   |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
<< Index
Immanuel Wallerstein - 1998
Immanuel Wallerstein is a sociologist, historical social scientist, and world-systems analyst.
Wallerstein began as an expert of post-colonial African affairs, which he selected as the focus of his studies after an international youth conference in 1951, and which his publications were almost exclusively devoted to until the early 1970s, when he began to distinguish himself as a historian and theorist of the global capitalist economy on a macroscopic level. His most important work, The Modern World-System, appeared in three volumes in 1974, 1980, and 1989. Wallerstein rejects the notion of a Third World, claiming there is only one world connected by a complex network of economic exchange relationships — i.e., a world-economy or world-system, in which the dichotomy of capital and labor, and the endless accumulation of capital by competing agents (historically including, but not limited to, nation-states) account for frictions. This approach is known as the World Systems Theory.
How Strong is the Superpower? (1 October 1998)
It is commonplace to call the United States today the only superpower. But what does this really mean? The expression conveys an impression of overwhelming strength in the geopolitical arena. Is this exact? Or is the United States, in Mao Zedong's expression, a "paper tiger"?
The first thing we think of when we discuss geopolitical strength is military power. There seems to be no question that the military hardware at the disposal of the U.S. government, combined with their well-trained armed forces, are superior to that of any other state today, and probably by far. But there are two crucial questions about military superiority. One is the consideration, in the eventuality of a real war, of how much damage an enemy force could wreak on the U.S. before it lost the war, and this measured both in terms of loss of life and potential material damage to the United States itself. If a second state could wreak sufficient damage, warfare, even were the U.S. to win the war, might not be considered a feasible option. This was clearly the case during the U.S.-U.S.S.R. cold war. Is it still true today? But there is a second consideration. Waging war requires a certain degree of popular consent within the country. This is normally achieved via patriotic commitment. But patriotic commitment has its limits. The population must be persuaded that the war is in its view just, and they must be persuaded that military victory is a feasible objective. Neither of these conditions are fully in place today. The ability of another state to cause significant military damage to the U.S. is clearly one of the main current worries of the U.S. It explains the constant and enormous pressure to limit nuclear proliferation as well as the expansion of the capacity of other countries to wage chemical and biological warfare. While the U.S. has no doubt slowed down the process, and maintained its own edge in these fields, continuing to block such spread seems a losing cause over the next 10-25 years. Even more worrisome from the U.S. point of view is the attitude of the U.S. population, who suffer from the famous "Vietnam syndrome." The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the repugnant face of Nazism furnished the strong basis for popular support during the Second World War. During the Cold War, the menace of Communism mobilized patriotic sentiment in the U.S., although already at this time, the U.S. public was deeply split over the legitimacy and worthwhileness of its intervention in Vietnam. By the time of the Persian Gulf war, U.S. popular support was conditioned on the assurance that almost no lives would be lost, which made it impossible for President Bush even to think of marching on Baghdad. The U.S. hyper-reluctance to engage in serious military action in Bosnia or Kosovo is clearly based in large part on the knowledge that the use of land forces would involve a long, costly interaction, with considerable loss of U.S. lives, and that the U.S. public would not support it, seeing neither justification for the action nor a clear prospect of clearcut military victory. Of course, military power does not exist in a vacuum. It is based on the strength of the country both in the economic and the political arenas. Here too, it is not clear that the U.S. can still be called a superpower. The economic strength of the U.S. is worth a separate commentary. But one shouldn't take too seriously the bloated image of U.S. economic strength of the last five years. The fact is that, in terms of relative economic strength in the world-economy, the U.S. was at its high point in 1945 and has been on a steady decline ever since. This decline was scarcely noticeable until the late 1960's, but after that the world began to talk of a triad of strong economic loci - the U.S., western Europe (or Germany), and Japan - and it was clear that, on many measures, the three were at near parity. There is very little likelihood that this will change over the next 10-25 years, and if it does, it is more likely that U.S. relative economic strength will decline still further than the reverse. This parity of the triad has two immediate consequences. It means that the U.S. has less money available for military expenditures or, that if it continues expenditures at the present level, that this will hurt further the so-called competitivity of the U.S. And the second consequence is that the triad have become serious rivals, which affects deeply the political strength of the U.S. The political strength of the U.S. is what we usually discuss under the label of leadership. The U.S. "led" the so-called Free World in the struggle against the Soviet bloc. What this meant is that U.S. governments defined the basic political objectives to be achieved and both the strategy and the tactics of the ongoing political struggles. The U.S. then took the lead in implementing the consequent political decisions, and insisted that its allies assist it in this task. Such a definition of leadership describes the relationship of the United States to its NATO partners and to Japan in the 1950's and 1960's. But with the growing economic strength of these allies, the description became less and less correct thereafter. In the 1970's there was talk of "trilateralism," which was essentially a figleaf, a paper concession by the U.S. to west European and Japanese sensibilities. As long as the U.S.S.R. continued to exist, the U.S. allies were reluctant