Self – Determination and its Value
By Israel Shamir
(A Talk given at
Rhodes World Public Forum of Dialogue of Civilisations, 12 October
2008).
National Self-Determination is a key issue in the
centuries-long dialogue between East and West. The two sides speak at
cross-purposes about it, even (or especially) when they use identical
terms. National Self-Determination really has two meanings, as different
as "the root of a tree in a square" is from "the square root". It can
refer to both Political Self Determination (PSD) and System Self
Determination (SSD).
- SSD is old, as old as mankind.
- PSD is the novel invention of Woodrow Wilson.
SSD is close to the concept of sovereignty, and is
described as the right of a nation (meaning: state) to freely choose its
political, economic, social and cultural systems -- to live in its own
way according to its own values.
PSD is the right of a people (meaning: ethnic
cultural unit) to create, join or secede from a state.
Both forms of self-determination are enshrined as
national rights by the UN Charter (Article 1, paragraph 2; and Article
55, paragraph 1), but their applications are quite different:
(1) Political self determination
The right of nations to Political Self-Determination
(PSD) is an integral part of the modern paradigm; it was upheld by the
West as part and parcel of a national-romantic trend, and was used to
tear the Balkans and the Arab world away from the great Eastern
commonwealth of the Ottoman Empire. Coincidentally, the territories that
realised their "self-determination" became British colonies,
protectorates or dependent territories, and eventually passed into the
Pax Americana. Realisation of PSD at the breakup of the Ottoman Empire
caused massacres and ethnic cleansings on a scale previously unheard of.
Smyrna and Salonika, Greeks and Turks, Armenians and Kurds, and later
Albanians and Serbs were victims of this Weapon of Mass Destruction.
The West upholds the application of PSD to the East,
and often invokes it in supporting independence for Tibet, Kashmir,
Chechnya, Balujistan, Wasiristan, Kurdistan and what not. Full
implementation of this principle would have the East fragmented into
hundreds of statelets, but with all of them embracing the same liberal
Western system of values.
Irony of history: In the 19th century, the
West was divided into nation states, while its adversary the East was
organized by big supranational territorial units, the commonwealths of
Ottoman Turkey, Austro-Hungary, Russia, China and India. The West fought
against the East not only with weapons of steel and fire, but also by
brandishing the concept of national (read: ethnic) identity and of the
desirability of each such identity’s self-determination through
secession and independence. In the 21st century, after almost
two hundred years of applying these principles, the West is united in
two large supranational territorial units of the USA and the EU, while
the East is fragmented into dozens of states, and the fragmentation
tendency is not over yet. In other words, the West and the East have
traded places; with the West’s superiority well entrenched.
This transformation allows us to recognise political
self-determination for the potent weapon of ideological warfare that is:
a Western device created for the purpose of undermining and colonising
the East. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was caused – to an
important extent – by the activation of this device, this ideological
long-term “sleeping mine” that had been incorporated in the Soviet
structure by the Communist Party for historical reasons. The Russian
Marxists had inherited this principle from the European Marxists for
whom this was part and parcel of their Eurocentric point of view.
Lenin’s Party minimised its application but did not exorcize it
completely. In 1991, it was used to break up the Soviet Union and caused
great damage to millions of Soviet citizens. Millions became refugees
and even more millions lost their right to use their native tongue or
even their basic civil rights.
This false and damaging “right” should be stricken
from the books and vigorously denied, as its very presence causes damage
and bloodshed. The East (meaning the Eurasian lands east of the core
Western European countries) could then return to its roots – in other
words, it could utilise the European integration experience and
reconstitute the large commonwealths uniting its population.
All big Eastern nations need it:
China -- It is
impossible to agree to the secession of Tibet, for it would make two
million Tibetans (or rather their monastic elite) the owners of millions
of square miles of territory, while two million non-Tibetans living
there would lose their rights or even their lives. The PSD of Tibet
would cause a vast ethnic-cleansing wave; it would undermine both China
and India (as parts of historic Great Tibet belong now to India), and it
would create a new Western military base in the very heart of Eurasia.
India -- Kashmiri
secession is equally unacceptable. An independent Muslim Kashmir would
not be able to keep two thirds of its present territory, for the
Buddhist Ladakh and Hindu Jammu, now parts of the Jammu and Kashmir
State, will not follow Srinagar. Dealing with the waves of Muslim
refugees that would ensue from Ladakh and Jammu, and the likewise
predictable Hindu refugees from Kashmir proper would ruin the country
for ages, whether or not such secession renews hostilities between India
and Pakistan. Instead of that, a large integration project could be
undertaken to revert the fateful Partition of the Raj and the partition
along the Durand Line. Pakistan, a failed state, may be deconstructed:
part to join back with Mother India, and part to rejoin Afghanistan.
