Immanuel Wallerstein • 2005 | Center for a World in Balance

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Immanuel Wallerstein - 2005

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.

Bush and the World: The Second Term (1 January 2005)

George W. Bush has been reelected for a second term of four years. It is rather certain what policy he will pursue on the U.S. domestic scene, since he has announced it clearly. He will push for further tax cuts. He will seek to privatize as much of the social security system as he can. He will appoint only judges who will reflect his conservative values, both on economic and social matters. He will seek to dismantle as much environmental legislation as possible. He will seek to strengthen the authority of the government in all police investigations and prosecutions. In short, he will pursue a classic rightwing agenda.

What remains much more obscure is what he intends to do in foreign policy, and this for one very simple reason. On the one hand, during his first term his administration committed itself strongly to a particular foreign policy - that of unilateral pre-emptive action whenever and wherever it felt like. On the other hand, this foreign policy has not been very successful, not only in the eyes of its critics at home and elsewhere in the world, but even in the eyes of many of its faithful supporters. There is turmoil in the ranks of the Bush partisans, which can be observed in the recent flurry of demands by certain major conservative figures for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld combined with the immediate support Rumsfeld received from others, including the president himself. Rumsfeld simply exemplifies these policies.

What can we expect now? There are actually two questions here. Will the second Bush administration pursue the identical foreign policy as the first? And, to the extent that it changes, how will the rest of the world react?

The most immediate question is Iraq. The number one political priority of the U.S., as we enter 2005, is holding Iraqi elections in the end of January. But why is this so important? In the first place, it is important to the U.S. in order to show that these elections can be held at all, despite the attacks of the insurgents. Secondly, it is important because the U.S. fears that, if they weren't held, they would be blamed by the Ayatollah al-Sistani, who might then shift his position from one of prudent distance from the U.S. to one of active hostility. Thirdly, it is important because the U.S. hopes to be able to shift the political/military battle in Iraq from one in which it is Iraqi insurgents versus the U.S. to one in which it is Iraqi insurgents versus a legitimate elected Iraqi government. But fourthly, it is important because it is seen as the essential prerequisite to a reduction of the number of the U.S. troops in Iraq. Of course, there are others who also anxiously want these elections - the interim Iraqi government and the mainstream Shia parties in particular.

So, elections will almost certainly be held - amidst continuing and probably escalating violence and amidst a high rate of abstentionism, especially in Sunni areas. But what will happen then? We shall probably see a new government with Ayatollah Sayed al-Hakim, the leader of the main Shia party (SCIRI), as Prime Minister. Depending on how the elections actually go and the behavior of al-Hakim, this government may or may not start with some minimal acceptance as a national government. The insurgency will almost surely continue, however, charging that the new government is a U.S. puppet. And the new Iraqi government will sooner or later have to choose between continuing to pursue the overtly pro-American policy of Iyad Allawi and adopting a nationalist line more consonant with the demands of the Iraqi people. One does not have to be a Middle East expert to suspect that sooner or later the new Iraqi government will opt to be more nationalist, in order first of all to be more legitimate.

The pressure on the U.S. to withdraw its troops will then be coming from three sides: from the insurgents, from the new Iraqi government, and from public opinion at home. Within the U.S., all the polls indicate that more and more people feel that the price the U.S. is paying in soldiers killed and wounded and in the costs of war is simply too high. The U.S. is at the beginning of an isolationalist reaction. And since isolationism has always had a strong hold within the Republican party, we shall begin to see the president's own supporters pushing for troop withdrawal.

There is no doubt that there are others within the Bush administration such as the militarists and the neo-cons - the two are not identical, by any means - who will fight this tendency bitterly. But this camp is much weaker than it was in 2003. So we may get a big swing in U.S. foreign policy. What we will not get is the modulated middle position of "multilateralism" dear to the heart of Colin Powell and to the first President Bush's advisors like Brent Scowcroft, and dear as well to the leaders of the more conservative wing of the Democratic Party (such as Senators Biden and Lieberman).

What happens vis-a-vis Iraq will presage all the rest of the Bush foreign policy. It is already the case that Bush has pulled back on North Korea and Iran to a position of tacit recognition of impotence. The Bush team is huffing and puffing, but they know there is very little they can do. They would be happy to see renewed negotiations between Israel and Palestine, which Blair is trying his best to push, but the U.S. will merely go along with such developments rather than be their prime promoter. These renewed negotiations are in any case not likely to go very far. And, in that case, the laid-back position of the Bush administration will protect it from too much internal U.S. damage.

Looking around the world, where can Bush act now? In Cuba? He'd like to, no doubt. But today we have state officials in Alabama (the heart of Bush country) saying that if they don't sell chickens to Cuba, Brazil will, and adding that the government's restrictions on trade with Cuba are an unjustified sop to the Cuban exiles in Florida. There is no sign of any serious support within the U.S. for a Cuban adventure. In Russia? We have just seen how, even though the Ukrainian elections have caused a very bad press for Putin in the United States, nonetheless Bush went out of his way to indicate that the U.S. will continue to work with Putin. In China? The economic interests of the United States preclude anything hostile, despite the uneasiness the Bush administration has with China's increased political role in Asia. In Europe? Even Rumsfeld's "new Europe" is beginning slowly to desert the U.S. In short, Bush does not have many options available to him. And since Bush is a canny and very unprincipled politician, he will not want to play in a game in which the odds are so heavily against him.

And how will the world react to a de facto pulling inward -both militarily and economically - of the U.S.? One can expect that, after an initial period of caution, everyone will try to take advantage of this new display of U.S. geopolitical weakness. The problem is that, once the U.S. presence in the world is reduced, it is like removing an elephant from the living room. No one is quite sure how to fill the space. And it is probably the case that no one has a fully prepared set of policies for such a situation. So there will be much unsure jostling among all the other geopolitical players. The U.S. was already a declining hegemonic power when Bush came to power in 2001. In seeking to restore the U.S. world position in his first four years of power, Bush actually made the situation much worse for the U.S. The U.S. (and Bush) will reap the harvest of his folly in the second term.

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: 1-203-432-6976.

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 Arafat, Arafat II? (15 January 2005)

Mahmoud Abbas has been elected President of the Palestine Authority to succeed Yasir Arafat. Will this make any difference? Is the creation of a Palestinian state nearer? Are the possibilities of an Israeli-Palestine agreement nearer? Many hope so, but the chances are thin.

Since 2001, when there were new governments in Israel and the United States, both Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush refused to have any contact whatsoever with Yasir Arafat. They argued that Arafat represented an insurmountable obstacle to peace. In effect, Sharon placed him under virtual house arrest, and tried (by and large successfully) to keep any and all representatives of other governments from visiting him. When, however, Abbas was elected the successor to Arafat, he received telephone calls from both Bush and Sharon congratulating him. Hence the total ban on contact with the leader of the Palestine Authority has been lifted. Now what?

The Israel/Palestine conflict is one of those long-lasting conflicts in which each side represents a group which has profoundly opposing interests such that there is no way that both sides can achieve their maximal objectives. This means that, short of the total elimination by one side of the other, the only solution is a political compromise that is extremely painful. This is exactly why these conflicts are long-lasting. Twenty years ago, I was in a meeting in which the conflicts in Israel/Palestine and in South Africa were being compared. I said that, while I was mildly optimistic that the first might be resolved in the decade or two to come, I was sure that there was no possibility of a political compromise in South Africa. I was obviously wrong. Exactly the opposite happened. Beginning in 1990 and ending in 1994, a compromise was indeed achieved in South Africa. During the same period, the conflict in Israel/Palestine has proved to be much more stubborn.

It is always useful in such situations to review what are the worst fears on each side. On the Israeli side, the fear is that the state of Israel as a Jewish state will be abolished. On the Palestinian side, the fear is that the Palestinian state as a viable state will never be created. So, the question is, can there be a solution that involves two states, both of which are viable and both of which are ready to live in real peace with each other? In the attempts over the past twenty years to arrive at a solution, three issues have produced the greatest difficulty: the boundaries of two such states, Jerusalem, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

The continuing face of violence has not been the obstacle to the solution; it is the consequence of the absence of a solution. The Israelis have been insisting that the intifada be ended completely before they will negotiate, and that the Palestine Authority directly suppress those who continue it.. The Palestinians have insisted that the Israeli state cease its occupation of the areas theoretically under the jurisdiction already of the Palestine Authority, cease the expansion of settlements, and liberate prisoners. Neither side has ceded to the demands of the other, which in effect are demands about steps preceding real negotiations.

It is always totally unrealistic in long-standing conflicts for either side to demand that the other disarm in any meaningful way. They never will do this before a settlement. But a settlement requires that the leaders of each side are in a strong enough position to bring along the overwhelming majority of their constituents when they make painful compromises. This is what made the compromise in South Africa possible. Mandela and the ANC really could ensure that the people they represented would accept arrangements made by them. And De Klerk and the National Party really could ensure that the White population and the armed forces would accept arrangements made by them. Dissenters would be marginal.

This is exactly what is missing in Israel/Palestine. Even if Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon entered into discussions in full good faith, it is quite doubtful that either could guarantee that their populations would accept compromise arrangements. Abbas is being hailed by the press as someone whose style and outlook is different from that of Arafat. Style yes, outlook probably not. If Abbas, who was not particularly popular in Palestinian polls as of six months ago, won so easiily, it is because Fatah, as the largest organization of Palestinian struggle, wanted to present a united front and minimize any excuse for Sharon (and Bush) not to negotiate. And Hamas was willing to go along, by in effect abstaining from the election, for the same reason.

But Abbas is on a short leash. He must produce serious results, and produce them rapidly. For the Palestinians, that means he must achieve the creation of a state in all (or virtually all) of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, a state that will be fully sovereign. And he must obtain some concession on the right to return if only a small one. Of course, this is exactly what Arafat had been trying to achieve. Arafat failed to achieve it, but he continued to have the credit of being the historic leader of the Palestinian movement, and of being someone who really tried. Abbas, while a militant of Fatah from the beginning and for a long time a top leader, is not Arafat and cannot coast on glory.

Sharon has built his career on opposing giving up most of the West Bank and east Jerusalem to the Palestinians and on not entertaining the idea of even a token resettlement of refugees. It is clear that he is on even a shorter leash than Abbas. Although, from the Palestinian point of view, his plan of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is at most a minor concession, he is meeting fierce resistance from within Israel. It is not at all clear that he can pull it off. The idea that he could agree to boundaries of a Palestinian state that would include all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem defies the political logic of the moment.

So, where are we? We shall see probably some desultory negotiations which will get nowhere. Sharon will continue to insist that Abbas arrest all those who engage in violence. Abbas will continue to refuse to do this, limiting his efforts to trying to persuade al-Aqsa, Hamas, and others to engage in an indefinite truce. When this doesn't succeed, as it will probably not, Sharon will begin to accuse Abbas of being Arafat II. Or, if Abbas does do what Sharon wants, before getting a state for the Palestinians with boundaries that are acceptable, he will lose the temporary legitimacy that he has, and probably be isolated among his people.

Outside intervention is a chimera. The only power that can intervene effectively is the United States, and the Bush administration simply will not break in any significant way with Sharon. This is for many reasons, not the least of which is the strength of Christian Zionism among the Christian right supporters of the Bush administration.

Of course, miracles sometimes occur. And the Holy Land is supposed to be the locus of miracles. But a secular political analysis of the situation does not encourage much immediate hope. After Arafat, almost surely Arafat II.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

Towards China's Reunification? (1 February 2005)

On January 15, 2005, representatives of the government of China and of the authorities on Taiwan held a meeting in Macao, which has been described as "historic." They agreed that, for the first time since 1949, there would be direct flights from mainland China to Taiwan. True, this agreement was for three weeks only, beginning January 29. And true, the flights were restricted to persons domiciled in Taiwan who were temporarily located on the mainland, to permit them to return to see families during the Chinese New Year. Who were these people permitted to take the flights? They were Taiwanese residents who are conducting business on the mainland. There are between 700,000 and 1 million such people, and their number is growing steadily. Given the recent exchange of harsh rhetoric between Beijing and Taipeh, the agreement was quite unexpected and sets an important precedent.

One must appreciate the historical background to assess its importance. We speak of the continuity of Chinese civilization over 5000 years. But if one looks closely at the history of China, there were a series of empires which lasted a certain time followed almost always by periods of breakdown of a central authority. The political history of China has been a continuous attempt to maintain or restore the unity of the country.

In the nineteenth century, the Chinese empire was under assault from outside imperialist powers. The weakening of the imperial power made possible the Chinese revolution of 1911, which ended the imperial dynasty. But from 1911 on, China was beset by regionalisms and civil war, until finally in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party and its army entered Shanghai and proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Unity restored, or almost.

What happened, as we know, is that the previous government of China, that of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang party retreated with part of their army to the island of Taiwan and continued to argue that it was the government of China, with the support of the U.S. government. The world then was required to choose between two alternate claimants to being the legitimate government of "one China" - that on the mainland and that on Taiwan. Since the key difference between the two governments was political, the rest of the world chose sides largely in terms of their position on the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. This meant that the Taiwan-based government kept for a long time the seat of China in the United Nations.

Bit by bit, however, various countries changed their position and the number of countries recognizing Beijing grew steadily. In July 1971, Henry Kissinger made a secret visit to Beijing, to prepare a later visit by President Nixon. In October of that year, the annual resolution to recognize the Chinese government in Beijing as the legitimate holder of the U.N. seat was finally adopted by the U.N. General Assembly. In February, 1972, Nixon came to Beijing to meet with Mao Zedong. At the end of this encounter, the U.S. and China signed on Feb. 28, 1972 the Shanghai Communiqué, in which it is said: "The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain that there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States government does not challenge that position."

In 1979, the U.S. and the Beijing government established diplomatic relations. The U.S. cut such relations with the Taiwan government and abrogated the U.S.-China Defense pact. But of course, the Taiwan government remained in place. There now began, however, an evolution of the dispute. Originally, in 1949, the dispute was exclusively about politics and the Cold War. But in the 1980s the group on Taiwan who stood for the idea of Taiwanese independence began to gain strength. There was now a second issue, quite different from the first. As the Cold War issue waned (and largely disappeared in the 1990s), the issue of secession came to the fore.

China calls for the reintegration of Taiwan into the political framework of the country. Those on Taiwan who resist this do so for two different reasons - discomfort with the nature of the political system of the People's Republic of China, and belief in the right of the Taiwanese to secede. Of course China, like most countries in the world faced with the problem of multiple ethnic groups within their boundaries, stands firmly against secession. See similar positions taken these days by Canada, Spain, France, Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia among others.

There developed one other important change in the situation of China's relation with Taiwan. Beginning in the 1960s, Taiwan grew in economic strength and wealth. It became an important locus of capital accumulation. However, beginning in the 1980s, the change in economic policy in the People's Republic of China led it too to grow in economic strength and wealth. There came a point where Taiwan's prosperity was being threatened by the competition that was coming from mainland China. One consequence of this was the desire of businessmen located in Taiwan to move some of their economic investment to the mainland. This accounts for the almost one million Taiwanese residents who are now working on the mainland. In the long run, this group has everything to gain from further economic ties between the mainland and Taiwan. And this may require closer political ties. We may have now, for the first time, a powerful political group within Taiwan who are actively interested in reunification.

