IN INTERNATIONAL politics today we assume we are witnessing a conflict between imperialist neocons and anti-capitalist anti-globalisers. But these extreme positions are identical in one respect: they both seek to wage wars on abstract nouns. And such a fuzzy-headed approach exposes the poverty of both ideologies.
Since 9/11, George Bush and his followers have been exhorting us to join in the “war on terror”. How? Where do we find this entity or country called “terror”? Why not also launch a pre-emptive strike on “horror”? The promotion of the concept of a “war on terror” reveals that the Bush regime doesn’t really know what it’s fighting against. The phrase has erroneously lumped together a coterie of anti-modern, religious hotheads in Afghanistan with a now-deposed regime in Iraq headed by a moustachioed dictator with a penchant for whisky and soft porn. The motto attempts to create an enemy, rather than to repel and — importantly — to understand one.
Similarly, and especially since 9/11, anti-capitalists have been tiresomely parroting the cry “Let’s not make war on Iraq — let’s make war on poverty!” But you can’t physically fight an abstract noun, and you can never make “poverty history”, because poverty is a relative concept. The only way to eradicate the difference between rich and poor is to erect a dictatorship in which no one is allowed to earn more money than his neighbour, in which everyone is forbidden to make a better life for himself. In other words, paradoxically, the only way to abolish poverty is to make everyone equally poor.
Yes, Bono & Co should campaign against trade tariffs, and raise awareness about African kleptocrats, but the phrase “make poverty history” is evasive, and leads to lazy thinking — as George Orwell noted, sloganeering always leads to the softening of the brain.
Similarly, we should not “wage war on terror”; we should only wage wars on countries or recognisable organisations if there is explicit evidence that they possess a threat to us.
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Wars on abstract nouns lead to arbitrary actions, acted out by unthinking minds. A just war or campaign can only be fought against an enemy that we can clearly define. We in Britain have fought “France” in the 19th century and “Germany” in the 20th century. These were proper threats, proper foes and proper nouns.