to do too much to reduce the U.S. role in world affairs. But ever since 1989, it has been clear that there has been a slow moving apart of the triad on political views, and that this moving apart is likely to grow rapidly in the decade to come. The assessment of U.S. strength as a state requires a distinction between strength as an ordinal measure and hegemony as a concept. Today, the U.S. remains the strongest state in the world, even if the gap between it and others is declining. But it is no longer hegemonic as it was in the period 1945-1970. To be hegemonic means to have a really significant economic lead over others. It means therefore to get one's way politically virtually all of the time, with relatively few significant compromises. It means NOT to have to use military force, except in a minor way, because the mere threat of using it, even merely an implied threat, suffices to make the target back down, and therefore it becomes unnecessary to use the force. This was the situation once, in the period from 1945 to circa 1970. It is no longer the case. Today, the U.S. realizes that developments in the world-economy are flying beyond its ability to manage them. It has no clear political objectives in the world arena that are widely legitimated by others. Its allies are beginning to implement their autonomous strategies and tactics. And above all, the U.S. is a hamstrung military power because it cannot easily wage any war that will be protracted and costly. Furthermore, there is nothing on the horizon that is likely to improve this prospect for the U.S. in any of these regards. Quite the contrary. And, indeed, one could argue that the unhappiness and frustration of the U.S. public with the decline of U.S. power explains much of U.S. internal politics today. The U.S. is not yet a paper tiger, and may still be the world's only superpower, but how much control can it be said to have over the world's trajectory in the next 10-25 years? I would say, not very much. Immanuel Wallerstein [Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315. These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.] What Difference Does European Union Make? (15 October 1998)
The trajectory of European Union has been remarkably swift. The idea first became a serious one only after the Second World War. It was partly an effort to bury the century-long struggle of France and Germany, partly an effort to contain Germany in the future, partly a way of struggling against what was seen as the menace of Communism and the Soviet Union.
In the early years, say 1950-circa 1965, it was an idea that was strongly supported, indeed pushed, by the United States government. The U.S. saw several big pluses in greater European cooperation/unity. It would speed up European recovery and make Europe a more solid market for U.S. goods. It would help to overcome French (and indeed British) reluctance to see Germany play again a military role, a role the U.S. thought essential in maintaining Western strength against the Soviet Union. It was precisely for these reasons that many segments of the European left, and not only the Communist parties, were suspicious of, indeed hostile to, talk of European unity. The situation began to change in the late 1960's and early 1970's. The basic difference was the growing economic strength of western Europe, and therefore the flickerings of a desire by Europeans to cease being automatic adjuncts of the U.S. on the world scene. There was a sense that western Europe's interests were not necessarily identical with those of the U.S. The attitude towards the U.S.S.R. was one issue. The evolution of West Germany's Ostpolitik and the insistence in the early 1980's on the building of the trans-Europe gas pipeline (from the U.S.S.R. to western Europe) were two instances of this cautious but definite loosening of the ties. Of course, as long as the Soviet Union existed, west Europeans were also afraid the U.S. might withdraw entirely from Europe, so they remained careful not to antagonize the U.S. too much, and insisted rhetorically on the closeness of the links. Nonetheless, as the Europeans showed more independence of the U.S., so the U.S. cooled on its enthusiasm for European unity. But this shift was also cautious, since the U.S. felt it had to maintain an approbatory rhetoric. As the U.S. cooled on European unity, the Soviet Union, initially very hostile for obvious reasons, began to change the tone of its discourse, until Gorbachev in the late 1980's began to talk of a single European house, a description that the U.S. did not like at all but which was received more openly by the west Europeans. The key strains between the U.S. and western Europe were in military and world economic policy. The military strains were the most visible. If France in 1957 rejected the European Defence Community because the French were wary of rearming the Germans, twenty years later they were the prime promoters of a European army built around a French-German collaboration. The United States saw this as a distinctly bad idea, one which threatened their military dominance via NATO of Western military decisions. The Germans were caught in the crossfire, acceding to the French in principle, and slowing down implementation in practice. Even so, the U.S. felt the Germans were much too warm on the idea. There was wider support in Europe for immediate monetary unification, support that has now produced the agreement on the euro which comes into existence on Jan. 1, 1999. The U.S. took a formally benign stance on this development, assuming as did many that the arrangements would fall through. And so it seemed for a while. Since the road to the euro was largely paved with the good intentions of neoclassical economics, there might have seemed some side benefits to U.S. policymakers. But actually, the combination of relatively good economic times for a few years and Franco-German political determination enabled all the states to meet the preconditions of Maastricht without too much pain, and lo an behold, the euro was there. The military situation had been changed by the collapse of the Communisms in 1989-91, and the world economic situation by the so-called Asian crisis of 1997-98. The collapse of the Communisms ought logically to have led to the dismantlement of NATO, since there was no longer a military threat from the Soviet Union to counter. In fact, it led to a curious effort to consecrate NATO as the de facto world police force. Why? There are several reasons. The liberation of east/central Europe from Russian