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April 14, 2005

From Professor of Peace Studies Johan Galtung

By Frej Jackson

Johan Galtung is professor of Peace Studies and Director of Transcend. He established the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) in 1959 and the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. He has published hundreds of articles and over 50 books, including recently "Human Rights in Another Key", "Choose Peace" and "Peace By Peaceful Means. Galtung holds numerous honorary degrees and awards, among them the Right Livelihood Award.

In this letter, Galtung answers the following questions posed by WorldAndUS:

What is the prospect of a continued US dominated world order in the long-term, and what role do the world-wide opinions about America play in this regard? Or in other words, how and why do world perceptions of the US matter?

Most non-Americans have an attitude very similar to my own: I love the US Republic and hate the US Empire. Hence what baffles some: "love and hate, often at the same time, often within the same person" – because they refer to different things. The US itself also has brilliant and dark spots, like all societies. But, what do we have against the US Empire?

Mainly this:

[1] The US Empire kills 12-16 million in 70 interventions after WWII
[2] The US Empire condemns people to misery by hyper-capitalism and [1]
[3] The US Empire manipulates the whole world including the UN politically
[4] The US Empire knows only its own approach and is unfit for dialogue

A system like that is condemned to decline and fall; that will also happen to the US Empire (for more on that, and for contradictions much beyond "world-wide opinions about America", see my On the Coming Decline and Fall of the US Empire).

I think what most people want derives easily from the list above:

- stop killing all over
- stop spreading misery along with wealth
- stop manipulating, arm-twisting, spying, coercing
- enter into dialogue as an equal party, also in the UN

In short, join the world. Step down from that platform above Planet Earth, "under God", as Chosen People with a Promised Land and a Manifest Destiny to change the world to your desire. This mentality came with the Pilgrims; the only new point about Bush is that he is more explicit.

The country that would benefit most from the decline and fall of the US Empire will be the US itself, getting rid of that killing, strangling, manipulating, autistic albatross around its neck. We from the outside join you in that struggle as nothing much can be expected from paranoid politicians seeing any dissent as a security threat, unable to see the underlying conflicts and simply go about solving them. And yet, enact the four points above, and gone is not only the US Empire, but the threats to US lives.

As a first step from the UC Berkeley stop referring to your country as "America". This is an insult to non-imperial Canada and to the countries of Latin America struggling under the burden of the US Empire. The name of your country is the US, the United States, or -- if you want to add a postal indication -- the United States of America. The citizens are not "Americans", they are very numerous, but "citizens of the US". How about USians for short?

Please also stop talking about "anti-American", presumably being a misnomer for "anti-US". We know perfectly well how to differentiate between Germany and Nazism, Russia and Stalinism, England and colonialism and so on, even if they were all deeply rooted. Most of us love the former and hate the latter. The USA is not (yet) fascist. But it is geo-fascist, killing directly and structurally all over the world. May your web-site make more of you people wake up and see the realities, not only the myths.

Posted April 14, 2005 10:32 AM

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