Immanuel Wallerstein • 2006 | Center for a World in Balance

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Immanuel Wallerstein - 2006

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.

2005 - The Collapse of Bush's Authority (1 January 2006)

Whatever one thinks of Bush's politics, there is no question that, at the start of 2005, he had arrived at the pinnacle of his authority. He had just been reelected and the Republican Party controlled both houses of Congress. Indeed, the Republicans were able to defeat the leader of the Democratic previous majority in the Senate. Bush interpreted this not only as a validation of his invasion of Iraq but as authorization to proceed with his very conservative economic agenda - renewal of the expiring tax cuts, a gutting of the social security program, drilling for oil in Alaska and in general a reduction of environmental protective measures as starters. He said that he was going to implement the mandate he felt he had obtained. Republican discipline was very strong and Bush controlled the signals.

Furthermore, the Democrats were deeply divided over whether they had done so poorly in the elections because they were seen as too far to the left or too far to the right. The former view was stronger among the Democrats in Congress. So Bush felt that he could count on at least some Democratic votes to add to his solid and united Republican bloc to pass any and all legislation that he favored.

One year later, all this has changed and changed radically. Almost all the legislation that was on Bush's list has failed to pass, and is unlikely to pass in the coming year. His unbreakable Republican bloc is now shattered. The so-called moderates have broken discipline. But so have the two right wings of the Republican Party - the fiscal ultra-conservatives and the Christian right. The Democrats are now showing the discipline that the Republicans had previously shown, so that the Republican breakaways have allowed them to win most crucial votes in one house of Congress or the other, but especially in the Senate. Bush's poll ratings are very low. Republicans up for reelection are asking Bush not to campaign for them. And at the end of 2005, some Democratic Congressmen have begun to talk of impeachment. Bush has even, for the first time, begun to admit that he may have made some (minor) errors during his presidency.

When we look at the heart of his world policy - Iraq - he is fighting a rear guard action against great pressure to cut and run - pressure coming from within the U.S., pressure coming from the Iraqis, and of course pressure from the rest of the world. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff has stated that he knows that the majority of Iraqis want U.S. forces to leave. While Bush is staunchly refusing to set a timetable for downsizing the troops, this is a sham front for the obvious fact that the U.S. and all its allies intend to withdraw substantial numbers of troops in 2006, and long before what Bush had set as the base point - the point when the forces of the Iraqi government can deal militarily with the forces of Iraqi resistance.

What happened in 2005 that accounts for such a turn-around in Bush's political strength? Most of what has changed has occurred within the United States, albeit with some assists from happenings in the rest of the world. There were five things that transformed the political atmosphere in the United States. No one of them would have been that damaging, but the events cumulated and they combined to make a rolling stone that is gathering momentum, to be played out in 2006.

The first and most obvious was that the casualty figures in Iraq have been steadily increasing with no sign whatsoever that the resistance is weakening. A cartoon in a New Delhi newspaper catches what everyone is feeling. It shows an enormous crocodile labeled "insurgency" whose jaws are being held open with great difficulty by a soldier labeled "U.S. troops." Next to him is a small person labeled "Iraqi forces." The U.S. soldier is saying to the Iraqi: "You better grow up fast and take over." Not too many people in the U.S. now think that this is at all likely, and very many now think that the U.S. should stop sacrificing still more lives.

The second was the enormous catastrophe of Katrina, which revealed a level of incompetence and social indifference in the Bush administration that left most people gasping. But this is not what has undone Bush. He felt it necessary to promise that the federal government would do something to repair the damage and pressed Congress to adopt a very costly program. This was the straw that broke the back of the Republican fiscal conservatives who had long been dismayed by the growing level of U.S. spending under a president theoretically committed to holding down the size of the government.

The third was Bush's ineptness concerning what may turn out to be his one achievement - naming conservative judges to the Supreme Court. The Harriet Miers fiasco broke the back of the Christian right who withdrew their automatic support of the Bush regime. To be sure they have no alternative to Bush but, now that he's in trouble otherwise, they are not rushing to bolster his position. They no longer trust him.

Then came the indictments - of Lewis Libby for the attempt to hurt Joseph Wilson because he exposed the brazen lies associated with alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the main justification of the invasion); of Tom DeLay, the former Republican majority leader in the House, charged with violating laws as part of his efforts to secure a Republican majority in the House of Representatives; and of Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who was part of DeLay's network aimed at buying votes in Congress. And, in addition, there is still pending the possible indictments of Karl Rove, the president's leading political advisor, and Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader in the Senate. All political regimes are embarrassed by this kind of indictments, but there were too many for Bush in a short interval, and involving such key persons.

Finally, however, it is illegal acts that may bring Bush personally down. It is not unusual for presidents of the United States to assert their "inherent" powers. However, the combination of Bush's personal instincts and Cheney's deliberate intentions to inflate the powers of the presidency has led to an unusually exaggerated form of such assertions. Bush started issuing secret orders in 2001, which permitted torture (although he didn't call it that) and illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens - both in clear violation of quite explicit laws. As this came to light, the defense has been triple: the president has such power "inherently"; the Patriot Act of 2001 plus the congressional resolution in the aftermath of September 11 "implicitly" condoned it; the "rules" were all changed by the new menace of "terrorism."

Initially, both the Congress and the media accepted these arguments by refusing to raise public objections. The scandal of Abu Ghraib caused the first public discomfort, which steadily grew. In 2005, Sen. McCain, who had suffered as a prisoner of war for five years and knew the consequences, led an open revolt, and got Congress to adopt a resolution forbidding such torture, over the very strong but in the end ineffective opposition of the Bush administration. Then someone leaked the story about the wiretaps, in which the Bush administration did not want even to use the rather easy legal path of going to a special and secret court to get authorization. The thing to notice is not that this happened, but that someone felt ready to leak it, and that the press was ready to report it. This was the way Nixon's downfall came about.

