QUESTION: There's a lot of rhetoric going on one thing that you really didn't talk about so much is that Defense statement that was read a couple of week ago. Every page of that statement is dressed up in the language of keeping the world safe from terrorism. And it is our duty as a leader to do that. I think it's right that most people are against imperialism, but they feel very strongly that it is the duty of the strongest nation in the world to keep the world safe from terrorism. So how do you sort of strip that rhetoric away from the imperialist agenda to convince people...?

DAVID HARVEY: I'm glad you mentioned that because there's something else that goes on in the statement, too, which is that we have to keep the world free. And the world of freedom is there--freedom. But freedom is always the freedom of the market. And Bush had an op-ed piece come up in the New York Times which is a bit like this kind of stuff where he kept on about "market is the thing," and now you know Russia is coming around, the Chinese are coming around, they're beginning to realize that the market is the way to go--and so freedom starts to come into the picture. And that rhetoric is very strongly in there and of course that's a very persuasive rhetoric about liberty and freedom and the US stands for that. It stands for that. But then it's not hard to talk about some of the tension in that. I mean it's talking about democracy, but then what does it do in Chile, what does it do in Venezuela, what does it do in many of these democracies--provided that the democratic regime is in favor of the United States. And if it's not in favor of the United States, then you overthrow it. That's the sort of the rule of the game.

Then the issue you're talking about. Again, I think we have to talk about terrorism as a very fundamental issue. But we have to talk about state terrorism as well as the individual terrorism. And to recognize that there are many states engaged in terrorist practices. I mean that's one of the arguments the US is using about Saddam--he engages in state terrorism against the population. And then it seems to me it's not hard to talk about a whole range of states that are actually engaging in state terrorism. Israel--some of the things that have gone on there are equivalent to state terrorism. The US has supported state terrorism in Latin America over the years very strongly. So we should be prepared to talk about terrorism and broaden the debate. One of the difficulties, I'm sure which all of us share is an incredible frustration of being unable to find situations in which you can freely talk about these things. I mean, we are in a very repressive situation. The media are not open--they're pretty much closed to this kind of discussion--although some have started to open up a little bit. The Democratic Party is doing nothing, although I have to say I was surprised 100 and so in the House of Representatives voted against it [Iraq resolution]. And then, remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. I think there was only 2 who voted [against it]--and they lost in the next election. There, it seems to me--there are little openings there. We now are in a situation--one of the things I think again this administration learned from Vietnam and through the Gulf War--was a way of keeping the press entirely out of the discussion. And the press has sat down--given their corporate ownership and all the rest of it--and the media--of course, television is even worse. So there's a real problem of how to discuss and debate this. The only way it seems to me it's got to be, and this, I think, the only way we have to go is through street action. And you know there is a tradition of that in this country that's there in the civil rights and the anti-war movements. And look what it's done in other countries. The French government tried to start putting all kinds of things in 1995, and people just took to the streets to basically stop the economy. And the government had to backtrack. It's interesting in France when you've got a totally right-wing government, I was saying to people, "You know this is terrible--you've got a totally right-wing government." And people said, "They're not going to do that much." And I said, "Well, why not?" "Because if they really do something we don't like then we'll just take to the streets." And everybody knows that. And the government knows that. So the government is not going to do that much. It would be scared of precisely that thing. You know, we have to find a different way of doing politics, and I think the sorts of things that are beginning to emerge now--protest demonstrations all over the place--there's a lot of movement now it seems to me. Protest demonstrations, street activism, teach-ins, and so-on. We had a big one in CUNY yesterday and there are others that have been set up, I mean, again, very often it's small--but then, we start. And there are these, for instance, the "Not In My Name" statement that came out in the New York Times, came out in the LA Times, and came out this weekend in USA Today. And that statement has 30,000 signatures to it. It's very hard to get in so you can actually talk about yes, well terrorism is an issue. Why aren't we dealing with terrorism, and isn't part of the problem for instance, the way in which, at this point, it seems there's very serious criticism to be made of the CIA and the FBI and the way they work. And part of the problem there is what I call the fetish of technology in the military. The CIA's spent so much money on high tech surveillance, they think they can control the world from 50,000 feet or something like that that it almost came down to they didn't have anybody who spoke street Arabic. The CIA issued a call--we need people who can translate Arabic for us. And you go, well what kind of intelligence service is that? They can't understand the language. I think there are issues of that kind cropping up. There are a lot of vulnerabilities. But part of the thing right now is the way the administration is working--it's quite sophisticated in keeping us off balance. They same regime change, and then they say, no, no, we're not into regime change, oh, well, if he gets rid of his weapons that is regime change. What kind of language is this.

