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D’une façon générale, l’aventure irakienne est portée sans hésitation au crédit (?) des néo-conservateurs américains et, plu généralement, de la droite dure du parti républicain. De ce fait, il y a un élément qu’on néglige, c’est l’aspect à la fois anglo-saxon et internationaliste du courant qui a renforcé le courant belliciste. Un terme est utilisé à cet égard : “anglosphère” (Anglosphere).
L’anglosphère est une version modernisée des grands courants anglo-saxons impérialistes, bellicistes, etc, et notamment des courants historiques de renaissance de l’empire britannique et, d’autre part, d’affirmation hégémonique du monde anglo-saxon. Ce courant a joué un rôle très important dans les derniers mois avant la guerre contre l’Irak.
Nous vous proposons en lecture deux textes qui permettent de fixer les idées sur cette question :
• Un texte du Boston Globe du 23 mars 2003, sur l’anglosphère et sur les partisans de la guerre aux USA qui sont, soit non-Américains, soit non-Américains d’origine. Il est remarquable de trouver beaucoup de Canadiens ou d’Américains d’origine canadienne.
• Un texte du Guardian du 27 janvier 2003, sur les partisans de la guerre au Royaume-Uni (intellectuels, historiens, etc).
Dans tous les cas, cette lecture de textes qui ne sont pas loin d’être contemporains (mars et janvier 2003) est particulièrement instructive à la lumière des événements actuels en Irak.
Today's most ardent American imperialists weren't born in the USA.
By Jeet Heer, 23 March, 2003, The Boston Globe
EMPIRE IS A DIRTY word in the American political lexicon. Just last summer, President Bush told West Point graduates that ''America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish.'' In this view, the power of the United States is not exercised for imperial purposes, but for the benefit of mankind.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, however, many foreign policy pundits, mostly from the Republican right but also including some liberal internationalists, have revisited the idea of empire. ''America is the most magnanimous imperial power ever,'' declared Dinesh D'Souza in the Christian Science Monitor in 2002. ''Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets,'' argued Max Boot in a 2001 article for the Weekly Standard titled ''The Case for American Empire.'' In the Wall Street Journal, historian Paul Johnson asserted that the ''answer to terrorism'' is ''colonialism.'' Columnist Mark Steyn, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, has contended that ''imperialism is the answer.''
''People are now coming out of the closet on the word `empire','' noted Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. ''The fact is no country has been as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the history of world since the Roman Empire.'' Krauthammer's awe is shared by Harvard human rights scholar Michael Ignatieff, who asked earlier this year in The New York Times Magazine, ''What word but `empire' describes the awesome thing America is becoming?'' While acknowledging that empire may be a ''burden,'' Ignatieff maintained that it has become, ''in a place like Iraq, the last hope for democracy and stability alike.''
Today's advocates of American empire share one surprising trait: Very few of them were born in the United States. D'Souza was born in India, and Johnson in Britain - where he still lives. Steyn, Krauthammer, and Ignatieff all hail from Canada. (Krauthammer was born in Uruguay, but grew up in Montreal before moving to the United States.) More than anything, the backgrounds of today's most outspoken imperialists suggest the lingering appeal and impact of the British empire.
''I think there's more openness among children of the British Empire to the benefits of imperialism, whereas some Americans have never gotten over the fact that our country was born in a revolt against empire,'' notes Max Boot, currently afellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ''But lots of people who are advocating pro-imperial arguments - such as Bill Kristol and me - are not Brits or Canadians.'' (Boot, who was born in Russia, moved to the United States as a baby.)
Imperialism is often seen as an expanding circle, with power radiating outward from a capital city like London or Paris to hinterlands. But a quick review of history shows that imperial enthusiasm doesn't emanate only from the center. Often, the dream of empire is nursed by those born on the periphery of power, precisely because empire would give them a place in a larger framework. Alexander the Great, for example, was born in Macedonia and went on to create an Hellenic empire. And France's greatest empire-builder was the Corsican Napoleon.
Odd as it sounds, Canadians once nursed similar dreams of taking over the world. At the end of the 19th century, Canada had the ambiguous status of being a dominion, governed by its own parliament yet embedded within the British empire. While some Canadian nationalists wanted constitutional sovereignty (a status not gained until 1982), many others believed that Canada could punch well above its weight if it worked within the British Empire. University of Toronto historian Carl Berger summarizes their view: ''Just as New England exerted an influence in the political and cultural life of the United States far out of proportion to her population . . . in time, Canada would likewise prevail within the Empire.''
