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.
The Critical Issues of the Coming Decades (1 January 2001)
As we enter the new millennium, the long-range issues are quite straightforward. The capitalist world-economy has never been so smoothly functioning, so seemingly successful as an historical social system, and so fast-moving. As a result, the polarization (economic, social, and political) of the world-system increases by leaps and bounds. The effort to commodify all social transactions is incredibly far-reaching, coming to include all the arenas that it was once thought impossible or unimaginable to commodify. But as the capitalist world-economy accelerates its breakneck pace, it is probably close to careening off course and heading towards self-destruction. We are living in an historic bifurcation that will lead us over the next 50 years into a new social order, which may be better or worse than the one in which we now live, even far better or far worse, but will certainly be different.
However, people living now cannot simply wait and see how it all comes out 50 years from now. We all live inevitably in the present. And what is of most immediate concern are the critical decisions that we shall be required to make in the next few decades, largely via our governments, but not only. There seem to me four issues that will frame our collective political lives in the immediate future. Each of these issues will arouse enormous controversy (each already has), and none of them has a simple or clear solution. But each must be confronted, and there are undoubtedly better and worse ways to handle the dilemmas each poses.
1) Movement of people. From time immemorial, humans have wandered the globe. Even after the agricultural revolution, which pushed humans towards being sedentary, there was still constant migration - fostered by war, famine, persecution, and the search for a better life. Such movement has not at all slowed down in the modern world; quite the contrary. The frequency and quantitative scope of movement is greater than ever.
Current residents of any area (especially in areas that are privileged) tend to be hostile to the in-movement of other people. They fear loss of privilege, loss of identity, loss of land and jobs. They erect barriers, especially legal barriers. But the barriers are increasingly inefficacious, and "illegal" migration is a growth stock. The ever-increasing polarization of the world-system augments the pressure to migrate and raises the stakes for everyone. And of course there are many employers who welcome the flood of immigrants as a mode of keeping down the cost of labor.
Anti-immigrant sentiment, working-class racism, and right-wing extremism have always been intimately linked. This is even truer today. Up to now, the response of Establishment forces in the major centers of immigration in the world (especially in North America and western Europe, but even in Japan) has been to "handle" this time bomb by means of ad hoc measures that seek to palliate discontent by trying to reduce (never eliminating) immigration and mollifying all and sundry.
It is unlikely that ad hoc palliative measures will continue to work at all if the rate of movement escalates further, as it most probably will, in the next few decades. The debate which we face will be about whether it would not be easier, less abrasive, and ultimately wiser to lift all (or almost all) barriers to movement, and let people flow where they wish. In a capitalist system run amok, such freedom of movement certainly fits in with the ideology of a free market. Conservative parties might be tempted to respond in this way to the needs of the large enterprises that support them, but if they do, will they be able to hold the voters of the "social right," whom they need to win elections. As for movements on the left of the political spectrum, they find themselves caught between pressures from the actual and potential immigrants to the wealthy zones and those from their working-class supporters (of the dominant ethnic groups resident within these zones) who tend to favor a restrictive policy. Will anyone be willing to cut the Gordian knot, and if not, will a corrosive political debate simply allow racist demagogues to flourish, with all the political consequences that would flow from such a development?
2) Armed interventions. In the coming decades, a war between major powers is extremely unlikely. But "smaller" wars - between countries of the South and of the North, or among countries of the South, or civil wars - are not only likely; they are virtually certain to be extensive. We hear two kinds of rhetoric about responding to these wars, not only within the powerful states of the North but in the rest of the world as well. One call organizes itself around the slogans of "national interest" (narrowly defined) in the North and "non-intervention" in the South. The second call organizes itself around the slogans of "human rights" in the North and (local) "liberation" in the South.
All these slogans are heavily inflammatory, and the true motivations are most often consciously and unconsciously quite other. But the two sets of slogans do tend to have different results. The first set tends to reduce interstate violence but simultaneously to maintain the status quo. The second set tends to maximize all kinds of violence and destruction, but does tend to result in changing who is in power everywhere. Neither set represents a "one size, fits all" program for political decision-making.
What can be said is that the U.S. may be now moving nearer to the first option (under Bush and Colin Powell) and away from the second. Europe may be moving in the other direction. And governments in the South are not sure which option they wish to encourage as a general principle. It usually depends on whose ox is being gored.
3) Internalization of costs. This turgid phrase refers to the degree to which productive enterprises pay the bill for preventing their productive activities from having toxic effects on the environment (short-run and long-run). Forcing internalization, which is the major effect of legislation to ensure a positive earth ecology, necessarily raises costs. The ability to pass costs on to the consumers depends on the elasticity of demand. But in the long run, higher prices reduce demand, which gives producers the choice of smaller total sales at the higher price or lower profit per sale in order to restore or increase total sales. A Hobson's choice.
Once again, the battle lines are both fierce and confused. This is because the costs of internalization are different for different groups, and they are different in the short run and the long run. Just as in the case of freedom of movement, even though there exists a basic left-right cleavage on this issue, there are also strong tensions within each side of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, the issue cannot be swept under the carpet, as it has been up until the last 20 years, because the costs of toxic decisions have become too great, and our margin of error increasingly small.
4) Women and religion. This may seem a strange way to pose the issue of gender. But two facts seem clear. On the one hand, the demand of women for their rights (whether this is defined as legal equality or as self-empowerment) has pushed itself to the forefront of the world political agenda. On the other hand, all the major world religions, and especially the more "traditionalist" versions of these religions, include a large component of gender hierarchy.
Up to now, decisions on gender issues have been made by religious institutions issue by issue, and reluctantly. The "liberalization" of mores generally in the last 100 years has steadily eroded some of the hierarchical features of the world's religions. But, in the last 25 years, "liberal" religious practices have found themselves under attack, and there has been increased resistance and pushback by the advocates of more "traditionalist" or "orthodox" views. Hence feminists can no longer count on a steady secularization process to aid their campaigns, which are nonetheless ever more vigorous and extensive.
We are coming to crunch time for the major religions on issues of gender hierarchy. It is not at all certain what will happen. What is quite clear is that this is a major locus of social debate for the next few decades, which will occur outside and inside the political arena.
The plate is full. But the battlelines are not as clearly drawn as they might be.
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 World and George W. Bush (15 January 2001)
George W. Bush is the first U.S. President of the twenty-first century, and the world is nervous. Outside the United States, everyone is discovering how much they appreciated Bill Clinton. He turned out to be a far better U.S. President from their point of view than they had ever expected. This was not at all because they agreed with Clinton's policies all of the time, or even most of the time. It is because the world found him intelligent, well-informed, a good listener, and above all, the best variety of U.S. president they could reasonably expect, given U.S. power, arrogance, and self-centeredness - what the French would call a pis aller.
The rest of the world by and large hoped (and expected) that Al Gore would succeed Clinton and carry on. They are surprised (and dismayed) by the actual results. The world fears, rightly, that George W. Bush has none of the particular qualities Clinton displayed, and that the power, arrogance, and self-centeredness will be all that's there. I have already suggested (Comment No. 47, Sept. 1, 2000) that there will be little basic difference in the foreign policy that will be conducted by Bush than there would have been had Gore become president. But this equivalence needs to be qualified.
When it is said in the United States that there exists a "bipartisan" foreign policy, what this means is that since 1945 the dominant majorities in both major parties have agreed on the fundamentals of U.S. foreign policy. From 1945 to today, this policy has been continuous and reasonably coherent, and has never really wavered with a change in the presidency. That said, it should be noted that each of the two parties has a significant group within it which seeks to shift the emphasis of foreign policy in important ways. The Democratic party has a (left) wing that tends to be more "dovish" (that is, influenced by the peace movement) and more sympathetic to the needs and claims of non-European zones of the world. This is what split the Democratic party at the time of the Vietnam war.
The Republican party has the counterpart in its (right) wing which stresses two themes: on the one hand, a greater isolationism (rejection of the United Nations, unwillingness to spend money on aid projects, skepticism about sending troops anywhere to "keep the peace"), and on the other hand macho militarism (more money for the armed forces, and particularly for weapons systems; aggressive impatience with development of military forces by anyone else, including so-called allies; tough stances towards China and Russia).
It has been widely observed that Bush has a delicate political job holding together the diverse groups of his supporters, even on domestic issues. So far, he has indicated that he will handle the tensions by throwing bones to each camp, and using slippery rhetoric. And so far (during the election) it worked. The question is whether this tactic will work as well on foreign policy issues, especially given the fact that Bush does not command a clear majority in the U.S. Congress.
He has comforted the adepts of traditional U.S. policy by picking a foreign policy/defense/economy team drawn from his father's administration. And the appointment of Robert Zoellick as U.S. trade representative may be seen as public assurance that Bush will continue the "globalization" thrust of his predecessor. But he has not forgotten the other tendencies in the Republican party. In Colin Powell, the U.S. now has a Secretary of State who incarnates caution, even extreme caution, in the use of U.S. troops elsewhere in the world. And in Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. now has a Secretary of Defense, totally committed to creating the so-called National Missile Defense (NMD) system.
Neither Powell nor Rumsfeld is an extremist representing respectively the "isolationist" and "macho military" points of view, but neither do they represent a real brake on these tendencies. Furthermore, it should be underlined that there is a certain contradiction, at least on a tactical level, in pursuing simultaneously these two tendencies. Contradiction, and therefore confusion. And therefore nervousness elsewhere in the world.
In the short period since Bush was proclaimed the victor, the nervousness has expressed itself publicly in a number of ways. The South Koreans have indicated that they worry that Bush will not continue the initiatives towards North Korea undertaken by Clinton, and thereby undermine the "sunshine" policy of Kim Dae-Jong. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, someone devoted to maintaining a U.S. role in Asia, but someone who also behind the scenes has been working to overcome distance between the Chinese government in Beijing and Taiwan, has indicated his fear that pursuing the NMD would in effect scuttle hopes that the differences could be bridged.
At the very moment that the Bush team has been suggesting that they wanted to get "tougher" with Saddam Hussein, the last ally of the United States in its policy in the region, Great Britain, has admitted that it is pressing the U.S. to end the "no overfly" policy in the southern and northern thirds of Iraq which the U.S. and Great Britain are unilaterally enforcing.
Most of the world's immediate nervousness centers around the NMD. The Prime Minister of Canada has indicated diplomatically his complete lack of enthusiasm. And virtually no one in Europe thinks it is anything but a balmy idea. It is this which explains the somewhat exaggerated response of the Europeans to the uncovering of the toxic damage of the use by U.S. forces of "depleted uranium" in their weapons in Kosovo. I say exaggerated not because I don't think that it was as irresponsible to use such weapons as to use poison gas. I do. But the response is exaggerated because many of the European governments have known of the dangers for a long time.
What happened is rather that the U.S. seems to think that NATO constitutes a structure which constrains all its members to act together, except the United States. The Italian government is thus understandably upset that its soldiers have, as a consequence, contracted leukemia. And of course, not the Italians alone. The French seem to play the role of saying publicly what other Europeans are thinking privately. On Jan. 10, the President of the Defense Commission of the French National Assembly, Paul Quilès, asserted that this affair illustrates "one of the essential problems of NATO," namely that "the Americans, within the framework of the Atlantic alliance, remain prone to take decisions unilaterally, without informing their partners, even after the event."
The U.S. is not fooled about what lies behind the debate on "depleted uranium" weapons. It is really the structure, indeed the very existence, of NATO. Donald Rumsfeld has already, in his testimony before Congress on his confirmation, stated his strong opposition to an autonomous European army which, he said, would threaten the structure of NATO.
Where will all this lead? Clinton did his best to slow down the inevitable decline of U.S. power in the world. The Bush team thinks he didn't do enough. They are going to make adjustments. The result will probably be that they speed up the process.
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.]
Davos vs. Porto Alegre: The World Soccer Cup? (1 February 2001)
In the heyday of neo-liberalism and its hype about globalization, the meeting-place of the rich and powerful each year was Davos, a Swiss ski resort which once a year hosted presidents, prime ministers, and CEOs of transnational corporations along with Establishment intellectuals and newspaper pundits, to discuss the state of the world. The people who came to Davos tended to agree with other that the future bode well, if only everyone eliminated all barriers to the free movement of capital across the world. This so-called World Economic Forum was, appropriately enough, a privately-sponsored, profit-making enterprise (it cost quite a bit of money to attend these meetings). The main purpose seemed to be mutual self-congratulation and a vast propaganda operation via the world media.
Neo-liberalism is no longer quite as fashionable or as self-assured as it was a few years ago. Some people had the idea of organizing anti-Davos meetings simultaneously with Davos, and some others thought of disrupting the Davos meetings. After Seattle and Prague, a momentum built up in the world struggle against neo-liberalism, and this year, there were not only anti-Davos meetings in Switzerland, but a worldwide World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Why Porto Alegre? Two good reasons. Porto Alegre is in the South, not the North. And the mayor of Porto Alegre, as well as the governor of the state in which it is located, are from the PT, Brazil's leading left party, whose leader Lula will be running for President of Brazil again soon, and his chances are improving.
So for a week now, we have had a world soccer match, in which the world press has been reporting the two forums, so diametrically set against each other. At the Brazilian forum, Walden Bello, Asian intellectual and militant, launched the slogan, "Davos is the past, Porto Alegre the future." Porto Alegre attracted 10,000 participants, a truly extraordinary number, considering that for the most part they were paying their own way or it was being paid by relatively poor organizations.
It is interesting to compare the atmosphere at the two meetings and what they have been saying. Neo-liberal policies have been coming under some criticism not only from the left but from the right in the last few years. I have pointed out previously the nervousness of some leading right-wing figures about the exaggerations of the IMF and the political restlessness this has caused. The last Director-General of the IMF himself indicated they may have overpressed their case (See Comment No. 34, Feb. 15, 2000: "The Head of the IMF: A Secret Radical?"). So it comes at little surprise that the International Herald-Tribune (IHT) used this headline this year: "The Specter of Social Accountability Hovers Over Davos." Nor is it a surprise that the World Bank released a report just in time for this year's meeting entitled "From Safety-Net to Springboard," in which they advocated a social protection strategy for the world poor.
It is a bit like a damaged ship throwing ballast overboard. It may help, but the idea is to keep the ship afloat. The organizers were taking no chances, however, with popular protest. In 2000, the meetings were considerably disrupted by hostile demonstrators. This year, the Swiss police was mobilized in force, trying to keep potential demonstrators from even reaching Davos. Since this effort was only partially successful, the police erected barbed-wire fences to seal off the conference center. The IHT published a picture of a Swiss policeman next to the barbed wire with a machine gun. And the correspondent of the Guardian had this to say about Davos: "For several days, the 'Spirit of Davos' trumpeted by the organizers of the elite international business community resembled East Germany in the 1980s."
But having genuflected to the need for overcoming the world "divides" - the official theme of Davos for 2001 was "Sustaining Growth and Bridging the Divides" - people there went on to discuss what was really on their mind, the American economy. And this theme gave rise to a quite different set of headlines. The IHT said "Theme at Davos: This is the Year of Europe." The Wall Street Journal Europe topped that with: "Will This Be the European Decade?"
Nor was this just an invention of the journalists. Rep. Jim Leach (Rep., Iowa) was taken a bit aback by the sense of "equaling." The German Deputy Minister of Finance talked of Europe's "quiet self-confidence." And the Finnish commissioner for new technology and enterprise in the European Union practically gloated that the Americans are finding that "it's good to listen sometimes." Considering that in years past the Americans were noted (politicians, intellectuals, and journalists alike) for lecturing Europeans and Japanese on how they should be copying U.S. patterns faster than they were doing, this year's meeting is quite a turn around. In any case, last year, Bill Clinton attended in person. Not only did George W. Bush not come but he didn't send any of his new cabinet.
Meanwhile, at Porto Alegre, the delegates were working away in the belief and expectation that "another world is possible." Some politicians were there yes - the French government divided its ministers between both meetings - but the bulk of the attendees were militants and intellectuals tied to the movements. They opened with a carnival, and went on to debate how this other world could be constructed.
While they were at it, some were inspired to engage in the direct action for which they were famous. The MST, the Brazilian movement of the landless, decided to destroy some transgenic plants on a plantation controlled by Monsanto, a multinational that has been specializing of late in transgenic agriculture. The MST enlisted the help of José Bové, the French leader of a populist movement in the rural areas devoted among other things to halting the spread of transgenic food. The Brazilian police decided to arrest him and expel him (he would have been leaving in a day in any case), but a Brazilian court promptly decided that the police had acted illegally. The Brazilian police were clearly on the same transnational wave length as the Swiss police.
Is Davos the past? The Davos meetings may well be. Their utility has been diminishing, and the difficulties involved in holding them have been going up. But of course the "spirit of Davos" - that is, world capitalism - is scarcely about to give up the ghost. They will however have to face up to a steadily increasing U.S.-Europe tension, made more dramatic by the potential serious downturn in the U.S. economy.