control led to immediate and enormous pressure from these countries to be allowed to join the West symbolically, via membership in NATO and in European Union, steps they felt sure would ensure their achieving west European levels of living rapidly. The U.S. endorsed such sentiments partly out of domestic political considerations and partly out of hopes that this would end the idea of an autonomous west European military force. The Germans endorsed such sentiments as part of a renewed drive to ensure Germany's role as a principal economic actor in this zone. And the French endorsed such sentiments partly out of a sense that they shouldn't be left behind in the struggle for influence. But neither the Germans nor the French nor indeed most other west European powers wanted to go too fast or too far with any integration of east/central Europe into European Union or even NATO. This was for two reasons. The economic price was very high and could unsettle the delicate compromises that now exist within the European Union about farm subsidies and North-South transfers of income, not to speak of its impact on immigration. But there was a second more political reason, played down publicly, the impact on relations with Russia. In the meantime came the many political disintegrations around the globe - in the Persian Gulf, in the Horn and Great Lakes regions of Africa, and especially in the Balkans. It seemed to all the great powers that something had to be done to restore stability, but what? The U.S. soured very quickly on any idea of using the U.N. as an agency of control, and fastened on NATO as its mode of legitimating action. However, immediately the difference between U.S. interests and European interests came to the fore. They were active competitors for markets and influence in these areas. And above all neither side was anxious to pay the military price. The U.S. idea has been that it supplies the air strikes and the west Europeans the ground forces. The west Europeans are obviously less enthusiastic about such a division of labor. The result has been a quasi-paralysis on effective military action. If the justification for having NATO is that it can act in such situations, the evidence thus far is largely against it. But the U.S. knows that, if they drop NATO, they open the way for a relatively rapid creation of a west European army. Meanwhile, a similar strain is occurring concerning world economic policy. When Valéry Giscard d'Estaing invented the idea of the G-7 in the late 1970's, he saw it as a way of reasserting a major French role in the world economic arena, and probably also as a way of reducing the U.S. role. The U.S. would have none of it, and insisted on seeing the G-7 as simply another mode of implementing U.S. policy, along with the IMF and the World Bank. The combination of the so-called Asian crisis and the establishment of the euro (and the consequently much stronger west European position) has paralyzed the G-7 in ways parallel to the paralysis of NATO. Neither the Japanese nor the west European are in a mood to accept U.S. directives on the world recession in process, especially when the U.S. is not even ready to pay the bill (similar to not wanting to provide the ground troops for NATO operations). What is clear is that there has been a long-term emergence of a relatively unified west European actor, which is actively seeking to create the political mechanisms consonant with its economic strength. And it is quite clear that the major opponent of its emergence is none other than its major ally, the United States. The pressures are all in the direction of the two sides pulling apart. The obvious consequence the Europeans are likely to draw is creating an autonomous military force and strengthening their political machinery. This means they are unlikely to proceed with too much further integration of east/central Europe into their structures, and this for two reasons. Adding more members now would enormously complicate the process of military and political strengthening of structures. But the second reason is a larger geopolitical one. As west Europe becomes a more central player on the world scene, there is one thing that would enormously strengthen it vis-a-vis the U.S. That is the inclusion of Russia in its geopolitical orbit. And this necessarily means, in terms of arrangements western Europe would make, Russia first, east/central Europe next. The other order would be politically impossible, since the east/central Europeans would veto any arrangements with Russia. Of course, the east/central Europeans fear precisely this priority by western Europe, but the question is can they stop it? A second Rapallo is on the horizon, and for essentially the same reasons as the first. What's holding it up is internal anarchy in Russia, not really west European restraint. Were Lebed or someone like him to come to power, and reestablish a semblance of state power in Russia, the process might go forward more speedily than we suspect today. None of this says whether the trends described here are good or bad. The question of course always is, good or bad for whom? Good for west Europe itself? The vestiges of left opposition to European unity believe not, but it is doubtful that the lower strata in western Europe are really worse off because of European unity than they would have been otherwise. Good for the United States? Obviously not. Good for the countries of the South? This is the ultimate argument of left opponents of European unity. No doubt, western Europe is no more likely to act in altruistic ways on North-South issues than the U.S. But the very existence of a multipolar North is ultimately a benefit for countries of the South, since it provides more space for them in which to maneuver and pursue their collective interests. In a strange way, at the very moment that we are experiencing the civilizational decline of the West, and the return to importance if not yet centrality of eastern Asia, Europe as Europe is getting a renewed cultural chance. It is not yet clear what the Europeans will do with this cultural opportunity. Immanuel Wallerstein [Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315. These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.] Is Japan Rising or Declining? (1 November 1998)
The press, the pundits, and the politicians are very fickle. They change their views about basic processes of the political economy with every bump in the business cycle. Nowhere has this been clearer than in the evaluation of Japan's role in the world-economy.
