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The Decline of Western Influence
Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube
Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd
This week our guest is Vijay Prashad.
TRANSCRIPT
Announcer (00:06):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Dr Wilmer Leon (00:14):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I, we have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between the current events and the broader historical context in which they occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the impact on the global village in which we live on today's episode. The question is, is the West's hegemonic control over the rest of the world on the decline? If so, is it salvageable for insight into this and other issues? Let's turn to my guest. He's an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He's a writer and fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of Left Word Books and the director of Tri Continental, the Institute for Social Research. He's a senior non-resident fellow at Sean Yang Institute for Financial Studies at the Remnant University of China. He's written more than 20 books, including the darker nations and the Poor Nations, and he's the author of the article, hyper Imperialism. He's Vijay Prade. Vijay, welcome to the show.
Vijay Prashad (01:45):
It's great to be with you. Yeah, truly.
Dr Wilmer Leon (01:48):
Thank you so much for giving me time in your peace. Hyper in imperialism. Well, in fact, let me start this way. Lemme start this way back in 2016 at the Democratic Convention, then Vice President Biden said, we do not scare easily. We never bow. We never bend. We never break when confronted with crisis. No, we endure, we overcome, and we always, always, always move forward. We are America second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't forget it, Vijay. The undefeatable indispensable America are terms that are often used, well worn tropes, the realities that are existing all around us. Make these statements trite and meaningless to me. Your thoughts?
Vijay Prashad (02:47):
Well, it's interesting Wilmer, because Mr. Biden made those comments, as you said in 2016. In 2023, the United States forgot to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Munro Doctrine. Now, for those who don't know the Munro doctrine, it was enunciated by James Munro. The idea was pretty simple. Ro was saying for this new country, 1776 Revolution, 1923, Monroe Doctrine, I mean in the 18th century, a decade was a very long time. I understand that, not like now where you're sometimes just goes by so quickly. Time seems to have speed it up, but nonetheless, a young country in 1823, Mr. Monroe says at the time that, look, we just told the British Empire to go out of our shores. Not exactly because Britain still had Canada as a colony, but nonetheless Britain out of a part of North America. The United States hadn't yet ejected the French from all of North America, and there was also pockets of other Europeans involved in North America, let alone South America.
(04:13)
So nonetheless, quite audaciously, Mr. Monroe said, with the backing of the whole political class. Don't forget, Jefferson had already foreshadowed some of this stuff in his speeches, but Monroe said, look, Europeans, this hemisphere, the Americas from the tip right down to TGA del Fuego is not yours. The Americans will determine the destiny of this hemisphere. Now, of course, he then said something else which is, well, we in the United States have a manifest destiny, very delightful term from Christian eschatology about the city on the hill, the church at the town square and so on. We have a manifest destiny. We are Europeans. We are Europeans who have gone beyond the Europeans in Europe, and we want to make it clear not only as Europeans, because there are Europeans in South America as well, but we want to make it clear that it's America for the Americans, except when we say Americans, we mean those from the United States of America.
(05:23)
So that in fact the Monroe Doctrine, noble words as well, the MRO doctrine basically says the whole Americas is the domain of the United States. The United States therefore can intervene anywhere in the Americas when it feels that its interests or the interests of an enlightened civilization are threatened. And therefore we had a range of interventions, military interventions, most of Central America, much of the Caribbean, Haiti, colonized recolonized United States goes into Dominican Republic, the assault on Cuba after 1959. And so all done on the basis of Thero doctrine of 1823. Now, it's interesting because Wilma, I could make an argument what the United States did subsequent to the So-called Spanish-American War where the US seizes, the Philippines seizes, Puerto Rico seizes Cuba. You see, it's a very good example of Thero doctrine being, well, it's America for the Americans, but really Americans means the United States of America. After the Spanish American War, 1898, the United States starts to globalize the Monroe Doctrine.
(06:44)
And in fact, that's what happens in the aftermath of World War ii because by the aftermath of World War ii, the United States did have the technology therefore could actually have a global MRO doctrine, military bases having ships that could cross the Pacific Ocean pretty rapidly, oil fired ships could get through the Panama Canal, could go out to the Suez Canal. You had an amazing global military footprint bases all over the world and so on. That was the global MRO doctrine. Well, what's happened is that as a consequence of a number of different factors, including in the United States, the government no longer wanting to regulate the rich and therefore harvest taxes from them for a host of reasons. That's one, the lack of any kind of consensus among the elites in the United States, deep partisanship and so on. And then the trauma of this third grade depression, all these factors came together to basically signal a decline of US global power.
(07:57)
That is, you still have the rhetoric of the Monroe Doctrine, Mr. Biden's speech in 2016, but you don't have the realities of the Monroe Doctrine. You can bomb any country around the world, but you really can't have legitimacy over them. If a country, for instance, on the African continent needs to have a bridge built, they turn to China now to get money for that bridge to build the bridge. The United States very good at bombing the bridge, not so good at building the bridge. And I think that itself, the bridge story is a way to encapsulate the nature of the decline. In other words, US still has immense military power, spends with its allies, three quarters of world military spending, but just doesn't have the resources to do the kind of development aid it used to build the legitimacy that it once did. You said shop won cliches, tired language and so on, reporting to Mr. Biden. Yes. And the reason for that is not because Mr. Biden is out there flogging old clothes. It's that no us politician in fact can flog anything but tired. Shop one rhetoric and belligerence, they can do that legitimately, but they can't go out there and say for instance, to the people in the Sahel, Hey, listen, don't do all these cos we'll come in, we'll build a factory. We'll build a bridge for unbelievably to even once hear them say, we'll build a school, we'll build a hospital. Not going to happen Wilma, not in our lifetime.
Dr Wilmer Leon (09:43):
You just mentioned that the United States has extraordinary military supremacy, but the irony in that reality is the United States for all intents and purposes, hasn't won a conflict since World War ii, unless you want to throw Grenada into the conversation. United States had its hin parts whooped in Vietnam. The United States had its hin parts whooped in Afghanistan, 20 years in Afghanistan, what two and a half trillion dollars wasted, and we wound up turning the country back over to the same folks that we were fighting to take it from. We lost in Iraq, we lost in Libya. Now we've been outmaneuvered in Ukraine and of all people, Ansar Allah in the Red Sea is having traumatic impact on international trade. So yes, the United States has military superiority, but it seems as though the nature of warfare has gone almost asymmetrical and the United States hasn't been able to keep up.
Vijay Prashad (11:05):
Well, one of the issues is the difference
Dr Wilmer Leon (11:08):
Is that assessment accurate?
Vijay Prashad (11:10):
Very accurate. I mean, look, let's just take one of your examples. Let's take the example of Afghanistan. You said over $2 trillion spent by the United States doing what? And that's a key thing. Doing what? I want to come back, Wilma to that distinction between blowing up the bridge and building the
Dr Wilmer Leon (11:30):
Bridge and building the bridge.
Vijay Prashad (11:31):
You see, because the United States can win battles, it can win a military confrontation. You can win a battle. I mean, I was there and saw the destruction of Iraq after 2003. You can destroy power plants, take out bridges, just level the government buildings to all those things win. But war have never, never been won merely by battles. Now, there could be lots of examples in the ancient world when an army was in fact defeated and another army came in and occupied and conquered and oppressed people. But in a way that's still not a victory in the war because unless you are able to do something for the people you've occupied, unless you are able to create legitimacy for yourself as a new government, a new king, a new ruler or whatever it is, there's no way to win the war. War just merely by force.
(12:31)
So in the case of Afghanistan, it is absolutely true. When the US went in there in October of 2001, the bombing was ferocious. The Taliban fled from Kabul, from Jalalabad. The Taliban remnants of them that had been sitting near the Pakistan border just ran across the border to Pakistan. They fed. I mean, you remember the battle of Torah, Bora when apparently Osama bin Laden was holed up in a cave there, the United States was ping those mountains. The Taliban was fleeing. They don't want to fight a direct battle. Nobody wants to stand Wilma in a plane and be taken out by a drone. Okay? The United States can do that. Incredible technology as a young person sitting in Nevada in Las Vegas with a toggle stick in a red button can kill somebody in the of Afghanistan, in Pakistan. Extraordinary technology having chased out the Taliban, having bombarded the infrastructure.
(13:34)
What happens next? Here, let's go to Iraq where it's clear, clearer. Lots of journalists looked at this closely. I mean, pram Chatterjee wrote a great book called Iraq Inc. In other words, Iraq Incorporated. What did he mean by that? What he meant was it was open season, Wilma, there's a Hollywood film about this. A bunch of, let me just speak pretty straight with you here. A bunch of jackasses from God knows where Republican party people showed up in Iraq, got contracts from the US government, from the people who were the vice councils of the United States in Iraq. They didn't build anything. Let's go back to Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, they began to count Wilma, and this is horrifying. They began to count educated. When they say so many hundreds of thousands of children are in school in Kabul, okay, how do you know that so many hundreds of thousands of children are in school in the area around ka?
(14:43)
How do you know that all across the country? How do you know that? Well, we know that because somebody invoiced the government for chairs. So if I invoice for a hundred thousand chairs, the US government and the Afghan government stunningly and scandalously said, we have a hundred thousand people in classroom. Meanwhile, a hundred thousand chairs were not even delivered. I just invoiced you. I took the money and ran. You never saw me again. I mean, you look at the audits done by the US government of the spending in Afghanistan, scandalous spending. So you can win the battle. You can't win the war. You're not building schools, you don't have kids in classrooms. Then families say, what's the point of throwing out the Taliban and bringing you guys in because you are just corrupt. Those people, they may have their problems and indeed, my God, they have their problems.
(15:42)
They want gender segregation. No girls in schools and so on, but at least they're not corrupt. That's what people started to say again about the United States government in Iraq, the same thing. People go, why is there this attitude? Let's make a quick buck. Why? Because people have been learning this since at least the Reagan administration in the United States. This cannibalization of society is not something that only happens abroad. You are familiar with that Within the United States, there's so many. There are even terms where it boondoggles. The US military forgets hundreds of millions of dollars. They can't find where that money went. I mean, this is annually. There are reports that come out on this money forgotten, this boondoggle culture among the elites. It makes them mediocre. They don't want to work to be an elite. They want to inherit elite status. Everything is about an inheritance.
