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 the political reality and the relationship between Nations; the only one that their actors – the States – know, recognize and practice. Today, the abrupt outcome from the period of bi-cephalic hegemony and balance of nuclear Terror, as determinants 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. Indeed, the current hegemonic Power has been hesitating since its foundation between its dilemmas; in 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, and 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. And 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 all sides: 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, namely: with the fatal final victory of Secretary of State Robert Lansing over President Wilson, and of Mister Hyde over Dr. Jekyll. The result is, for now, George Bomber Bush’s Administration. (All that for this!)

(For further detail, see Chapter 6 – ‘State Terrorism: Supression of Fundamental Human Rights’ of our work ‘‘Violence and Terrorism.- Their ideological mystification at the service of imperialism’.)

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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, which 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, since international relations have always been regulated by means of 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 believing that it is possible to go so far in the reductionism of international relations in their global reality, this is a belief 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 contemporary International Law, 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; mechanisms that 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? That is the question.

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”. In the USA, its current absence, deterioration, weakening or disappearance have led to its replacement by the plutocracy of the East, which – since the War Between the States in 1861-65 – 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 unfortunately he is so of a new generation: with the defects but without the virtues of his predecessors. In such circumstances, and in order to be able to give the results expected of it, the propaganda of the new hegemonic gang implanted in the USA 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 nouveau-rich masters of the world does not suffer too much as a result of their shortcomings, nor does it give raise to any attempt to remedy them. It is not that Bush thinks he is pretty clever; it is 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: who – 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 multi-national 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”. As there has been said: “Some believe that in the world they are in charge but they are wrong: in the world we are in charge”. In short, it means that the human rights and the rights of self-determination and of legitimate self-defence of all Peoples are a monopoly of the imperial Nation and its satellites.

Once the wings of “the Archangel Gabriel have been spread 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 all 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 Robert Clive’s “Black Hole of Calcutta” or the Drums of Fu-Manchu; “dangers” currently combined with “terrorism” as the supreme stage of Satanism. These are the problems 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 be not exactly that of the Redskins or the Dalton Brothers’, or that of Germany and Japan, or that of Communism or the Star Wars, and that it does not admit the same treatment or the same solutions.

But there happens that the alleged or real threats – Babylonic, Lacedemonic, Punic, Arabic, Turkish, Communist or Islamist-terrorist: the current and post-Communist supreme incarnation of Evil – have never been lacking 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 and guidelines that allow them to combine the romantic and humanist rhetoric (which propaganda still demands), along with the obliged and blunt realism that is required by the policy of universal power.

As for those guidelines, the current strategy of the hegemonic Administration seems to be based on the development of the reports that its Official Services of Investigation and Intelligence provides it with; and its Supreme Officer seems to believe that in them can be contained – for all he is interested and concerned in – the history, sociology and anthropology of the weary Humankind whose destinies he does already guide with firm rein and explosive spur. Yet, it is more than doubtful that the keys to current world geo-politics can be comfortably contained in those report-cards provided to this Officer by the National Security Council (NSC), the FBI, the CIA, and the Presidential Service Badge (PSB); and that his rustic ignorance on such matters as human geography or political history can result compensated by the capacity and readiness of his Administration to bury the world under the bombs. His postulated total coincidence between the service to Humanity, on the one hand, and the interests of the USA in the world, on the other, does rather point 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 the producers and spokespersons for the “official versions” of propaganda and psychological warfare issued by Governments, do sometimes seem to believe themselves what might be expected that they say only for making others to believe it. And in this way (since History is written backward by those who hold the present political power), it will not take long for those agentsto discover and believe themselves the multi-centennial antecedents that do found and justify the current alliances and oppositions. Thus, given the dilating effect exertedby the monopoly of mass psychological conditioning applied to the people’s gullibility, we can expect that they will soon learn about the constant Spanish and French support to the north-American war against the Axis Powers; or about “the fire of Gernika” carried out by the Basque nationalists, as it was already denounced by General Franco: democratic founder of the current Spanish régime and an early anti-terrorist leader, unjustly vilified and finally rehabilitated. They will not take long either in discovering 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 both Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy as well as the struggle against colonialism in general. Once more: you live and learn, since this is just beginning.