Q: What is the origin of the huge debt that you talked about? I mean we have the richest people here, the richest corporations, and when I read about our trade deficit--a lot of that trade deficit is corporations controlling production in other places and sending it back here and that's call "trade." Is that the debt? Who owes who what?

DH: The trade deficit is huge. It means that actually the US imports far more than it exports. It varies from year to year, but it's been going on a for a very long time. But then that is compensated for by capital inflows from the rest of the world. And the capital inflows from the rest of the world come in through US bond markets and stock markets and things like that. Stock market doesn't look so good anymore, but bond markets and so on, come into the US and in effect, cover that deficit. It means that foreigners are holding more and more of the US debt. So, okay, for instance if the government issues bonds or something of that kind, then they're bought by foreigners. So if the foreigners suddenly decide to sell that all, or dump it all, then the value of those bonds start to go down hill very fast. But as things stand at the moment, there's a continuous inflow from the rest of the world into the US. But then again--here's one of the things that happens with imperialism--if you have a central power like the US [which] offers or seems to offer tremendous security on your money, and you're in Argentina or Brazil and you have some money, where do you put it? Do you put in the Brazilian stock market or the Argentinean stock market? Where do you put it? Well, you put it in the US because that seems to you much more secure. In a way the capitalist system is in the US a sort of central depository because it is the center of much of the security. Which means maintaining the security of the US is absolutely crucial to the wellbeing of the US because the inflows allow this never to be called [debt]. So there's a perpetual process of that sort.

Q: One of the things that falls outside your oil nexus are the various ethnic clashes that exist. For example, the warfare between Muslims and Hindus. You have two countries--one country [India] is a theocratic, right-wing regime, and Pakistan, our old friend that armed the Taliban, created the Taliban. They are facing each other--they may go to war--mutually assured destruction which, of course, is why Saddam wants the bomb. Why the Koreans, which is good, the Koreans came out now and said that they might have the bomb. That's the best news I've heard. Isn't it a mad world that I can cheer that news? But what that means is that these various countries are asserting the logic why the need to have nuclear weapons. To me that's another loose canon. We had a huge nuclear freeze movement in this country . The threat of nuclear war is a real one. How do you see all of this fitting in? How do you see all of this relating to--I think this is a profound lesson of September 11th--the profound vulnerability of our industrial civilization. Which even the Marxist tradition buys into--I think you call it the fetish of technology. How will this turn out?

