But the ones that run US foreign policy are. Matthew Hooton in a typical smear wants to label Helen Clark as anti-American because she warned that involving us in attacking Houthis was a ”slippery slope.” She’s not and he’s wrong.
And the downward run has started. US and UK aircraft have started bombing the rocks in Yemen in what will be a futile attempt to prevent the Houthi targeting Israeli-linked cargoes in their vicinity.
The British have been bombing tribesmen since the days of the Westland Wapiti, bombing Iraqi tribesmen in the 1920s. But the tribesmen didn’t have missiles then, still less accurate ones. They do now. Escalation dominance is with the Houthis, and this situation could get really nasty. Hence Helen Clark’s wise warning.
Hooton’s anti-American slur on Helen Clark is reminiscent of the anti-semitism slur that was used to attack Jeremy Corbyn. His attack gets personal
Yet sometimes Clark’s prudent scepticism about US intentions risks crossing into something closer to knee-jerk anti-Americanism, as is probably only to be expected of any liberal academic of the Vietnam era.
What a tosser! It is perfectly possible to be pro-American and anti-neocon. I’ve been a chaplain to the US Air Force, went to University and taught high school in the US, and now link with many wonderful American peace activists fighting the neocons’ predilection for war.
However Hooton goes further to develop a neocon geopolitical theory. He states that “liberal internationalism is the best system for the world in general,” which one can debate in the detail, but then goes on to say:
But the advances in liberal institutionalism in the 1940s and 1990s didn’t occur because all the countries of the world decided to live and trade in peace together. They happened because those were the two eras of the last 80 years when there was a unipolar system, with the US having complete global hegemony.
It was the US, if you like, that used its complete military and economic dominance to put the rules-based system in place. As Clark seems no longer to accept, liberal institutionalism always needs to be underpinned by the most uncompromising realism, and a single dominant power – whether the Roman, British or American empires.
Without that underpinning, the rules-based system that Clark and anyone remotely sensible prefers is impossible.
That is the total neocon position – “full spectrum dominance,” and complete global hegemony for the United States. What that translates into is when it comes to the so-called rules-based order, it is the US that makes the rules and the US that gives the orders. Always and by definition in the interests of the US in all the institutions that Hooton lists.
But just like the Roman and the British empires mentioned by Hooton, the American empire is falling apart. The rest of the world is resisting, preferring co-operation to US-style winner-take-all competition. But dying empires are dangerous, and these are very dangerous times.
One of the many great things about Helen Clark is that she has always been a consistent advocate for peace. In my view her advice on the awful crisis in Gaza is far better than bombing the Houthis:
@HelenClarkNZ IMHO This is a slippery slope. Of course it is wrong to threaten key trade routes. But an end to the Gaza conflict & serious efforts to find a political solution there leading to a Palestinian state as key to 2-state solution would go a long way towards addressing root causes.
And there are some wiser heads in the US as well. Thus
Alexandra Stark of the RAND Corporation writing in the prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine: “Don’t Bomb the Houthis – Careful Diplomacy Can Stop the Attacks in the Red Sea.”
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Ansar Allah–Houthis–are stepping up in solidarity with Palestinians being subjected to treatment of a captive population by the IDF butchers rarely seen since the WWII Warsaw Ghetto.
So while this Red Sea action has got the usual suspects all riled up–including international shipping corporates…good on Houthis I say. The gutless EU and most Western Govt.s in fact won’t even deliver diplomatic rebukes to Israel and their US imperialist sponsors, let alone interventions to break the land and sea blockades on Gaza to deliver aid and get the water turned back on.
I suppose you have no idea about, or no problem with, their rule in North Yemen.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/yemen/dont-bomb-houthis
Or with non state actors involving themselves as militants beyond their nation state base.
It does not pay to suppose in this situation. I made no endorsement of Houthis bar their stand against the IDF and zionists-which few if any Western Govt.s have the courage to take.
