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CounterPunch
October
24, 2002
A Guide for the Perplexed:
The Major Countries of the World Defined by the Office of
Strategic Influence
by ANIS SHIVANI
Americans have tragically learned that vast oceans
no longer separate us from the rest of the world. The media
have shortchanged us by not providing enough useful information
about different countries of the world, leaving us unable to
always comprehend our foreign policy motives. The following
brief guide to individual countries around the world should help
clear up confusion about our strategic interests. With its help,
the average American should be able to follow the nuances and
subtleties of our approach to the rest of the world for at least
the next half-century.
Mexico. Mexico's biggest distinction is that it lies
south of our border. It is the country that contributes the
vast number of our leaf blowers, restaurant workers, and garbage
collectors. Mexicans relish crossing the Rio Grande with infants
on their backs or squeezing themselves like cattle in rickety
trucks in order to live in the world's freest society. Ricardo
Montalban, Salma Hayek, and possibly Maria Conchita Alonso and
Ricky Martin are some famous Mexicans. Cheech Marin is not from
Mexico - he was born in East L.A. Mexico is a corrupt and, until
recently, one-party state that insists on exporting drugs to
our country. In this age of diversity, Americans have great
respect for Mexican culture, as evidenced by the proliferation
of Taco Bell franchises around the country and the cultural synthesis
achieved by Tejano singer Selena. After NAFTA, Mexico has become
one of the world's most important emerging markets, according
to the Chicago School of economists.
Canada. Our neighbor to the north, the people here
distinguish themselves from the hegemony of American culture
mainly by mispronouncing certain words like "out" and
"about." Also with CBC, which is a socialist version
of NBC. Pierre Trudeau is not married to Jane Pauley--that's
Garry Trudeau. Canada is a very cold country, where they have
socialized medicine, French-speaking separatists, and probably
still some Vietnam era draft-dodgers. That's all one needs to
know about Canada.
Brazil. Most famous for half-naked carnival dancers,
Amazonian rainforests that guilt-ridden liberal arts students
fight to preserve, and Pele. Brazilians have no hang-ups about
sex, and their women wear very revealing bikinis, if they wear
anything at all. It is also an important emerging market, and
a great setting for magical realist novels. Ricky Martin possibly
comes from here. Brazilian women don't care to wear too many
clothes.
Argentina. It fought a losing war against Margaret Thatcher's
Britain over the rights to sheep-grazing land on some remote
islands, and has never been the same since. As with many other
countries, the U.S. through the IMF has repeatedly bailed out
Argentina with generous multi-billion dollar loans so that Argentina
may enjoy a free-market, free-enterprise economy. Argentina
usually does well in World Cup soccer games, although Americans
do not like soccer because it is a slow-paced, low-scoring sissy's
game. There have been riots here in recent years, but riots
are a fact of life in all countries not yet fully committed to
the free-market, free-enterprise system. The Chicago School
is popular here.
Chile. Not to be mistaken with chilies. Great progress
was made here after General Augusto Pinochet ushered in free-market,
free-enterprise reforms with the help of the U.S. There used
to be a demagogue named Salvador Allende who shot himself with
his own gun in his presidential palace at the first sign of trouble.
Chile has a great pension system which could be a model for
social security privatization in the U.S. The Chicago School
is taught in graduate seminars here.
Cuba. Dictatorially ruled by Fidel Castro (a smoking
buddy of Che Guevara), who since the end of communism has had
to resort to organized prostitution and rampant tourism to sustain
the country's fleet of 1950s Packards and Impalas. Cuba has
not been very important to us since the Cuban Missile Crisis
of 1962, when we faced down the Soviet threat with honor and
restraint. It is often the first stop for hurricanes that threaten
to annihilate the Gulf Coast of the U.S. The song "Guantanamera,"
not to be confused with Guantanamo Bay, originated here. Also
The Mambo Kings. Elian Gonzales came back here, and Ricky
Martin possibly comes from here.
England. It used to be a cold, rainy, foggy island inhabited
by stiff-upper-lipped people until Princess Diana died, humanizing
the whole country and making them more like us. Even more than
Canadians, they have difficulty enunciating the English language,
often using alternate vocabulary. Their most famous exports
since the end of the war have been the Beatles and the Stones,
although it is to be noted that rock and roll derived its inspiration
from indigenous American music - so we don't owe them that much.
Winston Churchill has been a model for our conservative presidents
confident of the manifest destiny of America, as well as for
Toastmasters tutors. They too have socialized medicine, which
doesn't work. They never got around to writing their Constitution.
We saved them during World War II.
