Soft Power

Soft Power

By John Taylor; 2007 June 02

Noam Chomsky for decades has been going around saying that the nation state is inherently violent, but as a libertarian he does not take it to the next logical step, that a world government would be inherently peaceful. This has to be the case for such an institution because its leadership would be for all humanity and it would therefore be by definition without rivals. There would never again be any need, perceived or otherwise, for secrecy, manipulation, black ops, spies or underhandedness or of any sort. The only enemy would be ignorance and poverty. The sole concern of a world government would be the good of the entire human race. Beyond that it would have no competition; it would be inherently non-violent.

Headlines over the past few days confirm this. George Bush has belatedly realized that climate change can no longer be minimized or ignored, and he is opening negotiations with, no, not the United Nations but with the two nations he regards as his chief rivals for hegemony in coming decades, India and China. He is willing to submit to restraints, but only if they do so at the same time. Other nations feebly point out that the UN is the only place to approach climate change comprehensively. Unfortunately what they say has no moral weight, since they are narrow-minded, sovereign nation states themselves. They can only peep like hungry baby birds; they are not convincing, even to their own ears. Historically, reason has never had an impact on nationalistic rivalries. Otherwise they would have worked out a world constitution back in the 1790's when Immanuel Kant wrote the outline, his "Sketch for a Perpetual Peace."

Nor is Canada the squeaky clean exception to nationalism that our naive patriots would like to think. Consider this headline from the Hamilton Spectator, "CSIS: Confucius used in China's quest for power." This article describes one of the most blatant examples of nationalist hypocrisy I have seen for a while. It is short, so let me cite the whole thing,

"Canada's spy service believes China has enlisted Confucius, the master of enduring wisdom, in its drive for global dominance. A newly declassified intelligence report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says Beijing is out to win the world's hearts and minds, not just its economic markets, as a means of cementing power.

"The secret CSIS brief, obtained under the Access to Information Act, points to the creation of more than 100 Confucius Institutes around the world, including one at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Vancouver. Agreements have been struck to create institutes in Waterloo, Montreal and Moncton, N.B.

"The Confucius Institutes, the brainchild of Beijing's Ministry of Education, primarily promote Chinese language and culture. `In other words, China wants the world to have positive feelings toward China and things Chinese,' the CSIS report says. The report, portions of which were blacked out, paints the spread of Confucius Institutes as a calculated use of the discipline known as `soft power.'" (Canadian Press, Ottawa, Spectator, May 29, 2007, A3)

Note the spook's wording: "In other words, China wants the world to have positive feelings toward China and things Chinese..." There is a word for that, hmm, what was it? Oh yeah, "peace." They want people to have positive and loving feelings towards their nation, that is, peaceful feelings. Is that so evil? By saying that our spooks have demonstrated who their true enemy is; not this rival or that one, but peace itself. Nationalism and its espionage bouncers pretend to be friends to its own but by setting up, and even making their own enemies, they are everybody's enemy, even their own. Spies would be out of a job if everybody started looking at others as brothers and sisters instead of rivals and enemies.

Soft power? Soft power? Have these spooks ever heard of Hollywood? Or the corporate machine known as the mass media? You know, the BBC, the world press, the CBC, for that matter? All of them promote the English language as De Facto world language, on a scale that makes the Confucius institutes look pathetic by comparison. English is the ultimate tool of Western "soft power," and it is being systematically forced down the throats of the whole world. And they are worried about a few Confucius institutes? Where do I sign up?

Soft has nothing to with what a nation state does. Even when they use the word soft, it is really very hard. Unless you happen to be a member of the elite. The only word for the power they promote is bloody. Bloody power. Humans pay in blood because for nationalists there has to be an "us" and a "them," and if there is not, they must make them. The true "soft power" would be what a democratic world government does. These rivals to unity use bloody power to create a bleeding edge of division.

Spies like to call themselves secret agents because secrecy defines them. As soon as the baseness of their true goals and motives is exposed, as they occasionally are in articles like this one, they show themselves for what they are, ugly, stunted, truly evil viruses, standing threats to the health of us all. No wonder the Guardian (in a citation quoted a few essays ago) said that Baha'is are "agents of world polity." We are agents, but the mirror opposite of secret agents; our peaceful goals are designed for bright sunlight, not to lurk in the dark.

The reason this article has not generated widespread outrage at its rank hypocrisy is that we are blinded by the very language we speak. We cannot see our own imperialism. The English language is the consummate language of imperialism. English cut its teeth in the colonization of North America. As Chomsky says, in the Sixties and Seventies the estimates of the numbers of the original Native American peoples kept rising to stratosphere. This caused great embarrassment to nationalists, who did their best to suppress the enormity of what had been done here. But this genocide was orders of magnitude greater than the death camps of Stalin, Hitler and Mao combined. And it was not just blood that was spilled. Entire languages were wiped out before they could be documented, much less preserved.

Before these scholarly discoveries, even in the eyes of children, cowboys and frontiersmen had been heroes. The English-speaking nations went through the all the stages of denial. Our behavior was not unlike the small number of neo-Nazis who try to deny the holocaust, except that what we try to deny is worse. But we have the advantage of being in power. We are bigger, richer and more powerful than the demented neo-Nazis, and there is no rival to English (except, as our spies point out, maybe Chinese). As a result our point of view, as opposed to reality, has great weight, and the denial goes on.