Now then, how an Institution that began giving men such as Washington, Jefferson and Adams could ever have arrived to produce Bush and Trump, this is a question that shows in itself the contingencies of historical process of evolution and the precariousness of political progress in this world. But everything has its explanation, because when General-President Eisenhower rode into Madrid amidst 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 aroused and spread in the world by the new reality of the hegemonic monopoly of the USA, are the result – perhaps deliberately integrated and assumed by itself – of the disappointment and frustration experienced on 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, has tried to join this new promised 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 subsequent  mafia reconstruction.

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The 20^th 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 and 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 law” as well as 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 the positive international law, knew what to expect with regard to it, whether in the soft or in the hard version. As there had happened with the LN, its successor the UNO did soon show that it formally and actually lacked any capacity to face a Great or Medium-sized Power, but not, for example, to hypocritically support the horrific  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 and condemn Serbs, Iraqi or Afghan military or politicians, on behalf of the hegemonic Power and its protégés, is one thing; the capacity to arrest, judge and condemn the leaders and performers of the north-American policy and their cronies, is 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 in its beginnings by the nuclear duopoly and the decolonization of the Third World, is now fading away – out of inefficacy and inconsistency – in the face of the lone advance of “the” Great Power, which no longer needs it for anything. It is not that the latter has had an error of appreciation or calculation; it is its capital, deliberate and cynical 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 law”, surpassing “illustrious” theoretical and practical precedents, has become a simple parcel of the law of the USA, which have already decided to organize the world on its own. Their Administration dictates international law, qualifies violence and terrorism, and judges of good and evil: it is the supreme representative of God 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 them to the duopoly of nuclear Terror and to the UN; but the end of the Cold War has made them hasten the direct and unhesitating step towards unshared supremacy and universal hegemony. The long period of balance of atomic Terror, maintained togother with the U.S.S.R., has provided the ground, the condition, the model, the impulse, the testing ground and the pretext for the gradual implantation of the new hegemonic Power. If at first it could be thought that the collapse of the communist strategic base released the destiny of the USA from their ideological-political ballast, however, what that disappearance of Soviet counterweight, concurrence, 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, or in any case such as it was established. Yet, in reality, what Communism et alia did was to consolidate the foundation of all régimes, that is: to consolidate 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 it no longer believed in it. Now, in the world of post-Communism, it is no longer a certain political and social system that is called into question; what is called into question is the system and the entire 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 to be “inevitable evils” given the circumstances prior to that ending, 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.

Dependence towards others – whether it be in terms of decisions, interventions, reprisals or wars – does already result humiliating and unbearable for the hegemonic Power, which has chosen to do everything it wants where, when 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 law. 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 that is being sustained by an overwhelming abundance of productive and financial resources that show capacity, will and determination consistent with the objectives politically and militarily pursued.

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To make the World a protectorate or a zone of USA occupation 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 capable, that is the question; because unilateral Violence is resolved in multilateral Violence is resolved in multilateral violence without compromise nor alternative.

The hegemonic Power and its vassal States do no longer recognize an Agent or International Law 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.

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”. However, under this new "international order", the manifestation of the naked reality and the uninhibited unilateral recourse to Violence has been exacerbated in everybody’s plain sight.

All States have reserved for themselves the right to qualify and carry out what they consider to be their own legitimate self-defence. The nuclear Powers have of course included the right to the discretionary and unilateral use of the supreme weapon, and the right to prevent others from using it. As a result, 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 did previously condition it.

The fundamental texts of the UN 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 of their legitimate 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 efforts and attempts to establish a ‘jus cogens’: an international peremptory right placed above all the norms of positive law of States, 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 of Violence 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 being currently 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 free-diposition/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 “anti-terrorist” Pact established by the hegemonic Power. The new universal oligarchy has already excluded everyone else from the international community.