Is Porto Alegre the future? Well, they've begun the task of mobilizing worldwide, and of creating alliances. But, if the spirit of Porto Alegre is to prevail, these militants still have a lot of work to do to flesh out a concrete strategy and a concrete program. Still, they are energized at the moment.
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 CIA's Assessment of World Perils (15 February 2001)
George J. Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence testified publicly before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Feb. 7. His statement is available to anyone on the CIA's web site. It is entitled "Worldwide Threat 2001: National Security in a Changing World." It paints a very bleak picture of world geopolitics, in terms of what Mr. Tenet considers are U.S. interests in the world-system. It is always a bit difficult to be sure, when reading such a public statement, how much of it is overstatement for immediate internal political gain (more funds, inflation of the role of the CIA, etc.) and how much is a call of alarm to alert political figures, especially in the U.S. Congress.
But it is always prudent to take such statements seriously, and to analyze them. The basic theme is that things are getting worse. Tenet calls this an "accelerating rate of change." He sees the current situation as the most difficult the U.S. has had to deal with (since 1945? it is not clear). He says: "Never have we had to deal with such a high quotient of uncertainty." Uncertainty is the theme over and over.
For example, the threat of "terrorism" - an old theme. But now, says Tenet, whereas "state-sponsored terrorism" is declining, decentralized transnational groups are emerging, and acts are "initiated and executed at lower levels." Ergo, as we can readily infer, it is far more difficult to put pressure on those responsible or make deals with them.
Weapon proliferation - nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons - seems to be the biggest worry. Tenet reviews the usual culprits, but then goes on to the higher worry. Three countries are singled out - Russia, China, and North Korea - not merely for possessing and expanding their own capacities but for being suppliers to other countries of these weapons. Tenet keeps repeating that these other countries need foreign assistance to enhance their own capacity, and that they are in fact getting precisely that, foreign assistance.
The U.S. in general, and the U.S. military in particular, are especially proud of their advantage in information technology. Tenet points out that the flip side of this advantage is the increase in vulnerability. Other countries do not need to match U.S. military technology because, by attacking U.S. informational nets, they have "the potential to degrade and circumvent [U.S.] advantage in conventional military power." And as we all know it seems quite easy for hackers, who seem to be a large group, to do damage to information networks.
When Tenet gets to regional issues, he puts, not surprisingly, the Middle East at the top of his list of worries. But again, let us notice what he worries about - not Arafat or Assad or even Saddam Hussein. He worries about "the changing nature of activism of the Arab street," and says that "a restive public is increasingly capable of taking action without any identifiable leadership or organizational structure." Once again, no one with whom the U.S. can make a deal, no one to intimidate. A faceless mob - the "energized street" - this is the ultimate nightmare of defenders of the status quo.
As Tenet goes through the zones of worry - North Korea, China, Russia, Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, the Balkans, South Asia, Indonesia, Africa, Colombia - what is striking is the universally somber tone. In no region does he say things are looking up. Danger, danger everywhere. He ends bemoaning the growth in "potential for state fragmentation." Once again, the worry is a chaotic situation that is not amenable to the usual kind of pressures a superpower exercises.
I would say myself that Tenet's assessment is rather realistic, and much more than the blather we have been getting from the rest of the Bush administration. The United States is indeed facing a different kind of threat today than it did during the period of the Cold War. There is no super-enemy, who coordinates the other side, and with whom one can deal, whether by mutual threat or by detente. And the U.S. is not at all psychologically prepared to deal with the "street" amidst "state fragmentation" and "uncertainty." Thus far, it has been reacting with the old methods against an enemy who is no longer there. It is Maginot Line mentality.
But more things have to collapse before the present U.S. leaders are ready to listen to someone like Tenet. And it is not at all clear that Tenet knows what to do in this new situation. But at least he knows there is one.
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.]
Marcos, Mandela, and Gandhi (1 March 2001)
The Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee, the General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), is leading a march on Mexico City at this very moment. It is an historic event, mobilizing tens of thousands of "indigenous" Mexicans, followed by the world press, accompanied by sympathizers from around the world, with speeches, rallies, and press communiqués en route. The government of President Vicente Fox, against whom the march is directed, is treating the march with great care, officially encouraging it, ordering 1600 police to guarantee the safety of the marchers and their leaders (who have been receiving anonymous threats), and saying that they are ready to meet with and negotiate with the EZLN. The EZLN is treating the government with much suspicion and a good deal of scorn, and insisting that the preconditions for negotiations on fulfilling the San Andrés agreements (that the previous government signed but never implemented) are the release of all political prisoners and the withdrawal of the Mexican army from Chiapas. So far, Fox has released some prisoners and withdrawn part of the army.
In the last 200 years, there have been many different kinds of revolutionary or antisystemic movements. When we look back on their history, we see that some of these movements engaged in military activity against the forces in power, and that such movements sometimes succeeded and sometimes did not. But military action, even of a guerilla nature, is not always really possible, for many different kinds of reasons.
There have been three notable instances in which these movements fought very difficult campaigns against formidable opposition and were successful without real military action. They substituted for military action, by necessity or by preference, a political campaign that mobilized what might be called moral hegemony. The three campaigns of which I am thinking are that of the Indian National Congress (INC) and Gandhi, that of the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) and Mandela, and that of the EZLN and its most famous spokesperson, Subcommandant Marcos.
Gandhi too led a march, the famous Salt March. In 1930, Gandhi started out with 78 people to march 241 miles to the sea in order to violate the law by picking up salt without paying the tax. The object was to obtain complete independence from British rule. He wrote the Viceroy in advance telling him of his plans and saying "Whilst, therefore, I hold British rule to be a curse, I do not intend harm to a single Englishman...." After Gandhi violated the law, everywhere in India others did the same, and the jails were full. The British were feeling the impact of civil disobedience, the use of symbolic manipulation as a weapon.
Some thirty years after the Salt March in South Africa, the ANC found the apartheid government mentally prepared for civil disobedience and impervious to this manipulation. The ANC turned to guerilla warfare. But it was not so easy, and at a very early point, many of the key leaders of the ANC were arrested, tried, and sentenced to long terms in a prison on Robben Island. There they stayed for some 20 years. But the ANC turned first the trial and then precisely the Robben Island prison into their symbols of resistance. They mobilized world public opinion and, despite their military weakness, the ANC finally was able to force an fiercely antagonistic regime into liberating the imprisoned leaders, negotiating with them, and holding free elections in which the ANC came to power and Nelson Mandela was elected President.
Some thirty years after the launching of the ANC guerilla campaign, in 1994, a hitherto unknown movement of indigenous peoples in the remote province of Chiapas in Mexico announced a guerilla campaign, calling itself the EZLN, seeking autonomy and rights for the indigenous peoples. The actual violence was very small and quite brief. But the potential was great. And the Mexican government was forced to negotiate a truce, which they then spent six years seeking to abrogate. The EZLN spent the same six years mobilizing world public opinion, now via such advanced instruments as the internet. And in 2000, the government that sought to undo the truce was itself overthrown in the national elections, and the new President says that it is his priority to resolve the issues raised by the EZLN.
There is little question that, seen from the perspective of the world-system as a whole, these three campaigns - that of the INC in India, the ANC in South Africa, and the EZLN in Mexico - are the three that have been able to gain the widest support from world public opinion, thereby achieving what might be called moral hegemony, and consciously sought to use this moral hegemony as their strongest mode of pressuring the powers against whom they were struggling. Gandhi, Mandela, and now Marcos have taken on the flavor of world moral heroes, and this fact alone served their causes well.
One should in addition note one key element in this acquisition of moral hegemony. The three movements, the three heroes, laid enormous emphasis on their universalism, on the fact that they were not the spokespersons of some narrow group interest. Gandhi and the INC insisted that they stood for a secular India, not a Hindu India, and struggled to maintain Muslims within their vision of a free India. Gandhi was killed by a Hindu fanatic precisely because of this. The ANC and Mandela insisted that they stood for a non-racial society, and not for a Black South Africa. The ANC had, and has, not only White members but White members of their inner councils. And the EZLN and Marcos have insisted that they fight for the rights not only of indigenous peoples but of all Mexicans, that they are indigenous Mexicans. Marcos himself is not an indigenous Mexican, which is why he is the Subcommandant, there being multiple indigenous Commandants. Moral hegemony is not accorded to ethnic particularists.
All three movements have insisted on large social visions, and the content has expanded over time. Today, we have Commandant Esther of the EZLN emphasizing the centrality of indigenous women to the struggle because, says she, they suffer from "the triple exploitation of being indigenous persons, women, and poor." The communiqué of the EZLN tells us that this is the "march of indigenous dignity, the march of the people of the color of the earth." Marcos, in an interview, tells us that "the EZLN has arms...but does not practice terrorism, and has never committed a murderous attack." Furthermore, he says, the EZLN is not seeking state power, because the center of power is no longer in the states. "It achieves nothing to conquer power." What the EZLN wants is a "citizen-ization" of politics, at which point the EZLN will disappear, as will, he says, the "figure of Marcos."
When asked at a meeting en route by a local leader what are the orders of the organizers of the march, the answer that was given by Marcos is quite remarkable: "We are going to Mexico City with you and with many other peoples. ...We are going in order to obtain constitutional recognition of the rights of the indigenous peoples. And never again shall we take orders from anyone." He insisted that "the indigenous peoples are the guardians of history."
Gandhi and the Indian National Congress asserted the rights of Indians to freedom from external colonial rule. Mandela and the ANC asserted the rights of the non-White 80% of the population to freedom from internal colonial rule by the European settlers. And Marcos and the EZLN are asserting the rights of the "indigenous populations" to freedom from the hidden colonial rule of those who have considered themselves socially superior. When India gained its independence in 1948, it established a model that was felt throughout Asia and Africa and thereby speeded up the end of colonialism everywhere. When the EZLN obtains recognition of the dignity of indigenous peoples in Mexico, this will have the same impact throughout the Americas and elsewhere.
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.]
From Sunshine to Skies Overcast? A Korean Tale (15 March 2001)
President Kim Dae-Jung, of the Republic of Korea, launched a major diplomatic initiative which he called the "Sunshine" policy. It was aimed at bringing about some serious improvement in the relations between the two Koreas, North and South. For a while, it seemed more successful than one might have expected. But now it seems to have been undone by the U.S. elections, during which neither candidate ever mentioned the Korean peninsula.
During the Cold War, four countries were divided between the two camps, by the creation of separate state structures. They were Germany, Vietnam, China, and Korea. In all four countries, nationalist sentiment for reunification has remained extremely strong throughout. In all four countries, the ideological gulf has been very wide. Each country has its particular history and its particular geography. Two of them have achieved reunification - Germany and Vietnam - in more or less opposite ways. In Germany, the Communist half was dissolved and absorbed by the non-Communist half. In Vietnam, the opposite occurred.
All four countries have been on the front lines in terms of military action. But in the cases of Germany and China, the military action was extremely constrained, whereas both Korea and Vietnam suffered major, highly destructive wars. Essentially, the United States, which has been a central figure in all four situations, lost the Vietnam war. The Korean war, in which the Chinese took direct part, ended in a tie. No one won. The frontiers are more or less the same today as before the war. The two sides are separated, still today 48 years after the truce was signed, by a highly-armed no-man's land, known as the DMZ (demilitarized zone).
Up until two years ago, there was no contact - economic, diplomatic, or even telephonic - between North and South Korea. Indeed, individual contact across the border was considered a treasonous act. It was this situation that Kim Dae-jung hoped to end by his "Sunshine" policy. To understand what has been going on, we have to see what are the priorities of the four principal political actors in the conflict: North Korea, South Korea, China, and the United States.
North Korea is today the last unreconstructed old-style Communist state: a single-party system with no public arena; an industrialized state with no space for private endeavors and a very low level of interstate economic exchanges; a strong military establishment; an ideological commitment, loudly proclaimed, to their version of Leninism. They have been, as everyone knows, in great economic difficulties in the last decade, the collapse of the Soviet Union having enormously exacerbated prior economic problems.
The priority of the regime seems to be to survive in more or less unchanged form. While they are probably favorable in principle to Korean reunification, they would at present only favor it on their own terms, which is totally unlikely. They actively fear a renewal of the Korean war, and believe that the U.S. intends to destroy the regime. They believe that the only thing that prevents this from happening is their military strength. In the evolving state of military technology, the North Koreans are convinced that this means they should develop nuclear capacity and long-range missiles, which they have been doing for a long time now.
South Korea's priorities are rather different. South Korea has had a remarkable economic rise in the last quarter century, and priority number one is probably to maintain their newly-acquired economic strength and enjoy it. South Korea is also seeking nationalist fulfillment via a larger role for the country in Asian geopolitics. They thus want some renewal of ties with North Korea. This is partly for sentimental reasons (both national and individual - the problem of divided families), partly for economic reasons, and partly for geopolitical reasons.
Having observed the economic consequences of the reunification of Germany for the West Germans, they are not anxious to have a real reunification at this time, neither by agreement of the two sides nor via the collapse of the North Korean regime. But they think, or at least the current government thinks (supported by the majority but not the totality of public opinion), that North Korea's current severe economic difficulties make that regime open to the kind of closer ties that the South Koreans hope to have. South Korea thinks that China is sympathetic to its proposals in this regard, and counts on the Chinese, North Korea's last diplomatic friend, to encourage the North Koreans to pursue such negotiations.
China has in fact done this. China is probably not interested in a real Korean reunification, since this would make Korea too strong an actor in the East Asian scene. But China believes that the North Korean regime cannot survive without bending somewhat in its economic policies, and the South Korean proposals would move North Korea in this direction. China also fears any renewal of hostilities, since that would undoubtedly harden the attitudes of the U.S. in regard to China, and might be the occasion of augmented military reinforcement of the Taiwan regime. Furthermore, China withdrew all its troops from the Korean peninsula in 1953, and has no desire to see any of them return there.
So, this brings us to the United States. During the Clinton years, the U.S. was brought somewhat reluctantly to a position of endorsing the South Korean proposals. The U.S. has interests quite different from those of the others. The U.S. has a worldwide military priority of limiting the military strength of all other countries, except insofar as these forces are entirely subordinated to U.S. control. They act this way even towards western Europe. So of course they act this way towards North Korea. What the U.S. fears most in the world-system today is what it calls "proliferation" - a word which means that other countries are trying to have the kinds of weapons the U.S. already has.
In its campaign against proliferation, North Korea is the number 1 demon. It has a regime totally hostile to U.S. interests. It has a technology that puts it closer to achieving nuclear weaponry than any other country not presently possessing it. It shows every intention of seeking actively to improve its weaponry. So what the U.S. wants is for North Korea to forego these efforts. This is not easy for the U.S. to achieve. It can try threats, but it is unsure that it would carry through on threats, and the North Koreans know this. It can try diplomacy, but then it has to concede something. Or it can dither. In some sense, Clinton's initial impulse was to dither. It was Kim Dae-jung's achievement that he convinced the Clinton government that diplomacy would do better than dithering.
So the U.S., North Korea, and South Korea have been negotiating for several years now, and it seemed last December that they had almost reached an arrangement, in which North Korea would limit its military technology in various ways in return for some serious economic assistance. We are told that Clinton was ready to fly to P'yongyang in December to clinch the deal, when two things stopped him: first, the Florida debacle, and then, when the election of Bush was certain, word from the Bush people that they would not fulfil any agreement. So he didn't go.
Since the inauguration of Bush, the U.S. has made very clear that it would not only not come to such an agreement, but that it would not even renew discussions with North Korea. Why not? There seem two obvious reasons. One, the Bush people are mired in a rightwing version of cold war mentality - you can't trust Communists; they only understand a tough line. But even more important is their own intentions in terms of military technology. The Bush government is moving full speed ahead with the so-called National Missile Defense (NMD) program, steamrollering apposition from allies and foes. It is doing this partly because it believes that the U.S. should put forward a supermacho position in geopolitics, and partly because this is a very profitable economic proposition for some people.
But pushing NMD as a policy is not all that easy. There is a lot of opposition, including within the U.S. The major rhetorical argument that the Bush people are using to advance the need for NMD is the evil intentions of the North Korean regime. One can hardly expect them to undercut their own major argument by pursuing a deal with North Korea.
So poor Kim Dae-jung, poor South Korea - caught between a rock and a hard place. It looks like the skies may be gray for a long while to come.
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 Militarist Camp in the U.S. (1 April 2001)
George W. Bush has made it quite clear, quite rapidly, that his Administration will govern the United States as far to the right as it politically can. How far can it? To answer that, it is not enough to look at the balance of political forces between the Democrats and the Republicans. Most commentators seem to emphasize how closely the two parties are balanced at the moment in the U.S. Congress. This is the wrong way to look at it. The fact is that this is the first time in forty years and only the second time since 1932 that the Republican Party has controlled the Presidency and both Houses of Congress. Numbers of bills that the Republicans favored in the last six years and for which they had the votes in Congress were either vetoed by Clinton or were withdrawn in the face of a threatened veto. The Republicans are today in a relatively strong position, despite the closeness of the presidential election and despite the narrow margins they have in the legislature.