Germany. The country where Hitler came from. We helped
them get over their guilt at the Nuremberg trials--please watch
the movie for invaluable historical insight--and with the Marshall
Plan we helped rebuild them. Now they serve as inspiration for
the Sprockets skit on Saturday Night Live and make BMWs
and Mercedes for rich Californians. The Berlin Airlift probably
saved many thousands of lives. It was just one of many favors
we've done Germans. Much of Germany's history is incomprehensible
to us: we can't figure out how and why a country would become
fascist and a dictator would choose to annihilate people's liberties
in one of the world's most civilized nations. It was a mistake
that Charles Lindbergh liked Germany.
France. The home of French food. It is difficult to
take the French seriously, since they don't take themselves seriously.
Paris is a good place to set romantic comedies with actors like
Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. They have made no worthwhile contribution
to world culture since Albert Camus, an alienated French-Algerian
who wrote of plagues and rebellions, died in a car crash at a
young age. In the twenties and thirties, many Americans used
to go there to have carnivalesque sex, with Edith Piaf singing
in the background. The French like to oppose us in the U.N.
Security Council, but this is not to be taken too seriously.
We saved them during World War II.
Italy. Federico Fellini
made some great movies here, but not since the early 1970s.
Home of spaghetti and meatballs, macaroni and cheese, and of
course pizza. Rome is the former headquarters of the world's
greatest empire--that is, until now--and its beautiful ruins
are a perfect setting for Charlton Heston movies. The Mediterranean
climate does wonders for the ailing pontiff's health, which is
great because the Pope has been one of the staunchest advocates
of free-market, free-enterprise economies around the world.
Madonna is not from Italy.
Sweden. Their model of prohibitively high marginal
tax rates and cradle-to-grave welfare is going the way of the
dinosaurs, which is a welcome relief to the Chicago School.
Depression and suicide rates are very high, which is understandable
given the prevalence of promiscuous cohabitation as an alternative
to traditional marriage and the widespread disbelief in God.
They disguise their high rate of unemployment by many devious
means. The Nobel Prize is the most objectively granted recognition
of achievement in the sciences and humanities, although it would
be better yet if it were moved to New York.
Russia. They have finally joined the community of nations
living according to free-market, free-enterprise rules after
even Gorbachev couldn't save communism. They probably no longer
have socialized medicine. We need to worry about their poor
nuclear scientists who might sell the secrets of weapons of mass
destruction to fanatic Islamic countries. We think they could
be our next great oil supplier. The Chechnyans are like the
mafia in New York before J. Edgar Hoover got to it--or Rudy Giuliani.
Their Georgia is nothing like ours. Russia is a great source
of mail-order brides.
China. The home of Chinese food. After Mao died, they
became nearly capitalist. Their free-enterprise zones are a
beacon of hope to the rest of the third world. Without a doubt,
the world's greatest emerging market. GE sells electric bulbs
here. We let them join the WTO and gave them the 2008 Olympics
because Wen Ho Lee turned out not to be a traitor after all -
as far as we know now. We still don't know who lost China.
Many people ride bicycles, but SUV makers haven't given up hope.
India. Primarily known for tandoori chicken, the Kama
Sutra, and the Taj Mahal. Also one of the world's great emerging
markets. Its main export is people, primarily in the form of
your company's software expert and your local ob-gyn. Indians
speak English nearly as well as people in Tallahassee, Florida.
Salman Rushdie left India when he was a boy and later wrote
about pickles and chutneys, which angered Indira Gandhi so much
that now they can't film Midnight's Children here.
Pakistan. A large Islamic country sandwiched between India
and Afghanistan. Whenever we give it a chance to join us as
our ally, its generals jump at it. The rest of the time it hovers
close to being a rogue state. Pakistan has produced the first
Islamic bomb, which is of little concern to us as long as the
bomb remains in the hands of generals. They have been fighting
for fifty years over a vale of tears known as Kashmir, which
happens to be a beautiful tourist destination.
Afghanistan.
There are many caves here, some
of them man-made. We stopped the spread of communism here in
the eighties, which brought about the collapse of the Soviet
empire and made the world safe for the free-market, free-enterprise
system. Afghan terrain is ideal for the construction of oil
pipelines through its length and breadth. It is our first real
test-case in humble nation-building, and tearing down the burqas
that keep their women from deriving full viewing pleasure from
wide-screen TVs. Rambo III was filmed here.
Iraq. A country of megalomaniacs who keep invading
their neighbors, producing weapons of mass destruction, and refusing
to abide by U.N. resolutions. They misread the lips of April
Glaspie in 1990. They like to gas their own people and pull
babies from incubators for pure sport. We looked the other way,
or possibly helped them, when they were fighting the war against
Iran in the eighties, but that's justifiable because pragmatism
suggests that we always choose the lesser evil--for the time
being. They think that "No-Fly Zone" refers to an
underground punk band in Seattle.
Iran. The Shah of Iran was a friend of America, but
when he tried to crack down on the mullahs they got real upset
and started a revolution. The French had given asylum to Ayatollah
Khomeini, which was a great mistake. The hostage crisis started
Nightline, which remains a model of outstanding international
reporting. The Iranians also got upset at Salman Rushdie. They
don't have as much oil as Iraq, but for the sake of national
security we may have to get rid of their women's burqas too.