They wiped out the Indians' military threat, along with millions of lives. Our elites learned long ago to use subtler methods, pure size and wealth rather than guns to achieve their ends; in other words, soft power. As soon as physical opposition halted, the English speaking peoples no longer needed to rely on bloody power, they could use soft power to gain the same ends. Hard power is reserved for the Third World, where it can be covered up behind the language barrier.

And the process of ruthlessly wiping out rivals to English in North America out has not stopped, or even slowed. Before, North America had been a highly diverse place, with hundreds of languages and cultures. Some were primitive, others far more advanced than anything Europe had seen. As a result of the victory of English over all other claimants, even Spanish, the other colonialist language, North America is a monoculture, and though it gains vitality (not to mention massive wealth) by dominating the cultural landscape of the entire world, on a local level we are a cultural and linguistic wasteland.

And these spooks have the temerity to point to China's soft power.

Abdu'l-Baha made a very perceptive comment about the ambitious but ruthless policy that began with Columbus. He says that for every bad there are also good results, and that the only unalloyed good comes of the Spirit.

"You must be very grateful to Columbus who discovered such a great country. It is exceedingly astonishing that though he was the discoverer, yet it became known by the name of America. Indeed this country should be called Columbia, which is true and just. Every existing being of the nether world, although it is useful, has still its harmful side. But the thing to be considered is, which is the greater, its usefulness or harmfulness? For example, although by the discovery of Columbus the world seemingly suffered weariness and hardships, for instance, if Columbus did not discover America the Titanic would not have been built and; so many souls drowned -- yet these evils in comparison with the benefits are as nothing. Therefore, the usefulness of other things must be considered. In this day the things which are all good are those which pertain to the spirit. They are all good and for the good of all. From them no harm ever comes, for they are light and there is no harm in light." (Abdu'l-Baha, quoted in Ali Kuli Khan, "Abdu'l-Baha Speaks on Divine Politics, Star of the West, Vol. 7, p. 77)

Columbus, like cowboys and frontiersmen, has lost his lustre over past decades now that the shocking details of his enslavement and suppression of native peoples have become better known. But the fact is that he discovered this place, and now we can learn to change our ways, if only we pay attention to Spirit.

Outside the commonwealth of Baha'u'llah, the closest thing to soft power is Esperanto. This popular internationalist movement promotes a neutral cultural medium without the baggage of nationalist rivalry. Esperantists were a surprisingly strong popular movement in the time of the Master. They were idealists, internationalists and entirely non-political, just like Baha'is. Esperanto was the result of many attempts over several centuries at devising an artificial, international language. It won out over all others by using what we now call in computer languages an open, non-proprietary architecture.

Esperanto was the kinder, gentler, non-political face of socialism. Being moderates, Esperantists encouraged in their publications a range of opinions, including criticism of certain governments. This made them the first to be singled out by the propaganda branch of the nationalist and communist regimes of the 20th Century. Sporadically at first, they were persecuted and suppressed by the authoritarian regimes before, during and after the Second World War. Virtually all speakers of Esperanto were, like the Natives of North America, systematically murdered en mass in Hitler's death camps, and later in Stalin's gulags. Extremes of right and left knew their enemy and crushed it. Yet another example of the nation state's inherent violence.

The English-speaking nations were intact after Hitler and Stalin fell. Esperanto was never strong there, for obvious reasons. As a result English rather than the more idealistic Esperantist approach to language became the inheritor by default. Today English is, albeit unofficially and in an unplanned way, the only competitor for the title of world language. Except, of course, for Chinese, but we have espionage agencies handling that problem for us behind the scenes, don't we? The English speaking nations still operate as in the past with an unrepentant, brutal and fundamentally genocidal agenda. With every word we speak, we exert our soft power and all contrary opinions are literally not understood in the forum of world opinion. Speak English. Speak White. Speak so you can be heard.

What is at the root of our bloodthirsty lust for power?

Baha'u'llah points right to the jugular: greed. Materialist greed always trumps human rights. Hmm, what do I do, stop killing natives and protect the cultural diversity of North America, or start a stampede to exploit its resources for my benefit? Hard decision. The kings of Europe were in the same boat. Do I colonize every corner of the world and get obscenely wealthy, or do I distract myself by protecting the rights of weakies? Tough choice.

Baha'u'llah wrote the kings of His age, questioning their motives, exposing their base soft power policy, and upbraiding them for their hypocrisy in pretending to glory while blood flows like a latter day flood. They affected to be concerned about all that is true and right but at heart they saw only their own good. And as He said to them, even their ability grab what they think would profit them showed how utterly incompetent they really were. In the following passage He offers a penetrating analysis of the materialist basis of their spiritual malaise. This same illness affects all nationalist leadership, past and present.

"Examine Our Cause, inquire into the things that have befallen Us, and decide justly between Us and Our enemies, and be ye of them that act equitably towards their neighbor. If ye stay not the hand of the oppressor, if ye fail to safeguard the rights of the down-trodden, what right have ye then to vaunt yourselves among men? What is it of which ye can rightly boast? Is it on your food and your drink that ye pride yourselves, on the riches ye lay up in your treasuries, on the diversity and the cost of the ornaments with which ye deck yourselves?

"If true glory were to consist in the possession of such perishable things, then the earth on which ye walk must needs vaunt itself over you, because it supplieth you, and bestoweth upon you, these very things, by the decree of the Almighty. In its bowels are contained, according to what God hath ordained, all that ye possess. From it, as a sign of His mercy, ye derive your riches. Behold then your state, the thing in which ye glory! Would that ye could perceive it!" (Gleanings, 252-253)