The real political question to look at is potential struggles within the Republican Party. Thus far, Bush has been able to hold the factions together, but can this last? Throughout the post-1945 period, there have always been three quite different constituencies that have made up the Republican Party: the economic conservatives, the social conservatives, and the macho militarists. Of course, many individuals are all three, but most persons give priority to one of the three thrusts. And therein lies the problem for the Republicans.
The economic conservatives are mostly businessmen and their cadres plus high-earning professionals. Their priority at the moment is to reduce their tax burden and to resist any effort to force enterprises to internalize their costs (via ecological legislation). With amazing rapidity, Bush has indicated that he will fight very hard for everything this constituency wants. And they seem clearly to be his personal priority. He may not get everything he wants in tax reduction. But he will probably get almost everything he wants in restricting environmental protection, since a large part of what is needed to be done requires the action of the Executive branch of government. He has already repealed a good deal of what Clinton tried to put into effect in the closing days of his administration. And he has shut the door definitively on the Kyoto Protocol. To the Europeans (and Canadians) who are unanimously very upset, he has said unequivocally that the interests of U.S. businessmen are his first concern.
The social conservatives have played an increasingly important role in Republican politics over the last 25 years, due to the mobilization of the Christian Coalition. Bush has gone out of his way to make serious gestures to meet their demands. He has reinstated the ban on giving any money to any international organization that indicates in any way that it favors abortions. He has appointed one of them as the Attorney-General, a key post. And he has in effect promised that his Supreme Court appointments would be ones they would favor. But he may not be able to get those appointments ratified. We shall see. However, in matters of new legislation, he has in effect told the social conservatives that they must do the work themselves to get the bills passed, and that, if they succeed, he promises to sign them. But it seems he is not going to spend too much of his own political ammunition in an effort to achieve these ends.
The joker in the pack is macho militarism. In a few short months, the Bush administration has managed to take on the entire world. Whereas the Clinton administration seemed to think that U.S. interests were served by calming down conflicts across the world (to be sure, in ways that the U.S. found comfortable), the Bush people seem almost to be stoking up the conflicts. They have said that a lot more has to be done about Saddam Hussein. They have withdrawn from mediating Israel/Palestine, and have shifted from a covertly pro-Israel position to an overtly pro-Israel, anti-Arafat position, They have flexed their muscles with the Canadians and the West Europeans by telling them in no uncertain terms that the U.S. will proceed with the new missile defense proposals, and have shown little interest in maintaining the old U.S.-Russian nuclear treaties, saying they are outdated. They have downgraded the Russians from being a potential ally to being again a potential enemy. They seem to be on the point of giving Taiwan the kind of arms they want and which the Chinese have made clear it is their priority for them not to get. As for easing anything on the Cuba embargo, forget it.
And of course, as I wrote in Comment No. 60, they seem determined to keep North Korea as an active enemy. This last posture has upset the European Union so much that they have sent a special delegation to North Korea, presumably to see if Europe could supply some of the financial assistance that the U.S. is clearly no longer ready to negotiate.
Romano Prodi, the President of the European Union Commission, has already accused the U.S. of failing to act like a "world leader" because of its narrow nationalist attitudes on the question of global warming. Mr. Bush seems oblivious. In his Press Conference on Mar. 29, there occurred the following extraordinary exchange:
Question: Mr. President, allies of the United States have complained that you haven't consulted them sufficiently on your stance with negotiations with North Korea, Kyoto Treaty, your deteriorating relations elsewhere. If you strictly read the international press, it looks like everyone's mad at us. Mr. President, how do you think that came to be? And what, if anything, do you plan to do about it?
Answer: Well, I get a completely different picture, of course, when I sit down with the world leaders.
Bush then went on to say on the carbon dioxide issue that "we will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first, are the people who live in America. That's my priority."
Is it really true that Bush is unaware of the fact that everyone is mad at the U.S., or does he not care? This is where the macho militarists come in. This group believes that power talks, and that if the U.S. doesn't act tough, it will lose everything - its power, its wealth, its centrality in the world-system. They don't want to settle conflicts; they want to win conflicts. And if it requires a little military action here or there, they are ready and eager.
The big question is, are the American people eager or even ready? And even more important for Bush, are the businessmen, who are his basic support group and the group to which he owes his loyalty, ready? Because, although military armaments generate a lot of profits (Shaw explained all this wonderfully in Major Barbara), it is also true that unnecessary wars interfere with capitalist profits in many different ways (Schumpeter always argued this). One of the major reasons why Clinton (and before him Bush the father) improved relations with China was the pressure of Republican businessmen, who wanted to invest and trade there. And it was Republican farm interests which pressed Clinton to ease the Cuban embargo. The militarist wing of the Republican Party runs against the grain of the economic conservative wing (or at least a part of it).
So the macho militarists may find arrayed against them not merely those they regard as their enemies (say, China and Russia) and the major U.S. allies but perhaps some major transnationals and other large U.S. businesses. This may cause Bush to rein in the macho militarists, because if he doesn't they might escalate the provocations. Is Bush strong enough to do this?
Teddy Roosevelt, unabashed spokesman of U.S. imperialism, advised "Speak softly and carry a big stick." The Bush administration is not following this advice. They are speaking quite loudly indeed. But what is the size of their stick?
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.]
We Are Very Sorry (15 April 2001)
With that phrase, said twice in a letter from the U.S. Ambassador to China to the Chinese Foreign Minister on April 11, the Chinese government agreed to allow the 24 U.S. air personnel to leave Hainan Island on "humanitarian grounds" and return to the U.S. How may we interpret this verbal ping-pong in the light of U.S.-China relations over the past two centuries?
No sooner had I issued Comment No. 61 on April 1 ("The Militarist Camp in the U.S.") concerning the internal struggle within the Republican Party between economic conservatives and macho militarists than this incident occurred to illustrate my point. I had argued that not only did the two groups have different interests but that Bush, forced to choose, would lean towards the first group. And so he did. His initial language was tough, even provocative, but he quickly retreated into a very sage diplomatic stance. And with that, he was able to achieve half of what he wanted. Of course, as all the commentators observed, the same division was going on within the Chinese government, and the same camp prevailed. The editorial in the New York Times said, approvingly, that there was "some accommodation on both sides."
The same reaction to the accommodation occurred on both sides. In the U.S., although they pulled their punches publicly, the militarist camp was quite unhappy with Bush. The influential conservative Weekly Standard permitted itself to criticize him publicly for his weakness. And, from what is being reported in the press, there seems to be popular discontent in China, a feeling that the Chinese gave in too easily to U.S. pressure. What however was the immediate rapport de forces in this U.S.-China confrontation, and where does it fit in the evolving historical relationship of the two powers?
What did each side want, and what were their strengths? The U.S. ideally wanted an immediate return of the personnel and the plane. This is what Bush demanded when the affair began. The Chinese ideally wanted an apology plus a promise to cease further reconnaissance flights in the area. The outcome was in-between. Bush got the return of the personnel, albeit not immediately. The plane is still in Chinese possession, and may remain there for quite a while.
The Chinese got something a bit less than an apology, but a lot more than the U.S. wanted to give. The U.S. first offered nothing, then "regrets," then "sorry," and finally "very sorry." The U.S. made its statement only in English. The Chinese translated the "very sorry" in two different ways. They used one term, which is said to be roughly equivalent, for being "very sorry" about the loss of the Chinese aviator's life. They used another term, said to be stronger and closer to "apology," to translate the "very sorry" for landing without permission on Chinese territory. It is true, as Henry Kissinger remarked, that while these terms were very important in resolving the immediate issues, they will probably be forgotten completely in a few months.
What was behind this verbal tussle? Before the incident had occurred, Bush had already said that he did not think China was a "strategic partner" but rather a "strategic competitor." From an analyst's point of view, China is quite clearly both. The U.S. and China are both counting on a significantly closer economic relationship in the next twenty years in order to meet what each thinks are its needs. This is a fact that U.S. businessmen clearly impressed on Bush and which in the end probably determined his way of handling the situation. But then the same thing may have occurred in China.
So they are strategic partners in the world-economy, at least now and into the next few decades. But they are also strategic competitors in the military arena. The U.S. wishes to maintain its present role as the most powerful (indeed indispensable) military presence in East Asia. And the Chinese clearly wish to see this role diminish, even disappear entirely. And the route China is taking to do this is to build up its own military, try to defuse conflict in Korea, and ultimately to absorb Taiwan. So the militarists in each camp have strong geopolitical arguments to back up their case each time a tactical question arises.
The story of the two countries goes back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. At that time, New England merchants (spiritual and sometimes literal ancestors of today's U.S. big businessmen) first sailed in their clipper ships to China for trade. They were soon followed by U.S. Protestant missionaries. (It is useful to remember that, in U.S. Protestant seminaries in the nineteenth century and even in the first half of the twentieth, there was a hierarchy of assignments for their students: the best were sent to China and Japan, the next rank to India, and the weakest to Africa.)
What the U.S. merchants worried about most was access, and there were two potential deniers of access: Chinese officials, and other Western powers (and Japan). Against Chinese officials, the U.S. backed "reformers" (just as they do today). Against other powers, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay proclaimed the "open door policy" in 1899. Today, the other powers are in no position to deny the U.S. access, but Chinese officials still are.
Between the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 against the "foreign devils" (the Christian missionaries and their converts), which was in part a reaction to the "open door policy," and the entry of the Chinese Communist army into Shanghai in 1949, the U.S. was a bit unsure who the "reformers" were. In particular, were Communists modernizers or enemies? That is why the Republican right in the early 1950's denounced various U.S. diplomats, politicians, and scholars for "having lost China." This is the source of the refusal to recognize the Chinese government and the very strong commitment to the Taiwan regime from the beginning.
We tend to forget these days that the U.S. and China actually went to war with each other a half-century ago. It was when both entered the Korean conflict. We also tend to forget that the Chinese almost won that war, and that the best that the U.S. could do militarily was to end the war in a draw, more or less on the boundary line where it started. And that this armed truce continues to this day, although Chinese troops are long since gone from Korea and U.S. troops are not.
In the 1950's, China was number 1 on the U.S. list of enemies, higher than the U.S.S.R. But then China and the U.S.S.R. had their historic split in 1960, and by 1972, Nixon (long a spokesman of a militarist stance vis-a-vis China) went to Beijing, met Mao Zedong, and started this "strategic partnership," which was an anti-Soviet partnership. Each side had to adjust its positions accordingly. On the Chinese side, they began to open up to world trade once again (and therefore to U.S. trade). On the U.S. side, the U.S. dropped its two China policy, recognized the Chinese government (George Bush, father, was one of our first Ambassadors) and allowed the Chinese government to resume control of its seat in the United Nations.
The sticking point in all of this was the military implications. The U.S. did not abandon Taiwan, although it toned down the mode of its support. And China did not abandon its military aspirations, not only strengthening itself but seeking to strengthen others across the globe who might stick pins in the U.S. And that's where we are today.
The latest incident shows that neither side is able either to do without the other in the economic sphere nor to intimidate the other in the military sphere. The question is what will be the case twenty years from now? My own bet is that China will be stronger and the U.S. somewhat weaker. That is Mr. Bush's dilemma.
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 Limits of Economic Conservatism (1 May 2001)
What we mean by economic conservatism is a political position favoring state action that enhances the ability of capitalists to make maximum profit from their economic activities. What enhances this ability? Two things, essentially. One is reducing the costs of production. The second is increasing prices by limiting competition. Reducing the costs of production means capitalists obtain a greater surplus at the current market prices of their products. Limiting competition means they are able to increase market prices for their products. Whenever a so-called conservative party obtains state power, they immediately move to do both of these things. The question is how far can they go? This is not a moral question but a political one: what are the political limits of economic conservatism? Let us look at how this works today, especially in the wealthier countries which have multiparty systems.
We start with reducing the costs of production. Capitalist entrepreneurs have three types of costs: payment of employees, payment for the inputs they need to produce their products, and taxes. Economic conservatives move most dramatically when they come into power having defeated governments with "social-democratic" leanings. The so-called neo-liberal governments of the last 25 years are good instances of such regimes: Mrs. Thatcher in Great Britain, Ronald Reagan and now again George W. Bush in the United States, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, and of course there are many others.
Governments reduce the costs of paying employees in two ways: resisting increases in minimum wages, and weakening of union structures. Mrs. Thatcher waged long battles with trade unions. One of the first thing Ronald Reagan did was to break the strike of air controllers. George W. Bush moved quickly to keep workers for an airline from striking. In addition, economic conservatives seek to pass measures limiting the ability of trade unions to participate actively in politics.
Similarly, economic conservatives seek to keep down the cost of inputs. They do this primarily by favoring the externalization of costs. That is, they permit the producers not to pay their bills in three ways: allowing them to dump waste, notably toxic waste; not requiring them to pay the costs of renewing basic resources they have used; contributing essential parts of the costs via the construction of "infrastructure" necessary for the marketing of the products as well to obtain necessary inputs. However, in the last several decades, there has been a widespread social movement to curtail these practices. It is called the ecology movement, which essentially asks the government to force the internalization of costs. One of the first things economic conservative governments do is remove or water down environmental legislation on the grounds that this increases the costs of production (which is true). George W. Bush has undertaken a number of spectacular measures along these lines - killing the Kyoto treaty, undoing measures to reduce arsenic in water, etc.
And, of course, economic conservatives make tax reduction their great symbolic issue. George W. Bush ran on this issue more than on any other, and has called for tax reduction as his number one priority.
The question is, how successful are these moves in reducing the costs of production? It is unquestionably true that they succeed in reducing the costs somewhat, and that they thereby increase the profits of capitalists in general, and of large capitalists in their own countries in particular. But of course, these moves stimulate resistance by all those who are hurt by such measures. The parties of economic conservatives regularly lose elections, particularly after a long bout of such cost-cutting. But they are often forced to retreat even while in office. It has often been noted that the conservative parties in France and Germany were afraid to push such measures strenuously, even when in power. But even aggressively conservative regimes, like that of George W. Bush, pull back. Bush kept the first airline strike from happening, but when the second one came along, he declined to intervene. His actions on Kyoto and on arsenic aroused so much furor that his government annulled further measures they were about to take. And, quite notably, the U.S. Congress is not going to give Bush the size of tax cut he wanted, nor permit as much budget cutting as he wanted.
So, one has to stand back and assess what is happening, what has been happening over the last 25 years, over the last 200 years.
The long-term curve is essentially an upward ratchet. The costs of labor, the costs of inputs due to internalization, the level of taxation has been going up continuously, but not steadily. It goes up every 25 years or so, then down again for 25 years. But it never goes down as much as it goes up. The political counterpressure is too great. This is what we mean by democratization.
So, behind the huffing and puffing on all sides, in the long run, capitalists are in trouble in terms of maintaining levels of profitability. That is why they seek to do an end run around the issue of costs in order to do something about prices. Capitalists say they believe in a free market. It isn't true. A totally competitive market is one in which no producer can ever make any profit whatsoever. In a totally competitive market, the buyer can always force the seller to reduce his price to pennies over the cost of production. Profit requires restricting the freedom of the market by some degree of monopolization. The fewer the producers the higher the profit.
However, no producer likes a monopoly if it's someone else's monopoly. They especially dislike a monopoly if it's legal, and the worst legal monopoly from their point of view is that of a state-owned enterprise. So, economic conservatives move in two seemingly contradictory directions. On the one hand, they seek to end legal monopolies. This is called "privatization" - and we have seen a lot of it across the world in the last 25 years, following the period between 1945-1970, when we saw the largest amount of "nationalization" of enterprises the modern world-system has ever known.
But privatization is only the beginning of the story. "Deregulation" is equally important, but for exactly the opposite reason. Once state-owned or state-backed monopolies are eliminated, what capitalists need is the possibility of constructing privately-owned monopolies. State measures that prevent this or limit this ("regulation") are anathema. There is no point having private enterprise if it's going to be a truly free market. In all the major arenas of profit, the last 25 years have seen an increased concentration of ownership, not merely at a national level, but at a world level. See communications, pharmaceuticals, computer technology, airplane construction, for a start.
Economic conservatives have been much more successful in increasing sales prices than in reducing the costs of production. This is largely because the majority of the population perceives almost immediately how it is being hurt by the drive to reduce costs of production and mobilizes against it. They find it more difficult to perceive the process of increased monopolization, at least until the costs suddenly skyrocket, as happened with the cost of energy in the 1970's and is happening again today. And when it does happen, the ordinary person finds it a bit more difficult to know who is doing what, and who should be blamed. A tax bill or dangerous toxicity permitted by government inaction is easy to spot. A corporate merger is reported on the inside pages of the major newspapers and not at all in the rest of the media.