(16:46)
They don't want to work hard. They don't want to do anything. It's interesting because in Afghanistan, the British, for all their flaws, they said, well, we have experience of three to 400 years of colonialism. The British were saying, you people don't have the staying power. Well, actually, Rory Stewart and others who were saying things like that, they were not right. It's not a question of staying power. It's a question of did you want to win the war or did you just want to win battles and then come in there and quickly make a buck and flee, go off somewhere else? As I said, a Hollywood film was made about this. It's in the culture, this conversation. I'm not making this stuff up. It's real. So yes, United States very big military capable of blowing up bridges just to repeat that, but not so committed to building them.
(17:39)
And that's how you lose your legitimacy. If you no longer give people something that they want or they need, you don't address their problems, you're not going to be credible. Look, during the pandemic, the Chinese announced that they've ended absolute poverty in China, so enormous fe, the United Nations celebrated it and so on as we speak, Wilma, I was reading a story that there's a bill sitting in the US Congress about tax credits to be given to families so that millions of children in the United States can for the period of just this calendar year, be outside poverty. I mean, how does a story like that look around the world here at the Chinese saying, we've eradicated absolute poverty and here's the United States Congress debating whether or not to eradicate poverty, mind you, whether to pass tax credit so that for one year so many tens of millions of children in the United States can be above the poverty line.
(18:43)
I mean, what's going on, Wilma? This is something for people in the United States to reflect on very seriously. Is this the country that looks credible to the world? When you have somebody saying, we own the finish line. I mean, what a revealing statement that is. Joe, Joe Biden. I mean Joe, nobody owns the finish line, Joe. That's why it's a finish line. If you own the finish line, Joe, there's no race. You rigged the race, and that's exactly the attitude that people in the United States need to confront. You can't live in a society that's rigged against you. You have to fight to build a society where people feel like something is there for them, and that attitude then will create new speeches. People will realize we're not a city on the hill. We don't have a manifest destiny. There is Noro doctrine. We're just people.
(19:38)
We live on the planet. We've got to collaborate with others, whether it's the people in Yemen or other people in Libya or indeed the people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I want a cell phone. I want to use their cobalt. I want to use their cold tan, but they have a right to live decent lives. I need to pay them. The corporations need to pay the people in the Congo that are digging that stuff up with their fingernails, and that's the scandal, and that's the discussion around that scandal that needs to happen in a place like the United States.
Dr Wilmer Leon (20:14):
And to Joe Biden's point and to your response about owning the finish line, if you claim to own the finish line, then that means that you control the finish line, and that also means that you can move the finish line. And that takes me to Tony Blinken term. Well, George HW Bush talked about the new world order, and then Tony Blinken comes in with not international law, but what's the term that Tony Blinken always loves to use about the controlling order? I can't remember the term that Tony Blinken loves to use, but it's where basically what he's saying is we have the rules, we set the laws. You all just follow what we say.
Vijay Prashad (21:09):
Yeah, this is his phrase, the rules based information,
Dr Wilmer Leon (21:11):
Order based order. Exactly. Exactly
Vijay Prashad (21:14):
Why you forgot it, Wilma. This is a because
Dr Wilmer Leon (21:17):
It has no definition.
Vijay Prashad (21:18):
No, it means nothing. And also it's one of the things that was there when Mr. Blinken was nominated for this job. You remember this very well. They praised him saying He's fluent in French. I thought, and I'm sorry to be so blunt, and I know that a lot of your listeners are serious people and they don't like this kind of talk, but I felt that Mr. Blinken, if he doesn't make sense in English, can't be making sense in French. So there's that rules based international order. What other kind of international order could there be? Tony? That's the question to ask him are they're all rules based. The question is who makes the rules and does everybody abide by the rules? Okay, we actually have rules that are based on
Dr Wilmer Leon (22:13):
Do we even know what the rules are, Tony? Yes.
Vijay Prashad (22:17):
In fact, that's the interesting part, Wilma, because okay, the question to ask them is what's the basis for your rules? In fact, the most consensus treaty document we have in the modern world since 1945, the document with the greatest consensus is the United Nations charter. There is no other document which has almost all countries signed onto it, okay? It's the greatest consensus document that we have in human history till now. Maybe there'll be another one, but the UN charter is paramount, and in fact, I would say that most people around the world want to live in a rules-based order, which is grounded in the rules, which we've all accepted by treaty, which is the UN charter, not the rules being something invented by the United States government at its whim by let's say the group of seven countries by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, by the 14 Eyes Intelligence Network.
(23:22)
They don't get to make the rules and impose them on us. I mean, what's really, really interesting in this period is that for the first time in my mind, since the 1970s, for the first time, we see heads of governments who are not necessarily leading political forces that are anti, whether it's the president and prime minister of Namibia, their political formation isn't anti systemic. Even in fact, Ali Pando and Il Rama, South Africa, these political forces are effectively telling the United States, now, we don't like your rules. We don't think your rules are good. Why? Because we think they are capricious and we think you don't follow them. What's the point of having rules if you don't follow them? So for instance, when international courts, the International Court of Justice demanded a ceasefire in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, just a month into that conflict, they called for a ceasefire.
(24:29)
A thousand people had died at that point. By the way, now, 25,000 Palestinians and counting dead, the ICJ didn't exactly call for a ceasefire. They said that we see that it's plausible genocides, an enormous admission by the ICJ, and then they said, you must do everything to end the genocide. Well, that means a cease file. They don't use that language. They don't say secession of hostilities. Nonetheless, what's interesting is people around the world, whether it's again in Namibia or it's Indonesia or it's in Bolivia, people, ordinary people not talking about governments, ordinary people are saying to their newspapers and so on. When I meet them, as I travel around the world, people say this to me, what they are saying is, look, when it's an African leader indicted in the international criminal court, the west goes all in. They demonize the person, and in some cases these people deserve to be in front of the ICC.
(25:27)
They've done bad things, but the level of demonization, the music is cranked up really high. These people are bad. They're committing crimes against humanity and so on here, 17 judges, 15 sitting judges of the international criminal court, the judge from Israel, the judge from South Africa, 17 judges basically to a account of most of the time, 16 to two, in some cases, 17 to one. The Ugandan judge was the outlier, and in fact, even the government of Uganda disassociated itself from her saying she doesn't speak for our government. In fact, very interesting and we can talk about that if you'd like, but most cases 1716 to two was the count, which means that the international criminal court, the court of the United Nations has basically said Israel's actions are plausible genocide. What does the United States, Canada, almost the entirety of the west do within our, they defund the United Nations Agency for the Palestinians Honora, within hours of this coming out, this order that the Algerians wanted carried immediately to the Security Council United States, I mean around the world, people are saying, you people are not credible, Mr.
(26:49)
Biden, you are not credible, and anyway, you are a one term president because you've lost left liberals in your own country. They're not going to vote for you after this and you've lost the election. I mean, Mr. Trump is going to come back, whatever that means, maybe catastrophic, but he's coming back. That's probably a foregone conclusion without legitimacy, Mr. Biden, Mr. Macrow, Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Soak, Mr. Schultz, I mean, you're so bent out of shape about Ukrainians because as people at the time were saying that these are white babies with blue eyes and blonde hair, but Palestinians, brown skin, black hair and so on, some of them have by the way, blonde hair, but nonetheless, not white, irrelevant. We're not even talking about the war in the Sudan. We're not talking about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We're not even talking about the ceaseless destruction of Yemen.
(27:49)
The reason the US and Britain are nuts, they think a couple of missiles will scare the Yemenis. Forget it. They've taken much more and more than that from the Saudis for a decade. They're not scared of anything and they've been hardened. What has hardened them? Not Islam, not some inherent accusation that they're terrorists. What has hardened them is your bombing. It's British and US ammunition used by the Saudis bombing them relentlessly for 10 years. People look at all this and say, you never complained about any of that. One Russian tank crosses the border. One Ukrainian is killed and suddenly you are outraged and you say, open the doors, all Ukrainian refugees allowed, but Syrians, you still remain in the camps in Greece or in Turkey, wherever Palestinians, we don't apply. And so on. The stock hypocrisy, racism, a lack of concern for human life, what I consider to be an international division of humanity.
(28:57)
That's what's really been drawn. There's an international division of humanity and the other side of that division, the prime minister of Namibia, the president of Indonesia, even the Indian foreign minister, right-wing government, they are now speaking from the other side of the international division of Vanity saying no more. I mean, Mia Amor Motley, the prime minister of Barbados last year convened a group for an emancipation conference. A former president of Nigeria was there, the former Prime Minister Addison from Jamaica, and they basically said, we're going to have reparations from the west. This is Barbados tiny country just thrown off the monarchy. And what happened this year recently, the African union's 55 countries, the 20 countries of the Caribbean community gathered together and said, reparations now of putting it on the agenda. This is not a radical demand, by the way. It's a pretty milk to demand, but it's actually showing this new mood. They're saying, we're fed up with your hypocrisy. We're fed up with your intervening, your attempting to foist the international monetary fund on us sending your warships to scare us. It doesn't work anymore. People, you politicians are too mediocre. You don't scare us, and Trump is that dog that western civilization is going to let loose against the world bark all night Wilmer, he'll bark all night, but he won't have the guts to bite anybody or to enter the house.
Dr Wilmer Leon (30:34):
You mentioned about Ansara la in Yemen and the fact that United States can't scare them, that takes me back to President Putin's statement. When Joe Biden first sent the USS Gerald Ford Aircraft carrier group into the Mediterranean, and Putin said, why are you doing that? Who do you think you're going to scare? These people don't scare. And in fact, Al Hhi in Yemen said, we want to fight you. They are saying, and who would think that this small country called Yemen where most people couldn't find it on a map of Yemen is saying, we want to fight you. Please. That's an amazing, amazing reality, and you also mentioned about not following that we have this rules-based order and we don't even follow the rules. Well, Joe Biden has just signed an executive order where he now says the US may sanction Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians. Now that's an interesting contrast or conflict or just total confusion. When the United States is sending weapons, sending money, logistical support, targeting support to the IDF to attack Gaza, but now seemingly for political reasons, he wants to issue this executive order and oh, by the way, Joe Biden's administration approved the sale of the very weapons that the settlers are using to murder Palestinians, but now he wants to try to sanction them for using the weapons that he sent Vijay. It's insanity.
