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.
2003 - The Year of Bush (1 January 2004)
The year 2003 is the year in which George W. Bush left his mark on the world. As the 2004 New Year began, he was probably celebrating it. But in actuality it was a disastrous year - for Bush, for the United States, and for the world. What Bush sought to demonstrate was that the United States could and would assert its power unilaterally in the world, succeed militarily in doing so, and thereby strengthen its political and economic position in the world. The U.S. would show it was the superpower, if not one that was respected, then at least one that was feared - by friend and foe alike. Has he succeeded? I think not.
Let us look at the year's events from Bush's point of view. The year started out rather badly. In February, the U.S. sought international legitimation for its war on Iraq via a resolution of the U.N. Security Council. Despite heavy lobbying, including repeated telephone calls by the president himself, the U.S. was unable to secure more than four votes (out of 15) for such a resolution and hence withdrew it. In March, the U.S. invaded Iraq anyway, with a "coalition of the willing" - essentially Great Britain, Australia, and Poland. At the last minute, Turkey, despite the large monetary bribe that it was offered, refused to take part.
The military operation was nonetheless swift, and by May the U.S. had occupied, more or less, all of Iraq. Bush proclaimed that the mission had been "accomplished." But as soon as he said that, the guerilla war began, and has been growing in strength ever since. More U.S. troops have been killed and many more wounded since the mission was "accomplished" than in the first phase, and as the year ended the U.S. armed forces admitted that the rate of casualties was mounting, not diminishing. Although the U.S. has worked hard to get other countries to send troops, its success has been quite limited. As a result, the U.S. has not yet been able to reduce its own troop commitment.
December brought one bright quasi-military achievement, the capture of Saddam Hussein. The head of the U.S. occupation, Paul Bremer, announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him." And so they had. But since this was not a child's game of hide and seek, it is not clear that the capture of Hussein solved many problems for the U.S. It was no doubt a psychological boost, especially inside the U.S. But did it reduce resistance to the U.S. occupation? It may possibly have been discouraging to some Baathist loyalists, although this remains to be proved. But, on the other hand, it liberated those Iraqis who had previously hesitated to fight against the U.S. only because they feared Hussein's return. Iraqi nationalism, after all, is not dependent on Saddam Hussein. In any case, the last weeks of December showed a considerable increase in violent attacks on the occupying forces.
How did Bush fare on the world economic and political front? Economically, the war brought about the so-called Baghdad boost, allowing for a spurt of economic growth worldwide. This was in large part the result of U.S. military Keynesianism. But there are two downsides to be noticed. The economic growth has largely benefited the wealthy. It did not result in a reduction in unemployment, either in the United States or elsewhere, or in an increase in real income for the working strata. So the longer-term impact on effective demand is in doubt. And, even more important, the dollar has been careening downward.
The downward slide of the dollar is to be sure an economic plus in the very short run for Bush (that is, in the electoral year of 2004). It permits an increase in U.S. exports and a reduction in real terms of the external debt. It may have stanched a further boost in unemployment. But a strong dollar is in the end a powerful political and economic tool, and the U.S. cannot afford to have a weak dollar for very long. But can it do anything to reverse the downslide? To cover the external accounts deficit, the U.S. borrows money by selling its bonds each month. Up to 2003, it was able to sell enough to cover its increasing deficit, and hence make possible the incredible financial transfers to U.S. corporations and its wealthiest citizens.
But, as the dollar began to lost significant value, the rest of the world began to hesitate to throw good money after bad by continuing to buy bonds whose value was plummeting. The U.S. deficit is no longer being covered by dollar inflow, which poses dilemmas for the U.S. Treasury. And the situation is kept from total immediate disaster only by the decision of East Asian governments (and particularly China) to continue to buy U.S. Treasury notes. China (and Japan and South Korea) do this out of self-interest of course. But their investment in dollars puts them at risk as well, and they may soon decide that the advantages are outweighed by the dangers to their own resources. In any case, the United States is now dependent on them for its continuing economic health, not vice versa, which is hardly a position of economic strength. And meanwhile, the U.S. is up for sale to outside investors, the inverse of what the U.S. would like the situation to be.
Politically, the situation is not much better. The war in Iraq marked a turning-point in U.S. political relations with Europe. France, Germany, and Russia have shifted from being recalcitrant allies to being uncomfortable but systematic political rivals. They act warily with the United States, not collusively. This means that, while they may from time to time go along with something the U.S. proposes, the U.S. can no longer count on them in a pinch. The repayment of the Iraqi debt is a case in point. James Baker seems to have obtained commitments from the European and East Asian debtors to renounce some part of the Iraqi debt. These countries may have despaired of being paid in any case, and they may yet exact concessions about rights to future arrangements with Iraq as the price of debt cancellation, when the detailed negotiations take place. Baker has not yet gotten the Arab states, who are the biggest creditors, to do the same. It should not be forgotten that one of the motives of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was to annul the debt owed to Kuwait.
It is now being openly said that western Europe is not ready to become once again faithful followers of American leadership. Most political figures, even the more conservative ones, believe U.S. policy in the Middle East is fundamentally flawed - not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, in Iran, and in Israel/Palestine. If either Pakistan or Saudi Arabia blows up in the face of the United States, there will be Schadenfreude in most European capitals, even in eastern Europe.
Last but certainly not least, the electoral campaign promises to be very difficult for George Bush. At the moment, he is counting primarily on the curtailment of the deflation threat and the capture of Saddam Hussein to propel his campaign forward. But Bush has raised hackles not only in the rest of the world. He has aroused a sleepy U.S. electorate to passionate political involvement. He has his devoted following, but for a significant portion of the American population, he arouses the strongest possible opposition. There will undoubtedly be some swing voters attracted by his patriotic rhetoric. But there are also large numbers (probably larger numbers) of often non-voting youths, greens, Blacks, and Latinos who have become deeply fearful of a Bush second term and are ready to vote this time, especially for Dean.
The year 2004 may not be the year of Bush.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
A Tale of Two Reports (15 January 2004)
Poor George Bush. He has been roughly treated in two reports this January. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) has done an exhaustive study of the evidence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and found that it "was not an immediate threat," exactly the opposite of what the Bush regime had contended. And the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issued a Staff Report on U.S. fiscal policies which details the "deterioration" of U.S. finances and says that the "hard-won gains of the previous decade have been lost and, instead of budget surpluses, deficits are again projected as far as the eye can see."
So, the eminently respectable and prudent, quite centrist, CEIP, says in effect that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was based on false charges, and implies strongly that the Bush regime knew they were false. And the citadel of capitalist orthodoxy, the IMF, has treated the U.S. government to the kind of public reprimand it usually reserves for dubious Third World regimes. It says in effect that the basic economic policies of the Bush regime are dangerous for the U.S. and the world. One can't say that Bush and company have gotten a good report card for their activities of the past three years. Let us review each report in detail.
CEIP says that, if Iraq's WMD program represented a "long-term" threat, it did not present an immediate one. CEIP says that "Iraq's nuclear program had been suspended for many years....[and that] Iraqi nerve agents had lost most of their lethality as early as 1991." This is because the first Iraqi war and the UN inspections and sanctions "effectively destroyed Iraq's large-scale chemical weapons production capabilities."
What then about the presumed intelligence to the contrary? CEIP analyzes the "dramatic shift [in] intelligence assessments" in 2002 and says that the "intelligence community appears to have been unduly influenced by policymakers' views...[and that] officials misrepresented threats from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missiles program over and above intelligence findings."
It further states categorically that "there was and is no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam's government and Al Qaeda." And it goes on further to say that "there was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD to Al Qaeda and much evidence to counter it."
So CEIP concludes that there was "no evidence to suggest that deterrence was no longer operable....There were at least two options preferable to a war undertaken without international support: allowing the UNMOVIC/IAEA inspections to continue until obstructed or completed, or imposing a tougher program of 'coercive inspections.'"
In short, CEIP validates every major argument made by France, Germany, and Russia in the Security Council and every major argument by opponents to the war inside and outside the United States. Of course, as we know, the Bush regime now says that the unfindable weapons of mass destruction are not really important (not something they said up to the war and indeed for months afterward). They now say that the point of the war was to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Of course, many opponents also said that had always been the point of the war. And former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill now confirms this by reporting that from the first days of the Bush regime, the president told his cabinet that he was looking for some way, some excuse, to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Bush is still denying this. He says he decided this only after Sept. 11. Whenever he decided it, it is not and was not a legitimate objective of foreign policy, since it was contrary to the most elementary precepts of international law.
It is bad enough for Bush to be rapped over his schoolboy's knuckles by a dubious, centrist think tank. It is more humiliating to be rapped over the knuckles by the guardians of world financial orthodoxy. What does the IMF report say? It says that the tax cuts plus defense expenditures may have spurred an economic recovery but "at the eventual cost of upward pressure on interest rates, a crowding out of private investment, and an erosion of longer-term U.S. productivity growth." And this will make the U.S. "less well prepared to cope with the retirement of the baby boom generation...."
The IMF agrees that the 2001 recession may account for some of the budgetary turnaround, but only "about half" of it. Another fourth comes was increase discretionary spending and the final fourth from tax cuts. Well, aren't tax cuts good for the economy? Bush's people shout this regularly. No, says the IMF: "It remains an open question whether the tax cuts adopted since early 2001 will have significant supply-side benefits. Although the cuts in income tax rates will - at the margin - improve incentives to work, the labor participation rate is already high, and empirical studies no not suggest that it is highly tax elastic." I guess this is why there are no jobs as a result of the tax cuts.
The IMF continues: "The modest efficiency gains that might arise from the recent tax cuts will also have to be weighed against the effects of a prolonged period of fiscal weakness....With U.S. fiscal deficits expected to persist into the foreseeable future, will any supply-side benefits be outweighed by the effect of weaker public saving on interest rates and investment?"
And, of course, what happens in the U.S. is of concern to everyone else. "[L]arge U.S. fiscal deficits also pose significant risks for the rest of the world....Higher borrowing costs abroad would mean that the adverse effects of U.S. fiscal deficits would spill over into global investment and output." The U.S. is headed to a debt level of 40 percent of GDP, "an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country....This trend is likely to continue to put pressure on the U.S. dollar, particularly because the current account deficit increasingly reflects low saving rather than high investment."
The IMF then launches into its worries about the solvency of social security and medicare. This is familiar ground for an IMF report, since the IMF always worries about too much welfare expenditures. And no doubt the Bush regime also worries about this. But the IMF spells out what it would take to close the fiscal gap: either "an immediate and permanent 60 percent hike in the federal income tax yield, or a 50 percent cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits." And so, the IMF prudently concludes: "Given the magnitude of this adjustment, it would seem likely that both revenue measures and sustained spending restraints would need to be considered."
Wow! In order to get out of the mess Bush has created, the U.S. would both have to raise taxes considerably and take a national cut in the standard of living. The IMF gingerly points out that one of the problems is that "the war on terrorism has compounded spending pressures, but these and other spending priorities will need to be weighed carefully if the adjustment burden is not to fall more heavily on the revenue side." In short, to keep the tax hike from being too big, the U.S. has to cut costs on the military. The IMF concludes that the "the U.S. fiscal problem is still manageable [but] the room for manoeuvre is narrowing quickly."
If the U.S. were Sri Lanka or even Brazil, the IMF would insist on "structural readjustment" before allowing any more loans. But the United States doesn't need loans from the IMF as long as the Chinese and the Japanese continue to invest in the U.S. dollar. So, the message of George Bush to East Asia is "please continue to bail us out." We shall see if East Asia hears him. Or more to the point, what price they will want him to pay.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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 Rising Strength of the World Social Forum (1 February 2004)
The recent 4th meeting of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai (India) - Jan. 16-21, 2004 - was a big step forward in the steadily rising strength of the World Social Forum. In five years, it has become a major actor on the world scene. There are three moments of origin in this story. The first was the very successful mass protests at the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization in November, 1999. A large group of mostly U.S. protestors - an unlikely coalition of AFL-CIO trade-unionists, environmental activists, and anarchists - succeeded in scuttling the meeting. Two months later, in January, 2000 at Davos, a group of some 50 intellectuals from around the world tried a different tactic, organizing an "anti-Davos at Davos," seeking to get anti-neoliberal arguments a world press. And in February, 2000, two Brazilian leaders of popular movements, Chico Whitaker and Oded Grajew, went to Paris to talk to Bernard Cassen, Director of Le Monde Diplomatique and the president of Attac-France. The two Brazilians suggested to Cassen that they join forces and launch a world meeting that would combine mass protest and intellectual analysis. They convened this in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at the same time as the 2001 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. They called this the World Social Forum, and Cassen said the object was to "sink Davos."
Porto Alegre in 2001 expected some 1500 participants. Some 10,000 came. The bulk of the participants in 2001 were from Latin America, France, and Italy. The basic principles of the WSF were that it was an "open meeting place" for "groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism." Its theme was "another world is possible." It was a "process," not an organization. It would not take positions as such, or make proposals for action, but it might generate such positions and proposals by some or all of those taking part in the WSF. It was "plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party" and acted in a "decentralized fashion." In short, there was to be no hierarchy or organizational discipline.
The formula was original and quite different from the historic antisystemic movements, including Communist and other Internationals. And it caught fire. The second meeting at Porto Alegre attracted 40,000 participants, including now a large group from North America. The third, in 2003, had 70-80,000 participants. Every conceivable kind of movement, reformist and revolutionary, every variety of oppressed or marginalized persons, the Old Left and the New Left, social movements and NGOs, came. So did an increasing number of political figures. The world press paid increasing attention.
But there were problems. The three biggest ones were: (1) a tension between those who insisted on retaining the formula of an open forum and those who wished to see the WSF become a "movement of movements," perhaps eventually another "International"; (2) an inadequate degree of participation from Asia, Africa, and east-central Europe; (3) debates about the internal structure and the funding of the WSF - how democratic and how independent was it as a structure? All three problems were tested at the Mumbai meeting, the first to be held other than in Porto Alegre.
The concept of the open forum is seen by the original founders as the key element that provides the strength of the WSF. They argue that any deviation from that formula will lead to exclusions and turn the WSF into one more sectarian movement. To guarantee the openness of the forum, the charter of principles had barred "party representations" and "military organizations." It was hard to enforce since both parties and guerilla movements came anyway, through front organizations. And it was controversial since many participants saw no reason to bar party structures (as long as any one of them was not in a controlling position). And guerilla organizations included the Zapatistas as well, who claim to be a military organization, even if their military action has been virtually nil, and of course most participants were highly sympathetic to the Zapatistas, even considering them a model movement.
When the Forum moved from Brazil to India, from a country in which most movements had more or less supported the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and therefore didn't need the actual formal presence of the PT to a country in which the movements were divided among many parties and where the parties were key mass organizations, the Indian organizing committee dropped the provision about parties. Still, the proscription against violence led to a split among the Indians. A small Maoist movement organized a counter-Forum, called Mumbai Resistance-2004, on grounds across the road from the WSF. And they denounced the WSF as a combination of Trotskyites, Social-Democrats, reformist mass organizations, NGOs financed by transnationals - in short, a stalking-horse for quietism and counter-revolution. They specifically attacked the concept of the open forum (merely a talk show, they said), the slogan (not "another world," but socialism as the objective, they said), and the financing of the WSF (the fact that some money had come in the past from the Ford Foundation).
But Mumbai Resistance proved to be a minor sideshow, stimulating some good discussion in the WSF but attracting maybe 2% of the numbers attending the WSF. As for action by the WSF, many pointed out that the world demonstrations of Feb. 15, 2003 against the war in Iraq were inspired and organized by WSF participants. So, in the end, everyone seemed to agree that WSF should retain the concept of the open forum but perhaps find some way to accept and institutionalize groups that wished to take common actions. There already is an assembly of movements, who meet together at the time of the WSF, and do pass resolutions and propose concrete actions. They are planning a worldwide demonstration on March 20, 2004, the anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The wish to expand the geographic scope of the WSF was behind the move to Mumbai, and it was a spectacular success. In 2002, according to the chief Indian organizer, not 200 people in India had even heard of the WSF. In 2004, hundreds of organizations, and more than 100,000 Indians alone attended it, coming from every conceivable social group - at least 30,000 dalits (untouchables), adivasi (tribal peoples), and women everywhere. Furthermore, against all of previous Indian political culture, they represented a wide range of political views, working together. The WSF will return to Porto Alegre in 2005 and is planning to go to Africa in 2006.
Finally, the internal structure of the WSF was a subject openly debated. An international council had been founded in 2001, with some 150 members, all co-opted. It is broadly representative, but certainly not elected. For were it to be elected, the WSF would become a hierarchical structure. But is this "democratic"? The international council makes real decisions - where the meetings are held, who will speak at the plenary sessions (the "stars"), and who may or may not be excluded from attendance. To be sure, most of the sessions are organized from the bottom up. In Mumbai, there were 50 or so such simultaneous "seminars" at every meeting-time, all in effect autonomous. In the sessions analyzing the structure of the WSF, the push was for more openness of decision-making, a way for participants to have input on the decisions. And all this, without turning the WSF into a hierarchical structure. Not easy, but at least publicly debated.
One should not miss the evolution of the thematic emphases. At Seattle, the drive was to stop the WTO. After Cancun in 2003, the WTO has receded as a major threat. Indeed, while the WSF is still fighting neoliberalism, the sense is that the WSF has made a real difference, that if Brazil and India are now pushing a different line, it is in large part because of the presence of the WSF. The Davos gathering was hardly mentioned at this year, but if there was one villain on all the posters this year, for all the marchers at Mumbai, it was George W. Bush. The poster of a Pakistani women's organization captured the sentiment: "When Bush comes to shove, resist."