The Canadian poet Charles Mair has one of his characters voice such ideas in his 1886 historical verse-drama ''Tecumseh'':
“For I believe in Britain's Empire, and
”In Canada, its true and loyal son,Who yet shall rise to greatness,
”and shall stand
”At England's shoulder helping her to guard
”True liberty throughout a faithless world.”
For many years, supporters of the British empire tended to be anti-American in outlook; they regarded the upstart republic as disorderly and disloyal. But with the rise of German power in the late 19th century, ''Anglo-Saxon unity'' became the watchword and British imperialists began encouraging American expansionism. Rudyard Kipling's famous imperialist paean, ''The White Man's Burden,'' often mistakenly linked to England's rule over India, was specifically written in 1899 to support Theodore Roosevelt's campaign to extend the American sphere of influence into the Philippines.
In the 20th century, as Britain was increasingly weakened by two World Wars, the locus of imperial ambition shifted from London to Washington. ''These Americans represent the new Roman Empire and we Britons, like the Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go,'' said future Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan in 1943. Like Winston Churchill, Macmillan had an aristocratic English father and an American mother. It was hybrid (and high-bred) identities of this sort that provided the glue for a century of Anglo-American concord. Echoing the Canadians of the previous century, Macmillan thought that his country's global position would be enhanced by serving as a junior partner in a very large empire. On another occasion, Macmillan even compared Britain to ''the Greek slaves'' who ''ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius.''
The promotion of ''Anglo-Saxon unity'' was particularly attractive to transnational business leaders like the Canadian-born newspaper tycoon William Maxwell Aitken (later known as Lord Beaverbrook). In 1910 Aitken moved to Britain, where he used his newspapers, Daily Express and the Evening Standard, to argue for free trade and the strengthening of imperial ties. In recent years, Beaverbrook's ideas have been given new currency by another newly ennobled Canadian-born newspaper magnate, Conrad Black, also known as Lord Black of Crossharbour.
While he has recanted his belief that the English-speaking provinces of Canada should join the United States, Black has been campaigning for the inclusion of the United Kingdom into the NAFTA trade accord. For Black, Britain's destiny is to be primarily an Atlantic power, not a European one.
Among conservative intellectuals, Black's dream of an Anglo-American concert of nations is part of a larger desire to strengthen ''the Anglosphere.'' Apparently coined by science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his 1995 novel ''The Diamond Age,'' the term has been popularized lately by journalists like James C. Bennett, who writes a weekly column covering ''The Anglosphere Beat'' for United Press International, and Andrew Sullivan, as well as by the English historian Robert Conquest. The proponents of an anglosphere want a loose and informal alliance of English-speaking peoples, modelled on the ''soft'' imperialism that governed Britain's relationship with dominions like Canada and Australia, not the ''hard'' imperialism of the Raj.
The enthusiasm for the old Pax Britannia has been bolstered by the revisionist scholarship of Scottish historian Niall Ferguson, whose new book ''Empire'' argues that the British Empire was a progressive force in world history that lay the foundations of our current global economy.
But the idea of a new American empire remains controversial on the American right, and not just among isolationists. Take the case of David Frum, the Canadian-born former Bush speechwriter who famously helped coin the term ''axis of evil.'' Though his writing shows touches of imperial nostalgia (among other thing, he has argued that Canada should jettison the nationalist Maple Leaf flag and return to the Union Jack), he rejects the imperial analogies drawn by writers like Max Boot. ''If `empire' means anything, it certainly does not describe what the US is proposing to do in Iraq,'' notes Frum. ''The big story, it seems to me, is the ascendancy of neo-Wilsonianism on the political right, not neo-imperialism.''
For Boot, that's just a language game. ''I don't think David and I disagree on any substantive point of foreign policy,'' Boot says. Another name for ''`hard' Wilsonianism,'' he points out, is liberal imperialism. After all, Wilson, who took over Veracruz, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, was one of our most imperial presidents. Boot adds: ''I prefer the more forthright if also more controversial term American Empire - sort of like the way some gays embrace the `queer' label.''
But even those most nostalgic for the British empire don't necessarily support a new American version. ''When I was a kid in England I spent a great deal of time studying imperialism, of which I approved and got into a great deal of fights about,'' says conservative writer Peter Brimelow, a British-born naturalized US citizen who edits the anti-immigration Web site vdare.com. ''But I personally am very skeptical about the new imperialism. I don't think you can unmake an omelet. I think obviously it would be better for everybody if the British and French had not left the Middle East. But the fact is that they did leave the Middle East and it is going to be very difficult to go back in.''
He continues, ''Part of the problem with people like Max Boot is that they are so young. They simply don't remember the Algerian war or what it's like to hold these people down. You have to go in there and kill a lot of people and fight these constant low-level conflicts.''
