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MIDDLEBURY INSTITUTE PAPER IX Keith Brunner “…Whenever
any Form of Government becomes destructive of [Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on
such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” (Declaration of Independence, 1776) Living in Burlington, the largest city in Vermont with a population of 40,000, it is easy to forget that I am part of the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the planet. Summer is almost here—sailboats are once again catching the breeze, musicians are performing on Church Street, the Intervale is attracting both new and experienced farmers eager to grow their own food, and hikers are exploring the nearby Green Mountains after a long winter. It’s an idyllic scene, until the silence is shattered by four F-16 fighter jets screaming over the landscape, very quickly on their way to a training sortie where they will be training to fight…Canada? Plattsburgh? Who is going to attack tiny, peaceful Vermont? Snap back to reality—when I pay my taxes, I am funding a United States government that has proclaimed global military hegemony, a government that doesn’t even try to conceal its devotion to private-sector interests, a government that has ignored any attempt at curbing major climate change, and a government that is running itself into the ground--and taking the rest of the world with it. I’m tired of it, and so are many of my fellow Vermonters. Given that the government of the U.S. has lost its moral authority, given that the nature of the capitalist system on which it relies is inherently unsustainable, and given that attempting to take state power at this time is implausible, I will argue for Vermont’s secession from the union as the most reasonable attempt at dissolving the empire and providing the citizens of Vermont with a better opportunity for a life of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The American Empire-Military Power The United States of America is undoubtedly an empire, and furthermore it is the largest empire that has existed in the history of humankind. Its military budget exceeds the total military budget of the next 25 nations (Naylor 2003)—as Chalmers Johnson has recently pointed out, “defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history” (Johnson 2008). As of 2005, it officially had 737 military bases located on foreign soil, and 2.5 million U.S. military personnel spread across the planet (Johnson 2006). As Johnson interestingly points out, “The thirty-eight large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005—mostly air and naval bases for our bombers and fleets--almost exactly equals Britain's thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia (2007).” Notice that Johnson described American facilities around the globe. This is the first time that an empire has truly held global power. Something else that sets the U.S. apart from past empires is the fact that we are open about our imperial ambitions. In 2002, the Bush Administration “announced its National Security Strategy, which declared the right to resort to force to eliminate any perceived challenge to US global hegemony, which is to be permanent (Chomsky 2003).” The key word here is “perceived”—if the Bush Administration “perceives” that a country is challenging U.S. hegemony, it will eliminate that challenge, or that government, or perhaps just drop one of our 3,696 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads on their capital city (2007 Annual Report on Implementation of the Moscow Treaty). The US government “perceived” that Saddam Hussein was a threat to our power, and responded by invading Iraq, dismantling his government, and imprisoning him. In hindsight, it has become clear that Hussein was not harboring or even building weapons of mass destruction, nor was he connected in any way with al-Qaeda, as U.S. government propaganda led its citizens to believe. What has also become clear is the enormous amount of profit being made by oil companies and defense contractors (many of whom have direct connections with the Bush Administration), and the tremendous debt that this war has cast upon the country. Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz believes that ultimately, this war will cost the United States over $3 trillion (Stiglitz 2008). The American Empire and the Planet It seems that those in charge of our country have forgotten the basic fact that any economic system that does not benefit the natural community on which it is based is inherently unsustainable (Jensen 2007). Let us take a look at the economy’s effects on our natural world. I believe that Kirkpatrick Sale (2008) sums up the situation quite well: Science is in agreement that all the important systems upon which human life depends are in decline and have been for decades: the erosion of topsoils and beaches, overfishing of every ocean fishery, deforestation, freshwater and aquifer depletion, pollution of water, soil, air, and food, overpopulation, overconsumption, depletion of oil and minerals, introduction of new diseases and invigoration of old ones, extreme weather, global warming, rising sea levels, species extinctions [on a scale not seen for millions of years], and human overuse of the earth’s photosynthetic capacity (Sale, 2008). I don’t need to go any further. As long as people have the view that nature is there as a commodity and not a community, this trend towards a barren earth will continue. A species of plant or animal goes extinct every 20 minutes. As the global empire and the culture with the highest level of consumption, America is responsible for vacuuming the oceans of life. We are responsible for the chaos that climate change is already beginning to bring us—droughts, food shortages, environmental refugees, etc. We are responsible for the sixth great mass extinction in the history of life on our planet. There are close to seven