导 言
正如帝国主义与新帝国主义二者有着相通之处，历史性地产生进而向全球蔓延的殖民主义与新殖民主义这两大体系，也表现出一些基本的共性。当然，既然“新殖民主义”和“新帝国主义”都带有一个形容词前缀“新”，使其与各自的传统形式区别开，那么前后之间还是存在着些许差异的。相同之处在于，无论是“新”是“旧”，它们都是各自特定历史时期的产物，而且都涉及到一部分地区、国家和民族对另外一些地区、国家和民族的操控、统治与剥削。无论是哪一种形式，它们都是硬实力和软实力在当时特定历史条件下以动态变化的规则相融合而成（如今奥巴马政府又提出一个新名词“巧实力”，即硬实力和软实力的“最优”组合），其方式或直接或间接，其水平、结构和具体表现多种多样。
传统的殖民主义和帝国主义更倾向于直接、有形的介入，通过从远距离和在东道国当地同时投放并输送硬实力，攫取对境外领土的控制权，然后再进行安抚、掌管和持续控制；至于对软实力的采用，也有一些，但并不多。而新殖民主义和新帝国主义，通常来说会选择运用更间接、更“柔性”的经济、政治、法律和文化等力量形式，从异地的远程基地投放之后，又经由一些“依附性的”“被征服的”本土化机构和精英们输送转换；同时，也在保证硬实力威慑（公开的军事行动和隐蔽的幕后操控）时刻待命，若有必要亮出来的时候决不会手软。
尽管世界范围的交通、通讯成本日益降低，强国霸权还是更青睐于投射形式更轻柔、距离更远的软实力（“天鹅绒手套”），胜过于更为直接化、本土化和公开化的粗暴硬实力（“铁拳”）。之所以如此，可不仅仅是由于霸权之手伸得过长、维持海外基地和据点的成本过高，以至于在殖民主义和帝国主义统治中心的内外不断制造出财政危机及其它危机；原因还在于，在比较直接粗暴的硬实力的运用之下，所造成的冲突会更加剑拔弩张、更加昭然若揭，其剥削性的真实本质、霸权统治的真正赢家和输家都一清二楚。铁腕推行硬实力的举动，将会不可避免地对尚未参战人员产生“副作用”——它往往更能激起而不是磨灭人们对侵略者的反抗。这与博得外围国家“心悦诚服”的战略要求是不相符合的。
以国际教育为排头兵的“软实力”被日渐倚重，其中还有一个重要因素，那就是遏制、影响、“教化”和劝服攻势的形式更为间接、隐蔽、潜在、柔和，而实现此类任务的技术不断地趋于复杂、难以察觉、效力更强——因为这类攻势使得那些被剥削者能更加直接甚至是“心甘情愿”地参与到对自身的剥削之中。正如壮烈牺牲的南非自由斗士、“黑人觉醒运动”领导人史蒂夫•比科（Steve Biko）所揭示的那样：“压迫者最有效的武器就是被压迫者的意志。”歌德也曾说过：“最无望的被奴役者莫过于那些误以为自己拥有自由身之人。”
软实力、硬实力以及应用这两种力量的核心在于教育，包括国际教育。教育提供了必要的技术手段和专家团队，用以发展软硬实力的相关技术和将之推行于全球的最有效手段。教育设定了一个框架，决定着我们准备利用自身感知力去发现什么（哪些是值得、哪些是不值得关注的主题），或进而去思考什么。教育树立了一些范式，而我们正是通过这些范式去运用自己的感知力，决定着我们感官所收集到的信息中哪些要接受、哪些要摒弃，决定着我们乐于去接近、接受或抵触什么样的信息源、什么样的“权威”。教育塑造了一些视角，约束着我们如何看待我们自身以及所处的社会经济、政治法律体系，相应地如何看待他人和他们各自所处的体系。教育形成了我们的眼界，影响着我们认为哪些是不可触犯的神谕，哪些是不能涉足的禁区。教育铸就了我们的历史观，引导着我们判断本国历史或别国历史中哪些方面是值得关注与反思的。教育打造出我们的科学观，规范着我们对于科学、科学方法及其应当如何运作和应用的观念。教育在向我们灌输，就我们现有体制的存在和扩张而言，哪些是我们应当奉为圭臬的主流“文化”、价值和信条。教育左右了大众消费的偏好和品味，我们所选择（或者说是被引导甚或被诱使）消费的内容，既是在反映同时也在塑造着我们的主流价值，包括我们需要生产什么、怎样生产、为谁生产，生产和资源配置应当如何进行。教育教导我们，对哪些词汇应当深刻领会并娴熟运用，对哪些词汇根本无须理会；教育还规定着词汇的内涵——包括“教育”这个概念本身的内涵。
在美国及其他各处的新保守主义和新自由主义看来，第四次世界大战即全球反恐战争已经进行了一段时日。随之而来的则有这样几个基本问题：第三次世界大战又是指什么？它是何时开始的呢？它仍在进行当中吗？该如何定义“胜利”二字？
为数不少的新保守主义者和新自由主义者，将第三次世界大战视为不同社会制度和意识形态之间争夺“心灵与思想”的全球性战争，在他们眼里，这场战争大致开始于1980年前后并持续至今。对他们而言，在资本主义面前，社会主义和共产主义“存在即威胁”——他们委婉地称之为对“民主”的威胁。新保守主义者也好，新自由主义者也好，都把这场发生在不同社会制度及不同意识形态间的全球性战争，看作是一场旷日持久的争夺战，不到资本主义最终取得对社会主义不可逆转的胜利，不到西方式的政治多元化（他们将之与“民主”相提并论）取得对一党制治理的胜利，就绝不会终结。他们清楚地懂得，社会主义建设及其对外防御所必需的人民、机制、生产关系和价值观的类型，完全不同于全球范围内资本主义扩大再生产所必需的价值观（极端个人主义、过度消费、自私自利、物质至上、急功近利等等）。
历史上的国际教育
殖民主义和帝国主义将国际教育作为推行霸权与实施统治的工具由来已久。早在罗马时代，霸权的推行不仅经常导致种族灭绝，而且还遵循了“种族灭绝”一词的始用者拉斐尔•莱姆金（波兰籍犹太学者拉斐尔•莱姆金于1944年在其文章《轴心国统治下被占领的欧洲》中，最早创造了“genocide”一词，即“种族灭绝”）所概括出的两大阶段：第一步，对锁定为进行种族灭绝和（或）外国统治目标的族群，摧毁其“国家形式”；第二步，在实施种族灭绝和（或）霸权推行中，将殖民或帝国霸权的国家形式强加于其上。