There is another factor playing here. It is the changing geopolitical scene - the decline of U.S. power worldwide and the growing geopolitical strength of China. This cannot help but stir a combination of increased Chinese nationalism among Taiwan residents and self-interested desire to flow with the geopolitical tide.

Is this enough to bring about reunification in a near future? It depends on many things: the degree to which isolationism takes hold in the U.S.; the degree to which the political relations of Japan and China improve; the degree to which there are serious moves toward Korean reunification. All of this can tilt the political atmosphere in important ways, and change the dynamics of China-Taiwan relations. If ten or twenty years from now, there is a serious East Asian regional bloc of China, Korea, and Japan, Taiwan will not want to be outside it.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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 Nuclear Club Expands (15 February 2005)

North Korea has now said officially that it already has nuclear weapons, and is not at all interested in discussing giving them up. Iran still claims it doesn't intend to make nuclear weapons. However it also says it will not discuss abandoning the progress it has made in developing nuclear enrichment facilities (which means of course that it could easily produce nuclear weapons when it wished to do so). And what does the United States say? The United States doesn't know what to say and is floundering. Henry Kissinger is sputtering, in print and on television. Condoleeza Rice is calling Iran a totalitarian state and telling the Europeans that they have to tell Iran clearly and loudly that, if Iran persists in its nuclear enrichment program, there will be U.N. sanctions (and the Europeans are telling her that such statements by her, made publicly or even privately, are distinctly counterproductive).

The fact is that, thanks to George W. Bush, the genie is long since out of the bottle. And thanks again to George W. Bush, the United States doesn't have the military or political strength to do anything about it. So what happens now? There are really only two scenarios possible for the next three years or so. One is that nothing significant happens in either Korea or Iran, as the U.S. finds itself too preoccupied with the continuing difficulties of getting out of the Iraq quagmire, too absorbed in its increasingly harsh internal political battles, and too isolated diplomatically to do more than alternately bluster and keep quiet. And the other scenario is that the superhawks overwhelm all resistance within the Bush administration, including that of the armed forces, and precipitate a military confrontation, either directly or through a third party (such as Israel for Iran).

I myself think that the second scenario is not very likely. It has at most a quite small chance of coming to pass, but it is no doubt possible. And if it did occur, it would be disastrous - in terms of lives lost (of Koreans or Iranians of course but also of Americans), especially if nuclear weapons were used. The most probable result would be a military impasse as well as serious worldwide ecological damage. So, even if the likelihood is small, it is quite scary, and it is the path of both wisdom and sanity to do everything that one can do to avert it.

If however we have the more likely scenario - that nothing really happens in either arena - what are the geopolitical consequences? They are quite negative for the United States, which is what is agitating Kissinger and probably also Condoleeza Rice. The first consequence is a further change in the world's estimate of U.S. military clout. Once thought virtually invincible, the overwhelming military power of the U.S. has been losing its ability to impress the world with "shock and awe" as it promised in the inimitable prose adopted by the Bush administration. The successful defiance of the U.S. by North Korea and/or Iran on such a key military issue would accelerate the growing feeling around the world that the U.S. is a Goliath just waiting for a David to humiliate it. This would undoubtedly harden everyone's readiness to go their own way, whether or not it met with approval in Washington.

What does going one's own way mean? It means, for one thing, that a number of other countries (beyond North Korea and Iran) might now begin to take serious steps in the direction of nuclear weaponry. It means that a number of countries will be more willing to take a tough line on bilateral or multilateral trade negotiations with the United States or the North in general. And it means that many, many countries will be willing to move away from a dollar-dominated world. Russia has already announced that it is going to price its oil in euros from now on. Others may follow soon. China has already indicated that it is thinking of pegging the yuan not to the dollar but to a basket of currencies. And then someday soon there might occur the U.S. nightmare - a sudden widespread loss of confidence in the dollar which, once it occurred, would probably be irreversible and would wreak havoc with the brittle finances of the U.S. government.

Nor would this be all. The U.S. is crowing these days over the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq, which President Bush called a "resounding success" reflecting "the voice of freedom." While the provisional figures are no doubt a bit inflated, it is clear that most Shiites and most Kurds voted, and that the Iraqi resistance could manage to kill only their usual quota that day. Is this so surprising? That more were not killed is a tribute to the intensive U.S. military mobilization (including the banning of cars moving on the streets). But was it surprising that Shiites voted? We have to remember that nine months ago, both the U.S. and Iyad Allawi were strongly opposed to holding these elections for an interim national assembly (primarily serving as a constitutional convention) at all, expecting that they would put the Shiites in a commanding political position, and Iyad Allawi out of a job. If the U.S. yielded, it was precisely because Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani made it clear that holding the elections were his bottom line, or else he would denounce publicly the U.S. occupation. Al-Sistani got his way, so of course the Shiites voted. As for the Kurds, a big Kurd turnout was their best guarantee to maintain at a minimum the degree of autonomy they now have de facto in their zones. The Sunni, as expected, effectively boycotted the vote. Also, amidst this "voice of freedom," the Kurds managed largely to keep the minority Christians and Turkomens in their areas from voting, since that would have diminished the percentages for the Kurdish list.

We shall have to see what happens now. But there is little likelihood that the U.S. will have the kind of government it had hoped to have. And there is little likelihood that the Iraqi resistance will fold until the U.S. withdraws its troops. The euphoria over the elections in the U.S. press may well soon fade into recognizing the reality of an endless low-intensity but major military conflict which will continue to drain money and lives and therefore the patience of the U.S. population. In the middle of all this, Iran may set off its nuclear test. The uproar in the West will of course be great. The popular approbation in Iran (but not only in Iran) will also be great. But after that, we may all settle down to a new status quo, as the geopolitical realities continue to evolve in a direction that George W. Bush will certainly not relish.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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: Quasi-Allies (1 March 2005)

George W. Bush, having failed to intimidate Europe in his first term of office, has decided to try another tactic. First, Condoleeza Rice, then Donald Rumsfeld, then Bush himself traveled to Europe on a charm offensive. They all said essentially the same three things. Let's forget our quarrels over Iraq; the U.S. considers Europe its allies; and let's discuss what the U.S. wants now and what we can do together. But they all added a fourth thing: The U.S. will still do what it wants, if the Europeans won't go along. In a press conference in Europe, Bush said about the debate with Europeans concerning Iran: "The notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. Having said that, all options are on the table."

The list of issues on which the U.S. and Europe disagree in important ways is impressively long: the Iraq war and current relations with the Iraqi regime; the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo; the policy to be pursued on Israel/Palestine; how to handle the issue of nuclear proliferation in Iran, and in North Korea; whether to maintain the arms embargo on China; the Cuba embargo; whether NATO should continue to be the primary structure within which U.S.-Europe relations occur, as opposed to the U.S. dealing with the European Union; Galileo versus the GPS as satellite navigational systems; the urgency of climate change and the Kyoto Protocol; support for the International Criminal Court; mutual complaints (and threats of reprisals) concerning industrial subsidies; the genetic modifications of agricultural seed; rivalry of Boeing and Airbus; and last but not least the rise of the euro as a potential world reserve currency.

There are several things to note about this list. They include just about every immediately important geopolitical issue. They include a large number of the central issues of the world-economy. They are almost all issues on which the disagreements go back many years now. They are almost all issues on which the divergence of positions is quite large. They are all issues about which both sides feel very strongly, and on which it is difficult to see too much room for compromise. And one last thing to notice. If one asks what the position of Russia is on these issues, in most cases, Russia takes the same position as Europe.

So, in what sense can one say that the United States and Europe continue to be allies? Well, they do share some important interests in common. They are both major centers of capital accumulation. They are both concerned with maintaining the stability of the world-economy. They are both wary of the growing demands of countries of the South in the North-South negotiations within the framework of the World Trade Organization. In short, neither wants to see any radical transformation of the world-system in which we are living. These concerns were the basis of the historic alliance between the U.S. and Europe, and they haven't disappeared.

So, one could argue that the discord is merely an argument over strategy, in which both sides share common goals. And, in a sense, this is what European leaders have been arguing for some time. But they haven't seemed to persuade the United States of this. The U.S. is not used to debating strategy with its allies. It has been used to deciding upon strategy and merely discussing marginal tactical issues with its allies, who used to be not truly allies but rather loyal followers. The combination of the economic decline of the United States, the end of the Cold War, and the fiasco in Iraq has undermined the entire bargaining power of the United States.

The Bush administration still cannot believe that this has really happened. The charm offensive has been just that - sweet words. One prominent observer has seen this clearly. William Cohen, longtime Republican Senator from Maine and Secretary of Defense under Clinton, attended one of the many occasions in recent days in which the U.S. was peddling its new line in Europe. He said, "The tone was different, but the tune was the same." Nor have the Europeans been fooled. Jacques Chirac smiled demurely at Bush and conceded to the U.S. one of its important demands, that the military trainers for the Iraqi forces be under NATO command. France assigned one officer to this task. Vladimir Putin responded to his gentle chiding by George Bush by confirming Russia's commitment to furnish enriched nuclear material to Iran and advanced surface-to-air missiles to Syria.

In September of 2004, I wrote a commentary entitled "Neither Feared Nor Loved?" in which I suggested that the U.S. may have to deal realistically with disposing of neither advantage. I am happy to report that this theme has now been taken up by one of the mainstream journals of the U.S., Time Magazine. In its Feb. 21, 2005 issue, Tony Karon writes: "the reality is that the Bush administration is neither loved nor feared in growing sectors of the international community - increasingly, it is simply being ignored."

Neither Europe nor Russia nor for that matter China wants to engage in open, bloody fights with the United States. But neither do any of them want to concede important ground to the increasingly bizarre positions of the United States. Europe is settling into the position of a quasi-ally, an indulgent cousin which humors the United States when it must and ignores it most of the rest of the time. And the U.S. must now decide whether it will react petulantly (and dangerously) by demonstrating that it still has powerful military toys by striking out with them, or retreat into a shell, or consider maturely what are its real options in the twenty-first century. Under Bush, I would not bet on the last option.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

East Asia and the World: The Decades Ahead (15 March 2005)

As late as the 1960s, few analysts in the Western world thought that either Japan or China, and of course much less Korea, would become major players in the world-economy. Today, no one doubts that they are already precisely that. In the 1980s, there were endless almost hysterical articles in the Western press about the coming dominance of Japan. This theme died down in the 1990s, to be replaced in the years after 2000 with a series of similarly almost hysterical articles about the possible coming dominance of China. What is the reality?

There seems little question that all of East Asia has made enormous progress as centers of capital accumulation, advanced technology, and rising productivity. Furthermore, the curves are all moving upward steadily. What is important, of course, are not absolute figures but figures relative to those of other major centers of capital accumulation - the United States and western Europe in particular. Grosso modo, one can say that since the 1970s at least, the economic strength of the United States has declined relative to both western Europe and East Asia, and that for the moment western Europe and East Asia have remained at par with each other.

I refer here to strength in all the arenas - production, commerce, and finance. The last great stronghold of the United States is the fact that the dollar remains the world reserve currency. However, the continuing fall in the value of the dollar, caused by the immense fiscal deficits of the United States in both the national debt and the current accounts, deficits which seem to be growing steadily and vertiginously, has put this stronghold into doubt. As everyone has noticed, the only way the United States has been able to cope with these two immense deficits is by borrowing money. And the major lenders are China, Japan, and to a lesser but not insignificant extent (South) Korea. The great debate in the world press is whether or not East Asia will continue to buy U.S. Treasury notes at the rate they have been doing in recent years. All three countries have signaled in the last six months that they are considering a greater diversification of their holdings in other currencies. It is generally (but not unanimously) argued that, should East Asia begin to do this, the dollar will fall further, perhaps precipitously, and that this might result in a serious depression not only in the United States but also elsewhere in the world.

It seems to me clear that the Bush administration has no intention or political possibility of curbing either of the two great deficits. The East Asian countries will have to choose in the near future between two dangers. On the one hand, if they reduce their investments in dollar holdings, they will curb the ability of the United States to purchase their goods, and they risk a consequent fall in employment and profits. On the other hand, if they continue to invest in a falling dollar, they are over time losing national wealth. The first is a short-term danger and the second is a medium-term danger. As the U.S. deficits grow, the middle-term danger will undoubtedly come more and more to the front. Indeed, this is happening already. I consider it virtually inevitable that East Asia will diversify and that the dollar will then lose its status as the sole world reserve currency. I believe that the United States will lose far more - economically and politically - in the resulting great turmoil than East Asia, and this consideration will actually be a spur to East Asia's taking this action sooner rather than later.

What then will happen? Our world-system, which is already chaotic to a significant degree, will become more so. One worry that everyone has is the impact of this chaos on military power and power conflicts. This is very hard to predict. For one thing, the United States could move in one of two quite different directions - a return to isolationism based on fortress America or more unilateral adventurism. It could even do both - first more adventurism and then fortress America. This is of course extremely important to East Asia. It will have an immediate impact on the developments on the Korean peninsula, and on the tensions between the Chinese government and Taiwan. It will also put forward as an urgent matter whether or not Japan engages in major military rearmament. In both South Korea and Japan, there will be the question of whether they go forward with developing nuclear weapons.

East Asia will find itself facing a fundamental question: whether or not the region will move in the direction of some kind of serious integration, as Europe has done over the last half-century. The difficulties are obvious. Both China and Korea are divided countries, in search of reunification. And all three countries - China, Japan, and Korea - harbor major historic grievances vis-a-vis each other. Such grievances are not insuperable as the story of Europe is showing us, but they have to be taken quite seriously and directly addressed in some way. Will this happen?

The plus of moving in the direction of East Asian cooperation and reconciliation is obvious. The combined economic, political, and yes military power of East Asia would become formidable in the coming half-century. In the transition the world-system is undergoing from its present historical structure - that of a capitalist world-economy - to something else, the East Asian bloc would come to play a central role, perhaps the central role.

The negative side is also obvious. First, such an effort would face very vigorous opposition from the United States and, to a lesser extent, western Europe. It might also face opposition from India. But, perhaps more important, it would open a debate about the relative role of China and Japan in any arrangements that would be under discussion, as well as the unwillingness of Korea to be treated as a minor partner without much right to a voice. Many efforts at regional unions in the past century have foundered on just such issues.

What is important to understand is that the question of East Asian political accord and integration is one that is almost entirely within the power of East Asia to resolve. The rest of the world is not going to be able to do much about it, either to aid it or obstruct it. The ball, as we say, is in East Asia's court.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

Bush's Geopolitical Legacy (1 April 2005)

The newspapers these days tell us that George W. Bush is concerned with his historical legacy. For what will he be remembered by historians writing twenty-five years from now? Apparently, he thinks that he will be remembered for advancing "liberty" in the world, and perhaps particularly in the Middle East. This seems to me most unlikely. I think he will be remembered for having anchored a major geopolitical shift that will be lasting - the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis. This comes to mind just now because on March 18 this year, there was a meeting between the leaders of these three countries (plus Spain) in Paris. Nothing extraordinary was decided at that meeting. It was rather just an ordinary, but now fairly regular, occurrence. It is the quiet regularity of these meetings one should notice.

