SPEECH BY HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF ZIMBABWE, CDE R. G. MUGABE AT THE XIII NON ALIGNED MOVEMENT SUMMIT PUTRA WORLD TRADE CENTRE KUALA LUMPUR, 25 FEBRUARY 2003
Date:25 February 2003
The Chairman of NAM and Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dato Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Your Majesties, Your Excellencies, Heads of State and Government, Distinguished delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Let me begin by thanking our host Dato Seri Mohamad Mahathir, and through him, the people of Malaysia for the warm welcome and hospitality that has been ours to enjoy since our arrival to this dashing and beautiful city, Kuala Lumpur.
In the same spirit may I also pay tribute to our outgoing chairman, President Thabo Mbeki, for so ably steering our organisation for the past four 'years, which period was quite eventful as President Mbeki rose to the challenges of world affairs thereby giving the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) a special place in the search for solutions towards a just international order.
Zimbabwe joins others in welcoming Timor Leste and St. Vincent and the Grenadines as new members of the Non-Aligned Movement. As we grow in numbers so should we grow in our strength.
The Non Aligned Movement came into being as an instinctual and pragmatic response to an era of dangerous rivalry in global affairs. The United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a deadly race in which the safety of our world from nuclear holocaust was said to be guaranteed by the deterrent value of Mutually Assured Destruction, known more aptly as MAD. The overarching doctrine was that those who were not superpowers or associates of the superpowers were not entitled to real choices. The bipolarity yielded the impulsion that you had to belong either to the United States or to the Soviet Union camp. Our Founding Fathers however resisted that impulsion and refused to join either of the camps opting for neutrality as they established the Non Aligned Movement which they based on the sound permanent values and moral norms that should govern international relations.
Today, however, we find ourselves in a new era of unipolarity constituting a portentous juncture in the history of our Movement characterised by unilateralism -cum-hegemonism, supported by an interventionist military doctrine that bids the more powerful to impose their will on those who, like many of us, are weak. Colonialism now assumes a varied form, and seeks to garner in all of us of the Third World as we get globally villagised under false economic pretences. We are cheated to believe that we shall all be equals in that village, but are denied to assume military strength of the same magnitude as that of the western and more highly developed States. We dare not develop nuclear arms for this is a prerogative of only the big ones. Trade between rich and poor must be free and uninhibited, and no preferences or derogations will be tolerated in this global village governed by WTO norms. Politically our sovereignty will not have the same weight as that of big brother, and big brother has the right to determine the justice of our systems and not we his. As he likes, he can blatantly use his prejudice to determine and upset the validity of any of our elections and declare a validly elected President of a country illegitimate.
But we must remain silent about the Presidential election fiasco of the United States whose votes failed to produce a winner until the USA Supreme Court, dominated by Republican judges, imposed Mr George Bush (Jr) as winner. And is it not ironical that Mr. Bush who was not elected should deny my legitimacy established by many observer groups from Africa and the Third World? Who should the world impose sanctions on, Robert Mugabe or George Bush? The fact of power has also become, to those who hold it the determinant of justice, morality and even legality. In other words the governing norms of our World have been greatly eroded.
The United States awakened to the implications of being the sole Superpower, joined by Britain, as a born again Colonialist, and other Western countries have turned themselves into ferocious hunting bull dogs raring to go, as they sniff for more blood, Third World blood. We, their hunted game, are for slaughter. The Charter of the United Nations and its sacrosanct tenets of international peace, the sovereignty of nations and non interference in domestic affairs of States, are being desecrated by the day. Listen to the Voice of America, I mean the voice of President as captured by television media, and you will no doubt conclude that he is no longer willing to subject the actions of his Administration to international law, rationality or the force of morality. Iraq might have developed or desired to develop arms of mass destruction. But the United States has massive arms of that magnitude. Why can't the United States demonstrate what Iraq should by destroying their own massive heaps first? They should surely teach by example, and yet they have refused even to sign the treaty on nuclear disarmament. To support the U.S. Administration's zest for aggression on Iraq is to support a proposed inhuman campaign which is sure to see many many lives lost.
Bush and Blair have, apparently developed similar warlike dispositions deriving from similar ideologies of new imperialism. Opinion makers like former Security Advisor to President Carter, Mr Brzezinski have spoken and written freely about a new imperial power. I quote Brzezinski directly to bring out the point:
"Unlike earlier empires, this vast complex global system is not a hierarchical pyramid rather America stands at the center of an interlocking universe, one in which power is exercised through continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus, even though that power originates from a single source, namely, Washington, D.C. and that is where the power game has to be played, and played according to America's domestic rules."
Brzezinski states further:
"In addition, one must consider as part of the American system the global web of specialized organisations, especially the "international" financial institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank can be said to represent "global" interests, and their constituency may be construed as the world. In reality, however, they are heavily American dominated and their origins are traceable to American initiative..."
When we think about it, the philosophy that Brzezinski elaborates in his book titled The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, should not unduly surprise us. Now Brzezinski also talks openly about American domination in the military, economic, technological and cultural spheres, and exposes a strategy that has been pursued methodically and relentlessly for some time now.
Emboldened by the conviction that the North Atlantic Grouping gained a geo political advantage at the end of the Cold War, Blair's close policy adviser, Mr. Robert Cooper, argues for what he terms a "New liberal imperialism" which asserts that,
"The most logical way to deal with chaos, and the most often employed in the past, is colonization. But colonization is unacceptable to post modern states (and, as it happens, to some modern states too). It is precisely because of the death of imperialism that we are seeing the emergence of the pre-modern world."
Robert Cooper goes on:
"What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human Rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its outline: an imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order and organisation."
Again he continues,
"The challenge of postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves (i.e. the West) we operate on the basis of laws and often cooperative security. But when dealing with more old fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era, force, preemptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary..."
Who after reading this Blair philosophy would be surprised by his irrational actions on Zimbabwe? He desires and is determined to undermine the sovereignty of my country and introduce neo colonialist rule. That we shall never allow him to achieve, and I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your consistent support and solidarity with Zimbabwe.
But against these enormous challenges, which confront us we should not hesitate to take bold and far reaching measures, which seek to revitalise our movement, tinkering on the margin will just not do. We need a permanent secretariat for institutional memory, implementation of our decisions and for constant and timeous articulation between Summits. If we are serious about our movement and if we want also to be taken seriously, we cannot continue to manage our affairs on an ad hoc or part time basis. It is time we put our money where our mouth is.
I thank you.
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