The bottom line is that economic conservatives try to roll the clock back. They succeed partially, but never as much as they wish. And reducing corporate monopolies is at least as urgent as increasing the share employees receive of surplus, forcing the internalization of costs, and maintaining a progressive tax system.
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.]
Torture, History, and Today (15 May 2001)
France is at the moment in the middle of a big scandal. An old and virtually unknown retired general, Gen. Aussaresses, has published a book in which he has admitted (one might almost say boasted of) the fact that, during the war in Algeria, he personally was in charge of extensive torture and murder on behalf of the French army. In any case, he says he has no regrets. For those who are old enough to have been politically active 40-45 years ago and who followed the events in Algeria, this admission comes as no surprise. It was widely alleged at the time by those who were tortured, by those who protested against these tortures, and by those (relatively few persons) who resigned from positions of authority in the French government, and indeed in the French army, in protest against these practices.
But of course at the time the French authorities vigorously denied the charge, and prosecuted persons who made such charges. They banned books that alleged such practices. In short, they lied through their teeth in the face of massive evidence. But now the torturer-in-chief himself says it was true. And he says that his superiors in the army and the government knew what he was doing, indeed ordered him to do it. The current president of France, Jacques Chirac, says he is horrified and has asked the army to look into the possibility of charging the general with crimes. He also wants the general to be revoked from membership in the Légion d'Honneur. The current prime minister, Lionel Jospin, suggests that the issue be left to historians. Everyone else is debating what to do.
How are we to think about crimes against humanity? And how are we to think about reopening the issue of such crimes many years later? For France is not alone in the face of this problem. Even if we restrict ourselves to the twentieth century, there were the crimes of the Nazis. There were the crimes of the Japanese in the second World War. There was the genocide of the Armenians. There was the Gulag in the Soviet Union. There was Pinochet in Chile. There was Ariel Sharon in Lebanon. There were the crimes of the United States in Korea and Vietnam. There are, more recently, all the many crimes in the Balkans and in Africa. Indeed, the list is very, very long.
And always the story is the same. Those who commit the crimes deny them when they are doing them. Those who denounce the crimes are denounced in turn. And later, much later, it is revealed that those in power lied through their teeth. Shall we just throw up our arms in despair? Shall we create "Truth and Reconciliation Commissions" everywhere, following the recent example of South Africa - an example that has itself been denounced for being strong on reconciliation and short on justice?
And above all, whom shall we blame? It is always easy to blame the other guy. We are rarely ready to admit our own guilt - our active guilt as torturers, our collateral guilt as those who knew but said nothing or not very much, our passive guilt as those who facilitated the crimes by joining in the passions that were their context. In the specific case of French torture during the Algerian war of independence, shall we blame Gen. Aussaresses? or also his superiors in the army? or also the members of the cabinet who authorized the special powers under which the army carried out the torture? How much did very famous French leaders know? Gen. de Gaulle who forbade the torture but then did nothing to implement his views? Or earlier François Mitterand, who as Minister of the Interior when the torture began, seems to have warned the Prime Minister against the practice, but then did not resign when it continued?
And above all, what should we do about it now? Put on trial an aging general, who obeyed orders (but so did the defendants at Nuremberg)? Or issue a report, in which the government admits all (or almost all)? Or simply write about it realistically in the textbooks? The scandal has brought to light what French textbooks are teaching young people today about the events then. Some don't mention them at all. Others mention them rapidly. The Ministry of Education says that teachers are free to supplement the textbooks. But the teachers say they have no time, given the material the students need to pass the exams. In Japan, there is resistance to including even the passing mention which one finds in the French textbooks. Do any U.S. textbooks talk of the slaughters of civilians in Vietnam, as exposed in the famous Calley affair or more recently as exposed by former Senator Kerrey (and Medal of Honor winner) who told of his own guilt in one such slaughter? Do any U.S. textbooks tell of the report of the Church Committee (of the U.S. Senate) spelling out the misdeeds of the CIA, for example, the attempted assassinations of Fidel Castro (which only last year a high ex-CIA official said was directly suggested in veiled language by President Kennedy himself)? Do we read of the Stalin era in Russian textbooks?
What lessons can we learn from these scandals? First of all, and I think this is first of all, that governments lie all the time, and especially about their crimes. Those who expose the lies of their own governments are not traitors; they are the honor of the country when their leaders have betrayed that honor. Secondly, we learn that it is important for school textbooks to spell out in some detail the misdeeds of their own countries. To be sure, it is reasonable to balance this by telling of the misdeeds of the others as well, but only if one emphasizes one's own guilt. No healthy social order can be built on the sand of self-deception.
Will such open discussion and awareness prevent the horrors from continuing? Possibly not, but it certainly won't hurt. The origins of the crimes are deep within the basic structures of the world-system within which we are living. The causers are structural. France tortured in Algeria in order to maintain a colonial system that was exploitative and indecent. Those in power could appeal both to the noble sentiments of their own citizens (love of country) and to the ignoble sentiments of their own citizens (love of power, love of privilege). It turns out it isn't very hard to get persons, in a situation of acute conflict, to do horrible things. What is difficult is to get people to stop doing horrible things.
The first appeal must always be to those who are more powerful, who are for the moment winning the battle. If one protests their misdeeds, they will tell you they are fighting terrorism or something else that is execrable. And no doubt they are. The question is how one can bring these mutual slaughters to an end. The solutions are always political. But political solutions last only as long as they reflect some modicum of justice.
So, yes, let's discuss the tortures of France in Algeria, and those everywhere else. Let us condemn those individuals who were weak enough to engage in the tortures or tolerate them (which is the vast majority of mankind). And yes, let us try to transform the structures of the world so that fewer persons, fewer governments are pushed by the logic of preserving their existing privileges to engage in these practices. The fact that this is not easy only means we need to work at it unceasingly. And it means we continually need to expose the past rather than to glorify 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 - Does It Matter Today? (1 June 2001)
In the beginning of this year, a distinguished French review, Critique, published a special issue on Moscow 2001, with largely Russian authors. The editor presented the issue on the back page of the journal in the following way:
Once upon a time there was the USSR. Adulated or hated, it mattered. Today there is Russia: does anyone care? We speak about it a lot, you say. No! We speak (correctly) about Chechnya. And then about the Mafia, and the nouveaux riches. Russia is reduced today to the picture of a few traits beaten onto a wall of indifference.
Is this true? Does no one care? And does that make sense in the world-system of the twenty-first century?
We must first look at Russia itself, and how Russia looks at Russia. The Gorbachev era was a whirlwind, in the very simple sense that everything went very fast in a direction almost no one expected before Gorbachev came to power. In virtually no time, the whole structure of Soviet power was dismantled, and in the 1991, the U.S.S.R. ceased to exist. Enter Russia and Yeltsin.
Yeltsin lasted a decade, a decade of "transition," as every one called it. State enterprises were dismantled, or rather were sold off cheap, often to their former managers. Russia entered into agreements with the United States to dismantle a part of its nuclear capacity. The armed forces were downgraded from that of a superpower to that of a regional power at best. And the Russians spent their time trying unsuccessfully to suppress a rebellion in Chechnya and somewhat more successfully to sustain regimes in the now independent republics of Central Asia that were formerly part of the U.S.S.R.
Above all, Russia lived out the great slogan of Restoration France, "Messieurs: enrichissez-vous!" A small but important stratum of Russians, many ex-apparatchiks but others new young persons, became international entrepreneurs and some became very rich indeed. Some of the wealth was gained by brazenly illegal means (the so-called Mafia); some of it was gained by semi-illegal means. Nothing unusual here, you will say - nothing but the bread and butter of savage capitalism. Quite right. When, in 1998, the rouble collapsed, it was bracing, but then Russians tried to pick up the pieces.
So why did everyone become so uneasy in the last few years? Why did the optimism of the early 1990's disappear? The answer is very simple. Two things became clear to just about everyone. Russia was not about to "catch up" with western Europe in wealth and economic power, not today and not tomorrow. It might improve its economic situation but there was no dramatic breakthrough in prospect. It was doomed to remain a semiperipheral state for a long time.
And if this were bad enough, suddenly everyone realized that Russia didn't matter anymore, didn't matter geopolitically. It could be ignored, and it was being ignored. And this hurt even more than the sense that the country was reaching an economic plateau. Nationalism is a very strong drug, and once one has been a superpower, one doesn't reconcile oneself very easily to being a second-rate has-been. Enter Putin, with his program not of economic transformation but of the reconstruction of geopolitical strength.
At the other end of the world, there is the United States. Under Clinton, in the Yeltsin years, the U.S. tried to buy off Russia with a supply of constant lollipops. Of course, the candy became a little expensive for the U.S. and there began to be some grumbling. On the other hand, the candy was scarcely enough for an avaricious group of Russian politicians controlling the sluice-gates of money flows. But then Yeltsin went, and Clinton went.
Enter George W. Bush and his band of unreconstructed conservatives. They seem to have the slogan of "keep the riches flowing as fast as possible in the next decade - to us" and the rest of the world, be damned! Since the U.S. has the greatest wealth in the world (at the moment) and an unbeatable armed forces (which, however, is politically almost unusable), the Bush crew are arrogant. They think they can get away with bullying anyone, not least Russia. So, restraints of historic treaties? Say they're outdated, and say the U.S. will violate them unilaterally, unless the Russians agree to dissolving them jointly.
Mr. Bush has just learned in U.S. internal politics that, when one deals highhandedly with elements one considers weak and wrong (for example, the so-called "moderates" of the Republican Party), it is actually possible for those so affronted to pick up their marbles and walk away, as Sen. Jeffords did recently, undoing the whole Republican agenda in the United States. The consequences for the Bush program within the U.S. are very far-reaching. Not preventing the Jeffords switch in party affiliation will go down as one of the monumental political blunders of this decade, if not longer.
Has Mr. Bush learned a lesson? Perhaps. It may be time for him however to look away from internal U.S. problems and cast a view on the geopolitical scene. For it is just possible that Putin will pick up his marbles and walk away as well. The Russians don't want to pick a fight with the U.S. They have more important things to do. But they do want to be taken seriously. At this very moment, things have improved economically in Russia because of the rise of world oil prices. On April 3, 2001, the New York Times headlined a small article, "Flexing its fiscal soundness, Russia will bypass the I.M.F." What this means is that the U.S. has lost its 1990 cudgel vis-a-vis Russia, the need for loans.
If Bush persists in the military program he has outlined, for which he is already in trouble with western Europe, Russia may just decide to ignore the U.S. Yes, ignore the U.S. What will they do? Who knows? Rebuild their armed forces? Probably. Play games in the Middle East? Probably. Cozy up to western Europe? Probably. Improve relations with China? Maybe.
The details of what Russia will do, and the degree of success such moves will have, may make less difference, than the possibility of showing a studied indifference to the U.S. If this happens, when this happens, Mr. Bush may find himself in as much trouble on the world scene as he now finds himself in the U.S. Senate.
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.]
Truth, Apologies, and Reparations (15 June 2001)
In January 1077, Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, went to Canossa, a castle in Italy where Pope Gregory VII was staying. He went to plead that his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church be rescinded. The Pope had him wait barefoot in the snow outside his castle for three days, and then admitted him and absolved him. Going to Canossa has become an expression to indicate that, after a political defeat, or in order to avoid a still worse defeat, one party to the conflict humiliates himself publicly and apologizes for his misdeeds.
A millennium later, there seems to be a great number of persons/countries going to Canossa, or being asked to go to Canossa. Why has this suddenly become fashionable, or necessary? The victors in the Second World War tried the leaders of defeated Germany and Japan as war criminals, setting a new precedent in international law. But many persons felt that this was insufficient, and that the successor regimes should assume moral responsibility for what the leaders of their country had previously done.
It took a while, but eventually the leaders of Germany issued public apologies for the genocide of the Nazi regime, and made some reparations to the State of Israel. More recently, they came under great pressure to extend the concept of reparations to all those who had been conscripted as slave labor during the war. And this very year, they have adopted such legislation, providing that the German state, jointly with some large German corporations, pay reparations to individuals still living who had been used as slave labor. Similar pressures have been put on the Swiss and Austrian governments, banks, and corporations, with comparable results.
The situation in Japan is quite different. The Japanese government has declined to emulate the German government. While they have issued some excuses, the language has been guarded. It certainly has not satisfied the two countries who feel most aggrieved by Japanese actions in the period 1931-1945: China and Korea. Indeed, the Japanese have been very reluctant even to rewrite the school textbooks to take account of their war crimes.
The idea of "truth commissions" has been spreading in many parts of the world that have known long and murderous civil wars. The most noted is the so-called Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. The South Africans came up with the idea that they would trade "truth" for "amnesty." If persons involved in the apartheid regime who had committed moral crimes would now confess them, in great detail, the Commission would grant them amnesty from prosecution. This has been a controversial mode of handling historic wrongs. Some critics have argued that this has enabled criminals to avoid "justice," and thereby "get away with their crimes." The Commission, and its supporters, argued that this was the road, the only road, to national "reconciliation." There are a number of Latin American countries which have created variants of the South African commission, with varying degrees of public acceptance. Some persons are now advocating similar commissions in the Balkans, and in other parts of Africa.
How recent do such crimes have to be? This is no minor question. As we well know, the creation of the modern world-system involved an enormous conquest and colonization of large parts of the world by European powers. They slaughtered "native" populations, enslaved them (or put them into conditions of forced labor), and appropriated their land. Today, both "indigenous peoples" and descendants of slave populations have started campaigns for "apologies" and "reparations" in many parts of the world, but notably the United States and Canada. Of course, land appropriation is still a current issue (as opposed to an historic issue) in still other parts of the world, for example, in Israel/Palestine.
Apologies are relatively cheap, and some have been made. Reparations cost money. And if they are to be serious, they cost a lot of money. Who should pay this? The obvious answer is the descendants of those who committed the crimes. But these persons often argue that they cannot be expected to accept the burden of what ancestors, a dozen or two dozen generations back, did. And what kind of reparations - money (in one form or another) or land? Land restitution would of course transform the distribution of wealth in the existing world-system. And to whom would this land be redistributed? These are of course difficult questions - difficult legally, and difficult morally. Still, there are beginnings of such reparations, even in land - more in Canada than in the United States.
There are crimes that are even older than the European colonization of the non-European world. There are the crimes committed in the name of religious faith. The Roman Catholic Church has taken the lead in recognizing this issue. Pope John Paul II launched a process of public apology and requests for forgiveness. Of whom? Of the Jewish people, of the intellectuals of the world for the persecution of Galileo and others, and most recently of Orthodox Christians. His words in regard to Moslems were less forthright, but he recognized the mutual pain the two religions had imposed on each other. The recipients of the apologies have tended to be thankful, but often asked for still more. Some Roman Catholics have been appalled by what they see as a belittling of the true faith.
Why, however, has all this become an issue now, indeed an issue of growing importance politically? The answer seems obvious. It is a reflection of a changed rapport de forces in the modern world-system, one sign of the increased political strength of the non-White populations of the world, and more generally, of all those who have been persecuted, oppressed, and kept down in the world's hierarchies.
This is no doubt a good thing. And the confession of sins, past sins, however far past, is both cleansing and can be historically instructive. Do reparations make sense? For still living survivors of misdeeds (workers in Nazi slave camps, Korean comfort women, etc.), it may ease the pain of their last days. But how about for descendants of the persons who were maltreated? One can look at such reparations as a symbol, as economic redistribution, as political transformation.
As a symbol, reparations have much value. They are a moral acknowledgment, with significant political consequences. They also have a cost, since they lead probably to a sense of aggrievement on those taxed for this purpose (especially those persons who are themselves not too well-off). This reverse aggrievement may not be justified but it will be a reality.
As economic redistribution, reparations are probably an extremely inefficacious mode of achieving this, since it will come in the form of bonanzas for a part, but only a part, of those to whom it should go, and probably leave relatively unscathed the persons who morally should pay the highest price. Economic redistribution, if that is the goal, is better achieved by direct political action.
This brings us to the last consideration - the long-run political consequence. The whole issue arises only because of the basic inequalities and crimes of construction of the capitalist world-economy. The solution is not going to come from tinkering with the system, apologizing, redistributing, and speaking the language of virtuous harmony. It requires far more than that.
So, truth yes. And apologies, yes. And reparations, maybe. But all of this must be placed in the larger context of transforming our existing world-system.
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.]
Europe: The Turning-Point (1 July 2001)
Europe must make three decisions in the next five years, on which its future depends. They are whether Europe is to have an executive structure that is political in form, who is to be included in Europe, and what Europe's relationship will be with the rest of the world. The three questions are interlinked. The three questions are presently totally undecided. Europe has probably five years at most to achieve some consensus on these three questions, or Europe will probably not survive in a meaningful form. Let us look behind the rhetoric to see what are the issues at stake.