The leading participants in the WSF are aware that riding the WSF is like riding a bicycle - keep going forward or fall off. For the moment, the WSF is riding well.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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 War President Sinking in the Mire (15 February 2004)
"I'm a war president," George W. Bush told Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press on Feb, 8, 2004. The statement only makes his case weaker. President Bush has had his former Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill testify that war against Iraq was on the cabinet's agenda from the day Bush took office. So, it wasn't Sept. 11 that led Bush on this path. And having told the American people and the world, not once but again and again, that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an urgent threat to the United States and the world, Bush hears his hand-picked head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, who was charged with finding Saddam's weapons, testify to the U.S. Congress that he couldn't find any and that he now believed Saddam Hussein gave them up as early as 1991.
Bush's standing in the polls fell immediately, and even quite conservative commentators are upset by Kay's findings and by the fact that the U.S. went to war on false pretenses. Everyone now wants to know how U.S. intelligence went awry, as if that were the problem. It is clear that the intelligence, which was itself faulty, was vastly overinterpreted by the Bush administration to meet their preconceived objectives. And it is not true that everyone was wrong. After all, there were clear voices before - the head of the International Atomic Energy Association, Scott Ritter, and others - saying that there was no evidence that weapons existed.
Bush is on the defensive. The coterie that surrounds him gives out different stories. Colin Powell now is not sure there were such weapons, as is Bush himself. Cheney and Rumsfeld are still saying they expect them to turn up. But no matter. The justification has changed. Bush tells us that Saddam Hussein had "the capacity to produce weapons." And besides, "he was a dangerous man," and "this is a dangerous world." Saddam Hussein is/was a "madman" who could potentially make a weapon and "then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network." In addition, "when the United States says there will be serious consequences, and if there isn't serious consequences, it creates adverse consequences." Eventually, who knows?, he might have made a nuclear weapon and then the U.S. "would have been in a position of blackmail."
It's gotten to be so thin an explanation that the United States today has lost all credibility, probably even with Tony Blair, who alas would never admit it. Meanwhile, things are not going well in Iraq at all. Five to ten Americans are being killed each week. And it's mighty dangerous to try to enrol in the Iraqi police force. Iraqi women are now afraid to leave their homes because of fundamentalist pressures. Iraq's code governing women, formerly the most progressive in the Arab world, has just been repealed by the Iraqi interim authority in favor of the sharia. The United States would dearly like to get out as soon as possible from the quagmire in which they said they would never be caught. It would like to turn over sovereignty to an Iraqi government by June 30. It would like the United Nations to take over post-June supervision of political negotiations among the Iraqis. It would like NATO to take over managing a stabilization force. It is not clear that it can achieve any of these wishes.
The June 30 turnover to Iraqis is bogged down at the moment because the Shia are insisting on elections (democracy, remember?) which they would win. The Kurds are insisting on virtual self-rule. And the Sunnis are insisting on not losing everything. The Shia and the Kurds have military units in existence, and the Sunnis are no doubt going to create one. The United States has suddenly produced a document showing that this ethnic conflict is all an Al-Qaeda plot. The reality is that it will be miraculous if post-June there isn't a rather unpleasant civil war. If the United States thinks that Kofi Annan and NATO want to get caught up in the middle of that, the U.S. better think again. The Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Switzerland's leading newspaper and scarcely a newspaper hostile to the U.S., has just run a cartoon showing a cement mixer labeled "Iraq reconstruction" pouring over George Bush in military costume and already half buried in the cement. Looking on are bemused spectators labeled U.N. and Europe, to whom Bush says somewhat desperately "Well, if you really insist on giving a hand."
The problem is that George Bush has nowhere to go. He has a difficult election coming up, and lots to explain about his own Vietnam war record. He can bluster all he wants about how nuclear proliferation is such a great danger that everyone should give up making even nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes, or face the consequences. Meanwhile, he is proposing to expand the nuclear bomb capacity of the United States. So, we may expect a rush of countries to cease nuclear fuel production.
And then there's the little matter of the economic hole he's been digging for the United States. If you give back most of the taxes and expand mightily war expenditures, of course the deficit is going to rise to astronomical proportions. He is scaring the pants off the serious capitalists of the world. And even his ultra-right wing economic conservatives in Congress are threatening to abstain in the next elections because of the endlessly rising deficit.
Bush did leave us with one last consolation in that interview with Tim Russert on NBC. He said "a free Iraq will change the world." I'm hoping myself that a free Iraq, if ever we and the Iraqis get there, might even change the United States. Who knows? It will be Bush's legacy.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
Proliferation Diplomacy: The Games Nations Play (1 March 2004)
The headlines in recent months have been full of nuclear diplomacy. It is hard to keep a straight face reading them. Libya has renounced making nuclear bombs forever. Pakistan's nuclear hero, Abdel Qadeer Khan, has confessed that he (and he alone in Pakistan) has been selling nuclear secrets on the world black market for two decades. General Musharref says he and the Pakistani army of course knew nothing about this. The Iranian government says it is not in the least interested in making nuclear weapons, never has been, never will be. The North Koreans haven't said anything new recently, but when last heard from, claimed they already were a nuclear power. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed el-Baradei, says he's amazed to discover the details of a large international smuggling ring in nuclear equipment. The CIA says it's learning all sorts of new things it never knew before. And Malaysia says it's anxious to cooperate in closing down any role its citizens or residents may have played in this worldwide smuggling operation.
Frankly, I believe almost nothing of this. Everyone knows everything, or almost everything, and has for quite a while. Most countries are lying through their teeth. This is the game of proliferation diplomacy. In real life, North Korea and Iran are no doubt hard at work developing nuclear weapons. Probably other countries are as well. The Pakistanis have every interest in continuing to support this. To be sure, the American government dearly hopes that there will be no further proliferation by others, while it improves its own nuclear weapons with abandon. And the world's secret services (and probably the IAEA as well) know more or less what's been going on, and have known this for decades. Furthermore, there are a lot of people, in the Western world and in the rest of the world, who are making lots of money supplying this traffic and have every intention of trying to make some more. The U.S. also knows that its power to stop this proliferation is more limited than it would like. Israel of course has been an unavowed nuclear power for more than thirty years, and is prepared to do what it can to stop others from acquiring these weapons, especially hostile others in its region, like Iran. But it too can only do so much. Bombing Iranian facilities would be a highly dangerous maneuver on its part, albeit the Israelis as the last true believers in Realpolitik could decide to do it.
Not to put too much nuance into this, a number of regimes know that their ability to survive depends on their having credible threats, especially when neighbors have them. Take Iran. Imagine if you were running the country. You are surrounded by powers, many of them less than wholly friendly, who have nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Israel, and now the United States (with troops on borders east and west). You would have to be crazy not to develop nuclear weapons. And whatever else the regime in Iran is, it is not crazy. Take North Korea. Would you, if you were the North Korean authorities, trust the United States not to take military action some day? After all, only the fast-foot maneuvering of Jimmy Carter undid President Clinton's decision to do just that. And this "weakness" on the part of Clinton is one of the things George Bush's acolytes hold against Clinton.
So, if this is the case, why does everyone play these public relations games? Because they do serve a purpose. It's all a matter of continual pressure - to speed up or to slow down the process. And sometimes the pressures do work, up to a point. But the public language of the game-players never matches the private. Take Pakistan. The Bush regime has pressed Musharref hard on several fronts - to expose Khan, to permit the FBI to play around in northwest Pakistan looking for Osama bin Laden, not to support the resurgence of the Taliban, and in general to act like a member of the world team of those willing to support Bush from here to eternity. But of course, this is less than wholly popular in Pakistan. Many observers have noticed that every time Musharref makes a speech Bush will like, he dresses in Western clothes and speaks English. And every time he makes a speech that the Pakistani people will like, he dresses in Pakistani clothes (or in military garb) and speaks Urdu.
It's all a matter of dosage - give a little to the U.S. but not too much, give a little to the Islamists but not too much. How hard the U.S. presses is also a matter of dosage - pursuing its avowed objectives and satisfying its macho image at home, but not going so far as to jeopardize Musharref continuing in office since he the U.S.'s best hope that nothing worse will succeed him. The trouble with these kinds of games is that it's easy to make mistakes. Either Musharref or Bush could go a bit too far and the regime might topple.
And Pakistan's regime might indeed topple. There is also the question of India-Pakistan negotiations. The Kashmir issue has been around now for more than fifty years. Let us review what happened. At the time of independence, there was an enormous amount of ethnic purification on both sides. There was also a provision in the British transfer of power arrangements that the princely states (of which Kashmir was one) could opt to join the country that they wished. The only place where the decision was in doubt was Kashmir, with a Hindu prince and a Muslim majority, and on the frontier of the two states. The prince opted for India. A war broke out, and there was a de facto partition of Kashmir. Ever since, India has claimed the Pakistani portion and Pakistan has claimed the Indian portion. There have been three more wars about this.
Is there a solution that can be negotiated? The fact is that India and Pakistan actually feel differently about the situation. India would be willing to accept the de facto partition as a permanent division, although it doesn't say this publicly. Pakistan really wants to reclaim the Indian part, or at least a lot of Pakistanis really want to do that. So what could a compromise be? India won't cede an inch. Peace involves Pakistan accepting the borders as permanent. Musharref might be ready personally to do this, if some face-saving formula could be found. The rest of the world would probably applaud. But if he does this while he's disgracing Khan, and allowing FBI agents to roam inside Pakistan, this would probably be just too much for him to survive. And India does want him to survive, since at the moment he is their best hope of ending the border incursions.
So is India pressing the U.S. to relax other pressures on Musharref in order that he make a deal on Kashmir? And is the U.S. going to do this, given their own priorities which do not include settling the Kashmir dispute? Come back in 50 years when the archives are opened. In the meantime, don't expect there to be much slowing down in nuclear proliferation.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
Haiti: The Bicentennial Coup d'Etat (15 March 2004)
In a world where many countries have sad tales to tell, Haiti is quite possibly at the top of the list. In the eighteenth century, Haiti (then known at St.-Domingue) was the jewel in the crown of the French empire. It was the leading sugar exporter in the world at the time and yielded immense profits to a small class of French plantation owners. The overwhelming majority of the population were Black slaves. There was a small intermediate group made up largely of mulattoes, poor Whites, and a few free Blacks.
Then came the French Revolution, and everyone on the island decided to profit from the turmoil. The White settlers elected representatives to the Estates-General, which then became the Assemblée Nationale, and sought autonomous authority on the island. The "free colored" in turn demanded their rights and found support among some members of the Assemblée Nationale, the Amis des Noirs. They succeeded in getting the Assemblée to award the vote to "propertied mulattoes," whose leader was promptly captured, tortured, and executed by the White settlers.
At this point, there began a slave revolt, and Haiti entered into a three-way civil war. The slave revolt frightened not only the White settlers and the propertied mulattoes but France, Great Britain, Spain, and not least the newly-constituted United States. Under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Black revolutionaries created a disciplined army and took over control of an independent state, which was then ostracized by everyone. By 1802, Napoleon had reinvaded the island and by a combination of force and deception captured Toussaint L'Ouverture and took him off to prison in France.
The story gets complicated after that. But basically the republic, officially launched in 1804 (hence this is the bicentennial year), would be under the control primarily of the mulattoes. The White planters left the island. The economy became a shambles. Nonetheless, the example of the Black slave revolt so frightened everyone that the leaders of the various independence movements in Latin America, including Simon Bolívar, would not recognize Haiti for many years. The last country to recognize Haiti was the United States, doing it only in 1854. The example of Haiti led both the Latin American revolutionaries and the United States to discourage an independence movement in Cuba, for fear of another Haiti. In the first half of the twentieth century, after multiple coups, the U.S. marines invaded and spent a lot of time in Haiti, running the show and collecting the debt.
If we fast forward to the period after the Second World War, we find ensconced in power one of the Western Hemisphere's worst rulers, François Duvalier. A doctor, a Black, he used a demagogy of noirisme to establish a dictatorial regime which he enforced through an armed group of thugs known as the tontons macoutes. Duvalier ruled from 1957 to 1971, and on his death he was succeeded by his son, Jean Claude, known as "Baby Doc." The regime remained the same but Baby Doc was less efficacious a ruler, He finally lost the support of the United States, and was overthrown in 1986, allowed to go into golden exile to his estate in France.
Power fell back into the hands of a largely mulatto elite group, who found themselves challenged by a populist priest, champion of the Black underclasses, named Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide won the presidential election in 1990 and was ousted by a coup in 1991 led by a right-wing group who proceeded to kill and repress supporters of Aristide. By now, there was some attention being paid to Haiti by world public opinion and a sense that this situation was intolerable. In 1994, Clinton sent in U.S. troops to restore Aristide to power, on condition that he only "complete" his term of office, not run again in 1996, and carry out a neoliberal economic policy.
Aristide accepted the terms. What else could he do? Meanwhile, however, Senator Jesse Helms, then the Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, fulminated against Aristide as a leftist anti-American. In 2000, Aristide ran again for President and won overwhelmingly. The opposition refused to stand, claiming that the elections were unfair. No doubt they were not pristine (but neither were those in the U.S. in 2000), but no outside observer thought that Aristide did not command the majority of the population.
When Bush came to power, the person in charge of Haitian affairs in the Department of State was Roger Noriega, previously the assistant of Jesse Helms and the one who had managed his anti-Aristide polemics. The U.S. cut off international funds promised to Aristide, forced him to empty his treasury to repay IMF loans, and (via the Republican party) poured money into those who had been ousted by Aristide in 1991 and again in 1994.
This brings us to 2004. A small group of right-wing rebels, indirectly armed by the U.S., invaded from the Dominican Republic. Aristide had been weakened by the financial squeeze, the corruption of his regime, and the fact that his supporters had been using oppressive tactics as well. The diplomatic charade now began. France called for Aristide to resign. Colin Powell said he was for a compromise - that Aristide stay but name a new Prime Minister after negotiating with the more palatable of the opposition. Aristide agreed, but the opposition refused. So the U.S. then said, quite illogically, well Aristide should resign. He refused. The U.S. then arranged that the hired security guards (from a U.S. firm) that had been protecting Aristide be withdrawn.
At this point, the U.S. emissary said to Aristide, we can guarantee your safe escape from the rebel troops only if you resign. Aristide wrote an ambiguous letter in Creole, and was then whisked off in a U.S. plane to the Central African Republic (no golden exile in France for him). He immediately told all and sundry that he had not resigned, that he had been kidnapped by the U.S. At which point, the Central African Republic authorities reminded him of their requirement that he be reserved, that is, shut up.
The U.S. Black poilitcal community are all demanding that Aristide be allowed to return and that the alleged kidnapping be investigated. This is supported by the association of Caribbean states (CARICOM) and by the African Union. But don't hold your breath. The coup (32nd in Haiti's history) has succeeded.
Why did this happen? The first question is why France played the role that it did. It is said in the press that this was a gesture of reconciliation after the fallout with the U.S. over Iraq. I don't think this is too plausible. France was not on good terms with Aristide, who had recently demanded that France pay reparations for what they did 200 years ago. But most of all, France was the ex-colonial power which had been eased out of a role in Haiti by the United States. By taking the lead, France got its foot back inside the Haitian scene, at the expense of Aristide whom they regarded as someone who had been installed by the U.S. (albeit now discarded).
As for the U.S., objectively, Aristide was not particularly bothersome. Unlike say Chavez, he was not sitting on oil, nor denouncing the U.S. But the neo-conservatives saw him as a Clinton product, a dubious type, and someone to be ousted in favor of people with whom they had close relations. So they stage-managed the whole transfer of power. In addition, it is meant as a warning to other countries in the Americas about the readiness of the U.S. to resume "gunboat diplomacy" in their backyard. And so it is being read.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
Spain, Europe, and Mr. Bush (1 April 2004)
On Thursday, March 11, 2004, in the early morning, bombs exploded almost simultaneously in several Madrid train terminals. Over 200 people were killed, and many more hurt. It was a terrible, cruel disaster and there was instant shock and grief in Spain and around the world. The first question of course was, who did it? The Spanish government immediately accused ETA, the Basque independence movement which has engaged in various attacks for several decades now. Within hours, however, many persons, including police agencies in various other countries, began to say that it was an al-Qaeda-linked group and not ETA. That same day, ETA, directly and through political groups sympathetic to it, denied the accusation strongly (whereas, in past ETA attacks, ETA had always claimed responsibility). Despite a growing sense that it was clearly not ETA, the Spanish government insisted that ETA was the prime suspect. The Spanish Foreign Minister ordered all ambassadors of Spain to proclaim this. Over several days, the Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar, personally telephoned the editors of all the major Spanish newspapers, insisting that ETA was to blame. Finally, the Spanish Minister of the Interior admitted that there was a possibility that it might be an al-Qaeda group. By Sunday, the whole world seemed to agree that it was not ETA, but al-Qaeda, although Sunday morning, the Foreign Minister was still insisting on television that the prime suspect should be ETA.
How do we account for such extraordinary misreading, if not deliberate misinformation, on the part on the Spanish government?
To understand this, we must go back to the roots of the Spanish government's policy, and of course remember that there were Spanish legislative elections scheduled for the Sunday following the bombings. In the post-Franco period, Spain had moved towards a basically two-party system akin to that of most of the Western world: a left-of-center Socialist party (PSOE) versus a conservative party, called the Partido Popular (PP). In addition to the usual left-right issues that divide such parties, they were divided both on foreign policy issues and on how to deal with the demands of various regions of Spain for autonomy (if not independence) - first of all Catalonia and the Basque country, but also Galicia, Andalucía, Valencia, and the Canary Islands.