Kipling, whose poem ''The White Man's Burden'' supplied the title for Boot's recent book ''The Savage Wars of Peace,'' might well have agreed. For all his pro-imperialist bombast, Kipling never underestimated the difficulty and danger of ruling other lands. In words directed toward Theodore Roosevelt, Kipling wrote:
“Take up the White Man's Burden-
”And reap his old reward:
”The blame of those ye better,
”The hate of those ye guard.”
Jeet Heer writes frequently for the National Post of Canada and the Boston Globe.
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
We know who's against war with Iraq. But who in Britain, outside the Blair camp, is for it? When Jamie Wilson and David Pallister began to investigate, they found many hawks embarrassed to 'come out'. But here they name the few who are willing to put their heads above the parapet
Monday, January 27, 2003, The Guardian
Andrew Roberts, the prolific rightwing historian, is commander-in-chief of the hawks. At 39 he is currently writing a biography of Henry Kissinger, having disposed - in a decade - of Salisbury, Churchill, Hitler, Napoleon, Wellington, Chamberlain, Halifax and the House of Windsor. Roberts is a keen supporter of the Atlantic Partnership, an exclusive band of influence-peddlers whose support for the Bush/Blair line of attack is based on a passionate belief in preserving the fragile partnership between America and Europe.
The Partnership, which Roberts describes as ''Yanks Anonymous'', was set up two years ago by the former Tory minister Michael Howard with Charles Powell, formerly Mrs T's foreign affairs adviser, as vice-chairman and John Mayor, Henry Kissinger and the former Labour defence minister Lord Gilbert as patrons. Last October it launched the Atlantic Partnership panel which, although not exclusively hawkish, now counts among its members some of the leading advocates for the removal of Saddam.
''I support a war against Iraq because I think it would be relatively easy to topple the greatest menace to world peace alive today,'' says Roberts. I would prefer we did not go back to the UN before taking action because it is a vapid talking shop beholden to the French.''
William Shawcross, the historian and journalist, is one of the prominent guests at the high table of the debate, a longstanding critic of the feebleness of UN intervention, a one-time liberal who has turned into a belligerent Atlanticist. ''The case for getting rid of this terrifying madman as soon as possible is overwhelming,'' he says. ''I simply do not believe that America and Britain would be acting in this way unless Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. They are either buried very deep or are mobile and being kept one step ahead of the inspectors. But I simply do not think we can go on appeasing Saddam forever. Let us hope that the diplomats and the military build-up will make him step down peacefully, and that there will be pictures of Iraqis dancing in the streets in the way they did in Kabul. If that happens, I think the left will be thinking, 'Where were we?'''
Charles Powell is flushed with admiration for Blair. Another keen member of the Atlantic Partnership, which in the past three months has hosted power breakfasts with foreign secretary Jack Straw, defence secretary Geoff Hoon and Sir Mike Jackson, commander-in-chief, land command. Powell's brother, Jonathan, is chief of staff at No 10.
Writing in the Telegraph, Powell has said: ''Britain has shown steadfastness, and the prime minister political courage, in facing up to the threat from Iraq to international peace and security and to hopes of a world order in which the UN's voice is heard and obeyed. Saddam's record of duplicity leaves little doubt that military action is required.''
Sir John Keegan, the venerable historian and Daily Telegraph defence editor, predicted last July that: ''Saddam, his awful family and his venal supporters are living on borrowed time. They have less than a year to enjoy their depredation of their homeland.''
Now the Atlantic Partnership panelist says: ''I feel very strongly that the anti-war party is wrong. I don't understand them. I'm beginning to understand what the [appeasement of the] 1930s was like. Saddam is a completely unpredictable leader. He's carried out two illegal wars. He is a monster in his own country. He has personally murdered people. He's in the Bokassa class [ex-emperor of the Central African Republic accused of cannibalism].
''But my case has actually nothing to do with Saddam. I've always taken the view that when the world unfroze at the end of the cold war there would be a proliferation of aggressive rogue states and the responsible powers of the world couldn't allow irresponsible rulers to acquire nuclear weapons and throw their weight around.''
Lord Renwick, the Labour peer and former ambassador to the US, is another Atlantic Partnership regular. During the Falklands conflict it was Renwick, then a senior diplomat in the British embassy in Washington, who was ordered to go along to the Pentagon to ask them for 105 Sidewinder missiles to bolster British air defences that are widely believed to have stopped Britain from losing the war.
''I do support military action against the Iraqi regime if it continues to defy mandatory resolutions of the UN security council prohibiting the continued possession or development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, including the development of weapons such as nerve gas and anthrax in contravention of all norms of international law,'' he says.
