- Two Faces of the same old coin
Two books by two prominent African writers, one a novelist, the other a psychiatrist have always dominated the debate about colonialism and neocolonialism in Africa. “Things Fall Apart” by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe and “The Wretched of the Earth” by Algerian psychiatrist and author Franz Fanon are classical works whose relevance has not diminished down to this day. The two works were in a way prophetic in content.
“Things Fall Apart” denounced the effects of colonialism when it came into contact with traditional African tribal societies whose values were compromised to disastrous effects. “The Wretched of the Earth” delves into the psychological effects of colonialism on the minds of the oppressed. He analyzed the conditions of the oppressed black masses and the psychic scars such oppression creates in the minds the oppressed.
We can add here another work by a black writer: Ayi Kwe Armah who in his “The Beautiful Ones are not Yet Born” shows how the post-colonial elites abuse their positions as the new rulers simply to spread the virus of corruption at the cost of the poor people who are suffering daily to meet the basic needs of life.
These works were prophetic in the sense that colonialism metamorphosed into neocolonialism without however shedding its original projects of subjugating African societies both materially and spiritually. Neocolonialism was thus the newest stage of colonialism and the highest stage of imperialism although the advent of globalization tended to blur this fundamental truth.
The symbiosis between imperialism and neocolonialism is evident even at the time of this writing wherever and whenever political crises are looming large in the horizon. Africa is still the destiny and target of neocolonialism. Europe was a colonial entity and America has followed in its footsteps to become the new champion of neocolonialism.
Historical facts speak for themselves. Most of the wars fought in the world since the end of the Second World War were instigated, exacerbated or conducted by proxy with the tacit agreement and support of the various Western governments. At the end of the war, the US was the most powerful economic and military power in the world and as such it claimed to lead but in fact dominate the world economically, politically, culturally and ideologically.
In between the end of the war and the advent of the new millennium, America consolidated its position in international affairs by sharpening its most effective weapon of ideological and cultural subversion of African countries in particular through its cultural institutions, its educational system and its ideological illusions.
American decline started back in the 1980s when a once maker and breaker in world affairs, controlling the most efficient military machine in history and economic system that had become the envy of the world started to budge because of what political scientist Paul Kennedy called “imperial overstretch”. In other words, the US started to be stretched to its limits and was threatened with break up and decline.
Commenting of Kennedy’s work, James Traub, a columnist at Foreign Affairs magazine says that, “The United States is exhibiting extremely idiosyncratic symptoms of great-power decline. Take the classic account of the subject, Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Kennedy describes a syndrome, which afflicted the Roman Empire, imperial Spain, and Victorian England, among others, in which regional or global aspirations outstrip national capacities. Kennedy projected the United States as the latest victim of “imperial overstretch,” because “the sum total of the United States’ global interests and obligations is nowadays far larger than the country’s power to defend them simultaneously.”
Colonialism maintained itself and tried to renovate its system through new conquests wars and subjugation of free peoples and territories. By the same token, US neocolonialism continued to pursue the same objectives, albeit with new approaches and new tools. When hard power became increasingly looked obsolete, Washington invented a new alternative called “soft power” that consisted of state-of -the arts technology that could be made to sustain its hard power leadership in global affairs.
In the mean time America lost its democratic values, becoming more racist at home and more aggressive abroad in the name of preserving the American ideal or the so-called “American dream” that is increasingly becoming nightmarish, or schizophrenic. American values came into conflict against the old democratic ideals and the new aggressive and jingoistic aspirations of its leaders. With former president Trump in the White House, American neocolonialism evolved into fascism disguised as white supremacist nationalism.
The recent defeat and withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan is the last straw that broke the camel’s back. A string of retreats have preceded this last one. America retreated from Iraq not on its own free will or because of its concern for the Iraqi people. It was defeated and forced to withdraw. In Syria, the US was involved on the side of those who masterminded the civil war in the first place. Then when ISIS became too strong to defeat with American military might alone, the US chose to fight on two fronts.
Libya was also the wrong culprit that is paying with the blood of its people following the killing of its one time famous leader. NATO, America and the then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton conspired to kill Khadafy and plunge the country into the interminable chaos that makes Khadafy’s dictatorial rule look like a child’s play.
Internationally America is in retreat. It has lost its international prestige and respect. Its economy is in permanent crisis and destined to be overtaken by newly emerging powers like China. Domestically, the United States is harboring the worst form racism on its black and Hispanic populations. Abroad it is conducting the worst proxy wars. Washington is an expert in proxy wars. It hired, used and paid the fascist TPLF to fight its war in Somalia.
Ethiopia is only the victim of American geopolitical manipulations. The US is now paying its same bankrupt ally to wage a proxy war against Ethiopia as Herman Cohen and fellow conspirator brought the same cannibalistic regime headed by the TPLF into Ethiopia’s political space by hook or by crook. Unfortunately, the US is using the same spent force to bring to life its same defeated neocolonial project in Africa and the world.