The repercussion of this 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 established/accepted by them 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 – 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.” Now then, in the anthropomorphic Animal Kingdom, the intraspecific conflict in each species remains reduced in conditions and by procedures that do not occur nor are applied in the human species. On the contrary, isolationism and war are the characteristic of the “state of nature” among humans, whose States are always in a position or in a willingness “which is called Warre; and such a warre as is of every man against every man” (T. Hobbes); situations only partially mitigated by 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 such 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 to one’s own behaviour thus justified, that is: it is a simple means of unilateral conditioning of others’ behaviour by one’s own. Thus, the norm of conduct is a simple sub-product, an ideological replica and accessory, a 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, established in so as to hide and comfort – by means of the “moral” fiction – the universal principle and the 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 law, 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.) Because, from the start and as is natural, no one respects a “right” of a part, in whose foundation one appears only as the 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. Imperialism and the ruin of Peoples’ right of self-determination, that is: of their 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 – and of the loss of their national independence and identity – permeates the social base of some States and their Governments: which are themselves imperialists on other Peoples and States that they dominate or aspire to dominate (because of their considering them “historically their property” or because of having placed them directly under the “Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty”, as established by those elaborate subterfuges that they have invented so as to justify their own domination), but which do nevertheless feel threatened – or pretend to be so – by other stronger Powers, 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 who, after the air raid on New York and the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001, did expect or wish that, as a result, there would be a revision 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 law during the last fifty years from WWII do appear, in hindsight, to be consequence of the opposition and the balance between the two Powers; which bestowed the Third World a so exceptional as provisional role. But 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 these advances.

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 “absolute evil, fascism, violence and terrorism” 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. (See our work: ‘Violence and Terrorism.- Their ideological mystification at the service of Imperialism’.)

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 both about the universal qualification-disqualification of the political forces, as well as 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 either. 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, in order to guarantee them through their national liberation. Liberation struggles carried out “by all possible means, including armed struggle” [UNGAR 3070 (1973)], “by all means at their disposal, particularly armed struggle” [UNGAR 33/24 (1978)], and “by all available means, including armed struggle” [UNGAR 35/35 (1980)] etc.); as established by some of these Resolutions in defence of the subjugated Peoples’ rights of self-determination or independece, 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 ‘violence’ and ‘terrorism’ not with a precise and respective meaning but with an amalgamation of different meanings, albeit 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 from them 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 from the totalitarian legal systems of the pre-war period; which does by itself illustrate the real content of the new political order that has re-adopted these criteria.

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 and ideologically presentable definition for concepts that are really diverse, and that therefore are not susceptible to conceptual unification, is remedied with the preparation, publication and updating of a mere list or “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.

This new so-called “anti-terrorist” Terrorism, thus established and restored, does now extend without limits to the whole international reality. Any resistance and any critical reserve to one of the “signatory” States of the “anti-terrorist” Pact has to face also, 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 that Pact of “collective legitimate defence against terrorism” 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. Given that similar causes produce similar effects, fifty years of betrayals, impotence, and capitulation in the face of imperialism of all those who could impose it, have also ruined the UNO along with all the advances and illusions that this Organization did arouse or disappoint; until finally the new hegemonic Power decided to openly ignore such an obsolete antique.

Once the balance that had been established by means of the Terror of the nuclear duopoly and the Cold or Hot War has been undone, there has been a shift – from that “peace of balance” – to an attempt of a “hegemonic peace” that sometimes resembles the “Pax [peace] of the Empire”, and other times the “anarchy” or the law of the jungle. This embryonic world “order” has now been succeeded by the inevitable rampage of the multi-lateral and multi-centred violence: the currently demanded “multi-lateralism” is the imperialistic multi-lateralism of the “Great” imperialistic 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 law”, 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 function of guarantee, these principles resist poorly and yield to the demands and consequences of the war of aggression and of the colonization; especially if they involve the loss of the war and the colonies, or if the alternative cost exceeds what was had been foreseen 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 call their “national interests”. They do so with all cynicism, as if these interests were legitimate and not imperialistic, and as if they 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 law” of the “Great” nations is the imperialistic law. After the slight advances precariously established within the framework of the duopoly of thermo-nuclear Terror, the “new world order”, a result of the ending 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 the Peoples subjugated by multi-polar imperialism. A destruction necessarily linked to the advance of fascism and militarism, and to the sabotage of all progress of an International Law and Morality that, defective though they might be, did postulatedly bind everyone equally.

