- 7 months ago
- #considerthis
From military strikes to media narratives, US power is sustained through more than just war. From Gaza to the Global South, its reach is felt through bombs, sanctions, and justifications that sustain them. What sustains this structure of power? What role does the Global South have in challenging it? And what does resistance look like in this moment of global fracture? On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with historian and journalist Vijay Prashad, executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Chief Correspondent for Globetrotter. He is also the author of ‘The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power’, which he co-wrote with Noam Chomsky.
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00:00Hello and good evening. I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to Consider This. This is the show
00:15where we want you to consider and then reconsider what you know of the news of the day. The images
00:20out of Gaza have shocked the world. Entire neighborhoods flattened, tens of thousands
00:26of people dead and growing evidence of war crimes. Yet the Israeli military campaign continues,
00:33backed by billions from the US in support and diplomatic cover. And the recent strikes on Iran
00:41have further raised the stakes in a region already on the brink. So is this impunity or empire in
00:50action? And if the US is a superpower in decline, as many have claimed, why does its military
00:56footprint still shape so much of our world? So tonight on the show, we'll ask what sustains this
01:03structure of power? What role does the global south have to play in challenging it? And what does
01:10resistance look like in this moment of global fracture? I'm delighted to tell you that my guest
01:16on the show today is historian and journalist Vijay Prashad. He's the executive director of
01:22Tri-Continental Institute for Social Research, and he's the chief correspondent for Globe Trotter.
01:28He's also the author of The Withdrawal, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power,
01:34which he co-wrote with Noam Chomsky. Vijay, thank you so much for being on the show with me today.
01:39It's great to have you joining us. So let me begin this very important conversation that we're about to
01:46have by asking you about Gaza and the genocide happening there. What has that revealed to you
01:53about the current state of the international order, particularly in terms of power and impunity?
02:02Well, firstly, I'm very happy to be with you, Melissa, and happy to have this conversation,
02:08firstly, with a person with your lovely energy. But I must say that this is a difficult matter to
02:15talk about. And it's difficult because it demonstrates a real decline of, you know,
02:23what shall we say, humanist values, you know, not just enlightenment values, but the values of humanism.
02:31You know, we're watching live streamed, as the United Nations put it, a genocide where one country,
02:39the most powerful military in the world, the United States, is just ceaselessly providing material,
02:48by which I mean, large bombs, 500 pound bombs on a regular basis to the Israeli military,
02:56which without much ability to take incoming fire, is just bombing and devastating
03:03the lives of the people in Gaza, the Palestinians in Gaza. And then on top of that, Melissa, what is
03:11heartbreaking is to watch the starvation politics. You know, they've just stopped food, electricity,
03:18water from entering. Gaza already has the world's largest number of child amputees. That's stunning.
03:25You know, it's just a population of 2 million. It's got the world's largest number, not per capita of child amputees.
03:34And then now children are starving to death, you know, in the in the dozens a day. This is just horrifying.
03:41And as I said, it demonstrates the absolute decline of humanist values. But more than that,
03:48it actually shows us that regardless of the changes, and I know you want to talk about that, the changes in world power,
03:57the United States still dominates military power, is still able to intimidate other countries into silence.
04:06You know, even though countries around the world, people are exasperated, you know, your country, my country,
04:14they've all complained and criticized this. I live in Santiago, Chile, Mike, it's the largest population
04:21of Palestinians outside the Middle East, half a million Palestinians. The government has complained,
04:27the Malaysian government has complained. It hasn't made an impact. And that is heartbreaking.
04:33So what does this moment tell you about the durability of US-Israel impunity? Is it likely to
04:42continue, even though much of the world is speaking out against it?
04:49Well, it looks like that to me. I mean, you know, this is a question really to ask the 191
04:57maybe countries in the world, maybe less, because the Europeans seem to be entirely behind this genocide.
05:04I mean, the British are providing landing strips for Israeli planes. That was revealed very recently.
05:10The Germans are continuing to provide all kinds of support and so on. You know, it's very difficult
05:17to be pro-Palestinian in Europe. You get arrested for it. You know, so the rest of the world,
05:25you know, where are we? You know, why aren't we able to put pressure on the Israeli government
05:31to seize and desist? You know, why? Where is the talk, Melissa, of no-fly zones? You know, when
05:38there was a minor civil war taking place in Libya, you know, tens of people dead. The Europeans went
05:46nuts and said no-fly zone and so on. And then they went and destroyed the Libyan state. Yeah.