In the arena of foreign policy, the Socialists, who controlled the government under Felipe González from 1982-1996, pursued an active effort to integrate Spain into Europe and to play a prominent role in European institutions. The Socialists also were an important force in trying to bring about a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. In internal affairs, the Socialists pressed for considerable devolution of the constitutional structure, although no doubt less than regionalist parties hoped to obtain.
When the PP came to power in 1996, they shifted the focus radically. They sought to move closer to the U.S., especially in any issue in which there was conflict between the U.S. and western Europe. This became dramatically clear after George Bush became the U.S. President. Spain became a very active supporter of Bush's Iraq policy. As a member of the Security Council, it co-sponsored the U.S.-supported resolutions, and it sent troops to participate in the invasion of Iraq. In questions related to Israel, Spain allied itself with Sharon. As for regionalism, Aznar argued that the Socialists had been far too soft on "terrorists," and in particular on the ETA (although González had certainly pursued an unremitting struggle against ETA). Even vis-a-vis the so-called moderate regionalist parties, Aznar was not ready to make any concessions. The PP was heir to the Franquist tradition of acute hostility to regionalism in any form. As for Europe, just last fall, Spain had been, along with Poland, the hold-out state that made it impossible to agree on the new constitution for the European Union - a constitution strongly backed by France and Germany, the two states that had been most hostile to Bush's Iraq policy.
One week before the elections, all the polls showed that Aznar's party would win. Its majority would be reduced but it would surely form the next government. Then came the bombings. We know now that, within hours, the Spanish police had told the government that, based on the discovery of one bomb that had not exploded and an analysis of its composition, it was almost certain that it could not be ETA which was responsible but rather an al-Qaeda-linked group. The government suppressed this information and proceeded on its claim that ETA was responsible. The politics of this is clear. First of all, Aznar and the PP have been as obsessed with ETA as George Bush and the neo-cons have been with Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Neither Aznar nor Bush wanted the prime spotlight to be on al-Qaeda. Furthermore, Aznar was aware that, with elections coming in three days, were it to be thought that the bombings were caused by al-Qaeda, the Spanish voters might feel this was payback for Spain's involvement in the Iraq invasion, especially since the overwhelming majority of the voters (including PP supporters) had made clear in 2003 that they were opposed to Spain's involvement in the war.
So, Aznar played the big lie, and he did so personally. By Friday, however, the Spanish police was threatening to expose the government, since they did not wish to be blamed for incompetence. Thus, the Interior Minister had to cede ground, and suggest that the government was pursuing all possible perpetrators, even if it continued to believe that ETA was the most probable perpetrator. But the contrary evidence was mounting. And by Saturday, there were demonstrations all over Spain denouncing the government for misleading the people. Various editors of newspapers said they personally regretted editorials they had written the day before. They said they had been deceived by Aznar. And on Sunday, the government was roundly turned out of office. The Socialist leader, José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, immediately announced that he would fulfill his electoral promise (made long before the bombings) to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq on June 30. It is expected that the new government will resume discussions about further devolution within Spain, especially since the regionalist parties also profited from the reaction to Aznar. And the future Spanish Prime Minister immediately flew to Paris to discuss with President Chirac Spain's wish to reintegrate Europe and to proceed with the new constitution for the European Union. It took another two weeks until the Interior Minister admitted that there was no evidence whatsoever of ETA involvement.
The Spanish bombings became the Spanish bombshell. Various small Latin American countries suggested they would follow the Spanish example in withdrawing their troops from Iraq (Honduras was the most explicit). And Europe was now dramatically back on the tracks. The Poles indicated they could not be the sole holdout and would revise their position. The Bush administration supporters started their usual smear campaign. The Spanish, they said, were being cowards, giving in to terrorism. This scarcely impressed people in Spain or elsewhere in Europe, since it was so manifestly at odds with the Spanish reality.
The irrelevance of this smear campaign was especially patent since, in the week following, the Bush administration came under a parallel attack for deliberate misperception of the world situation, and thus misleading the American people. Richard Clarke, who had been the chief anti-terrorist person in the Bush administration (as he had been in three previous administrations), denounced Bush and his key colleagues for deliberately ignoring al-Qaeda in 2001 in order to pursue their policy of focusing on Iraq as the problem, and this in the days both before and after the attack of September 11. Bush and Aznar are birds of a feather, and the two situations are remarkably parallel.
Clarke's accusations will not go away, and they are stirring up the kind of voter unrest that undid Aznar, all the more so since his charges have been seconded by a series of other persons who were in a position to know what was being said in the high councils of the Bush administration in 2001 - two former deputies of Clarke; former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill; Gen. Donald Kerrick, former deputy National Security Advisor; and several others in key positions. The vote on Bush's re-election is not days away but months away. So Bush may have time to recoup. But on June 30, when the U.S. hopes to install a sovereign Iraqi government, the U.S. will probably not be able to bring home the many troops it had hoped, and thus fail to gain the electoral credit such a move might bring. And Europe is not about to be more accommodating to the Bush obsessions. Bush might do well to take to heart what the first Republican President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, famously said: "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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 U.S. Is Losing the War (15 April 2004)
The challenge to the U.S. occupation of Iraq has suddenly become serious. The media and politicians alike, across the world and inside the United States, are for the first time taking seriously the question, can the U.S. prevail in Iraq? And equally suddenly, the discussion is centering not around the question, can the U.S. bring "democracy" to Iraq, but around the question, what can the U.S. do to prevent the situation from turning into a fiasco for the U.S. itself - "another Vietnam" is the way it is usually phrased?
The negatives are piling up. A continuing, but hitherto low-level, guerilla warfare in the central Sunni areas of the country, with 3-7 U.S. deaths a week, has escalated. After four Americans were ambushed, killed, mutilated, and dragged through the streets of Fallujah, the Marines decided on a major counterattack. The considerable firepower employed, including an attack on a mosque, has resulted in hundreds of Iraqi deaths, a veritable carnage according to the Iraqis, without (as of now) resulting in a U.S. military takeover of the city. The disproportionate U.S. response has managed to antagonize even the closest supporters of the U.S. Adnan Pachachi, former Iraqi foreign minister, member of the Iraqi Governing Council, and one of those the U.S. most counted on to support their efforts, has denounced the U.S. military attack on Fallujah as "completely unacceptable and illegal," calling it a form of "collective punishment."
Meanwhile, the U.S. chose this very moment to challenge openly Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical young Shiite cleric who has been unremittingly hostile to the U.S. occupation. In the process, the U.S. stirred up the hornet's nest, and al-Sadr's people occupied the holy city of Najaf and other sites. The U.S. for the moment does not dare to try to enter Najaf. Furthermore, the U.S. succeeded in creating a very delicate situation for the more powerful, more moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose followers are being attracted by al-Sadr's militance, especially given the U.S. actions. Al-Sistani is moving carefully, far too carefully for the taste of the U.S.
And everywhere, the Shia-Sunni split has started to melt into the background amidst unified Iraqi patriotism. Even Kurds are beginning to talk this way. So, what had been merely guerilla action is starting to be resistance, which makes a real difference. The resistance forces not only hold a number of cities for the moment, but they have cut the road from Amman in Jordan to Baghdad, thus threatening the supply chain.
In addition, various groups have taken to kidnapping non-Iraqis, in order to place meaningful pressure on the other countries that have been supplying troops and other support elements as part of the U.S.-led coalition. Popular support in these other countries had been weak from the beginning. And government support had already begun to erode even before the latest escalation. Now the U.S. has to spend much of its diplomatic energy trying to persuade coalition partners not to withdraw troops, or to send replacements for those which are leaving. The boat is leaking, at the very moment that the U.S. needs more troops, not less.
Of course, the U.S. can send more troops itself - although not all that many, unless it reinstitutes the draft, which would be politically ruinous for the Bush administration. Some American politicians are calling loudly for more troops now. But others are talking, albeit less loudly, of the possibility of unilateral withdrawal. Bush would like to do neither, and hopes the whole discussion will go away. But that is scarcely possible, now that Bush's handling of the "terrorist threat" both before and immediately after 9/11 has become a matter of passionate national, televised debate.
Many American and other political leaders are saying they want the United Nations and/or NATO to play a larger role. But while the U.S. leadership is repeating this mantra (hard for them to swallow, given their previous contempt for the U.N. and even NATO), the U.S. is moving very slowly on getting the needed resolutions. This is because it is not at all clear that it could get them. The price for such resolutions is high - ceding a lot of control in Iraq. And the U.S. administration is not yet ready to do this. So it wants what it has wanted from the beginning - substantive help from everyone else on exclusively U.S. terms. Not only are the U.N. and NATO not ready to do this; even the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council has become recalcitrant.
U.S. elections are coming, and the situation is getting worse. And the magic date of June 30, when the U.S. promised to turn over sovereignty to the Iraqis is approaching. There seems to be no clear plan about what to do, even now. The U.S. is praying (and I mean praying) that somehow Lakhdar Brahimi will use his charm and intelligence and get the Iraqis (all of them) to agree on acceptable formulas. It's a very long shot. And even if the formulas are found, will the new Iraqi sovereign state have the military power to control anything? It's very hard to see how. But if the U.S. troops still rule the roost after July 1, the Iraqi sovereign power will appear to all Iraqis as a powerless puppet, and the U.S. military casualties will continue to mount.
So, what will happen? If anyone on the U.S. side had a clear plan, as of now, perhaps they could stabilize the situation. But from Cheney to Rumsfeld, from Bremer to Gen. Abizaid, there seems to be little more than bewildered chiefs wandering in a fog. As for the Democrats in the U.S., they can't make up their mind whether they want to denounce the Bush administration for starting the war, or for not winning it. In any case, the best that Kerry has come up with is to turn the whole mess over to the U.N. (and maybe NATO as well) - in short, really the same mantra.
There is the old wisdom that when you're in a deep hole, the first thing you must do is to stop digging. In order to stop digging, however, people have to admit that they were wrong to get into the hole in the first place - if not morally wrong, at the very least politically wrong. I frankly don't see anyone in Washington ready to do that yet. So it's easy to predict that the U.S. will continue to dig deeper.
The day may come, sooner than the U.S. thinks, when it will decide to evacuate Iraq. It is worth remembering that, when the U.S. evacuated Saigon in 1975, it was faced with a unified enemy with tight control over its own side. The Vietcong ordered their soldiers not to shoot at a single U.S. very vulnerable helicopter that was evacuating. The Vietcong were ready instantly to establish order in Vietnam. In Iraq, there is no Vietcong. The Iraqis may well shoot at the departing helicopters.
No one is really preparing in the United States for the post-Iraq era, which is likely to leave its harshest residue inside the United States. In the coming internal U.S. war of mutual recriminations, it is doubtful that anyone, on either side, will have a good word to say for George W. Bush.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
U.S. Withdrawal? (1 May 2004)
In the beginning of 2003, the great debate, in the United States and throughout the world was, should the United States go into Iraq? Now the debate has become, should the United States withdraw from Iraq? The occupation has not gone at all as the U.S. authorities had hoped, and expected. Iraqi armed resistance is spreading. The U.S. armed forces are stretched thin. The Iraqis are increasingly and openly hostile to the U.S. and all those who support the U.S., even the Iraqi Governing Council that the U.S. installed to be its faithful ally.
The centrist, Establishment elements in the United States, who all supported the U.S. president's decision, and if in Congress voted for it, are now all very queasy, and they do not know what position to take. One fallback is to say that, while it may have been justified to go into Iraq (the most acceptable justification for this group was to oust Saddam Hussein from power), the war has been conducted badly. The U.S. tried to do it with too small an army. It failed to do what it took to "win the hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people. The government didn't plan ahead for the post-Saddam period and has made grievous errors. This is not a very strong dissent from the Bush administration's position. The obvious conclusion of this kind of criticism is to call for an increase in our military force in Iraq, for spending more money on reconstruction, and a revival of the draft. This is the position of Republican "critics" like Senators McCain and Hagel.
The Democratic leadership, and most notably Sen. Kerry, go one step further. They say the U.S. should "call in" the United Nations and NATO, which they say Bush should have done from the beginning. The fact that neither the U.N. nor NATO is ready to be called in to the U.S.-created disaster zone is not mentioned. But these people have one more argument, which was spelled out very clearly in a New York Times editorial on April 25:
"This page felt it was a mistake to invade Iraq without broad international support, and since then we have seen few indications that Mr. Bush's notion of establishing a stable democracy is anything but a dream. Yet leaving Iraq now would create a situation so horrific that the United States is obliged to press forward as long as there seems any hope of making progress....This is not the moment for retreat and it certainly is not the moment for half measures."
Yet, as has become clear in the battle of Falluja and the siege of Najaf by the U.S. armed forces, half measures seem to be the only realistic choice. "Full" measures promise even greater disaster for the United States.
What would really happen if the U.S. withdrew? First, we need to know what it means to "withdraw" - all troops or some troops; immediately, soon, or "when the situation stabilizes"? There is clearly today no central government in Iraq, and there is no army (since the U.S. disbanded the only one Iraq had). There is scarcely a police force. The United Nations' representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, says he is hoping to achieve agreement on a brand new central government by the end of May which would be an "interim" government of "experts" until the holding of elections, projected for January 2005.
In the meantime, the U.S. proconsul, Paul Bremer, says he is hoping to reconstitute an Iraqi army, using some of the old generals, who were only "nominally" members of the Baath party. This is being roundly denounced by the former Pentagon favorite, Ahmed Chalibi, who has been in charge of "de-Baathification" of Iraq. Chalibi, who has been unable to demonstrate that he has any popular support anywhere in Iraq, is also opposed to Brahimi's plan, which would eliminate him (and his "party") from the government, probably permanently.
So, maybe there will an army of some sort by January 2005. There are also "militias" of varying importance - at least two that are Kurdish, at least two that are Shi'ite, and probably one that could be easily constituted in Sunni areas. This is the source of the frequent argument that, left alone now, Iraq would fall into civil war. This seemed more likely three months ago. U.S. incompetence has created nationalist links among these rival factions. And U.S. military actions in Falluja and Najaf may seal a new unity, or at least something strong enough to reduce radically the likelihood of anything resembling what happened in Bosnia in the 1990s.
We have recently learned, through the book by Bob Woodward, that Colin Powell reminded George W. Bush, as he was making his decision to invade, of the "antique store" theory of intervention in foreign zones: "If you break it, you own it." That is what the New York Times is now saying: "The United States is obliged to press forward." Obliged? Surely not legally. Morally? Let us look at that more closely.
If you hurt someone and make his situation worse, should you stay around and offer to help? Well, yes, if that would be a remedy, and would be welcomed by the person you're helping. But certainly not, if that would make the situation still worse. Personally, I don't see that what Bremer plus Gen. Abizaid are doing is remedying anything. The situation is steadily deteriorating. And the thing the Iraqis are complaining about most vociferously now, even those who were initially somewhat friendly to the invaders, is that the U.S. is doing great damage to Iraq, and looks like it is going to do still more. The reason is simple. There is very little that the U.S. can do at present that will bring stability and order to Iraq, much less the so-called democracy the U.S. claims it wishes to impose.
The Iraqis have two principal grievances about the U.S. occupiers. They are hurting (and killing) all sorts of people who are not combatants in their understandable efforts to save the lives of U.S. troops and presumably to reestablish order. But secondly, and probably more important, the Iraqis are not persuaded that the U.S. ever intends to leave. And they have good reason to doubt this, since Bush officials have been saying as much for a long time. The U.S. is building permanent military bases in Iraq. The U.S. has said that the "sovereignty" that is being restored to Iraq on June 30 is only "partial." Sovereignty is however like virginity - you either have it or you don't. There is no in-between. If U.S. armed forces can act as they deem wise in post-June 30 Iraq, the country is not sovereign. If the government cannot make laws without clearing them with the U.S., the country is not sovereign - it's a colony.
So, what can the U.S. do? I suppose, since there is at the moment no central government and no army, an instantaneous U.S. withdrawal would indeed have chaotic consequences. But the U.S. could commit itself now to turning over full sovereignty to the interim government on June 30 (which would make the use of the U.S. military restricted and limited by the decisions of this government). It could permit immediately the reconstitution of an Iraqi army. And it could commit itself to total withdrawal of U.S. forces as of say January 2005. But above all, it could renounce all aspirations for any U.S. bases in Iraq in the future.
Does this have some risks from a narrowly U.S. point of view? Of course, it does. But this is the cul-de-sac in which the Bush administration put the U.S. and this is the best way to cut U.S. losses, probably the only way. Will the new government of Iraq be friendly to the U.S.? Quite possibly not. The U.S. didn't know it had a good thing with a virtually toothless Saddam Hussein in power. But when you make a really big mistake, the best thing to do is to admit it and pick up your life from there. Will George W. Bush do it? Almost surely not. Will John F. Kerry do it? Perhaps, but it is very far from sure.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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 U.S. and Europe, 1945 to Today (15 May 2004)
Since 1945, a primary objective of U.S. foreign policy has been to keep western Europe as a subordinated, highly integrated part of its geopolitical strategic resources. This was easy to achieve in the aftermath of the Second World War, when Europe was economically exhausted from the effects of the war, and when a majority of its populations, and even more of the political and economic elite, were fearful of Communist forces, both because of Soviet military power and because of the popular strength of western European Communist parties. The U.S. program took the form of Marshall Plan economic assistance for European recovery and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
It is within this context that the moves to create European institutions took place. At first, these efforts were limited to six countries - France, West Germany, Italy, and the three Benelux countries - and involved limited economic arrangements. There were also early efforts to create European military structures, which were not successful. The movement in this direction was strongly supported by European Christian-Democratic parties, but also by Social-Democratic parties. They were strongly opposed by the Communist parties in these countries, who saw these structures as part of the Cold War. From a U.S. point of view, European structures seemed desirable, both because they strengthened European economies (and therefore made them better customers for U.S. exports and investments), and because they seemed to be a way of allaying French fears about German military rearmament and integration into NATO.