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 “club” 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 other 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, that dream consists in reality of a nightmare that is now shamelessly clad in an aseptic and falsified honorability, due to the alleged involvement in it of the imperialistic States, supposedly “committed to the sake of freedom in the world”, and other obscene trickery. In the face of these falsifications, 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 is 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 beautiful anti-imperialistic dream of the characters that they themselves had formerly celebrated. Heroes too often cruelly executed – either they be the two Tupac Amaru, or “the Celt” Roger Casement – by those States that, as those lackeys-writers of imperialism say now, “are committed to the sake of freedom in the world”. By doing so, they are concealing that the true and sole commitment of those imperialistic States is to ruin the freedom of Peoples that they keep subjugated (and with it the world peace), when that freedom does directly or indirectly affect the maintenance of their National-imperialistic domination.

Such an ideology does by all means try to deny, recuperate, review, limit, undermine, confuse, falsify, distort and – in short – evacuate and destroy the very concept of the RSD of the Peoples subdued by imperialism. 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” thus becomes reconcilable, harmless, recuperable and assimilable for the States and Nations that violate it, and unusable for the National Liberation Movements. The ideological incapacity in which are kept the Peoples that are still the prey of the imperialism, does favour the dissemination of the clumsiest wiles (as there happens in the Basque Country with the caricature they call “right to decide”) in order to implement the falsification of the RSD. The political consequences of it are difficult to exaggerate, because there is no possible strategic processing of a right whose nature is being kept unknown, hidden or falsified.

Along 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 given that there are no freedom and RSD unless they are fundamental ones; since to affirm them as subordinate is to affirm them as non-existent. Indeed, an accesory and subordinated “RSD” is simply the denial of that right and of the national freedom that it entails. Pursuant 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 fundamental 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 blocking their national freedom is the “big sleep” 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 imperialistic official 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.

Consequently, 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: a “still photo” that is supposed to be modulable at its convenience and subject to exception whenever its maintenance does not suit the interests of the hegemonic Power, or when 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 for the full enjoyment of them all, as recognized – not constituted – by contemporary International Law, is also, logically, 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: an objective that motivates and integrates the ideological and political strategy of the Nationalist, imperialistic, reactionary and totalitarian worldwide forces, is therefore the main line of the general policy that governs 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 spreads cunningly 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 Peoples’ freedom. 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 Peoples’ right of free disposition and the imperialism. (But the official “historians” of the “Basque” collaborationism Pnv-Eta are not concerned with these 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 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/Ichkeria; 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 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, as an inglorious result, has succeeded in establishing the general cooling of democracy and the freezing of the right and the process of liberation of subjugated Peoples. 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 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 range from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (comfortably installed now under the benevolent protectorate of its erstwhile rebel and terrorist colonies, and today plethoric hegemonic Power), to the historical fascists and the last-minute profiteers 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 destiny of the new 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 in the procedure of penal sanction, and the significant “restoration” of the torture and terrorism of masses: setbacks 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 Terrorism of imperialistic States on the subjugated Peoples. As is evident, only hypocrites can argue that it is possible to maintain fascist or colonialist oppression over the Peoples, without resorting to the criminal procedures that this oppression 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 condemnation made by the “homologated defenders” of human rights, since this “condemnation” refers only to some rights that, for 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.

Indeed, 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 this offensive – carried out 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”, with which those “homologated defenders” do fraudulently supplant and replace the fundamental human rights. And this on condition – in any case – that guarantee, security and satisfaction are afforded to the sensitive and almighty Governments that violate Peoples’ rights: a unique and equivocal way for the NGOs and the like to obtain the generous, benevolent and interested indulgence or these Governments towards the “humanitarian rights”. 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.

Nowadays as in the past, the new totalitarian 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:

“An assembly was therefore at once called; and – after much expression 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 on other peoples, and never more so than now by your present change of mind in the matter of [the decision to kill all] the Mytileneans. [...] For you are entirely forgetting that your empire [the Athenian ‘democracy’] is a tyranny exercised on disaffected subjects [peoples] who plot intrigues and remain subdued against their will; peoples whose obedience is ensured not by your suicidal concessions of favours, but by the superiority given you by your own strength and not their loyalty’.” Etc. (Thucydides; ‘History of the Peloponnesian War’; III, 36-6/37.)

“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 fundamental 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.