They have done much to revitalize Beverly Hills and Westwood.
Saudi Arabia. A place where women can't drive and men can't
watch dirty movies, and American soldiers have to swear not to
eat pork and drink wine. The locale for Lawrence of Arabia.
A dictatorial regime where theft will get your hands cut off,
so the world's largest oil reserves are secure. A dangerous
breeding-ground for such radical cults as Wahhabism and the Salafiyya,
which Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would like to see assimilated
into an Islamic Reformation.
Israel. The only democracy in the Middle East. The
state of Israel was created out of nothing in 1948 to make room
for the Jews of the world, who had almost been annihilated in
the Nazi holocaust. Since then, this small (about as large as
San Diego), defenseless state has been under ferocious assault
by Palestinians, a people who can't really make a historically
verifiable claim to having always lived here, as well as by all
Arab states. Israelis handle suicide bombings really well, setting
a model for how we should take it once these occurrences become
commonplace in the U.S. Zionism is not racism, and Israel is
not an apartheid state. Those are lies. They did us a great
favor by destroying Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, thus showing
the world that preemptive strikes work.
Palestine. As stated, this entity didn't really exist
until it came in handy as a myth to brandish against the state
of Israel after 1948. They want nothing better than to kill
every last Israeli. They have never acknowledged the right of
Israel to exist. They are backed by powerful forces around the
world. Their children create great havoc by throwing stones
at harmless soldiers. Yasser Arafat is the most famous Palestinian.
He used to like hijacking planes and killing Israeli athletes,
until he shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin at the White House in
1993. In 2000, Ehud Barak wanted to give the Palestinians 95
percent of what they wanted, but this wasn't good enough for
the Palestinians because they like terrorism as a way of life.
They'll never get as good a deal again.
Somalia. The setting for Black Hawk Down. We
tried to step in to keep the warlords from killing the people,
but we were not shown enough gratitude. Muhammad Farah Aideed
had some personal grudge against George Bush senior. Somalia
helped teach us again that if we fight, we go in with overwhelming
force and leave no room for loss. Female circumcision here shows
what an enlightened, progressive society the U.S. is by comparison.
Women in the U.S. can drive.
South Africa. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s disciple
Nelson Mandela, the great African pacifist who spent nearly all
his life in jail, comes from this country. Mandela shows us
how important it is not to keep grudges--if you go along stoically,
unlike Mumia Abu Jamal, one day you will be released from jail
and made president of a country, or at least a company. AIDS
is a big problem here, but the multinational drug companies are
doing everything in their power to make drugs accessible. Besides,
the South Africans first have to learn not to deny the real causes
of AIDS.
Japan. We saved probably millions of Japanese, and
certainly American, lives by shortcutting the war and dropping
the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, our
great generosity helped reconstruct their society as a genuine
liberal democracy. We were a bit scared of them in the seventies
and eighties, when they made cars only as large as today's average
SUV's front seat, but after we absorbed the lessons of quality
circles and just-in-time-inventory, we became good friends again.
Especially since they seem to be mired in a decade-long depression,
so we can afford to import Ichiro and other baseball players
without fear of alienating American fans. They are no longer
a threat to buy up all of Southern California's real estate.
Australia. The land down under, where the Beach Boys really
should have come from. Paul Hogan started a wave of crocodile
hunting on cable TV. Their laid-back attitude may not be conducive
to peak capitalist efficiency, but they seem to make up for it
by following our own cultural trends like beach volleyball, surfing,
and scuba diving.
Philippines. In the eighties, Imelda Marcos collected thousands
of pairs of shoes. There was a people's revolution, after which
it became less and less tolerable for the U.S. to have so few
female representatives and senators. The U.S. once ruled the
Philippines, but since we are not an empire we relinquished control
once the Filipinos assured us that they would send no more than
10,000 mail-order brides to our country every year. Our bases
here provide great stability to the country.
Vietnam. A country like a domino that we did much to
save from falling over before the last helicopter flew off the
embassy rooftop in Saigon. Our helicopters would still be in
Vietnam had public opinion not tied the hands of the military.
John Kerry, John McCain, and many other political contenders
got their start here. We put the past behind us after letting
Maya Lin contribute the winning entry for the Vietnam Memorial,
and especially after George Bush senior buried the Vietnam syndrome
in the sands of Arabia. There are probably still many MIAs there,
but this will have to be up to future Sylvester Stallone and
Gene Hackman movies to figure out.
Anis Shivani
studied economics at Harvard, and is the author of two novels,
The Age of Critics and Memoirs of a Terrorist. He welcomes comments
at: Anis_Shivani_ab92@post.harvard.edu
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