即使到了现在，英国仍拥有一批致力于地理学、人类学和外国语言学研究的顶级大学——这是因为，相较于刚刚才悟出这个道理的美国霸权，英国的殖民和帝国强权早已深谙此道：当你组织大量装备精良的军队、凭借坚固的军事基地来对土著民族实施直接统治和越界占领时，当地人无疑会十分清楚谁是统治者、谁是被统治者。他们还很明白：海外基地将耗费巨大，会在自己的大本营内制造财政危机及其它危机；同时，海外基地一旦被潜在的充满敌视情绪的原住民所包围，将是不堪一击的。因此，英国设置了“地区长官”体系，招募本土精英（大多是具有混合血统并且肤色较浅的本地人）并让他们到大学中接受培训，随后再安排他们对“他们自己”的人民进行统治，或协助外来强权实施控制；借助于这些精英所构成的网络，只需相对较少但训练有素的殖民行政管理人员就能有效地实现统治。如同今日之美国一样，当时的英国不仅鼓吹他们是世界“文明使命”的组成部分，而且把自己的政治、经济、文化、法律与社会体系以及价值观作为“普世性范本”——如果哪个国家对“文明”（这种“文明”已经被殖民和帝国强权定了型）的进步报有任何方面（如水平、形式和速度等）的期待，就必须仿效这个范本。
就像今天一样，传教士们将身份隐藏在“国际教育人士”等各种外表和名目之下，被派出充当种族灭绝活动的分包商和殖民帝国霸权的急先锋。他们所采用的典型形式，用美洲土著民族的概括说法就是“3B体系”——圣经（Bible）、美元（Buck）和子弹（Bullet）。首先是圣经，与之形影相随或紧随其后的是商业利益，同时也少不了军事表现，以便维护既得利益并进一步介入。同公元4世纪早期在尼西亚大公会议上将基督教树立为罗马帝国正统宗教的罗马皇帝康斯坦丁一样，英国及其许多传教士都明白一点：要想最终摧毁现存的原住民机构（“国家形式”）并用另一套机构取而代之，那么首先应当循序渐进地拉拢、利用既有机构，例如借用异教徒的礼拜日和宗教仪式，这远比直接地公开围剿这些东西更加奏效。这意味着，若企图捣毁当地的“国家形式”，就必须先努力了解这种形式和当地民族语言，并且（或者）借助于不同的面目和伪装，雇佣、教导、训练当地人去奉命行事。
和英国一样，美国霸权正在面向未来，寻求权谋的长远推行和更为间接隐蔽的统治。他们已经建起“教育交流”，引入一批从东道国或别处挑选出来的精英和具有精英潜质的人，向其灌输世界观，传授实用技能，植入符合霸权利益的信条。这些精英中的许多人受到了刻意扶植，借高等教育等各种背景镀了“金”，从而不仅可以在一些名义上是当地的、本民族的、“去殖民化”的机构中获取和保持一定的权力地位，而且能够作为有别于本地人的教育人士、政治家、科学家、传教士、文化传播者、情报人员等，以这类身份展开一些服务于境外势力的活动。
现实中的国际教育
外国语言学习与交流
随着全球化步伐加快和广度深度不断扩大，国际教育的必要性比以往任何时候都更受到重视。最偏远的民族、地区和社会形态，正在越来越快地被卷入和统一到一个与资本主义规则信条相适应的动态的全球经济体当中来。在此情势之下，一方面更多的非英语人群要去学习英语，另一方面许多以英语为母语的人也要去学习其他正在兴起的有影响力的语言。各种项目和交流机构纷纷设立，一部分的确从事着他们所公开宣称的业务，但有一些却名不副实。这些项目不仅事关学习不同的语言，而且涉及到跨文化的认知、跨国联系的建立。
并非所有的文化和语言学习交流项目都出自善意。在曾经当过“经济杀手”的约翰•珀金斯（他曾受雇于美国国家安全局，协助该部门诱使穷国和独裁体制踏入在劫难逃的债务和奴役性偿债陷阱之中）的几本书中，他谈到了世界少数民族语文研究院（SIL International），美国一个极端保守的基督教新教会团体，专事于整理研究少数民族语言、接近失传的土著语言，并组织相关培训。他们与西方情报机构签有培训协议，据说还为一些大型跨国公司例如石油公司提供培训，以便介入当地的领土和文化，通过向当地人提供食品、药品和衣物，以及将当地人迁往教会保留地等方式，迫使或拉拢当地人向外国公司交出矿藏丰富的土地和资源。他们还参与圣经的翻译工作，译成稀有和近乎失传的语言。实际上，当一个人学习一种新的语言时，学习过程中的反馈效应会潜移默化地影响此人的思想体系，影响他对各种问题和利益取向的观念，因此，这时他所能接触到、学习到的特定的语法、词源、词汇，连同那些他无从接触到的东西，一起塑造着实用语言中的范例、价值观和水平，塑造着这个学习者的立场观点，哪怕是在他自己的文化环境中学习他自己的母语时也会发挥作用。
基金会、研究院和“专家鉴定”
诸如美国国家民主捐赠基金会、福特基金会、洛克菲勒基金会之类，目前各地充斥着大量老牌的或新建的全球基金会和研究院，组织国际教育交流，分发印刷精美的出版物，为贯彻帝国主义利益和意图担任前沿阵地（“智库”）。它们还有能力给物色好的、中意的学者和学生们搭建发表见解的讲坛，推广他们的学术出版物以提高知名度，给予奖金丰厚的奖项，提供在知名学校和“智库”的教研职位，由此建立起有益于帝国利益的各种全球工作关系和人脉。近来，这些机构正在着眼未来，挖掘和培养一批年轻的学者、官员和潜在精英，这些人现在可以接受招募，未来可以安插到他们能够升迁到的各自国内职位而服务于西方国家利益。由于青年学者往往年龄不大，刚刚拿到学位却缺少研究经历和著作，因此他们特别容易上钩并受摆布——这样他们就能得到资助来创作和出版学术著作，而一旦拥有了这些，青年学者将很快地在本国和境外的学术圈子里步入上升通道。青年人经常会陷入无所适从的境地：一方面他们由于履历平平或缺少名校学位，无法找到工作或研究职位，另一方面他们由于没能找到合适的工作或研究机会，又不可能拥有一份沉甸甸的履历。而这些基金会提供了一个“浮士德式的交易”（指浮士德为了追求更多知识而将灵魂献给魔鬼作为交换），使他们得以立即跳出这样的陷阱或困境。这些基金会和研究院还能够影响国内外的研究导向、内容和应用，并在时事评论和各项事务中树立一派观点。
来自西方著名教育机构的大名鼎鼎的首席“专家”们，正在被引进到外围地区，并像其他一切商品一样得到推销。经常会出现这种情况，当你仔细去审视这些“专家”的作品时，尤其是在社会科学和艺术领域，你会发现他们的工作真的十分稀松平常，根本不比外围地区学者正在做着的工作“先进”到哪儿去。然而，就是存在着一种能够打造出名牌的权力，就是有一批个人和机构拥有这些“品牌”，这使得他们处处受到追捧和邀请，并形成将来可以为霸权利益效力的关系和同盟。一些外围国家地区的青年学者久闻“专家”盛名（要么身为教科书或研究著作的作者，要么拥有令人惊羡的头衔和资格认证），他们寻求“专家”们的资助以照亮个人前程，他们渴望着能移民到西方国家的重镇去工作，因此，在这些年轻人面前，“专家”们还扮演着“吸引者”“物色者”甚至是“招募者”的角色。