billion people on this earth, and everyone wants the right to consume like the Americans do. As Barry Commoner points out, we view nature as the tap and the sink—we harvest the natural world, convert it into something that is unnatural, and dump our useless waste back into the ecosystem (Commoner 1971). The American Empire and Capitalism When viewing civilization from a modern perspective, one can see the ebbs and flows of empires, for example the militarism and slavery of the Roman Empire, then the mercantilism and colonialism of the British Empire, and now the global capitalism of the American Empire. Empires have always been about a certain amount of people gaining wealth and power at the expense of other people and the natural world, and the American Empire is surely no different. Since the 1980’s, U.S. internal and foreign policy has mostly been dominated by the Washington Consensus, which calls for the repeal of governmental regulations, in favor of a hands-off, laissez-faire approach to economic decisions. These regulations that are being axed were put in place after the stock market crash and resulting Great Depression in the 1930’s to provide a social net for workers and to prevent another devastating crash. They were an attempt to solve what has become known as the Polanyi Problem, which is the fact that unregulated capitalism makes for intolerable social conditions and is therefore unsustainable. Now that this social net is being removed, the United States is seeing the highest levels of income inequality since the 1920’s--right before the crash. Through agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. government has pushed other governments to eliminate trade barriers and regulations in order to promote the uninhibited flow of goods and services. This trade is free only for those who have the power, however. Regulations were there for a reason, and their removal has pushed many people in the US and abroad into poverty, as heavily-subsidized U.S. crops flood foreign markets, and American jobs are sent overseas. John Maynard Keynes pointed out that unregulated capitalism tends toward wild financial speculation, creating a setting in which financial bubbles grow and burst. The removal of regulations on financial markets has allowed for financial speculators to gain an unprecedented hold on the domestic and global economy, allowing them to have an influence in such diverse fields as the housing market, food prices, and even currencies markets—and this financialization creates a wildly unstable market. This unprecedented push towards a socially intolerable and financially unstable consolidation of power has been aided and defended by the U.S. government, at the expense of its own citizens as well as the rest of the world. Renowned M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky decided to name his 2003 bestseller on American foreign policy Hegemony or Survival. He fears that the current empire threatens the whole of humanity on our planet (and, I would add, most of the non-humans as well). We have a choice: either we end, dissolve, destroy (insert your own verb here) the American Empire, or we watch as humanity, as well as the natural world, falls into chaos. With or without active participation in its demise, the American Empire is on its way out. Every single empire that has ever existed has eventually collapsed or deflated, and ours will prove to be no different. Given the destructive nature of this empire, and the fact that every day that it continues to exist it pushes more and more species to extinction and puts more and more people below the poverty level with the intent of increasing the wealth and power of a small few, we cannot sit around and wait for it to collapse on its own. We must take it down. We have not inherited the land from our ancestors; rather, we are borrowing it from our grandchildren. The longer we wait to take down this destructive system, the worse off those grandchildren will be. As one of fifty states in the union, Vermont holds tremendous power in and over the United States. What would happen if our entire state decided that it has had enough, and left the empire to form its own nation? We have governed ourselves before—I believe it’s high time we start thinking about it again. Secession as a Direct Action Direct action is a form of political activism which seeks immediate remedy for perceived ills, as opposed to indirect actions such as electing representatives who promise to provide remedy at some later date (Wikipedia). The citizens of Vermont have elected representatives who consistently speak out against the Iraq war, yet the occupation continues. One of Vermont’s Senators has introduced the most progressive climate-change bill in the Senate, yet it is not taken seriously. Vermont has joined with California in supporting states’ rights to make their own greenhouse-gas- emissions laws for automobiles, but legal roadblocks continually pop up to stall the effort. I am not alone in my belief that it’s time that Vermont informs Washington that we’ve had enough, and we are leaving to form our own country. In the words of University of Vermont professor Frank Bryan, “Vermont didn’t join the Union to become part of an Empire” (Bryan 2007)” This idea of secession is not as outlandish as it may seem at first glance. For one, Vermont was its own country from 1777 to 1791, when it agreed to become the 14th state in the union. For those 14 years of political independence, Vermont “issued its own currency, ran its own postal service, developed its own foreign relations, grew its own food, made its own roads and paid for its own militia” (Bryan 2007). We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. Professor Bryan and I are not alone. Two months ago, the 2008 Vermonter Poll done by the U.V.M. Center for Rural Studies found that 11.5% of Vermonters favored secession (vermontrepublic.org 2008), and the year before