Vijay Prashad (32:45):
You put it very, very well. I mean you put the point very plainly, but let's again look at this executive order. I think they named four people in this, and one of them in fact has already made a public statement saying, listen, I don't have any bank accounts in the United States. I'm not affected by this not planning to travel. There don't have any assets there. This is just symbolic. One of the people named has already said that this is bogus, not a critic of this, but what Biden doesn't do here and doesn't have the guts to do is there are thousands of US citizens in these illegal settlements. This executive order doesn't touch a US citizen in an illegal settlement who goes and shoots a Palestinian. It doesn't touch that person. This is just directed at those who are Israeli citizens, but not US citizens. Many of the US citizens are also Israeli citizens. They have joint citizenship, but this is not, he is immunized US citizens in this. That's one point. Secondly, he doesn't really sanction anybody. I mean, you want to give a real sanction, sanction Israeli politicians who are inflaming the settlers. What about putting them on the list? I mean
Dr Wilmer Leon (34:08):
Smoke trick for example.
Vijay Prashad (34:10):
Exactly. Why should they not? Why should universal jurisdiction not cover them? You look back at the international criminal court warrant against Mr. Potent and his minister of children, they were accused and maybe there is an accusation to be made there. They were accused of removing children from a war zone in Ukraine. They were accused of removing children from the war zone. Now, fourth Geneva Convention does say that population transfer is illegal, but let's have a discussion about that removing children from a war zone, is this appropriate? Should they have been removed to Russia? Did they go with the consent of their parents? There could have been a range of discussion and debate. I don't remember any debate. I just remember being told that this is a war crime and the ICC indicted him. Now, the Israelis have already killed over 11,000 children. They didn't remove children from a war zone in the way that the Russians did.
(35:13)
They did remove children from a war zone, but by killing them, 11,000 of them in body bags, 11,000 of them and no ICC warrant and no statement from the United States government instead this ridiculous executive order that's supposed to modify his base. You see what's been happening is I watched these videos, Mr. Biden traveling around the country, the United States trying to drum up support for his failing election campaign and at every single stop, it seems to me, or at least that's what circulates, I know this is not exactly a scientific assessment what you see circulating, but at many campaigns stops. He starts speaking, he's talking about a woman's right to choose whatever he's talking about. People yell, genocide, Joe, they yell, seize fire. Now they yell, stop supporting Israel and he is a dear in headlights as any of us would be a caught between a really bad policy that you can't defend and a base that is angry with you because let's not forget that this is a base that might not be scared into voting. Again for the Democrats, this is a base that might say, really, Trump is so bad and you were so great, you authorized a genocide against the Palestinians. I don't think this base is coming back.
Dr Wilmer Leon (36:37):
Lemme quickly say to that point. That's a great point and I've been saying for a while that in 2020, Joe Biden was talking about how horrific Donald Trump was and he was making a lot of promises about what he would do. He had no track record as a president. Now in 24 he has a track record as a president and he's now starting to make some of the very same promises in 24 that he made in 20, and folks are comparing his promises and his rhetoric to his record and they're saying You didn't do it then why are you going do it now?
Vijay Prashad (37:21):
In fact, worse than that, the people who are out there at these rallies saying genocide, Joe sees pie. Now these are people with a modicum of interest in what's happening outside the United States. They're not people who are going to focus on quite correct issues like for instance, a woman's right to choose. There is some difference between the candidates and so on. Not that the Democrats have done much to defend the woman's right to choose or on the question of immigration. I mean the Democrats haven't done much better than the Republicans in some cases, maybe even worse
Dr Wilmer Leon (37:54):
Because it's more important to them as an issue, as a political wedge issue than it is for them as a solution.
Vijay Prashad (38:04):
Correct? Exactly. So what you have is you have people genocide, Joe Ana. These are people who are saying, I'm not a single issue voter. I'm not going to be wedged by you back into the fold. You can't wedge me and you can't wedge me because I'm looking at these other things. And there are lots of young people in that cohort and one of the areas where they're looking at is Cuba. This July norm Chansky and I are going to release a book called On Cuba, which is where the reason I know all this stuff about the MRO doctorate, and I mean I'm not a scholar of all this, but we had to study this to understand US foreign policy against Cuba. We did a deep study. It was a pleasure to work with. No on this book, it's not an interview book. We wrote this together.
(38:51)
We discussed and talked and went through it and so on Cuba, there's a section in the book toward the end where Mr. Biden says, during the campaign says that I am going to reverse Trump's unfortunate strangulation of the people of Cuba. We are going to remove Cuba from the state sponsored on terrorism list. We are going to roll back the 243 extra sanctions, no more talk as John Bolton did of axis of whatever it is of tyranny and so on. Bolton speech, none of that. Biden said all that there, this video of him saying all that. It's not like some private interview, which he then denied. He said this in front of the cameras. Well, then he came into office, he won the election, came into office. Jen Psaki at the time, spokesperson was asked, what about the reversal? He can by executive water get rid of some of these sanctions.
(39:52)
You can start the process to remove Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list and so on. Because Cuba, after all is a state sponsor of healthcare for the world, not terrorism, a bad idea Trump, and now Biden Biden didn't do anything and Jen Psaki said, it's not on our agenda. Now what you just said ferociously, I'm going to reverse Trump's. It's not on our agenda now. Then there was some small protests in a small town, a few hours outside Havana, which the anti Cuban people in Miami blew up and said, it's a big protest in July and so on, he is going to overthrow the government. Then Biden entered and said, we are going to tighten our grip on the island because we have to support the people fighting. So not only did he not do what he said because it was not on the agenda when he started to do something about Cuba, it was in fact Trump plus.
(40:52)
So in that case, what the heck, man? I mean, where are you genocide, Joe? That's what people are calling him more and more. That is not a good look for a president or for a person running for president of the United States on the Democratic ticket because I admit to you, I know a lot of the people on the left and so on, but don't underestimate the power of that small section of left liberals because they are the activists. They are the ones that go door to door In South Carolina for instance. There is no such thing as a democratic party. There are only motivated activists who are the people. It's mostly middle-aged women and young college students who go door to door distributing things, talking up candidates, going into churches, talking to their friends and so on. If that crucial section is started to call him genocide Joe and say, ceases fire now, and to ask questions like, why are you trying to suffocate the people of Cuba?
(41:58)
Why can't you pass a proper infrastructure bill? Why are you arresting and deporting people at the border? Activists say that you lost the election because there's no body else to substitute for them. You can have as much astroturfing as you want. You can get all the high rollers around the United States to give your campaign money. You can hire people to go with clipboards, but they don't have the passion to stand on the door, stop to stand at the front door, knock on the door, say, listen, you got to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They're just going to stand there with a clipboard. Say, I have been told to say, please vote for Mr. Biden, it's chat GPT, man, you don't win elections with chat GPT, you win elections with passion. It's not going to be there for them, and I think they have made a huge, huge error trying to believe that these little executive orders will claw back that section.
(42:56)
The only thing that's going to claw back that section is something that neither of the political parties can do. Mr. Trump can't do it either. None of them can break with the Israeli ruling elite, none of them. None of them will offer a robust criticism of Israel. That's a serious problem for the American elite. The American public on the other hand, has already broken that consensus. You've already seen the polls, Wilma, a majority maybe up to something like two thirds of the United States. Public no longer wants the US to support Ukraine with money. Correct? Two thirds of the US public, correct. A majority of Republicans don't want the United States to support Israel in this war. A majority of Republicans, that's interesting. 40 some percent of Democrats have turned against this war. That's compelling evidence to my mind once more of the great disjuncture in US politics between the people's mood and their opinions and what the governments want to do.
(43:56)
Nancy Pelosi was confronted by some protestors from Port and what did she say? She said, oh, you are all doing the work of Russia. Russia. I mean for God's sake to use this kind of language against US citizens who have a First Amendment right to protest the FBI, my God, I can't believe I'm going to say this. I just got word this evening before we spoke. The FBI has made a public statement Wilmer saying that we will not investigate people who are conducting nonviolent protests on behalf of the Palestinians because those people doing the protests have a First Amendment right. The FBI has said that
Dr Wilmer Leon (44:38):
Mean because Nancy Pelosi called upon the FBI to investigate those protestors saying that they were operatives of Russia and here was her rationale. Putin has a message saying that there's genocide in Gaza and these protestors are saying that there's genocide in Gaza. So because the protestors have the same message as Putin, ergo or Ipso facto, they must now be operatives of Russia when everybody on the planet should be opposed to genocide. Even Nancy Pelosi should be opposed to anybody in their right mind should be so even if Putin is the autocrat, is the dictator, is the madman, is whatever is the evil villain is a swamp monster and an evil villain. A broken clock is right twice a day. So the issue on Gaza, he's right on that issue.
Vijay Prashad (45:59):
Well, I'm actually personally invested in this particular part of the conversation because some months ago, the New York Times basically accused me of being an agent of the Chinese government. It was a ridiculous article. I mean, I was embarrassed to read it, not embarrassed for myself, embarrassed for the New York Times. I was like, man, you guys wrote some pretty shoddy articles with the name Judith Miller attached to them that basically made the case for the United States to go to war illegally against the Iraqi people. You got some pretty bad journalism under your hat, the gray lady all these years, but this particular article was really bad because it essentially took certain quite trivial facts like I run a research institute, I also work for a media house. I have people who donate to these things. I can't travel to the SA region on money. I borrow from my friends. I need donors for this because when I publish things, I can't get enough newspapers to pay me enough to actually travel to places. You got to forward fund a lot of these projects. I'm not embarrassed to say that I don't come from money. I'm not independently wealthy. I don't have that kind of trust fund that would enable me to live the kind of
Dr Wilmer Leon (47:26):
George Soros won't back you, so
Vijay Prashad (47:28):
Yeah, he's not going to back me. I've got to find people, and by the way, the Chinese government gives me zero money. In fact, my post at the Chang Yang Institute of Financial Studies is non remu. I don't make any money at all. They don't pay me for anything. The reason I took that position is I was keen to interact with Chinese scholars. I wanted to have a place where I could sit down and listen to what Chinese scholars are thinking and saying, almost no place in the world that allows that unless you get involved somehow with a Chinese institution because they don't trust. You can't just show up in Beijing and say, Hey guys, I want to talk to you so I don't have any Chinese. They know that. By the way, the New York Times know that they knew the provenance of the funds.
(48:09)
They knew everything they had all the material, the questions that the journalists asked me. I'm going to give this to you just because it's so funny. David, far andhold the journalist, senior journalist New York Times wrote big questions like, for instance, are you paid by the Chinese government? Do you take orders from the Chinese government? I mean, I felt that this is not journalism's McCarthyite hearing. It's the kind of question you'd expect some off the wall, right-Wing congressman to ask you, Lindsey Graham, that kind of thing, going from McCarthy to Lindsey Graham and to somebody as mediocre as Marco Rubio who read that article and the next day asked the Department of Justice to investigate all the projects named in it. Fortunately, either the Department of Justice is doing an ongoing investigation that I don't know about or they decided not to take Mr. Rubio seriously, which I think is probably what happened.
