Several weeks ago, I came across an interview out of the UK with a former CIA staff. I took time to listen to it.
In the middle of listening to the interview, I couldn’t help putting my hand over my mouth impulsively after hearing the interviewee say American handlers and foreign assets. That kind of impulse is not in my habit. What I heard felt so out of the ordinary and unbelievable.
I asked myself at a moment’s notice why both the handler and the asset are willing to be so, especially the so called asset than the so called handler. I wonder if this is what Edward Snowden left.
Ever since I listened to that interview, I remember it many times about every day. About every time I remember it, I couldn’t stop that impulse of putting my hand over my mouth.
It is totally counterintuitive to the culture in which I grew up. It is not that interpersonal relationships don’t exist in it. It is that the handler and asset relationship is a singular setup in contrast to a mutual relationship.
I had to ask myself if I am out of this world or if this singular setup is out of this world. To the extent that the so called assets exist in about every country around the world, I couldn’t help imagining a singular suction model to tap the resources of the entire world.
I have asked myself if I misunderstood the culture of the community in which I grew up in rural Ethiopia.
I tried to remember it as much as I can. I remembered a few words to guide me if I missed something. The following basic words came to mind: ወል፣ ዉል/ዉሊ፣ ዉሎ፣ ዉለታ።
ወል signifies mutual or plurality.
ዉል has roughly the same meaning as the noun version of the English word will. In another word, it means accord.
ዉሎ can be used to signify mutual or plural friendship.
ዉለታ signifies the litmus test of friendship. A friend in need is a friend in deed may be its rough equivalent.
The civil society that I grew up in is fully conscious about the essence of all these basic words, at least as much as my understanding about them goes.
In my view, civil is a conscious practice of living and thriving in peace. The maintenance of peace is based on an ingrained consciousness of the fallacy of war and a reckoning of the supremacy of the rule of law.
The above four words are common in the community because they are used in practice. They characterize how families raise their children and get along among one another.
A family teaches its children to not steal. It goes beyond that. If a child steals a property and takes it to another family for a favor, the head of the family as an adult advises the child to return it and reaches out to the adult head of that child’s family in order to advise that the child not repeat it.
I often imagine that how families in villages in any country get along may be analogous to how countries in the global village can get along.
I am using this analogy to express my presumed relationship between the heads of superpowers.
If the Director of Intelligence of the US takes a property of the US to China or Russia for a favor, the Presidents of those countries would tell him or her to return it and then call its President the subject be advised to not do so again. The same goes for the President of the US if the Director of Intelligence of China or Russia brings the property of his or her country to the US for a favor.
I am sure this sounds simplistic coming from a layperson about intergovernmental relationships. Then again, as a layperson about it, I ask why can’t it be that simple.
ዉል or Will is as old as it gets. So, for example, what is there to hinder the Directors of Intelligence of both the US and Russia to agree to a one page ዉል or Accord about how to get along and the heads of two of the superpowers get along as the adult heads of the respective countries. The same question can be asked about the superpowers China and Russia unless they have already achieved this kind of mutual relationship.
According to a new book by Jim Sciutto, the US, China, and Russia are becoming the superpowers of the world.
In that case, can’t the world ask of the Presidents of these three superpowers to be the adult leaders of the world? Or is that too much for the world to ask of them?
The singular model of a superpower out of American handlers and foreign assets is both shocking and untenable, at least in this layperson’s view about intergovernmental relationships.
As simplistic as it may sound, while listening to an evidently tormented soul who was being interviewed, my mind drew an analogy between slavery and the handler and asset relationship, which I fail to erase out of my mind. Tormented soul because he admittedly chose to live a tormenting life style. As I kept listening to the interview, I longed for a question from both the interviewer and the interviewee if the latter has asked if the life style he chose or was persuaded to choose is a valid life style. That question never came in that interview.
Replace handler with master, asset with slave, and intelligence with farm and ask if it is not analogous to slavery.
Years ago, I incidentally came across a writing of an American citizen referring to the head of a presumably sovereign country a pawn. Despite differences in political views, that kind of reference by an American citizen is a reminder of lynching in slavery.
I am not sure if there are social science scholars who have the expertise to validate or invalidate this analogy. To the extent that it can be said that this analogy is plausible to study, is it not a globalization of slavery?
If so, what a disgrace and stain on all civilizations.