L’Empire (US) tombera le 24 octobre 2020, — bon anniversaire, professeur Galtung

Le politologue norvégien Johan Galtung, professeur, spécialiste mondial de la recherche sur la résolution des conflits par des moyens pacifiques et créateur de l’organisation TRANSCEND, a donné une conférence lors d’une rencontre de cette organisation à Vienne le 12 juin 2007. Le thème est bienvenu : «What Comes After The U.S. Empire?». Le site Information Clearing House met en ligne le texte de cette conférence le 20 juillet.

Parlant de ce qui succédera à “l’Empire US”, Galtung nous explique naturellement quand et comment cet empire tombera. Il nous donne la date exacte, — le 24 octobre 2020, jour de son 90ème anniversaire, — sous forme d’une plaisanterie qui n’en est pas vraiment une si l'on considère son expérience intellectuelle. Galtung est l’un des rares à avoir annoncé, en 1980, que le Mur de Berlin tomberait avant 1990.

Galtung estime que l’empire US tombera rapidement parce qu’il est soumis à un nombre impressionnant de contradictions. Il en dénombre 15 majeures, toutes également convaincantes, terminant d’ailleurs par la plus impressionnante de toutes, notre favorite, et si complètement spécifique aux USA, à “l’empire de la communication”: la contradiction «[b]etween myth and realities: the US dream and US reality.» La définition que Galtung donne de l’empire est particulièrement satisfaisante et peut s’appliquer effectivement aux USA, — alors que le concept est historiquement et géographiquement plus contestable pour cette puissance. Il définit un empire comme un système qui, par sa puissance, crée des contradictions qui sont des accidents systémiques mettant l’ensemble en danger. La psychologie tient un grand rôle dans l’ampleur de ce danger, dans la mesure où les dirigeants de l’empire ne distinguent pas ces contradictions et sont incapables de réaliser les réformes nécessaires. «An Empire is a transborder arrangement that combines economic, military, political and cultural power. It's an enormous power display that obviously brings with it contradictions. Contradictions are problems you cannot solve unless you change the system, but you can coexist with a couple of contradictions. When the contradictions start multiplying, synchronizing and synergizing, they become serious.»

Voici, ci-après, le passage où Galtung décrit la fin de l’empire US :

«Let me introduce number 6, with a quotation from the South African Nobel Prize winner in literature J.M. Coetzee. Absolutely brilliant. The essay he wrote and published in 1974, when he was 34 years old, was about South Africa and the Vietnam War. He wrote a statement about the USA, putting it in the working of a specialist in a U.S. think tank in California, southern part. The project he is working on is how to break the wild of the Vietcong, and substitute for Vietcong goals that are compatible with the sincere US love for the Vietnamese people. He writes:

»“If the Vietnamese had come singing towards us through the hails of bullets, we would have knelt down and embraced them.”

»If they can come singing through the hails of bullets. A good way of putting it. Yes, if only it's exactly what happens. The idea that we can bomb the people into submission, and make them love us, is insane. When the Germans were “bombed into submission”, it actually strengthened the Nazi party. What then happened to the Germans was something else. At a certain point they realized that their whole project was doomed, the whole Nazi project was wrong wrong wrong. They were not taught a lesson by being bombed. “If only they would come singing through the hail of bullets, we would go down on our knees and embrace them.” The perception of their own project came from the inside. What Coetzee leads up to is psychosis, diagnosis maybe a combination of narcissism, megalomania and paranoia, maybe with elements of a fantastic detachment from reality. But we are not dealing with psychopaths, we are dealing with socio-paths. Maybe lovely individuals, but with an image of the world totally devoid of any humanitarian reality when those attacked refuse to do what Reagan said when he was entering a helicopter, in connection with Nicaragua. “Mr. President, what do you want them to do?” “All I want them to do is to say ‘Uncle’”, meaning “I submit.”

»It doesn't work like that with a deep culture and a deep structure at work. US political science and US economics have no concept of history, and, it seems, only two concepts of structure, hierarchy and anarchy. If you come from a Nordic country, or from the European Union, you have no problem what equity is about, even if I had to make up the word “equiarchy”, to add to hierarchy, polyarchy and anarchy. Their only approach to equity was and is the signed agreement, contract, regardless of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th level consequences. Similarly, solution to them means settlement, a signed document, and I would argue it isn't good enough, solution is deeper.

»So how is the US Empire performing these days? There are 15 contradictions at the end in the hypothesis made in the year 2000. Let me say what the basic theory is about. An Empire is a transborder arrangement that combines economic, military, political and cultural power. It's an enormous power display that obviously brings with it contradictions. Contradictions are problems you cannot solve unless you change the system, but you can coexist with a couple of contradictions. When the contradictions start multiplying, synchronizing and synergizing, they become serious.

»For the Empire people hit by an Empire start understanding that they have a common cause: get rid of the Empire – like colonialism, like slavery.

»I can now pick up some of them, such as the amount of Euros passing the Dollars in circulation last December, Toyota passing GM in January, and you have the number of patents in the world with the US proportion sinking in comparison with other countries passing the US in one domain after the other. There is all of this happening, and much much more.

»Let me point to a key factor. It hasn't happened yet. But, many Europeans have felt bothered, and the moment they meet people in the Iraqi resistance movement and they compare notes, a sense of a common cause may start arising. If I now take all of these 15 points, some of them also inside the US, and Americans also sense that they are better off without the US Empire, the moment that common cause factor comes about, the US Empire is doomed. That is what happened to the Soviet Union. My prediction made in 1980 was that the wall would fall before 1990 and that the Soviet Empire would follow and they performed on time. The prediction of the US Empire is by 24 October 2020, the UN day and also my 90th anniversary, and you are all invited to celebrate.»

Mis en ligne le 21 juillet 2007 à 10H19