For over a year now, the world press has been full of discussion of the so-called Asian crisis and the serious plight of Japanese banks. The danger we face, we are constantly told, is that a recession, a deflationary thrust, that originated in East Asia (in Thailand immediately, but really in Japan before that) is spreading, will spread, like some plague and overtake so-called healthy national economies, of which the exemplar is said to be the United States. Yet, a mere four years ago in 1994, a U.S. scholar could write, in a text typical of the period: Given the end of the Soviet empire, a stagnant Europe, and a lack-luster U.S. economy, Asia Pacific economies offer the greatest opportunities for dynamic consumer and infrastructure-related markets for the 1990s. With California in the fifth year of a painful recession, the worst since the Great Depression, the Asia Pacific economies are particularly alluring as an export market.(1) Is it possible that in a mere four years, the world-economy has been so transformed that the U.S. needs now to fear Japanese failures where in 1992 it needed to fear Japanese successes? In the 1980's we were regaled with the special merits of Japanese entrepreneurs - flexible production and subcontracting - and today we are regaled with its special vices - crony capitalism and undue government interference with the freedom of the world market. If the analysts of the 1980's, on hindsight, are said today to have been so wrong, are we sure that those proposing the virtually opposite analyses today are so right? Once again, a longer time perspective would be helpful. Right up to the Second World War, indeed even into the 1960's, Japan was typically pictured as a poor country whose industries concentrated on low-cost, somewhat shoddy products. As recently as 1962, a prominent group of U.S. scholars published a comparative analysis of Japan and Turkey, trying to decipher which of these two industrializing countries, middle-ranking on a world scale, was more likely to succeed in its effort to "modernize" the country?(2) All of a sudden, in the 1970's, Japan emerged on the world scene as a major locus of world-economic activity, at the level of western Europe and yes, of the United States. It was then that a Trilateral Commission was created. We began to speak of a Triad, and when the G-7 was constructed as the club of the rich, no one doubted that Japan was an essential member. As the U.S. debt escalated into the trillions in the Reagan era, it was Japanese money which made possible this indebtedness. In 1991, the U.S. could not have afforded the Gulf War without the subsidy of four countries, of which Japan was one. So whence the image that Japan today is not only in crisis today but is pulling the rest of the world down with it? There seems little doubt that Japan (as the wealthiest and most dynamic center of an East Asian economic node) remains today one of the key loci of the world-economy on a par with, and as a rival to, the U.S. and western Europe. This has been constantly true since at least 1970. It is still true today. It will almost surely continue to be true over the next 25 years at least. If we look back at the last 25 years, we see two outstanding economic facts. The entire period has been one of a Kondratieff downturn in the world-economy during which OECD data show that the global level of profits from productive activity has been noticeably lower than in the previous A-phase (1945-circa 1970) and that most capital accumulation has come from financial speculation. The second outstanding economic fact of the last 25 years is that, since the global level of capital accumulation has been lower, the entrepreneurs of the three major centers (U.S., western Europe, Japan) have sought to shift the burden of the downturn to each other, and their respective governments have sought to shift the burden of unemployment to each other. The result has been a seesaw for 25 years, in which the U.S., western Europe, and Japan have each had their turns at being momentarily on the top and on the bottom in relation to each other. The 1980's was Japan's heyday. The U.S. has been doing comparatively better in the mid-1990's. In the last phase of the Kondratieff downturn, which is just ahead, it is probably Europe that will do the best. But these are passing advantages. But what of the Kondratieff upturn that will come after the recession and deflation we are all entering now? In a downturn, the goal of one strong economic node vis-a-vis the others is to suffer the least. In an upturn, the goal of a strong economic node vis-a-vis the others is to capture the largest share of the expanded accumulation. They will all try to develop the same products, market them in remarkably similar ways, and seek to lock in world monopolies in the new technologies. The advantage will not be located in some deep-seated cultural difference. It will be straightforwardly capitalist, and go to the one who will produce most competitively. And the secret will be as simple as lower costs. We usually however look to the wrong place for low costs. A competition of leading industries in a period of expansion has little to do with labor costs, since in fact these will probably be nearly identical in all three modes, and in any case, in a period of economic expansion, competing industries are more worried about strikes interfering with production than about creeping wage rises. The key difference will be in remuneration at the top - both the very top of the industries and the vast "middle strata" of cadres both within the leading industries and in the larger civil society outside (the lawyers, the psychologists, the entertainers, the endless consultants). Here the U.S. bill is by far and away the highest, western Europe's much lower, and Japan's least of all. It is not hard to predict that in the period 2000 or 2005-2025, it is Japanese productive enterprises that are likely to garner the largest slice of the world economic pie in the new leading industries of that era - informatics, biotechnology, new energy sources - even if at the moment they seem to be doing less well in the second half of the 1990's. 1. Tapan Munroe, "The Importance of the Asia Pacific Region for California's Economic Vitality" in B.K. Bundy et al., eds., The Future of the Pacific Rim. Westport: Praeger, 1994, p. 63. 