如今，超过5万家各类非政府组织(NGOs)涉足于国际教育和交流。这些组织一般来说只围绕着某一特定课题，经常是以其所关注的特殊事务或领域而命名。部分机构除了成为各种西方商业和情报利益的前哨，它们还通过不同形式、程度的“分而治之”，通过制造一些“行动已经奏效”的假象，安抚或笼络那些具有“进步”思想或危害制度安全思想的人士，消解或缓和、笼络由于单一问题或政治方面原因的政治激进主义。这些组织提供旅行考察的机会，提供国际会见、国际研究和数据库的资源，提供见习机会，这样可以在乏善可陈的简历上增光添彩，让人产生为当代各种全球性问题“做了些事情”的虚幻成就感。它们有时提供“内部”和定制的专业学位及认证证书，这些证书载有知名头衔，与西方知名教育、商业和研究机构有所往来。它们通过让一些外围国家地区的教育机构、政治—经济机构同西方权威机构建立联系和交流，立时提升了这些机构的“可信度”，提高了其世界地位。
教科书、“文化产品”以及教育设备和软件
在教科书、文学、音乐、时尚、电影、电视节目及教育等各领域中，为了出口相关的设备和软件并切合当地应用的需要，作为帝国主义软实力和硬实力的推行，美国及其西方盟国正在进行并不断升级重要的创新和竞争。任何情况下，关于脑部科学、认知心理学、人类学、实验心理学、经济学、政治类科学、教学法和其他规律的主要的探索成果，一切可以普遍适用和专用于某类文化的切入点、战术和机制，只要有利于说服教育、塑造思想和开展宣传，都会加以吸收利用。所有这些推行软实力和硬实力的措施，其覆盖的内容、范围和深度都经过仔细考量、精心计算并停留在思想层面上，保证控制在正当合法的尺度内而不触犯法律。
这片领域的确算得上是一个富矿。由于很多教师和研究者确实是（或感觉到）工作强度很大，而这些设备和软件被推销成包装精美、分门别类、“尖端水平”、挂有“金字招牌”、“易于掌握运用”、“省时省力”又综合全面的商品，加之来自西方而被想象为“优质”和“先进”产品，因此很容易诱使他们接纳和使用这些工具，但其实只不过是帝国主义文化和利益的载体。特别是一些学业负担繁重的年轻的研究生们，常被指派去给本科生上各种专业基础课，他们更容易成为这些营销的目标人群。另外，营销活动的最惯用的伎俩之一，就是通过对设备和软件的相关设计与定价策略，使购买者对境外的关键性支持服务和后续进口形成极大依赖。
时尚、音乐、文学、电影、电视节目，也被用作软实力和硬实力的工具。隐含在其经过精心设计的内容、形式和具体应用之中，一个最核心的信息就是，“外国”意味着优等，应当加以效仿和追捧，而外围民族的文化和历史则是“劣等”的，甚至是导致外围国家一切所谓“落后状态”的所谓主要“原因”。这类商品的生产带来了可观的出口及东道国市场利润，更重要的是，与资本主义相关联的价值观和文化优势，帝国主义霸权所推动的大众消费，能够而且现实地制造出了不同形式和程度的依附、奴役性债务陷阱、自主权的丧失。被“糖衣炮弹”击中的国民，就像在都市化统治中心生活的各民族一样，正在获得这样的认识：当我们以一个人“拥有”和消费什么东西、多少东西，而不是以一个拥有物品的人这个主体，来定义“个人自由”和幸福成功时，那么这些物品，以及那些进行推销和提供融资的人，就有可能最终支配这个人。这些推行软实力的措施十分强调而且强化了教育类形式，因为不少青年学生出于个人发展或其他原因，被异域或外国的时尚、音乐、文学、电影和电视节目所吸引；同时，他们也许贬低了自己所处的社会，认为社会没能重视并提供这些“文明”“进步”的教具。
视觉、听觉、线条、影像等技术与风格的创新，在范围、深度和复杂程度各方面都与日俱增，应用于电影、电视、音乐、文学、艺术、时尚当中，使得“但愿长梦不愿醒”的心态以及逃避现实生活的疏离感越来越容易产生巨大的效果。影片、电视变得更加图形化和情绪化，人们需要更新奇更刺激的轻松娱乐，而这些需求也确实得到了满足。在人们欣赏电影或电视节目时，实际上这些作品运用了很多手法来促使观众们产生“暂时抛开一切怀疑”的念头，而同样的一些技术可以被用于而且也正在用于制造和培养其他服从于帝国主义利益的信念。设计这样的技术，不仅是为了方便灌输，也不仅仅是用当地文化不具备的典型的“异域”风情吸引和挑逗观众，而是要对被视作帝国主义扩张之障碍的当地文化加以侵蚀，并最终将其摧毁到失去个性识别度。
结 语
众所周知，如果有可能的话，美国及其同盟者们将越来越避免硬实力的表现形式，避免对境外领土的实际侵占与控制。当到了硬实力非上不可的时候，美国的霸权集团正在发展更为灵活、敏捷、简洁、“巧妙”却是致命的武器和部署能力，而不是从实体上占领和管理大面积的境外领土。出于上文所述的原因及其他原因，它们越来越重视发展形式异常复杂的软实力以及推行运用软实力的手段。不过，帝国主义的软实力推行绝非真的那么富有“柔性”和非强制性。如果我们将“强制”定义为一种力量，这种力量可以获得赞同或者是迫使某人在不知情不自愿的情况下按照他人意愿行事，那么软实力这种形式，特别是当它被开发运用到发挥人们潜意识的作用，运用到对信息予以制约和塑造，从而促使某人按照他人意愿和利益行事时，这种隐蔽性的强制权力同样是具有极大强制性的。
帝国主义软实力的目标，就在于维护和壮大其社会模式的特征、价值、信条和利益，使这种模式作为所有国家效仿的一种普世性范例，若是这样无法得逞，再以公开强硬的武力相威胁，陷这些国家于持续的危险之中。随着世界性危机的发生，以及帝国霸权被内部不断发酵的财政危机和社会—文化—政治衰落逼入死胡同，软实力和硬实力这两种力量形式的推行似乎都更加不计后果、孤注一掷。拥有和攫取得越多，就必须丧失得越多。帝国霸权的推行，无论对受害者来说，还是对霸权推行者来说，都经常伴随着比地震和飓风更具灾难性的后果；同时，它如同地震和飓风一样，尽管目前还无法彻底消除，但却可以去认识、去了解。正是通过了解这些霸权施行的本质、起源、途径、措施和意图，那些作为其对象和目标的国民才能最大程度地保护自己的文化、社会经济和政治法律体系，使其免遭逐步的破坏、侵蚀以至最终颠覆，维持自治、自决和独立。
此文译自英文国际期刊《国际思想评论》（International Critical Thought)2011年第1卷第1期（2011年5月伦敦出版），作者为北美洲印第安人黑鹰族后裔，现任美国克拉克大学经济学和地理学教授。
International Education and Imperial Penetration, Co-optation and Control.