05:52In 2011, NATO went in and just lethally crushed the institutions. Where is that noise? You know,
06:00that's why I say this is a death of humanism. Where are our governments, the Asian governments,
06:05African governments, you know, why aren't they running into the UN Security Council and saying
06:10no-fly zone? Why?
06:13Could I ask you that question? Why is there such a widening gap between people and power? Because
06:22we see such growing public outrage globally and yet Western governments remain largely unmoved about
06:30the issue of Gaza. How would you explain it, Vijay? Well, first, let's in fact give some praise to
06:40our governments. You know, the other day, there was a music festival in Glastonbury and Bob
06:46Violin, a musician, made a statement which is not in by itself objectionable. He said, you know,
06:54look, I know my language. I know some Arabic and so on. And in these languages, it's very common to say,
07:03you know, Murdabad, you know, death too. You go out on a demonstration, you say, you know,
07:09Malisa Zindabad, that is Malisa long late, you know, and then you might say, you know,
07:15whatever it is, you know, some wretched political thing, or they say Murdabad, death too. It's a
07:20perfectly everyday expression in politics, you know, strikers say, you know, this company,
07:28Murdabad, you know, whatever. In Arabic, it's the same. In many languages, it's the same. He says death
07:34to the IDF. The IDF is the Israeli Defense Force. It's a military. It's not to a people. He's saying
07:42stop the military. It's a, in my language, you know, IDF Murdabad would be a perfectly normal thing
07:49to say in a, in a, in a, in a protest, perfectly normal. He says this, okay. He gets attacked by
07:56everybody. The government of Colombia's president, Gustavo Petro, puts out a tweet saying, Bob
08:03Weiland, you're welcome to come and play in Colombia. Just to give you a sense that our
08:09governments continue to be pretty forthright and straightforward and saying, you know, we are,
08:15we are not with this. Okay, fine. But then why can't you stop the Israelis? Why can't you prevent
08:21them from moving? Well, let's face some facts here. Okay. Right now, the NATO countries had a
08:29meeting. They had the annual meeting in The Hague, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization led by the
08:35United States. They decided to lift their military spending to 5% of gross domestic product.
08:41They already accounted for about 70% of world military spending annually. Now at 5%, they're going to
08:49account for over 80% of world military spending. China accounts for around 4% of world military
08:56spending. These are major dangerous military powers. Their ships patrol the waters off the coast of
09:05Malaysia, China, this, that, and the other. You know, they have the capacity to inflict great harm
09:11on our countries. And therefore they threaten us. They threaten us with two instruments, military,
09:17which they show they can use. They just used it against Iran again. They threaten us militarily
09:23and they threaten us economically. You don't, you try to be too tough and, you know, you, you putting
09:30on some kinds of new kinds of boots. We're going to prevent you from getting access to dollars. We're
09:36going to make the economy scream. You see, you can have capital controls. You can try your best to,
09:42but you still need dollars to buy certain things and so on. De-dollarization hasn't happened.
09:48And so they can strangle you. You asked, well, why aren't we able to make them move? Because they
09:55remain powerful, even though there are shifts taking place in the world. These shifts are happening
10:00around trade, around development. They are not happening when it comes to the dollars' ubiquitous use
10:09or military power. Talk to me about NATO and the expanding reach and its evolving role. It has,
10:17to a certain extent, evolved into the global enforcement arm of US interests. So talk to me
10:25about that and the role of the US military industrial complex in sustaining global conflicts we see
10:31around the world. Is war good business for the US and therefore the rest of the world will have to pay
10:40the cost for that? What a, what a good question because, okay, look, you know, I don't know what
10:48phone you have. And I don't want to ask you because I don't want you to publicly say I've, it's easier to
10:53hack if you announce what kind of phone. But most people in Asia and Africa and Latin America don't have
11:00iPhones. They're just too expensive. Most of us have some Chinese phone or a knockoff phone or a phone
11:08made in South Korea or whatever. Yeah. That's what we have. We, we, we just can't afford to buy iPhones.
11:14Most of us. Yeah. Okay. So the United States is finding that its companies are not able to generate
11:21the kind of commodity sales that they used to, you know, they don't, they don't, they don't have a
11:27lock on the market. Yeah. It's true that they have the lock on the market on some high end things
11:32like high end electronics and so on. But those just don't sell enough in quantity to sustain an
11:39economy where the US has a comparative advantage is in military sales. You know, they are the world's
11:46largest exporter of military equipment. So it's true. Why Southeast Asian countries need to have a
11:54massive military? I don't know. Although it is true that in any day now, Burma could fall apart,
12:00you know, and, and Myanmar falling apart could lead to a serious problem in, in South, but who is your
12:06enemy today? You know, um, who is Thailand worried about, you know, are they mainly worried about their
12:12own people or are they worried about Malaysia, Cambodia? I mean, who are you? Why buy so much military?
