Joe Millionaire and the triumph of the West

Okay, I did not attend yesterday’s peace rally, unlike thousands of others, though I did attend the first rally.

I have to admit, like many bloggers, I just have war fatigue at the moment.

So I skipped the march and went to watch “Joe Millionaire” at missjenjen’s – I laughed, I howled, I hooted and swore, I recalled all the joys of exuberantly bad television. (And he clearly should have picked Mojo, but let’s leave that to one side.) I hold to my previous opinion that this kind of programming heralds the apocalypse, but its utterly manipulative use of everyone involved in the final episode was just too tawdry not to get aboard with. (Don’t tell me those “spontaneous” speeches weren’t heavily coached and scripted – the bad editing so gave away that there were takes and touch-ups.)

And of course, that saccharine moment – making an ordinary man who has just confessed to lying an on-the-spot minimum-entry-level millionaire. Consumer culture comes up with the goods once more.

Am I indulging in fashionable western self-hatred? Possibly. Despite the wonderful distractions of “Joe Millionaire”, it’s hard to avoid the war at present. So, here are my thoughts for the moment on the war.

The legality or otherwise of this war is now a moot point. Though I think Hillary Charlesworth’s analysis (and if there were rock-idol pin-ups in public international law, she’d be mine) of why the war is illegal trumps the “yes” case. In short, there is no realistic case for piggy-backing this war onto the 12-year old authorisation for the use of force in Resolution 678, which was about Iraq leaving Kuwait. Even most “yes” lawyers are forced to concede justifying the present war involves radical re-interpretation of the notion of “self-defence” under the UN Charter. Iraq is at the far spectrum of any immediate threat to anyone. Containment has already been successful.

Also, the humanitarian intervention justification here is weak. Hussein is undoubtedly a nasty, cruel and vicious ruler. None will mourn his passing, least of all his own people. However, this is not the NATO intervention in the Balkans– the best recent “model” for humanitarian intervention without UN Security Council authorisation: clear, present, wide scale and systematic human rights violations and population displacement as the trigger; and a response that had international legitimacy, if not formal legality, because it was backed by a broad coalition of nations. The coalition of the willing is the US, Britain and (a token contingent from) Australia – and 42 other nations providing moral support, 15 of which will not be named publicly.

The notion that this is anything but an exercise in Anglo-American foreign policy by other means is wearing increasingly thin.

Frighteningly, some conservative commentators are now dropping any pretence that this is not the case.

The call to Empire in the Spectator is an example of what scares me:

“Slowly, obscurely, enunciated with difficulty in thick Texan accents, a new doctrine of international order is emerging, of which the imminent war is a crucial outing. It is the doctrine of humanitarian intervention — or, to give it its proper name, neo-colonialism. This doctrine is driven by the firm belief — uncluttered by relativist self-loathing — in the universal principles of liberty and justice. It gives expression to our sense that everyone, not just the West, has a right to live in a decent country — and that the West has a duty to help them do so.”

Yes, other nations deserve democracy. But believing an Empire can just graft it on without any fashionably “relativistic” deference to local culture? Pakistan, anyone?

Anyway, the debate for international law is moving on. The next testing ground is whether Iraq is a precedent. That will depend not on new legal criteria justifying a new doctrine of pre-emptive and tepidly humanitarian military intervention - but the results in a reconstructed Iraq.

Comparisons with reconstruction in Japan or West Germany are stunningly naive. Japan and Germany were unitary states, the product of the age of nationalism. Nationalism in Iraq is a myth. Like so much of the Middle East it is a country defined only by lines in a map left by the imperial powers of another century. Cultural, religious or ethnic unity is an illusion. The Kurds have solidarity with each other, across borders, not with the illusion of a nation-state. Much the same could be said for other local ethnic and religious groups.

Further, will “the West” have the stomach to stay in for long years of reconstruction once its officials start to be assassinated by various local factions (including, potentially, Islamic extremists who do not believe in secular nations but only the world-wide rule of theocracy)? Or will we retreat to leave the ungrateful natives to their savagery, having spurned the gifts of our civilisation?

I’ve beaten this drum before. I’ll be quiet now, I promise.