Pillage, Plunder, and Western Hypocrisy

By now, most people have come to the realization that the global economic order is under the unrepentant control of neoliberal institutions. Not to conflate neoliberalism with capitalism, but suffice to say both philosophies share the same goal: privatization, deregulation, and trade liberalization, all in the pursuit of profits.

For some people, like Slate’s Matthew Yglesias, there’s nothing wrong with this picture. If more than 300 workers are killed in an unsafe sweatshop, it’s better that they be citizens of a country far away from America’s teeming shores like Bangladesh. According to such commentators, the lives of the working poor in Third World countries are somehow worth less. After all, we need someone to make our cheap t-shirts.

When a similar catastrophe happens at home, the horror becomes more visible. To this point, most Americans were understandably aghast at the recent explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas which was caused, at least in part, by a lack of regulation.

The factory collapse in Bangladesh was an accident, however. What if people were being intentionally and systematically slaughtered by a nefarious and autocratic regime? Would the West step in and intervene on moral grounds? Once again, readers will be keen to note a disturbing double standard.

With respect to the conflict in Syria, President Obama and his administration officials are on record as having stated that if the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) begins to use chemical weapons in the civil war which has been raging for two years, a “red line” will have been crossed. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel claims that there is intelligence to suggest Syrian President Bashir al-Assad is going down this road, if he has not already done so.

Let’s ignore the fact that there are more than 70,000 people dead already as a result of the war, all of whom have been killed in ways that do not include chemical weapons. Let’s also ignore that there was also good “intelligence” that told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We know now, however good the grounds for suggesting may have been, that that was either an epic lie or an epic error — I’m not sure which is worse. Let’s further ignore the fact that the United States has used its own chemical weapons during times of war, most recently in Iraq, where children in Falluja are now being born with three legs today as a result of American weapons tainted with uranium and white phosphorous.

The shadow people in Washington could not care less about the plight of civilians. A Syrian intervention — which would most likely take the form of a no-fly zone and an injection of cash and weapons to the anti-government, Salafist rebels who would love to turn the country into a Taliban-esq playground for jihadists — is merely another way for the indefatigable anti-Iran policymakers in Washington to continue to redraw and reshape the Middle East.

The new era of imperialism is not often so ostentatious. For example, juxtapose the tragedy taking place in Syria with the equally tragic tale of the Rohingya in Myanmar. I have written extensively about this unfolding genocide, calling out Burmese “democracy icon” Aung San Suu Kyi for her ominous silence. The only thing even more disquieting than that has been the lack of media coverage of this ethnic cleansing, to say nothing of Washington’s disinterest.

So why would Washington have such a divaricating response to what is essentially the same phenomenon?

Back in April 2012, I was in Southeast Asia covering the elections in Myanmar. I was able to sit down with a local businessman who couldn’t hide his excitement of getting his hands on a piece of the Burma pie.

“Burma is considered to be the last frontier in Asia,” according to Son Visel, owner of various textile manufacturing plants from China and Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia. “Think about it: Burma is a fertile plain virtually untouched by any type of Western or Eastern styled development. There are extraordinary profits to be had.”

It is precisely because of the insatiable appetite for both human and natural resources that Burma is now poised to follow its western neighbor Bangladesh down the road of neoliberal dependency. Myanmar’s impressive fossil fuels industry, which will likely be sold to foreign investors for peanuts in due course, is already being exploited at tremendous human and ecological costs.

There’s money to be made, and even the wholesale destruction on an entire ethnic minority’s culture, livelihoods, and lives themselves will not stop the Western powers from liberalizing Burma’s economy. Why would one worry about such things when one can make a killing, financially speaking, off of it?

It’s frustrating enough when our political leaders in America ignore egregious human rights abuses around the world. But it’s criminal when these same individuals exacerbate them.

Photo: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images