of freedom a city that has been inhabited these seven hundred years; but we put our trust in the fortune by which the gods have preserved it until now, and in the help of men, that is, of the Lacedaemonians; and so we will try and save ourselves. Meanwhile we invite you to allow us to be friends to you and foes to neither party, and to retire from our country after making such a treaty as shall seem fit to us both.’

“Such was the answer of the Melians. [...] The Athenian envoys now returned to the army; and the Melians showing no signs of yielding, the generals at once betook themselves to hostilities, [...]; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves; and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.” (Thucydides, ibid. Translated by Richard Crawley.)

Which can be the feasibility of such an imperialistic-colonislist system of domination and military occupation; which ones its limits and margins of manoeuvre, those are issues that do not allow a non-weighted answer. The deep and permanent crisis in which the contemporary hegemonic Power is immersed does not unluckily allow to expect that its own particular capabilities, peculiarities and contradictions can lead, finally, to solutions that are different from those that have always been taken by the hegemonic Powers and the “universal” hegemonies and Empires throughout History. Nineveh, Athens, Rome, Austrasia or Samarkand did already point to an ineluctable and fatal process that – from Thucydides to Toynbee – has been repeatedly highlighted.

*

All the imperialistic Powers have always invoked political realism as a needed method to deal with the international rapport of forces; but, invariably, they have overestimated their own possibilities. The recourse to force and universal domination: purported solution of all problems, does fatally run into the limits inherent to their own nature, and produces the same consequences that are aimed to be avoided. Cannons provide great services and “solve” many difficulties, yet they do not solve them all or forever; and the bombs – as Bonaparte said of bayonets – are useful for many things but not to sit down on them. New and conflictive frontiers appear when the old ones are surpassed, and new problems arise and are reproduced by the same means that had resolved the preceding ones. Conflicts do always reappear under new forms, until a new more or less universal Empire comes and replaces the old one to re-walk the same path, repeat the same mistakes and assume the same consequences.

The “unfailing commitment” to the sake of “peace, freedom, justice and democracy, and of the good against the evil”: obtained from such accredited and steadfast, reliable, unselfish and sincere friends and allies as the Spanish fascists and their peers at the expense of the freedom of their victims, offers the American Empire some advantages and gives to it certain guarantees; but it also arouses resistances – with respect to its objectives, terms, means and priorities – that, as a hegemonic Power, it should evaluate and gauge. Its ability to turn its former allies into adversaries, or to make new ones, is widely verified. As for its ability to keep the friends or to make new ones, that’s a horse of a different colour. Perhaps, after all, that question lacks – or it is supposed to lack – importance, starting from a sufficient accumulation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. It is thus shaped and built a political and ideological determination that only the facts will be able to weaken or modify, perhaps when it is already too late. Only the results will decide to what extent and for how long the current hegemonic Power has been wrong about friends, enemies, epoch or Planet.

As it seems, freedom and democracy are not going to be the prospects of Humanity in a foreseeable future; not even the object of its yearnings. “What it wants, what it seeks, what it will have is terror.” The terrorist and totalitarian world order is characteristic of the contemporary human. A certain naïve, outdated and superseded Address: delivered by the way at Gettysburg and at a crossroad of the American history, stated that “the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the Earth”. Certainly it is not probable, in any case, that the Spirit of Freedom will entirely disappear from it, but it is going to have a very bad time in the coming times. “In the coming times”, the democrats and free people will have better get used to the idea that freedom, democracy and human rights are but antiques and fairy tales, little or nothing compatible with this century that begins, or they will have to take very seriously their struggle for survival.

In any case, the decisions that will for a long time remain determining factors of the world policy are today as foreseeable as unavoidable. Any attempt to prevent or modify them through the conviction of theoretical discourse is undoubtedly lost work; all argumentation in this sense, more illusory than the Melian discourse to the Delian League. The economically and politically dominant Power is also the ideologically dominant Power. The hegemonic or imperial Power is not to be taught of what it does already know, of what it does not want to know, or of what it surely has already assumed. Nothing nor nobody will be able to separate it away from its immanent destiny, and nothing nor nobody will be able to turn us away from the unavoidable consequences.