Geopolitical shifts are analogous to the movement of tectonic plates on the earth. Tectonic plates move beneath the visible surface. They move continuously. The plates both converge and diverge. At certain points the pressure of converging plates or the fissures between diverging plates lead to an explosion we call an earthquake. In the geopolitical arena, analogously, we note the explosions resulting from convergence in the outbreak of "world wars." World wars cannot be missed but we are less likely to notice the divergence phenomena, which lead to lasting reconfigurations of the geopolitical arrangements, what in geological terms would be the creation of new separate continents.

The geopolitical world had a major convergence/world war from 1914 to 1945 between Germany and the United States, out of which emerged a new world order that resulted from the hegemony of the United States in the world-system. This new world order had a major fault line defined by the Cold War, but the two plates of this world order never converged. There never was a hot war between the two adversaries. On the other hand, at the same time, there were divergent tendencies. The one the United States always feared most was the possibility of Europe pulling away from the North Atlantic alliance, and then leading to a Paris-Berlin-Moscow alignment.

There were many small movements in this direction. The idea of a Paris-Moscow link was suggested in various ways by Charles De Gaulle, who saw this as a mode of restoring France's and Europe's centrality to the world-system. But the Franco-Soviet treaty he signed in 1944 was submerged by the strength of the Cold War alignments, and it must be said also because of the strength of the French Communist Party at that time, an element that De Gaulle worried about and felt he had to work to constrain. The United States and the Christian Democrats in Germany worked hard to prevent the realization of a reunited and "neutral" Germany, which might have been the forerunner to a second Rapallo Treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union. But the possibility was suggested again by the so-called Ostpolitik of Willi Brandt, which the United States opposed quite strongly. And when Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, he offered the vision of the "common house" of Europe, an idea that was subsequently dropped when Yeltsin ousted Gorbachev.

The fact is that all these attempts to move in the direction of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis were not only opposed by the United States but opposed successfully, primarily by the brandishing by the United States of the ideological fissure of the Cold War. This argument however was something that became more difficult to make after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the collapse of the Communisms in east-central Europe. The underlying geopolitical plates were now slowly but definitely moving in a divergent direction. What happened after 2001 is that George W. Bush, in his failed attempts to intimidate western Europe and Russia, accomplished the remarkable feat of speeding up the divergence between Europe and the United States to a point where a major fissure is in the process of being consolidated. We shall recognize how permanent this is perhaps only a decade from now. But, when the historians of 2025 look back at this period, they will mark this realignment as Bush's great geopolitical legacy, the one transformation that will be credited directly to the activities of his administration.

The question, of course, is what difference this will make for the ongoing life of the world-system. This anchoring of Europe as a political actor quite separate from the United States will combine with the toppling of the dollar from its role as the only reserve currency, each reinforcing the other. The United States will emerge from this much weakened, not merely in real strength but in perceived strength, including perceived military strength. And then we shall all find ourselves in another ball game.

There will be three geopolitical stories to watch. One will be the economic competition between Europe and East Asia for the central role in the accumulation of capital in the coming decades. The degree of political cohesion that Europe and East Asia will each achieve separately will have a major impact on the outcome of this competition. The second will be the struggle of what might be called some middle economic powers that are also regional giants - India, Brazil, South Africa, at least - to maintain their balance and assert their role (and alliances) in this new geopolitical arena. The third is to see how the United States will be able to adjust to these new realities in which its real and perceived role will be much less than it is now.

If one is to observe this realignment and its effects soberly and intelligently, it is crucial not to analyze the daily, weekly, even yearly shifts in political positioning by the states. These will go up and down with some volatility, just as the stock market goes up and down all the time. What matters are the longer-run trends. Furthermore, it is important to take public stances of leading figures with a pinch of salt. All politicians have to talk to multiple audiences, and all engage in disinformation tactics. It is less what they say (although sometimes the public rhetoric is very revealing), or what they promise to do, but what they really do.

In any case, within the overall framework of the declining power of the United States, there is more immediately the declining significance of what George W. Bush himself says and does. He is past the pinnacle of his internal political strength, and will soon be reaping the full reward of the geopolitical setbacks the United States will be facing. He will be blamed more perhaps than is just analytically. But others will think he will only be getting his just deserts.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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 Catholic Church and the World (15 April 2005)

The extraordinary celebration of John Paul II at his funeral, whose only comparable event in the last fifty years was the funeral of John F. Kennedy in 1963, has led to many reflections on the role of this pope, and that of the papacy in general, in world history. The pope was celebrated more or less equally by George W. Bush, Fidel Castro, and Jacques Chirac, by Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and by clerics from all the world's religious institutions, which, even given the usual outpouring on such occasions, seems remarkable. As for the Catholic Church, it is now approaching its two-thousandth year of existence as an institution, which no other structure of any kind can match. It leads one to remember the perhaps apocryphal statement of the great French diplomat of the beginning of the nineteenth century, Talleyrand, who is supposed to have responded to the question of what he did during the Revolution and the Terror with the answer, j'ai survécu (I survived).

The Catholic Church has indeed survived the most incredible series of transformations of world social structures over two millennia. How has it been able to do it? I would say by paying close attention to two questions: how the Church should relate to political authorities; and what the Church needs to do to hold itself together. John Paul II was deeply concerned with both these questions, and his unusually long papacy (only one pope ever served longer) consisted of a long series of acts that responded to these concerns.

The Church, as we know, passed its first three centuries as a pariah group of faithful, fiercely persecuted by the Roman authorities. But in the beginning of the fourth century, the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, which then became the official religion of the Roman Empire. One of the early acts of Constantine was to convene the Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the bishops proclaimed Arianism (a doctrine that denied the divinity of Christ) to be heresy and defined the basic theological doctrine of the holy trinity that has guided the Catholic Church ever since.

The Church had at this point created a firm hierarchical structure and affirmed a clearly-defined set of dogmas. On this basis, the Church was able to survive and thrive until the beginning of the modern world-system in the sixteenth century. Its evangelical activities reached successfully all of Europe, but only slightly beyond Europe. During all this period, the Church existed primarily within political structures that were governed by Christian rulers. It did suffer the great schism with the Orthodox churches in the eleventh century, one of the basic divisive issues being the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. But otherwise, the Church was able to contain potential heresies by developing a supple structure of multiple institutions with differing emphases (particularly the monastic structures). As for the political authorities, the Church wrestled with various rulers, and particularly the Holy Roman Emperor, over the degree of control the political institutions could have over the Church and vice versa. In an sense, the outcome of these struggles was a vague and unclear compromise about the division of authority, which allowed decisions about these issues to be made on a pragmatic basis, and never once and for all.

This could be said to have worked quite well until the advent of the modern world, when the states in Europe began to construct themselves as strong, autonomous structures within the now emerging capitalist world-economy. The emergence of strong states was linked with the emergence of Protestant churches which took multiple forms, all of which however rejected the hierarchical authority of the Bishop of Rome. Religious struggles between the Catholic Church and the various Protestant churches ensued for two centuries.

Initially, a solution was enshrined in the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 - cuius regio eius religio (the religion of the ruler is the religion of the state). But this was not enough to settle the matter in the largest European state, France, where a civil war ended with the Edict of Nantes in 1598, instituting the concept of religious tolerance for significant Christian minorities. This was revoked in 1685, but essentially restored after the French Revolution. It was this new concept of "tolerance" with which the Church had to come to terms from then on.

Religious tolerance as a concept came to be an integral part of a larger doctrine known as the Enlightenment, and which initiated a vast process of secularization, that is, of removing a whole series of moral issues from the dominance of the religious authorities and increasing the rights of individual choice in many moral arenas, particularly in all those that had to with sexuality and its social consequences. The Catholic Church was not the only religious structure to find this individualization of moral choice unacceptable, but it took the lead within the European states to argue the case against secularism in the public arena.

In the nineteenth century, the Church denounced this secularization of moral values as the perversity of liberalism, which it condemned and against which it fought. It must be said in retrospect that it was, by and large, a losing fight. By the late twentieth century, European states legitimated or at least tolerated many practices to which the Church was opposed - divorce, birth control, abortion, homosexuality. What is more, even among practicing Catholics, these practices gained large sway, and certainly there came to be a feeling that they should be tolerated if others wished to engage in them, Furthermore, the Catholic Church (as did other religious structures) saw a serious decline in vocations to the priesthood and in attendance at religious services.

On the other hand, the Catholic Church was ceasing to be a European institution. Along with the creation of a European-dominated capitalist world-economy went a process of evangelization in the non-European zones of the world, which made considerable progress. Conversions, along with differential birth rates in the twentieth century, transformed the Church from one in 1900 still with predominantly European membership to one in 2000 in which European had become a minority.

The Second Vatican Council, convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962, sought to respond to these changes in the social environment within which the Church existed. John XXIII called for an aggiornamento, an updating of the Church. What this meant were changes in the liturgy to reduce the role of Latin and the establishment of an episcopal synod to help govern the Church (seen as a mode of reducing the vertical character of Church governance). There was also a new emphasis on ecumenicism and a removal of anti-Semitic language from Church teachings.

The heart of Vatican II, as seen by Catholics themselves, was that it was a deliberate attempt for the Church to come to terms with the modern world. This is precisely what more conservative Catholics rejected in the aggiornamento. They saw it as an abandonment of the essentials of the faith. This was made all the worse when the Church seemed to tolerate the concepts of the theology of liberation, put forward especially in Latin America, in which Church prelates and theologians advocated a deep involvement in radical political movements seeking earthly justice, and therefore entering into acute opposition with state authorities.

When John Paul II came to the papacy, he sought to rectify what he believed to have been a too great abandonment of traditional Church doctrine. He reemphasized the centrality of the Pope's authority. He condemned the theology of liberation. And above all, he reiterated in the strongest possible way the Church's traditional views on sexuality - opposing the idea of married priests or women in the priesthood, denouncing abortion and all other kinds of interference with sexuality. He became a world leader in the religious reaction to the triumph of secularization and the individualization of moral practice.

He sought to restore the Church to a centrist position in terms of relations with the political powers - never all-out opposition to any state authority and never all-out support. Of course, within those extremes lay a whole range of possibilities. He forbade the involvement of priests with radical movements. But he also criticized neoliberalism and opposed both wars in Iraq. Much has been made of his role in the downfall of the Communisms in eastern Europe. No doubt he played a role, particularly in his native Poland, but the dismantling of these regimes would almost surely have occurred had he not been there to play the role he did play. He did emphasize a very broad ecumenicism, apologizing publicly for the historic errors and misdeeds of the Church towards other Christian churches, towards the Jews, towards the Moslems. But he also set very clear limits on what might be called structural Christian ecumenicism, that is, reuniting different churches.

Where is the Church today in terms of its historic worries: its relation to the states; maintaining the integrity of the Catholic Church? In the end, he did nothing that was really new in the Church's relations to the state powers. He certainly was in no way able to reverse the declining formal role of the Church, even within largely Catholic countries. His policy towards the states remained the traditional pragmatic one.

He reasserted firmly the hierarchical structure of the Church and its views on sexuality. But this does not seem to have stanched in any significant way the slippage in the real sexual practice of Catholics, the decline of priestly vocations, or the decline in Church attendance. Some say this will be compensated by an upsurge in all these fronts among the non-European sectors of the Church. It may be so, but it is ally possible that the secularization of Church practice will spread to these regions as well. It is doubtful that in 2050 John Paul II will be seen as having had as much long-lasting impact on the Church as John XXIII. The aggiornamento seems irresistible.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

Death by a Thousand Cuts (1 May 2005)

There was an old Chinese torture called Ling chi, a death by a thousand cuts. The cuts are all small, but in the end the person dies. This is what is happening to U.S. dominance of Latin America. The latest small cut, and it is a small cut, has happened in Ecuador. Ecuador is a small country with however several important features: It is an oil producer. It has a very large indigenous population which has historically been excluded from power and is of course economically and socially exploited. It borders Colombia where a civil war has been going on for a very long time now, and in which the United States is heavily implicated in support of the very conservative government. It is also a country in which in the last ten years three presidents have been forced out of office by popular uprisings, each time with at least the tacit support of the armed forces.

In 1997, Abdala Bucaram, who had been elected on a platform of fighting the oligarchy, instead began pushing a severe austerity program, as advised by the Argentine former finance minister, Domingo Cavallo, of the kind the IMF had been pushing (and which Cavallo had previously implemented in Argentina). After a two-day strike by labor unions, students, women's groups, human rights organizations, and CONAIE, the federation of indigenous nationalities of Ecuador, the Ecuadorian congress dismissed Bucaram, on the grounds of mental instability. The next election brought in another conservative Jamil Mahuad, who proceeded to "dollarize" the economy. So in early 2000, another popular uprising evicted him. This one was led by a combination of indigenous organizations and "populist colonels," whose leader was Lucio Gutierrez, and who was thought by the United States to have links to Chavez in Venezuela (see Commentary No. 33, Feb. 1, 2000).

The forces of order took hold once again. Gutierrez was marginalized and the Vice-President, Gustavo Noboa, took over. In the next elections in 2002, however, Gutierrez won with the strong support of the indigenous movements. The election was hailed as a victory for the left. Once in office, nonetheless, Gutierrez changed his stripes. In 2003 he visited Washington and declared himself "the best friend of the United States" in Latin America. Soon, the indigenous movements pulled out of the government and Gutierrez proceeded to offer a new military base to the United States, become an enthusiastic supporter of Plan Colombia (the U.S.-led plan to support the Colombian government against the guerillas and also, the U.S. argued, against narcotraffickers). And Ecuador was in full negotiations over a free trade treaty with the United States. While the oil price rise was aiding the government budget, none of that money reached the vast majority of the population. The drop that made the cup overflow was that Gutierrez changed the Supreme Court so that the new one would pardon Bucaram, who promptly returned to Ecuador, and had his party in parliament support Gutierrez.

So this April, there was another uprising in Ecuador. Gutierrez called the demonstrators forajidos - fugitives. The demonstrators immediately assumed the name with pride, and within days were able to make Gutierrez into the forajido instead. This time, the uprising included not only the usual suspects - the movements of the indigenous populations but also segments of the middle class who were revolted by the corruption of Gutierrez and Bucaram. Once again the army stepped back and Gutierrez has now been succeeded by his vice-president, more to the left, Alfredo Palacio. Since then, there have been confusing indications of the new policy. Palacio appointed a moderately left Catholic, Rafael Correa as finance minister, one of whose first statements was to deplore that 40% of the government's budget went to paying off the debt and only 2% to health and education. While the government has assured the U.S. it will permit its existing base to remain, it is not going to build the additional larger base to which Gutierrez had agreed.

The U.S. has warily recognized the new government after much delay. Castro and Chavez have hailed the change, but some "revolutionary" groups are decrying the fact that it is not doing a lot more. What may we expect now? Probably this time, a great slowdown on anything that smells of neoliberalism. Already the indigenous parties have recovered some parliamentary seats which they had lost because some of the representatives elected on their list had shifted parties to support Gutierrez.

The Ecuadorian uprising fits into a pattern that has been going on now for a decade in Latin America, and especially since George W. Bush came to power. Not so long ago, when a government in Latin America displeased the U.S., the U.S. was usually able to change it - by direct force if necessary, or by using the local military. This was the fate of Guatemala, of the Dominican Republic, of Chile, of Brazil, and many others. The only notable failure in this regard was Cuba, and the U.S. was able to mobilize almost all Latin American countries to cooperate in isolating/blockading/boycotting Cuba.