(49:10)
But the point reason I'm raising this is that it's really interesting in the United States unable to have the argument. Why can't Nancy Pelosi have the argument about Gaza unable to have the argument about Russia, let's say, or unable or unwilling to have the argument about China? They simply want to repress you. They want to say anybody who doesn't follow the line saying China is evil, Russia is evil. The Palestinians are terrorists. Anybody who moves even one millimeter from that general line, they just want to repress you. They want to delegitimize you. They want to basically put you in jail. They don't want to have the argument with you, and that I think is depressing for the whole situation of the culture in the United States, the political culture, the conversations, I mean for God's sake. I watched a couple of the Republican primary debates before the Iowa caucuses.
(50:14)
I watched a few of them. The level of conversation was abysmal. It was juvenile. Juvenile. There are real problems in the world. I mean real problems that guy Ram, he actually did a favor for us culture because we Ramas proved once and for all that all South Asians aren't at the caliber of doctors and whatever. There's no model minority. I mean there's mediocrity even amongst South Asian Americans, mediocre. He's out there as an attack dog of somebody just sort yelling at people. I felt bad at moments even for DeSantis, for God's sake, let the man try his best to put an argument on the table. Don't keep interrupting him and saying, Ron, you is Ron, you're that. And then DeSantis piling on Nikki Haley, I thought, God, you are just a bunch of people that if I saw you in the bar, I would get out of there, get into my car, drive across town.
(51:16)
I would prefer to buy a bottle at a liquor store and sit in my car, not car. I would prefer to sit in the anti room of my house and drink it by myself. I don't even want to be within sight of you when I'm having a drink, let alone let's say in front of a congressional committee. Really mediocre level of discussion if that's the standard of discussion, no wonder that if they are challenged, let's talk about Gaza. They'll just say, you are a Russian agent. Get out of the room. I don't want to talk about, I just heard Megan Kelly who had Trump on her show for an hour. She has a YouTube type show. Anyway, Megan Kelly was on a podcast I was listening to a very, very interesting, she was talking a little bit about this, about the fact that the deterioration of the ability to actually have a discussion about ideas, the big ideas, you want to have a discussion about immigration, let's have a discussion about immigration. Let's not demonize all sides and not talk to each other about how to understand these issues.
(52:29)
There is no space for that and therefore Nancy Pelosi turns around and says, FBI investigate them. They're criminals. And fortunately somebody at the FBI had managed to read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and decided, Hey, listen, they have a constitutionally protected right to speech as long as they are nonviolent. Now, I found that an interesting part of their statement because in fact, I'm not even sure that's necessarily true because for instance, this goes back to Dr. Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham jail. Does nonviolence include, for instance, resisting chaining yourself to a wall, blocking a street and so on there? I think we could have an interesting discussion with the lawyers at the FBI that What do you mean by nonviolent? I mean, if I go and lock myself into the office of a congressman, are you still going to say I a right to that speech? Because after all, you can't lionize the civil rights movement and then criminalize its tactics today, which is exactly what they seem to be doing. Nancy Pelosi will stand up there and say, the great Dr. Martin Luther King, when I marched with him across Selma, as you know, every living American politician marched across Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King. I marched across, but then if you try to march across the Brooklyn Bridge, you are an agent of Russia.
Dr Wilmer Leon (54:00):
You were mentioning the United States is better at blowing up bridges than building bridges, and the Washington Post has a very interesting article. China sets sites on Taiwan's three remaining tiny Pacific Islands, and here's an interesting element of this as China. This is from the Washington Post as China Vs. With the US for power and influence in the Pacific. It has tirelessly tried to pry allies away from Taiwan. By many means, chief among them money, it has offered much needed funds to struggling island nations like Nru and allegedly doled out envelopes of cash to officials and accusation. Beijing denies China has approached Pacific politicians as they travel overseas, inviting some to lunch and surveilling others what they're slaying out. I mean, that sounds like lobbying to me. And what they don't say in the peace is, well, China's not assassinating rulers in these islands. China isn't involved in their elections. China isn't overthrowing their governments. China isn't involved in China, is engaged in building relationships with countries, and they're doing it by determining what the country needs, seeing what China can provide and how there can be a win-win. And that's not rhetoric. That's, as you know, that's an actual policy strategy of the Chinese government win-win, and somehow the Washington Post makes it out to be nefarious, and there's something spooky going on here because China's actually building relationships with these people not coming in, building air bases, army barracks and shooting people.
Vijay Prashad (56:12):
Well, there's something in this Taiwan China story that the Washington Post also won't cover. There's something really interesting. Well, firstly, it is settled treaty position of the United States that Taiwan is basically a part of China that was established when the United States agreed to remove the Republic of China from its permanent seat at the UN Security Council and replace it with the People's Republic of China. This was right there in the 1970s, part of the Nixon Mao negotiations and so on. Okay, so why is the United States so desperate to hold on to Taiwan? Lemme give people a little glimpse into things that don't get talked about. Taiwan is the home to a company called TSMC. TSMC is one of the world's largest chip manufacturers. In fact, 90% of the advanced chips used in cell phones and other electronic gadgets made by TSMC. The United States worried about eight, nine years ago that if China was able to incorporate Taiwan, not necessarily by political incorporation, but even just economically, what was John Adam's statement?
(57:29)
That by the natural force of gravity, Cuba will fall into the US lap. They were salivating about that, by the way, because it was about the Mississippi River and the slavery complex. They wanted Cuba part of that big slavery kind of economy down the Mississippi River all the way to Cuba, like the force of gravity. Cuba will fall in. Well, United States worried by the force of gravity. Taiwan is going to fall into the lap of China, economic links, everything that post. So United States government then started talking to TSMC saying, look, you have to set up a factory in the us and indeed United States opened the door in Arizona. They built a big factory. Washington Post ran a story about it. It was a huge thing. Lots of engineers came from Taiwan. The factory went nowhere. Why the Taiwanese engineers said, we can't work in these conditions. People just don't. They don't work. I mean, whatever they said, I'm not even judging anybody, but they turned home. That's what they said. That's what they said. I mean, I don't know. I wasn't there.
Dr Wilmer Leon (58:33):
They couldn't find the workforce that they needed to perform the tasks that needed to be performed. That's what they said.
Vijay Prashad (58:41):
That's what they said. And then they went back home. So TSMC still in Taiwan and actually also on the Chinese mainland produces a lot of these advanced chips. Now, United States tried to squeeze China's ability to buy these chips, but what they're really worried about is that TSMC will come to the realization that they cannot, absolutely cannot accept the US sanctions on China that prevent TSMC from selling chips to China, because China is one of the biggest markets for those advanced chips. There's also a Dutch company that produces very advanced electronic equipment for Chinese. They cannot afford to stop selling to China, and because of that, the United States will buy to anything to maintain Taiwan. But there's a real worry that they can't control it because in Taiwan, people are saying, sanctioning China is bad for us, bad for our economy. That's the natural cause of gravity. John Adam's statement didn't work for Cuba. It might work for Taiwan.
Dr Wilmer Leon (59:51):
And as we get out, what did Joe Biden, or what did members of the administration say when Nancy Pelosi was getting ready to go over there and there was all this concern that China might shoot her plane out the sky and all this other kind of stuff. The Biden administration said, if conflict breaks out between China and Taiwan, the United States will blow up TSMC. The United
Vijay Prashad (01:00:21):
Imagine that
Dr Wilmer Leon (01:00:22):
Threatened to blow up the TSMC factory on the mainland of Taiwan on the island of Taiwan. If conflict broke out, that to add additional validity to your statement, that's how and what that also did, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention that forced Huawei to develop. Just speaking on the cell phone side of things that motivated Huawei to expedite their chip development, their phone development, and they now have developed this, I can't remember the name of the phone, but their latest cell phone also now has satellite capability.
Vijay Prashad (01:01:14):
Imagine that.
(01:01:16)
Look at what I would be able to do with a phone like that, Wilma. I mean, the fact of the matter is just to underline all these points and give you the bottom line. The fact of the matter is it's very clear that we are at a fork in the road. The legitimacy of the old colonial countries of the global North has declined precipitously ever since the war in Ukraine and this war in Gaza. And at the same time, the kind of confidence in the global south, the new mood in the global south has really altered the confidence levels has risen. That's where we are. You asked at the beginning of the show, can this be turned around? I don't think so. I think what people in the United States must try to do is to recognize that everybody who lives on this planet earth is equal, and the people in the United States are not more gifted or more entitled or anything very good people in the United States, but nothing special compared to other people in the world. We got to live as a planet. We have to collaborate. We can't talk about finished lines and races. That's not where we're going. This is a human family and we have to treat each other in a better way than we do our own families
Dr Wilmer Leon (01:02:40):
And the solution to the conflicts are not military. One of the things that I have been saying about the conflict in Gaza is that Israel has bombed the world into reality, and people now see the horrors that have been ongoing for the last 75 years. It's playing itself out on their cell phones. It's playing itself out all through social media, and people are now finally looking at this, and they are, it's similar to, I believe it's similar to what Dr. King's strategy was with the children in the protests and the nonviolent protests. Do not respond to the brutality. Let the world see the brutality for what it really is and people will be aghast. And now the response in Gaza has bombed the world into reality and people all over the world, with the exception of Joe Biden and Tony Blinken and Samantha Power, who by the way wrote a book about genocide and now people on her staff are resigning their positions, asking her, well, wait a minute. I thought you wrote a book about your side. How can you back this play? The responses to the solutions to these problems are not through sanctions, and they're not through militarism and violence. They are through negotiation and accommodation, and the sooner the United States understands what Brix understands and what the Chinese cooperative and so what all of them understand, the better off we're going to be.
Vijay Prashad (01:04:32):
I mean, I agree with you fundamentally got to hope and believe that these changes, this new confidence arising in the world is going to provide a path out of the madness. We are at a fork in the road. Let's not choose madness.
Dr Wilmer Leon (01:04:49):
Let's not choose madness for no one wins in that debate. Vijay Prade, thank you so much for joining me today. Folks, I want to thank you all for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wimer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow, leave a review, share my show with those and love, follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. Peace. I'm out
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This week our guest is Vijay Prashad.