First, what structure for Europe? The issue is usually discussed in terms of how much power should Europe have. Should it be a federal structure or a Europe of nations (that is, a confederation)? This is not a very useful way to pose the issue. Any student of federal or quasi-federal political structures knows that the division of power between the larger structure and its constituent units is a matter of constant, unending political debate, and is not something that is or can ever be settled once and for all. Europe will be no exception to this banal generalization.
The real question is not how much power the European central structure will have in the near future but whether this power will be politicized. That is, will there be some form of executive that is chosen to represent some political point of view (right, center, left, or a coalition) through some process of democratic choice? At present, the executive structures represent states, not parties. As long as they do not represent parties, they will never have popular legitimation, and the structures will remain subject not merely to national vetoes but to popular disinterest, if not worse. A non-politicized structure is not likely to survive any real critical division within Europe.
The second question is the geography of Europe. The European Union today has fifteen members. The EU's official rhetoric is that it is in favor of, indeed enthusiastic about, expansion: include everyone in, eventually. But do they mean it? And anyway who is everyone? Europe's first political structure was the empire of Charlemagne. It covered essentially most of what is today France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, western parts of today's Germany, and northern parts of today's Italy (plus parts of Switzerland, Austria, and Spain). Charlemagne's empire lasted his lifetime. After his death, it was divided into three parts, more or less France, Germany, and a thin strip between the two then called Lotharingia (which ran from the Low Countries to northern Italy). It is no accident that, when the European idea was revived in the 1950s, it was the same six (core) countries that constituted the initial structures. The first postwar Europe was, if you will, the reconciliation of France and Germany, the reconstitution of the Carolingian empire. Europe has slowly expanded since to include all the countries that were not under Communist rule (except for Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland, who refused to join). This gave us the present 15, who constitute the European Union. Twelve of the fifteen have constituted the European Monetary Union, whose euro will become the common currency on Jan. 1, 2002.
Europe is presently discussing the inclusion of a long list of formerly Communist countries plus what might be called the outlying Mediterranean (Malta, Cyprus, Turkey). These countries are ranked in a complicated order of eligibility. Why do these countries want to join the European Union? Two reasons mainly. First, it would serve as their legitimation, denoting them as morally and culturally part of "civilized" Europe, constituting (they hope) an end to their marginality. Once in the European Union, they feel they would no longer risk being assimilated conceptually to the Third World. A subsidiary consideration for many persons is that inclusion in the EU would ensure that non-"democratic" forces would find it more difficult to come to power in these states. And the second reason goes along with the first. These countries all hope and expect that entry into the European Union will aid them economically in substantial ways, bringing their standards of living far closer than they are now to those of western Europe.
Why might western Europe want to include these countries in the EU? This is far less clear. Some argue that it will have some beneficial effects on the internal politics of these countries, and thereby preserve the peace in Europe. There may be some economic benefits of an open market. But neither of these arguments is really persuasive. What we have is a situation in which publicly no one wants to say no to these demands, but many members of the EU hope that other members of the EU will drag their feet, and make it difficult or impossible to proceed. The recent referendum in Ireland which voted against the Nice agreements on expansion constitutes a veto which, if it isn't reversed, has in fact thrown a spanner in the works.
There is another enthusiast about the inclusion of at least the central European states in the EU. It is the United States. And the reason is simple, and ties in with the third problem. All these countries tend to be far more viscerally pro-American today than western European countries. All these countries want to be in NATO and want NATO to survive.
Europe, as it is being constituted, has three foreign policy relationships to resolve: the United States, Russia, and the South in general (and Africa and the Middle East in particular). The United States means NATO. Europe is beginning to create its army. The U.S. is unhappy about this. The Europeans keep insisting that such an army will work within and in cooperation with NATO. But no one really believes this is true in the long run. A European army will only come into existence if NATO goes out of existence. The U.S. wants NATO to continue primarily to be sure there is no serious European army. Europe wants an army in order to be a serious actor on the world scene. The two objectives do not mesh well.
Central/East Europe, if it has to choose between NATO and a European army, chooses NATO. This is because of Russia. Western Europe doesn't think there is a Russian "threat" (at least any more). Quite the Contrary. Western Europe thinks that a reinforced Russian center might be a force for stability. In addition, it might provide a long-term economic partner. These are not views widely shared in the former satellite states. Again. quite the contrary.
There is a second point of discord between (western) Europe and the former satellite states. This is the relationship with the South. Central Europe wants an infusion of west European money. There would be two losers here: the small amount of money that flows to the South and the fairly large amount of money that flows to the "less" developed states currently within the EU: notably Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland.
So who is Europe determines what is Europe and what will be the geopolitical stance of Europe. This is a Gordian knot that needs to be cut. There is a great deal of reluctance of European leaders to take decisive stands on this interrelated set of questions, largely because each government is afraid of the repercussions on internal politics, and to some extent afraid of how the U.S. would react. On the other hand, the very indecisiveness has had the effect of reducing support for the EU within each of the present member countries, since it hard to arouse popular enthusiasm for a structure which is still unsure of where it is heading on some fundamental issues.
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.]
Intractable Conflicts? (15 July 2001)
The daily newspapers are regularly filled with the latest violence in long-standing seemingly intractable political conflicts across the world. Three of the most prominent since 1945 have been those in northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, and South Africa. It may be illuminating to compare their trajectories. If anyone had asked me (or most people) in say 1980 which of the three was the least likely to find a political solution, I would have said South Africa. Yet such a solution was in fact found in the early 1990s, whereas the violence and conflict is ongoing and continuing in the other two regions. How can we explain this?
Each of the situations of course has its own history and its own particularities, and none is a clone of the other. Still, the three situations have shared some common features. In each case, there was one group - the Ulster Protestants, the Israeli Jews, and the South African Whites - which was dominant, in the sense that it controlled the political machinery, was strong militarily, and had clear economic advantage. In each case, the other group - the Ulster Catholics, the Palestinians, the South African Blacks - considered themselves colonized and oppressed (arguing they were the original inhabitants of the area). In each case, the dominant group claimed that it had legitimate historic rights to the area, and that in the past they had been themselves the victims of oppression, and were therefore now primarily defending themselves against further oppression. In each case, the division between the two groups was exacerbated by an overlay of religious justification for the political positions, an argument more emphasized on the side of the dominant group than on the side of the dominated group.
In each case, the dominated group was demographically larger than the dominant group. The dominated groups formed organizations to secure their rights and win power, and eventually these organizations entered into insurrection. In each case, the dominant group regarded the organizations of the other group as terrorist groups, and refused for a long time even to consider the idea of political negotiations. In each case, there was a prolonged, albeit intermittent, civil war. In each case, there was international pressure to arrive at political negotiations, which eventually took place with mixed results.
Yet the outcomes have been different. The civil war now seems to be over in South Africa, where the Whites have ceded political power to the majority of the population. On the other hand, a political solution to the Israeli/Palestinian dispute - the most discussed formula is that of two sovereign states - seems further away than ever. In northern Ireland, the halfway house to a permanent political solution, which was finally agreed upon in 1998, seems about to collapse. Are the latter two conflicts intractable, whereas somehow the one in South Africa was not?
In general, one can say that there is no such thing as an intractable conflict. A few (not many) of such conflicts end by one side getting most of what it wants by outright force, thereby stabilizing the political situation for a very long time. In most cases, however, a one-sided victory is not possible. Because of this, most such conflicts end by some sort of political compromise which is grudgingly accepted by the generations in power at the time of the compromise, one however that may come to seem "normal" by later generations. A few such conflicts drag on and on for a very long time, with neither a military nor a political solution. Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine seem to be in this last category. South Africa somehow moved into the category of grudging political compromise. What happened?
There were several features in the South African situation that were different from the other two. The dominant group was demographically a much smaller percentage of the population (at most 20%). The political system that the dominant group had installed was openly and unashamedly undemocratic, denying all political rights to the dominated group. The dominant group was itself divided, ethnically, and the Afrikaner group which held the political power was contested by a White Anglophone group whose politics were ambivalent and which had better links to powerful forces in Europe and North America. The ideologically "extreme" position of the dominant group - the open espousal of apartheid - made it ideologically illegitimate on the world scene.
The main organization of the oppressed - the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) - had a very long history of advocating non-violent resistance, and had only turned to insurrection when all other doors seemed definitively closed. The ANC hewed to a strong universalist line, calling for majority rule but insisting that White South Africans were part of the nation. The ANC implemented this policy by having White members, including in very high positions in the organization. The ANC therefore appealed to the international legitimacy that adherence to universalist norms normally merits.
Still, this was not enough to achieve its objectives. For one thing, the ANC always found it difficult to pose a serious military threat to the apartheid regime, which gave the regime less motive to compromise. For another, the ANC's internal alliance with the South African Communist Party (and therefore the fact that it received political support from the U.S.S.R.) was used by the regime to turn Western governments away from any active support, if not indeed the contrary.
What then turned the tide? Two things basically. The extreme international illegitimacy of the apartheid regime meant that organized support for the ANC cause was far more organized, far more extensive, and far more effective than anything either the Irish Catholics or the Palestinians have ever been able to obtain. As just one example, opponents of apartheid were able to get the U.S. Congress to vote for economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in 1986, against the wishes of then President Ronald Reagan. It is inconceivable that the U.S. Congress would do anything similar in the other two situations. The result was that the economic sanctions did in fact begin to hurt the dominant group in South Africa. So did the cultural boycott which kept artists, sportspersons, and scholars from visiting, but which also worked the other way: South African artists, sportspersons, and scholars found it very difficult to participate in ordinary international meetings.
The negative economic effects was felt in particular by very large corporations, some based in South Africa itself and some based elsewhere but with large investments in South Africa. These groups began to fear not only the short-run effects but the long-run effects on their economic interests. It was such groups that began to take initiatives in the 1980s to bring about a political compromise. Without reviewing the details, a compromise was indeed reached. The apartheid regime was dismantled, but White citizens retained their political rights. More importantly, the ANC worked to maintain intact, with no fundamental changes, the economic structures of the previous governments. There was essentially no retribution for the past. (See our discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Commentary No. 66, June 15, 2001.)
The key difference with the other two situations is the degree of international illegitimacy of the apartheid regime and the strong economic interests of powerful corporations in a political settlement. There are no powerful corporations equally anxious for a political settlement in northern Ireland or Israel/Palestine. And world sentiment is more mixed concerning the legitimacy of the two sides in the conflict. Few people know much about, or care much about, northern Ireland. And in Israel/Palestine, support for the Palestinian cause is muted in public opinion by continuing Western guilt over the Nazi Holocaust.
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 in NATO? (1 August 2001)
I have been waiting for someone to bite the bullet. And Timothy Garton Ash did it. He wrote an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times on July 22, in which he argued for Russia's "eventual place" in NATO. Now, Timothy Garton Ash is neither "soft" on Russia nor someone unaware of the geopolitics of the region. He is today perhaps the leading public intellectual in the Western world writing about the countries of east-central Europe that once made up the so-called socialist bloc. He believes passionately in human rights and in a democratization process in these countries that will eliminate the vestiges of their Communist past.
Yet, he now wants Russia in NATO. What are his arguments? He says that, of course, NATO should expand eastward, and that including the Baltic states will bring the world closer (and here he cites Vaclav Havel) to "stability, security, democracy, and an advanced political culture...." But he then proceeds to reprimand gently even his culture hero, Havel, for not "push(ing) his thinking far enough to suggest Russia's eventual participation in NATO." The nub of his case for including Russia is its effect on the "the next generation of political leaders, whose thoughts about whether Russia belongs to the West will be greatly influenced by whether the West itself believes Russia should be part of it." Ash admits that people will think him a "lunatic" now but he expects that his views will become "conventional wisdom" ten years from now.
Now, if I understand the surface argument correctly, admission to NATO is an intermediary step in a process of "democratization." One has to reach a certain level already (Russia is not yet there), but not all the way, because then the very inclusion in NATO will "democratize" (or should it be "Westernize"?) a member. What's going on here? Is NATO now a school of political education or is it still a security organization? And if it is still a security organization, against whom should it secure its members? No longer against Russia, they say. And Ash, at least, suggests that it would be unwise to turn it into an anti-China alliance.
To make sense of this, we have to go back to 1945. When the victorious Allies created the United Nations, they adopted a Charter which presumed that the potential danger to peace would come from some resuscitated version of Nazism/fascism/militarism (that is, what the Axis powers had represented ideologically). The key Chapter of the U.N. Charter that was supposed to deal with this danger was Chapter VII, entitled "Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression." This Chapter required all members "to make available to the Security Council, on its call...armed forces...necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security." The use of these armed forces was to decided by the Security Council with the assistance of a structure called the Military Staff Committee, which was to consist of the Chiefs of Staff (or their representatives) of the five permanent members of the Security Council - that is, China, France, Russia [U.S.S.R.], the United Kingdom, and the United States.
This body began work on Feb. 1, 1946, met every two weeks thereafter, and after 29 months reported to the Security Council on July 2, 1948 that it was unable to fulfil its mandate. Although the group continued to meet ceremonially, it was in fact totally moribund, until it was seemingly revived by a U.N. resolution in 1990 for the purpose of undertaking a naval blockade against Iraq. But two or three informal meetings led to the decision not to activate formally the Committee.
It is obvious why the Military Staff Committee could never function. The main geopolitical tension after 1945 was not the putative revival of the Axis powers (or others states pursuing a similar policy) but the Cold War, which preoccupied the governments of the five permanent members of the Security Council, and which made it therefore impossible, indeed inconceivable, that they could agree unanimously on anything to do with the use of military force in the international arena.
Instead, four of the five permanent members involved themselves in two gigantic military alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The justification each of the two alliances gave for its existence was the existence of the other. It would have seemed to follow that after 1989, with the collapse of the Communisms, the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., and the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, that NATO would have gone out of existence. The momentary hope that this might occur was signaled by the attempt to revive the Military Staff Committee in 1990. But it was not to be, since even then, the five could not agree on coordinated military action.
The members of NATO decided to continue, indeed to strengthen their structures, and expand geographically their mandate. (Previously, NATO had restricted its formal mandate to the European continent.) What justification did NATO give for its two notable actions - expansion eastward by including new members, and military operations in the Balkans. One was a version of what Ash is talking about - the "democratization" by Westernizing of the formerly Communist countries. The second was the existence of "rogue powers" which threaten the peace, and which no one else could contain.
These are of course self-assumed tasks. If NATO follows Ash's advice, and includes Russia, it would be directed against whom? Why not move to include China, Korea, and Japan? Why not then India? Why not then Brazil? And so we could continue. Until we would arrive at guess what - the United Nations. So, why do not the NATO members cut short the whole process, disband NATO, and simply revive the Military Staff Committee? Once again, the answer is obvious. NATO exists today to defend the West/the North against the rest/the South. Defend is of course a euphemism, since at the moment no one in the South, singly or collectively, is in a position to challenge militarily the NATO powers.
A U.N. military operation would have to be responsive politically to the whole world, and not just a third of it. And if we could imagine the Military Staff Committee actually functioning, the commanding officer of the armed forces being used would not always be (it might seldom be) an officer of the United States armed forces, which would mean that U.S. forces would be serving under the command of a foreign officer. The U.S. is not willing to have this happen even within NATO, much less within the framework of the United Nations, far less reliable from its point of view .
So, there we have it. NATO is a military tool of the West/North. Of course, NATO would be ready to include Russia, once Russia were willing to play by its rules. In the meantime, it will have to make do with Latvia. And the rest of the world will be subjected to its self-satisfied and self-justifying rhetoric.
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 Future of China, the Future of the World? (15 August 2001)
China, it seems, is on everyone's mind. The United States is perhaps the most discussed and debated power in the world today. But China is a close runner-up. Why everyone thinks about the U.S. is very obvious. It is the world's most powerful country - economically, militarily, and politically. What it does affects everyone everywhere. So it is quite natural that its policies are discussed, debated, and analyzed.
But China? To be sure, it has the largest population. And it claims to be the oldest civilization. Furthermore, it has incredible potential. But potential is not actuality, today. So why discuss, debate, analyze China so extensively? This was not really the case 50 years ago, or even ten years ago. What has changed? In part, the decline of others to discuss. Russia has faded a bit into the background, perhaps temporarily, but quite noticeably for the moment. Japan's economic triumph seems a bit tarnished in many people's eyes. Europe seems an uncertain picture. At a time, however, when even the U.S. seems to be somewhat less powerful and less exuberant than a decade ago, China (virtually alone) seems to be on the rise. Perhaps this is only passing impression, but it is the current impression.
