Violent Geography: Christian Parenti

On April 8th to a packed room of nearly 200 at the University of Vermont, acclaimed writer for the Nation, Christian Parenti came to give a talk on imperialism and it’s effects on ‘failed states’ and how it causes states to fail, as part of the Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series.
As he says, what he means by ‘failed and weak states’ is the, “fragmentation of society, neighborhood versus neighborhood. Large parts of the global south are in a state of disintegration. Bare institutions of the modern state are failing. Ruled by the gun and the bribe. The right wing invokes this as the front line of the war on terror. The backwards idea that the ‘coming anarchy’ requires more colonialism, more humanitarian intervention. Not less.”
Parenti outlined the principal four back-story causes that leads to this shattering of society. The legacies of colonialism, Cold War era military intervention, imposing of the neoliberal political economy and the eventually corruption of the local elites into full-blown dictators.
What occurs next in this climate of imperialistic economic mismanagement is what you can see today in places like Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. The criminalization of the economy to narcotics and bribes and the rise of extreme ethnic and religious conflict.
Into how this all plays out, Parenti referred to a Rosa Luxemburg quote from 1916 who was intern referring to a Frederick Engels quote, “’Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does ‘regression into barbarism’ mean? This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences.’”
In closing Christian Parenti said, “It’s not that the world is impoverished, it’s just that the people in the world are impoverished. There is a tremendous amount of wealth in the world that can be redeployed to meet people’s needs. We have to have economic plans not moral outrages.”