TRANSCRIPT
Announcer (00:06):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Dr Wilmer Leon (00:14):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I, we have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between the current events and the broader historical context in which they occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the impact on the global village in which we live on today's episode. The question is, is the West's hegemonic control over the rest of the world on the decline? If so, is it salvageable for insight into this and other issues? Let's turn to my guest. He's an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He's a writer and fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of Left Word Books and the director of Tri Continental, the Institute for Social Research. He's a senior non-resident fellow at Sean Yang Institute for Financial Studies at the Remnant University of China. He's written more than 20 books, including the darker nations and the Poor Nations, and he's the author of the article, hyper Imperialism. He's Vijay Prade. Vijay, welcome to the show.
Vijay Prashad (01:45):
It's great to be with you. Yeah, truly.
Dr Wilmer Leon (01:48):
Thank you so much for giving me time in your peace. Hyper in imperialism. Well, in fact, let me start this way. Lemme start this way back in 2016 at the Democratic Convention, then Vice President Biden said, we do not scare easily. We never bow. We never bend. We never break when confronted with crisis. No, we endure, we overcome, and we always, always, always move forward. We are America second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't forget it, Vijay. The undefeatable indispensable America are terms that are often used, well worn tropes, the realities that are existing all around us. Make these statements trite and meaningless to me. Your thoughts?
Vijay Prashad (02:47):
Well, it's interesting Wilmer, because Mr. Biden made those comments, as you said in 2016. In 2023, the United States forgot to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Munro Doctrine. Now, for those who don't know the Munro doctrine, it was enunciated by James Munro. The idea was pretty simple. Ro was saying for this new country, 1776 Revolution, 1923, Monroe Doctrine, I mean in the 18th century, a decade was a very long time. I understand that, not like now where you're sometimes just goes by so quickly. Time seems to have speed it up, but nonetheless, a young country in 1823, Mr. Monroe says at the time that, look, we just told the British Empire to go out of our shores. Not exactly because Britain still had Canada as a colony, but nonetheless Britain out of a part of North America. The United States hadn't yet ejected the French from all of North America, and there was also pockets of other Europeans involved in North America, let alone South America.
(04:13)
So nonetheless, quite audaciously, Mr. Monroe said, with the backing of the whole political class. Don't forget, Jefferson had already foreshadowed some of this stuff in his speeches, but Monroe said, look, Europeans, this hemisphere, the Americas from the tip right down to TGA del Fuego is not yours. The Americans will determine the destiny of this hemisphere. Now, of course, he then said something else which is, well, we in the United States have a manifest destiny, very delightful term from Christian eschatology about the city on the hill, the church at the town square and so on. We have a manifest destiny. We are Europeans. We are Europeans who have gone beyond the Europeans in Europe, and we want to make it clear not only as Europeans, because there are Europeans in South America as well, but we want to make it clear that it's America for the Americans, except when we say Americans, we mean those from the United States of America.
(05:23)
So that in fact the Monroe Doctrine, noble words as well, the MRO doctrine basically says the whole Americas is the domain of the United States. The United States therefore can intervene anywhere in the Americas when it feels that its interests or the interests of an enlightened civilization are threatened. And therefore we had a range of interventions, military interventions, most of Central America, much of the Caribbean, Haiti, colonized recolonized United States goes into Dominican Republic, the assault on Cuba after 1959. And so all done on the basis of Thero doctrine of 1823. Now, it's interesting because Wilma, I could make an argument what the United States did subsequent to the So-called Spanish-American War where the US seizes, the Philippines seizes, Puerto Rico seizes Cuba. You see, it's a very good example of Thero doctrine being, well, it's America for the Americans, but really Americans means the United States of America. After the Spanish American War, 1898, the United States starts to globalize the Monroe Doctrine.
(06:44)
And in fact, that's what happens in the aftermath of World War ii because by the aftermath of World War ii, the United States did have the technology therefore could actually have a global MRO doctrine, military bases having ships that could cross the Pacific Ocean pretty rapidly, oil fired ships could get through the Panama Canal, could go out to the Suez Canal. You had an amazing global military footprint bases all over the world and so on. That was the global MRO doctrine. Well, what's happened is that as a consequence of a number of different factors, including in the United States, the government no longer wanting to regulate the rich and therefore harvest taxes from them for a host of reasons. That's one, the lack of any kind of consensus among the elites in the United States, deep partisanship and so on. And then the trauma of this third grade depression, all these factors came together to basically signal a decline of US global power.
(07:57)
That is, you still have the rhetoric of the Monroe Doctrine, Mr. Biden's speech in 2016, but you don't have the realities of the Monroe Doctrine. You can bomb any country around the world, but you really can't have legitimacy over them. If a country, for instance, on the African continent needs to have a bridge built, they turn to China now to get money for that bridge to build the bridge. The United States very good at bombing the bridge, not so good at building the bridge. And I think that itself, the bridge story is a way to encapsulate the nature of the decline. In other words, US still has immense military power, spends with its allies, three quarters of world military spending, but just doesn't have the resources to do the kind of development aid it used to build the legitimacy that it once did. You said shop won cliches, tired language and so on, reporting to Mr. Biden. Yes. And the reason for that is not because Mr. Biden is out there flogging old clothes. It's that no us politician in fact can flog anything but tired. Shop one rhetoric and belligerence, they can do that legitimately, but they can't go out there and say for instance, to the people in the Sahel, Hey, listen, don't do all these cos we'll come in, we'll build a factory. We'll build a bridge for unbelievably to even once hear them say, we'll build a school, we'll build a hospital. Not going to happen Wilma, not in our lifetime.
Dr Wilmer Leon (09:43):
You just mentioned that the United States has extraordinary military supremacy, but the irony in that reality is the United States for all intents and purposes, hasn't won a conflict since World War ii, unless you want to throw Grenada into the conversation. United States had its hin parts whooped in Vietnam. The United States had its hin parts whooped in Afghanistan, 20 years in Afghanistan, what two and a half trillion dollars wasted, and we wound up turning the country back over to the same folks that we were fighting to take it from. We lost in Iraq, we lost in Libya. Now we've been outmaneuvered in Ukraine and of all people, Ansar Allah in the Red Sea is having traumatic impact on international trade. So yes, the United States has military superiority, but it seems as though the nature of warfare has gone almost asymmetrical and the United States hasn't been able to keep up.
Vijay Prashad (11:05):
Well, one of the issues is the difference
Dr Wilmer Leon (11:08):
Is that assessment accurate?
Vijay Prashad (11:10):
Very accurate. I mean, look, let's just take one of your examples. Let's take the example of Afghanistan. You said over $2 trillion spent by the United States doing what? And that's a key thing. Doing what? I want to come back, Wilma to that distinction between blowing up the bridge and building the
Dr Wilmer Leon (11:30):
Bridge and building the bridge.
Vijay Prashad (11:31):
You see, because the United States can win battles, it can win a military confrontation. You can win a battle. I mean, I was there and saw the destruction of Iraq after 2003. You can destroy power plants, take out bridges, just level the government buildings to all those things win. But war have never, never been won merely by battles. Now, there could be lots of examples in the ancient world when an army was in fact defeated and another army came in and occupied and conquered and oppressed people. But in a way that's still not a victory in the war because unless you are able to do something for the people you've occupied, unless you are able to create legitimacy for yourself as a new government, a new king, a new ruler or whatever it is, there's no way to win the war. War just merely by force.
(12:31)
So in the case of Afghanistan, it is absolutely true. When the US went in there in October of 2001, the bombing was ferocious. The Taliban fled from Kabul, from Jalalabad. The Taliban remnants of them that had been sitting near the Pakistan border just ran across the border to Pakistan. They fed. I mean, you remember the battle of Torah, Bora when apparently Osama bin Laden was holed up in a cave there, the United States was ping those mountains. The Taliban was fleeing. They don't want to fight a direct battle. Nobody wants to stand Wilma in a plane and be taken out by a drone. Okay? The United States can do that. Incredible technology as a young person sitting in Nevada in Las Vegas with a toggle stick in a red button can kill somebody in the of Afghanistan, in Pakistan. Extraordinary technology having chased out the Taliban, having bombarded the infrastructure.
(13:34)
What happens next? Here, let's go to Iraq where it's clear, clearer. Lots of journalists looked at this closely. I mean, pram Chatterjee wrote a great book called Iraq Inc. In other words, Iraq Incorporated. What did he mean by that? What he meant was it was open season, Wilma, there's a Hollywood film about this. A bunch of, let me just speak pretty straight with you here. A bunch of jackasses from God knows where Republican party people showed up in Iraq, got contracts from the US government, from the people who were the vice councils of the United States in Iraq. They didn't build anything. Let's go back to Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, they began to count Wilma, and this is horrifying. They began to count educated. When they say so many hundreds of thousands of children are in school in Kabul, okay, how do you know that so many hundreds of thousands of children are in school in the area around ka?
(14:43)
How do you know that all across the country? How do you know that? Well, we know that because somebody invoiced the government for chairs. So if I invoice for a hundred thousand chairs, the US government and the Afghan government stunningly and scandalously said, we have a hundred thousand people in classroom. Meanwhile, a hundred thousand chairs were not even delivered. I just invoiced you. I took the money and ran. You never saw me again. I mean, you look at the audits done by the US government of the spending in Afghanistan, scandalous spending. So you can win the battle. You can't win the war. You're not building schools, you don't have kids in classrooms. Then families say, what's the point of throwing out the Taliban and bringing you guys in because you are just corrupt. Those people, they may have their problems and indeed, my God, they have their problems.
(15:42)
They want gender segregation. No girls in schools and so on, but at least they're not corrupt. That's what people started to say again about the United States government in Iraq, the same thing. People go, why is there this attitude? Let's make a quick buck. Why? Because people have been learning this since at least the Reagan administration in the United States. This cannibalization of society is not something that only happens abroad. You are familiar with that Within the United States, there's so many. There are even terms where it boondoggles. The US military forgets hundreds of millions of dollars. They can't find where that money went. I mean, this is annually. There are reports that come out on this money forgotten, this boondoggle culture among the elites. It makes them mediocre. They don't want to work to be an elite. They want to inherit elite status. Everything is about an inheritance.