Christopher Hitchens is another recruit to the war party. He believes there are at least four reasons why there should be immediate regime change in Iraq: Iraq's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, the fact that Saddam has broken the genocide convention, Saddam's link with international gangsterism, and the human rights of the Iraqi people. ''I have always considered myself a supporter of the Iraqi people and the Kurds who are in favour of regime change, and I would be on their side even if Bush was not. That is my position of principle.''
Salman Rushdie bases his support for war on purely humanitarian grounds. ''There is a strong, even unanswerable case for a regime change in Iraq that ought to unite western public opinion and all those who care about the brutal oppression of an entire Muslim nation,'' he said in the Observer earlier this month. ''Saddam Hussein and his ruthless gang of cronies from his home village of Tikrit are homicidal criminals... As I listen to Iraqi voices describing the atrocities of the Saddam years, I am bound to say that if the US and the UN agree on a new Iraq resolution, then the rest of the world must stop sitting on its hands and join the Americans and British in ridding the world of this vile despot and his cohorts.''
Gwyn Prins, the Alliance Professor at the London School of Economics and senior fellow at the Institute of International Affairs, believes there is already both a legal and moral duty to rid Iraq of Saddam by whatever means necessary. Previous UN mandates concerning the Iraqi leader's barbarous and genocidal behaviour towards his own people were enough of a legal mandate, regardless of the question of weapons of mass destruction, he says.
''The choice is not between whether people will die in the context of military operations or not. We live in a world where people who suffer under barbarous and illegitimate regimes die as a consequence of their own government's hand, as we have already seen in Iraq with the Kurds. If we take no action, then they die anyway, and so in moral terms I am perfectly well persuaded that if a military action is the only way to remove Saddam, then that is what should happen.''
Melanie Philips of the Daily Mail cannot be considered a Blair fan. But she admires the prime minister's ''very high level of courage and statesmanship'' over Iraq. ''I am only for war as a last resort,'' she says. ''The aim of the exercise is to force Saddam to fulfil his commitments to destroy his weapons of mass destruction and show the world that he has done so, which was one of the conditions for the ceasefire at the end of the Gulf war. If all diplomatic efforts fail to persuade him to do that then the threat he poses to the whole world is so grave that as a last resort the west would have no choice but to force him to do so. The repeated claim that there should be a second UN resolution is merely a device for not facing up to the issue. We've had 11 years of failure to adhere to UN resolutions.''
Matthew D'Ancona of the Sunday Telegraph says: ''I support Blair's position. I think it's not strictly necessary to have a second resolution, but the American phrase 'a coalition of the willing' is a useful one: the more multilateralism the better. A second resolution is desirable but not a precondition. US attitudes changed hugely after 9/11 and I think not many people understand that Blair has taken a decision so that he can influence that change. It is better to be in the tent rather than outside.''
Bernard Jenkin, the shadow defence secretary, is one of the most staunch cheerleaders for war on the Tory benches. He is one of Iain Duncan Smith's closest allies and an uncritical supporter of America's tough new foreign policies. Last week he caused a furore when he called the firefighters tying up thousands of troops on their one-day strike ''idiots'' and a ''disgrace'' to their country.
''No civilised person wants a war,'' he says. ''Military force should only ever be used as the last resort, but there comes a time when your whole society and way of life is threatened.
''Why Iraq? Saddam Hussein has got what the terrorists want. He has the worst record in the world on the use of weapons of mass destruction alongside links to terrorism. The UN has given him the 'final opportunity' to disarm. If he has squandered it, he must still be disarmed.''
Compared to the other hawks on the list, the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sachs, is a veritable pigeon, but trying to find a supporter for war against Iraq among Britain's religious leaders is a bit like trying to turn bread into fishes. He told the Jewish Chronicle recently that he was ready to back military action by America and Britain against Saddam if certain conditions were met. He said the campaign must have ''clear and achievable aims, must be supported by a broad international coalition and all possible precautions must be taken to prevent civilian casualties'', but added that the world should reflect on the Israeli air force's attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, which was widely criticised at the time. ''If not for that air attack, the world would today be facing a virtually impossible situation.''
Peter Stringfellow, down in the West End, is firmly in the pro-war camp: ''For there to be stability in the region there needs to be a stable Iraq so, reluctantly, if the US go we have to go with them 100%.''
George Best, the former footballer, joins him in the celebrity hawk squadron. ''After the horror of the Bali nightclub bombing, I hope the do-gooders who think we are overreacting to the recent terrorist threats will wake up and realise what we are facing,'' he said in his Mail on Sunday column. ''Of course, invading Iraq won't stop al-Qaida and other terrorists, but I do believe that we need to seriously address all threats to modern democracies.''
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
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