In the last five years, on the other hand, many Latin American countries have moved to the left both via the ballot box and via popular demonstrations, but always less than totally left. The list is long: Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Venezuela. Indeed, the only government in South America which the U.S. government really likes these days is Colombia. Just recently, there was an election of the Secretary-General of the Organization of American States. And for the first time in the history of this organization, the U.S. candidate did not win. The Mexican government recently tried to eliminate from the next presidential competition the candidate of the left party. And it had to back down under popular pressure from within Mexico. Cuba is no longer isolated in Latin America. None of this is being celebrated in Washington.

Now these are all small cuts. None of these states, even Venezuela, have pushed too far. But Brazil did organize the G-20 revolt in the World Trade Organization which has brought that organization to a virtual standstill. And Argentina did defy the world financial community and reduce outstanding debts remarkably. And the Free Trade Association of the Americas (ALCA in Spanish initials) is getting nowhere, although it remains the prime economic objective of the U.S. in Latin America.

Left intellectuals and some left movements are unhappy in each of these countries with all the things the supposedly left governments have not done. But the U.S. is even unhappier with what they have done. The fact is that today the U.S. no longer can be sure that it has control - economic, political, or diplomatic - of its backyard, the Americas. It is dying the death of a thousand cuts - all small ones, but quite deadly, nonetheless.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

Putin's Diplomatic Triumph (15 May 2005)

Was it really George W. Bush who was the guest of honor at the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of V-E Day in Moscow on May 8, 2005? Did he really stand on Red Square next to Putin to review goose-stepping Russian troops carrying hammer-and-sickle banners with the image of Lenin while Russian jets roared overhead? I think the world press has underplayed the monumental character of this event. How is it that the major event of this sixtieth anniversary was celebrated in Moscow, and not in Washington, London, Paris, or anywhere else? How come everyone came? By everyone, I mean the presidents of France, China, Israel, the prime ministers of Germany, Italy, Japan, India, South Korea, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and assorted other representatives of some fifty countries. The only major world figure not to come in person was the Prime Minister of Great Britain (too busy perhaps with salving his wounds after a narrow electoral victory that was less than glorious). Also missing were top echelon figures from North Korea (perhaps anxious not to be forced into a meeting on the side of the six-nation group discussing nuclear armaments).

Furthermore, Putin rubbed salt into the wounds of the United States. He took the opportunity to give an interview to the U.S. press criticizing U.S. world policy, and more important to have a summit with leaders of the European Union in order to sign four "road map" accords on the economy; freedom, security, and justice; external security; and research, education, and culture. This follows the April 11 accord with Germany on economic cooperation in eight major areas including nano- and bio-technologies and oil and gas transportation. And since Jacques Chirac also came and stood at Putin's right (while Bush was at his left), Putin accompanied Chirac to inaugurate the monument to Charles De Gaulle.

The U.S. press made much of the fact that three countries refused to come to the celebrations (Estonia, Lithuania, and Georgia), and that President Bush sandwiched his trip to Moscow with a visit before to Riga (where he met the presidents of the three Baltic states) and one after to Georgia, where he gave fire-eating speeches about democracy and received the crowd's cheers for being critical of Putin and Russia about both the present and the past. Why then did Bush go to Moscow at all? In November 2001, Putin visited Bush in Crawford, Texas, and Bush famously talked of trusting Putin, because he "looked him in the eyes." In May 2005, Bush got into Putin's somewhat ancient private automobile and drove Putin around, both of them with broad smiles on their faces, so that every photographer could see how close they were. What's the point of all of this?

This is old Cold War technique on both sides. The U.S. was using lots of rhetoric about freedom, but the bottom line is to do nothing, just as the U.S. used rhetoric to denounce the Soviet repression in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 but essentially did nothing. The U.S. did nothing then because they needed the Soviet Union to keep the lid on nuclear conflict. And today, despite Bush denouncing the Yalta accords, the U.S. still needs Russia. But there is one difference. In the Cold War days, the Soviet Union also needed the United States. So they too used a lot of rhetoric but essentially did nothing. Today, however, the U.S. needs Russia more than Russia needs the United States. It's no longer such a balanced equation.

That the U.S. needs Russia today will be a surprise to most Americans but not to analysts elsewhere in the world. The U.S. needs Russia for a lot of things. It needs Russia so that it not be as isolated in the world diplomatically as it currently is. It needs Russia not to move too close to France and Germany. It needs Russia not to give so much support to Iran. It needs Russia to cooperate on various intelligence matters. One has to say that it is not getting very much along any of these lines from Russia. What does Russia need from the United States? Well, the one thing it doesn't really want is to start up an expensive arms competition, once again. The U.S. keeps threatening this. The question is does it have the money to do it, really?

Well, one can say the U.S. also wants to gain diplomatic and political support among the countries of the former Soviet Union. That's true. And these countries are often ready to play the game. But they want more than words. And the question is, how far is the U.S. ready to go in Georgia to get Russia to withdraw its troops. In the end Saakashvili needs to come to terms with Putin, not with George W. Bush. And Bush will continue to put Putin ahead of Saakashvili. It's a question of priorities.

Of course, both Bush and Putin have to worry about their home audiences. Hence the rhetoric, especially on the side of Bush. But those who really want some anti-Russian action in the United States are already getting wary of Bush - all talk and not much action. And money, money, money!

On May 10, the Ottawa Citizen in Canada had a political cartoon which sums up the situation: It shows a diminutive Bush walking beside an extremely tall Putin. Bush's head only reaches the top of Putin's legs. And he is saying: "Wow...I can still see into your soul from here, Vladimir!" Putin, who no doubt is having some trouble at home these days, is compensating by doing quite well in the geopolitical arena. As an old KGB officer, he must be smiling a sweet smile.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

Playing With Fire: the U.S., Iraq, Iran (1 June 2005)

When you're a powerful country, it's hard not to play with fire. But the Bush regime has been particularly reckless. Take for example the triangle Iran, Iraq, the United States. The history is well-known. The first famous CIA intervention anywhere was in Iran, way back in 1953. At that time, Iran had a prime minister named Mohamed Mossadegh, a secular middle-class politician who had the audacity to nationalize Iranian oil. The shah went into exile. Great Britain and the U.S. were quite unhappy about this and they backed, indeed inspired, a military coup to arrest Mossadegh and restore the shah to his throne. From then on, the shah's Iran became a close ally of the United States. Shah Reza Pahlevi's regime was authoritarian and very repressive but this didn't bother the U.S. since he was a pillar of pro-U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Finally, the shah's regime was overthrown by a popular uprising in 1979 and the shah went into exile once again. This time the dominant forces turned out to be not secular nationalists but Islamic militants led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. An Islamic republic was proclaimed. And within a year, Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy and kept those they found there prisoners for 444 days. The U.S., needless to say, was quite unhappy once again. Iran proclaimed the U.S. the Great Satan, and the U.S. in turn now considered Iran a total enemy. President Carter's attempt to liberate the U.S. embassy prisoners by force turned out to be a fiasco. And President Reagan got them out only by making a secret deal, returning frozen Iranian assets for their release.

The U.S. decided the best way to handle the Iranians was to encourage the president of Iraq, one Saddam Hussein, to invade Iran, which he did in 1980. Iran is of course a largely Shia Muslim country. And Iraq has a very large number of Shia Muslims who however have been kept from participation in power by Sunni Arab politicians since Iraq's creation as a modern sovereign state. In 1983, Pres. Reagan sent one Donald Rumsfeld as a special envoy to meet Saddam Hussein, to encourage him in his war efforts, to offer him direct and indirect forms of assistance (including some elements of biological warfare), to remove Iraq from the U.S. list of states aiding terrorist groups, and in general to coddle Saddam. The Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years, was extremely costly to both sides in both casualties and money, and finally ended in exhaustion, with the troops back at the starting-point. It was a military truce, but of course the political enmity persisted.

Saddam Hussein, as we know, found it difficult to repay the debts he had contracted in order to conduct this war, especially Iraq's large debts to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. He decided to cancel the debts and satisfy long-standing nationalist claims in one fell swoop by invading Kuwait in 1990. Now at last the U.S. turned against Saddam Hussein, leading a U.N.-sanctioned coalition to oust Iraq from Kuwait with, among other things, the tacit support of Iran. The war ended with various kinds of double crosses. Saddam had sent much of his air force to Iran to keep it safe from U.S. bombing. After the war ended, Iran refused to return the planes. The Shia in Iraq rose up in rebellion against Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War, but the U.S. refused to help them after the truce with Saddam, although the U.S. eventually did enforce a no-fly zone over Shia areas - too late, however, to prevent Saddam from his revenge on the Shia rebels.

Everyone was a bit unhappy with the de facto truce betwen 1991 and 2001. The neo-cons in the U.S. felt that the U.S. had been humiliated by the fact that Saddam remained in power. Saddam was unhappy because of a U.S.-led economic boycott and U.N.-decreed limitations on Iraq's sovereignty concerning the sale of oil. Iraqi Shia (and Kurds) were unhappy because Saddam was still in power, and the U.S. had let them down. And Iran was unhappy because Saddam was still in power, because the Iraqi Shia were still suffering, and because the U.S. was still too much a force in the region.

When September 11 occurred, the neo-cons seized the opportunity to get Bush to focus on a war on Iraq. As we know, the invasion would finally occur in 2003, resulting in the overthrow of Saddam. At the time, George W. Bush denounced the "axis of evil" - a trio of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. The U.S. had now decided to be against both the Iraqi and the Iranian regimes simultaneously, but to take on Iraq militarily first. It is quite clear that in 2003 the Bush regime considered it only a matter of time before the U.S. took on Iran.

What President Bush seemed to expect in 2003 is that the U.S. would be able to install, rather rapidly, a friendly regime in Iraq, and then proceed to force a showdown with Iran. What they did not expect was a quite powerful resistance movement in Iraq, one which they now seem unable to contain seriously. What they did not expect was effective political pressure from the Shia to hold early elections that would give the Shia a majority in the government. What they did not expect was that the U.S. military would be so overstretched that there is now no way the U.S. can seriously consider undertaking any kind of military action to change the regime in Iran.

And least of all did they expect that it would be Iran that would be in a position to be the great diplomatic victor of the U.S. invasion. Take what happened on May, 15, 2005. The U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, made an unannounced visit to Baghdad, during which she spent her brief time half scolding, half pleading with the new Iraqi government, and all this is public. She said that the Iraqis should try to be more "inclusive," the code word for making more space for Sunni Arabs in the government. She cautioned against "severe" de-Baathification, meaning the inclusion in power of at least some of those who supported Saddam Hussein. Presumably, Rice thinks this might undermine the resistance to U.S. occupation and make it possible to reduce U.S. troop commitment to Iraq (the better to use them against Iran?). Curious turnaround where the U.S. Secretary of State is pleading on behalf of at least some ex-Baathists. And, as far as one can tell, to half-deaf ears. The analyses of the present Iraqi government, or rather its priorities, seem to be different.

Two days later, the Foreign Minister of Iran, Kamal Khazzeri, arrived for a far more successful four-day visit. He was greeted at the airport by Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, himself a Sunni and a Kurd, who broke into fluent Farsi. After three days, Iraq and Iran signed an agreement to end hostilities between them, in which the new Iraqi government agreed with Iran that the Iraq-Iran war was initiated by Saddam Hussein. The two countries renewed criticisms of Israel. If Bush thinks the new Iraqi government is going to join the U.S. in a crusade against Iran, that other member of the "axis of evil," he clearly has another think coming.

Relations between Iraq and Iran have now become normal, en route to becoming friendly. This is not what the neo-cons had envisaged when they launched the drive for a U.S.-led "democratization" of the Middle East. When the U.S. forces leave Iraq (probably sooner rather than later), Iran will still be around, and (thanks to the U.S.) stronger than ever.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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 Ambiguous French 'No' to the European Constitution (15 June 2005)

On May 29, 2005, the French voted in a referendum not to ratify the proposed European constitution. Three days later, Dutch voters did the same. In both cases, the margin was solid. Since then, the world press has been filled with discussion about the future of Europe as a vision and as an institution. But the consequences of these votes is in fact extremely ambiguous.

Take the French vote. There were three groups which hailed the vote as a victory: the neo-cons in the United States, large segments of the French left (and particularly the alterglobalists), and rightwing Euroskeptics throughout Europe. In the U.S., William Kristol, editor of the leading journal of the neo-cons, the Weekly Standard, ended his editorial on "A New Europe?" with "Vive la France." The proponents of the "no" on the French left celebrated in the streets of Paris. And rightwing Euroskeptics were delighted at last to win a round in their efforts to derail Europe.

Could they all have been right? Let us see what they were celebrating. For the U.S. neo-cons, the French "no" (and the Dutch "no") were defeats for arrogant, anti-American European elites, and no doubt particularly for the current prime nemesis of the neo-cons, Jacques Chirac. "This is a moment of hope - for the prospects of a strong pro-American, pro-liberty, more or less free-market and free-trade, social and morally and reinvigorated Europe," said Kristol.

For French alterglobalists, the "no" vote represented quite the opposite - both a rebuff to Anglosaxon conservative values and a rejection of neoliberalism as a program, as incarnated in the proposed Constitution, and as represented by the members of the European Commission and the bureaucracy in Brussels (and represented for them as well by Chirac's government in France). And for the rightwing Euroskeptics, the vote represented a blow against this same Commission and this same Brussels bureaucracy, which stood in their eyes for imposing socialism on Europe. There was also a strong xenophobic element in the French "no" (and even more in the Dutch "no") - a rejection of the possible future admission of Turkey into the European Union, and an attack on the policies that had admitted so many Moslem immigrants into Europe.

Obviously, as in all referenda, the "no" vote put together very different groups with very different objectives. What seems to have provided the additional "no" votes to previous referenda in France were an increased percentage of Socialist and Green voters who were angry about the state of the economy and fearful of further "globalization" - a view they expressed by defeating the treaty. And what seems to have provided the additional "no" votes in the Netherlands is an upsurge of fears about Muslim immigrants in their country caused by recent very notable acts of violence.

Whatever the explanation of the votes, what are the consequences? The "no" votes mean the definitive end of the proposed Constitution, since it required unanimous ratification, and there is zero likelihood that France or the Netherlands will have a second vote to undo the first. This does not, of course, mean the end of institutional Europe. The EU is left with the structure it has. The problem is that the existing structure was considered by most people to be inadequate to the needs of an expanded Europe, and the Constitution was supposed to improve the situation by reducing the need for unanimity in a number of areas, and by creating two central posts (a president and a minister of foreign affairs) to increase political solidity. It may be some time before European governments try again to improve the present institutional structures.

Since one of the main problems that led both to the attempt to write a new Constitution and to the rejection of this very Constitution was the expansion of Europe from 15 to 25 members, further expansion may well be on hold. Bulgaria and Romania were scheduled to join the EU in 2007. The German Christian Democratic Union, presently expected to win the 2006 elections, has already announced that, once in power, they may veto or hold up these adhesions. The chances of Croatia, Macedonia, Ukraine, and of course Turkey to be allowed to join seem even thinner for the moment.

There are those who are quietly happy. One of them is Tony Blair. The French "no" has various positive consequences for him. It saves the United Kingdom from holding its own referendum in 2006 as promised, and therefore a probable public defeat for him. Blair can now contend that he was in favor of the defeated Constitution but that a British referendum is now irrelevant. Furthermore, Blair cannot be unhappy about the rebuff to Chirac (as well as to Schröder in the separate and earlier German regional elections). It is welcome relief from his difficulties at home because of his Iraq policy. Blair may now try to put himself forward now as the leader of Europe.