By the 1960's, two elements in the equation began to change from the U.S. point of view. First, Western Europe was becoming too strong. It was emerging as an economic peer of the U.S. and therefore as a potential serious competitor in the world-economy. Secondly, Charles de Gaulle came to power once again in France. And De Gaulle wanted to have European structures that would be politically autonomous, that is, not subordinate segments of U.S. geopolitical strategic resources. At this point, U.S. enthusiasm about European unity began to cool. But the U.S. found itself politically unable to state this openly. There were further shifts in the situation. The Communist parties of Western Europe grew weaker electorally. And their politics began to change in the direction of what was then called Eurocommunism. One of the consequences was a shift in the position of these parties about European structures, which they began cautiously to support, or at least tolerate.
This was the period in which the U.S. was losing the war in Vietnam, which took a serious toll on the U.S. geopolitical position. The combination of this political-military setback, combined with the emergence of Western Europe and Japan as major economic competitors, meant the end of unquestioned U.S. hegemony in the world-system and the beginning of a slow decline. It required a major shift in U.S. foreign policy from the simple outright dominance of the earlier period. The shift started with Nixon - détente with the Soviet Union, and more importantly the trip to Beijing and the transformation of U.S.-China relations. Nixon initiated the policy of what I call soft multilateralism," a policy that would be pursued by every successive U.S. president from Nixon to Clinton, including Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
In terms of Europe, the main consideration was how to slow down what seemed to be a growing trend towards European political autonomy. To do this, the U.S. offered Europe geopolitical "partnership" (that is, a degree of political consultation) on two fronts - the continuing Cold War with the Soviet Union, and the political-economic struggles of the North versus the South. This was supposed to be implemented by a multitude of institutions - among others, the Trilateral Commission, the meetings of the G-7, and the World Economic Forum at Davos. The program on the Cold War resulted in the Helsinki agreements. The North-South program resulted in the drive against nuclear proliferation, the Washington Consensus (in favor of neo-liberalism, against developmentalism), and the construction of the World Trade Organization.
In the 1970s and 1980s, one could say that the adjusted U.S. foreign policy was partially successful. Although Europe's political autonomy increased - remember German's Ostpolitik and the gazoduc linking the Soviet Union and Western Europe - by and large Europe did not wander very far from the U.S. geopolitically. In particular, attempts to create a European army were effectively blocked by continuing opposition by the United States. In practice, although not in words, the U.S. had become hostile to European unity.
U.S. policy seemed even more successful on the North-South front. Most Third World countries fell in line with the IMF's structural adjustment policies, and even the socialist countries of east-central Europe moved in this direction. Popular disillusion with the national liberation movements in power and with the Communist regimes in the socialist bloc muted any remaining militancy and created a sense of morose pessimism among the world left. And of course, the final "triumph" was the collapse of the U.S.S.R.
But this "triumph" did not at all serve U.S. foreign policy interests, least of all in western Europe. For it removed the last major argument as to why western Europe should accept a subordination to U.S. geopolitical "leadership" around the world. Saddam Hussein seized the moment to pose an overt challenge to the U.S., something he would never have been able to do in the previous Cold War days. The Gulf War ended in a truce at the line of departure, which, as the decade went on, seemed less and less acceptable to the U.S. Clinton nonetheless pursued the Nixon policy of "soft multilateralism" in the Balkans, the Middle East, and East Asia, and the west Europeans still declined to break openly with the U.S. on any major issue. Meanwhile, to ensure that western Europe would stay in line, the U.S. pushed hard for the incorporation into European institutions (and NATO) of the now non-Communist east and central European states, feeling that these states would be eager to maintain and reinforce ties with the U.S. and would thus counterbalance the emerging autonomist sentiments in western Europe.
Enter George W. Bush and the hawks. They viewed the Nixon-to-Clinton foreign policy as incredibly weak and a major contribution to the continuing decline of U.S. power in the world. They were particularly disdainful of any reliance on United Nations structures and especially anxious to contain Europe's aspirations to political autonomy. In their view, the way to do this was to assert U.S. power unilaterally, and militarily, in a blatantly forceful way. Their target of choice, well announced beforehand during the 1990s, was Iraq, for three reasons: The Gulf War had been "humiliating" for the U.S. in that Saddam Hussein survived; Iraq would be an excellent site for permanent U.S. bases in the Middle East; Iraq was an easy target, militarily, precisely because it did not have weapons of mass destruction.
The theory of the hawks was that the conquest of Iraq would demonstrate the unbeatable military superiority of the United States, and would therefore have three effects: It would intimidate the western Europeans (and secondarily the East Asians) and end all aspirations for political autonomy. It would intimidate all aspiring nuclear powers and induce them to abandon any pretensions to obtaining such weapons. It would intimidate all Middle Eastern states, and induce them to end all aspirations for self-assertion geopolitically as well as get them to accept a settlement of the Israel/Palestine issue on terms acceptable to Israel and the United States.
This policy has been a complete fiasco. The seemingly easy target of Iraq has turned out not to be such an easy target. At the moment, the U.S. occupation is facing resistance and an ever-growing uprising which will minimally end with an Iraqi government not at all to the taste of the U.S. and maximally with a total withdrawal of U.S. forces, as happened in Vietnam. The attempt to split Europe into two camps - the so-called "old Europe" and "new Europe" - had momentary success. But with the Spanish elections, the tide has turned entirely, and Europe is on the verge of establishing its geopolitical autonomy for the first time since 1945. Nuclear proliferation has not been slowed down. If anything, it has been speeded up. And Middle Eastern states are pulling away from, not edging towards, the United States (with the exception of Libya, a policy that may not last). And Israel/Palestine is in total deadlock, which will persist until it explodes in a way that cannot be contained.
The macho unilateralism of the hawks has failed, and support for such a policy within the United States has declined considerably, even among Republican conservatives. However, what is the alternative? What the Republican moderates, and even more the centrist Democrats, led by John F. Kerry, offer in its place is a return to the "soft multilateralism" of the Nixon-to-Clinton years. Can this work now? It is very doubtful. It is almost certain that, in the next decade, the siren of nuclear armament will attract a dozen states at least, and that we shall be going from eight to twenty-five nuclear powers in the next quarter century. This provides a real constraint on U.S. military power. There seems no likelihood that Middle Eastern realities will move in any direction the U.S. will like. This is particularly true of Israel/Palestine.
What of Europe? Europe is the big question mark of world geopolitics at the moment. Even the most "Atlanticist" of Europeans has become wary of the U.S. government, and even of a "multilateralist" U.S. But Europe still shares one interest with the United States - the North-South struggle. The adoption of a serious European constitution is still in doubt, especially since a single negative vote on a referendum in any one country can undo any agreement. And in particular, the European left is not yet cured of its post-1945 doubts about European unity, and is therefore not yet ready to throw itself wholeheartedly into European construction. This is particularly true in the Nordic countries and in France, but there are some similar reserves almost everywhere.
A strong autonomous Europe is a first, and essential, building block of a multipolar world. An autonomous Europe that would be willing to work towards a fundamental restructuring of the world-economy in directions that would actually start to overcome the continuing North-South polarization would constitute an even greater change on the world scene. Both are eminently possible. Neither is at all certain.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
Scandal After Scandal (1 June 2004)
Al Gore thundered on May 26: "How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison." Gore's outrage at the multiplying scandals in Iraq (and Afghanistan) is common currency in most of the world. It has grown strong even in the United States.
No one defends, or hardly anyone, the practices exposed in the multiple military prisons of the United States. There are three different views of what has happened. There is the official position of the Bush administration: the abuses are the work of a few bad apples, all of whom are low-level soldiers, who have violated American values and will be punished for it. There is the view of Al Gore and an increasing proportion of the solid American center: this is the work of the Bush administration, and it is they who should be punished for it. Gore called for the immediate resignation of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, his three top associates (Wolfowitz, Feith, and Cambone), of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and CIA Director George Tenet. He stopped short, but just barely, of calling for the impeachment of President Bush. There is a third, minority position, which argues that prison abuses have long been built into the American political culture, and that the military scandals are merely more of the same. I suppose it follows from this position that it is the United States as a whole which should be punished for it. This position does not have much traction inside the United States, but it receives greater attention elsewhere in the world.
If everything were otherwise going well in Iraq, the Bush brush-off of the scandals ("a few bad apples") might prevail. But everything is not otherwise going well. In April, the U.S. launched two important military actions in Iraq - one in Fallujah, the stronghold of Saddam loyalists; and one against Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shi'ite cleric who daily denounces the U.S. As far as one can tell, the strongest military power in the world has lost both battles. In Fallujah, the U.S. was forced to settle for a truce, in which it evacuated the city and turned over power to only mildly-disguised former Republican guards of the erstwhile Saddam regime. And in Najaf, the outcome of the battle between al-Sadr and the U.S. army seems to be a truce, in which the U.S. and al-Sadr will both vacate the city, but without the arrest of al-Sadr or the disbanding of his militia.
Meanwhile, the putative transfer of power on June 30 to an Iraqi government that will be "sovereign" is not proceeding well, or at least it is not proceeding very speedily, with only a month to go. For one thing, there is a not minor debate about what "sovereign" means. The United States seems to take the position that one can be "sovereign" in title, but limited in sovereignty in practice. The U.S. does not wish to limit in any serious way the ability of its occupation forces to continue to pursue their self-appointed tasks in ways they deem best after June 30. It reminds me of the infamous and eminently maladroit pronouncement of General Janssens, who commanded the armed forces of the Belgian Congo, just a few days before the country was to become independent (also on a June 30, but 1960). General Janssens assembled the African troops and wrote on a bulletin board: "After independence = before independence." This did not go over very well, and the result was a mutiny, which started a five-year long civil war and national and international crisis.
In any case, few others seem to share the U.S. definition of "sovereignty". On May 25, Tony Blair, the closest ally of the U.S. in Iraq, said of the post-June 30 period: "If there is a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Fallujah in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government and the final political control remains with the Iraqi government." Colin Powell immediately publicly disagreed, saying U.S. (and coalition) forces would remain under U.S. command. And the next day, Blair denied there was a rift, although it is hard to see how the two positions can in reality be reconciled. As to the rest of the world, at the moment France, Germany, Russia, and China are holding out for more specification about Iraqi sovereignty before they vote a U.N. resolution, which the United States very much wants and needs. And the existing Iraqi Governing Council is also demanding more real power for the post-June 30 government. One member even said that, after June 30, U.S. troops should leave in months, not years.
President Bush has been calling on the American people "to stay the course." General Anthony Zinni, retired Marine general and former commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East, replied incredulously: "This course is headed over Niagara Falls." And so it seems, not merely to longtime opponents of the Iraqi invasion but even to many neo-con supporters of the war. Some of Mr. Bush's own supporters are calling for a "mid-course correction." But what can Bush in fact do? Fareed Zakaria is Newsweek magazine's chief political commentator. He supported the U.S. decision to go into Iraq. In the May 17 issue, his piece is entitled "The Price of Arrogance." His denunciation of President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld is merciless: "On almost every issue concerning post-war Iraq - troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani - Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect." Zakaria calls this a "strange combination of arrogance and incompetence" and says that, however the elections turn out, "George W. Bush's legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I'm sure he assumes full responsibility."
The Economist, long the incarnation of worldwide economic conservatism, and also an original supporter of the war, believes that there is indeed a possible mid-course correction that is desperately needed. The May 8-14 issue has a cover that shows one of the infamous photos of Abu Ghraib prison under the heading "Resign, Rumsfeld." Their editorial reads: "The scandal is widening....Moreover, the abuse of these prisoners is not the only damaging error that has been made and it forms part of a culture of extra-legal behaviour that has been set at the highest level....The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, should resign. And if he won't resign, Mr. Bush should fire him." So, The Economist and Al Gore end up with the same immediate solution to scandal after scandal.
The Economist seems to think this might save Bush. But would it? If Bush thought it would, he might well do it, not out of a sense of honor (much too old-fashioned an idea for born-again Christian Bush) but out of an instinct for political survival. However, it is quite probable that the American people would take a Rumsfeld resignation to be an admission that something was terribly wrong with Administration policies. They might even infer that, as Harry Truman famously said, the "buck" stops not at the door of the of the Secretary of Defense but at the desk of the President of the United States. Bush is not noted for admitting errors. When last asked publicly at a press conference if he could recall any errors he had made at any time during his presidency, he was stumped for an answer, and suggested that the reporter ought to have given advance notice of such a difficult question.
So, the world and Bush are stuck with the scandals that won't go away. Some low-level soldiers will be punished. General Sanchez, who commands the occupation forces, seems to have fallen, although no one will admit that this is the reason. Rumsfeld will stay, at least until the elections. And Bush will have to face his voters and the world - a bit lonely, these days.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
Turkey in Europe? (15 June 2004)
Is Turkey European? Will Turkey be accepted as part of the European Union? This question, which has been lingering for a good twenty (if not fifty) years, gets very little attention outside of Turkey and to a much lesser extent in western Europe. Yet, it is one of the more important geopolitical issues of the coming decades.
An intelligent answer to this question has to start in the sixteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire was at its peak of glory and importance under Suleiman the Magnificent. At that time, the Ottoman Empire seemed to be the anti-Europe - a Muslim empire expanding everywhere, including into Christian Europe. It not only controlled most of what we now think of as the Arab world, but it was conquering all of southeastern Europe. This culminated in the seventeenth century, in the so-called Türkenjahr, when the Habsburg emperor successfully resisted the second Ottoman siege of Vienna, in the very center of Europe. After this, the Ottoman Empire began to recede slowly, until in the nineteenth century, it was considered the "sick man of Europe." Yet, note, it was called the sick man "of Europe."
The Ottoman Empire finally collapsed in the wake of the First World War. The military hero of the battle of the Dardanelles in 1915, Mustafa Kemal (later to be called Atatürk, father of the Turkish people), founded in 1919 a national liberation movement that was dedicated to the creation of a Turkish republic, nationalist and secular. By 1922, the Ottoman Sultanate was abolished. In 1923, the Turkish Republic was proclaimed, with Atatürk as President. And in 1924, the caliphate, that is, the religious authority that the Ottoman Sultan had incarnated, was abolished as well. (When in 2001, Osama bin Laden, referred to 80 years of Muslim humiliation, he specifically traced it to the abolition of the caliphate.)
The program of Atatürk was resolutely "Westernizing" - transformation of the legal system, liberation of women, abolition of religious symbols (such as the wearing of the fez), and above all "Etatism" - the central role of the state in the life of the citizens. Westernizing, but not pro-European, in the sense that the Turkish republic was vigorously anti-imperialist, and played the role in the League of Nations that we associate later with the role of India in the United Nations - a constant critic of colonialism and imperialism. While relations with the Soviet Union were initially good (shared anti-imperialist sentiments), they deteriorated seriously in the interwar period. And in the Second World War, Turkey remained neutral, to the great displeasure of the Allies.
When, in 1946, Great Britain announced its political withdrawal from the Middle East, the United States took up the slack. The Truman Doctrine put the U.S. squarely behind the governments of Greece and Turkey in the face of what they and the U.S. considered the Soviet menace. So, when NATO was formed in 1949, it seemed self-evident that Turkey would become a member. And when the United Nations appealed for troops to aid South Korea in 1950, Turkey responded in an important way. By now, Turkey had shifted its cultural model of Westernization from France (initially favored in the 1920s) to the United States.
When the party founded by Atatürk began to lose strength for the first time in the post-1945 period, the Turkish armed forces moved into the foreground as the principal guarantor of secular nationalism and Etatism (that is, a homogeneous Jacobin version of the role of the state). When, in the 1970s, the then European Economic Community began to expand into southern Europe, Turkey indicated its interest, but it was passed over. It is not sure, however, that Turkey itself was all that anxious at that point to join Europe.
Turkey was consumed by its internal problems: an armed forces that had seized power on several occasions, an emergent rebellion of the large Kurdish population located in southeastern Turkey, and the beginnings of an Islamist revival. For the mainstream Turks, and especially the armed forces, Kurds did not exist. There were only Turks. And they were unwilling to allow any recognition of group rights, including linguistic rights. The armed forces repressed rebellion, at very great cost. Nor were the armed forces willing to make any concessions to Islamists. They too were repressed. This was however an era of increasing concern in western Europe with human rights and the pattern of brutal repressions and military takeovers was deemed in western Europe very unacceptable in a country aspiring to integration in European institutions. There was a second consideration. In the 1950s, western Europe needed an influx of workers to sustain its expanding industries. And they turned in particular to Turks. This was especially true of Germany, which had a large Gastarbeiter program. But in the 1970s, with the beginning of the Kondratieff B-phase and therefore of increased unemployment, both the governments and the public began to think that the Turks should go home. However, by now, we were into second-generation Turks, born in Germany and elsewhere in western Europe, who considered themselves natives of these countries and wished not only to remain but to exercise the full rights of citizens. As the Turks remained in western Europe, and as many North Africans came also to migrate there (especially but not only to France), the percentage of Muslim population began to grow markedly. And as Islamism began to grow in influence among these Muslims, acute cultural (and political) conflicts began to play an important role in the daily life of western Europe.
In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, western Europe turned to the incorporation of east-central Europe into its institutions. And Turkey was moved repeatedly to a place after these countries. Meanwhile, in Turkey, a remarkable thing occurred. An Islamist movement actually came to political power. But it was an unusually "moderate" Islamist movement, which became more enthusiastic about integration into Europe than the old Etatist military. The Islamists in power saw Europe as a guarantee of their civil rights. So did the Kurds. The United States also favored Turkish integration into Europe, seeing it as constraining any tendency of Turkey to break with the West, and therefore with the United States.