2. Robert E. Ward and Daknwart Rustow, eds, Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1964. Immanuel Wallerstein [Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315. These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.] The Strategy of Saddam Hussein (15 November 1998)
The standard analysis of Saddam Hussein is that he is a somewhat megalomaniac dictator who is constantly testing the will of the rest of the world, and the United States in particular, to stop him from his expansionist designs. The basic conclusion one can draw from such an analysis is that if the United States shows sufficient willpower and the political ability to organize the collective willpower of at least a good part of the world community, Saddam Hussein will lose out. Such an analysis and such a conclusion misses the entire point of Saddam Hussein's strategy. Saddam Hussein actually is one of the astutest practitioners of the ancient arts of geopolitics. The key to his strategy is that he is actively seeking to provoke the United States into constant military confrontations, even if his forces come out second-best in each of them in the short run.
Suppose his analysis went in the following way. The existing balance of forces in the contemporary world-system favors in all arenas the major world powers - the United States in particular, Western Europe and Japan secondarily - and that their continuing economic advantage is secured by their control of the world's political structures and their military forces and equipment. Suppose he then assumed that there was no way for the rest of the world to break this stranglehold on advantage without undermining critically the military capacity of the United States as a preliminary to other steps in the geopolitical reorganization of the world-system, such as the creation of a pan-Arab entity of some strength. Suppose finally he assumed that the Soviet Union had been not an element that Iraq could find useful in its long-run strategy but an active obstacle, in that Soviet military power was used less to undo U.S. military power than to constrain countries like Iraq, in order that they not interfere with Soviet arrangements with the U.S. If he had made such an analysis, as early say as the 1980's, what would he have done? First, he would have taken advantage of oil rent quietly to build his military capacity. Secondly, he would have tried to obtain both Soviet and U.S. beneficence, the former as a political ally and the latter as a bulwark against an Iranian regime considered by the U.S. (and its key Arab allies like Saudi Arabia and Koweit) as the most dangerous element in West Asia. He would therefore have launched a seemingly suicidal war against Iran and maintained it for many years, since it brought in further outside political support, money, and aid in building his own long-term military capacity. In the meantime, Saddam Hussein was chalking up nationalist credits throughout the Arab world by the constancy of its support for the Palestinian cause. Iraq was after all the only Arab country still technically at war with Israel, never having signed a truce agreement in 1949. This cost little, since Iraq had no common frontier with Israel, but every time there seemed little hope of the creation of a Palestinian state (and this surely was the case in the late 1980's, early 1990's with the breakdown of all talks), Iraqi credibility in the Arab world rose. Happily for Saddam Hussein, just as the eight-year Iran-Iraq war petered out in a draw (after of course countless casualties), the Soviet Union collapsed. Ah, said Saddam Hussein to himself, now's my chance. With the possibility of Soviet constraint on me and all my allies in the South no longer existing as a practical matter, I can begin to take on the United States directly. Let's see: how about a little invasion of Koweit? This will at one and the same time do three things: satisfy a long-standing Iraqi nationalist claim, erase a significant part of Iraq's external indebtedness, and force an unpleasant choice upon the United States. Why not push forward this chess piece? The United States was taken aback by the audacity of the move. It took a closer look at Iraqi military strength and upgraded its overall evaluation. It was not sure how to react. This was the moment of Mrs. Thatcher's reputed telephone call to George Bush: This is no time to flinch, George. Was she right? In one sense, absolutely. Had the U.S. flinched, Iraq would still be in Koweit, and its centrality to West Asian politics ensured. It is indeed true that Saudi Arabia might have been next. This scenario reflected Saddam Hussein's vision of himself as the Arab Bismarck (or a new Saladin), reunifying by force, wiles, and diplomacy the Arab world in order to catapult this reunited Arab world onto the world stage as a major player. The United States went about organizing the