Kristol's editorial no doubt reflects the mood of the Bush regime. They have been trying for four years to throw a monkey-wrench into a stronger Europe. The rejection of the Constitution and the confusion that it is causing is the first good news they have had in two years on that front. In the long run, Europe will no doubt continue to pull away from U.S. domination but Bush at this point is more concerned with the short run, and in the short run the French "no" is definitely helpful to him.

As for the French alterglobalists, what have they gained? They have demonstrated an increased strength within the family of all those left of center in France. Indeed, the French Socialist party and the Green party are both in turmoil as a result of the vote. There may be important realignments and it is not at all sure that the French rainbow coalition of the left can reconstitute itself in a way that will enable it to win the 2007 presidential elections, especially if the center-right coalition manages to get its act together better than the center-left coalition.

Have the alterglobalists made a major impact on the struggle against neoliberalism in the world-economy? They were already doing well due to the rise of protectionist sentiment throughout the countries of the North (North America, western Europe, east Asia). The vote in France is a reflection of this. But will this vote accelerate the movement? That depends on two things. One is whether the alterglobalists can separate in the popular mind the fight against neoliberalism from the xenophobic, anti-Islamic sentiments that are overtaking much of Europe. And the second is the degree to which the position of the Bush regime continues to erode in the geopolitical arena, and it is therefore unable to capitalize on the setback to European political integration.

Many people in Europe are saying that now is the moment to "start over" in the whole exercise of European unity. The problem from the beginning has been that a more social Europe is not possible unless it is a more federal Europe. But significant segments of the European left (and not only the left in France) have always been afraid that a more federal Europe meant an undermining of the social achievements in their own country. Until the European left is ready to test its strength and fight its fight within a more federal European structure, it is going to go from confused referendum to confused refendum, find itself weakened internally in the struggle to maintain national social achievements, and find Europe unable to play the world geopolitical role vis-à-vis the United States that the European left wishes it to play.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

Mr. Bush's War (1 July 2005)

We know now that George W. Bush confided to one of his friends before he was president that he wanted a war with Iraq and that, unlike his father, he would get rid of Saddam Hussein. And so he has. But as the U.S. polls turn seriously against him and a majority of Americans today say that the war wasn't worth the loss of lives, it is time to take a reckoning of what Mr. Bush has accomplished.

He wanted a quick war, and he didn't get that. The U.S. occupiers are faced today, two years after the invasion was launched, with a stiff Iraqi resistance which the U.S. doesn't seem to be able to quench. Indeed, it seems to be growing more, not less, deadly as time goes on. The U.S. says its strategy is to train Iraqi government troops to the point that they can handle this resistance. But everyone admits, and first of all the U.S. generals on the scene in Iraq, that the U.S. is nowhere near this goal, and that it might not be reached for a number of years, if ever. Donald Rumsfeld himself is talking of needing to stay in Iraq for twelve years, which certainly doesn't make it seem as if he thinks the Iraqi government is going to be able to handle the resistance very soon without U.S. assistance.

At this point, there are extremely few Iraqi government units that can fight even a minor engagement by themselves. The training doesn't seem to stick. Now, one can presume that the U.S. trainers are competent and highly motivated. So why doesn't the training stick? There seem to be several reasons. One is the motivation of the Iraqi troops. They are in it for the most part because it is a relatively well-paying job, if an extremely dangerous one at the moment. So they collect the pay checks and avoid the battles, especially since they are ill-equipped for the most part. One intrepid Westerner who actually went out with these troops for a while (most Western reporters remain in the well-protected Green Zone of Baghdad) discovered that these troops were singing anti-American songs when U.S. advisors were out of hearing.

Few commentators have made the obvious comparison of these U.S.-trained Iraqi troops with the resistance units. The latter, though lacking the U.S. training and U.S. support, seem to fight very well, as admitted by the U.S. military. They are certainly not in it for the money. Dare I suggest they are in it for the patriotism, whether this is Iraqi national patriotism or Islamic jihad or a combination of the two? And this is a quite powerful motivation. Every once in a while, an American advisor points to the fact that rebellions can be crushed, and offers as examples the British crushing of both the Malaysian rebels and the Mau Mau in Kenya. But there are obvious differences. In Malaysia, the rebels were rooted in the Chinese community and the Malay majority had no sympathy for them. And the Mau Mau lacked any access to advanced weaponry. There is no comparison with the situation in Iraq, which is closer in structure to all those resistances that did win out against the West or West-supported regimes.

Mr. Bush also wanted a regime in power that would be a strong, long-term ally, capable of running the country. So far he hasn't got that either. On all three counts - strength, role as a reliable U.S. ally, and ability to run the country - the new Iraqi government has yet to show that it can meet the bill. Military strength they clearly do not have. So let's look at the ability to run the country. In the chaotic situation that Iraq presents today, there is an exodus of the skilled professionals which Iraq has in larger supply than most Middle Eastern countries. Under Saddam, some of these professionals left because of repression or fear. Today, they are leaving because their lives are threatened daily by mafiosi, resisters, random violence, and kidnapings. Skilled female labor stays home, in part out of fear of the chaos but in large part because of the Muslim fundamentalist pressures.

As for being a reliable U.S. ally, I sure hope that Condi Rice is not counting on the present Iraqi government in a pinch or in the middle run. For one thing, the Iraqis have to get their act together in the enormous tensions between the differing ethnic/religious groups. If the Iraqi army is weak, that is not true of the militias, which are more clearly the future of order (and disorder) in Iraq. Pulled in all directions, there is no national project, certainly not one of being a good boy in a neoliberal world order.

The third thing Mr. Bush hoped for was the reassertion of an uncontested hegemony of the United States in the world arena. But it is now becoming jaded journalese to point out that de facto multipolarity is the name of the present situation, and that the U.S. is on a downward slide. Dick Cheney can rant all he wants, but one has to wonder whether even he believes that the U.S. is stronger than ever and that the world is complying with U.S. wishes.

And finally, like the narrow-minded provincial that he is, George W. Bush expected that the U.S. would flourish at home and return to the mythical paradise that was the United States of the robber barons of the nineteenth century making their fortunes in a country peopled by happy small-town, Christian families going to church on Sundays and hiding their sins in a big closet. Instead, the United States is living through a national culture war that is massive and threatens to turn violent in the next decade. The U.S. has never been so split internally since the Civil War. Indeed, in some ways, the U.S. is replaying the Civil War. But, as with all these things, the second time around is not only farce but even more vicious.

Richard Nixon seems in retrospect to have been merely a small-time criminal, but at least an intelligent one. He presided over the defeat in Vietnam, but he wasn't the one who started the war. Nonetheless, his downfall was caused by his skullduggery in the context of the defeat in Vietnam. Will George W. Bush be impeached? Doubtful. But his skullduggery is far vaster than that of Tricky Dick, and history (and the U.S. people) will judge him more harshly.

In the meantime, Iraqis and Americans are dying and being maimed every day. And nothing good will come out of these deaths.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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 Zapatistas: The Second Stage (15 July 2005)

Since 1994, the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas has been the most important social movement in the world - the barometer and the igniter of antisystemic movements around the world. How can it be that a small movement of Mayan Indians in one of the poorest regions of Mexico can play such a major role? To answer that, we have to take the story of the antisystemic movements in the world-system back to 1945.

From 1945 to the mid-1960's at least, the antisystemic movements (or Old Left) - the Communist parties, the Social-Democratic parties, the national liberation movements - were on the rise throughout the world, and came to power in a very large gamut of states. They were riding high. But just as they seemed to be on the cusp of universal triumph, they ran into two roadblocks - the world revolution of 1968, and the revival of the world right.

The world revolutionaries of 1968 were of course protesting everywhere against U.S. imperialism but they were protesting against the movements of the Old Left as well. For the students and workers involved in the 1968 movements, the Old Left movements had come to power, yes, but had not then fulfilled their promises of transforming the world in a more egalitarian, more democratic direction. They were found wanting. The 1968ers went on to create new movements (Greens, feminist movements, identity movements) but none of these was able to mobilize the kind of mass support that the traditional movements had acquired in the post-1945 period.

In addition, and in the wake of a major downturn in the world-economy, the world right caught its breath and reasserted itself. Most notable of course were the neoliberal governments of Mrs. Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. But even more important perhaps was the ability of the IMF and the U.S. Treasury to impose on most of those governments where the Old Left was still in power a major retreat in their economic policies, getting them to shift from import-substitution developmentalism to export-oriented growth.

When the last and strongest of these Old Left governments - the Communist regimes of the USSR and its East-Central European satellites - collapsed in 1989-1991, the growing disarray of the antisystemic movements (both Old Left and New Left) reached an apex of disillusionment and gloominess about their capacity to transform the world.

But just as the tide of neoliberal ideology seemed to reach its peak in the mid-1990s, the tide began to turn. The turning point was the Zapatista rebellion of Jan. 1, 1994. The Zapatistas raised high the banner of the most oppressed segments of the world population, the indigenous peoples, and laid claim to their right to autonomy and well-being. Furthermore, they did it not by demanding to take power in the Mexican state, but by seeking to take power in their own communities, for which they asked the formal recognition by the Mexican state.

And while the military side of their rebellion came rapidly to a close with a truce, politically they reached out to the "civil society" in Mexico, and then to that of the entire world. They convened "intergalactic" conferences in the forests of Chiapas, and were able to obtain the attendance of an impressive number of militants and intellectuals from around the world. When a new president came to power in Mexico in 2000 (ousting the decrepit "revolutionary" movement that had been in power for sixty-odd years), the Zapatistas marched on Mexico City to demand that the terms of the truce accord of 1996 (the so-called San Andrés Accords) at last be implemented by the Mexican government. And when the Mexican legislature failed to do this, despite the enormous support the Zapatistas were receiving from the "civil society," they returned to their villages in Chiapas and began to implement their autonomy unilaterally by creating - de facto, if not de jure - democratic governments, their own school system, their own health facilities. But the Mexican army remained poised around them, always potentially threatening to dismantle this de facto structure.

The importance of the Zapatistas went way beyond the narrow confines of Chiapas or even of Mexico. They became an example of the possible to others everywhere. If in the last five years, most South American countries have put left or populist governments in power, the Zapatista example was part of the igniting forces. If the protestors in Seattle were able to derail the 1999 WTO meeting, and were able to follow up with similar demonstrations in Genoa, Quebec City, and other places as well as this year in Gleneagles, they were in no small measure inspired by the Zapatistas. And when the World Social Forum capped this renewal of antisystemic struggle beginning in 2001, the Zapatistas were a heroic model.

But now, suddenly, in June 2005, the Zapatistas proclaimed a red alert, calling all their communities to leave their villages and come into the forest for a massive "consultation" of the base. The reason? They said they could no longer afford simply to wait indefinitely as the Mexican state ignored the promises they had made a decade earlier in the truce agreements. They declared themselves ready to "risk the little they had gained" (that is, the de facto limited autonomy which had no juridical base) in order to try something new. The Zapatistas declared that they had ended the first phase of their struggle, and that it was time to move on to a second stage, one that would be political and not military, they added.

In the third and last part of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacondona Forest, issued on June 30, 2005, the Zapatistas have given us a clear indication of the political line they are advocating. It makes no mention of any political party, either in Mexico or elsewhere. They tell people everywhere who are struggling for their rights, who are on the left, that the Zapatistas are with them. They talk of creating a vast political alliance in Mexico - we are Indians but we are also Mexicans. And they talk of creating a vast political alliance in the world. They use a language that is at once inclusive - inclusive of all strata and all peoples and above all of all oppressed groups - but that is resolutely on the left, not however necessarily tied to any party.

The most important thing about this initiative, in my opinion, is its timing. It is eleven years since the tide began to roll back against neo-liberalism and imperialism. But for the Zapatistas, not enough has been accomplished. I have the sense that they are not the only ones who think this. I have the sense that throughout Latin America, and especially in all those countries where left or populist groups have come to power, there is a similar feeling that this has not been enough, that these governments have had to make too many compromises, that popular enthusiasm is waning. I have the sense that in the World Social Forum, there is the same sentiment that what they have accomplished since they started in 2001 has been remarkable, but is not enough, that the WSF cannot simply continue to do the same things over and over. In Iraq and the Middle East in general there seems also to be a sense that the resistance to the machista interventionism of the United States has been amazingly strong but that even so it has not been enough.

In 1994, the Zapatista rebellion was the barometer of a rejection of the helplessness that had begun to overcome the world antisystemic sentiment. It served also as the igniter of a series of other initiatives. Today, when the Zapatistas tell us that the first stage is over and that we cannot linger there, they seem to be again the barometer of a shift in sentiment everywhere. The Zapatistas want to move on to a second stage - political, inclusive, but thus far without having made very detailed objectives. Will they now be the inspiration for a similar reevaluation throughout Latin America, in the World Social Forum, throughout the antisystemic movements all around the globe? And what will be the detailed objectives of the next phase?

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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., India, and China (1 August 2005)

On July 18, 2005, the United States and India issue a joint statement, which celebrated the new Strategic Partnership between the two. Three days later, the Chinese government revalued upward the yuan in relation to the U.S. dollar, something which the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, had been requesting for some time, and which he praised effusively. Both represent significant shifts in the world geopolitical structure. The two are more closely linked than the world press has noticed, and neither is quite what it seems.

Both events were hailed in the United States as diplomatic victories for the U.S. Were they? And what makes these events special? India and China together represent half of the world's population. Yet for the entire second half of the twentieth century, when the United States was the dominant power in the world-system, the U.S. never had really good relations with either power. Has this changed?

The China story is in many ways more well-known in the United States, and of greater concern to the U.S. Congress, the U.S. media, and the general public. When the Chinese Communists entered Shanghai in 1949, and then proclaimed the People's Republic of China, the U.S. government regarded this as a great danger to U.S. national interests. Not only was their political ally, Chiang Kai-shek, forced to retreat to Taiwan, but the new Chinese leaders were seen as the forward batallions of world Communism. In 1950, China signed a military alliance with the Soviet Union. When the Korean War started later that year, the United States soon found itself fighting the Chinese on the battlefields, and not too successfully, it should be added.

During the 1950s, China and the United States were unremittingly hostile to each other. Then suddenly in 1960 the world became aware of a split between China and the Soviet Union. This had many causes but one precipitating factor was the fact that the Soviet Union reneged on its pledge to help China acquire nuclear weapons, something China would nonetheless accomplish on its own in 1964. In the decade following this, the U.S. and China began, largely unnoticed, to take parallel positions on many questions, culminating in the spectacular visit of Richard Nixon to Beijing in 1972 to meet Mao Zedong. China and the United States saw mutual advantage in constraining the Soviet Union, and entered into what can be considered to have been a limited alliance.

In the 1980s, China began a major internal economic reorganization, allowing it to participate in the world market as an increasingly important producer and trading partner. By the late 1990s, Chinese economic growth became the big story of the world-economy. This aroused very mixed response in the United States.