Russia -- It is
doubtful whether the 1991 application of PSD to the former Soviet
territory will have a lasting effect. The secession of the Ukraine bore
bitter fruit: the pro-Western regime of Yushchenko banned the Russian
language, the first tongue of majority of Ukrainian population. People
are not allowed to use Russian; even the works of the greatest Ukrainian
writer Gogol are being classified as “foreign literature,” as they were
written in Russian. Yushchenko supplied modern weapons to Georgia and
intends to bring his own country into NATO, thereby turning the Ukraine
into an enemy of Russia. Georgia is a criminal basket-case: half of the
Georgian population moved to Russia in order to escape Saakashvili and
his “independent” regime.
The dubious “right to PSD” should be counterbalanced
by two more fundamental principles: that of forbidding discrimination,
and that of avoiding bloodshed. The creation of new states on an ethnic,
religious or cultural basis unavoidably causes bloodshed and
discrimination. For instance, the creation of the independent Estonian,
Latvian and Georgian states brought forth brutal discrimination against
non-Eestis, non-Letts, non-Kartvels who constitute almost half of these
countries’ population. At the first (post-Versailles) attempt to tear
these areas away from Russia and make them independent, local elites
expropriated and expelled the Germans from Estonia and Latvia, and
Armenians were expelled from Georgia. At the second attempt in the
1990s, they victimised the Russians in Estonia and Latvia and the
Abkhazians and Ossetians in Georgia. This caused a chain reaction: while
the expelled Germans of the Baltic States had given support to Hitler’s
militarism, Ossetians and Abkhazians have created a new problem, that of
Georgian refugees from these regions.
We know that a marriage may fail -- but a divorce can
fail, too! The 1991 divorce of the Soviet republics failed. The way out
lies through reintegration of the post-Soviet areal, followed by the
reintegration of other large Eastern commonwealths (“Empires”); the
reintegration of the Muslim and Orthodox lands formerly united in the
Byzantine or Ottoman Empire into one Commonwealth of the East, under the
auspices of Russia and Turkey, could reverse the process of
fragmentation which created a dozen Balkan states, broke Iraq into three
statelets, tore Lebanon off from Syria and Kosovo off from Serbia.
Instead of allowing Kashmir to secede, India and Pakistan should
reintegrate. Re-integration is the way to stop discrimination,
pauperisation and submission to the West for all the nations of the
East. The present collapse of the Western finance system makes such a
move possible and desirable.
The priority of the principle of non-discrimination
over the principle of self-determination should be proclaimed and
established in the Middle East. The Jewish State is a pilot Western
project, created by breaking off a slice of Syria for the implementation
of “right” of the Jewish people to Political Self-Determination. It
became a constant source of discrimination, it encourages secession and
separatism, it is a military base for the West, it is a state with long
history of aggression against its neighbours, a potential aggressor
against Syria and Iran, and a transgressor against nuclear
non-proliferation. All of this can be cured by the reintegration of
Palestine into one non-discriminatory state. As the November 29, 1947 UN
Resolution was never implemented, and as a separate Palestinian state
has not been created due to the intransigence of Jewish elites, this
project should be abandoned, and an integration project should be put in
its place. The creation of a non-hegemonist, non-discriminatory state of
all its citizens in place of the Jewish State could become the turning
point for the transformation of the East from fragmentation to
integration.
(2)
Hegemony and Self Determination
The way of nations’ SSD -- the way of their right to
live in accordance with their values -- is blocked by the Western
hegemony. This hegemony is not only material, as expressed in military
conquests and colonisation, but cultural as well. This cultural hegemony
has ancient roots, beginning with the old claims of the Pope of Rome to
his primacy over all the Patriarchs. That hegemony is connected to, but
not identical with, the Eurocentric world view. Eurocentrism is
basically a parochial view by people who are not sufficiently aware of
the rest of the world, and who thus sin against political correctness.
But Western hegemonism reaches far beyond the parochial Eurocentric
view. Edward Said correctly noted the drive for political and
ideological dominance behind the cultural Eurocentric view.
Dr J C Kapur quoted the "Macaulay Minute" document to
the same effect: “We (the British) can’t ever conquer India, unless we
break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and
cultural heritage. If the Indians think that all that is foreign and
English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their
self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want
them, a truly dominated nation.” This is not an exact quotation but
rather the gist of Macaulay’s speech. In other words, cultural hegemony
is a prerequisite for lasting political and economic dominance, in
Gramscian terms.
In the last quarter of 20th century,
hegemony shifted; its power base narrowed considerably. First, it became
US hegemony; later, it became the hegemony of the finance-based and
heavily Judaised American elites. This is not Western hegemony any more,
but hegemony against the West as well as against the East. The
hegemonic liberal paradigm is a hostile force standing against the
peoples of the West as well -- the long truce between the hegemonists
and the people of the West is over.