Otherwise how could Washington try to pick up the TPLF from the dustbin of history in order to resuscitate it and assign it to wreck havoc on millions of innocent Ethiopians? An old Ethiopian saying fits this scenario very well. It is a tale about the hen that perhaps faced the unpleasant prospect of ending in the cauldron as a stew for one of the holidays. It was at that moment that the hen was quoted by the imaginative Ethiopians as saying that it was going “to scatter the grain to the four winds even if it had no time to bite at it.” The TPLF is a dying organizaion kept on a ventilator with American artificial respiration like a man with COVID-19 fighting for his life.
American exceptionality, its supremacy, and its illusions are churning out the same old cinematic illusions and Hollywood bravado that hardly disguised the inhumanity of its foreign policy. US foreign policy turned from the schizophrenic to the absurd. This more evident in Ethiopia which was a traditional ally of Washington for more than a century and suddenly turned into its foe. Washington is acting like a drunkard who quarrels with his drinking buddies only to go back home and throw abuses and even pieces of furniture at his wife who has nothing to do with his quarrel back at the pub.
What has Ethiopia done to deserve all this abuses and threats of the last few months? If it has done anything that the US does not like at present may be the fact that it is located in this part of the world we call The Horn of Africa, which is the creation of God or nature and that this nation of 112 million people, by the last count, has decided to stand up and be counted as a country of pride people who really matter in regional and world politics. Unfortunately the Washington bigwigs tend to think not in terms of countries or peoples but in terms of geographic entities and territorial blocs.
In its pursuit of world domination, America had forgotten to do its homework and when the moment of reckoning arrived in its long journey from being a land of asylum to a power of conquest, the Washington bigwigs targeted Ethiopia as village bullies select their targets among those who they thinks can be easily cowed or beaten to submission.
American supremacy is being threatened with fast decline as the new Chinese bandwagon is grinding on irresistibly. The US is angry at its crumbling geopolitical interests as Kennedy put it in his above-quoted book. Since the 1990s, Washington has poured billions of dollars to control the strategic Horn of Africa and has failed as it has recently failed in Afghanistan at a war that was conducted with similar objectives and similar methods.
Ethiopia has done nothing to alter the balance of forces in this part of Africa in favor of this or that great power. It is only trying to be itself and survive in this wild world where the powerful try to destroy the weak and the poor. Yet it is forced to paying dearly for trying to be its own self and stand up to be counted as an independent and sovereign country.
America fought a proxy war in Somalia and failed. The same is true for its latest defeat in Afghanistan. It manufactured the Taliban against the former Soviet Union and created the monster that devoured it at the end of the game. Now it is apparently trying to woo potentially anti-Taliban forces such as ISIS (K) that recently carried out the bombings at the Kabul international airport that killed more than 170 innocent civilians and its own soldiers.
One should not be surprised if tomorrow the US hire ISIS (K) to conduct another proxy war in Afghanistan sacrificing tens of thousands of innocent human lives as well as trillions of dollars as it did to bolster and then facilitate Taliban’s access to power thereby facing the nightmare military and political scenario.
Meanwhile American cultural fascism continues to produce tons of horror movies as if the horrors of real time are not enough to scare the poor and innocent of this world and this country. It is the same old story. Hollywood thrived on violence and wars. it started to tell the story of the bloody treatment of so-called Red Indians as they were being slaughtered by the white cowboys in the wild west of early 20th century America. In those movies the white cowboys and so-called pioneers were always the heroes and the poor Red Indians who later on were forced to live in reservations, were always the villains.
Then came the era of the war movies hereby American Red Berets were eulogized as the new heroes while the Vietcong, were portrayed as the new villains. This was followed with America’s engagements in proxy wars and Hollywood productions followed suit. Movies like “Black Hawk Down” portrayed Somali warlords who opposed the American presence in Somalia as “wild men” who punish the invaders as wild or inhuman. In other times, Hollywood portrayed Somalis as pirates who easily and senselessly kill people for money. These stereotypes are repeated time and again in movies are repeated in movies to the benefit of corporate interests behind the film industry.
American horror movies and tech-driven wild imaginary bloodlettings are working hard to produce the future butchers of this world as they have already done with the likes of the Afghan Taliban and the Ethiopian terrorist TPLF, two monsters with the same incorrigibly blood-thirsty instincts although with different faces.
Meanwhile Chinua Achebe and Franz Fanon continue to warn Africans about the neocolonial peril that is lifting its bloody head now and then until it is finally done away with although nobody knows when this will happen. After imperial overstretch comes final retreat as the US finds itself at this stage in Kabul and elsewhere.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SEPTEMBER 3/ 2021