response. This was less easy than it seems in retrospect. The U.S. had to convince other Western powers. While the U.K. and a few others went along readily, some were quite reticent, notably but not only France. Nor was the U.S. Congress enthusiastic. Nor were the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. The support of both Congress and the military leadership was reluctant because they both were afraid of the same thing, that a military confrontation would require a long and costly war, costly not only financially but in terms of lives. No one wanted to replay Vietnam. The U.S. thus really tried diplomacy, finding however that Saddam Hussein was not ready to budge on the essentials. The U.S. thus felt it had no choice but to use military force. The U.S. secured the requisite United Nations resolution, the token military assistance from a series of countries, the crucial agreement of Saudi Arabia to allow their country to be used as a military rear area, and the financial underwriting of four countries (Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Koweit). With this in hand, the U.S. launched its military action. This was not at all unanticipated by Saddam Hussein. Of course, he would have preferred that the U.S. flinch, but he thought that even if the U.S. engaged in military action, it would lose. Saddam Hussein did not think the U.S. would lose militarily, but lose politically. And he was not wrong. The U.S. of course did win militarily, and with remarkable swiftness. Koweit was rid of Iraqi forces. Then the U.S. had to decide what to do next. We know the series of decisions the U.S. took: 1) Its forces did not march to Baghdad, but withdrew from Iraq; 2) the U.S. then gave air shelter to the ethnic minorities in the north and the south of Iraq; 3) the U.S. obtained from the United Nations a series of draconian measures designed to force Iraq to dismantle the significant parts of its military apparatus. Why did the U.S. not march on Baghdad and rout out Saddam Hussein? There were two essential reasons. First, it would have required land military forces, with the probability of high loss of lives, followed by a continuing military occupation. Secondly, there was no obvious group with which to replace the present Iraqi regime. The big risk was a disintegration of Iraq, which would have strengthened Iran even more, and probably endangered Saudi Arabia just as much as Iraq's conquest of Koweit. Almost everyone, from the U.S. armed forces to the Saudi regime, counseled against it, and George Bush followed this advice. But then what? Then two things: try to secure the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by clandestine action, which the U.S. has no doubt pursued constantly but has failed thus far miserably; and try to dismantle Iraq's major weaponry, which has at best been very partially successful. How has Saddam Hussein been able to hold off the United States? First of all, by a very tight internal regime, which has made it almost impossible to contest him, however much ordinary people have been suffering the consequences of the wars and blockades. Secondly, by seeking to maneuver with the West Europeans, the Russians, and the Chinese to stall the U.S. politically. And thirdly, by trying to provoke the United States, in order to make it again and again choose between demonstrating impotence on the one hand and potential isolation on the world scene on the other. The most effective tactic to pursue the provocation has been to provoke boldly and pull back at the last minute. This minimizes military loss for Iraq while constantly weakening the U.S. position. So here we are again, and the U.S. had once again no good choice. Saddam Hussein stopped the U.N. control process, and "defied" everyone. President Clinton responded on Nov. 13: "None of us can tolerate an Iraq free to develop weapons of mass destruction with impunity." And then at the very last minute, Iraq said it would once again accept U.N. control. Clinton's statement gets to the core of U.S. concerns and Saddam Hussein's strategy. He quite intends to do just that, develop weapons of mass destruction with impunity. He counts on two things. One is underlying political support in large parts of the world for the idea that there is no legitimacy to a U.S. monopoly on "weapons of mass destruction." And the other is drawing the U.S. into a quagmire bit by bit, and then wearing it down politically (especially in Europe and at home), which he sees as a slow, long-term, but inevitable process. If, in addition, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should once again break down, he will count further on an upsurge of Arab nationalism behind him. The U.S. will perhaps in the coming year again bomb Iraq, and no doubt more effectively than in the past. But the same question will recur. Will the U.S. march on Baghdad? Can the U.S. arrange an overthrow of the regime? Saddam Hussein believes neither will happen and that, in ten years, his strategy will pay off. Remember, he is not avoiding confrontation with the United States. He is seeking it, and thriving on it. Immanuel Wallerstein [Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315. These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.] Russia and China: Lonely Giants (1 December 1998)
Russia and China are two of the largest countries in the world, both in area (Russia especially) and population (China especially). They have been power centers and major civilizational loci for a long time. They exhibit deep cultural pride. They are major military powers. And they are unhappy, lonely countries.