On the one hand, China now represented a major zone of potential large profit for U.S. corporations, which had a new and very important outlet for their exports and indeed their investments. In addition, China's increasingly large accumulation of U.S. dollars resulting from the excess of their exports over imports were invested almost exclusively in U.S. treasury bonds, permitting the Bush administration to cover its enormous balance of payments deficit. This deficit was the result of the combination of the Bush tax refunds, the incredible costs of the Iraq war, and the declining level of manufacturing exports. This seemed a good deal to a lot of people in Washington - profits for U.S. corporations, a low interest rate set by the Federal Reserve Board encouraging a high level of consumption in the U.S. and a major housing bubble, which in turn sustained internal U.S. employment levels. And in the geopolitical arena, the U.S. was seeking the essential help of the Chinese in its efforts to restrain North Korean nuclear ambitions.

On the other hand, there were many nay-sayers in the U.S. to any close relation to China. First of all, Chinese exports fostered by the undervaluation of the yuan was said to be responsible for the unabated decline in employment in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Even more important to the militarist segment of the Bush administration was the fact that the Chinese were using this economic growth to invest heavily in a military upgrading which was threatening to make the Chinese a serious world military power in the next twenty years. And when this year the Chinese state corporation CNOOC entered a bid to buy a U.S. oil producer, Unocal, hysteria broke out in the U.S. Congress, with much talk of a long-term threat to U.S. oil supply.

The Bush administration was caught between two sets of supporters, and tried to navigate the waters by concentrating on pressuring the Chinese for an upward evaluation of the yuan. This presumably would improve the prospects of U.S. manufacturing exports, and might in the process create some constraints on the Chinese budget available for military expenditures. And in addition, the U.S. moved to strengthen its links with India, a bit to counterbalance the growing strength of China in the Asian arena.

The story of U.S. relations with India is less well-followed in the U.S. but is no less ambiguous and complex than the Chinese story. When India became independent in 1948, the U.S. in principle saw this as a success story - decolonization of the world's largest colonial territory and a government that permitted normal electoral politics. But India, almost immediately, assumed the role of the world's leading neutral (later to be called non-aligned) power in the Cold War, and the U.S. did not like this one bit. A few years later, Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, would make his famous declaration that "neutralism is immoral."

The moral disapprobation of the U.S. did not faze the Indian leadership at all. They persisted in their self-assigned role, indeed expanded it. India was one of the five countries that convened the Afro-Asian conference at Bandung in 1955, and joined with Egypt and Yugoslavia a few years later in establishing the network of non-aligned countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Furthermore, since India was not able to make serious military purchases in the U.S., it made them in the Soviet Union. When there was a brief but significant border war between China and India in 1962, the Soviet Union sided with India, not China. The U.S. began to think of India as a de facto partner of the Soviet Union.

The U.S. meanwhile cultivated a close relationship with Pakistan, which was in rather constant conflict with India over a wide range of issues. India had its first nuclear explosion in 1974, Pakistan in 1987. Neither country signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and both countries were then the objects of U.S. Congress limitations on U.S. military commitments. Still, it was clear to one and all that the U.S. was allied with Pakistan and not with India. After September 11, U.S. links to Pakistan grew ever stronger. The U.S. now began however to suspect that the reliability of the Pakistani alliance, both short-term and more importantly middle-run, was low, and began to consider India more favorably, especially given the end of the Cold War and therefore of the Soviet menace.

Was then the new Indo-U.S. joint statement a victory for U.S. diplomacy? In it, the U.S. for the very first time legitimated India's role as a nuclear power, by promising India that it "will work to achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India as it realizes its goals of promoting nuclear power and achieving energy security." This of course undermined enormously the already weak position of the U.S. in opposing Iranian nuclear ambitions, since what India has received from the U.S. is precisely what Iran has been claiming is its right, "full civil nuclear energy."

And in return, what did the U.S. get? - a promise "to combat terrorism relentlessly." Since India was already doing this, it wasn't very much. Meanwhile, India is maintaining its close relations with Iran and Russia, and even (on paper) a strategic alliance with China. More importantly, India is proceeding with Project Seabird, aimed at turning it into the major military power in the Indian Ocean. This does not make the Chinese too happy, to be sure, but it shouldn't make the U.S. too happy either, since at the moment, it is the U.S. that is the major military power in the Indian Ocean.

As for China's upward reevaluation of the yuan, it was a mere 2.1. percent, and the Chinese seem to want to stay there for the moment. Far more important is the fact that the yuan is no longer pegged to the U.S. dollar but to a basket of currencies. This means the end of the guarantee that the Chinese will sustain the U.S. balance of payments deficit. A stronger yuan will make it cheaper for the Chinese to buy U.S. oil companies. The revaluation will scarcely matter in terms of U.S. manufacturing exports. But it will matter much in the maintenance of the U.S. housing bubble. When the interest rates rise enough, the financial crisis of the U.S. government may begin to seem severe to the U.S. Congress, and its willingness to continue the mad level of governmental expenditures on war and tax refunds will come into acute question.

Bottom line of all of this: India has become legitimated as a world military player, and China as a world financial player. The U.S. has gotten paper gains in return for both recognitions, not worth the paper they are written on.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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. Has Lost the Iraq War (15 August 2005)

It's over. For the U.S. to win the Iraq war requires three things: defeating the Iraqi resistance; establishing a stable government in Iraq that is friendly to the U.S.; maintaining the support of the American people while the first two are being done. None of these three seem any longer possible. First, the U.S. military itself no longer believes it can defeat the resistance. Secondly, the likelihood that the Iraqi politicians can agree on a constitution is almost nil, and therefore the likelihood of a minimally stable central government is almost nil. Thirdly, the U.S. public is turning against the war because it sees no "light at the end of the tunnel."

As a result, the Bush regime is in an impossible position. It would like to withdraw in a dignified manner, asserting some semblance of victory. But, if it tries to do this, it will face ferocious anger and deception on the part of the war party at home. And if it does not, it will face ferocious anger on the part of the withdrawal party. It will end up satisfying neither, lose face precipitously, and be remembered in ignominy.

Let us see what is happening. This month, Gen. George Casey, the U.S. commanding general in Iraq, suggested that it may be possible to reduce U.S. troops in Iraq next year by 30,000, given improvements in the ability of the Iraqi government's armed forces to handle the situation. Almost immediately, this position came under attack from the war party, and the Pentagon amended this statement to suggest that maybe this wouldn't happen, since maybe the Iraqi forces were not yet ready to handle the situation, which is surely so. At the same time, stories appeared in the leading newspapers suggesting that the level of military sophistication of the insurgent forces has been growing steadily and remarkably. And the increased rate of killings of U.S. soldiers certainly bears this out.

In the debate on the Iraqi constitution, there are two major problems. One is the degree to which the constitution will institutionalize Islamic law. It is conceivable that, given enough time and trust, there could be a compromise on this issue that would more or less satisfy most sides. But the second issue is more intractable. The Kurds, who still really want an independent state, will not settle for less than a federal structure that will guarantee their autonomy, the maintenance of their militia, and control of Kirkuk as their capital and its oil resources as their booty. The Shiites are currently divided between those who feel like the Kurds and want a federal structure, and those who prefer a strong central government provided they can control it and its resources, and provided that it will have an Islamic flavor. And the Sunnis are desperate to maintain a united state, one in which they will minimally get their fair share, and certainly don't want a state governed by Shia interpretations of Islam.

The U.S. has been trying to encourage some compromise, but it is hard to see what this might be. So, two possibilities are before us right now. The Iraqis paper over the differences in some way that will not last long. Or there is a more immediate breakdown in negotiations. Neither of these meets the needs of the U.S. Of course, there is one solution that might end the deadlock. The Iraqi politicians could join the resisters in a nationalist anti-American thrust, and thereby unite at least the non-Kurd part of the population. This development is not to be ruled out, and of course is a nightmare from the U.S. point of view.

But, for the Bush regime, the worst picture of all is on the home front. Approval rating of Bush for the conduct of the Iraqi war has gone down to 36 percent. The figures have been going steadily down for some time and should continue to do so. For poor George Bush is now faced with the vigil of Cindy Sheehan. She is a 48-year-old mother of a soldier who was killed in Iraq a year ago. Incensed by Bush's statement that the U.S. soldiers died in a "noble cause," she decided to go to Crawford, Texas, and ask to see the president so that he could explain to her for what "noble cause" her son died.

Of course, George W. Bush hasn't had the courage to see her. He sent out emissaries. She said this wasn't enough, that she wanted to see Bush personally. She has now said that she will maintain a vigil outside Bush's home until either he sees her or she is arrested. At first, the press ignored her. But now, other mothers of soldiers in Iraq have come to join her. She is getting moral support from more and more people who had previously supported the war. And the national press now has turned her into a major celebrity, some comparing her to Rosa Parks, the Black woman whose refusal to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama a half-century ago was the spark that transformed the struggle for Black rights into a mainstream cause.

Bush won't see her because he knows there is nothing that he can say to her. Seeing her is a losing proposition. But so is not seeing her. The pressure to withdraw from Iraq is now becoming mainstream. It is not because the U.S. public shares the view that the U.S. is an imperialist power in Iraq. It is because there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Or rather there is a light, the light an acerbic Canadian cartoonist for the Calgary Sun drew recently. He shows a U.S. soldier in a dark tunnel approaching someone to whose body is attached an array of explosives. The light comes from the match he is holding to the wick that will cause them to explode. In the month following the attacks in London and the high level of U.S. deaths in Iraq, this is the light that the U.S. public is beginning to see. They want out. Bush is caught in an insoluble dilemma. The war is lost.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

Deepening Rifts on the Left? (1 September 2005)

For the last 150 years, one of the biggest issues that has divided the world left has been whether or not it is important for left social movements to support the electoral objectives of whatever is the principal party "left-of-center" in a particular country. There have been three basic positions: those who say that such parties are totally unreliable as defenders of the interests of the social movements and therefore should be shunned; those who say that the only hope of achieving anything substantial is to have such parties in power; and those who waver between these two positions. In fact this third group, the waverers, are almost always a substantial group whose immediate position often dictates the political results.

The dilemmas have become very acute lately, as we can see by taking a look at the current political debates in Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico. The politics and the historical background of each country are of course quite different. But they share certain features. Each has a functioning parliamentary system with regular elections. In none of them is there a serious armed military insurgency that involves the breakdown of order. In all of them there is a public debate going on about what left social movements should be doing now.

The most immediately dramatic case is that of Brazil. There, a left party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), came to power in October 2002 with the election of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva as President. This was the long-sought triumph of a left party and was hailed as this by the social movements in Brazil and indeed elsewhere in the world. In the elections, as well as in the twenty years preceding, the PT had the support of the two largest social movements - the trade-unions (CUT) and the rural landless (MST), as well as of a series of Catholic left social movements. The immediate problem for the government was that, although the PT won a clear majority in the presidential polls and was the largest party in the lower house, it only obtained circa 20% of the seats in both houses of the legislature. It felt it had to enter into shaky coalitions with centrist and even rightwing parties, in order to get legislation passed.

From the outset, the policies of the Lula government caused controversy on the left. The government appointed key officials and adopted a financial policy that met the desires of the world's investors and of the IMF, and was seen by the social movements as thereby capitulating to neo-liberalism. The PT had promised distribution of land to the landless, and over three years has delivered very little. The PT promised respecting environmental concerns about the development of the Amazon, and has delivered very little.

On the other hand, Brazil's foreign policy seemed to involve a major confrontation with the United States: emphasis on the strengthening of the regional trade community of Mercosur, and seeking its extension to all of South America; friendly links with Chavez in Venezuela; leadership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) of the G-20, which opposed the efforts of the U.S. and the European Union to pursue neo-liberal objectives via the WTO. Some however see Brazil's policies in South America as a regional "imperialism" merely competing with that of the United States.

And in 2005, a new element was injected into the picture. Brazil became embroiled in a corruption scandal that implicated some of the leading figures in the PT and the government, to the point that there has begun to be talk of impeaching Lula. In any case, his own reelection and/or a PT victory in 2006, which seemed a certainty not too long ago, is now in question.

So what should the social movements do? Very early on, many left intellectuals turned against the PT. And a small segment of the party seceded. But neither the CUT nor the MST seemed ready to desert the party. However, now, the MST has begun to be quite strong in its criticism of the government, and the party itself has become internally divided about its policies, especially its financial policies. On the other hand, the social movements, more left elements within the party, and many intellectuals hesitate to abandon the PT altogether, because they fear that, after 2007, there will be installed a truly right-wing government once again, one that would be difficult to evict, once in power.

The situation in South Africa is similar in many ways to that of Brazil. There the African National Congress (ANC) finally won an 80-year battle to establish a state structure based on one man one vote. And of course, once that was achieved, the ANC won the elections handily, electing Nelson Mandela as President in 1994. He was in turn succeeded by Thabo Mbeki in 1999 who was reelected in 2004. In South Africa, the ANC had an alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP) throughout its years of resistance to the apartheid regime, as well as with the trade-union movement, whose present incarnation is the Congress of South African Trade-Unions (COSATU). In South Africa, unlike the case of the PT in Brazil, the ANC has had an overwhelming majority in parliament. The only formal alliance has been with the SACP and COSATU.

The actual policies of the ANC in power have not been that different from those of the PT. They have pursued economic and fiscal policies which the left intellectuals (and indeed COSATU and the SACP) have seen as neoliberal. The ministers who were actually in charge of these policies are however members of the SACP. The government has not done much on promised land reform, although they have done something about extending electricity to Black African urban areas. While originally promising better access to water, the government has sought to privatize the suppliers in part, and this has met resistance from the social movements.

In world affairs, they have joined Brazil in the G-20 within the WTO. They have in effect defended Zimbabwe's regime against the attacks of the U.S. and Great Britain. This however is not at all appreciated by COSATU and South African left intellectuals, which regard the Zimbabwe regime of Robert Mugabe as an antidemocratic regime that has betrayed the freedom struggle. Mbeki has played an important diplomatic role on the African continent, as a "mediator" in many struggles, but some see this too as a sort of regional "imperialism."

The immediate crisis in South Africa, as in Brazil, is over corruption. There however, it is the putative successor to Mbeki, Jacob Zuma, until recently the Deputy President, who has been charged with this and is facing court proceedings. Mbeki moved to suspend Zuma from his party and governmental functions. Both COSATU and the SACP have come to the strong support of Zuma, asking Mbeki to annul the prosecution and asking the ANC to reverse its suspensions of Zuma. But should therefore COSATU and the SACP actually break the alliance? Unlike in Brazil, where the fear is that right-wing parties could come to long-term power, the fear in South Africa of the social movements is that, if they broke with the ANC, it could succeed in excluding them from the limited power they now have. So they hesitate to make a definitive break.

In Mexico, as we have previously seen (Commentary No. 165), the analogous party is the Partido de la Revolución Democrátice (PRD) which is not yet in power, but whose candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), is widely predicted to win the coming elections. The key social movement in this situation is the EZLN or Zapatistas. And they have very loudly taken their distance from the PRD before it even comes to power. They have said that they expect very little in gains if and when that happens. In effect, the Zapatistas are predicting that the PRD in power will not be too different from the PT and the ANC in power. The PRD is also facing some corruption scandals, albeit lesser ones than those in Brazil and South Africa.

But almost immediately after enunciating this position, the Zapatistas clarified it. They said they were not calling on people to abstain from voting for the PRD, nor of course were they calling on them to vote for the PRD. They said that it was a matter for each voter to decide. But they themselves were going to concentrate on what they call "la otra campaña" (the other campaign) to build democratic structures and alliances, in Mexico and the world, from the bottom up.