(16:46)
They don't want to work hard. They don't want to do anything. It's interesting because in Afghanistan, the British, for all their flaws, they said, well, we have experience of three to 400 years of colonialism. The British were saying, you people don't have the staying power. Well, actually, Rory Stewart and others who were saying things like that, they were not right. It's not a question of staying power. It's a question of did you want to win the war or did you just want to win battles and then come in there and quickly make a buck and flee, go off somewhere else? As I said, a Hollywood film was made about this. It's in the culture, this conversation. I'm not making this stuff up. It's real. So yes, United States very big military capable of blowing up bridges just to repeat that, but not so committed to building them.
(17:39)
And that's how you lose your legitimacy. If you no longer give people something that they want or they need, you don't address their problems, you're not going to be credible. Look, during the pandemic, the Chinese announced that they've ended absolute poverty in China, so enormous fe, the United Nations celebrated it and so on as we speak, Wilma, I was reading a story that there's a bill sitting in the US Congress about tax credits to be given to families so that millions of children in the United States can for the period of just this calendar year, be outside poverty. I mean, how does a story like that look around the world here at the Chinese saying, we've eradicated absolute poverty and here's the United States Congress debating whether or not to eradicate poverty, mind you, whether to pass tax credit so that for one year so many tens of millions of children in the United States can be above the poverty line.
(18:43)
I mean, what's going on, Wilma? This is something for people in the United States to reflect on very seriously. Is this the country that looks credible to the world? When you have somebody saying, we own the finish line. I mean, what a revealing statement that is. Joe, Joe Biden. I mean Joe, nobody owns the finish line, Joe. That's why it's a finish line. If you own the finish line, Joe, there's no race. You rigged the race, and that's exactly the attitude that people in the United States need to confront. You can't live in a society that's rigged against you. You have to fight to build a society where people feel like something is there for them, and that attitude then will create new speeches. People will realize we're not a city on the hill. We don't have a manifest destiny. There is Noro doctrine. We're just people.
(19:38)
We live on the planet. We've got to collaborate with others, whether it's the people in Yemen or other people in Libya or indeed the people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I want a cell phone. I want to use their cobalt. I want to use their cold tan, but they have a right to live decent lives. I need to pay them. The corporations need to pay the people in the Congo that are digging that stuff up with their fingernails, and that's the scandal, and that's the discussion around that scandal that needs to happen in a place like the United States.
Dr Wilmer Leon (20:14):
And to Joe Biden's point and to your response about owning the finish line, if you claim to own the finish line, then that means that you control the finish line, and that also means that you can move the finish line. And that takes me to Tony Blinken term. Well, George HW Bush talked about the new world order, and then Tony Blinken comes in with not international law, but what's the term that Tony Blinken always loves to use about the controlling order? I can't remember the term that Tony Blinken loves to use, but it's where basically what he's saying is we have the rules, we set the laws. You all just follow what we say.
Vijay Prashad (21:09):
Yeah, this is his phrase, the rules based information,
Dr Wilmer Leon (21:11):
Order based order. Exactly. Exactly
Vijay Prashad (21:14):
Why you forgot it, Wilma. This is a because
Dr Wilmer Leon (21:17):
It has no definition.
Vijay Prashad (21:18):
No, it means nothing. And also it's one of the things that was there when Mr. Blinken was nominated for this job. You remember this very well. They praised him saying He's fluent in French. I thought, and I'm sorry to be so blunt, and I know that a lot of your listeners are serious people and they don't like this kind of talk, but I felt that Mr. Blinken, if he doesn't make sense in English, can't be making sense in French. So there's that rules based international order. What other kind of international order could there be? Tony? That's the question to ask him are they're all rules based. The question is who makes the rules and does everybody abide by the rules? Okay, we actually have rules that are based on
Dr Wilmer Leon (22:13):
Do we even know what the rules are, Tony? Yes.
Vijay Prashad (22:17):
In fact, that's the interesting part, Wilma, because okay, the question to ask them is what's the basis for your rules? In fact, the most consensus treaty document we have in the modern world since 1945, the document with the greatest consensus is the United Nations charter. There is no other document which has almost all countries signed onto it, okay? It's the greatest consensus document that we have in human history till now. Maybe there'll be another one, but the UN charter is paramount, and in fact, I would say that most people around the world want to live in a rules-based order, which is grounded in the rules, which we've all accepted by treaty, which is the UN charter, not the rules being something invented by the United States government at its whim by let's say the group of seven countries by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, by the 14 Eyes Intelligence Network.
(23:22)
They don't get to make the rules and impose them on us. I mean, what's really, really interesting in this period is that for the first time in my mind, since the 1970s, for the first time, we see heads of governments who are not necessarily leading political forces that are anti, whether it's the president and prime minister of Namibia, their political formation isn't anti systemic. Even in fact, Ali Pando and Il Rama, South Africa, these political forces are effectively telling the United States, now, we don't like your rules. We don't think your rules are good. Why? Because we think they are capricious and we think you don't follow them. What's the point of having rules if you don't follow them? So for instance, when international courts, the International Court of Justice demanded a ceasefire in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, just a month into that conflict, they called for a ceasefire.
(24:29)
A thousand people had died at that point. By the way, now, 25,000 Palestinians and counting dead, the ICJ didn't exactly call for a ceasefire. They said that we see that it's plausible genocides, an enormous admission by the ICJ, and then they said, you must do everything to end the genocide. Well, that means a cease file. They don't use that language. They don't say secession of hostilities. Nonetheless, what's interesting is people around the world, whether it's again in Namibia or it's Indonesia or it's in Bolivia, people, ordinary people not talking about governments, ordinary people are saying to their newspapers and so on. When I meet them, as I travel around the world, people say this to me, what they are saying is, look, when it's an African leader indicted in the international criminal court, the west goes all in. They demonize the person, and in some cases these people deserve to be in front of the ICC.
(25:27)
They've done bad things, but the level of demonization, the music is cranked up really high. These people are bad. They're committing crimes against humanity and so on here, 17 judges, 15 sitting judges of the international criminal court, the judge from Israel, the judge from South Africa, 17 judges basically to a account of most of the time, 16 to two, in some cases, 17 to one. The Ugandan judge was the outlier, and in fact, even the government of Uganda disassociated itself from her saying she doesn't speak for our government. In fact, very interesting and we can talk about that if you'd like, but most cases 1716 to two was the count, which means that the international criminal court, the court of the United Nations has basically said Israel's actions are plausible genocide. What does the United States, Canada, almost the entirety of the west do within our, they defund the United Nations Agency for the Palestinians Honora, within hours of this coming out, this order that the Algerians wanted carried immediately to the Security Council United States, I mean around the world, people are saying, you people are not credible, Mr.
(26:49)
Biden, you are not credible, and anyway, you are a one term president because you've lost left liberals in your own country. They're not going to vote for you after this and you've lost the election. I mean, Mr. Trump is going to come back, whatever that means, maybe catastrophic, but he's coming back. That's probably a foregone conclusion without legitimacy, Mr. Biden, Mr. Macrow, Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Soak, Mr. Schultz, I mean, you're so bent out of shape about Ukrainians because as people at the time were saying that these are white babies with blue eyes and blonde hair, but Palestinians, brown skin, black hair and so on, some of them have by the way, blonde hair, but nonetheless, not white, irrelevant. We're not even talking about the war in the Sudan. We're not talking about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We're not even talking about the ceaseless destruction of Yemen.
(27:49)
The reason the US and Britain are nuts, they think a couple of missiles will scare the Yemenis. Forget it. They've taken much more and more than that from the Saudis for a decade. They're not scared of anything and they've been hardened. What has hardened them? Not Islam, not some inherent accusation that they're terrorists. What has hardened them is your bombing. It's British and US ammunition used by the Saudis bombing them relentlessly for 10 years. People look at all this and say, you never complained about any of that. One Russian tank crosses the border. One Ukrainian is killed and suddenly you are outraged and you say, open the doors, all Ukrainian refugees allowed, but Syrians, you still remain in the camps in Greece or in Turkey, wherever Palestinians, we don't apply. And so on. The stock hypocrisy, racism, a lack of concern for human life, what I consider to be an international division of humanity.
(28:57)
That's what's really been drawn. There's an international division of humanity and the other side of that division, the prime minister of Namibia, the president of Indonesia, even the Indian foreign minister, right-wing government, they are now speaking from the other side of the international division of Vanity saying no more. I mean, Mia Amor Motley, the prime minister of Barbados last year convened a group for an emancipation conference. A former president of Nigeria was there, the former Prime Minister Addison from Jamaica, and they basically said, we're going to have reparations from the west. This is Barbados tiny country just thrown off the monarchy. And what happened this year recently, the African union's 55 countries, the 20 countries of the Caribbean community gathered together and said, reparations now of putting it on the agenda. This is not a radical demand, by the way. It's a pretty milk to demand, but it's actually showing this new mood. They're saying, we're fed up with your hypocrisy. We're fed up with your intervening, your attempting to foist the international monetary fund on us sending your warships to scare us. It doesn't work anymore. People, you politicians are too mediocre. You don't scare us, and Trump is that dog that western civilization is going to let loose against the world bark all night Wilmer, he'll bark all night, but he won't have the guts to bite anybody or to enter the house.
Dr Wilmer Leon (30:34):
You mentioned about Ansara la in Yemen and the fact that United States can't scare them, that takes me back to President Putin's statement. When Joe Biden first sent the USS Gerald Ford Aircraft carrier group into the Mediterranean, and Putin said, why are you doing that? Who do you think you're going to scare? These people don't scare. And in fact, Al Hhi in Yemen said, we want to fight you. They are saying, and who would think that this small country called Yemen where most people couldn't find it on a map of Yemen is saying, we want to fight you. Please. That's an amazing, amazing reality, and you also mentioned about not following that we have this rules-based order and we don't even follow the rules. Well, Joe Biden has just signed an executive order where he now says the US may sanction Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians. Now that's an interesting contrast or conflict or just total confusion. When the United States is sending weapons, sending money, logistical support, targeting support to the IDF to attack Gaza, but now seemingly for political reasons, he wants to issue this executive order and oh, by the way, Joe Biden's administration approved the sale of the very weapons that the settlers are using to murder Palestinians, but now he wants to try to sanction them for using the weapons that he sent Vijay. It's insanity.