They are first of all unhappy about the fact that they are not as deeply respected by other world powers as they feel they ought to be. They are unhappy because the level of their economic production is lower than they would like it to be, and significantly lower per capita than the other great powers with which they compare themselves. And they are unhappy because they feel they have been badly treated by other world powers - or more than badly, unjustly. It is no accident that they both installed Communist regimes in the twentieth century. And even that act did not seem to change their sense of isolation in the world. Today Russia's Communist regime is a matter of history, and China's regime is transforming itself, a bit slowly to be sure, into something else. If one looks at the world from their eyes, their faults have been minor to those of the faults outsiders committed against them. Russia has felt that it has been treated by other European powers as barbarians, as extra-Europeans - at least for the last 500 years, if not for longer. It feels that Russia suffered a terrible devastation in the Second World War, thereby saving the world from the horrors of Nazi domination, and that this human sacrifice has never been really appreciated by either western Europe or the United States. And today Russia feels that the last pillar of its national pride, its armed forces, is disintegrating. China feels similar grievances. Heirs of the Middle Kingdom, China still feels it is the true center of world civilization. It feels it was despoiled by the Western world for at least two centuries. It feels that its national unity is still imperiled, and seeks to recreate the boundaries and glories of yesteryear. It remembers that, only fifty-odd years ago, it was internally ravaged by a devastating Japanese invasion as well as by a civil war. And China remains deeply suspicious of both Japan and the U.S. The story of course looks different from the vantage point of the Western world and that of Japan. Russia and China are seen as having expressed once again through their adoption of Communist regimes in the twentieth century both totalitarian ideals internally and imperialist intentions externally. And they remain therefore suspect to many people and politicians in the West and in Japan. Nor are they considered too benevolently in the rest of the world. In east/central Europe, Russia is regarded primarily as a perennially imperialist power, the one that has attempted to dominate them. China is regarded by many of its neighbors to the south as playing a similar game, if not by armed force then at least via the implantation of a merchant diaspora, who remain culturally and perhaps politically loyal to China. To be sure, outside the West and Japan, there are many countries who agree that Russia and China are regions of the world that have been exploited by the West in the same ways these countries feel they themselves have been, and are Russia and China may be admired in such countries for having had the courage of fighting back. But even when they are admired, Russia and China are often still not liked or trusted. So they are lonely as well as unhappy giants. These images of Russia and China, self-images and those of others, play a significant role in contemporary geopolitics. They lead Russia and China to insist loudly and repeatedly on their right to have their voice heard and respected, to participate in major geopolitical decisions. These images lead Russia and China to devote a good part of their national product to maintaining and strengthening their armed forces. These images lead them to be willing to defy world opinion, whenever their interests seem to them impinged. It also explains their other national priorities in addition to the maintenance and strengthening of their armed forces. Russia and China are desperately anxious to ensure the integrity of their present national boundaries, and in China's case, to reunify with the major national area still outside, Taiwan. They want serious and rapid improvement in their economic machinery and productivity. And they want to strike strategic bargains with specific other countries to guarantee their world roles. China seeks to gain a relationship of political parity and comity with Japan and the United States. It offers the latter economic links, both as producer and consumer. What they hope to get in return is significant improvement in their productive infrastructure plus a long-term reduction in the U.S. military presence in East Asia. China would like in addition some form of reunification of the Korean peninsula, if for no other reason than that it might lead to this reduction of the U.S. military role in East Asia. China is at the moment more self-confident than Russia, but this could be temporary. Russia is hurting badly from the rapidity of the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and from the economic chaos that the unrestrained entry into Russia of world market sctors has wreaked upon it. Russia seeks to contain the damage, but at the moment it has no strong center. This too may be temporary. In the medium run, Russia seeks to reestablish its role of peace-imposer in the region (but exactly what region?) and for this role to be again recognized by the other major world powers. In the medium run, too, Russia is looking to the establishment of a relationship of parity and comity with western Europe within the context of a greater Europe. Russia's erstwhile satellite states of east/central Europe are unsympathetic to such a project and most of them will no doubt seek to block it. But Russia has important military and economic cards to play in its negotiations with western Europe, if and when it restores strong central authority within its frontiers. It represents a major military force that can be rebuilt, and it represents (just like China) a major market and production zone. The key element in the equation is that both Russia and China still nurse the grievance that they are not respected as they feel they ought to be, as they feel their status as contemporary giants and heirs to long traditions entitle them. As long as giants are unhappy and lonely, there can be no quiet in the world. The status of these two countries is a matter that requires the attention of the world, for the sake of the world. Immanuel Wallerstein [Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315. These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.] Weapons of Mass Destruction (15 December 1998)
One of the major worries of the United States today is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. What this means is the U.S. in very anxious that countries who do not presently have nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons not acquire them. This concern has a long history.