By James Craven/Oomahkohkiaaiipooyii
Introduction
The historically generated and globalized systems of colonialism and neo-colonialism, as in the cases of imperialism and neo-imperialism, carry common denominators (nouns colonialism and imperialism) because they have some fundamental features in common. They also have some features that are different—hence the adjective “neo” differentiating them from the classical forms. What they all have in common is that they are all systems that belong to specific historical periods, and, they all involve control, domination and exploitation of some regions, nations and peoples by others. Each type of system incorporates specific, historically determined, dynamic, formulae or algorithms, of direct and indirect, levels, structures and specific forms, of both hard and soft power. The strategic goals of colonial and imperial powers involve penetration, control, domination and exploitation of nations, regions and peoples of the “peripheries” for the benefit of the policies and expanded reproduction of the metropolitan colonizing or imperial power centers.
Classical colonialism and imperialism historically, have involved the more direct and physical penetration, taking, settling, holding and ongoing control of foreign territory through both distant and localized projections and transmissions of hard power; with some, but few, forms of soft power to follow. Generally neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism, involve projections of more indirect, and “softer” forms of power (economic, political, legal and cultural) from more distant bases transmitted through “dependent” and “captive” localized institutions and elites, with threats of hard power (overt military and covert operations) projections at the ready and certainly used when needed.
Even with decreasing costs of transport and communications globally, imperial powers prefer the more distant and softer forms of power (the “velvet glove”) over the more direct, localized and overtly brutal forms of hard power (the “iron fist”). This is not only due to the fact that imperial overreach and high costs of standing foreign bases and settlements overseas create fiscal and other crises within and throughout the metropolitan colonial and imperial centers, but, also, because the contradictions are more intense and naked, and the real exploitative nature and real winners and losers of imperial or colonial rule, are much clearer and naked with the more direct and brutal forms of hard power projections. The inevitable “collateral damage” on non-combatants that comes inexorably with hard power projections often serve to recruit rather than dampen, resistance to foreign domination and is not consistent with winning “hearts and minds” in the peripheries.