it was 13 per cent. As the empire of which it is a part of continues to fall apart, those numbers will surely grow. Vermont’s secession from the United States of America would serve a dual purpose. First, it would be a direct action against the American Empire. The act of Vermont’s citizens collectively standing up and saying “We’ve had enough” would make many U.S. citizens in other states think long and hard about Washington’s legitimacy, and it is my belief that this would inspire movements for major change across the country. When a state has decided that things are so bad that it wants out, you can be sure it will be recognized by the other 49 states. Secession would also show the rest of the world that there are major chinks in America’s armor. Given America’s enormous military, breaking down the empire from within may be the only feasible option at this time. Secondly, and just as important, Vermont’s secession would provide a better life for Vermonters than is currently possible under U.S. domination. Right now there are people working to push three bills into law in the Vermont Statehouse: one legalizing industrial hemp, one allowing the sale of farm-fresh meat, and one allowing the sale of farm-fresh milk. The bills are necessary because these three things are either prohibited or heavily restricted under U.S. law. I would like to know: who is Washington to tell me where I can and cannot slaughter my family cow? These restrictions were created by big agribusiness to keep citizens from growing their own food so they stay dependent upon the present economic system and fuel corporate profits. Vermonters should be free to implement whatever kind of health care they desire, without having to answer to Washington. The same can be said about education, about drug laws, about same-sex marriage, about the death penalty, about abortion rights, and especially about sending their sons and daughters off to fight in an unjust war. In the U.V.M. 2008 poll, 77% of Vermonters agreed that the United States has lost its moral authority—and I, for one, do not want to be governed by a body without morals. When I bring up the idea of secession in conversations, people often point to the Civil War. “It’s illegal” they say, “look at what happened when the South left the Union.” I will take the opportunity right now to say that these people are ignorant. First and foremost, the U.S. constitution does not forbid withdrawal from the Union. According to the Tenth Amendment, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” As Thomas Naylor of the Second Vermont Republic think tank points out, nowhere in the Constitution or in the state ratification documents is there any renunciation of sovereignty to the national government—which means that states can leave any time they please (Naylor, 2005). Second, when the Confederate states were in the process of leaving the Union, there were three proposed amendments to the constitution that would forbid secession. These did not pass, but that makes it clear that it is fully constitutional to secede. And lastly, when the Union army withdrew from the South, it forced the Confederate states to sign a clause forgoing the right of sovereignty. This clearly implies that states which have not signed this clause--Vermont being one of them—have the full right to secede from the Union. The idea of secession is not new, and it is not limited to Vermont. As I write this, sixty native Hawaiians have occupied the Iolani Palace in downtown Honolulu, stating that they are the true government of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and will begin governing immediately (Associated Press, 2008). What makes Vermont’s secession movement stand out, however, is the very real possibility that, if necessary, the state could govern and feed itself. Arguably, the transition to self-governance would be easiest in Vermont, where almost all of the state’s 237 towns convene once a year in a town meeting to vote upon issues of importance within the town. This is direct democracy in action, normal citizens getting together to make decisions for themselves, with no room for lobbyists and special interests to get in the way. Switzerland, with its 26 cantons, or small states, each with a good deal of autonomy, provides a working example of what Vermont could look like in the not-so-distant future. The cantons are small enough for the citizens’ voices to be heard, and most of the country holds to traditional agrarian values, which are encouraged by the government. With prosperous Switzerland as an example and a rich history of direct democracy under its belt, Vermont could surely govern itself. The question of providing enough food to sustain the population is a bit more complex. Before addressing this, I would like to point out that food self-sustainability would be necessary only in the event of total economic sanctions placed upon Vermont, or the event that the global or continental food system totally collapses. Noted author Bill McKibben addressed this issue in September 2007, and while he did not specifically give a “yes” or “no” answer, he makes it clear that in his opinion Vermont could make the transition to feed itself if it became necessary (McKibben 2007). I personally live in a cooperative, where I pay around $120 a month for food that has been grown and produced as close as possible to Burlington. This summer, I will be attempting to grow all of my own food, and sustain myself as much as possible by my own efforts. I know this opportunity does not currently exist for all Vermonters, but if it came down to it, anyone can tend a garden. Our state is currently “at the center of a renaissance of farmers' markets, farm stands, and other forms of direct sales from farmers to consumers” (Timmons 2006). Local food has become part of the culture, as Vermont has the highest per-capita direct sales in the country. As oil prices skyrocket, prices of