With the prospect of Turkey actually joining the European Union looming on the horizon, some west European leaders began to verbalize their fears, notably Valérie Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Kohl, who openly suggested that Turkey did not fit. What they meant of course was that including Turkey into the European Union would suddenly augment significantly the percentage of Muslims in Europe. But this was a moment when France was banning the wearing of the Muslim head covering by girls in school. And politicians throughout Europe were beginning to respond openly to anti-Muslim fears.
Suddenly, the issue has become acute, for Europe and for Turkey. For Europe, the issue is whether Europe will base its future on being a Christian culture or being a secular culture. It should be noted that, at this very moment, Europeans are debating fiercely whether, in the new constitution, there will be explicit reference to the Christian heritage of Europe, something being strongly pushed by the Vatican. The seeds of expanded internal turmoil depend on the degree to which Europe can or cannot find ways to make cultural space for its inevitably increasing Muslim population. Integrating Turkey is seen by some as tilting the balance in the direction of greater turmoil. But it is seen by others as one of the best ways of overcoming this turmoil.
Meanwhile, in the greater Middle East, as the Bush administration likes to call it, a rejection of Turkey in Europe could add a major factor to the equation. Turkey is Muslim but it is also the heir to Ottoman domination of the Arab world, and has been regarded with great suspicion by the Arab populations and states ever since their independences. On the other hand, were Turkey to be barred definitively from Europe, it is quite possible that the "moderate" Islamism now in favor might give way to a less "moderate" version, something that would rebound on Europe significantly. Turkey in Europe is not a minor question.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
Geopolitical Turmoil in the Middle East (1 July 2004)
Iraqi sovereignty has been "returned" to the Iraqi people, more or less. What now? Everyone is waiting to see if the guerilla war against the United States will now abate. It seems most unlikely. If not, what can we expect - in the next six months, in the next five years? There are four crucial, interrelated loci of instability and possibility of significant change.
The first question is whether a stable Iraqi government can be created. It seems clear as of now that Iraqi nationalism is back on the front burner of Iraqi politics. The one thing on which the Shia and the Sunni, their clerics and their secular forces, can agree is that Iraq should reestablish itself as a unified state, regain its economic strength, and reassert its political role as a major power in the Arab world. Very few Shia or Sunni leaders are interested in establishing a multiparty system, with alternating governments and extensive civil liberties. Quite the contrary. They want a strong state. What is most probable is that we shall see a neo-Baathist state, with three differences from the previous one. It will be a joint operation of Shia and Sunni elites, not just Sunni. It will have a strong Islamist component, unlike the classic secular Baathist regime, women being the first to suffer from this difference. And Iyad Allawi is positioning himself to be the new Saddam, after he liquidates Saddam in a swift trial, probably not public.
Will this be better for either the Iraqi people or the United States government? This is doubtful. For the moment, the current Iraqi leadership is no doubt afraid to cut its dependence on American forces too quickly, and the U.S. will continue to occupy Iraq for the time being. But the advantage to the Iraqi government from these forces is draining away, and the disadvantage of being linked to them is daily increasing. So, probably within 6-12 months, the Iraqi government (whichever one we have) will request a withdrawal of these forces, to which the U.S. government will be overjoyed to accede. Will we have elections? Maybe.
The fate of the Kurds is the next locus of instability. The new Iraqi government harbors no sympathy for Kurdish desires for a federal regime, and the Kurds are not ready to recognize the legitimacy of any government that does not concede to them what they feel is their fair place. The Kurds are a very large people. They are mostly Sunni Muslims, but up to now Islamist tendencies have been rather weak among them. Collectively, the Kurds present the classic face of a nationalist movement. The Kurds have an unhappy history. The moment for them to have been established as a sovereign state was after the First World War, in the wake of the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire. But they were neither organized enough at that time nor useful enough to any world power to accomplish this. So they remain divided up among many sovereign states - notably Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran - and are well treated in none of them.
Consequently, for quite some time now, they have been pursuing the path of nationalist rebellion, and casting about for allies wherever they could find them. They haven't had too much luck over the past thirty years. In the last decade, they tried the American card, presenting themselves as the most faithful ally of the U.S. in the region. Never mind that the U.S. more or less betrayed them in 1991; they tried again in 2003. Danielle Mitterand, an ardent supporter, warned them then that the U.S. would be an unreliable pillar on which to build their strategy. And she seems to have been proven right. While the U.S. no doubt would like to maintain Kurdish support, the Bush administration has clearly decided that Kurds matter less than the Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and that if they have to choose, they'll go with the Ayatollah. In any case, the U.S. has little choice. The U.S. can scarcely continue the overflight protection it gave the Kurds in the 1990s against Saddam Hussein.
The Kurds realize all this. They seem to be turning towards the other friendless group in the Middle East, Israel. And Israel is happy to comply. But while Israel can offer important technical support and political connections, it cannot send an army, and this is what the Kurds may need. Besides, Israel may soon find it has big problems of its own. Sharon's government is in ever greater difficulty. While the Gaza withdrawal plan is a scam, it is still more than Sharon may be able to implement, given the fanatic resistance of the pro-settler forces.
The real problem is not there, however. Palestinian resistance remains unabated. And the Sharon anti-Arafat folly seems to be guaranteeing that the resistance will take on an ever more Islamist flavor, and therefore an ever more uncompromising one. Israel's steady move to the right has created an impasse from which there may be no political way out. Sharon (but also Peres and Barak) have all seemed to think that time is on the Israeli side. Create a fait accompli and sooner or later the world will legitimate it. But, on the contrary, time is very much against Israel.
For thirty years at least, Israel has counted on the unstinting diplomatic, economic, and military support of the United States. And the ties have gotten ever closer. Under the present Bush administration, it is hard to discern any distance whatsoever between the two governments. Israel has become the untouchable taboo in American politics. All politicians support Israel, virtually in all circumstances. But can this last?
The problem for Israel today is the Bush invasion of Iraq. It is a fiasco. And the American public is turning against it, each day more. The latest poll shows that for the first time a majority of the American public believe that the invasion was a mistake. And members of the Establishment like Sen. Fritz Hollings are now ready to write op-ed pieces saying that "the United States has lost its moral authority." As the U.S. reconsiders fundamentally what it has done in Iraq, it will not be too long after that the public will start to reconsider the unconditional support of Israel. And when that collapses, as it has in the last decade in western Europe, Israel will be in real trouble.
This brings us to locus number four of great change - Iran. Iran is a major "middle power" in the world-system. It has a large population. It has wealth. It has highly-educated cadres. It is heir to a very ancient civilization. And it is the principal locus, along with southern Iraq, of Shi'ism. True, it has internal problems in that its clerical regime is authoritarian and much contested by a large part of the population. But this may not affect its geopolitical strength any more than China's tight internal political regime affects its geopolitical strength.
The immediate question for the world's powers about Iran at the moment is nuclear proliferation. I agree with those who say that the Iranian government is not forthright on this issue. I have no doubt that they are pursuing nuclear development. I also have no doubt that, within three years or so at the most, they will explode a nuclear device, and will thereby join the "nuclear club," as one of their officials put it recently.
There are several reasons for this. First, Iran cannot be bribed out of it. This may be a remote possibility in the case of North Korea, but it is a non-starter for Iran. Furthermore, it seems that Iran really needs the nuclear energy, if it is to achieve the kind of major industrial development it has in mind. But most of all, Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers - India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Israel, and of course the United States. Any Iranian leader who did not seek nuclear weapons would be out of his mind. Furthermore, Iran cannot see why it is all right for India, Pakistan, and above all Israel to be members of the club, but not for Iran.
There is one danger Iran faces. This is not an invasion by the United States, which simply doesn't have the military strength, not to speak of the political strength, to pull it off, no matter how many nuclear bombs Iran will produce. The danger it faces is an Israeli air strike to take out their nuclear facilities the way Israel did with Iraq on June 7, 1981. The Israelis would certainly consider this very seriously. The problem is that the world has changed since 1981. In 1981, Israel was slapped on the wrist for its gross violation of international law. Today, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the world would be less tolerant. Indeed, it would be in an uproar. And the backlash against Israel would be enormous, including in the United States. Very few people, in either the U.S. or Europe, would appreciate being dragged into a military strike against Iran. And Iran could and would use it to enhance its already considerable clout in the region, including in Iraq.
The Bush administration has created a firestorm, and both the U.S. and Israel will pay the price, which is scarcely the scenario the neo-cons had envisaged.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
Quo Vadis America? (15 July 2004)
Quo vadis America? Everyone wants to know, including Americans. Once, not long ago, the world was divided between those who hailed the United States as a leader of the world's forces for human freedom, and those who saw it as an imperialist power, an opponent of what it pretends to defend. Almost all American citizens were in the first camp, as were a large proportion of Europeans, and significant percentages of people in the rest of the world. Conversely, those who had negative feelings about the United States were disproportionately from the non-Western countries, though with a certain percentage from Europe. There are no statistics, but a fair assumption would be it was a 50-50 division.
During the era of George W. Bush, this lineup has changed radically. An overwhelming majority of the world's population regards the U.S. as a dangerous giant. Some accuse it of malevolence, some of folly fed by ignorance and hubris, but all are worried and wary. And for the first time in my lifetime, a significant number of Americans are also worried and wary of what their own country might do, might be doing. And what no one seems to know is, quo vadis America?
This question is probably the most significant one in world politics, at least for the next decade. Thereafter it may well become irrelevant, or at least of secondary importance. For the United States is at a crossroads of decision, and it is not yet fully aware of this decision's dimensions. There are, of course, the elections in November 2004, which the media are already calling the most important ever. This is a bit of an exaggeration. But it is clear that the electorate is both extremely polarized and almost evenly divided. The Republican Party has perhaps never been so aggressively right wing since 1936 (and they were trounced in that election). And the Democratic Party has never been so passionate in opposition to an incumbent president. The slogan, "anyone but Bush," is heard everywhere.
Domestic support for Bush and his policies has slipped badly in the last year, largely because of events in Iraq - the failure to find the much vaunted weapons of mass destruction, continuing guerilla resistance to the occupation, and the ignominy of the treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Yet, as every pollster points out, the decline of support for Bush has not been accompanied by a rise in support for the Democratic contender Senator John Kerry. There have been many explanations for this paradox - Kerry's personality being the primary one. I believe the explanation is simpler. At a gut level, many of those who are unhappy with Bush's policies wonder whether Kerry would do differently.
So, question number one is: were Bush's policies reversed, either for moral or political reasons, what alternative policy could the U.S. undertake to restore its moral authority in world opinion? To answer that, we have to look at U.S. domestic developments.
From the end of the Civil War (1865) to the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, the U.S. government - the presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court - was basically controlled by Republicans. Then, with the onset of the Great Depression, New Deal Democrats ascended and brought two fundamental changes to U.S. politics: they legitimated the welfare state and took the country from a dominant isolationism to an active interventionist policy in world affairs. Then, in the post-1945 period, the United States became "multicultural." Catholics and Jews ascended the political and social ladder. And behind them came the demand of Blacks, Latinos, and other marginalized groups to do the same (including those marginalized for their sexual dispositions). This second group never achieved the social acceptance of the (White) Catholics and the Jews, but the worst overt discriminations ended, notably in the armed forces.
Faced now with a country dominated by the Democratic Party, there was a "conservative" reaction - to the welfare state, to multiculturalism, and to "internationalism." Those who led this movement saw their salvation in transforming the Republican Party into a non-centrist, fully rightwing party. What these conservatives needed above all was a mass base. And they found it in the group now known as the Christian right, a group composed of persons particularly upset by the liberalization of sexual mores and the end of the guaranteed social dominance of White Protestants.
The Christian right was especially interested in the so-called social issues: notably abortion and homosexuality. They both drew voters from the Democratic Party (the Reagan Democrats) and mobilized previous non-voters. From Nixon to Reagan to George W. Bush, the Republican Party moved steadily rightward on these social issues. But they also moved to pull down the welfare state, and to substitute for "internationalism" what became encrusted with George W. Bush - unilateralism, based on the U.S. right to engage in preemptive war. With the fiasco in Iraq, the erstwhile centrist forces are saying stop, and they want "anyone but Bush."
The biggest question before the United States and the world is, what if Kerry wins? Kerry and those around him seem to be calling for a return to the good old Clinton days. They want to restore the point at which the centrist Democrats had moved furthest to the right. Is this possible? Would this be acceptable to the American voter? Would it appease the erstwhile allies of the United States, now so alienated?
Whatever the outcome of the U.S. election, passions will not have been calmed on the great social divide over abortion and homosexuality. And the attempts to save the U.S. standard of living by dealing with the incredible deficit will make painfully clear that one cannot have both ever-reduced taxes and ever-increased expenditures on health, education, and guarantees for old age. Macho militarism will also be unsustainable without U.S. citizens committing to serious military service, an enormously unpopular idea.
The pressures on the U.S. from elsewhere in the world are likely to increase radically following the election. The almost inevitable U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (probably faster under Bush than under Kerry) will be seen, at home and abroad, as a defeat, and this will lead to terrible internal accusations inside the U.S. Both Europe and East Asia will probably pay less and less attention to U.S. diplomacy. The dollar will get weaker. And nuclear proliferation will probably become commonplace.
In the midst of such a scenario, can the U.S. rebound? Of course. It depends, however, on the definition of rebound. With the U.S. military stretched to its limits and suffering steady loss and with the national debt reaching record highs, not only are the days of hegemony over but so are the days of "dominance" and even probably of "leadership." A rebound would require an internal U.S. reassessment of its values, social structure, and social compromises. It would require overcoming the increased social, economic, and political polarization of the last thirty years. And this would be very much tied to a reassessment of how the United States engages the rest of the world.
Quo vadis America? It is torn between reconstituting itself as a country that matters (in its own sight and in that of the world) and one which is internally divided and perceived as irrelevant.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
A Primer on U.S. Presidential Elections (1 Augustus 2004)
U.S. presidential elections are always important, at least for the last 100 years or so. And they affect everyone throughout the world. The election of 2004 is an unusually tense one for several reasons. A larger percentage of the U.S. and the world's population believe it matters. The predictions are for an extremely close election. The sense of each side that they cannot afford to lose is quite evident.
To understand what's at issue, one must start by observing some structural features of U.S. presidential elections that make them different from the principal elections in just about every other country that has meaningful elections. The first thing is that the U.S. is a genuinely presidential system. That is, the U.S. does not elect a parliament which chooses a prime minister. It is not even semi-presidential, like France, where the ability of the president to govern is severely constrained if he does not also control the parliament. And the election has only one round of voting (again unlike France). Smaller parties cannot transfer their votes on a second round. This single feature explains why the U.S. has and must have a two-party system. The election of the president for a fixed term of four years is an all-or-nothing proposition. Therefore, if one doesn't construct a wide coalition to win it, one loses it. Third parties can throw an election to a party which otherwise would have a minority of the votes.
And, if this weren't enough to ensure that it was a two-party system, the U.S. has this curious relic of the eighteenth century, an electoral college system, where voters of each of the fifty states elect electors who in turn elect the president. The number of electors each state is equal to the number of members of the House of Representatives (more or less proportional to the population) plus two. The "plus two" provision ensures that smaller states have a slightly greater weight than larger states. And since the population of states is related to the concentration of persons in cities and their suburbs, the system gives greater weight to voters from rural areas and small towns. One consequence of this is that someone can be elected president with less overall votes than his opponent. This has happened several times, and most recently in 2000.
And there is a third structural feature. The laws of each state provide that a majority of the voters in that state choose all the electors of that state. This means that elections are only really important in those states in which the voting is close. In the current U.S. election, the contest is thought to be close in at most 19 of the 50 states, and really close in about seven. A small shift of voters in seven states can determine who will be the next president of the United States.
All this explains why the U.S. has two large parties, each of which is basically a coalition of different groups. Historically, the Democratic party was the party left of center and the Republican party the party right of center. This division reflected primarily economic issues: workers' rights, the welfare state, taxation policies. In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt was called by many Republicans "a traitor to his class" because, although he personally was from a wealthy, upper class family, he enacted the New Deal and supported the rights of unions to organize. This division over economic questions remains real, but has become somewhat secondary in the division of the two parties in the last twenty years.
The Democratic party has just held its convention to nominate John Kerry. All commentators agree that it was an exceptionally unified convention. There was hardly a dissenting voice about anything. Those delegates who had reservations about Kerry kept them to themselves in a fervor to oust George W. Bush from the presidency. The tone of the convention was carefully monitored to utilize only themes that might appeal to the "undecided" voters in those key states which will decide the election.
One has to ask oneself what it is that made the Democrats show such unity. What is it that holds them together? It is not foreign policy. While the majority of the delegates and of Democratic voters think the war in Iraq was morally and politically wrong, this is not the position of Kerry or his close advisors, nor is this the official position of the Democratic party. Rather, Kerry argues that the war was conducted ineptly. The U.S. should have allowed the inspections to continue. The U.S. should have worked more closely with its traditional allies. And Kerry promises to do this now. He proposes to increase U.S. military strength, not withdraw from Iraq.
So what unifies the Democrats? Why are all the antiwar activists going to vote for Kerry, despite his position on Iraq, which even the Washington Post, a centrist newspaper, calls a "missed opportunity"? Is it economic issues? There are differences, no doubt, in this domain. But the Republicans seek to minimize the extent of the differences. And, unlike in 1936, the lines are not that strongly etched. In the Clinton years, there were no major advances in the welfare state. Rather, Clinton enacted so-called "welfare reform," which had long been a Republican program.