So, deepening rifts all over, without yet definitive breaks between the left social movements and the main left-of-center party in the country. Can the situation in all three countries remain in this uncertain state? Will the parties respond to the pressures of the left social movements by pursuing bolder, more left policies? Or conversely, can the social movements maintain their pressure, if the parties instead move further to the right, and become more repressive of the social movements? The next few years are a political crossroads in all three countries (and no doubt in many others as well), which will have a major impact on the worldwide struggles of left social movements to construct that "other world that is possible," in the slogan of the World Social Forum.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

Katrina: The Politics of Incompetence and Decline (15 September 2005)

The entire world has been following with stupefaction the incredible performance of the U.S. federal government's response to the physical and human disaster of the hurricane Katrina. All the television networks of the U.S. and of many other countries plus all the major newspapers have been following the story in detail. The general reaction has been to ask how could the government of the richest and most powerful country in the world have reacted to this disaster as poorly as, or even much less well than, governments of poor Third World countries? The simple answer is a combination of incompetence and decline. And the results of this disaster will be a further diminution of respect for the president within the United States and a deepened skepticism in other countries about the United States' capacity to put action behind vacuous rhetoric.

The initial reaction of George W. Bush to Katrina was to say, how could anyone have predicted that the levees would be breached and 80% of the city of New Orleans flooded? As a matter of fact, the Houston Chronicle predicted it in 2001. The New Orleans Times-Picayune predicted it in 2002. And the National Geographic, one of America's most widely-read magazines (and one totally apolitical), predicted it in 2004. As a matter of fact as well, such a catastrophe was listed in documents of the government published during Bush's own presidency as one of three potential major catastrophes that were quite possible. In addition, anyone listening to the television two days before Katrina struck heard the mayor of New Orleans warn the citizens of New Orleans (and the world) that this time, this was a really serious storm, and he ordered mandatory evacuation of the city. As everyone knows now very well, only 80% of the residents had the car and the money with which to evacuate. Did the U.S. government think urgently to send in buses before the storm hit and the levees broke, in order to evacuate the other 20 percent? Of course not.

Ten days after the crisis began, the government seemed to get its act together somewhat, but ten days is a long time. This long delay was however not accidental. It is the direct result of how the Bush regime operates--poor judgment and active indifference to anything that isn't high on their list of priorities. They missed the boat at many different points in the almost five years before Katrina. After Sept. 11, they promised to make sure that the government would be prepared for any emergency. This was in fact the whole point of establishing the Dept. of Homeland Security. Obviously, they did not do it. They proved as unprepared for Katrina as they were for 9/11. Just last year, they urged Congress to reduce the amount of money that could have been used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to repair the levees that were in bad shape. So the Corps of Engineers had to postpone the work.

There is then the question of predicting a storm of such magnitude. There are currently two competing explanations for the ferocity of the storm. One is global warming, which is said to have created conditions in the Gulf of Mexico that favored intensifying hurricanes. The Bush administration has of course always contended that global warming doesn't exist, or at least is greatly exaggerated. The competing explanation is that hurricane strength is a cyclical phenomenon, and that every thirty years or so, the average strength goes up and then goes down. But even if only the latter explanation is used (one that fits the political position of the Bush regime better), it was easy to see that the thirty-year period of weaker hurricanes had come to an end and therefore something like Katrina was highly likely to occur. So, why wasn't the government on the alert? Incompetence and indifference because preventing hurricane damage to New Orleans (and indeed the rest of the Gulf Coast) was not on the high priority list of an administration which wants to fight a war in Iraq, persuade Congress to allow it to drill for oil in Alaska, and repeal the estate tax so that the 2% wealthiest people in the United States can be relieved of this burden.

Another major factor is the political style of Bush and his associates. They made political appointments to all the top posts in the administration. There is nothing unusual in this, since all U.S. presidents do this. But what was different in the Bush style is that Bush and all his appointees were deeply suspicious of the political tendencies of the experienced bureaucrats in the government agencies. They ignored them, they intimidated them, they overruled them regularly. And so these skilled bureaucrats tended to resign. It has been a veritable exodus, not least in the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), the agency in charge of handling such disasters. And this is of course part, a large part, of the explanation of why FEMA did such a bad job--at least until the president finally pulled his incompetent FEMA head, Michael Brown, off the job and turned it over to a Coast Guard Vice-Admiral, who has been handling similar crises for his entire career.

The real question is what now? I am not asking this about the victims, who are suffering in multiple ways and are likely to suffer for some time to come, since they are scattered across the country, without money or jobs or homes. I am asking what now, first for President Bush and secondly for the United States? Bush's ratings, which are already extremely low (by comparison with past presidents), are likely to go lower still. The war in Iraq is every day more unpopular at home and more unwinnable in Iraq. Bush cannot find a way to exit gracefully. The economy is not in good shape at all - oil prices are surging upward, and Katrina surely did not improve things, since New Orleans is a key port in the import and export of U.S. goods, and since both oil wells and natural gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico have been badly damaged. And since the U.S. is now estimated to need to increase its debt by $200 billion to do the necessary reconstruction, the Chinese and other buyers of treasury bonds must be getting more hesitant than ever about subsidizing the improvident Bush regime.

But it is the image of the U.S. that will be the most affected. When El Salvador has to offer troops to help restore order in New Orleans because U.S. troops were so scarce and so slow in arriving, Iran cannot be quaking in its boots about a possible U.S. invasion. When Sweden has its relief planes sitting on the tarmac in Sweden for a week because it cannot get an answer from the U.S. government as to whether to send them, they are not going to be reassured about the ability of the U.S. to handle more serious geopolitical matters. And when conservative U.S. television commentators talk of the U.S. looking like a Third World country, Third World countries may begin to think that maybe there is a grain of truth in the description.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein, distributed by Agence Global. For rights and permissions, including translations and posting to non-commercial sites, and contact: rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically, or e-mail to others, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To contact author, write: immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu.

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.]

Exit Strategy (1 October 2005)

The debate has shifted in the United States. It is no longer about the merits of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is now about when and how the U.S. can withdraw its troops from Iraq, what is called "exit strategy." George Bush does continue to make speeches before ultra-friendly audiences saying that withdrawal now would embolden terrorists. But I think one should notice the "now" in his rhetoric. In any case, Bush's rhetoric is not going over very well. Even among his most ardent supporters, many are saying that the rhetoric is vacuous, and there is no concrete evidence offered of military or political progress for the U.S. position in Iraq. Indeed, every day the situation seems worse, with even the U.S.-backed Iraqi government's officials in Shi'ite Basra arresting British soldiers, who have to be rescued by force.

One has to pay attention when the quintessential Establishment voice on foreign policy in the United States, the review Foreign Affairs, runs an article in which the author is arguing that "the Bush doctrine has collapsed" and that consequently the government has no choice but to "embrace realism" and take a "pragmatic turn." And despite repeated statements by various people that U.S. troops may stay until 2009 or longer, Maj. General Douglas Lute, who is the director of operations of the U.S. Central Command (which oversees the occupation of Iraq) has now stated on the record that the U.S. will pull "significant numbers of troops out of Iraq in the next 12 months in spite of the continuing violence."

I think the strongest sign of a change in mood in the U.S. is that one of the candidates for the Republican party's presidential nomination in 2008, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, says the U.S. is getting "more and more bogged down in Iraq," that the President should meet with Cindy Sheehan, and that the White House is "disconnected from reality and losing the war." It does not matter whether Hagel is right. The important thing is that he's running for the Republican nomination, and he must think that there are Republican voters who will respond to the validity of his analysis. Hagel is in fact moving faster than the leading Democratic politicians, except for Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, also a candidate for a presidential nomination, who has called officially for a withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2006.

Further to the left, there are a number of groups now calling for immediate withdrawal. Their march on Washington was a clear success, with between 100,000 and 200,000 participants - not yet up to the anti-Vietnam War numbers, but then in this war, there are no middle-class draftees. Most of the soldiers are lower-class minorities and poor Whites. The latest polls show a three-way split in U.S. public opinion: one-third for total and immediate withdrawal; one-third wanting to reduce the number of troops, but not yet ready for total withdrawal; and one-third to "stay the course," as President Bush phrases it, or to stay in Iraq "until the job is done," as Vice-President Cheney puts it. This seems to mean a very long time. Those more in the political center want withdrawal by a fixed date. The Observer in London wrote recently that the British government is planning to withdraw substantial troops next spring. This was immediately denied by Tony Blair, but the Observer is not known for inventing stories.

The people in the Cheney camp are really unbudgeable and will simply continue to press their views. It is the debate between those who call for reduction of troops and/or withdrawal by a fixed date and those who call for immediate and total withdrawal that is more interesting. In recent weeks, virtually every major newspaper in the United States has been running editorials whose tenor is: The U.S. probably made a mistake in invading Iraq. But it now has "responsibilities" not to leave precipitously, since that would result in a civil war. The so-called "moderates" (calling for withdrawal by a fixed date) argue that, even if the initial invasion was unjustified, the U.S. responsibility to the Iraqis is to help the U.S.-supported government maintain internal order, until it demonstrates it can do it by itself. This group brandishes the menace of total breakdown of national order in Iraq, civil war, and possible other outside invasions (by Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia).

The answer by those in favor of immediate withdrawal is quite simple. They argue that order has already broken down in Iraq, that the U.S. continued presence is one of the principal causes of this breakdown, that every additional day spent there worsens the situation rather than improves it. And finally they argue that a fixed future date provides no magic since the likelihood that the situation will be substantially different on that date from today is minimal.

The Bush regime has not only lost the war on the ground in Iraq. It is increasingly losing the support of the U.S. public, in a way that Bush may find irreparable.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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 Mudslide (15 October 2005)

The Bush regime is in the middle of a political mudslide, both nationally and internationally. Two almost simultaneous geological mudslides that occurred this month - one in Guatemala and one in Kashmir - have reminded us of how terrible they are. Once they've started, almost nothing can be done to stop them. We can only pick the dead and the survivors out of the devastation afterwards.

For Bush, the warning signals have been there for a while. The occupation of Iraq has been going steadily worse - more lives lost each month, and a political impasse over the constitution however the vote turns out. Popular support in the United States has been sliding downward. The rising cost of gasoline has been noticed by all households, and the rising level of governmental expenditure has been noticed especially by Republican fiscal conservatives. When the hurricanes struck, the incompetence of the Bush regime was there for all to see. Had everything else been going smoothly, political damage might have been marginal. But everything else has not been going smoothly.

Then came the nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. Personally, I have no doubt that she is what Bush says she is, someone who shares his own political outlook, and therefore a logical choice for him. But he has stirred up a hornet's nest among his so-called base - the Christian right in the United States. Let us look at why there has been such a negative reaction to her among Bush supporters and why Bush might have nominated her.

The Christian right has always been wary of Bush, never really sure he is one of them. But they have swallowed all their doubts (lately about the Iraq fiasco, the high level of government spending, and the response to the hurricanes) because they wanted one thing out of him above all - the appointment of a Supreme Court justice who would reverse the historic decision on abortion, Roe v. Wade. They had bad memories of both Reagan and Bush father, who appointed justices (Kennedy and Souter) who were not ready to reverse Roe v. Wade. They wanted a guaranteed choice this time. And there exist no doubt a number of prominent jurists available who would have satisfied this demand.

Bush did not choose any of these jurists. Instead he chose his long-time associate and present-day official counsel to fill the post. Why? There are probably several reasons. Bush knew that appointing any of the list that the Christian right wanted would have led to a filibuster in the Senate. And he was not sure, given his decline in the polls, that he would have won the battle. A defeat in the Senate must have seemed more than he could risk. We'll never know if his calculation about this was right.

The second reason may have been that Bush is worrying about a number of cases to come before the Supreme Court in the next three years that are not about abortion but about his own decisions as the president. And he probably wanted to have a sure vote on those issues, which Miers seemed to offer him (more surely perhaps than any of the anti-abortion jurists the Christian right wanted him to nominate). In addition, the other part of his base - the business community - actually likes Miers, who has had long links with them and is seen by them as reliable on the issues that concern them.

The last reason must surely have been that he thought he'd get away with it vis-à-vis the Christian right, since he thought they would "trust" him. But they don't trust him. They might have trusted him even a year ago, but no longer. It's the mudslide. And of course, the fact that they are now launching a major campaign against Miers, hoping to force him to withdraw the nominee, just accelerates the mudslide. The 2006 elections are coming up. And the signs are clear. In the states where the Republicans hoped to oust Democratic senators, their "strongest" candidates are declining to run, clearly afraid they would lose. This nervousness now pervades the Republican members of Congress, and makes it ever more difficult for Bush to get anything he wants. The fact that Sen. McCain could get a 90-9 vote in the U.S. Senate on an anti-torture proposal that is implicitly very critical of the Bush administration, and was actively opposed by Bush, is a measure of how weak Bush's position has become within his own party.

Political mudslides are situations in which, no matter what you do, you lose. Had Bush nominated one of the jurists the Christian right wanted, he would have lost. But avoiding that peril, and nominating Harriet Miers, he lost as well. How much devastation this mudslide will cause in U.S. politics we shall soon see. But of course, it will have consequences as well on the U.S. position in the world political arena. The Iraqi constitutional referendum is another lose-lose situation into which Bush has fallen, and it is too late to pull back. More on that, after we have the exact returns.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

Mr. Bush's Nightmare (1 November 2005)

Everything went wrong for George W. Bush in October, 2005. Some called it "the perfect storm." It seemed to take Bush by surprise and left him like someone buried in the mudslide, still alive but struggling hard to extricate himself. It looks unlikely that he will be able to do so. Let us review all the fronts on which Bush suffered political setback.

First, Iraq. The U.S. casualty rate passed 2000, and this was noticed even in middle America among those who initially supported the war. Many now feel it was a mistake. Bush's approval rate fell to under 40%, extremely low even for a president in his second term (when ratings often fall). The elections to ratify the Iraqi constitution didn't really help. True it passed, but over very heavy Sunni opposition. No one believes that this constitution can be the basis of a long-term stable, legitimate government, or that this government would really survive a U.S. pullout.

Then, there are the indictments. Note the plural. The Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, is facing charges of money-laundering for electoral gain, and has had to step down. His close political ally, the lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, has been indicted for fraud. And above all, the very powerful I. Lewis Libby, Chief of Staff to the Vice-President and Assistant to the President, has been indicted on five charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements. This indictment is of course closely related to the Iraq War, since the issue was Libby's attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson by "outing" his CIA secret agent wife. Wilson had been sent on an official mission to Niger and later publicly related the non-existence of proof that Saddam Hussein has been buying uranium there. To be sure, Karl Rove has not yet been indicted for his involvement in the same project to discredit Wilson, but the Special Prosecutor made it quite clear that this remains a real possibility. Looming on the horizon is an enquiry into the financial misdeclarations of Senator Bill Frist, the Republican Majority Leader, concerning stock sales. And we should remember that indictments lead to trials some time later, in time to remind everyone of misdeeds after the initial publicity has died down.