DH: This is why this kind of threat of destabilization of the whole region [is serious]. I think the Pakistan India thing is a really a serious issue. To be set off by this whole kind of process. I'm terrified of that. I think I'm more scared now than I was during the Cuban missile crisis. I really am ... because if this thing gets out of hand. And indeed Pakistan--I mean we saw the election in Pakistan--it's sort of moving toward the religious Islamic parties and let's say Musharef--he's not a particularly nice guy, but if he gets replaced by an Osama type--I love these things that are coming out--these Tom Payne ads? You've seen those things? Where Osama Bin Laden is saying "Invade Iraq, invade Iraq. I want you to invade Iraq"--you know like a recruiting poster--because "we'll get the nuclear weapons of Pakistan, we'll get lots of recruits." It scares me--and I think the whole potential for the thing to spill over into a conflagration between Pakistan and India. And you ask me how it's going to turn out. I don't know. I think they're playing with fire with this invasion of Iraq. I think people should understand that they're playing with fire. Also, the situation with Iran is pretty interesting, because I'm pretty sure it does have nuclear weapons, although they haven't said it. I wouldn't at all be surprised if they had nuclear weapons. They certainly have the capacity. And if they have nuclear weapons. They won't mind if Saddam is being hit over the head by the US. But they know full well that they're next in line. And furthermore they've got the whole problem with the Suni population versus the Shiite population in Iraq and what that might mean and the other thing is that any war in Iraq is likely to send in [refugees]. I mean someone was telling me the other day Iran has more refugees per capita than any other country in the world. From all these places--from the former Iran-Iraq war, from Afghanistan and all the rest of it--and there would be a huge wave of refugees coming in there. So, it's very hard to see Iran remaining stable under these circumstances and in any case you have an internal conflict in Iran between the reformers, the moderates and the progressives, and whatever religious people control the courts and military apparatus. And there would be a wave of repression on the reform--that's almost certain. So, I think this whole thing going on there is really dangerous. And I'm really scared about the possibilities. You know when you listen to someone like Wolfowitz, he says, well, you know, "maybe it's not a bad idea if this whole thing blows up. We can go in and put it back together." You know, it's a humpty dumpty situation--put it back together again--and I really think they're nuts. But they really believe they can do it. Any administration is going to have contingency plans for anything that goes wrong. They ... should have a contingency plan for this and they either think that they can control it and it won't get out of hand, or they think, that well if it does get out of hand it will provide us with more opportunities.

Q: I think the people we should concentrate on are not the war mongers, but the people who don't know. What kind of neutral sources of information can we use to convince those people without raising red flags? What sort of advice do you have? What strategies would you use for dialogue.

DH: It would be nice if there was neutral information around, it's hard to find neutral information. First off, I think it's not entirely the case that information that's put out by Chomsky or some one or another ... it's not entirely dismissed by people because it's presented well and factually and so on, then it can be fairly convincing in its own right. So I don't think you should hold back on that. But there are some thing coming out. For example, there's a very good article in Harper's back in October or September that just went over the defense documents from the last years of the Bush administration and looked at the continuity between 1991 and 1992 and now. And this is a very good piece [which] just sort of took the documents and showed what was there. There's a lot of information out there already--in terms of what people like Wolfowitz and others have been saying. And you can collect all this together and people have done that. So there are those sources of information of that kind. It seems to me you could use. And give to people. There's some good analysis out there and we have to be alert and we have to use it. You can say, well I have my opinion, but look at this. It's there in the documents, this is what they're saying. Is this the kind of thing you want to go along with, is this the kind of thing you agree with, do you agree with pre-emptive strike for example, that's not a secret? Do agree with this notion you have the right to go pre-emptively into any place? I mean and what does that do to the United Nations? Pre-emptive right is not part of what the UN structure is. There are topics of debate at this time, basically, by asserting the right of pre-emptive strike, the US is saying that it is the only one that has the pre-emptive right. China does not have a pre-emptive right to go into Taiwan, India does not have a pre-emptive right to go into Pakistan. But the problem is that once the US starts using this notion of pre-emptive right everybody can say, I have a pre-emptive right. And at that point you're politically headed into a pretty anarchic international system. It's not the way the international system has been working up until recently. Again, the US is moving into this unilateralism. That is undeniable. Unilateralism with some friends underneath. You know, in Britain, they call Blair Bush's "poodle." They have cartoons of him cradled in Bush's arms going "yap yap."

Q: [Question about the USA Patriot Act]

DH: Well, I just agree with that--it was a pretty ghastly piece of legislation. I think again, there is only one way to confront that. Bits and pieces well be confronted through the courts. But what worries me is that the courts are not--well we know what the Supreme Court is--what it has done, anyway. If Bush gets command of the Senate ... we know what the judicial appointments are going to look like ... they're going to ram a whole bunch of them through. I think were headed into something potentially extremely dangerous. I think, without panicking, we have to emphasize the seriousness of the situation. Through things like the Patriot Act, through things that are going on outside. The common sense of the US is not to be in favor of imperialism--because imperialism does not benefit the common person in this country. It's very important to recognize that. It's often said, "Well the wealth of this country depends upon imperialism." But in fact, a lot of imperialist policies benefit a very small number of people in the country and the masses of people don't benefit from it very much at all. There's a lot more activism on that level, on the civil rights issues--a lot of people are more concerned about that then the invasion of Iraq. So I think it's possible to mobilize greater support around the civil rights question that it is around the war.