But what is China today, and what will it be in the near and medium term? That is the most interesting thing about China. The analyses are extraordinarily disparate. Take China as a military power. Is the world to take Chinese military strength seriously? Is the U.S. to do so? It seems that the countries of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia do all take China seriously as a present and future military power. Does the United States?
When we investigate the motives behind Bush's proposed Missile Defense program, the U.S. administration speaks publicly of "rogue states" (usually indicating North Korea in particular) as the object of its worries. Diplomatically, its chief problem is the existence of a treaty it signed with Russia, as part of containing the interstate rivalries of these two states, a treaty that the U.S. now wishes to abrogate, given the decline in Russia's military strength. China, however, is never mentioned in this context by the Bush regime. Yet it is no secret to the analysts that the country that would be most affected militarily by the Missile Defense program would in fact be China, whose current meaningful missile technology would be largely nullified by this U.S. program. Is this then the primary, if unavowed, object?
The ongoing debate within the U.S. about Bush's missile proposals revolves heavily around the technological and military plausibility of such a program. Many opponents speak of it as resembling the Maginot Line, an inefficacious mode of defense. In response to such a line of argument, one Richard Cummings, described as a member of the [U.S.] Association of Former Intelligence Officers, wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times in which he gave this case in favor of the Bush plan:
"The Reagan administration used 'Star Wars' as a ploy to break the Soviet economy. It worked, and we won the cold war. The missile shield will do to the Chinese Communist Party what 'Star Wars' did to the Soviet Communist Party. As soon as the Chinese start committing the resources to counter it, they will run out of money for domestic needs and the entire system will collapse" (Aug. 10, 2001).
Is Mr. Cummings's letter the voice of truth? Is he revealing the real motivation of the U.S. government? And if so, what does his analysis imply? It implies three things: (1) The fact that the Chinese Communist Party remains in power continues to be seen as a threat to U.S. interests; (2) China's economy will not be able to remain stable if it is "forced" to expend still more on its military; (3) The "collapse" of the Chinese "system" is expected to have little or no ripple effect that might trouble the larger stability of the world-system.
Is any of this true? That is to say, is it likely that the Chinese Communist Party will be ousted from power in the foreseeable future? Is the fact that it is currently in power a "threat" to anyone, and if so, to whom? Would expanded military expenditure place an impossible burden on the stability of the Chinese government? And will China have more friends or fewer friends in the geopolitical arena in the decades to come, should the U.S. missile program be implemented?
It should be noted, first of all, that the future role of the Chinese Communist Party is much debated, within and outside China. Premier Jiang Zemin suggested quite recently that the continuing primacy of the Chinese Communist Party was a guarantee of stability and moderation that the world (meaning the U.S. primarily) really ought to cherish and support. It seems that many of the world's leading capitalist figures - not only in the United States, but even in such unlikely places as Taiwan - may be agreeing with him, may in fact be building their own expectations of capital accumulation around such a premise.
The recent decision to admit "capitalists" to membership in the Chinese Communist Party is a case in point. What is termed by some analysts on the political left as the ultimate betrayal or retreat from Communist principle is being hailed by some in the U.S. and elsewhere as a sign of "moderation" and "gradual change" that will lead to greater pluralism. But if this is the expectation, why would anyone in the Western world want to imperil this slow "evolution" by imposing a "collapse" on the Chinese regime, as Mr. Cummings suggests is, and ought to be, the policy of the U.S. government? Indeed, the argument about encouraging gradual change has been extensively used to applaud the decision to hold the Olympics in Beijing in 2008.
One gets the impression that the Chinese leaders themselves are self-confident and optimistic about the future of the Party, but prudently so. They believe that time, that is, the next thirty years, are on their side. But they recognize that many things could go wrong. Perhaps they worry a little about errors of judgment by North Korea, but I warrant they spend more time worrying about the unpredictability of U.S. politics, and hence of U.S. geopolitical activity.
The example of the U.S.S.R. has led many to the assumption that all Communist regimes are inherently fragile. (This comes after some 50 years of making the equally absurd prediction that once a Communist Party were in power, nothing could ever budge it.) What this analysis of fragility leaves out of the picture is that, unlike Russia and all the countries of East and Central Europe, the Communist Parties in China (and Vietnam and Cuba) all have nationalist sentiments on their side rather than against them. And China, on the rise, has enormous economic attractiveness to the capitalists of the world. This makes for an uncertain mix whose immediate turbulences are exceptionally hard to predict. It would, nonetheless, be a grievous error for anyone facilely to rule China out of the picture, or to rule the current regime out of the picture. On the other hand, the China of the 21st century is clearly no longer the China that proclaimed that "the East is Red." So we cannot be sure what it will mean for the world that China is looming ever larger on the world scene.
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.]
Honor the Elderly? (1 September 2001)
Until the advent of the modern world-system, most people had been living, for some 10,000 years, in basically agricultural societies, in which perhaps 80% of the population were engaged in food-producing activities, if not more. In these societies, not too many people survived to what is today considered the age at which one is elderly, that is, 65 years. Furthermore, these elderly normally did not stop working, although their output was no doubt reduced by physical difficulties of all sorts. The key element to remember is that there were not too many such people as a percentage of the population. So these societies typically "honored" the elderly, considering them founts of wisdom and persons deserving to be repaid what they had done for others by being taken care of in their old age.
This social attitude slowly but radically changed in the modern era. In the first place, many more persons who had survived the perils of infancy were able to reach 65 years of age. In the second place, the birth rate went down whenever and wherever there came to be social pressure on adults in their prime to invest actual money on children (education and child care, primarily). As a result, the age pyramid began to alter, and the elderly became an ever larger percentage of the population.
The initial crisis occurred in the more industrialized countries in the nineteenth century. Urban workers were not able to sustain their elderly family members who thereupon risked a deteriorating degree of poverty, even starvation. As the problem became more severe and the social protest greater, governments began to respond by creating one form or another of "old age insurance." When these systems began, the amount of money that was given to individuals was absurdly low, and therefore the total cost to the state was low (involving therefore low amounts of taxes). In fact, of course, people then (or now), who had enjoyed a moderate income during their work years, were seldom willing to live in later years on the small income that state old age assistance offered. Those who could afford it arranged for supplemental insurance, whether paid for by themselves or by employers or by some combination thereof.
Inexorably the curves went up - more elderly as a proportion of the population; the political demand for higher old age assistance payments; an expectation of a decent life style when one was elderly. Hence the social costs (and the taxation) went up. In the last twenty years, as a result, there has been much discussion of a coming time when, it is claimed, these assistance programs would no longer be viable. Higher payments and fewer people to pay current premiums would add up to a deficit in the fund. And so for twenty years or so there has been a movement to "solve" this problem, essentially by reducing the payments, having them start later (than at 65 years), and "privatizing" them (on the grounds that the stock market would yield higher returns for the individual than more conservative government bonds). In addition to this discussion in the wealthy countries, the IMF has been putting direct pressure on the poorer countries to cut back on social insurance.
Of course, these are all bookkeeping manipulations. The essential question is how we will decide to divide up the overall pot of accumulated resources. Picture three broad groups: those who are active in the work force (largely between 18-65 years); children and those still in school (largely 0-25 years); those who have "retired" from the active work force (largely 55-90).
In those agricultural communities of yore, there would be some system of sharing (the work and the consumable items) that was decided on in some way. In these decisions the elderly (a very small group) usually had a large say. What the modern world did was to shift decision-making primarily to those in the active work force. Social insurance began to tilt it back a bit in favor of the elderly. What the attack on social insurance today is doing is shifting it back to those in the active work force. This isn't only an intergenerational conflict, of course. It is also a class conflict. Social insurance involves a transfer (a small transfer, but a transfer nonetheless) from those who have a comfortable income to those who are poor. And those who are poor are more demanding these days, less helpless and less accommodating to the comfortable ones.
Looking at it this way makes it clear that there is no "problem" to solve, only decisions to make. At any given point of time, there is just so much social surplus. Those who work want to spend it on themselves, and maybe on their children. They are less enthusiastic about honoring the elderly by spending it on them. Those who are elderly feel they merit the respect due them in return for their earlier work and the respectability that comes with a decent standard of living. Those who are children find it hard to have their own voice, and largely depend on the advocacy of adults.
Take something as straightforward as medical expenditures. The costs of modern medicine are high - high wages for the health workers, high costs of medical machinery, high costs of drugs. So, in a triage (and there is always a triage), should the money go to a 6-year old child, a 40-year old adult, or a 75-year old elderly person? Stated abstractly this way, who could choose? One could answer generically: one-third of the whole to each. Or one could do a merit ranking: Which of the three cases is the most urgent? In which case will be the results be the most complete or last the longest?
But neither an across-the-board formula nor a supposedly meritocratic triage will really work, if for no other reason than that individuals will constantly combine to subvert such a system by getting favored treatment for themselves or their loved ones. What is urgent is not some tinkering with the existing imperfect system but collective debates about intergenerational allocations. The answers are not self-evident, and it would not be easy to reach consensus. Nor, once a consensus were reached, would the question cease to be reopened constantly. But how much healthier such an open discussion would be. It would limit (not eliminate) class advantage, and it would limit (not eliminate) the advantages of being located in wealthy versus poorer countries.
Are we morally so far behind those agricultural societies of yesteryear that we cannot honor the elderly, take proper care of the children, and still afford a reasonable life style for those in the work force?
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.]
September 11 2001 - Why? (15 September 2001)
On September 11, 2001, the whole world watched a human tragedy and a great drama, and everyone was fixated on it. In the U.S., four commercial airliners were hijacked in the early morning. The hijackers numbered 4-5 persons in each plane. Armed with knives, and having at least one person among them capable of piloting the plane (at least once it was in the air), the hijackers took over the planes, ousted (or killed) the pilots and directed the planes on suicide missions. Three of the planes hit their targets: the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington.
Given both the amount of fuel aboard and the technical knowledge to know at which height the planes should hit the buildings, the hijackers managed to destroy completely the two towers and carve a big hole in the Pentagon. As of now, there are probably more than 5000 dead (no one has an exact figure) and many more hurt and traumatized. The U.S. air network and financial institutions have ground virtually to a halt, at least for this week, and untold short-range and middle-range economic damage has been done.
The first thing to note about this attack is its audacity and its remarkable success. A group of persons, linked together by ideology and willingness to be martyrs, engaged in a clandestine operation that must be the envy of any secret service agency in the world. They obtained entry into the United States, managed to board with knives four airplanes, which were leaving from three airports almost simultaneously, and all of which were heading on transcontinental flights and therefore had large amounts of fuel on board. They took over the planes, and managed to get three of them to reach their targets. Neither the CIA nor the FBI nor U.S. military intelligence nor any one else had any advance notice or was able to do anything to stop this group.
The outcome was the most devastating such attack in the history of what we call terrorist attacks. No previous attack killed more than 400 or so persons. Even at Pearl Harbor, to which the analogy is being widely made, and where the attack was conducted by the military forces of a state, many fewer people were killed. Furthermore, this was the first time since the Civil War (1861-1865) that warfare occurred within the boundaries of the continental United States. The U.S. has since been engaged in many major wars - the Spanish-American War, the First World War, the Second World War, Korea, and Vietnam - (not to speak of "minor" wars), and in all of them the actual fighting occurred outside these boundaries. The fact that warfare occurred in the streets of New York and Washington constituted the biggest shock to the American people of this attack.
So, the big question is why? Virtually everyone is saying that the person responsible for the attack is Osama bin Laden. It seems a plausible assumption, since he has declared his intention to carry out such acts, and perhaps in the near future U.S. authorities will produce some evidence substantiating this assumption. Let us suppose this is correct. What would bin Laden hope to achieve in attacking the U.S. in this spectacular way? Well, this could be seen as an expression of anger and revenge for what bin Laden (and others) consider the misdeeds of the U.S. throughout the world, and particularly in the Middle East. Would bin Laden think that, by such an act, he could persuade the U.S. government to change its policies? I seriously doubt that he is so naive as to think this would be the reaction. President Bush says he regards the attack as an "act of war" and possibly bin Laden, if he is the perpetrator, thinks the same. Wars are not conducted to persuade the opponent to change his ways, but to force the opponent to do so.
So let us reason as though we were bin Laden. What has he proved by this attack? The most obvious thing that he has proved is that the United States, the world's only superpower, the state with the most powerful and sophisticated military hardware in the world, was unable to protect its citizens from this attack. What bin Laden, again presuming he is in fact the force behind it, wished to do, clearly, is to show that the U.S. is a paper tiger. And he wished to show it, first of all, to the American people, and then to everyone else in the world.
Now this is as obvious to the U.S. government as it is to bin Laden. Hence the response. President Bush says he will react forcefully, and the U.S. political elite of both parties have given him their patriotic assent without any hesitation. But now let us reason from the point of view of the U.S. government. What can they do?
The easiest thing is to obtain diplomatic support of condemnation of the attack and justification of any future counterattack. This is exactly what Secretary of State Powell said he would be doing. And it is reaping its rewards. NATO has said that, under Article 5 of the treaty, a military attack on the U.S. (which they consider this to be) requires all its members to give military support to the counteraction, if the U.S. requests it. Every government in the world, including that of Afghanistan and North Korea, has condemned the attack. The sole exception is Iraq. It is true that popular opinion in Arab and Muslim states has not been as supportive of the U.S. but the U.S. will ignore that.
The fact that the U.S. has achieved this diplomatic support, perhaps later a U.N. resolution, will hardly make bin Laden quake in his boots. The diplomatic support is going to seem to be thin gruel for the American people as well. They will demand more. And more almost inevitably means some kind of military action. But what? Whom will the U.S. Air Force bomb? If bin Laden is behind the attack, there are only two possible targets, depending on further knowledge about the evidence: Afghanistan and/or Iraq. How much damage will that do? In half-destroyed Afghanistan, it hardly seems worthwhile. And the U.S. has been restrained about bombing Iraq for many reasons, including not wishing to lose lives. Maybe the U.S. will bomb someone. Will that convince the American people and the rest of the world that the U.S. is too fearsome to attack? Somehow I doubt it.
The truth of the matter is that there is not too much that the U.S. can do. The CIA tried for years to assassinate Castro, and he's still there. The U.S. has been searching for bin Laden for some years now, and he's still there. One day, U.S. agents may kill him, and this might slow down this particular operation. It would also give great satisfaction to many people. But the problem would still remain whole.
Obviously, the only thing to do is something political. But what? Here all accord within the U.S. (or more widely within the pan-Western arena) disappears. The hawks say that this proves that Sharon (and the present Israeli government) are right: "they" are all terrorists, and the way to handle them is with harsh riposte. This hasn't been working so well for Sharon thus far. Why will it work better for George W. Bush? And can Bush get the American people to pay the price? Such a hawkish mode does not come cheaply. On the other hand, the doves are finding it difficult to make the case that this can be handled by "negotiation." Negotiation with whom, and with what end in view?
Perhaps what is happening is that this "war" - as it is being called this week in the press - cannot be won and will not be lost, but will simply continue. The disintegration of personal security is now a reality that may be hitting the American people for the first time. It was already a reality in many other parts of the world. The political issue underlying these chaotic oscillations of the world-system is not civilization versus barbarism. Or at least what we must realize is that all sides think they are the civilized ones, and that the barbarian is the other. The issues underlying what is going on is the crisis in our world-system and the battle about what kind of successor world-system we would like to build.(1) This does not make it a contest between Americans and Afghans or Muslims or anyone else. It is a struggle between different visions of the world we want to build. September 11, 2001 will soon seem to be, contrary to what many are saying, a minor episode in a long struggle that will go on for a long time and be a dark period for most people on this planet.
1. I have made the case for why we are living in a crisis of the world-system in Utopistics, or Historical Choices for the Twenty-first Century (New York: New Press, 1998)
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.]
Beware! The United States Might Prevail (20 September 2001)
"If [bin Laden] thinks he can run and hide from the United States and our allies he will be sorely mistaken....We will prevail" (George W. Bush). There is an old peasant folk wisdom that says "beware of what you wish for; you may get it." I have little doubt that the United States can bomb Afghanistan, probably overthrow the Taliban, and possibly kill bin Laden. The U.S. may prevail. And then what?
We prevailed once before in Afghanistan. In the 1980's, the country had a Communist government. The U.S. was unhappy and sought to overthrow it. The U.S. succeeded. The result? The U.S. got the Taliban and bin Laden, whose organization is built on the foundation of CIA-trained veterans of the anti-Communist struggle in Afghanistan.
At the time, there were Communist governments in Bulgaria and Laos as well. The U.S. did not try to overturn them. Today, Bulgaria has a post-Communist government with the son of the former king as Prime Minister. Not an impossible scenario for Afghanistan. Today Laos, a very poor country, still with a Communist government, is limping its way into involvement in the world-economy. It is a threat to no one, not even the U.S. Not an unlikely scenario for Afghanistan. But in Afghanistan the U.S. insisted on prevailing.