Another factor in the increasing use of “soft power”, with international education at the forefront, is that the technologies of more indirect, covert, subliminal and softer forms of coercion, influence, “education” and persuasion are increasingly sophisticated , harder to detect, and, more effective, as they allow and facilitate the exploited to more directly, and even “voluntarily”, participate in their own exploitation. As the martyred South African freedom fighter Steve Biko put it: “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” And as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe put it: “None are more hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”
At the core of the production functions of all social formations, and of both hard and soft power and the goals of their application , is education including international forms. Education provides the technical skills and personnel with expertise needed to develop the technologies of both hard and soft power as well as the most effective means for their global projections. Education sets the frames for what we are prepared to use our senses to discover (worthy versus unworthy topics) or even consider. Education shapes the prisms (paradigms) through which we use our senses, decide what of the data gathered by our senses we are likely to accept and reject, and, what sources and what “authorities” we are prepared to access, accept or reject. Education shapes how we see ourselves and our own socioeconomic and politico-legal systems relative to how we see others and their respective systems. Education shapes our views of what is sacred and what is taboo. Education shapes our views of history and which ‘aspects of our own history or the histories of others are worthy of focus and consideration. Education shapes our view of what is science and scientific method and how they are conducted and applied. Education shapes what we take to be our dominant “culture”, values, and imperatives of survival and expanded reproduction of the systems we live under. Education provides the incomes for mass consumption as well as the tastes and preferences shaping what we consume; and what we choose or are induced and/or seduced to consume, both reflects and shapes, our dominant values as well as what we need to produce, how to produce it, and, for whom, production and resource allocations shall take place. Education teaches what words are worth knowing and using and which not; and education shapes what words mean or do not mean—including the concept of “education” itself.
