When Representation Becomes Collusion: Imperialism at GUQ

In 2002, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powel, in coordination with Howard University president, H. Patrick Strewart and Congressman Charles B. Rangel, founded the namesake Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Program. The program, as also described by GU-Q student Ranneme Abu Hajar in a recent Gazette article, is intended to provide opportunities to aspiring diplomats of color. This, she argued, was part of a larger opportunity to provide more representation for international communities in Western institutions like NATO (which eventually hosted an event in this university) and the US Department of State, organizations that people in this region are, “not open-minded to.” She claimed that working in the Department of State as a person of color has been “villainized” by people, although she admitted its partial validity. Despite this, there was an attempt in this interview to normalize it, to argue that change from within is possible. To supporters of this view, the Empire is reformable, fixable. Rather than resist imperialism itself, they seek to reduce its worst excesses. This view is not only naive but also dangerous, trapping Arabs and other minorities into representation politics that normalize the imperialist forces that have been terrorizing our region for decades. 

The limitations of representation politics can be found in the very program described in the interview and the people behind it. While Colin Powell—the man who announced the program and first African-American secretary of state—was in office, he oversaw the American disinformation campaign in the leadup to the Iraq war, infamously presenting false and misleading information in front of the United Nations to justify one of the US’ most devastating imperialist invasions, the so-called “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” His blackness and his more moderate positions relative to the GOP did nothing to stop him from being one of the architects of a war that shattered an entire nation’s social and political fabric. As the war continued, he maintained his support for the invasion even as reports came out of torture at the Abu Ghraib Prison, the Mahmudiyah rape and killings of an Iraqi girl and her family, and the Nisour Square Massacre that included Iraqis as young as nine. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, at the height of this violence in Iraq, referred to Bush as “the devil.” In response, the program’s namesake, Charles B. Rangel, attacked Hugo Chavez by stating that, “I want President Chavez to please understand that even though many people in the United States are critical of our president that we resent the fact that he would come to the United States and criticize President Bush.” Despite being a person of color and a Democrat, he could not find it in himself to even allow criticism of George W. Bush by the leaders of the Global South; this is the height of performative diversity. While claiming to provide opportunities for people of color in diplomacy, it does it with the intent to defend the American imperialism that murders, rapes, and tortures those very same people of color. They don’t want to protect people of color from imperialism, they want us to participate in it.

Institutions like NATO and the US State Department are unreformable and irredeemable, they are the very bedrock of the Western world order that has upheld injustice everywhere it finds itself. NATO’s foundation at the beginning of the Cold War was with the explicit interest of protecting the European-American imperialist order, one threatened by a powerful Soviet bloc. Their forces and resources, which have been used in operations everywhere from Afghanistan to Yemen to Libya, are the defenders of the so-called “rules based order” that cannot stop (and in reality, protect) international law’s greatest offender: Israel. The US State Department has been part of some of the most horrific crimes of the last several decades, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan. The idea that this can somehow be fixed by some token Arab sitting in the conference room that has already decided to carpet-bomb Yemen is not just idealistic, it's delusional. The interests of the American empire are not overridden by the whims of a few naive Arab-Americans who are convinced they can finally find the argument that will change the minds of hardened war criminals. We saw how even seemingly progressive figures from Obama to Bernie to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) have all failed to take a genuine stance against imperialism. Both Bernie and AOC hesitated for months to call the mass killings of Gazans a genocide (Bernie still doesn’t) and continue to call for liberal two-state solutions. Obama oversaw horrific drone campaigns and other imperialist operations across the MENA region that killed thousands of people.

That’s the worst part of it all: These people are your best-case scenario. Even if a naive Arab manages to change decades-old American policy on the Middle East, it will be for the smallest, most meaningless concessions. Let’s suppose they secure an independent Palestinian Authority (a ridiculous fantasy, but I’ll entertain it). They will secure a pathetic puppet state for Israel in the West Bank, cut off from Gaza, leaving Palestinians with nothing but a sorry excuse for an independent state as the rest of the world pats themselves on the back for finally achieving the mythicized two-state solution. When that happens, the US will still be bombing Yemen, continuing what Saudi Arabia started by massacring Yemeni civilians and completely balkanizing the country. They will still have a military presence in Iraq, a country they’ve refused to leave for over two decades now despite repeated requests by the Iraqi parliament and countless militia attacks. They will still have military bases in Syria, a country that now finds itself facing the prospect of losing even more land to an emboldened Israel that is not feeling the consequences of committing a genocide and expanding its territory across three different countries. They will still back Turkey in its indiscriminate bombing of villages in both northern Syria and Iraq, killing countless Kurds, Assyrians, and Arabs. The imperialist order will function just fine with the concession you’ve forced upon them; in fact, it’ll only convince themselves that they are the arbiters of freedom, democracy, and justice. Congratulations on your success at reforming from within, hopefully the West will applaud themselves loud enough so that we can’t hear the screaming.

I am under no illusion that Georgetown University does not already contribute to these systems of imperialism all the time. Particularly in the SFS, we see the normalization of these morally grey internships, jobs, and conferences that promote the agendas of the American empire. What disappoints me, however, is this D.C. SFS attitude being imported to GU-Q. At least here, we can avoid the worst excesses of the sickening attitudes and imperialist ideologies that permeate across the pond, until recently. The promotion of NATO as an organization to learn from has been nothing but embarrassing to watch unfold. To see NATO events being promoted in group chats the same day as an international strike for Palestine was taking place was, to many, including myself, a sign of blatant disrespect to the victims of an ongoing genocide. We heard the argument that whether we agree with it or not, we have to study how it works; but we don’t give any other entity this type of excuse. You don’t need to join the IDF to know its committing genocide, you don’t need to work for Elon Musk to know he’s a sociopathic neo-Nazi, and you don’t need to promote and work for NATO to know it is one of the bedrocks of the imperialist order.

I have no issue with Arabs working in NATO or the US State Department. There are countless people from our region, especially from my country of Iraq, who have collaborated with the very forces that oppress their people. Those people are at least partially honest about what their objectives are: to serve the United States. What I cannot tolerate, however, is putting a progressive spin on serving war criminals and acting as if it advances the interests of our people—it does not. You are either with imperialism or against it. You can paint imperialism every color of the rainbow, but it won’t change what it is. Keep your jobs, internships, and events— the rest of us are content with having a conscience.