Vijay Prashad (32:45):
You put it very, very well. I mean you put the point very plainly, but let's again look at this executive order. I think they named four people in this, and one of them in fact has already made a public statement saying, listen, I don't have any bank accounts in the United States. I'm not affected by this not planning to travel. There don't have any assets there. This is just symbolic. One of the people named has already said that this is bogus, not a critic of this, but what Biden doesn't do here and doesn't have the guts to do is there are thousands of US citizens in these illegal settlements. This executive order doesn't touch a US citizen in an illegal settlement who goes and shoots a Palestinian. It doesn't touch that person. This is just directed at those who are Israeli citizens, but not US citizens. Many of the US citizens are also Israeli citizens. They have joint citizenship, but this is not, he is immunized US citizens in this. That's one point. Secondly, he doesn't really sanction anybody. I mean, you want to give a real sanction, sanction Israeli politicians who are inflaming the settlers. What about putting them on the list? I mean
Dr Wilmer Leon (34:08):
Smoke trick for example.
Vijay Prashad (34:10):
Exactly. Why should they not? Why should universal jurisdiction not cover them? You look back at the international criminal court warrant against Mr. Potent and his minister of children, they were accused and maybe there is an accusation to be made there. They were accused of removing children from a war zone in Ukraine. They were accused of removing children from the war zone. Now, fourth Geneva Convention does say that population transfer is illegal, but let's have a discussion about that removing children from a war zone, is this appropriate? Should they have been removed to Russia? Did they go with the consent of their parents? There could have been a range of discussion and debate. I don't remember any debate. I just remember being told that this is a war crime and the ICC indicted him. Now, the Israelis have already killed over 11,000 children. They didn't remove children from a war zone in the way that the Russians did.
(35:13)
They did remove children from a war zone, but by killing them, 11,000 of them in body bags, 11,000 of them and no ICC warrant and no statement from the United States government instead this ridiculous executive order that's supposed to modify his base. You see what's been happening is I watched these videos, Mr. Biden traveling around the country, the United States trying to drum up support for his failing election campaign and at every single stop, it seems to me, or at least that's what circulates, I know this is not exactly a scientific assessment what you see circulating, but at many campaigns stops. He starts speaking, he's talking about a woman's right to choose whatever he's talking about. People yell, genocide, Joe, they yell, seize fire. Now they yell, stop supporting Israel and he is a dear in headlights as any of us would be a caught between a really bad policy that you can't defend and a base that is angry with you because let's not forget that this is a base that might not be scared into voting. Again for the Democrats, this is a base that might say, really, Trump is so bad and you were so great, you authorized a genocide against the Palestinians. I don't think this base is coming back.
Dr Wilmer Leon (36:37):
Lemme quickly say to that point. That's a great point and I've been saying for a while that in 2020, Joe Biden was talking about how horrific Donald Trump was and he was making a lot of promises about what he would do. He had no track record as a president. Now in 24 he has a track record as a president and he's now starting to make some of the very same promises in 24 that he made in 20, and folks are comparing his promises and his rhetoric to his record and they're saying You didn't do it then why are you going do it now?
Vijay Prashad (37:21):
In fact, worse than that, the people who are out there at these rallies saying genocide, Joe sees pie. Now these are people with a modicum of interest in what's happening outside the United States. They're not people who are going to focus on quite correct issues like for instance, a woman's right to choose. There is some difference between the candidates and so on. Not that the Democrats have done much to defend the woman's right to choose or on the question of immigration. I mean the Democrats haven't done much better than the Republicans in some cases, maybe even worse
Dr Wilmer Leon (37:54):
Because it's more important to them as an issue, as a political wedge issue than it is for them as a solution.
Vijay Prashad (38:04):
Correct? Exactly. So what you have is you have people genocide, Joe Ana. These are people who are saying, I'm not a single issue voter. I'm not going to be wedged by you back into the fold. You can't wedge me and you can't wedge me because I'm looking at these other things. And there are lots of young people in that cohort and one of the areas where they're looking at is Cuba. This July norm Chansky and I are going to release a book called On Cuba, which is where the reason I know all this stuff about the MRO doctorate, and I mean I'm not a scholar of all this, but we had to study this to understand US foreign policy against Cuba. We did a deep study. It was a pleasure to work with. No on this book, it's not an interview book. We wrote this together.
(38:51)
We discussed and talked and went through it and so on Cuba, there's a section in the book toward the end where Mr. Biden says, during the campaign says that I am going to reverse Trump's unfortunate strangulation of the people of Cuba. We are going to remove Cuba from the state sponsored on terrorism list. We are going to roll back the 243 extra sanctions, no more talk as John Bolton did of axis of whatever it is of tyranny and so on. Bolton speech, none of that. Biden said all that there, this video of him saying all that. It's not like some private interview, which he then denied. He said this in front of the cameras. Well, then he came into office, he won the election, came into office. Jen Psaki at the time, spokesperson was asked, what about the reversal? He can by executive water get rid of some of these sanctions.
(39:52)
You can start the process to remove Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list and so on. Because Cuba, after all is a state sponsor of healthcare for the world, not terrorism, a bad idea Trump, and now Biden Biden didn't do anything and Jen Psaki said, it's not on our agenda. Now what you just said ferociously, I'm going to reverse Trump's. It's not on our agenda now. Then there was some small protests in a small town, a few hours outside Havana, which the anti Cuban people in Miami blew up and said, it's a big protest in July and so on, he is going to overthrow the government. Then Biden entered and said, we are going to tighten our grip on the island because we have to support the people fighting. So not only did he not do what he said because it was not on the agenda when he started to do something about Cuba, it was in fact Trump plus.
(40:52)
So in that case, what the heck, man? I mean, where are you genocide, Joe? That's what people are calling him more and more. That is not a good look for a president or for a person running for president of the United States on the Democratic ticket because I admit to you, I know a lot of the people on the left and so on, but don't underestimate the power of that small section of left liberals because they are the activists. They are the ones that go door to door In South Carolina for instance. There is no such thing as a democratic party. There are only motivated activists who are the people. It's mostly middle-aged women and young college students who go door to door distributing things, talking up candidates, going into churches, talking to their friends and so on. If that crucial section is started to call him genocide Joe and say, ceases fire now, and to ask questions like, why are you trying to suffocate the people of Cuba?
(41:58)
Why can't you pass a proper infrastructure bill? Why are you arresting and deporting people at the border? Activists say that you lost the election because there's no body else to substitute for them. You can have as much astroturfing as you want. You can get all the high rollers around the United States to give your campaign money. You can hire people to go with clipboards, but they don't have the passion to stand on the door, stop to stand at the front door, knock on the door, say, listen, you got to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They're just going to stand there with a clipboard. Say, I have been told to say, please vote for Mr. Biden, it's chat GPT, man, you don't win elections with chat GPT, you win elections with passion. It's not going to be there for them, and I think they have made a huge, huge error trying to believe that these little executive orders will claw back that section.
(42:56)
The only thing that's going to claw back that section is something that neither of the political parties can do. Mr. Trump can't do it either. None of them can break with the Israeli ruling elite, none of them. None of them will offer a robust criticism of Israel. That's a serious problem for the American elite. The American public on the other hand, has already broken that consensus. You've already seen the polls, Wilma, a majority maybe up to something like two thirds of the United States. Public no longer wants the US to support Ukraine with money. Correct? Two thirds of the US public, correct. A majority of Republicans don't want the United States to support Israel in this war. A majority of Republicans, that's interesting. 40 some percent of Democrats have turned against this war. That's compelling evidence to my mind once more of the great disjuncture in US politics between the people's mood and their opinions and what the governments want to do.
(43:56)
Nancy Pelosi was confronted by some protestors from Port and what did she say? She said, oh, you are all doing the work of Russia. Russia. I mean for God's sake to use this kind of language against US citizens who have a First Amendment right to protest the FBI, my God, I can't believe I'm going to say this. I just got word this evening before we spoke. The FBI has made a public statement Wilmer saying that we will not investigate people who are conducting nonviolent protests on behalf of the Palestinians because those people doing the protests have a First Amendment right. The FBI has said that
Dr Wilmer Leon (44:38):
Mean because Nancy Pelosi called upon the FBI to investigate those protestors saying that they were operatives of Russia and here was her rationale. Putin has a message saying that there's genocide in Gaza and these protestors are saying that there's genocide in Gaza. So because the protestors have the same message as Putin, ergo or Ipso facto, they must now be operatives of Russia when everybody on the planet should be opposed to genocide. Even Nancy Pelosi should be opposed to anybody in their right mind should be so even if Putin is the autocrat, is the dictator, is the madman, is whatever is the evil villain is a swamp monster and an evil villain. A broken clock is right twice a day. So the issue on Gaza, he's right on that issue.
Vijay Prashad (45:59):
Well, I'm actually personally invested in this particular part of the conversation because some months ago, the New York Times basically accused me of being an agent of the Chinese government. It was a ridiculous article. I mean, I was embarrassed to read it, not embarrassed for myself, embarrassed for the New York Times. I was like, man, you guys wrote some pretty shoddy articles with the name Judith Miller attached to them that basically made the case for the United States to go to war illegally against the Iraqi people. You got some pretty bad journalism under your hat, the gray lady all these years, but this particular article was really bad because it essentially took certain quite trivial facts like I run a research institute, I also work for a media house. I have people who donate to these things. I can't travel to the SA region on money. I borrow from my friends. I need donors for this because when I publish things, I can't get enough newspapers to pay me enough to actually travel to places. You got to forward fund a lot of these projects. I'm not embarrassed to say that I don't come from money. I'm not independently wealthy. I don't have that kind of trust fund that would enable me to live the kind of
Dr Wilmer Leon (47:26):
George Soros won't back you, so
Vijay Prashad (47:28):
Yeah, he's not going to back me. I've got to find people, and by the way, the Chinese government gives me zero money. In fact, my post at the Chang Yang Institute of Financial Studies is non remu. I don't make any money at all. They don't pay me for anything. The reason I took that position is I was keen to interact with Chinese scholars. I wanted to have a place where I could sit down and listen to what Chinese scholars are thinking and saying, almost no place in the world that allows that unless you get involved somehow with a Chinese institution because they don't trust. You can't just show up in Beijing and say, Hey guys, I want to talk to you so I don't have any Chinese. They know that. By the way, the New York Times know that they knew the provenance of the funds.
(48:09)
They knew everything they had all the material, the questions that the journalists asked me. I'm going to give this to you just because it's so funny. David, far andhold the journalist, senior journalist New York Times wrote big questions like, for instance, are you paid by the Chinese government? Do you take orders from the Chinese government? I mean, I felt that this is not journalism's McCarthyite hearing. It's the kind of question you'd expect some off the wall, right-Wing congressman to ask you, Lindsey Graham, that kind of thing, going from McCarthy to Lindsey Graham and to somebody as mediocre as Marco Rubio who read that article and the next day asked the Department of Justice to investigate all the projects named in it. Fortunately, either the Department of Justice is doing an ongoing investigation that I don't know about or they decided not to take Mr. Rubio seriously, which I think is probably what happened.