If being faultless was the pre-requisite for nations, organisations and individuals opposing genocide in Palestine, then the Palestinians would have no hope at all.
The immediate task is to stop the Israeli butchers with an internationally backed Ceasefire. The rest of the worlds issues will be dealt with in due course.
Mike .It's sad that you seem to take Matthew Hooten's comments seriously. Nobody else except Matthew does. My mum said don't waste your time debating with fools.
It is amazing that someone (hooton) who has been completely exposed in the past as a dishonest morally corrupt person still get a voice in nz journalism.
'nz journalism' lol it's the herald, look at the company he keeps with the likes of Joyce, Prebble etc
Always been a useful tool for them is good old granny.
And worse to actually attack shipping that has nothing to do with Israel, and pretending any defence of that shipping is a threat to Yemen, its nation and its people.
While the Russians were wrong to claim that safe passage only referred to peace-time – the Houthi are not representatives of any nation state government and so are not able to legally impose an embargo as a war action – they were right to note that defence of shipping should include continuance of efforts to maintain an internal peace within Yemen.
Just as Clark was to note, that the future of Gaza should be premised around what makes a two state peace more likely.
"Hootin loves Pootin"
This is an expansion of Putin's war in the Ukraine he is spreading the conflict to weaken the west's resolve . Iran is behind both the massacre in Israel knowing Netanyahu would respond in the way he has.
The Yemen has done the same at the behest of Iran now Russia's deputy.
This is going to create another round of mass instability just what Putin wants.
Inflation will take off again and countries will face big economic consequences
This could play into Putin's Puppet Trumps election chances.
The West should have built a blockade around Yemen instead of a direct strike.
Wow, those dastardly Iranian masterminds! They're controlling the world!
Hang on, isn't it the Russian masterminds that run everything?
"Hootin loves Pootin"
This is an expansion of Putin's war in the Ukraine he is spreading the conflict to weaken the west's resolve . Iran is behind both the massacre in Israel knowing Netanyahu would respond in the way he has.
The Yemen has done the same at the behest of Iran now Russia's deputy.
This is going to create another round of mass instability just what Putin wants.
Inflation will take off again and countries will face big economic consequences
This could play into Putin's Puppet Trumps election chances.
The West should have built a blockade around Yemen instead of a direct strike.
Helen Clark is right being patient and not kicking the Hornet's nest was a better option.
On a different note looking back at the Irish famine at behaviours changing as the famine got worse.
We are seeing similar behaviours in the world today as people get more desperate social unity breaks down even at a family level hence the word famine.
We are seeing more of this in the world these conflicts are going to have flow on effects of more disunity in the world.
Hooton is fond of making up sweeping generalisations that have no basis in evidence and are in fact rubbish. An example is:
"Palestinians have in fact never been too keen on the two-state solution, with many, like Hamas and the Houthis, committed to the complete destruction of Israel and pushing the Jewish people into the sea."
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/matthew-hooton-helen-clarks-anti-americanism-on-show/UTSVJNM2MVC5LADYQVMWQSN7GA/
In fact the PLO and Israel in 1993 signed the Oslo accords which had the goals of peace and a two state solution; Palestine and Israel.
Unfortunately "The peace process that the [Oslo] deal was supposed to begin has been stillborn, with Israel continuing its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, and the Palestinian people no closer to – and some would argue further away from – an independent state."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/13/what-were-oslo-accords-israel-palestinians
Correct re PLO. But Hamas opposes the PLO and does not support two-states.
Mike, can you please check the convo in the back end re the post editor, cheers.
I think at least part of Hooton's thesis is correct: rules-based international orders have historically only existed where they've been able to be backed up with sufficient force.
Where he's wrong is that it doesn't necessarily require a single hegemonic power to impose it on everyone else.
Take Europe for example: if the EU isn't a rules based international order, I don't know what is.
Yet I've never seen Germany or France invade Greece or Spain or Austria to force them to join or comply with the rules.
These institutions are possible in a multipolar world: just harder to maintain.