In the First World War, mustard gas (a chemical weapon) was used extensively, inflicting much painful damage on soldiers but, as far as one can tell, not affecting seriously the outcome of the military conflict. One of the conclusions Western powers drew from this was that everyone would be better off from a mutual renunciation of chemical warfare. An international agreement was concluded to this effect, and was actually observed for the most part during the Second World War. However, the Second World War saw a race between the Axis and the Allies for the creation of an atomic bomb. As we know, the United States won this race, and then used the bomb not against Germany but against Japan. The Japanese felt then, and many others share the view, that this decision was made because the Germans were Europeans and the Japanese Asians. During the war, there was also considerable research on biological weapons as well as chemical weapons. In 1945, the United States stood alone as a possessor of nuclear weapons, and had considerable knowledge about chemical and biological weapons. It decided to share its nuclear knowledge with its close ally, Great Britain, and then made it its urgent priority to stop all other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons. The major military opponent of the U.S., the Soviet Union, spared no effort in acquiring first an atomic bomb, then a hydrogen bomb. By 1949, both sides in the Cold War had nuclear weapons, and this turned out to be less disastrous than everyone had claimed it would be. Analysts began to talk of mutual deterrence, a thesis that neither side would risk a real war because the response of the other side would be too terrible to contemplate. Whatever the validity of this analysis, the United States then turned its attention to trying to ensure that no fourth power would become a nuclear power. But first France, then China proceeded to acquire nuclear capacity, feeling obviously that they would not be taken seriously as a great power without it. The United States learned to live with the reality of five nuclear powers, and turned its attention to make the process stop there. But then, India demonstrated that it could set off a nuclear reaction. And many other countries engaged in clandestine efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. There is good reason to believe that both Israel and South Africa achieved nuclear capacity (although the apartheid regime, as one of its last acts before turning over power to the A.N.C., renounced nuclear weapons). Many other countries are thought to be very near nuclear capacity: North Korea, perhaps Japan in East Asia; Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Algeria in the Muslim world; Brazil and Argentina. The U.S. has pushed successfully for an international convention committing countries to no further "proliferation," but many of the likely candidates for nuclear candidacy have refused to sign the convention. One of their major arguments has been that they see no moral or political reason to guarantee existing nuclear powers a monopoly, and are asking for these countries also to renounce nuclear weapons before they commit themselves to doing this. This has been the position notably of India and Pakistan, both of whom demonstrated this year that they had nuclear weapons. During the Iran-Iraq war, it seems that chemical and biological weapons were used, and then that they were potential weapons in the Gulf War. When Iraq lost this war, one of the conditions that was imposed on Iraq was the destruction of all its weapons of mass destruction. As we know, this has been extraordinarily difficult to enforce. In the negotiations of the U.S. and South Korea with North Korea, one of the objects of the U.S. has been to buy nuclear renunciation from North Korea. It seems doubtful that this has worked. The U.S. seems never to have placed similar pressure on Israel or apartheid South Africa. In any case, Israel is unrepentant, as are the various Arab countries who have been engaged in this nuclear quest. The only region of the world where U.S. pressure seems to have had some effect is Latin America, and even there one cannot be sure. Stripped of all verbiage, the issue has been essentially one of power. Weapons of mass destruction make a difference in the warfare of the future. The U.S. has been using two arguments. One is that of sheer force. It will penalize countries which defy this demand. This works only up to a point. It doesn't work against close allies, who can afford to defy the U.S. and it doesn't work against hostile powers, who wish to defy the U.S. It works best on in-between cases like Argentina. The U.S. also uses an implicit moral argument. The case it makes (to its own public first of all) is that the U.S. (and by extension Western powers in general) will use these weapons responsibly, that is, only as a last resort, whereas countries of other regions of the world cannot be trusted not to use them irresponsibly, against each other and against the U.S. This assumption of moral virtue compared to the dubious ethics of leaders of other regions does not go over very well in the world community of today. It reflects a moral arrogance that very little in the history of the twentieth century gives reason to credit. So where are we then? The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has been going on apace since 1945 throughout the world. The U.S. and other Western powers have of course been constantly investing in and improving their own stock of these weapons as well. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the pace of this expansion (both in terms of geography and in terms of the destructiveness of the weapons) will slow down in any significant way in the next 25 years. Will this increase the likelihood of terrible destruction? The answer is yes and no. No, because one major effect will be precisely that of the Soviet a-bomb. There will be more likelihood of the spread of mutual deterrence. But yes, because the probability of so-called accidents will also grow: accidents due to mishaps, and accidents due to the inability of states to control middle-level personnel who control actual weapons. In addition, it is obvious that we are making great progress in miniaturization of these weapons, which therefore puts them every more rapidly at the disposition of non-state forces, both political rebel groups and criminal groups. The solution to this reality is not evident. It is clear that the continued pressure of the U.S. government on other governments not to obtain such weapons has in fact slowed down the process of proliferation but it has in no way stopped it. It is very doubtful that continued pressure of this kind will do better. And the moral argument will seem ever thinner and more overtly racist as the years go on. Immanuel Wallerstein [Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315. These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.] |