Q: [In 1985?], you gave a talk upstairs in the library on [the geopolitics of capitalism]. You spoke of possible linking between Russia and Japan and a possible US war. [How has the situation changed?]

DH: I think that the main line of the US was containment. It's not containment anymore because it hasn't got anything to contain. The only thing it should try and contain is itself and it doesn't seem to be able to do a very good job of it. So it seems to me we ought to think about all those political relations as taking a different form--it's very much more a fluid relation. I think we've seen alliances struck--suddenly there's an alliance with Russia on this. Some of these things seem to me to be tactical. There's not much depth to them. And my feeling about China--I would not be at all surprised if the Chinese don't think that the US is going so mad that it's likely to blow its self up. And if the Chinese sit there and let them do it, that would be fine. There's almost a way of thinking I suspect, which kind of says some of this that's going on doesn't seem to be a sign of strength in the US, it's a sign of weakness, it's a sign of deep insecurity. And part of that was given by September 11th. But I think there's another deeper sense of insecurity which comes out of the fact that the economy is not doing very well at all. It's in a mess. And a lot of things that people thought were taken care of were not taken care of. A lot of things that were just sort of left in abeyance have gotten much worse. The number of people with no insurance is shooting up, there's a lot of internal difficulty. So there's a side of me that what's going on is that Bush is trying to mask the internal difficulty. Because they would lose the election all over the place under normal circumstances and they're using this thing to get through this election. And when they get through this they'll sort of back off --there'a side of me that thinks that. But no, I think they're not going to do that. They are really into this. They're really going to go for this. And it's important to understand why. The Europeans--the French are holding out--because actually the French have a very good relationship right now with Iraq. So they're going to lose. The Russians stand to lose a lot if the US goes into Iraq because Iraq owes them a lot of money. Maybe the US has said, "We'll pay you the amount of money." And it may be that the US is thinking that if it gets Iraqi oil it can sell Iraqi oil and that's going to pay for the war. That's part of the calculation, I'm sure. They can use the Iraqi oil to pay for the war. And pay for the occupation. But if they do that then the French are real difficult--the Europeans are now recognizing this, I think--[and] have launched a real serious program about going into renewable energy sources as fast as they can and they want to be 20% dependent upon renewable energy sources by 2020 or something like that. They realize their dependency upon Middle Eastern oil is their crucial problem. So there's lots of switching going on politically. And lots of tactical alliances. This week the Russians are on board, next week they're not. It's a fluid situation and I don't think there's any major alliance apart from the British and the US.

Q: [Question on anti-globalization movement]