local organic foods will become more and more competitive with heavily subsidized yet oil-dependent industrial agriculture, and the greater demand for local food will bring down the price even further. U.S. Reaction Should Vermont secede, the United States would be faced with a number of options, ranging from diplomatic to quite violent action. Given that our government, through its own National Security Strategy, is willing to eliminate even “perceived” threats to its power, its reaction must be carefully thought out and planned for. The first question that comes to mind is that of invasion or attack. If the 625,000 people of Vermont get together and decide to leave the Union, will Washington respond with violence? It could. Even though from an economic viewpoint Vermont exists solely for dairy, tourism, and maple syrup, the audacity of its people for even considering secession might push the U.S. government to respond militarily. Of course, Vermont would have no chance fighting back against the U.S. military (and probably wouldn’t even try), but even with that certain defeat the state has still accomplished one of the two goals it set out to accomplish. It would be noticed, both domestically and internationally, and it would probably find a surprising level of support. After all, it has been the norm for only half of the United States population to vote these days—I have an inkling that many of those who don’t vote do it for a reason, and the news that one of the states tried to secede may galvanize them into action. Another scenario is the U.S. allowing for secession, thanking the Vermont Republic for its time with the Union, and both entities go on their way. I have some doubts that this would occur. I think that the most realistic scenario would be a combination of both the violent and the nonviolent—the U.S. would develop a package of economic sanctions and place an embargo on Vermont, then lean on other countries like Canada to also adopt the embargo. Given that we share a border with Canada, the question of whether they would bend to U.S. pressure or continue to trade with Vermont is quite important. As I have said before, I am not alone in calling for secession. The Second Vermont Republic is a secessionist citizen’s network that has been around for five years, publishing editorials and appearing on prime time news networks. The Middlebury Institute for the study of separatism, secession, and self-determination has been convening conferences with separatist groups from all over the country since 2004, and is dedicated to looking at the policy implications of secession. And the Vermont Commons, a self-described online and print forum calling for independence, has been gaining steam since its introduction in 2005, with 13,000 copies of the last issue circulating all over the state. This is a movement that will continue to grow in the coming years, and it’s my belief that it can’t grow fast enough. Conclusion We are on a sinking ship. The American Empire is economically, politically, culturally, and especially environmentally unsustainable, and far from fixing itself, it is just getting worse. When a government of people who have no moral authority are in the possession of enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over, in the position to dominate the global economy for their own interests, and continually and foolishly place the needs of the “economic system” above the needs of the natural world, the time for action cannot be put off any longer. Someone, or something needs to stand in front of U.S. progress with an enormous red STOP sign. Vermont’s exodus will prove to be just that. We are an anomaly among the fifty states of the Union. We are a peaceful, ecologically responsible, and mostly agrarian state in a country dominated by big business, industrial agriculture, and big impersonal governance. It is time that we once again step up to the world stage and return once again to be a self-governing republic. On behalf of the citizens of Republic of Vermont, I would like to say “Thanks for the hospitality, Uncle Sam. The past 217 years have had their ups and downs, and after a long time together, we will now be on our way. We bid you adieu.” Keith Brunner is a third year undergraduate at the University of Vermont, studying the intersection of economy and politics with the natural world. He is also an assistant at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at UVM, and is currently homesteading in Charlotte, VT. Works Cited Baldwin, Ian, and Bryan, Frank. 2007. “The Once and Future Republic of Vermont.” Washington Post. Chomsky, Noam. 2003. “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance.” New York: Henry Holt & Company, LLC Commoner, Barry. 1971. “The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology.” Bantam Books Johnson, Chalmers. 2006. “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.” New York, NY: Metropolitan Books Johnson, Chalmers. 2007. “737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire” Retrieved April 30th, 2008 Johnson, Chalmers. 2008. “Why the U.S. has really gone broke.” Le Monde Diplomatique, February. McKibben, Bill. 2007. “Can Vermont Feed Itself?” Vermont Commons.) Naylor, Thomas. 2003. “The Vermont Manifesto.” Xlibris Corporation Niesse, Mark. 2008. “Hawaiian sovereignty seekers take over palace grounds.” Associated Press. Sale, Kirkpatrick. 2008. “You Know Your Empire is Collapsing When…” Vermont Commons Number 22 Stiglitz, Joseph. 2008. “The Three-Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.” New York: WW Norton & Company, Inc. Jensen, Derrick. 2006. “Endgame: The Problem of Civilization.” New York: Seven Stories Press “The Declaration of Independence” Retrieved April 30th, 2008 Timmons, Dave. 2006. “Local Food in Vermont- Mixed Messages.” Vermont Commons. US Department of State. 2007. “2007 Annual Report on Implementation of the Moscow Treaty” Retrieved April 29th, 2008 |