12:19Well, one of the reasons is military purchases are the best way to make a lot of money through
12:25bribes. So government officials who are prone to bribery, um, you know, build up the threats and so
12:33on. And they make a lot of money. There's a lot of money swashing around, you know, in the, in the,
12:38in the swill, the, the pig swill, you know, where the pigs eat, uh, there's a lot of money sloshing
12:44around in the pig swill. Okay. That's true. And I, I, I get the point there that is correct,
12:51but more than anything, it is also true that for the United States, diplomacy comes with a gun.
13:00You know, we saw that decades ago, you know, um, in fact, in the WikiLeaks, um, uh, materials,
13:08it was already clear that us diplomats were complaining to Washington saying, listen, I'm just
13:15the stenographer of the general that comes to town. You know, the general is making foreign policy.
13:21Um, they walk in, they say X, Y, Z, and I just take notes and send it to you. This was, uh, in,
13:28in writing from the ambassador in Pakistan and the ambassador in Egypt. Now this may not be in all
13:34embassies. These are quote unquote hotspots. Yeah. But still you get the vibe. And by the way,
13:40the U S military has a field of study in its, um, defense intellectual wing called military diplomacy,
13:48where they've actually theorized this. So military sales, um, which are so wasteful, you know,
13:56trillions of dollars over the last 10 years, military sales. And we have people dying of hunger
14:03around the world, you know, this death of humanism that I talked about earlier is a general condition.
14:11You know, we seem to want to live in a culture of cruelty rather than a, than a culture of humanity,
14:19you know, that I can walk down the street in a, in a civilized country and see somebody starving on
14:26the street. And that's completely acceptable. You know, it's not a surprise to anybody. It's just
14:31a normal fate of life is a culture of cruelty. The fact that we can live in societies where there's
14:37such a large number of women who are killed every year by their spouses. And that just sort of goes
14:44by, you know, is part of the normal culture of cruelty with which we live. So, you know,
14:50you asked me a really good question, a specific question about arms sales, but really the arms sales,
14:56the genocide, these are part of a much wider culture of cruelty, which breaks my heart.
15:02So the decline of humanist values, as you mentioned, Vijay, is that a new face of imperial warfare?
15:12Is that a way to, it's a new, a new pattern of, of fighting wars, proxy wars without boots on the ground?
15:21Is this empire in another name? Well, let's look at it this way. Okay. You know, we are intelligent
15:30people. And, and if I was to ask you that if you took a, got into a taxi or got into your car and drove
15:37to the local university and sought out the most influential people in that university, yeah, who actually
15:44influence society, you would have a hard time finding them, you know, because the intellectuals,
15:50the religious leaders are completely eclipsed by somebody else. Who are they eclipsed by? They are
15:58eclipsed by what is known in the United States as soft power. They are eclipsed by the music that comes
16:06from the US. They are eclipsed by, you know, the fact that people in, in Asia are interested in what's
16:13happening in Hollywood or people in Asia are interested in what's happening in New York. You know,
16:18wow, there's a, there's an election in New York. I mean, you don't know that there's an election in,
16:23in, you know, what happened to the, you know, opposition leader in Thailand, but you know that
16:29what's happening in New York or you don't know what's happening in Bangladesh, but wow, in New York,
16:34something or London, you know, there's this amazing new album out, you know, you don't really care
16:40about who's the Malaysians, you know, great singers or who are the Indonesian intellectuals, you know,
16:46going further afield, what's happening in, in Timor-Leste, you know, who's written a book,
16:52these things are not there. So this so-called soft power has eroded our consciousness. You can't build
17:00a humanism in Asia that is going through New York. You have to ask yourself, you know, what is the,
17:08what is the thinking, you know, why aren't you, or maybe you are, I don't mean to be insulting,
17:14but why aren't you, for instance, one of the key intellectual voices in, in the country, you know,
17:21that sets the terms for thinking about what it means to be a human in the, you know, let me say
17:28this to you. I, I'm on a regular basis, meet young people on a regular basis. And what they are most
17:34worried about is, listen, they say to me, you know, they sometimes call me prof, which I'm not
17:40doctor, which I am, but not that kind of doctor, you know, whatever. I just say, call me Vijay.
