(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The allegation According to Svein Thuastad, a member of Sandnes SV, in SV's work program that the United States is "the greatest threat to world peace" is "crazy". We get to know this in a larger piece about "SV's lost virginity" in Ny Tid 35/05. The responsibility for the wording of the work program is attributed to comrade Thuastad, whom he calls "the party's so-called system-critical wing". He even perceives this wing as "a core problem" for the party.
The American William Blum has in the book Rough State: A Guide to the Worlds Only Superpower (2000) lists 67 "global interventions" from the United States, say since 1945 to the year 2000. He then includes about 12 non-military shareholders, the rest are military. In Vardøger (www.vardoger.no) 28 03 Johan Galtung writes about this. Galtung also refers to Zoltan Grossmann who shortly after September 11 made a list of "One hundred years of US military intervention from Wounde Knee to Afghanistan" on the basis of Congressional Records and the Library of Congress Congressional Researc Service. His overview shows 134 small and large, global and domestic interventions in the period 1890-2001. This gives an average of 1,15 per year up to and including the Second World War. For the period after 1945, the average increased to 1,29 per year. In the period 1990 – 2001, ie the first 11 years after the end of the Cold War, Grossmann has registered 22 interventions – an average of 2 a year. "This supports the hypothesis that more interventions are needed for defense when an empire grows," concludes Galtung (p.186).
Blum, Grossmann and Galtung – a system-critical core problem for liberal thought! Although Blum's figures are "debatable" (Galtung), they are more than enough to stick to the wording of the work program on the United States' role as a peace / war nation. I do not know of any other state in history (not even the Roman Empire) that has waged so many wars in such a short time. Do any of the readers of Ny Tid know about others? Or should the knowledge of the biggest political threat to world peace ever be a party blanket between selected members of Sandnes SV?
Precisely because the United States is now what the self-serving superpower she is, she is not allowed to eat with. It must be assumed by the SV when the party now has an influence on foreign policy in government position. If one is to pursue real politics, one must at least have a realistic view of the phenomenon, no matter how crazy it is. The fact that the party program put words to an insane reputation is not insane, but only an advantage. And although little Norway can in no way become a real "partner" to the United States, there is still no reason why the country should still be a "poodle".
Hans Ebbing is a philosopher and SV veteran.