According to the neoconservatives (NC) and neoliberals (NL) in the U.S. and elsewhere, World War IV, the global war against terrorism, has been underway for some time. That begs some fundamental questions: What was or is World War III? When did it begin? Is it still underway? How is “victory” defined?
Many of the neoconservatives, and neoliberals too, see World War III as a global war between systems and ideologies for “Hearts and Minds”; and, according to them, it has been underway since around 1980. According to these forces, socialism and communism are “existential threats” to capitalism and what they euphemistically call “democracy”. The neoconservatives and neoliberals too, see this global war between systems and their respective ideologies as a long and protracted one that will only end with the final and irreversible “triumph” of capitalism over socialism, and Western-style political pluralism , which they equate with “democracy” over single-party rule. They understand very well that the types of people, institutions, relations, and values necessary for socialist construction and its defense are very different than those necessary for the “social capital” and expanded reproduction of capitalism on a global scale (ultra-individualism, mass consumerism, selfishness, materialism, inability to delay gratification , get-rich-quick, etc).
International Education in History
The use of International education by colonial and imperial powers as an instrument of power projection and rule has a long history. Even in Roman times, colonial and imperial power projections and intentions not only often brought with them genocide , but followed the two fundamental phases of genocide outlined by the originator of the word “genocide”, Polish Jurist Raphael Lemkin: 1) destruction of the “national pattern” of the groups targeted for genocide and/or foreign control over; 2) imposition of the national pattern of the colonial or imperial power conducting the genocide and/or power projections.
Even today, some of the top universities specializing in geography, anthropology and foreign languages are found in Great Britain as the British colonial and imperial powers understood what the U.S. Imperium is only beginning to understand: that when you have direct rule and occupation of foreign territory by large numbers of well-armed foreigners, in fortified military bases with extra-territorial powers over indigenous peoples, it makes it very clear to the locals who are the rulers and who are the ruled. They also understood that overseas bases can be costly, can generate fiscal and other crises in the home metropolitan social formations, and, when surrounded by potentially hostile indigenous populations, are highly vulnerable to attack. So the British set up the “D.C” or “District Commissioner” system where only a relatively few highly trained colonial administrators ruled through networks of local elites (mostly mixed-race and lighter-skinned indigenous persons) recruited and trained in the universities of the colonial and imperial powers, trained and installed to rule and aid in the projections colonial and imperial power over “their own” people. The British, like the U.S. today, not only preached they were part of a global “civilizing mission”, but projected their own political, economic, cultural, legal and social institutions, values and systems as “universal templates”, that all nations must copy, if they were to have any hope of the levels, forms and rates of growth of “civilization” said to be modeled by the colonial and imperial powers.
Missionaries, then as today, operating under various covers and fronts, including as “international educators”, were sent in as subcontractors in genocide and front men (and women) for colonial and imperial power projections and control. They followed the typical pattern captured in the phrase common among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: “The 3-B system” or “Bible, Buck (dollar) and Bullet”. First the Bible, accompanied or followed by commercial interests, followed by military presences (troops and support bases) to facilitate more penetration and protect that which has occurred. The British, like many of their missionaries, understood, like the Roman Emperor Constantine who established Christianity as the dominant religion of the Roman Empire at the Council of Nicaea in the early fourth century AD, that in destroying existing indigenous institutions (“national patterns”) and replacing them with others, starting with, and then gradually co-opting, the existing institutions, such as sacred pagan holidays and rituals, was far more effective in ultimately smashing them and replacing them with others than in putting them directly and openly under siege. This meant that those seeking to smash the indigenous “national patterns” had to understand them, as well as local indigenous languages and/or had to hire, indoctrinate and train locals to do their bidding for them under various fronts and disguises.
Like the British, the U.S. Imperium is looking to the future and to long-term power projections and more apparently indirect and covert rule. They have set up “educational exchanges”, bringing in selected elites and individuals with potential to become elites in their home countries or elsewhere, hungry for educational opportunities and statuses not available in their home countries, to be indoctrinated with world views, practical tools and paradigms consistent with colonial and imperial interests and their power projections. Many of these elites were specifically groomed and equipped with educational and other backgrounds that would not only allow them to capture and hold positions of power in nominally local, indigenous and “de-colonized” institutions, but also to act as educators, politicians, scientists, missionaries, carriers of culture and influence and intelligence agents against local populations, in service of foreign powers as well.
