Dr Tim Anderson is Director of the Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies. He was for 20 years an academic in Political Economy at the University of Sydney and before that taught at other Australian universities. He researches and writes on development, rights and self-determination in Latin America, the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. He has published dozens of articles in a range of academic books and journals. His most recent books are: Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea (2015), and The Dirty War on Syria (2016, in ten languages).
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While the extraordinary pretexts for each war must be studied, with independent evidence, they cannot be fully understood separately. Each aggression forms part of a broader strategy. The separate wars can be seen most clearly with regard to the regional plan, and indeed the globalist ambitions of the patron.
Similarly, the resistance in particular countries can and
should be studied, but their integration into the regional resistance remains critical to their success. No single independent state or people has the capacity to prevail against this onslaught. ...Small states and peoples cannot fight big powers alone; they must form a strong alliance.
The resistance to foreign domination in each country, and regionally, is the historical outcome of particular forces.Resistance has a common character but no idealized personality. It is informed by different cultural and religious principles, historical circumstances and social formations. Yet the common defense is of popular self-determination and maintaining accountable social structures that serve broad social interests. In every circumstance imperial intervention is destructive of that accountability and those interests. So it is that, in the West Asian region, the Resistance combines secular-pluralist, Shi’a and Sunni Muslim, Christian, Druze, socialist, secular and Arab nationalist traditions. Notwithstanding the fact that organized resistance requires strong social structures, the primary contradiction of this struggle is not ‘capitalism v socialism’ but rather imperialism versus independence. No social gains can be built without an independent and locally accountable body politic; nor can they be defended in face of the sustained onslaught without strong regional coordination and collective action.
As with The Dirty War on Syria, this book addresses the myths created to advance the multiple wars and myths about the resistance. It also attempts some provisional history of the conflicts.
The focus on resistance can help us understand and anticipate the defeat of great powers, something not really possible for those whose analysis begins and ends with power.