17:46And then they'll say, we are struggling to be good people. You know, we don't know how to be good
17:52people. This is a very important question. You know, it's a question that goes back to us,
17:58to the times of Buddhism, you know, when the Buddha said, you know, what does it mean to be good in
18:04the world? You know, what is Dharma? What is it to be good? These are fundamental questions for young
18:09people. They don't want to become money grubbing. You know, they don't want to search jobs where it's
18:15all about money and they push people aside. They don't necessarily want to be celebrators of war.
18:21They want to be good people. And you know what, where are the role models? Where are people
18:26articulating the theory of what it means to be good? It's not Elon Musk. He's not a good guy.
18:32It's not Jeff Bezos. There's a genocide going on and you've spent tens of millions of dollars on a
18:38ridiculous wedding, you know, all live streamed wedding with a live stream genocide. Jeff Bezos,
18:45not a good person in my opinion. You know, why are these oligarchs set up for us as role models?
18:53So that's what I would put back to you. You know, it's not a question of this or that. It's a question
18:59of, let's start with the basics. You know, the death of humanism is also the death of genuine
19:06human leadership, you know, cultural and, and, and, and, and sort of a broadly social leadership.
19:14If we want to stop the decline of humanist values, we want to reverse the death of human, humanism.
19:23What would that look like? And I think of the word resistance because it's fighting and unlearning
19:29everything that's been pushed onto you and what you've been taught before. So if you were to think
19:34about what that looked like today, what resistance looks like today, not just on the streets in terms
19:41of protesting and the like, but across all our daily lives, across our consumption patterns as
19:47consumers, across media, across academia, across institutions, what might that look like to you, Vijay?
19:54Yeah, it's, it's, it's again, a tough question to answer in a few minutes, you know, obviously,
20:02obviously I cut my teeth doing all those things you mentioned, you know, going out on the street
20:07and doing this and that, but in fact, it's, it really isn't just about that. It's about thinking
20:14about what does it mean to make things in a society? You know, if I go into a bazaar in your,
20:21in, in, in, in say, you know, any city, Kuala Lumpur, or I go into a bazaar in Singapore or wherever I go
20:27into a bazaar, why is it that I, I, when I look at for toothpaste, for instance, everything is
20:33imported, you know, why is it imported? Um, why aren't we capable of making our own toothpaste?
20:39Every country doesn't have to make the toothpaste for God's sake, but why does it have to come
20:44from, you know, China or, or, or, or, or Europe, you know, are we not capable of, of doing basic
20:51chemistry? You know, are we not capable of making our own soap? I mean, what strikes me as funny is
20:57once I was in Damascus in Syria, a city of very old civilization, you know, great culinary, um,
21:04tradition and the biscuits available in the market, all from Turkey. And I thought, wow, you know,
21:11there was a time that Haleb, which is Aleppo, you know, the great city of Haleb, uh, with,
21:16which was like the center of cuisine, you know, they, they, they, with the Armenians that came there
21:23understood how to cook meat with, with dried fruit, with figs and with, you know, with raisins and so
21:29on, drawing from Iranian traditions of like a biryani with the, with dried fruit in it and whatnot.
21:36You can't make biscuits. Why are you importing your biscuits? You're asking me, what is resistance?
21:42Resistance means learning to do things for yourself and not being, in fact, um, somebody else's pawn,
21:51you know, thinking for yourself, making for yourself, learning to teach your children how to make
21:58things, you know, not just to, to go out there and buy things, you know, consumerism isn't existence.
22:07You know, consumerism is not existence. To exist is to build things, to, to manufacture things,
22:15you know, with ideas or, or real things. That's what living is. You know, my kids, you know,
22:22birthday time. Yeah. Make me something. Don't buy me something. Make me something.
22:28Yeah. Go learn how to be a potter or, you know, or my, my second daughter, you know,
22:35made me Grogu out of, you know, you know, this is Grogu. Yeah. From Mandalorian. Make me something
22:43for God's sake, you know, because when you make something, uh, there is dignity in that, you know,
22:49there is dignity in that you are dignified. You're not just, you're not just dependent on somebody else.