Next came the Supreme Court appointment fiasco. Seeking to avoid a knockdown battle in the Senate over the Supreme Court nomination, Bush chose his lawyer, Harriet Miers. He was immediately pounced on by his most conservative supporters, who doubted her conservative credentials. Bush said trust me, and they said we don't trust you, because the only thing that concerns us is undoing the right to abortion, far more important to us than supporting George W. Bush, and we're not sure about Miers. They forced her withdrawal, a humiliation for Bush. He has now had to nominate a person they want, Samuel Alito, and he will thus get the Senate battle he wanted to avoid. Whether Alito is confirmed or not, the political bottom line was stated by former Senator John Breaux of Louisiana, a quite conservative Democrat, who noted the consequence for Republicans in Congress: "It means the fear factor is gone."

And then, to top it off, the President of Iran chose this moment to thumb his nose at the United States by publicly calling for the destruction of Israel as a state. To be sure, this has been Iranian official policy for almost three decades, but restating it now so flagrantly was simply saying to Bush, "I dare you to do something about it." Meanwhile, in Israel, the very temporary truce between the Palestinians and the Israeli government seems to have collapsed.

Can Bush do something to recuperate? Well, obviously, he is trying in the Alito appointment. But even if Alito is confirmed, the credit will not go to Bush. Can Bush invade Iran? Most obviously not. And getting a U.N. Security Council resolution to sanction Syria, if he can, is small potatoes. If one goes through the list of what went wrong in October, every item will continue to plague Bush: mounting casualties in Iraq, political instability in the Iraqi government, judicial trials that in every case implicate his government, a fierce social battle over the Supreme Court, and Iranian (and North Korean) open defiance.

Even political friends are getting off the sinking ship. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of Bush's few fervent allies in Europe, but himself in trouble in his coming elections, chose this moment to announce very publicly that he had fruitlessly tried to persuade Bush not to invade Iraq. And Senator Trent Lott, former Republican Majority Leader, opined that Bush needs "fresh faces" among his immediate aides and the cabinet.

Within the Republican Party, the reaction of persons up for election has been to take their distance from Bush. Once upon a time, not too long ago, everyone wanted Bush to campaign for them. Now candidates are careful not to invite him to do this. Bush's ability to be the leader, nationally or internationally, is critically damaged, perhaps irreparably.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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 United States versus Latin America (15 November 2005)

The severe rebuff to Bush's diplomacy at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Playa, Argentina, November 4-5, was in some sense the culmination of almost two centuries of difficult relations between the United States and the rest of the Americas. It did not come out of nowhere, and it is by no means the end of the story which, from a U.S. point of view, is going downhill steadily.

The United States proclaimed the Americas to be its private reserve as early as 1823 in the Monroe Doctrine. By it, the United States hailed the independence from Spain of its many former colonies, and told European powers not to try to intrude themselves further in the Americas. Of course, a similar recognition was not extended to Haiti, a state dominated not by White settlers but by Black ex-slaves and free "Coloreds." The United States refused to recognize Haiti until 1862 (when the secession of its slave states lifted some of the pressure on the U.S. government). To be sure, the U.S. did not have an entirely free hand in Latin America. Great Britain was still the dominant economic (and political) force there throughout the nineteenth century.

But slowly, the United States established its primacy in Mexico (after various military encounters), in the Caribbean (especially after the Spanish-American War), and eventually in South America as well. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States felt free to wrest Panama away from Colombia (to build its Canal) and to send marines to establish its order (and defend its corporate interests) in various Central American and Caribbean presumably sovereign states.

The "big stick" policy of overt imperial intrusion was basically the only U.S. policy until 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the "good neighbor" policy in its stead, applying this to Cuba, Mexico, and Puerto Rico among other places. After that, the big stick was not altogether abandoned (the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba under Kennedy, the marines sent into the Dominican Republic under Johnson, the invasion of Grenada under Reagan, and the invasion of Panama under George H.W. Bush). Nor should one forget to include the innumerable times the U.S. covertly supported military coups (notably in Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, and - unsuccessfully - in 2002 in Venezuela). But the big stick alternated with suaver diplomacy. And it was suaver diplomacy that George W. Bush was trying to use in his clumsy manner in Mar del Playa.

It didn't work. Why? While in a sense Bush is trying nothing new in Latin America, merely continuing the policies of his predecessors there, his Iraq adventures have crimped the ability of this policy to work. By trying to push - most unsuccessfully - his policy of machista intimidation in the Middle East, he has undermined radically the level of world support for the United States at the same time that he has tied down the instruments of strength (military, financial, and political). The culmination of two centuries of dominance in Latin America is the picture of the United States as a giant with feet of clay. We need only look at the series of blows to U.S. power and prestige registered at and before Mar del Playa.

The president of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner, opened the meeting with a speech in which he said that the United States has the "inescapable and inexcusable" responsibility for policies that have led to poverty and a social tragedy in Latin America. He specifically cited the Washington consensus and the structural adjustment policies of the IMF. While this is traditional language of the left in Latin America, it is probably the first time that the host of an interstate meeting said this publicly with the U.S. president in the audience. Did Bush walk out? No, he held this tongue and merely praised Kirchner for the improvements in the Argentine economy that he has accomplished.

Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela who has now become the great nemesis of the U.S., spoke to a vast public assemblage, denouncing the perfidies of the U.S. He was joined, among others, by Argentina's (and Latin America's) great soccer hero, Diego Maradona, who used the occasion to say that "Fidel [Castro] is a god, and Bush is an assassin." Soccer stars may not be qualified political analysts, but they are very influential with public opinion.

The U.S. reaction to Kirchner and even to Chavez was mild because the U.S. was concentrating on the one thing it wanted out of the summit - a commitment, a recommitment, to achieving the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Here the U.S. ran into a granite bloc: the four states that comprise Mercosur - Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay - plus Venezuela just said no. President Fox of Mexico tried to rally the others, but without Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela, FTAA is, as Chavez proclaimed, "dead, and we are burying it here." Meanwhile, these same countries have been strengthening their economic ties with Europe and China to the detriment of the U.S.

Bush has pushed two things in Latin America - FTAA, now dead; and isolating Cuba. While Cuba was still not invited to the summit (Bush would not have come had it been), just days later, the U.N. General Assembly voted once again, and with the highest vote ever (182-4, with 1 abstention and 4 states not voting) to call for an end to the U.S. blockade of Cuba. The best the U.S. could get in Latin America were two "non-votes" from Honduras and Nicaragua.

Finally, although at Mar del Playa one of the U.S.'s few public defenders concerning FTAA was Mexico, Mexico just days earlier had ratified the International Criminal Court treaty, and specifically refused to sign the so-called bilateral non-surrender agreement the U.S. has been insisting on everywhere for its own soldiers.

The Monroe Doctrine is dead. And there are few mourners.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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 French Riots: Rebellion of the Underclass (1 December 2005)

France had a rebellion of its underclass in November 2005 that lasted for about two weeks. Groups of young people across France, mostly of North African or Black African descent, set fires to cars and hurled rocks at police. In some ways, this was the kind of uprising that has been occurring throughout the world in recent decades. But it also had particular French explanations. It exploded like a phoenix. It has been suppressed by the force of the state. It is far from over.

The immediate story is very simple. Three young men saw police stopping other youths and asking for identity cards. This happens routinely in France to young people of "color" who live in the de facto segregated high-rise dilapidated housing of "les banlieues" (the suburbs, which is where France's ghettos are located). These housing complexes are home to largely unemployed, undereducated youth who have few prospects for jobs, for upward mobility, or even for non-work activity (sports, cultural centers). These youth run away from identity checks primarily because they are often pointlessly taken into custody, where they are frequently harassed and remain in police stations for many hours until their parents come to bring them home.

In this particular case, the youths jumped a wall and landed in an electrical complex, where two of them were electrocuted. This was the spark to the rebellion. It was a rebellion against poverty, joblessness, racist behavior by French police, and above all lack of acceptance as the citizens they mostly are and as the cultural minority they feel they have the right to remain. The French government seemed primarily concerned with repressing the rebellion, and eventually it succeeded. The fact that the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior are fierce rivals for the future candidacy for president of the governing party ensured that neither of them was going to seem soft on rebellion and thereby give an advantage to the other.

It always amazes me that people are surprised when underclasses rebel. The surprising thing is that they do not do it more often. The combination of the oppressiveness of poverty and racism with lack of visible short-term or even medium-term hope is surely a recipe for rebellion. What keeps rebellion down is fear of repression, which is why repression is usually swift. But the repression never makes the anger go away. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin says that this uprising was not as bad as that in Los Angeles in 1992 in which 54 people died and 2000 were hurt. Perhaps not, but that is hardly a basis for boasting.

Throughout the world today, the metropolitan areas are filled with people who match the profile of the rebels in France: poor, jobless, socially marginalized and defined as "different" - and therefore angry. If they are teenagers, they have the energy to rebel and the absence of even the minimal family responsibilities that might restrain them. Furthermore, the anger is reciprocated. Those who are in the more comfortable majority fear these young people precisely for the characteristics they have. The better off feel that the poor youths tend to be lawless and well, "different." So, many of the better off (perhaps not all) tend to endorse strong measures to contain these rebellions, including exclusion totally from the society, even the country.

France in some ways is an exaggerated version of what we find elsewhere - not only in North America and the rest of Europe, but throughout the South in countries like Brazil, Mexico, India, South Africa. Indeed, it is hard to think of a country where this issue does not exist. The problem with France is that too many of its citizens have long denied to themselves that this is a French problem as well.

France defines itself as the country of universal values, where discrimination cannot exist because everyone can become a French person if they're ready to integrate fully. The reality is that France has always (yes, I said always) been a country of immigration. In the days of the Ancien Régime and even in the first half of the nineteenth century, the non-French speakers (50% up to the French Revolution) migrated to Paris and other northern cities. Later it was the Italians, the Belgians, and the Corsicans. Then came the Poles, and then the Portuguese and Spaniards. And in the last 40 years or so, massively the North Africans, the Black Africans, and the Chinese from what was formerly French Indochina.

France is a multicultural country par excellence still living the Jacobin dream of uniformity. The number of practicing Catholics is zooming down while the number of practicing Muslims is increasing daily. The major consequence of this has been a hallucinatory debate for over a decade about what to do about young Moslem girls who wish to have their hair covered when they go to school. The racist right saw the wearing of the foulard as an affront to Frenchness, and if truth be told, to Christianity. The classical left (or at least a large part of it) saw it as a challenge to sacrosanct laicité. Both sides combined to outlaw the foulard (and in order to be balanced, Christian and Jewish "large" symbols too). So, a certain number of Moslem girls were expelled from school. And the matter was thought to be solved, somehow.

What was remarkable about this rebellion this time in France is that it did not focus on religious issues. For example, it did not result in anti-Semitic tirades. Because France has a large number of poor Jews who live in the same housing complexes, there have been Muslim-Jewish or rather Palestinian-Israeli tensions for the last two decades. But that issue was shelved. The French rebellion was a spontaneous class uprising. And like most spontaneous uprisings, it could not be sustained for too long. But also like most rebellions, the possibility of recurrence will not disappear unless the gross inequalities are overcome. And it does not seem that too much effort is being made by French authorities (or for that matter by authorities elsewhere in the world) to overcome inequalities. We are in an epoch of accentuating, not alleviating, inequalities. And therefore, we are in an epoch of increasing, not decreasing, rebellions.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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.]

Losing One's Nerve in Iraq (15 December 2005)

In response to the ever-growing sense that the United States is doing poorly in Iraq, indeed in the view of many is actually losing the war, the U.S. government has launched a campaign to persuade everyone that this is not so. In November, 2005, the U.S. National Security Council published, with great fanfare, a document entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." And President Bush has been pushing its line vociferously in public speeches.

What this document argues is that victory is occurring, but occurring in stages, that victory is a vital U.S. interest, that the U.S. has a quite clear strategy for victory, but that this victory will take time. The key sentence in this wordy document, which evades all concrete analysis of what is actually going on, is a quote from President Bush's speech on Oct. 6, 2005: "In Iraq, there is no peace without victory. We will keep our nerve, and we will win that victory."

We will keep our nerve, says Bush. But his Rasputin, Vice-President Cheney, is not so sure, since he constantly asserts that U.S. critics of the Bush administration, however mild their criticism, are undermining this "nerve" and risk making the U.S. lose its resolve. The number of Republican Congressmen and Senators who are worried that the voters have already lost their "nerve" and might vote against them seems to be increasing at a very rapid pace, and seems to be having a great impact on the "nerve" of these Republican politicians.

When Rep. John Murtha, ex-Marine and longtime stalwart hawk, called for pulling out of Iraq, most commentators felt he was the unofficial voice of large numbers of senior military officers who were unable to voice their concerns publicly. Is this loss of their nerve? Neither Murtha nor the hidden senior military officers would define it this way. They see a situation in which the U.S. will not at all be able to win the kind of victory Bush is talking about, and by staying in Iraq they believe that the U.S. armed forces are being weakened as a military force able to do its work elsewhere in the world. They want to cut their losses before the U.S. armed forces lose even more.

It seems clear now that virtually every member of the U.S. coalition that has military forces in Iraq intends to reduce its number, if not fully withdraw them, in 2006. It seems fairly clear that the U.S. itself will do this. Nobody of course admits to losing their nerve, but public opinion at home and impending elections are taking their toll.

What about the Iraqis? There are two main groups of Iraqis - those who are energetically fighting the U.S. forces and any Iraqis thought to be cooperating with them, and the others. Those who are energetically fighting the U.S. are said, in this U.S. document, to be composed of three groups: rejectionists (Sunni Arabs who have not "embraced" the changes); Saddamists (who wish to restore the old regime), and terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaeda. The U.S., according to this document, has more or less given up on the latter two categories but hopes to persuade "many" of the first group to reduce their opposition. There does not however seem to be much evidence that this is happening. In short, those whom the U.S. calls its "enemies" do not seem to have lost their nerve, or their competence in fighting.

But what about the other Iraqis? Here the U.S. seems to be counting on the new Iraqi security forces, presumably under the authority of the new Iraqi government. I say presumably because it is obvious that these security forces are deeply infiltrated both by the "enemies" of the U.S. and by various militias - two kinds of Kurdish militias, and at least three kinds of Shi'a militias - who are pursuing their own objectives under the cover of being the national army. The U.S. says it is counting on these security forces to take over its task of fighting the "enemy" - that is, those who reject all legitimacy to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

But is the objective of those who control various parts of the new security forces really the same as those of the Bush regime? Do they intend to be "a full partner in the global war on terrorism" - the longer-term goal of the U.S. according to this document? Is this credible over the longer run? Even if those who are in the new government now are still there two years from now (itself a dubious proposition), why would they want to play this role when it can only make it more difficult to create even a moderately stable political situation in Iraq?

And finally, among winners and losers, more attention is being paid by observers today to the possibility that the big winner will be Iran. It is not that even a Shia-dominated government in Iraq will be in any sense a stooge of the Iranians. It is simply that they will not in any way want to play a role of being hostile to Iran, and therefore could not, will not, be sympathetic to U.S. objectives vis-a-vis Iran.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls in Iraq. They toll for George W. Bush, and the United States. Bush claimed the U.S. went into Iraq so that it would not have to fight this "war" on U.S. soil. But the contrary is happening. The turmoil is coming to U.S. soil with a vengeance. One of the claims as to why the U.S. should not immediately withdraw from Iraq is that it might result in an Iraqi civil war. But no one discusses what kind of civil war might be in the process of developing in the United States.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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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