DH: The anti-globalization movement (I prefer to call it the alternative globalization movement) has within it a lot of potentiality to start to rethink these sorts of questions at the international level. There are many organizations which have global reach. The NGO's are some of the more problematic and most of them are undemocratic, and there are all sorts of problems with them, but some of them are doing a pretty good job. So there are again a whole set of possibilities to work through if you like the idea of an alternative globalization movement. Some of the institutions which have been set up do have potentialities which can be recuperated for progressive causes. I don't think it's an unprogressive thing to have Pinochet arrested in London at the behest of a Spanish judge for crimes committed in Chile. I thought that was a pretty good thing. I just wanted it to happen to Henry Kissinger. Now internally, this is why I come back to the psychology internally. I think that the US has a view of itself and the population has a view of itself which is totally uncomprehending of why the rest of the world should hate it so. On the other hand, most of the people in the US want to do good in the world. Now you can either regard this as total hypocrisy or you can say at a certain psychological level there is a deep concern about the loss of civil liberties through the Patriot Act, there is a deep concern about engaging in imperialist practices and the like. Therefore, mobilization in this country is really crucial to political action. We are in a sense in the belly of the beast. At least we can give it ... a belly ache, if not actually make it disgorge some of the most horrible things that it does. If you start to look at it that way, there are forms of political action. I don't think the immediate struggle for state power is the entire story. I think it's an important part of the story. I don't think it will be irrelevant if Lulu gets elected in Brazil. I don't think it's going to change the world. But it's a significant step in a certain kind of direction. There are movements of that kind which seem to me have the possibility of progressing in a different direction. Our task in the US is really to try to work with the social psychology of the place in a better kind of way. That's why I asked that kind of question. Because I'm not sure how to do it. I'm not sure that we have understood very well how to do it. And to do it in the way that it actually brings out the sentiments that are deeply embedded in the US traditions. And to use those sentiments--the US after all was the center of a civil rights movement. And that changed things. And the civil rights movement had implications for the rest of the world. So things that
happen here have significance for the rest of the world. We have got opportunities to do something like that. The problem is finding the mechanisms to do it.

Q: How about the European Union? Do you see this as any kind of prevailing force? Why aren't they standing up more in ...?

DH: They're scared. They're intimidated and I think they're also divided. I mean Britain is there on that and Germany is there on that. Lot of pressure on them.

Q: But they're going to lose big time on oil ...

DH: Well, yeah, I think so and I think they know which is why I think they're extremely nervous about things. I think they don't want to go along with it but ...

Q: [Question on getting young people involved and related question]

DH: Well, you can't reassure anyone on that except by being willing to take the lead. I mean I'm one of the original signers of the "Not In My Name" statement and you get some pretty hair-raising e-mails from people. There's been some pretty serious harassment of people who are speaking out on things. But I think we have to be prepared to continue doing it in the face of that harassment. That again--that was how the civil rights movement worked. People were prepared to go out there to do it. And there's no getting past that. And you may have to put up with some difficult times and that's a question of how far you can push yourselves. How to involve younger people? I think ... one of the big differences between the Vietnam [War] and now is that there was a draft. And young people got very nervous about what was going on in Vietnam. But I think there's some constituencies that will be very concerned about that. We have one of the council members in New York City Council came to a teach-in we had yesterday and he comes from Harlem and he said, "Look, most of the people who are likely to die in any conflict ... they're people of color and they're low income people and they're my constituents. I know that if things start to go badly my constituency will have to put up with a lot of the problem." So there are many areas where young people can be drawn in. Because this isn't likely to be a small war. It's likely to be a rather large one. And I can't imagine that whatever scenario you put in ... that there will be a significant number of casualties. And even the administration is saying that--be prepared. And when that happens, sentiment starts to change rather rapidly.

Q: Part of the Left does not see the "anti-terrorism" plans as imperialist. Christopher Hitchens is an example. Will you comment?

DH: I think in the immediate wake of September 11th, there were many people, including myself, who found it difficult to find exactly what kind of line to take and what kinds of things to say. It was very difficult for emotional reasons and analytical reasons. Most people I know had a very deep ambivalence about what to say and how to say it. For instance in the immediate wake of September 11th we had a teach-out at CUNY and a lot of that was full of that ambivalence. But the last month we set up a teach-out the situation now--and a lot of that ambivalence has disappeared. Particularly around Iraq. Because most people see that the question of terrorism and the fight against Al Qaeda and all of that kind of thing is different ... the switch into this has something to do with Iraq. It's just not plausible at any level. And a lot of things that are being said there about suddenly these stories are being told about Saddam being part of the "axis of evil" and all this kind of thing just doesn't strike us as plausible. Now you don't want to get into the kind of situation where you're saying "I'm a supporter of Saddam." I'm not. And I certainly would be in favor of getting the weapons inspectors back in there to do whatever they can to make sure he gets disarmed. I'm all in favor of that. And if there's regime change there, I think that would be fine. But I don't think the US has a legal or any other right to go in there and enforce it--just because it feels like it. Because there are these other questions which are being pursued. And I think as those other questions come into the forefront of the discussion, fewer and fewer people will kind of get into this line of Christopher Hitchens takes that it "seems that people on the Left think that John Ashcroft is worse than Osama Ben Laden." That's not the issue. The issue is what kind of measures can be taken to improve security. What kind of measures can be taken to deal with some of these networks that exist. What I find phenomenal is that most of the discussion now is about not intervening in those networks. And it seems to me that they're having about as much success of intervening in those networks as they've had in the war against drugs. And they don't know how to do it. They really don't know how to fight it. So they're going for something where they can kind of actually have a conventional war and therefore it's something they can say we're doing. So I think that Christopher Hitchen's line is less and less plausible. Where as initially quite a few people followed that line. Fewer and fewer people are going with it now. That division within the left has largely collapsed. We're now in a different ball game and if we're going to take this seriously we're going to have to find some sort of resistance to what is happening.

