Page 25 - AEI Insights 2020 - Vol. 6, Issue 1

Bajrektarevic, 2020a

dominated European debates of the time. It brought about the conception of the ‘noble savage’
– who could be assimilated, versus the ‘ignoble savage’ who was destined for either labour
detention or final solution. That coerce-or-exterminate dilemma of ‘soul salvationists’ even
culminated within the pre-Westphalian Christian Ummah. It was best epitomised in the famous
Valladolid controversy of 1550, by which Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda’s notion of the ignoble
savage faced off against Bartolomé de Las Casa’s view of the noble savage.
In both cases – the claim was offered – the Amero/AfroAsian Natives deserve salvation as they
have a ‘strong desire for it’, but the views differed on whether the Natives’ prone wishes
exceeded their mental capacity to receive Christianity. Hence, the debates – which were the
roots and origins of the later liberal theories as well as the early precursors to the subsequent
regime change, humanitarian intervention and preemption doctrines, and to the (onesided
ultimatum of) EU Accession criteria – always presupposed the inferiority (and passivity) of
the Natives.

Frankly, this remains a constant behaviour in international relations: E.g. views on Libya
differed, as they differ today on Syria. However, what is common to all views is; nobody
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consults the local population and considers what they would like for themselves.

Legitimizing the imperialism of imagination

In a course of subsequent centuries, the notion of final solution underwent through a
sophistication, and was eventually replaced by the combination of cultural conversions/
submissions (induced submissiveness), politico-military obedience and socio-economic
apartheid. A subtle apartheid (that is easy to deny, but hard to prove) is usually better than the
brute genocide (which is traceable and easily quantifiable). At the peaks of imperialism a noble-
ignoble savage dilemma was embodied in an implicit and explicit racism. Debate was focused
on a question whether the nations’ inferiority can be remedied through the imperial ‘civilizing’
mission, with social Darwinists and ‘scientific’ racists being rather pessimistic, but more
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forthcoming on possible solutions.
The so-called central dilemma of liberalism – Is it liberal to impose liberal values on illiberal
societies – was of course only an innocently looking tip of the large iceberg, of the tireless
othering. This ‘epistemology’ was further soft-embedded in the so-called Peter Pan theory with
a romanticised image of the Other as more childishly careless and helpless, than intentionally
cruel and barbaric. Foreign remained Other, but ‘became’ rather alluring, promiscuous and
exotic. Essentially, the East as a child enveloped in innocence, a derided inferior who would
never grow up. This, of course, gave rise to various binary categorisations, the us-vs.-
them/either-or listings, in order to manufacture rift and hence to facilitate a decisive and long-
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lasting differentiation between the constructed West and the East.
The West as a constructed male vs. the East as a constructed female. A ‘mind-oriented’ west
vs. a ‘body-oriented’ east. Phallusoid peninsulas and islands of (Atlantic-Scandinavian) Europe

6 For centuries, it follows the same matrix: doctrinated/induced inferiority, denouncing, attack, marginalization,
passivation, plunder, indirect rule, remote control presence. Or, reduced to a binary code formula: victimisation-
criminalisation. Namely: humanitarian intervention.
th
7 E.g. Cecil Rhodes, the 19 century British businessman and the architect of Apartheid, used to say that to be
born an Englishman was to have ‘won first prize in the lottery of life’. He is also remembered of the following:
“I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the
human race.” Large part of colonial Africa was called after his name – Rhodesia, until rather recently, 1979.
8 Small surprise that the 43 US President (un)famously claimed: ‘you are either with us or against us’. His father,
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the 41 US President, viewed the Cold War and summarised its epilogue effectively: ‘We win, they lose’. For the
st
Atlantist’s world all should be Kierkegaardian either-or, a binary choice.
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