22:55The great Burkina Faso leader, Thomas Sankara used to say, he who feeds you, controls you. He who feeds
23:02you, controls you. Learn to feed yourself. You know, why are you importing pasta? For God's sake,
23:08you're not Italians. You don't need, kids don't need to eat pasta every day, right? Eat whatever rice
23:15with some delicious vegetables, stir for children. Learn how to cook. You know, don't just use
23:21processed food in a microwave. You know, that's resistance. It sounds a little off from your
23:27question, but really what I mean is if you learn to feed yourself, you will not be dependent on
23:34somebody else. I liked what you said about learning to think for ourselves. And I think that as in this
23:41age of, um, the thousand channel media at the moment, we are just consuming what we want and
23:49we're not really thinking. It's all kind of passive consumption. Um, given that, you know, you've,
23:54you've studied this, you, you're a historian, you're an author, you're a journalist. I'm wondering if we
24:00were to apply this lens of thinking for ourselves, of thinking critically about what we're being fed,
24:07what would you highlight for us to pay attention to? Simply people, particularly in the global south,
24:15uh, what should we be paying attention to now that's not maybe getting enough airtime, enough, uh,
24:21spotlight? Well, a couple of things. One is formally, I'm really, really happy. We are using
24:28the technology available to us to do things like this. Why? Because see, you know, you have your
24:35show, you're, you're, you're doing, you're thinking for yourself, you, you're bringing in guests, you're
24:39having a conversation. This is very important. Yeah. Um, it's important that there are all these young
24:44kids on the internet with their YouTube channels and, you know, their podcasts. And this makes my heart
24:50swell because it means that they are not just consuming media. They are all out there chatting,
24:56talking about whatever. I want to talk about Dua Lipa going on a world tour because I had an
25:03experience recently that just, I was, it's a whole other thing. Okay. Not today, not today,
25:10another day. Okay. So anyway, um, I'm really happy formally that all these things are happening. Yeah.
25:17But in terms of, you know, what should one be talking about? I, I'm a little bit of a one trick
25:23pony on this because I, I, you know, obviously talk about whatever, why should I tell you what
25:28to talk about? But, you know, in our Institute in tri-continental, we are really fixated on what
25:34we call the new development theory. And what we are asking people is like, if you are a country of,
25:41you know, 80 million people, 70 million people, what is the development pathway for your country?
25:48Because what's happened is over the last 50, 60 years, we have become dependent on the international
25:54monetary fund to basically tell us what they think our development pathway should be. We are not
26:01building our own debate and discussion. You know, what are the, the raw materials that we have?
26:08What are the people, uh, capacities that we have? You know, what, what should be our pathways of,
26:15of advancement? How are we going to exit poverty? You know, is it make, does it make sense to build
26:22a train line to China and be part of the belt and road initiative? Is it make sense for India and
26:28Southeast Asia to have a much closer relationship, you know, a sea relationship? Is it, is that makes
26:34sense? You know, um, there are language, uh, affinities in both directions. You know, some countries
26:40in Southeast Asia are very fortunate. There are Tamil populations. You can have a link with
26:45India. There are Chinese popular. You can have a link with child. These are very fortunate. Um,
26:51you know, think, how do you think holistically about the development capacities of a country rather than
26:57saying, Hey, listen, you've got to tighten your budget. You've got to stop funding education. I mean,
27:03this is a recipe that applies to everybody. So when you ask the question, as I said, one trick pony,
27:09I'm obsessed with this, that every country needs to develop its own development pathway. But in fact,
27:15to be honest with you, it's not such a one trick thing because it really is asking people, Hey, listen,
27:21build your own thing. You know, I'm not going to tell you what it should look like, but I want to
27:26hear from you. What is your, who are your great development pioneers, your thinkers, you know,
27:32that you may want to go back to, to start there again and think, who are these people? You know,
27:37there was an amazing guy in Singapore, um, who was a man of the right, you know, very different from my
27:45politics, but his name was Raja Ratnam. And he was, um, Lee Kuan Yew's, uh, foreign minister,
27:52the school of international, you know, affairs is named after him in Singapore. He's a man of the right,
27:57you know, okay. But very early on, and I wrote about him in darker nations, Raja Ratnam said,
28:03look, we are a small island nation. Basically, um, we need to develop our port and that should be the
28:10center of our, uh, you know, we, we, we are going to become important because China is going to become
28:16important. And he thought in advance and look what he did to this tiny Island, you know, and it's not
28:21just Raja Ratnam. It's wrong to say it's him. He was leading a team of people who were studying this.
28:28And, but if I returned to the source of Singaporean development theory, I would go and read about them.
28:35Every country needs its intellectuals to return to the source and try to go around the IMF, uh, period of
28:43dead thinking. Vijay, it's been such a joy speaking with you. Thank you so much for that invigorating
28:51conversation. That was historian and journalist Vijay Prashad. They're wrapping up this episode of
28:57Consider This. I'm Melissa Idris, signing off the evening. Thank you so much for watching.
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