If the lines are blurred in foreign policy and economic policies, there is one domain in which the lines between the Democratic party and the Republican party today are indeed quite clear. This is the social domain, which has three components: multiculturalism, social liberalism, and the environment. In this domain, 95% of the Democrats are on one side and a large majority of the Republicans on the other side.
There is good reason why 90% of the Blacks and 70-80% of the Latinos vote Democratic. For all their frustration that the Democrats don't do enough to advance their rights still further, they know that the Republicans are working to undo the rights they have - supporting laws that disenfranchise them, opposing affirmative action, seeking to enact "English only" laws, and tightening (even closing) immigration flows from the non-White world.
As for social liberalism, the two principal issues that have divided Americans in the last twenty years or so - abortion (the single issue that accounts for the fact that women are more likely to vote Democratic than men) and the rights of homosexuals - once again place an overwhelming majority of Democrats on one side and a majority of the Republicans on the other. A third issue has now arisen, that of stem cell research. And this was dramatically raised by the speech of Ronald Reagan, Jr. at the convention, in which he called on the country to vote for stem-cell research (actively opposed by Bush and the Republican party). These issues of social liberalism are tied to the demand for "civil liberties" - today markedly threatened by the policies of Attorney-General Ashcroft and the Patriot Act.
And finally, the environment. This was a political issue invented by Republicans at the turn of the twentieth century. But most Republicans have long since abandoned this issue, and the Bush administration has spent its energy dismantling every advance the Clinton administration made in this arena.
And it is these social issues, not the foreign policy ones or the economic ones, that explain the importance to the voters of judicial appointments, and in particular those to the Supreme Court and the nine Courts of Appeals. The Republican party is committed to naming judges who will be hostile to any extension of rights in these domains.
If the Democratic party wins the elections of 2004, it will be in large part because it has the enthusiastic, even the desperate, support of those who stand for these issues in the social domain. No doubt, it hopes to pick up some undecided voters by its positions on economic issues and another segment who are dismayed at Bush's foreign policies. But the unity of the Democratic party does not lie there. And the changes a Kerry administration would bring will be less notable in foreign policy or economic issues than in this social domain.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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 Changing Geopolitical Role of East Asia (15 Augustus 2004)
East Asia is the locus of three countries - China, Korea, and Japan - which have long and related civilizational heritages. Up to the nineteenth century, to the extent that these countries were aware of the existence of the European world, it was a distant, not very interesting, and not very important part of the world. In the nineteenth century, this distant world, organized in the form of a capitalist world-economy, intruded suddenly into East Asia, and forcibly incorporated the region into the economic and political networks of this capitalist world-economy. From the point of view of the dominant strata and countries of that world-system, East Asia was considered merely one more area to be constructed as a zone producing peripheral products in the axial division of labor of the world-economy.
Needless to say, East Asians were not happy with this subordinated role in this world-system into which they had been incorporated. Japan began early to try to reverse this situation with the Meiji Restoration. It sought to learn the skills and create the internal institutions necessary to allow it to transform its role in the worldwide division of labor in which it now found itself. China began its effort at reversal a little later with first the Revolution of 1911 and later the Long March of the Chinese Communist Party. Korea's attempt at reversal was delayed by the Japanese colonization of Korea, and started only after 1945.
As of the end of the Second World War, all three countries were still playing a secondary role in the modern world-system. The United States had now become the hegemonic power of this world-system. It had overwhelming economic advantage. It was the strongest military power in the world. Its only serious military and ideological rival was the Soviet Union. To keep the peace, something advantageous to both powers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union made a tacit deal, called metaphorically Yalta. They agreed to divide the world into two segments, and agreed to keep the boundaries of these two zones intact. They further agreed to go their separate economic ways (in effect the Soviet Union autonomously withdrew from the exchanges of the world-economy). And they agreed to engage in a rhetorical, but rigorously non-violent, struggle called the Cold War. The function of the rhetoric for each side was less to change the geopolitical status quo than to preserve it by each thereby keeping its allies and satellites in line.
The four times the Yalta arrangement was tested - the Berlin Blockade, the Korean War, the Quemoy-Matsu quarrel, and the Cuba crisis - each ended in a truce at the line of departure. The Yalta arrangement seemed to be working well. And then suddenly it got into trouble. Two major developments undid Yalta and thereby undid U.S. hegemony. The first was the remarkable economic rise of western Europe and Japan. By the mid-1960s, the U.S. had lost its economic edge over the productive enterprises of these two zones. They could not merely compete well with the U.S. in their home markets, but even in the U.S. market as well as in the rest of the world. Western Europe and Japan were no longer dependent economically on the goodwill of the U.S. government. They had become major economic rivals and therefore might aspire to political autonomy.
The second change was the unwillingness of some major countries in what had come to be called the Third World, or the South, to accept the status quo arrangements of Yalta. The first was China in which the Chinese Communists, defying Stalin, marched on Shanghai and established their rule. But China was not the only rebel. Cuba, Egypt, Algeria, but above all Vietnam all challenged the U.S.-dominated world order. In doing this, they did not have really have the support of the Soviet Union, which usually limited its role to rhetoric and a little money. But nonetheless Vietnam, a small country, was able not only to resist the United States but actually defeat the U.S. in war, an incredible feat that transformed the world-system.
It was at this point, in the early 1970s, that we can observe the beginning of the slow but persistent decline in U.S. power, the end of its true hegemony. The story of the next thirty years, 1970-2000, was the story of the attempt of the United States to slow down its loss of power in the world-system. For East Asia, this was a period of enormous economic growth, first in Japan, then in the so-called four dragons (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore), and then in mainland China.
The advent of George W. Bush to the White House, and the attack of September 11 which gave the neo-cons in the Bush administration the legitimacy to carry out their program of unilateral military interventionism culminated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. This invasion has turned out to be a major fiasco for the U.S. - diplomatically, politically, economically, and even militarily. The intention of the neo-cons was to strengthen the U.S. position in the world-system and restore its hegemony. The result has been exactly the opposite. It has accelerated Europe's drive for political autonomy. It has quickened the pace of nuclear proliferation, most notably in North Korea and Iran. And it has deeply hurt the political and moral credibility of the United States.
Geopolitically, what we may expect in the next twenty years is the emergence of both Europe and East Asia on the world scene acting independently of the United States. But what form will this take in East Asia? Economic cooperation and coordination between the three countries is the least of the problems. They are all already strong loci of capital accumulation and it can be expected that they will become stronger in the decades to come. Working together, they could probably become the principal motor of the world-economy. They have everything to gain by economic integration and very little to lose. They will probably move in this direction decisively.
The principal difficulties are political. The three countries have historic grievances with each other which are still very important in their continuing relationships. Korea still remembers its colonization by Japan. China still remembers the Japanese occupation of most of the country in the 1930s and 1940s. And Japanese nationalism is still fueled by a sense that, over the millennia, they were culturally looked down upon by China and Korea. The second great political problem is that both Korea and China are still divided countries, and their reunification remains a prime and urgent concern. The third great political problem is the question of the form and extent of military power each will assume, and in particular the development of nuclear weapons.
If East Asia is to play the economic role that is possible for it, it must resolve these political problems. Neither China nor Japan will be able to fulfil its economic potential without the other. And I would add even China and Japan together cannot do it without Korea. This means that a major intra-East Asian political negotiation must occur, of the kind that occurred in western Europe over the last half century. And this is of course where the uncertainty lies.
Should all three countries be able to put historical grievances behind them (not really an impossible idea), should Korea and China find the formulas that will permit political reunification of their countries, and should the three countries make clear decisions about their military build-up and perhaps military collaboration, then East Asia will be a formidable force in world politics in the twenty-first century.
They will then have three major policy decisions to make: (1) how they relate to the United States; (2) how they relate to the countries in their near perimeter (specifically, southeast Asia) and in their outer perimeter (south and southwest Asia); (3) what position they will take in the North-South struggle in the coming decades. It should be noted that these are exactly the same issues that are facing Europe in the coming decades (although the perimeters are different).
For the last fifty years, struggles and debates in the world-system have been defined and constrained by the United States (and its collusive pseudo-opponent, the Soviet Union). In the next fifty years, we shall all find ourselves in a truly multi-polar world. We also shall all find ourselves in transition from a world-system that is a capitalist world-economy to some other kind of world-system, as yet undecided and undefined. East Asia will be a central part of that process, but it will not be alone.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
Neither Feared Nor Loved? (1 September 2004)
In August, 2004, the Pew polling agency released a poll, co-sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), about attitudes of U.S. voters on current world affairs issues. They discovered an unusually high degree of concern about world issues (as compared say to economic issues). But even more important, they found considerable difference in attitudes between Bush and Kerry supporters. Specifically, the Bush supporters are twice as likely to feel that the U.S. is stronger than it was ten years ago. And asked if the U.S. is less respected in the world than previously, Bush supporters are slightly less likely to think so. But more significantly, only 22% of them think world respect is a major issue, whereas 56% of Kerry supporters rate its decline as a major problem.
The CFR published a commentary on the poll by three of its Fellows - Lee Feinstein, James M. Lindsay, and Max Boot. Here is their analysis:
These disparities suggest something deeper than divisions over the Iraq war are at work. Bush supporters and Kerry supporters are taking sides in the longstanding debate over the relative importance of "hard" versus "soft" power. Will the U.S. be safer and more prosperous if it is feared, or if it is loved? Are America's military strength, and the willingness to use it, what count most, or is America's reputation abroad equally important?
I believe that this commentary is correct, but it evades an important analytic question, which seems to have escaped the attention of the three CFR Fellows, and probably of the large bulk of the American population.
Suppose the United States is neither feared nor loved? Is this credible? And if so, what are the implications of such a view of the U.S. by people elsewhere for war and peace, geopolitical realignments, and the U.S. view of itself in the decades to come?
Let us look at both fear and love.
When one talks of the U.S. being feared, one is referring to fear of the overwhelming military hardware the U.S. possesses, and the technological expertise and financial backing that it reflects. It is quite clear that, as of now and probably for some time to come, no other country could declare war on the United States and hope to win. And for that reason, I do not see the slightest hint of any country thinking about declaring war on the United States. But old-fashioned interstate war between great powers is not the issue at the present time.
The issue is whether U.S. military power is adequate to maintain order in every corner of the world in which activities are going on of which the U.S. government disapproves. Is the U.S. capable of "preempting" what it considers to be threats by dangerous regimes, or what it considers to be threats by non-state actors it labels "terrorists"? Does Iran "fear" the United States? Does al-Qaeda fear the United States?
Well of course both Iran and al-Qaeda (quite different kinds of actors) know that the U.S. can and probably will engage in multiple hostile actions towards them. And tactically, they may decide from time to time that it is wiser not to provoke what they may perceive to be an aggressive bear. But does that mean they really fear the United States? To fear the United States implies that they will change their basic strategy (not their interim tactics) because they might be crushed by the United States if they did not. Is there any evidence that this might be true?
After three years of a "war on terror" and almost 18 months of occupying Iraq, is the U.S. actually more "feared" than it was previously? I cannot see myself how reasonable persons, whatever their political views, could defend that proposition. The Bush unilateralist military machismo has been exposing the limits of U.S. military power, not its efficacity. The U.S. is faced with an ever-widening and fiercer insurrection in Iraq, a weakening of its political position throughout the Middle East, and an increasing reluctance of Americans to pay the ever-increasing price in lives and money for this non-victory. The Iraq adventure is far more likely to end in humiliating withdrawal than in the triumphant spread of pro-Western "democracy" in Iraq and the wider Middle East.
But what about the alternative - to be "loved"? The United States used to be loved, at least by one-half of the people of the world. I have heard many a speech, public and private, on the historic and present-day importance of the role of the United States in the world - as exemplar and defender of human freedom, without whom the world would be far worse off than it is. So I know these people are out there - or were out there. What, however, has been happening in the last three years, for a good number of these people, is a public avowal of unhappy disillusionment, an almost pleading wish that the Bush fiasco hadn't revealed so plainly to them the down side of U.S. foreign policy.
These people want urgently that the U.S. put another foot forward again, the one they think they used to know. That is why so many of them speak so openly of hoping that Kerry will win the elections. But at the very same time, they also add that somehow it can never be the same again. Kerry will be better than Bush, they think, but will this be enough to transform the world situation, and their view of the world situation? Will the U.S. be "loved" - again? For that to happen, they have to wipe out the memory not only of the Iraq invasion, but of Abu Ghraib, of Guanatanamo Bay, of the Patriot Act - whose appalling consequences many of these foreign philo-Americans have felt personally when they sought visas or tried to enter the U.S.
Mao Zedong said famously that the U.S. is a paper tiger. He may have been ahead of his time. It may not have been true when he said it. But what if it is becoming true now? The consequences of this for both the world and the United States are completely uncertain. In terms of geopolitics, it may be creating a momentary vacuum into which all sorts of players will rush, with very uncertain results. And for the United States, it may lead to endless and futile arguments between the devotees of hard and soft power about who is to blame, when what is needed within the United States is a total reassessment of how it relates to a world it no longer is in a position to dominate either by fear or by love - for good or ill.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]
What Has the U.S. Achieved in Iraq? (15 September 2004)
Most of the world think that the U.S. policy in Iraq has been a political failure. Even a majority of the U.S. electorate seems to think so, according to the latest polls. This does not seem to faze the Bush regime, which argues (and may even really believe) that its policy has been a great success. So, let us review the situation.
First, let us look at what the present U.S. government most loudly claims as a success. Saddam Hussein has been overthrown and he himself is a prisoner, destined at some point to be put on trial. This is unquestionably true. I have however tried to figure out what else can be put in the success column, and I'm having a hard time coming up with anything. I have compiled a list of eight other possible or asserted U.S. objectives, and find the score on each of them either in doubt or quite negative.
(1) The first is the destruction of the Baath party and its political influence in the future in Iraq. Well, the party is formally dismantled. And initially the U.S. occupying authorities sought to eliminate the Baathists from any role in Iraqi institutions (the army which was dismantled, the police which was reorganized, the universities, and the government ministries). But when the U.S. was faced by insurrectionary forces in Fallujah which they found they couldn't dislodge, they found that the only solution was to turn to ex-Baathist leaders in order to bring about a truce and to restore order locally after the U.S. forces withdrew.
Now, we learn from the N.Y. Times that these former Baathists were subsequently tagged by the local population as U.S. agents, and have been forced to resign or to shift their allegiance to an Islamic fundamentalist group that now controls not only Fallujah but a good deal of the Sunni areas of western Iraq. So, the U.S. is in the extraordinary position of regretting the downfall of the ex-Baathist group in Fallujah and its environs. In Afghanistan, the U.S. succeeded in the 1980s in ousting a secular Communist regime only to install thereby the Taliban, whom they discovered eventually to be far worse. The U.S. seems to be doing something similar in the Sunni areas of Iraq.
(2) The second is control over the world oil supply. It is hard to see that the U.S. is in a better position today than it was three years ago. Iraqi oil exports are erratic because of continual guerilla attacks on the pipelines. Whether, once the political situation settles down (and this may take quite some time), the U.S. will end up with a greater de facto influence on how Iraq plays its oil cards than say France or Russia remains to be seen.
(3) The third is reducing the ability of Islamic "terrorists" to attack the U.S. or otherwise to achieve hostile objectives. Despite all the nonsense that is sometimes said, it is clear that, before 2003, the regime of Saddam Hussein did not really allow these groups to operate from an Iraqi base. Now, these "terrorist" groups are free to roam in Iraq, seize hostages, and recruit new participants. Whatever the degree of achievement of U.S. objectives in this regard elsewhere (cutting off funds to al-Qaeda and destroying its bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan), invading Iraq cannot be said to have advanced significantly U.S. objectives in this regard.
(4) The fourth is creating a stable, pro-American government in Iraq. Well, the U.S. is certainly not there yet. The present Allawi interim regime is weak in every way - in military and police power, in political control of Iraq, and in legitimation by the population. The recent standoff in Najaf of the offensive of Allawi and the U.S. military against Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia hardly enhanced Allawi's status. For the moment, the interim regime is still utterly dependent on the support of the U.S. military. If it wants to achieve legitimacy, it has to either increase radically its military strength (which seems remote) or increase its legitimacy (which means distancing itself from the U.S.). Allawi may aspire to be the next Saddam Hussein, but he has a long way to go. And if he gets there, is it sure the kind of stable government he might thereby create would really remain "pro-American"?
(5) The fifth is to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction. It is not only that the Bush regime found no such weapons in Iraq. It is also that the invasion of Iraq may well pull down the last shreds of the nuclear non-proliferation program. Iran and North Korea have obviously speeded up, not slowed down, their efforts. It is now announced that South Korea may be following in their footsteps. And if so, can Japan and Taiwan be far behind? What can the U.S. do? What can the United Nations do? The bluff may well have been called.
(6) The sixth is to spread "democracy" throughout the Middle East. Whatever this may be taken to mean, I can't see that much has been accomplished. If democracy means multi-party elections with no constraints, it seems likely at this moment that such elections would result - in Iraq, in Egypt, in Jordan, in Saudi Arabia, in Afghanistan, and in many other countries - in regimes far less to the taste of the United States than the current ones. It is for this reason that the Bush regime has been dragging its feet on such elections in Iraq, not pushing them forward at full speed. "Democracy" seems to be favored by the Bush people only if it gives the right results. The people, unfortunately, are perverse.
(7) The seventh is to make friends and influence people, throughout the region and the world. Even the strongest supporters of the Bush administration in the United States have noticed that its policies have had the opposite effect. They have "unmade" friends and influenced people negatively. The Bush people are reduced to saying that this is not important, and that the U.S. should not allow its policies to be dictated by so-called friends.