How is the U.S. going to prevail now? A combination of U.S. military might and support from other countries. The U.S. has already announced that it is insisting that all countries in the Middle East and the Muslim world choose sides and support the U.S. unconditionally. Apparently, Pakistan has already agreed to do this. The U.S. policy in the region has been based on virtually unconditional support for Israel. But it has equally been based on supporting the twin towers of U.S. strength in the Islamic world, the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have different politics, different locations, and different histories. But they share two features. They are powerful and influential in the whole region and have served U.S. interests extremely well over the past decades. And the regimes in both countries are based on a coalition of support from pro-Western modernizing elites and an extremely conservative, popularly-based Islamic establishment. The regimes have maintained their stability because they have been able to juggle this combination. And they have been able to do so because of the ambivalence of their policies and their public pronouncements.
The United States is now saying, away with ambiguities. The U.S. may prevail, no doubt. But in the process, the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan may find that their popular base is irremediably eroded. They may collapse, just like the Twin Towers in New York City. And if they do, just like the Twin Towers, they will bring down other smaller buildings and weaken the foundations of still more. The United States may regret the day when Assad, Khaddafi, Arafat, and even Saddam Hussein are no longer in power. Their successors may be far fiercer in their anti-Americanism, because their successors, unlike these persons, will no longer share modernist values with the United States.
Consider that this may have been bin Laden's plan. His own suicide mission may have been to lead the United States into this trap.
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 Outcome Could Not Be More Uncertain (1 October 2001)
In his speech to the U.S. Congress and to the world, President Bush said, in asserting what the U.S. intended to do, that there were many difficulties ahead, "yet its outcome is certain." This could not be more untrue. If his statement was meant as hortatory rhetoric, it may be considered normal discourse for a leader of a nation besieged. But if it reflects the analytic view of Bush and his principal deputies, then it is a dangerous misperception.
Of course, the first obscurity is to which outcome Bush is referring. He may mean the destruction of Al-Qaeda, which is a possible albeit extremely difficult objective. He may mean the elimination or defanging of all groups anywhere that the U.S. will designate as "terrorist," in which case the possibility of success seems extremely dubious. He may mean a restoration of the belief of the American people and the world in general in the military prowess of the United States government, which is, as of this point, an objective whose success is quite uncertain. He may mean sustaining the interests of the United States as a country and of its enterprises, an objective whose likelihood of success is at best shaky.
It is important in thinking about "outcomes" to give oneself different time lines. I propose three: six months, five years, 50 years. The picture for Bush looks rosiest within a six-months perspective. Consider what he has already gained in the short period since Sept. 11. Before that day, the Bush administration was subjected to opposition, of varying degrees, from just about everywhere, and notably from the Democrats in Congress; the allies in Europe; Russia and China; the governments and populations of most of the countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; and a worldwide "anti-globalization" movement. That's a formidable list, and almost all of this opposition has either disappeared or been greatly muted since the attack on Sept. 11. The Democrats in Congress and the allies in Europe have rallied round the U.S. under siege. Russia, China, and most of the governments of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have given some kind of at least qualified support to a U.S. response to the attack. The "anti-globalization" movement has been relatively quiet and is wondering whether it should transform itself into a "peace" movement.
Of course, Bush is not the only one to derive some immediate political advantage from the attack. Since the U.S. is so anxious to line up everyone everywhere on its side, at least minimally, it has been ready to pay a diplomatic price in exchange, and others have not been hesitant to ask, especially those further away from the inner core of "friends." The Democrats in Congress and the allies in western Europe have not yet dared to demand anything. But Russia, China, Pakistan, Sudan, the various Arab states (and who knows whom else Powell has been promising things) have been less bashful. And soon the Democrats and the allies in western Europe may join in the game. So, for the moment, it sounds like a win-win game for everyone whom Usama bin Laden doesn't appreciate.
However, the bill comes due in six months. By then, the U.S. will have had to do something, something military. What it is we don't know for sure, and it seems that even the U.S. government may not know for sure. This is because, as has been widely admitted, there are no good options. A surgical strike against bin Laden by special troops parachuting into Afghanistan runs the risk of the U.S. fiasco in Iran in 1980, which lost Carter his reelection. Bombing Afghanistan, the most probable single act, has multiple limitations: few plausible targets, likelihood of great civilian carnage plus a refugee flood into Pakistan, great political discomfort in Muslim states, and a low likelihood that bombing alone would end Taliban control of central Afghanistan.
There are some in the U.S. administration who want to bomb Iraq, which at least has plausible targets. The problem is that Saddam Hussein is not an ally of Usama bin Laden, more plausibly one of the bin Laden's future targets. And bombing Iraq would not only undo all of Powell's efforts to create a grand coalition but also place the U.S. before the same dilemma it faced in 1991: would it dare assume the burden of a land invasion and occupation?
And when the U.S. decides which of these doubtfully effective alternatives to choose, then what? If it "fails" militarily, this will reinforce bin Laden's point that the U.S. is a paper tiger, and we all know how fickle allies become when a great power demonstrates military weakness. If it doesn't fail in its actions per se, but gets embroiled in a long military confrontation, any of the following may occur: significant loss of U.S. lives (bringing on all the internal U.S. debates about escalation that pervaded the Vietnam war); great civilian destruction in Afghanistan (which might make the world think that the 7000 lives lost in the Sept. 11 attack did not justify such a massive response); great political turmoil in some Muslin countries - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, and others less obvious.
None of this would look too good for the U.S. government. Suddenly, there might be a vast "peace" movement in the world. And George W. Bush might reflect, like Lyndon Johnson, that it would be prudent not to run again.
Of course, perhaps this picture is exaggerated. Perhaps the U.S. could in fact pull off a surgical strike. Perhaps the Taliban would collapse conveniently by themselves. Perhaps Bush would come out as a victorious hero, as his father did in 1991. At that point, he would still face two other hurdles.
One hurdle would be domestic. His father went from victory and incredible poll ratings to an electoral defeat within 18 months because, as the saying went then, "It's the economy, stupid." Just this week, the Wall Street Journal, the incarnation of economic conservatism in the U.S., said that Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill, risked losing all his credibility because of his rosy optimism about the economy. Clearly, a lot of U.S. capitalists are hunkering down for the stormy period ahead. U.S. voters notoriously have a short memory and, once the flag-waving has passed, will vote their pocketbooks. And they always blame the ins for economic troubles.
If that weren't enough, suppose the U.S. took out bin Laden, overthrew the Taliban, and then three months later, somebody else was able to pull off a spectacular attack, in the U.S. or in western Europe, would not all the U.S. credit for success disappear in a huff of smoke before the emergence of a hydra-headed monster? Certainly, the bravado and the self-confidence would be shaken. Is this so implausible?
Now, then, if we move to a five-year perspective, will the U.S. position in the world-system be stronger than today? Will today's geopolitical line-ups survive as a serious mode of organizing global politics? Might the "anti-globalization" movement perhaps have been metamorphosed into something more coherent and far more militant than today? These are not unreasonable questions to consider. Above all, may not chaotic conditions become something much more the universal norm, and insecurity the daily potion of still more of us? And might the world economy not begin to oscillate wildly?
And if it does, where will we be 50 years from now? Nothing could be less certain. But looking back from 50 years ahead, it is doubtful that Sept. 11 in itself will seem all that important.
President Bush, in that same speech to Congress, said "And we know that God is not neutral." I guess Bush is not known as a theologian. I thought that the way the three great Western religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - had all dealt with the problem of evil ("If God is omnipotent, why does He permit evil to exist?) had been by saying that God had endowed humans with free will. But if God is not neutral, then humans do not have free will. And if humans have free will, then God is distinctly neutral about human conflicts.
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 Dilemmas of a Superpower (15 October 2001)
President Bush and his associates have obviously been debating intensely how they should deal with the challenge to U.S. power and security that the Sept. 11 attacks have posed. They seem to be doing this carefully, and are probably quite dismayed at the negative consequences of most of the ways in which the U.S. government might react.
The first problem they have faced is the breadth of the "coalition" that the U.S. wishes to assemble in its "war on terrorism." The world press reports constantly that there are two quite different views within the U.S. government. Option A seems to be broad coalition and narrow definition of objectives. Option B seems to be narrow coalition and broad definition of objectives. The press indicates that Colin Powell is the most prominent spokesperson for Option A, and the Undersecretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, the most prominent spokesperson for the Option B. For the moment, it seems that President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and probably Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have come down on the side of Option A, and that is what the U.S. in initially pursuing.
What does Option A involve? It involves trying to get virtually every government in the world to endorse the objective of pursuing bin Laden. That is of course not difficult since bin Laden and al-Qaeda seem to have negative views about virtually every government in the world, with the exception of the Taliban. They denounce the U.S. first of all of course, and Israel too of course. But they also denounce Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Iran. They do not like the Iraqi regime. Small wonder that virtually all of these governments return the compliment. The objective, "bringing bin Laden to justice," gets rapid endorsement.
But how does one bring bin Laden to justice? It seems that the answer is by pressure on the Taliban, who are the de facto (if not the de jure) government of Afghanistan. What kind of pressure? Well, bombing. A little bombing has won at least tacit support from the "coalition." A lot of bombing? We shall have to see. And extending the bombing to include Iraq, as proponents of Option B wish to do? Very few governments would endorse that.
The United States has not ruled out Option B. They seem merely to have decided to try Option A first. President Bush has been careful to add sentences to his statements which leave the door slightly open to Option B. They have also left the door open in a second way. The coalition may be as wide as conceivable, but the military action includes only two countries, the U.S. and Great Britain.
This is no accident. At the time of the Gulf War, the first President Bush asked for United Nations authorization. The U.S. found that this meant that they had to clear various matters along the route with too many others. So, when Kosovo came along, President Clinton was careful to leave the U.N. out and ask only for NATO authorization. It turned out that even NATO tied U.S. military hands too much for the taste of the U.S. government. This time, when NATO offered its military help, the U.S. said no. Germany is said to have been particularly peeved. Doing it this way, however, means that, if the U.S. decides to move to Option B, it has to clear this at most with Tony Blair. (The press suggests, however, that even Blair might not be enthusiastic about extending action to Iraq.)
What is this all about? Since bin Laden has openly challenged U.S. military prowess, the U.S. is determined to reassert this. It's not merely a matter of protecting U.S. citizens and residents from attack, but of re-establishing worldwide belief that the U.S. is an invincible superpower. Can the U.S. do this?
The problem with Option A is that bombing raids on Afghanistan are not going to accomplish too much. Probably the next step will be sending in special forces. Bin Laden knows that, and indeed looks forward to it. He seems convinced that the Afghans defeated the Soviet Union and brought down its system. Of course, the U.S. believes it brought down the Soviet Union, but that is not bin Laden's view. Bin Laden clearly hopes, and expects, that the U.S. will meet the Soviet fate in Afghanistan, and that as a consequence he will "bring down" the United States as a superpower. It seems a fantastic idea, but then bringing down the Twin Towers in New York would have been considered a fantastic idea a mere two months ago.
Bush, Rumsfeld, and Blair have been repeating, almost as a litany, that the war will be "long," and by that they seem to mean at the very least a year (or two or three?). They are thus "preparing" U.S. and world public opinion for the fact that instant victory is not at hand. The problem with a "long" war is that the very length of it works in favor of bin Laden's objective, exposing the clay feet of a superpower. If the war is long (and begins to be costly in lives), without clear military achievements, a number of things will happen. The "coalition" will fritter, and particularly the degree of support the U.S. will be able to get from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. A "peace movement" will begin to emerge in the U.S., the Western world more generally, and the rest of the world as well.
But perhaps worst of all for the Bush administration, it itself might begin to be torn apart. The proponents of Option B will become more vocal and more denunciatory of the proponents of Option A. Who knows who would then resign? But such a development cannot be politically healthy for President Bush. If in addition, there were one or two coups in Middle Eastern states, bringing to power governments less friendly to the U.S., this would only exacerbate things. And if violence escalated on other fronts (not only Israel/Palestine, but say northern Ireland, Indonesia, and who knows where else?), the idea that bin Laden was the singular most evil "terrorist" in the world would begin to seem implausible.
This is of course a dismal picture from the point of view of the U.S. government. The proponents of Option B will say that this is by no means inevitable. They will urge not only Option B but perhaps an enhanced version, say using tactical nuclear weapons somewhere or other. This is not an impossible scenario. If carried out, however, it could isolate the U.S. diplomatically in a dramatic way. On the other hand, the U.S. could find itself less capable of maintaining diplomatic support even if it stayed with Option A but were not able to eliminate bin Laden.
The United States is playing for very high stakes. It had lured itself into thinking, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that it was truly a superpower, and that no force could stand in its way. It misinterpreted its very limited victory in the Gulf War and in Kosovo as evidence that this was true. It may well find that this isn't really true. And if it does find that, then it may have to reassess quite dramatically how it relates to the rest of the world. Bin Laden claims to speak for long-standing grievances of the Islamic world. He envisages a replacement world in which very few of us could find a place, or would find livable. It would not at all be a better world, even for Muslims. But bin Laden is a clever man as well as an ideologically-committed man, who is taking great advantage of the structural weaknesses of the U.S. position as a declining hegemonic power. And it is not at all clear that the U.S. governments (either of Bush or Clinton before him) have understood geopolitical realities as well as he and al-Qaeda have. In war and diplomacy, there is no room for self-deception.
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.]
Superpower? (1 November 2001)
The United States is a hegemonic power in decline. I have been expressing this viewpoint since at least 1980.(1) This statement is meant to be analytic and not prescriptive. I have found that nonetheless it evokes not only disbelief but anger, and that such a reaction occurs on all sides of the political spectrum, and all around the world. Persons on the right take the statement to be false, or rather they take it to be true only insofar as the superpower has insufficiently asserted its strength. Furthermore, they seem to assume that, by my making such an analysis, I am creating a defeatist attitude that is self-fulfilling. These persons have a strange degree of belief in the power of the word, or at least of my word.
Persons on the left are often incredulous, telling me that it is obvious that the United States dominates the world scene and imposes itself around the world, and that in evil ways. So how can I talk of U.S. being in decline? Am I not thereby deflecting people from meaningful action? And persons in the center seem to be offended by the very idea that appropriate intelligent action on the part of those in power will not, cannot, eventually remedy any limitations on U.S. virtuous action.
What does it mean to be a hegemonic power? It means that normally one defines the rules of the geopolitical game, and that one gets one way almost all of the time simply by political pressure, and without having to resort to the actual use of force. The story of how one gets to be a hegemonic power and why it is that hegemony never lasts is not my subject here.(2) The question rather is what evidence do I have that U.S. hegemony is on the wane.
I certainly do not deny that the U.S. today is the strongest military power in the world, and that by far. This is not only true today but it will probably be true for at least another 25 years. But it is no longer true that the U.S. defines unilaterally the rules of the geopolitical game, nor it is true that it gets its way most of the time simply by political pressure, or even gets its way most of the time. The present struggle with bin Laden is not the first, but merely the latest, instance of this new reality.
I say new reality, because there was a time not so long ago when the U.S. was truly hegemonic, when it was the only superpower. This was true more or less between 1945 and 1970. Despite the Cold War and despite the U.S.S.R. (or maybe in large part because of them), the U.S. almost always could get what it wanted, where it wanted, when it wanted. It ran the United Nations. It kept the Soviet Union contained within the borders the Red Army had reached in 1945. It used the CIA to oust or rearrange governments it found unfriendly (Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Lebanon in 1956, the Dominican Republic in 1965, and so on). It imposed its will on often reluctant allies in western Europe, forcing them to pull back from military operations (as in Suez in 1956) or pressing them to speed up the pace of decolonization because the U.S. considered this to be the wiser and safer course.
In this period, Americans were learning how to "assume their responsibilities" in the world. They had a "bipartisan" foreign policy. Then things began to change. The big economic lead the U.S. had over western Europe and Japan disappeared. These countries became economic rivals, although remaining political allies. The U.S. began to lose wars. It lost the war in Vietnam in 1973. It was humiliated by Khomeini in Iran in 1980. President Reagan withdrew U.S. marines from Lebanon in 1982 because over 200 of them were killed in a terrorist attack (and this two days after he had said that the U.S. would never do this). The Gulf War was a draw, the troops returning back to the line where it began. Some people in the U.S. say today this was because the U.S. didn't have the guts to march on Baghdad (or made the mistake of not doing this). But the decision of the first Pres. Bush reflected a military-political judgment that the march would have led to a U.S. disaster over time, a judgment that seems solid and prudent. And whereas Jimmy Carter could impose a Camp David settlement on Egypt and Israel in 1978, Bill Clinton could not do the same for Palestine and Israel in 2000, although he tried hard enough.