International Education Today
Foreign Language Studies and Exchanges
With the pace, scope and depth of globalization increasing daily, the imperative for international education is seen as more critical today than ever before. Increasingly, the most remote peoples, regions and social formations are being integrated and articulated within a dynamic global economy run in accordance with capitalist principles and imperatives. Not only are more non-English-speaking people under the imperative to learn English, but many English-speaking people are under the imperative to learn other emerging influential languages as well. All sorts of programs and exchanges are being set up, some actually doing what they openly claim to be doing, some not. These programs are not only about learning different languages, but are involved in cross-cultural awareness, establishing cross-border relationships and even obtaining work abroad when unemployment rates rise in some home economies.
Not all of the cultural and linguistic study and exchange programs are benign. In several of his books, former “economic hit man” (who worked for the U.S. National Security Agency helping to lure poor nations and despotic regimes into impossible-to-escape debt peonage) John Perkins discusses the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) now called SIL International, an ultra-conservative Christian evangelical group in the U.S. that specializes in the documentation, study of and training in rare and sometimes near-extinct Indigenous languages. They not only hold contracts to train Western intelligence services in these rare languages, they also allegedly train large transnational companies, like oil companies, to penetrate indigenous lands and cultures to force or co-opt them to turn over resource-rich lands and their resources to foreign companies by offering to move them to missionary reservations and to provide food, medicines and clothing in return for deeds to their lands. They are also involved in translations of the Bible into rare and near-extinct languages. Further, when one learns a new language, the specific constructs, terms, sources, vocabulary that one is exposed to and learns, along with those one is not exposed to and does not learn, serve to shape the paradigms, values, levels of useful knowledge and perspectives of that person learning with feedback effects on that person’s ideology, meanings of words and perspectives on various issues and interests even when operating in his or her own native language and in his or her own culture.
Foundations, Institutes and “Expertise”
There is a plethora of both established and new global foundations and institutes like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, etc., that organize international education exchanges, produce and distribute glossy publications, as well as operate as fronts (“think tanks”) for imperial interests and intentions. They have the capacity to give selected and favored academics and students forums and visibility for their academic publications, provide lucrative grants, provide research and teaching positions at prestigious schools and “think tanks”, and to establish all sorts of global working relationships and friendships that may be beneficial to imperial interests. They are presently looking to the future to find and cultivate young scholars and functionaries, potential future elites that can be recruited in the present to be placed in positions where they can rise in their respective countries and serve imperial interests in the future. Young academics are especially vulnerable to approach and manipulation in that as they are often young and have recent graduate degrees but little experience or publications, they can be given assistance with generating and publishing academic publications, in the right venues, that will fast-track them to upward mobility in academia at home and abroad. The young are often caught in a “Catch-22” trap where they cannot find employment or research opportunities because their resumes are light on experience or degrees from prestigious schools, and their resumes are light because they cannot find employment or research opportunities; these foundations offer them “Faustian Bargains” that allow them to instantly escape such traps or dilemmas. These foundations and institutes are also able to influence both foreign and domestic research directions, content and applications in service of imperial paradigms and interests and to shape perspectives on the debates and issues of the times.
Leading “experts” with big names from prestigious educational institutions in the West, are brought in to the peripheries and marketed as if they were like any other commodity. Often, when one examines their work, especially in the social sciences and arts, their work is really quite pedestrian and not at all “advanced” from what scholars in the peripheries are doing. But there is the power of branding and “brand names” (individuals and institutions) that allow them to be invited and to form relationships and associations to serve imperial interests well into the future. They also act as “attractors” to and “spotters”, and even “recruiters” of young scholars of the peripheries who have heard of them by reputation as authors of texts or touted research, or as individuals with impressive titles and credentials and who seek their patronage to secure their own futures, often in the imperial centers to which they hope to emigrate, work and where increasing percentages remain. They are agents of brain drains that loot some of the most skilled and talented to the metropolitan centers of the Imperium.
All sorts of Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), more than 50,000 today, are involved in international education and exchanges. They are generally organized around specific single issues and are often titled to show their particular issues or areas of focus. Some not only act as fronts for various Western commercial and intelligence interests, but they help to dissipate or co-opt individuals with “progressive” or system-threatening ideologies and passions with forms and levels of “divide-and-rule” and illusions of effective action that often go with, and yet dissipate or mitigate or co-opt, political activism on single-issue causes or politics. They offer opportunities for travel, for global contacts, research and data bases, for internships, to embellish meager resumes, and, to give some comfort with the illusion of “doing something” about various global issues of the times. They recruit foreign students with specialized skills (foreign languages, mathematics, science, knowledge of foreign cultures and politics, computers, etc) in subjects that the educational systems of the West simply cannot or will not equip students from the Western nations to acquire and apply. They sometimes offer “in-house” and customized academic degrees and certificates that carry prestigious titles and are associated with prestigious educational, business and research institutions in the West and abroad. The give educational and politico-economic institutions in the periphery instant “credibility” and enhanced global standings with associations and exchange programs with prestigious institutions of the Western Imperium.