(8) The eighth is to establish the credibility of U.S. military power, as a deterrent to all potential enemies of the U.S. and all potential troublemakers everywhere. But using military power, especially overwhelming military power, only works if it results, in the inimitable words of the Bush administration, in "shock and awe." We have seen the shock but not the awe. It is hard to be awesome when the great U.S. armed forces are held in check by a popular resistance in Iraq that is growing daily. It is hard to be awesome when it is clear that the U.S. armed forces are at present stretched to their utter limits, in terms of personnel, with few means of expanding their number in the near future. It is hard to be awesome when we have military and intelligence personnel in the U.S. urging prudence on their civilian superiors.
The problem with demonstrating credibility is that, if success builds on success, lack of success makes the situation worse. The Bush regime seems to have achieved this undesirable goal. If this were a school exercise, I fear the grade would not be "excellent" or even "very good" but at most "barely passing" and at worst, an outright failure.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
After Iraq, Iran? (1 October 2004)
Iran and its possible nuclear weapons has become again a matter of active discussion in the media and debate in the U.S. government and world diplomatic channels. The immediate background is clear. When George W. Bush constructed his "axis of evil," he listed Iran along with Iraq and North Korea as one of the three countries of which he was speaking. The U.S. subsequently invaded Iraq. And the U.S. launched five-power discussions with North Korea about its putative nuclear program, discussions that have gotten nowhere.
Iran was treated differently. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sought to inspect Iran's nuclear facilities, and issued a report indicating some concern with what was going on. Iran insisted that it was seeking enriched uranium facilities only in order to produce peaceful energy output. The European powers and Russia insisted that Iran give stronger guarantees that it was not intending to become a nuclear power. The U.S. wished immediate Security Council action threatening sanctions on the matter. The Europeans demurred, pending further diplomacy. Iran however then canceled permission for further inspections by the IAEA, indicating dissatisfaction with the allegations made against Iran. The whole matter seems now at a standstill. Israel has been indicating that it would not tolerate Iran's joining the nuclear club and has implied that it might therefore take military action. And in Washington, there seems to be a debate within the Bush administration as to whether or not the U.S. should contemplate military action, either directly or via Israel.
What's going on? Let us look at it from the viewpoint of each of the powers concerned. The United States and Israel do not believe Iran when Iran says it is not intending to develop nuclear weapons. The West Europeans and Russia are not so sure. They think that international pressure could get Iran to renounce any such aspirations. The Iranians seem to think at least two things. There is nothing under present international law that makes it illegitimate for them to develop enriched uranium capacities for peaceful purposes. But probably they also think that there is no good reason why they should not develop nuclear weapons.
The Iranian logic is rather simple. There are now at least eight nuclear powers in the world. At least six of them are militarily nearby - Israel, India, Pakistan, Russia, China, and of course the United States. They feel that there is no moral reason why Iran is less entitled to nuclear weapons than these countries. And, as long as Iran does not have such weapons, they believe that its political and military position in the region is limited. The U.S. and Israel agree that this is the logic of Iran's position. They therefore do not credit the diplomatic protestations of Iran that it does not intend to develop nuclear weapons, which they consider to be merely a smokescreen to appease world public opinion while affording Iran the time to complete the operation.
I agree that this is the logic of the Iranian position. The question, however, is therefore what? What Iran sees as a military necessity serving as a defense against potential U.S. military action, the U.S. and Israel see as a military threat to them. The Europeans and Russia are caught in the middle, and are not sure what to do. These countries are essentially waffling. So let us analyze the real consequences of Iran joining the nuclear club, say in two years or so. Is Iran likely to engage in military action against someone - Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan - when it obtains these weapons? This seems extremely doubtful. To be sure, acquiring such weapons would make Iran's political position stronger vis-a-vis the region. Of this, there seems little doubt. Is this a reason for war?
What are the U.S. and Israel really afraid of? In the case of Israel, any military strengthening of any Arab or nearby Muslim country is seen as a negative development to be opposed. Iran is not only openly and vigorously hostile to Israel but is a mainstay of the Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. What an Iranian nuclear capacity would really do to Israel is put a damper on its ability to take strong military measures against its neighbors. From Israel's point of view, this is enough to make it feel that an absolute priority for them is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear capacity. And Israel is obviously considering the possibility of launching a preventive air raid to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity, as it did to Iraq some twenty years ago.
The U.S. point of view is slightly different. The U.S. may think that the Israeli fears are a bit exaggerated. The U.S. may even agree that Iran is unlikely to launch a nuclear attack on anyone, or give atomic weapons to al-Qaeda. What the U.S. really fears is that, if Iran is allowed to join the nuclear club, this will break the dike, and legitimate an outpouring of attempts of others to become nuclear powers - South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan; Brazil and Argentina; South Africa; Ukraine, and no doubt others. Plus Iraq! For, if Iran has nuclear weapons, will not an Iraqi regime, even one led by Iyad Allawi (if he survives), not want one too?
The U.S. may have the most military hardware by far in the world today, and no one else is going to come close for a good twenty years at least. But the generalized spread of even second-rate nuclear weapons would be an enormous constraint on the use of military force by the U.S. The U.S. already has serious problems with having a large enough military force (as opposed to military hardware) to enforce its will on the ground. Its military efforts might grind to a virtual halt, if 25 countries had a couple of nuclear weapons. This is make or break for the vaunted military supremacy of the United States.
So, what will happen? Even half the Bush regime is hesitant to think of actual military action in Iran. The Pentagon doesn't have the personnel. The U.S. doesn't have the money. And, if Iraq is difficult to occupy, Iran would be ten times more difficult. So, in fact, the U.S. has a position that is as hesitant as that of Europe. The Bush administration just doesn't want to admit it. And, were Kerry to become president, little would change in this regard.
The Iranians can make the same analyses. So, they will persist. Israel may get desperate. But it is not clear that Israel has the military force really to destroy Iranian nuclear capacity today. And world public opinion is not the same as it was twenty years ago. An Israeli military strike could ignite world opinion against it to new heights.
The bottom line? In two years, Iran will probably be a nuclear power, and the world will probably adjust to it, as it did to Indian and Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons. But one cannot be sure that the fanatics in the U.S. government (civilians, not military) can live with that. Nor can we be sure that the Israeli government can be restrained. In either case, the scenario will then be quite different.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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 Referendum (15 October 2004)
The U.S. elections on November 2 will be a referendum on George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. If the entire world had a vote, Bush would lose overwhelmingly. He'd probably get a maximum of 20% of the vote. Even in countries where the governments have supported U.S. policy - Great Britain, Italy, Poland, Pakistan - the majority of the population thinks the war was at the least a serious error of political judgment, at worst an illegal and immoral act. Bush would no doubt lose in Iraq itself.
But of course, the whole world does not have a vote. Only U.S. citizens do. And they are far more equally divided than the rest of the world. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in April 2003, a good majority of the U.S. population supported the government. But this support has steadily eroded since, and today, a majority of the population (but only a narrow majority) think Bush made a bad mistake.
Actually the polls show a curious feature. If one asks a question about Iraq, Bush does not do well and is doing worse each day. But if the pollster asks instead about the "war against terrorism" or about so-called homeland security, a majority think that Bush is doing well or at least would do better than his opponent. So what are the polls measuring?
When the question is about Iraq, the pollsters are measuring a concrete phenomenon - Iraqi stability, the strength of the insurrection. And what the U.S. public sees is that each day U.S. and Iraqi lives are lost, and there is no clear indication that the situation will improve in any short horizon. Even the Bush administration admits this, saying only that, although the situation in Iraq may get worse still, it will eventually get better. But when the poll questions are about terrorism, what the answers measure is not something concrete but rather an amorphous fear about an ogre out there, hard to pin down, called Islamic fundamentalism, or al-Qaeda, or just "terrorists". And since it is amorphous and for the most part hidden, reaction to it is based more on emotion than on careful analysis.
When the pollsters tap U.S. fears, many (perhaps most) respondents are answering not in terms of solving real problems but in terms of giving expression to their psychic desperation. The newspapers each day may indicate that the Iraq war has not in fact weakened al-Qaeda significantly but has probably strengthened it. Nonetheless, this doesn't seem to hurt Bush as much as one might expect. Bush banks on support for his macho, black-and-white portrait of the situation. He seeks to exude unbudgeable strength, and a portion of the electorate responds to that stance.
Listening to the two candidates debate the issues, it is clear that they are talking to pervasive fears about the future. What Bush underlines is fear of an enemy. And he justifies everything he does as the way to respond to that enemy. What Kerry underlines is fear of decline. He argues that Bush has diminished the status and power of the United States in the world by his incompetence in foreign policy, by "fighting the wrong war at the wrong time and the wrong place." He argues that U.S. jobs are disappearing, especially for those in manufacturing, pointing out that Bush is the first president in seventy years (that is, since the 1929 depression) during whose term of office jobs have actually decreased. He argues that Americans need to fear for their pensions and that Bush's proposals on social security will make matters still worse. And he argues that Bush's fiscal irresponsibility endangers the country's solvency and the future standard of living of the children of America.
To all of this, Bush responds by saying that he is optimistic about the "march of freedom throughout the world." But having said that, he returns immediately to the theme that the U.S. is in great danger, a danger whose solution lies primarily in U.S. hands, and that Kerry will be weak in facing the dangers.
So, it's fear, fear, fear. With so much smoke, is there fire? The last time the American people were so afraid was during the depression that started in 1929. And when Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, he famously said in his inaugural address in 1933: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Roosevelt offered a New Deal, a welfare state, a legitimation of trade-unions, a "good neighbor" policy in Latin America. And when the U.S. was attacked at Pearl Harbor and entered the Second World War, he offered the "four freedoms" which included the "freedom from fear."
In this period the American people recovered its self-esteem, and once again felt good about itself and its role in the world. This lasted through the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the first years of Lyndon Johnson. The Vietnam War was the shock it was both because the self-image of the United States came under attack from within the U.S. and because, with all its military power, the U.S. couldn't seem to win the war. There followed thirty years of uncertainty and introspection by the American public, which it found difficult to handle. Carter expressed this uncertainty publicly and he was rejected for the smiling Ronald Reagan who spoke of "the city on a hill" - the dream once again of a pure and morally triumphant America.
The collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to verify that dream. But it was quickly followed by the defiance of Saddam Hussein and ethnic purifications in the Balkans and Africa which, despite U.S. unquestioned military power, it couldn't seem to contain effectively. The fears were already rising when Osama bin Laden successfully attacked the U.S. at home and Bush seized the opportunity to pursue the long-planned drive of the neo-cons to invade Iraq. The expectation was that this invasion would restore unquestioned U.S. hegemony in the world-system. In fact, it has weakened it further. And the U.S. public senses this, if murkily.
So, what can Americans do? They do not know, but they will vote. And it will be a vote either for Bush or against Bush. We shall see.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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 Middle East Cauldron - The Next Five Years (1 November 2004)
Whoever is President of the United States, the basic political dilemmas of the Middle East will be the same in the coming five years. There are three loci of crucial happenings and probable major shifts in the coming period: Iraq, Iran, and Israel/Palestine.
The issue in Iraq that will have most impact on the future of Iraq, the Middle East, and the world is when and under what circumstances U.S. military forces will quit the country. At this point, the U.S. military presence has come to be a surgical graft that the Iraqi body is rejecting, and rejecting definitively. Sooner or later, U.S. forces will have to leave entirely, including from the prospective permanent bases. There are only three manners in which U.S. withdrawal can take place: as an early autonomous decision of the U.S. government; at the later request of the Iraqi authorities; or ultimately chased by Iraqi insurgents.
The first alternative is undoubtedly the one which would serve U.S., Iraqi, and world interests best. It is also the least likely to occur. The U.S. president will find this impossible politically to do in 2005 or 2006 because it would be interpreted, first of all at home in the United States, as a major political defeat for the United States. And it would be. Antiwar sentiment in the United States is growing, but it is not yet at the point where members of Congress would willingly endorse such a move. Even those in the military who think the entire Iraqi invasion was a grave error would regard withdrawal now as a slap in the face of the U.S. military. And those leaders in other countries who have backed the U.S. fully - Blair, Berlusconi, Howard - would equally be dismayed, because it would have very negative political consequences for them in their countries.
The second alternative - being asked to withdraw by the Iraqi government - is more plausible. Of course, it depends to some extent on political developments within Iraq. The elections of January may well take place, even if participation in many areas will be fitful or even virtually nonexistent. The elections are likely to take place because a number of important actors are at the moment committed to them: the U.S. government; the interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi; the Kurdish leaders; and Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, who sees the opportunity for a legislature dominated by religious Shia.
But this does not ensure a legitimate regime after January. For one thing, if the U.S. forces go into Fallujah, as they seem to intend to do, not only will this guarantee Sunni non-participation in the elections but it threatens to ignite new eruptions in Shia areas, now that Moqtada al-Sadr has committed himself to full support of Fallujah resistance. And if, despite such eruptions, the elections take place, it is by no means clear whether Allawi would be able to consolidate his control of the central government or would be displaced by a figure closer to al-Sistani and less dependent on the United States.
But whatever the makeup of the Iraqi government in 2005, its prime and most immediate concern will be to secure popular support and legitimation. What can such a government offer a population that is unhappy with American military presence, massively insecure because of the insurgency and the U.S. response, and in great economic difficulty? Such a government will have only two choices: moving much closer to the U.S. proconsul and his military forces, or distancing itself considerably from them.
Closeness has not paid off thus far, either in deepening legitimacy or in getting significant material support from the U.S. It follows that, at some point, the likelihood is that the Iraqi government will turn against the U.S. They will certainly be encouraged to do so, for different reasons, by all their neighbors - Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Iran. Even if they have deep reservations about each of these neighbors and their governments, the pressures coming from them plus the pressures coming from their populations plus the undoubtedly erratic behavior of the United States will probably be enough for the Iraqi government to shift its basic position vis-a-vis the United States.
But if they don't, because they fear an inability to survive without U.S. military support, then it will be the insurgency that will grow stronger and stronger, and become the de facto government of the country. When that happens, Iraq is headed towards a Tet offensive scenario. And the U.S. may have to evacuate its personnel from the Green Zone in helicopters. This will be a far greater defeat than autonomous withdrawal in 2005.
Meanwhile, in Iran, the government will join the nuclear club in this same period. Iran is a major power in the region, heir to a very ancient civilization, a Shia state beside a largely Sunni Arab world, a country surrounded by nuclear powers. It needs nuclear weapons to realize its full weight as a regional power, and it will do what it takes to get them. It has three obstacles in its path. The most public is the opposition of the U.S. and the European Union to this breakdown in observance of the non-proliferation treaty. This is the most public and the least important obstacle, since in fact neither the U.S. nor the EU can do very much to stop Iran.
There are two more serious obstacles. The first derives from Iran's internal politics. The government in power has been losing popular support and legitimacy for more than a decade because of its repressive and fundamentalist politics. It is not that the opposition forces would really be against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons but rather that, should they be able to create turmoil, the government might not have the energy to move forward on the nuclear front. However, at this point, the opposition seems too weak politically to disrupt, and the government's strong stand on nuclear weapons would probably be a popular move at home.
The third and most serious obstacle is the Israeli threat to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. There is little doubt that the Israeli government would like to do that. There are however three questions about an Israeli attack. Can Israel do it in such a way that the attack would really cripple Iranian capacity? Can the Iranians retaliate in such a way that Israel would really be hurt? And would world (including U.S.) opinion swallow such an attack as they did the Israeli bombing of Iraq in 1981, or would they react by turning Israel into a total pariah state?
I doubt Israel can cripple Iran because I believe that Iran has scattered its facilities already enough to prevent this. I also doubt that the Iranians could retaliate with sufficient strength to hurt Israel seriously. But the weak point for Israel is world opinion. Israel has already lost a lot of legitimacy in the last four years, and this could be the last straw. The world's geopolitics are quite different today than in 1981. The lesson of South Africa is that it is politically extremely difficult to survive as a pariah state.
Finally, there is Israel/Palestine. Israel has tied its fate to that of the United States in the Middle East. A defeat for the United States is a defeat for Israel. At the moment, Sharon is trying the ploy of a unilateral Gaza withdrawal which would enable him effectively to foreclose a meaningful Palestinian state on the West Bank. But it doesn't seem to be working. Hamas is unalterably hostile and unappeased. And the Palestine Authority, which might have been willing to negotiate such an arrangement, has been excluded from its implementation, and therefore has to be ultra-reserved as well. In any case, Arafat may well die soon, and once that happens, the PLO may splinter into many parts, to the probable benefit of Hamas.
Meanwhile, among the Israelis, the refusal of the right-wing settlers to envisage even this tiny concession has led to a virtual split in the Likud party, and an implicit threat of total implosion of the Jewish state. Gaza withdrawal will never really come about. But in the process of trying to do it, Sharon might reunite the Palestinians and fatefully divide the Israeli body politic in ways that have never occurred up to now. And this division among the Israelis themselves might be the final blow to their political strength within the United States. Israel/Palestine might finally lose its status as an untouchable U.S. political issue and become a matter of public debate within the United States. This would bode ill for Israel's survival.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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 2004 Elections in the United States (15 November 2004)
George W. Bush has been reelected President of the United States, and he has increased his margin of support in both houses of the Congress. What happens now - in the United States, in the world? We have to start any analysis with an appraisal of Bush. Bush is by far the most right-wing president the U.S. has had since the Great Depression. And he is the most aggressively reactionary president in the history of the United States. I am using the term "reactionary" in the classic political meaning of the term - someone who wishes to turn the clock back politically.