(49:10)
But the point reason I'm raising this is that it's really interesting in the United States unable to have the argument. Why can't Nancy Pelosi have the argument about Gaza unable to have the argument about Russia, let's say, or unable or unwilling to have the argument about China? They simply want to repress you. They want to say anybody who doesn't follow the line saying China is evil, Russia is evil. The Palestinians are terrorists. Anybody who moves even one millimeter from that general line, they just want to repress you. They want to delegitimize you. They want to basically put you in jail. They don't want to have the argument with you, and that I think is depressing for the whole situation of the culture in the United States, the political culture, the conversations, I mean for God's sake. I watched a couple of the Republican primary debates before the Iowa caucuses.
(50:14)
I watched a few of them. The level of conversation was abysmal. It was juvenile. Juvenile. There are real problems in the world. I mean real problems that guy Ram, he actually did a favor for us culture because we Ramas proved once and for all that all South Asians aren't at the caliber of doctors and whatever. There's no model minority. I mean there's mediocrity even amongst South Asian Americans, mediocre. He's out there as an attack dog of somebody just sort yelling at people. I felt bad at moments even for DeSantis, for God's sake, let the man try his best to put an argument on the table. Don't keep interrupting him and saying, Ron, you is Ron, you're that. And then DeSantis piling on Nikki Haley, I thought, God, you are just a bunch of people that if I saw you in the bar, I would get out of there, get into my car, drive across town.
(51:16)
I would prefer to buy a bottle at a liquor store and sit in my car, not car. I would prefer to sit in the anti room of my house and drink it by myself. I don't even want to be within sight of you when I'm having a drink, let alone let's say in front of a congressional committee. Really mediocre level of discussion if that's the standard of discussion, no wonder that if they are challenged, let's talk about Gaza. They'll just say, you are a Russian agent. Get out of the room. I don't want to talk about, I just heard Megan Kelly who had Trump on her show for an hour. She has a YouTube type show. Anyway, Megan Kelly was on a podcast I was listening to a very, very interesting, she was talking a little bit about this, about the fact that the deterioration of the ability to actually have a discussion about ideas, the big ideas, you want to have a discussion about immigration, let's have a discussion about immigration. Let's not demonize all sides and not talk to each other about how to understand these issues.
(52:29)
There is no space for that and therefore Nancy Pelosi turns around and says, FBI investigate them. They're criminals. And fortunately somebody at the FBI had managed to read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and decided, Hey, listen, they have a constitutionally protected right to speech as long as they are nonviolent. Now, I found that an interesting part of their statement because in fact, I'm not even sure that's necessarily true because for instance, this goes back to Dr. Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham jail. Does nonviolence include, for instance, resisting chaining yourself to a wall, blocking a street and so on there? I think we could have an interesting discussion with the lawyers at the FBI that What do you mean by nonviolent? I mean, if I go and lock myself into the office of a congressman, are you still going to say I a right to that speech? Because after all, you can't lionize the civil rights movement and then criminalize its tactics today, which is exactly what they seem to be doing. Nancy Pelosi will stand up there and say, the great Dr. Martin Luther King, when I marched with him across Selma, as you know, every living American politician marched across Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King. I marched across, but then if you try to march across the Brooklyn Bridge, you are an agent of Russia.
Dr Wilmer Leon (54:00):
You were mentioning the United States is better at blowing up bridges than building bridges, and the Washington Post has a very interesting article. China sets sites on Taiwan's three remaining tiny Pacific Islands, and here's an interesting element of this as China. This is from the Washington Post as China Vs. With the US for power and influence in the Pacific. It has tirelessly tried to pry allies away from Taiwan. By many means, chief among them money, it has offered much needed funds to struggling island nations like Nru and allegedly doled out envelopes of cash to officials and accusation. Beijing denies China has approached Pacific politicians as they travel overseas, inviting some to lunch and surveilling others what they're slaying out. I mean, that sounds like lobbying to me. And what they don't say in the peace is, well, China's not assassinating rulers in these islands. China isn't involved in their elections. China isn't overthrowing their governments. China isn't involved in China, is engaged in building relationships with countries, and they're doing it by determining what the country needs, seeing what China can provide and how there can be a win-win. And that's not rhetoric. That's, as you know, that's an actual policy strategy of the Chinese government win-win, and somehow the Washington Post makes it out to be nefarious, and there's something spooky going on here because China's actually building relationships with these people not coming in, building air bases, army barracks and shooting people.
Vijay Prashad (56:12):
Well, there's something in this Taiwan China story that the Washington Post also won't cover. There's something really interesting. Well, firstly, it is settled treaty position of the United States that Taiwan is basically a part of China that was established when the United States agreed to remove the Republic of China from its permanent seat at the UN Security Council and replace it with the People's Republic of China. This was right there in the 1970s, part of the Nixon Mao negotiations and so on. Okay, so why is the United States so desperate to hold on to Taiwan? Lemme give people a little glimpse into things that don't get talked about. Taiwan is the home to a company called TSMC. TSMC is one of the world's largest chip manufacturers. In fact, 90% of the advanced chips used in cell phones and other electronic gadgets made by TSMC. The United States worried about eight, nine years ago that if China was able to incorporate Taiwan, not necessarily by political incorporation, but even just economically, what was John Adam's statement?
(57:29)
That by the natural force of gravity, Cuba will fall into the US lap. They were salivating about that, by the way, because it was about the Mississippi River and the slavery complex. They wanted Cuba part of that big slavery kind of economy down the Mississippi River all the way to Cuba, like the force of gravity. Cuba will fall in. Well, United States worried by the force of gravity. Taiwan is going to fall into the lap of China, economic links, everything that post. So United States government then started talking to TSMC saying, look, you have to set up a factory in the us and indeed United States opened the door in Arizona. They built a big factory. Washington Post ran a story about it. It was a huge thing. Lots of engineers came from Taiwan. The factory went nowhere. Why the Taiwanese engineers said, we can't work in these conditions. People just don't. They don't work. I mean, whatever they said, I'm not even judging anybody, but they turned home. That's what they said. That's what they said. I mean, I don't know. I wasn't there.
Dr Wilmer Leon (58:33):
They couldn't find the workforce that they needed to perform the tasks that needed to be performed. That's what they said.
Vijay Prashad (58:41):
That's what they said. And then they went back home. So TSMC still in Taiwan and actually also on the Chinese mainland produces a lot of these advanced chips. Now, United States tried to squeeze China's ability to buy these chips, but what they're really worried about is that TSMC will come to the realization that they cannot, absolutely cannot accept the US sanctions on China that prevent TSMC from selling chips to China, because China is one of the biggest markets for those advanced chips. There's also a Dutch company that produces very advanced electronic equipment for Chinese. They cannot afford to stop selling to China, and because of that, the United States will buy to anything to maintain Taiwan. But there's a real worry that they can't control it because in Taiwan, people are saying, sanctioning China is bad for us, bad for our economy. That's the natural cause of gravity. John Adam's statement didn't work for Cuba. It might work for Taiwan.
Dr Wilmer Leon (59:51):
And as we get out, what did Joe Biden, or what did members of the administration say when Nancy Pelosi was getting ready to go over there and there was all this concern that China might shoot her plane out the sky and all this other kind of stuff. The Biden administration said, if conflict breaks out between China and Taiwan, the United States will blow up TSMC. The United
Vijay Prashad (01:00:21):
Imagine that
Dr Wilmer Leon (01:00:22):
Threatened to blow up the TSMC factory on the mainland of Taiwan on the island of Taiwan. If conflict broke out, that to add additional validity to your statement, that's how and what that also did, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention that forced Huawei to develop. Just speaking on the cell phone side of things that motivated Huawei to expedite their chip development, their phone development, and they now have developed this, I can't remember the name of the phone, but their latest cell phone also now has satellite capability.
Vijay Prashad (01:01:14):
Imagine that.
(01:01:16)
Look at what I would be able to do with a phone like that, Wilma. I mean, the fact of the matter is just to underline all these points and give you the bottom line. The fact of the matter is it's very clear that we are at a fork in the road. The legitimacy of the old colonial countries of the global North has declined precipitously ever since the war in Ukraine and this war in Gaza. And at the same time, the kind of confidence in the global south, the new mood in the global south has really altered the confidence levels has risen. That's where we are. You asked at the beginning of the show, can this be turned around? I don't think so. I think what people in the United States must try to do is to recognize that everybody who lives on this planet earth is equal, and the people in the United States are not more gifted or more entitled or anything very good people in the United States, but nothing special compared to other people in the world. We got to live as a planet. We have to collaborate. We can't talk about finished lines and races. That's not where we're going. This is a human family and we have to treat each other in a better way than we do our own families
Dr Wilmer Leon (01:02:40):
And the solution to the conflicts are not military. One of the things that I have been saying about the conflict in Gaza is that Israel has bombed the world into reality, and people now see the horrors that have been ongoing for the last 75 years. It's playing itself out on their cell phones. It's playing itself out all through social media, and people are now finally looking at this, and they are, it's similar to, I believe it's similar to what Dr. King's strategy was with the children in the protests and the nonviolent protests. Do not respond to the brutality. Let the world see the brutality for what it really is and people will be aghast. And now the response in Gaza has bombed the world into reality and people all over the world, with the exception of Joe Biden and Tony Blinken and Samantha Power, who by the way wrote a book about genocide and now people on her staff are resigning their positions, asking her, well, wait a minute. I thought you wrote a book about your side. How can you back this play? The responses to the solutions to these problems are not through sanctions, and they're not through militarism and violence. They are through negotiation and accommodation, and the sooner the United States understands what Brix understands and what the Chinese cooperative and so what all of them understand, the better off we're going to be.
Vijay Prashad (01:04:32):
I mean, I agree with you fundamentally got to hope and believe that these changes, this new confidence arising in the world is going to provide a path out of the madness. We are at a fork in the road. Let's not choose madness.
Dr Wilmer Leon (01:04:49):
Let's not choose madness for no one wins in that debate. Vijay Prade, thank you so much for joining me today. Folks, I want to thank you all for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wimer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow, leave a review, share my show with those and love, follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. Peace. I'm out