Hegemonists deny the right of systemic
self-determination. They deny:
- The right of Iranians to live in accordance with
their religious views and under the guidance of their spiritual leaders,
- The right of people of North Korea and Cuba to stay
Communist,
- The right of Palestinians to elect the religious
and solidarist Hamas government,
- The right of Malaysians and Russians to keep their
TV under national control;.
Moreover, they deny:
- The right of the Austrians to elect a right-wing
government,
- The right of Americans to ban abortions and
celebrate Christmas openly,
- The right Frenchmen and Germans to disprove the
Judaic worldview;
- The right of Swedes to limit immigration and
cultural diversity.
In short, hegemonists deny the right of nations to
choose their political system and to live in accordance with their own
values. They claim there is only one acceptable and permitted system of
values -- the Western, liberal, secular, civilised one -- while other
systems are inferior, erroneous, criminal and defective.
The nations of the West are still subjugated and do
not dare to rise up in open revolt against the hegemonists. The East has
a different attitude: nations and civilisations are entitled to live
their own ways. The West is entitled to break with this hegemony, or to
accept it, as it finds fit. The East claims the same right for its many
ways.
This was proclaimed by the Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev in his call for multipolarity. This doctrine of multipolarity
is not limited to multiple power structures, as some people claim. It
goes well beyond that: It is recognition of many different political and
value systems, or recognition of the right of system self-determination.
The hegemonists theoretically accept this right as it
is stated in the UN Charter, but practically speaking they deny it, and
carry on their fight against every other value system, while demanding
submission to their hegemony on the civilisational level.
Now we can re-evaluate the Cold War: It was not an
ideological war of two equal political systems, but rather a war of the
East to live in accordance with its own values. The Communist East did
not try to impose its values on the West, while the West denied the
right of the East to live its own life the way it wanted.
Noam Chomsky tried to reduce this question of
hegemony to its economic factor. He wrote that the US as the carrier of
Western hegemonist spirit seeks “only” access to the markets and
resources of other countries -- the “right to rob”, in his words. That
would be bad enough, but the hegemonists are not satisfied with sheer
robbery; now they need only your money and labour, but your soul as
well.
For this purpose they built up a system of single
civilisational control over the world; they utilise the UN,
International Tribunals, World Court, IEAE, tolerance-imposing bodies
and other agencies. The leaders of the East still do not understand that
these agencies are kept in the hegemonists’ hands and they undermine the
civilisational independence of the East.
Many nations recognise that the Western hegemonists
are not satisfied with financial prey -- that they demand submission to
their cultural diktat. That is why all Russian post-Soviet leaders
(including Mr Medvedev) swear that they subscribe to the hegemonist
value system, though they try to defend their natural resources. They
agree to go to various Auschwitz-related events, build tolerance museums
and denounce the spurious offences of racism and antisemitism. They do
this in order to be kept off the shortlist of the enemies -- the "Axis
of Evil."
But Russia –like other non-Core lands – does not
really submit to the liberal paradigm, and therefore it remains an
adversary, despite its leaders’ claims to the contrary. A value system
is a system defines sins and virtues, and these do not coincide for all
civilisations.
Under hegemonist rule, Mankind not only switched from
the carriage to the motor car, and not only gave up pleasant
conversation in salons and gardens for watching CNN and MTV. The most
advanced and progressive part of Mankind also forged the old sins into
new virtues: A glutton became a sought-after restaurant columnist; a
lecher paraded his pride along the city streets; a wrathful man called
for the righteous bombing of Teheran; sloth was promoted to a way of
life. Greed became the highest quality of the New Man.
Systems are divided by different attitudes towards
God and towards the Majority. The East – as well as the traditional West
– prefers solidarity, loves God and rejects greed; while the hegemonist
liberal paradigm celebrates individualism, approves of greed as a
supreme virtue and leaves God a modest place among the personal
belongings of the faithful. The Gospel-stated choice of God or Mammon
has never been so obvious or so valid.
Now, as the Mammon-built card palaces collapse, the
illusion of the Market as the only true measure of things is being swept
away. Greed necessarily destroys societies. Societies
that choose God are wiser than those that choose Mammon.
In the West, believers are being persecuted; in the
US it is forbidden to even give Easter or Christmas greetings. Teachers
are being sacked for such public expressions. On the other side, the
East is still full of faith. In Russia, the churches are full, street
signs celebrate church feasts, and the demand for solidarity is as high
as ever. The same tendency is apparent in Palestine, Turkey and Iran
where people prefer faith-based solidarity to cold and rational secular
nationalism. It could be the same in the West, if the great spiritual
teachers of the past century, Simone Weil and T S Eliot, were only
heeded today. Their defeat occasioned the rise of liberal hegemony. Only
after the defeat of hegemony will the civilisations be able to respect
each other and carry out their dialogue, all the while respecting each
other's systemic self determination. At last we have the chance to
fulfil this dream.