Textbooks, “Culture”, and Educational Hardware and Software
In the areas of exporting and adapting to local uses, textbooks, literature, music, fashion, movies, television programs and educational and other hardware and software, as forms of imperial soft and hard power projections, the U.S. and Western allies are making and stepping-up major innovations and campaigns. In all cases, major “discoveries” in brain science, cognitive psychology, anthropology, experimental psychology, economics, political science, pedagogy and other disciplines, associated with universal, as well as culturally-specific triggers, tactics and mechanisms of persuasion and the shaping of ideologies and agenda, are being incorporated. What is carefully, calculatingly and ideologically controlled in all these instruments of soft and hard power are the allowable versus non-allowable, content, scopes and depths of coverage.
This is especially fertile ground as many teachers and researchers are, or feel, overworked, and thus hardware and software, marketed as packaged, glossy, structured, “state-of-the-art”, prestigious “brand name”, “easy-to-use-and-apply”, “labor-saving” and comprehensive, plus from the West and thus supposedly “superior” and “advanced”, are easily induced to adopt and use these tools marketed as labor-saving but in essence carriers of imperial culture and interests. Young graduate students, with heavy workloads, often assigned to teach undergraduate and foundational courses in various academic disciplines, are especially targeted by these marketing approaches. Plus, built into some of the hardware and software being exported are “backdoors” that allow surveillance of computers and their connections and applications from a distance. In addition, one of the oldest tricks in marketing is to design and price hardware and software to as to cause dependence on critical supporting services and complementary inputs from abroad.
Fashion, music, literature, movies and television programs are also used as instruments of soft and hard power. Embodied in their calculated content, forms and applications are the central message that “foreign” means superior, to be emulated and preferred, and that which is part of the culture and history of the peoples of the “peripheries” is “inferior” and, even the major alleged “cause” of any alleged “backwardness” in the nations of the peripheries. Not only are very lucrative export and domestic markets created with these types of commodities, but, in addition, the values and priorities associated with capitalism and the mass consumerism pushed by the imperial powers, can and do create forms and levels of debt peonage, dependence and loss of autonomy . People in the nations targeted by imperial interests, are learning, as are the peoples of the metropolitan centers, that when one defines “personal freedom” and prosperity in terms of what and how much one “owns” and consumes, instead of a person owning things, the things, and those who sold and financed them, may well wind up owning that person. These instruments of soft power articulate with and reinforce the forms of soft power in education as many young students, for developmental and other reasons, are attracted to “exotic” or “foreign” fashions, music, literature, movies and television and they may devalue their own societies that perceive to have failed to value and provide these trappings of “civilization” and “progress”.
Exponentially increasing—in scope, depth and sophistication---innovations in optics, audio, graphics, film technique and genres, and, the like, applied to movies, television, music, literature, art and fashion, make the “suspension of disbelief” and escape from the realities of life easier and easier to effect on a mass level. Films and television get increasingly graphic and sensational with new and more intense levels of titillation (modern versions of the Roman “bread and circus”) are being demanded and those demands met. The same technologies employed to make masses “suspend disbelief” when they go to movies or watch television can be employed and are employed to create and nurture other kinds of beliefs in service of imperial interests. They are designed not only to indoctrinate, not only to draw in and titillate audiences with the “exotic” typically not found in local cultures, they are also designed to undermine and eventually destroy beyond recognition the indigenous cultures seen as obstacles to imperial expanded reproduction.
Conclusion
By all accounts, in the U.S. and its allies, are increasingly eschewing, if possible, forms of hard power and the actual taking and holding, physically, of foreign territory. When hard power projections are necessary, the U.S. Imperium is developing more agile, rapid, flexible, precise, “smart”, transitory and lethal weapons and deployment capabilities rather than physically occupying and holding large areas of foreign territories. They are focusing more and more on developing very sophisticated forms soft power and methods of soft power projections and their applications for the reasons that have been discussed previously along with other reasons. But imperial soft power projections are not really that “soft” and non-coercive. If we define “coercion” as the force of obtaining consent or causing someone to act according to the will of others without fully informed and voluntary consent, then forms of soft power, especially when developed and applied to have subliminal effects or to limit or shape information to cause someone to act in accordance with the will and interests of others, then such power is also very coercive with its true concealed coercive powers but another coercive instrument.
The object of imperial soft power is to develop and assert the features, values, imperatives and interests of the imperial social formation as a universal template for all to emulate or to be in perpetual peril (subject to move overtly hard and coercive forms of power) with the failure to do so. With global crises and imperial powers increasingly cornered with mounting internal fiscal crises and socio-cultural-political decay, both the forms of soft and hard power projections are likely to be more reckless and desperate; the more one has and has acquired, the more one has to lose. Imperial power projections, like earthquakes and hurricanes, often with even more disastrous effects on both the victims and power projectors alike than those of hurricanes and earthquakes, cannot be stopped at present but can be understood. And it is in understanding their nature, origins, methods, instruments and intentions that those who are the objects and targets of these power projections can best protect themselves and their own sovereignty , self-determination, independence, cultures and socio-economic and politico-legal systems from gradual sabotage , erosion and eventual overthrow .