Q: How can we counter the rhetoric of war? I think the rhetoric used about "our way of life is being attacked" has appeal to many.

DH: I did write a piece eventually about what happened in New York on September 11th. And one of things I said was I turned on the radio and tuned into the BBC and the BBC said, "it was an attack upon the main symbols of American financial and military power." And I turned to the US media and they said, "it's an attack on American values." I thought it was extraordinary and then actually the local media treated it as an unfathomable disaster, like an earthquake with lots of personal tragedy and all that. Now actually there's three lines of thought that take you a long way into sorts of ways you can react to September 11th. And you can see them at work in the reconstruction of the site. So this whole kind of question that this was attack upon American values. There was a lot of resentment in New York, by the way, on the anniversary of September 11th. Because they saw it used as a national event when to most people in New York they saw it as a local event. The fire fighters are having to demonstrate in Central Park in the rain--a lot of them are sick. They were told there was no problem with all that ghastly stuff that came out. When the stuff came through my window about the third day afterwards, I thought my computer had blown up and I thought how many computers were in those buildings? And they all burned up--you know what's in those computers--and to say there was nothing dangerous in the atmosphere. The firefighters are getting sick, they're being denied pay raises, they're shrinking the fire service and then they get some firefighter out and parade him up as a great hero of the land. And people think--well this is nuts. And so there's a certain kind of notion of American values which is really hollow and my favorite view--if this really were an attack on American values how come we had three days of non-commercial TV? I mean we should have had 100% commercial TV. No ads. For three days. Well it was extraordinary. No airplanes either. So I kind of ... I mean I think you're right there's a rhetorical game that's being played. But this comes back to the visceral politics. And the constant moving--I mean the administration is very slippery about what it's saying. It keeps on changing its language. So there is not a constancy around what it's talking about. It tries to come back to these rhetorical devices about values and freedom and all that kind of stuff. It constantly tries to invoke them. But then the reality of what it's talking about seem to shift around.

Q: [Further question on American values]

DH: Well, I think I think we can take up American values at a certain kind of level and actually use them. Instead of singing "God Bless America" we can sing "This Land is Your Land." I mean just a simple example.

Q: [Again, on values]

DH: Yeah, but at a certain point that we need to say we need to defend something here. We should ask: what are we defending? Are we defending the civil rights tradition? Are we defending that, or are we defending a certain notion of constitutionality--those things that have been fought for? Or are we defending some kind of nationalist notion of who we are? I think there's something to debate there. The left can engage with.

Q: The president's polls remain so high. What's wrong with the American public?

DH: I don't know. I think a lot of it's ... They're not as high as they were and they're coming down I think--but not fast enough. I think it's this notion of a siege mentality. I think people feel threatened, under siege and don't know quite where to turn. But also, what alternative political leadership is there? Where's the alternative political leadership to challenge that? We haven't seen that coming from the Democratic Party at least with people in power. Some people have tried to exercise some sort of critical discussion about it, I don't know. I worry about that too. We've basically gone crazy....

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY (Compiled by Baltimore IMC))

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