Bush has already demonstrated in his first term in office that he doesn't intend to be a compromiser or a moderate in the pursuit of his program. Rather, he seeks to use a bulldozer to attain his objectives, riding over opposition forces and even weak members of his own camp. He has already said of his reelection that he has earned political capital and that he intends to spend it.
Within the Republican party, Bush has three different constituencies: the Christian right, big business, and the militarists. Each is feeling its oats right now, and putting pressure on Bush to pursue its interests. Their priorities are however quite different, and none of the three constituencies gives more than nominal support to the concerns of the other two.
The Christian right is basically concerned about issues internal to the U.S. They have concentrated their fire on two current questions: gay marriage and abortion. What they want is to render impossible gay marriage. To do this definitively, they need a constitutional amendment. And they wish to outlaw abortion, which requires that the Supreme Court undo the decision called Roe v. Wade. To do this definitively requires new appointments to the Supreme Court such that there can be a 5-4 vote for such a reversal. At the moment, three justices are ready to vote that way, but one of them is about to retire. Bush therefore needs to appoint three justices committed to overturning Roe v. Wade.
But this is only the beginning of the Christian right agenda. They wish to undo the entire liberalization of mores that has been one of the marks of the twentieth century, not only in the U.S. but also in Europe and much of the rest of the world. In the United States, were they to get their way on gay marriage and abortion, they would next work on banning contraception, making homosexual sex illegal, limiting or even ending divorce, and for some of them forcing women out of the work force and maybe even the vote. Another part of their agenda is pushing the clock back on racism, and reestablishing the United States as a country socially and politically dominated by White Protestants. They would begin by ending all forms of affirmative action and proceed from there to immigration issues and then perhaps to voting rights. This would undo the entire social evolution of the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century.
This of course expresses the intentions of the most extreme group. But it should be noted that, for the moment, this extreme group controls most of the political structures of the Christian right, and plays a very large role in the Republican party. Their political strategy is to get courts that will allow legislatures to do these things, appointing persons young enough to guarantee an institutionalization of these decisions, and then to elect such legislatures.
Can they do this? The Christian right is certainly in a better position than it has ever been to get their kinds of judiciary appointed. They might even be able to get a constitutional amendment, although this requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate plus confirmation in three-quarters of the states. It will not be easy, but is by no means impossible, especially if Bush throws his weight behind the effort.
Needless to say, such an effort will be fought politically, and will upset the still important minority of so-called moderate Republicans. Bush will support the Christian right, provided that it doesn't jeopardize what he wants to do on the economic front, which is more important to him personally and of course to his big business constituency. What do economic conservatives want? They also want to push the clock back - on taxation, on environmental regulation, on legal suits against them, on health costs. On taxation, it is simple: they want to shift the taxation burden from the rich to the non-rich. They have been pursuing this objective in many ways: lowering tax rates for the top categories, reducing taxes on dividends, and the so-called reforms of social security and medical insurance. The immediate objective is to make permanent the major tax cuts of the first Bush administration, and to permit opting out of the social security program via so-called individual accounts. The latter would remove younger, better-off persons from being contributors to the fund that now serves to pay the retirement accounts. Further down the line might be the elimination altogether of social security (an achievement of the Roosevelt administration in 1935) and beyond that of the income tax (legalized in 1913 by constitutional amendment). Government income could then be assured either by a flat tax or by a national sales tax, both of them highly regressive.
On the front of the environment, most of the Bush agenda will be pursued by executive fiat, although they will still try to get the Alaska pipeline through the legislature. They are counting on the transformed courts not to stop them. The same is true of their efforts to constrain so-called class action suits by which big business is held to account for its misdeeds. Here Bush will try to enact "tort reform," limiting the amounts of financial punishment the courts can impose. And of course Bush is committed to do nothing to constrain the pharmaceutical companies from their indecent level of profits, even as he tries to enact so-called reforms of medicare that would in fact reduce real benefits.
This too will be fought politically. The major constraint on the Bush administration will come less from the Democrats than from the more sophisticated capitalist strata, who are worrying these days about a possible meltdown of the dollar and a monstrous government debt, growing by leaps and bounds, both of which could result in a disaster for the stock market. Some of them are beginning to say that, if these changes are to proceed, the U.S. government must cut its costs. And the only place it could cut a sizeable amount in a short run is in the military budget, which brings us to the third constituency, the militarists (including the neo-cons).
The militarists want to go back to the days, more recent, when the United States was the unquestioned hegemonic power in the world, when it could dictate what should happen everywhere, or almost everywhere. This constituency took top place in the first Bush administration, and the question is whether they can maintain that slot in the second Bush administration. The Iraq war, it is clear, has not gone the way the militarists and the neo-cons had hoped and predicted. And they are running into difficulty at home, not merely with the antiwar movement, but with conservative and centrist forces, who are bemoaning the folly and the economic cost of the invasion. It is also clear that the armed forces themselves, while they are always happy to have more money for their hardware, are quite grumpy about being caught, once again, in a military conflict that they are far from certain to win. They fear the backlash that withdrawal would cause the armed forces themselves. The top leaders of the armed forces remember Vietnam; they were all junior officers then.
The civilian militarists seem to want to take a fast flight forward - invade Iran, invade Cuba. This is however the arena in which the Bush agenda seems least likely to succeed, or even to be tried. Aside from the increasing worldwide hostility to the U.S. as a "rogue state" (Hungary chose the day after the U.S. election to announce it was withdrawing its troops from Iraq), the foot-dragging of the top military will find considerable support among the big business constituency. They are aghast at the continuing financial drain of the wars, which threatens their ability to get the economic changes they want.
What we can expect from Bush is full speed ahead. But he risks tripping over divisions in his own camp as well as major embarrassment in the world arena, forcing a withdrawal from Iraq. The net result of that could be both a very strong antiwar movement in the U.S., which could revitalize the left, accompanied by a strong revival of isolationism, which historically had a base in both the left and the right. In the long run, thus, the Bush agenda has poor prospects in the world-system. But for the moment, it has quite good prospects on internal questions within the United States. We may indeed get a judicial system that will force social life backward. And if we do, the polarization of political life of which everyone is talking may escalate into serious internal levels of conflict. The United States is the big loser of the 2004 elections; the world may actually be a gainer.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
Elections, Elections, Elections (1 December 2004)
Elections have become the commonplace of the modern world. Almost every country holds elections, and repeatedly. Furthermore, almost every country claims that they are a democracy. When most people use the word democracy, the first thing they believe this implies is elections. But not any kind of elections; they think of so-called free elections. By most definitions, a free election is presumably one in which alternate candidates, representing different views, may present themselves to the electorate, may communicate with them freely, and be elected by the free vote of the electorate. The result of such a free election is supposed to be considered a legitimate decision about who shall govern a political unit (or in the case of a referendum what decision shall have force of law). If an election is free, the losing side is expected to recognize that it has lost the election honestly and therefore is expected to accept the results as the will of the majority.
There are an enormous number of assumptions in this standard description. Since in many cases, perhaps most cases, elections matter, voters often feel passionately about the elections - before, during, and after - and quite often do not accept passively the results of the elections. That is, they protest that the elections were unfairly conducted or even fraudulent, and that therefore the results are illegitimate. This happens quite often. If one thinks of recent or forthcoming elections in the world, there have been a series of elections with contested results: for example, Iran, Venezuela, the United States, Georgia, and Ukraine in 2004, and Iraq and Palestine, upcoming in 2005 and already being contested in advance. It is important to note that not all election results were controversial. Many countries had elections in 2004 about which no serious questions of legitimacy were raised - for example, Canada, Spain, Uruguay, and India.
It is illuminating therefore to see the kinds of questions that have been raised in the contested elections, and the reasons why they did not go sufficiently smoothly such that no one bothers to write about them, except to analyze why the winners won. We should start by assuming that there are always some practices in an election that do not follow the theoretical rules of legality and fairness. It is usually only when the elections are close enough that such practices could have changed the announced results that much fuss is made.
The first, perhaps most elementary question, is who has the right to vote. The concept of free and fair elections usually assumes that all citizens over a certain age (usually 18 or 21) are eligible to vote. Today, anything less than universal suffrage of both sexes is considered less than a free election. Since these provisions tend to be legal ones in most countries and in effect for some time previous to the election, disenfranchisement is not usually raised as a current issue. But it was precisely raised by some in the context of the U.S. elections. In the U.S., where the rules vary according to the individual states, the question of whether felons can vote is an important consideration. Only two states out of 51 jurisdictions permit prisoners to vote. And some states permanently disenfranchise felons even after they have completed their sentences. Since prisoners come disproportionately from minority groups, the effect is to reduce significantly the rights of Blacks to vote in certain states. And this, given the system of the electoral college, can decisively affect the outcome. For example, George W. Bush would have lost the 2000 elections, if felons were not largely barred from voting in Florida. How much this would have affected the 2004 elections is unclear.
Who can stand for election? This was a major issue in the Iranian elections. In the current system, there is an official organ that has to certify the right of a given candidate to stand for election. This structure was controlled by one major faction in the elections, and it declined to certify large numbers of the candidates of the other faction who were thus excluded from the ballot. In the forthcoming Palestinian elections, will the Israelis permit Marwan Barghouti, currently imprisoned, to stand for election as president, to campaign, and if elected to serve?
Who has access to the media? This is a question of who controls the media, by the government and by money. In some cases - notably Georgia, Iran, and potentially Iraq, the government had heavy control over the media, thereby depriving the opposition of the ability to argue their case in the media. In the case of Palestine, Israel controls the media, and we shall have to see what the impact of this control will be. The issue of money and its impact on access to the media, which sell their space, has long been a major issue in the United States.
But all these issues occur, so to speak, prior to the actual voting. It is in the actual voting that most of the serious complaints are normally made. The first is that of intimidation of the voters. Intimidation can take many forms. There is the effect of mobilization of voters by strong-arm methods, or conversely preventing voters from voting. The opposition made this accusation in Venezuela. This will certainly be an issue in Iraq. But there are other subtler forms of intimidation. It was argued that in the U.S. elections, intimidation took the form of challenging without good reason the right of voters to vote or by spreading untrue rumors about the rights of voters to vote. It is feared that the continued presence of Israeli troops in Palestinian areas may have the affect of making it difficult for Palestinians to vote, and certainly of candidates to campaign.
The biggest issue always is the actual counting of the votes. This was an issue in Venezuela, the United States, Georgia, Ukraine, and looking ahead quite likely in Iraq and Palestine. In Venezuela, the opposition to this day contests the counting, but groups of international observers asserted that the counting was fair and the results are today generally accepted. In the United States, the counting in some states is still being contested (including in the courts). One complaint, the result of advanced technology, is that there was manipulation of computer-generated results where there exists no so-called paper trail. The evidence, largely disseminated by internet, comes from a series of calculations which show that some results are statistically highly improbable. In Georgia, as a result of street rebellion, the government backed down and in effect admitted that the initially announced results were fraudulent. This is what is being debated right now in Ukraine. These questions are always complicated by the rules concerning recounts, and the decisions of the electoral commissions or the courts (which are themselves open to being contested, as in Venezuela, the United States, and Ukraine).
And then there is the question whether one can have fair and free elections in situations of political and military disorder. This is the central question today about the forthcoming elections in Iraq. For example, the combination of the insurgency and the call for either boycotting or postponement of the elections by most Sunni political parties and religious authorities may mean, will probably mean, that Sunni participation in the voting will be very minimal, in which case can the results be considered legitimate?
Finally, there is the question of outside interference. The government in Venezuela charged the United States with overtly supporting the opposition. In Georgia, Ukraine, Iraq, and Palestine, there have clearly been outside forces not merely interested in the results but inserting their influence actively in affecting the results, or in affecting the post-election debate about the results.
In general, there is a good deal of hypocrisy when one invokes the concept of free and fair elections. Elections are supposed to decide political results. But quite often the causal arrow goes the other way. Politics decides the ostensible results. And sometimes, in contested elections, a behind the scenes political compromise affects whether or not the results are considered legitimate.
It is not that elections should not be fair and free. It is that we are a far way from ensuring that this occurs across the world, North and South. And an old maxim tells us that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones, or at least should do so with much prudence.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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.]
China and the U.S.: Competing Geopolitical Strategies (15 December 2004)
Ever since Richard Nixon went to China on Feb. 21, 1972 to visit Mao Zedong, the world's geopolitical alignments have never been the same. The meeting represented a spectacular shift in geopolitical hostilities of the post-1945 period. The major consequence was that China and the United States ceased to act as though each were the other's primary enemy, and acted as though each were a potential collaborator of the other on the world scene - collaborator, which is less than an ally. Each has been careful to do nothing that would allow for a return to the pre-1972 period which had seen open warfare in Korea and unlimited rhetorical harangue across the world. This cautious, even wary, relationship has continued unabated up to today and has survived intact even during the era of U.S. neo-conservative aggressive foreign policy under George W. Bush.
Initially what brought the two countries together was the desire of each to constrain, even diminish, the power of the Soviet Union. But they soon discovered that each could have important economic benefits out of a less antagonistic relationship. And each had long-term visions which they thought might be served by this curious bilateral arrangement. The U.S. sought to tame China, to bring it out of its Maoist cocoon and into the market whirl of the capitalist world-economy. China sought to buy technology, trade, and above all time in which to strengthen its economy and its military, and enable it to become a superpower. To some extent, each has been served well thus far in terms of what it sought to achieve.
But as we move forward into the twenty-first century, it is becoming clear that each is pursuing a quite different geopolitical strategy in its semi-friendly but intense competition with the other. Any major power in the interstate system has four different cards to play in its search for power and preeminence: the economic, the political, the military, and the cultural-ideological cards. But of course the cards each has to play are not equally strong, and the choice in foreign policy is always which one or ones to emphasize.
The United States is a declining hegemonic power. Its economic card has been on the decline for almost forty years. Bush's incredible expansion of national debt has made the U.S. economic situation far worse than it was even five years ago. U.S. manufacturing is for the most part a doomed export and now we learn that Brazil may displace the U.S. as an agricultural exporter - one of the last advantages in production of the U.S. on the world economic scene. The declining economic strength of the U.S. has diminished its political strength, particularly but not only in Europe, and Bush's Iraq fiasco has intensified the negative feelings considerably. As for the cultural-ideological strength of the U.S., the collapse of the Soviet Union undid the major argument which it had been using to rally support around the world. And the efforts of the U.S. to use the "war against terrorism" as an ideological substitute has fallen very flat.
So, the U.S. has had to fall back on the only strong card it has left - the military card. However, even here the U.S. is doing less well than one might have expected. It has shown in Iraq, once again, that it is basically incapable of dealing with a nationalist insurgency. Still, the U.S. retains an incredible edge in military hardware, and it is pouring an immense proportion of its national wealth into maintaining and expanding this edge.
The key to U.S. military superiority remains nuclear weapons, which explains why the U.S. continues an almost hysterical concern with nuclear proliferation. It is however becoming clear, even to the Bush administration, that the U.S. is isn't going to be able to stop a series of countries from obtaining nuclear weapons. North Korea and Iran may head the list, but there is a long list quietly (or not so quietly) starting to jump on the bandwagon. When the U.S. can't get even Great Britain to align itself on its struggle to keep Iran in line, it is in bad shape politically.
This doesn't mean that the U.S. is abandoning the effort to maintain an unquestioned military lead. It is moving full speed ahead in developing itself the so-called mini-nukes. These mini-nukes are actually reasonably powerful. They have about the power of the bombs that were used over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have, however, two features that are different: they can burrow deep into the ground (and therefore of enemy shelters), and they cause less collateral damage, which supposedly will make them less politically objectionable. The U.S. is proceeding with their production at Los Alamos, and will probably be testing them soon. These mini-nukes are not meant as a deterrent but for actual pre-emptive use. If the U.S. does succeed in making viable mini-nukes, we may expect a new worldwide arms race to try to counter this U.S. advantage.
Meanwhile, China is on a different tack. It is to be sure intent on strengthening its military apparatus. But it will be a while before China can in any sense be a peer to the U.S. on this front. China also maintains a low political profile on the world scene. It consists mainly of cultivating better relations with just about everyone. But China is certainly not yet ready today to be a major political player. Furthermore, China's ideological stance is, to say the least, confusing. It is a "market socialist state" - the meaning of which no one is totally sure. It sometimes remembers its position of the old days of the Bandung conference, as a leader of the Third World, but most of the time, it is relatively quiet on North-South issues.
China's main card today is the economic card. It is a rising economic power. How powerful it might come to be is as yet unsure. But it is patiently expanding its role. A Chinese firm has just bought out IBM's personal computer division and is now the third largest firm in the world. China is a mainstay of the U.S. dollar by investing in U.S. treasury bonds. This gives China more economic control over the U.S. than vice versa, since a withdrawal of these investments or even a rapid lessening of their extent could wreak economic havoc on the U.S. China has cultivated excellent relationships with Iran, which enhances its needed access to petroleum.
And most interesting of all, on November 29, 2004, China signed a deal with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that is being hailed as "historic" and which moves towards establishing a trade bloc that rivals those of the U.S. and the European Union. This agreement creates a market zone of two billion people, and it will be accompanied by new road and rail links between China and Southeast Asia. What China needs to do to complete this solid base is to come to an economic arrangement with Japan. This is an objective that is complicated by long-standing political and military concerns on both sides. But it seems economically so advantageous to both China and Japan in the long run that it is hard to see that it will not come to pass.
The U.S. emphasis on the military card has the flavor of desperation. China's emphasis on building slowly its economic base seems by contrast an act of patience. Perhaps this is the story of the tortoise and the hare.
by 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 immanuel.wallerstein@yale.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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