The last time the U.S. snapped its fingers and got its way was on Sept. 11, 1973, when it engineered a coup in Chile and put Pinochet in power. On Sept.11, 2001, it was bin Laden who snapped his fingers, and the U.S. people and government are still reeling from the blow. Now, bin Laden does not have a large army or navy or air force. His technological capacity is relatively primitive. He does not have funds available to him that can match U.S. government resources. So, even if the match were to end in a draw, he will have won.
It took the U.S. thirty years to learn how to "assume its responsibilities" as a hegemonic power. It wasted the next thirty years, pining for lost glory and maneuvering to hold on to as much of the power as it could. Perhaps it should spend the next thirty years learning how to be a rich, powerful country in an unequal world, but one in which it no longer controls the situation unilaterally. In such a world, it would have to learn how to come to terms with the rest of the world (not only Afghanistan, not even only China and Russia, but also Canada, western Europe, and Japan).
In the collapsing world anarchy that is marking the transition from our modern world-system to something else, how the United States - its government, its citizens, its large enterprises - play their roles matters to everyone. Everyone everywhere has an interest in obtaining an intelligent, creative, hopeful response of the United States to the world crisis in which it and everyone else find themselves today. For the U.S. is still the strongest power in the world, and it still has traditions and aspirations it values and that many people (not only Americans) think have contributed something positive to the world in which we all live.
The ball is in the court of the United States. It is too easy for Americans to be infuriated at the terrible destruction of human lives in the Twin Towers and its aftermath. There is too much unthinking anger in the world already (even if much of the anger on all sides is justified anger). There is no guarantee that the world can navigate the next 25-50 years with minimal violence. But we can try to analyze what it would take to get us all out of the deep hole in which we find ourselves these days.
1. I believe the first time I said this was in "Friends as Foes," Foreign Policy, No. 40, Fall 1980, 119-131.
2. I first treated this question in "The Three Instances of Hegemony in the History of the Capitalist World-Economy," reprinted in The Politics of the World-Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984, 37-46.
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.]
Five Years From Now (15 November 2001)
Ever since Sept. 11, the U.S. government has been preaching the theme, "be alert" but "let normal life continue." At a moment when the military picture in Afghanistan shows reverses for the Taliban, where should we look for normal life? Perhaps to Doha, where the conference of the World Trade Organization has just ended.
The conference was held in Doha, in Qatar, because no other country offered itself as a site, out of fear of the difficulties of handling the protesters coming from the "anti-globalization" movement. The decision was effective in that regard, the number of protesters being very reduced by comparison with Seattle. Of course, the events of Sept. 11 also played a role in this reduction.
Doha seemed a quasi-success at the finish, in that some kind of accord was reached. But Doha brings to our attention that the future of the world-economy is not a simple matter of a struggle between those favoring and those opposing "globalization." Far from it, as we wrote on Dec. 15, 1999 (Commentary 30) concerning Seattle. There are three separate battles, and the line-up shifts for each battle. There is the battle between the U.S. and the European Union. There is the battle between the North and the South. And there is the battle between the forces who wish to protect the environment and acquired workers' rights and the others.
The United States got something important out of Doha. It wished to have a renewal of talks on further liberalization of the world-economy, and it obtained agreement that such talks would start. India was allowed to enter into the minutes its reservations. And start of course does not finish. In order to obtain even this decision, the United States had to give ground on two major issues. It had to agree that the European agricultural subsidies would not be formally excluded in the future but merely made a subject of further negotiations. And it had to agree on a loosening of the protection of the patent protections for pharmaceutical companies (a loosening, not an abandonment). Nothing was done for the environment, and not much for greater access in the North for textiles produced in the South.
Where does this leave us? The editorial in the Financial Times of Nov. 14 on "A Deal in Doha" says: "Reaching a deal required so many compromises and caveats that the final agenda is almost meaningless." I agree. In the world-economy, as in Afghanistan, the game remains wildly open. All the players are still standing, and no particular direction of events is assured.
Going into Doha, there were two warning signals for the U.S. from Europe. One was the statement of Pascal Lamy, the European Commissioner for Trade: "Our concern with development places us in the position of an intermediary between the U.S. and the countries of the South." It is by no means clear that either the U.S. or the South welcomes Europe as the intermediary. But that is little consolation over the medium run for the U.S. which prefers to see itself as the leader of a united North. But the second appeared in the magazine for Portuguese entrepreneurs, Fortunas e negocios. Its November issue explored aloud two things which are being said more quietly throughout Europe. Its lead article discussed the economic advantages of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis, going from Lisbon to Vladivostok, struggling against a United States that is doing all it can to "keep Europe weak." And its editorial noted, even more provocatively, that Europe had a long tradition of linkage with Islam which has ended before in reconciliations. It then added: "Islam is...a paradigmatic case for Europe. Because economically also we have a common adversary."
The U.S. government seems to be thinking that the Sept. 11 events have given it the opportunity to recreate its role as the center of a world coalition against a small minority of evil forces. And it is congratulating itself of the success it seems to have had in this effort. But we have to come back in five years to see whether this is partial or total self-delusion.
The first thing we should look at over the next five years is whether or not, despite the WTO, there will exist three de facto relatively separated economic zones: the Americas, Europe (from Lisbon to Vladivostok) and East/Southeast Asia. A little noticed meeting of ASEAN recently called for the creation of a free trade zone including China, in order to achieve "greater independence" from the United States. The admission of China (and Taiwan) to the WTO will have one major effect that is also little noticed. It will accelerate considerably Taiwanese investments in and trade with China, leading to de facto integration of the two, transforming the internal politics of Taiwan, and advancing Chinese goals in the region.
A second thing to look at over the next five years is whether or not, and in what form, the forces that make up the movement of Porto Alegre can regroup, can give themselves some concrete objectives that command wide support, and can achieve some organizational coherence.
And a third thing to watch is the impact of the economic downturn on the internal politics of the United States. In either of the two most likely scenarios (Afghanistan recedes as an issue, or the U.S. finds itself in a continuing quagmire in Afghanistan and the Islamic world in general), the result is likely to be a breakdown of the temporary U.S. unity. Politics within the U.S. may become much harsher than in the past few decades, and there could be some realignments.
The crucial things to think about are the longer-run trends.
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, 2001 (1 December 2001)
When Vladimir Putin became President of Russia, not so long ago, he had relatively few cards with which to play in the world arena. The Russian economy was in bad shape, and large segments of the population were worse off than they had been in the last years of the Soviet regime. The central government was in bad shape, threatened both by local and regional barons who had usurped a large part of real political power and by a very persistent secessionist movement in Chechnya. The armed forces were very unhappy, remembering how much relative power they had lost in the world arena and not seeing too many prospects of immediate improvement in their lot. Rather they were being bled and made unpopular by the unsuccessful war in Chechnya.
The world financial institutions were tired of funding the drain in the Russian economy. The United States was largely ignoring Russia politically, proceeding with an expansion of NATO into countries bordering Russia. Western Europe was annoyed by Russia's position on Yugoslavia and disabused of economic investments there. The Chinese seemed to have written Russia off. Russia's credit in the Middle East, and beyond in other parts of the Third World, was at an all-time low. And of course, the ex-satellites in east/central Europe were doing everything they could think of to make life miserable for the Russians.
It's a wonder Putin took the job. It didn't seem very promising. How things have changed in under two years. Putin has been a very energetic leader, a much cleverer one than anyone gave him credit for (after all, he was supposed to be nothing but a KGB apparatchik), and quite tactful in his diplomacy.
He started with first things first, firming up his base at home. He liquidated the barons and recentralized the state. And he took firm action against the Chechens, without losing too many Russian lives. He hasn't won that war. Far from it! And he has had to take a lot of international flak for violating human rights. But, unlike the bumbler Yeltsin, he managed to make the pursuit of the war against the Chechens less a source of popular grumbling than a source of Russian popular pride in his "strong" leadership. The army seems to be reassured that he will do what he can, within the limits of a strained budget, to meet their needs.
Putin then began to pursue a foreign policy in all directions (tous azimuts, as de Gaulle said in 1968 of French nuclear strategy). He went to China, and between them they set up a quiet alliance on two issues - countering Islamism in Central Asia, and trying to limit U.S. power in the world. He went to Germany, and charmed the Bundestag not only by speaking in German but by seeming to be quite a reasonable fellow. He reinvigorated Russian ties with Iran, but was also diplomatically helpful to Iraq. He even managed to get the Prime Minister of Israel to visit Russia.
With a bit of patience, he persuaded George W. Bush to meet with him - in Slovenia. And Bush looked Putin in the eye and announced to the world that he could trust him. That one-upped Gorbachev who only managed to get Reagan to say "trust, but verify."
He improved relations with the IMF and World Bank, and presided over an upturn in the Russian oil industry, which now provides 40% of an expanded government revenue.
So, when September 11 came along, Putin was ready to take maximum advantage of the fast-moving game of world chess that was going on. He did this by being flexible without giving up very much. The U.S. wanted support for the war on terrorism. It got it. The U.S. wanted to make some military arrangements with Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan. Russia did not oppose it but did not relax its own strong position in Tadjikistan.
The United States was happy to pay for this cooperation. One of the major issues between the U.S. and Russia was Bush's determination to move forward with missile defense and, if necessary, to renounce the arms treaty with Russia that stood in his way. So Putin went to Texas, put on cowboy boots, and got the Bush administration to postpone, for the moment at least. any idea of renouncing the treaty, without actually endorsing anything the Bush administration wants in changes to the treaty. They are still "discussing" this. In the meantime, U.S. criticism of Russia's actions in Chechnya has dissolved in the wake of Bush's zero tolerance for terrorists. Putin was all smiles. When Andrei Gromyko nominated Mihail Gorbachev as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he is supposed to have said to the Politburo, Comrade Gorbachev "has teeth of steel." I will leave it to history to decide if this evaluation was accurate in the case of Gorbachev, but I have the feeling that Putin has teeth of steel.
Meanwhile, Putin discussed with NATO some new arrangements. He saw he couldn't stop expansion. So he decided, in the old political wisdom - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. NATO and Russia are moving forward with the creation of a special NATO-Russia council, to cover such joint concerns as "terrorism" and other matters, not publicly disclosed or perhaps not yet decided. The press is speculating as to whether this does or does not give Russia the same kind of veto power every NATO member has on joint action. But at the very least it gives Russia a say in NATO matters. And as far as I can see Russia has not had to pay a price for this privilege. It is said that some countries in east/central Europe are not very happy about this new arrangement.
And finally, and not least, for the first time in my memory, Russia is at the center of discussions of the world price of oil. Raising or lowering the price of oil, by fiat or by adjusting the output, has long been the purview of OPEC, and most especially of Saudi Arabia. Who actually pulls the strings has long been a matter of debate, but there seems to be little doubt that raising or lowering the oil price has serious consequences for the world-economy.
In November of 2001, the price of oil plunged on the world market. And the Saudis took the lead in calling for a reduction of world output in order to bolster the price level. OPEC agreed. Non-members Mexico, Norway, and the U.K. went along. Russia refused. And since Russia refused, it isn't going to happen, at least not now.
So why did Russia do this? Putin says he has nothing to do with it. It is the decision of those privatized oil firms that now control Russian oil production. It is amusing to see how fast Putin has cottoned on to the favorite trick of U.S. presidents - denying any responsibility for what U.S. private corporations do, when everyone knows that, if the U.S. government really wants to twist the arms of these corporations, it can and will do so. (Most recently, it twisted the arms of all the private television networks not to show interviews with Osama bin Laden.)
So why would Putin not want to go along? One can suggest several reasons. One is simply that Russia thinks the demand is outrageous. In the 1990s, Russia reduced its output because of the economic confusion and turmoil, and the Saudis and others reaped the benefits of that. Now that Russia is doing better (and making up for lost income), the Saudis want them to pull in their belt. A second reason is that Russia's economy and government income is now doing better precisely because of oil production, and they don't want to hurt that. A third reason may be that Russia is aiming for the long run, of increasing its market share, for which it is prepared to take lower prices now.
But there are also geopolitical considerations. The Saudis are in political trouble at home. And this trouble is causing them to fail to meet immediate U.S. demands, thereby straining the alliance. Russia may want to show the U.S. that it is more reliable than the Saudis, may want to begin to appear as a possible substitute for them in terms of energy production. In any case, Putin's position on this matter is not displeasing to the U.S. Treasury at this moment.
Meanwhile, there are Russians in Kabul again, thanks to their proxy, the Northern Alliance, and its agent, the U.S. Air Force. All this doesn't make Russia a superpower again. But it does return Russia to the role of a very serious player on the world geopolitical scene.
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 Swooping of the Hawks? (15 December 2001)
"Whom the Gods would destroy
they first make mad"
(Euripides).
The day of the hawks may be here. Poor hawks. They have been so frustrated by American presidents - and not merely by such Democratic wimps as Clinton and Carter. George W. Bush wouldn't send the troops into China earlier this year when the Chinese had the audacity to down a U.S. plane that overflew their territory. George Bush, father, wouldn't march on Baghdad. Ronald Reagan himself virtually gave the crown jewels away at Reykjavik when he met with Gorbachev. Let's not talk about Ford. And Richard Nixon (and his sidekick Henry Kissinger) actually made a deal with Mao Zedong, not to speak of signing that dangerous 1972 ABM treaty. The last gutsy thing an American president did was when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan. And that was done by Harry ("give 'em hell") Truman.
But Osama bin Laden did the hawks the favor of mobilizing American nationalism behind their program of America can do anything it wants in the world because America is the land of liberty, the only real land of liberty. And it looks like the hawks are going to go for broke. The U.S. government is withdrawing from the 1972 nuclear treaty. The U.S. government is seriously considering war on Iraq, according to the clear warning of Vice-President Cheney. The U.S. government has ended any semblance of impartiality in the Israel/Palestine imbroglio. And the U.S. government is certainly twisting arms all around the world, trying to make sure there is no serious dissidence from its decisions.
For the moment, the U.S. public seems ready to back almost any macho assertion of U.S. power, anywhere. What has succeeded is success. The U.S. armed might has undone the Kalashnikovs of a bunch of mad mollahs in Afghanistan, and installed in power what is probably a bunch of mad warlords, but at least they're the U.S.'s warlords - for the moment, that is. And hey, fellas, all that matters is whether you're ready to cooperate with the Pentagon, isn't that so? Well, they seemed for the moment to have ousted the mad mollahs. Come back in six months to be sure.
More than that, the U.S. public is ready to denounce as traitors (or almost) any U.S. citizens that are raising any questions about these policies. The ostensible opposition, the Democrats in Congress, are scared out of their wits that they might be targeted as anything less than enthusiastic about a militarist program that even Nixon and Reagan, not to speak of Bush the elder, would not have touched when they were president. Ah, for the good old days, when all the U.S. had in power were Johnson and McNamara. The hawks are really serious these days - no moral twinges, no intellectual hesitations. If, while they're at it, they can seriously limit civil liberties within the U.S. and throw tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to the poor suffering megacorporations, well all the better. But this is all secondary to showing the rest of the world that what the U.S. says goes, and the rest of the world better believe that it doesn't matter if they don't like it.
So, for the few sober types that are still around, let us try to calculate what will actually happen. Will the U.S. do it? Quite possibly. Why? Bombastic aggressiveness is usually a sign not of strength but of weakness. If the U.S. government really felt that everything was going its way, it wouldn't need to bomb Baghdad. One doesn't need to read Machiavelli or Gramsci to know that force is not the optimal way to control the world; it's second best or third best. I will not review here the arguments in Commentary 76 ("Superpower?"), but simply assert again that the U.S. is today a hegemonic power in decline.
When a hegemonic power is in decline, it has only two plausible alternatives: adjust to reality intelligently, reaping the continuing rewards of past accumulation; or pull the house down. What our hawks are proposing is pulling the house down. Some of them may believe that they and their friends will survive Armageddon, and still be on top - with a little "collateral damage," to be sure. Others, more lucid, may not care (Après moi, le déluge!). And some may be Dr. Strangelove - mad!
We are living a dangerous moment. It's not so easy to be a hawk. They don't get that many opportunities. This is one of those rare moments. If they don't grab it, or fail to make it, they may not get another chance like this for a long while. That means, of course, that, if they are stopped now, the worst may pass. What does this depend upon?
It depends on the degree of awareness of the danger - not merely among the immediate targets of the destruction but among all those who are supposedly in the camp of the U.S. government - the political center in the United States, the member governments of NATO, the military leaders who understand the consequences. And it depends on the degree of intelligent and rapid mobilization of those Franklin Roosevelt called "left of center."
They all have been relatively mute these past three months - partly by the emotional reaction to the events of September 11, partly by the world's lack of sympathy with the methods and goals of Osama bin Laden, and more recently partly by the seemingly rapid fadeaway of the Taliban. This is what the hawks have been counting on. If the day of the hawks may be here, this is the moment to counter them with vigorous action.
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.]
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