If things were going well elsewhere, Bush might survive all this. But they are not going well for the U.S. anywhere - not in the Middle East, not in Latin America, not in Europe, and not in Asia. Elections are ahead in the U.S. and Bush is not at all happy.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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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.]

Sharon's Illusion (15 January 2006)

When Ariel Sharon suffered his stroke, most Western commentators mused that the world would never know his exact plans for bringing peace to Israel/Palestine, and that no one else might be able to resolve the issue as he was about to do. This seems to me quite absurd. I know his plans, as he scarcely hid them. And these plans would not have resolved the issue, since they were based on a fundamental illusion.

National security is the obsession of most Jewish Israelis. As well it might be, since the basic security of the state of Israel is quite precarious and has been for a long time. Ariel Sharon was all his life someone who wished to obtain full sovereignty for Israel over the entire territory of what had been the British Mandate, and in some areas (Golan) beyond it. He wanted this territory to constitute a Jewish state, with a clear Jewish majority of the population.

In these views, he was in the direct line of Vladimir Jabotinsky and his Revisionist movement within Zionism. Jabotinsky, let us remember, had formed his party in protest against the British exclusion of Trans-Jordan (today's Jordan) from the Mandate. The Revisionists (of which today's Likud party is the descendant) always had the most expansionist vision of the territory of Israel. The Revisionists were also always insistent on the necessity for a militarily strong (and when they thought necessary aggressive) Israel, the policy of an "iron wall."

Sharon was also a brilliant soldier. He played an increasingly important role in successive Arab-Israeli wars, and a notoriously repellent role in the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, for which the Israelis themselves eventually formally sanctioned him. As a minister in various governments, he was a leader in pushing new settlements in the occupied territories after 1973, with the intent of creating faits accomplis that would be very difficult to undo in any future peace negotiations.

So what gave him his current reputation as a peacemaker? Two things: One is Sharon's dose of realism. He came to realize that the full implementation of his program aroused too much opposition even in the U.S. government to be feasible. And he came to fear the impending demographic "catastrophe" - an Arab majority in Israel as a result of differential birth rates. And on the other side (that of centrist Israelis and pro-Israeli Westerners) the increasingly widely-held belief that only a notorious hawk would be politically able to make the necessary concessions to obtain a settlement. The examples of DeGaulle and Algerian independence, and Nixon's meeting Mao Zedong were regularly cited.

What was Sharon's plan? He planned to evacuate those parts of the occupied territories that were densely populated by Arabs and thinly populated by Jews. Gaza was the first step, and various scattered zones of the West Bank would have been next. He planned simultaneously to incorporate zones that today have high Jewish settlement. This included East Jerusalem of course, but also three settlement blocs in the West Bank around which the wall is presently being built. He then planned to say to the Palestinians that you may set up a state in the remaining areas, provided that you have no serious military apparatus and provided that you recognize Israel and the permanence of these new boundaries. And since he knew that no Palestinian leaders would accept such terms, he intended to do this unilaterally, without consulting them.

What was the illusion? He believed first of all that the Palestinians would have no choice but to live with this unilaterally-imposed reality. How he could think that is beyond me, since the most "moderate" of Palestinian leaders have already made it quite clear that this would be absolutely unacceptable. And of course the Palestinians are already about to vote in less "moderate" leaders. He believed second of all that time was on Israel's side. How he could think that is also beyond me. The Israelis have been losing international legitimacy steadily since 1973 at least. Arrogant unilateralism isn't working for George W. Bush. There's no hope it would work for Israel. Indeed, Sharon's plan would speed up the delegitimization of Israel, just as Bush's invasion of Iraq has speeded up the decline of American power.

Abba Eban, Israel's famed diplomat, is supposed to have said, "the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Could this not be said even more forcefully of Israeli leadership over the past 50 years? Sharon may have been the last gasp of illusionary politics for Israel. Peace is always a political, not a military, arrangement.

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.]

Two Cheers for Evo? (1 February 2006)

The election of Evo Morales as President of Bolivia has sparked an extensive debate about how far left Latin America is moving. Or rather, an extensive debate about what it means to be on the "left" in Latin America (or anywhere). There have been, it seems to me, four different ways of appreciating the electoral victory of Morales, which reflect four different political sociologies.

There is a large group of Latin American left intellectuals, and their sympathizers elsewhere in the world, who have hailed the election of Morales enthusiastically. They analyze the situation this way. Morales is an Aymara, the first indigenous person to be elected president of Bolivia, whose population is more than 60% indigenous. This is a social and political triumph, even a social revolution, and in any case social justice. Morales has himself emphasized this element, engaging in a traditional Inca ceremony immediately before his formal inauguration as president. Furthermore, the indigenous populations of Bolivia clearly greeted his election with joy.

But Morales also campaigned on economic themes. He campaigned against the U.S.-endorsed program to eradicate coca production. He was against the privatization of water, and called for nationalization of the gas deposits via renegotiation of the contracts with foreign firms for the exploitation of natural gas resources. These have all been hot issues in Bolivia for the last decade. In his new cabinet, he has placed in charge of these issues persons identified with the popular struggle.

Finally, there is the geopolitical commitment. He has attacked U.S. imperialism. His first international visits after his election were to Cuba and Venezuela, whose leaders warmly embraced him. He then flew to Spain, France, China, South Africa, and Brazil, where he was received again with great enthusiasm.

Nonetheless, there is another smaller group of Latin American intellectuals and activists who are distinctly cool about Morales. They see him as someone who did not himself lead any of the popular struggles of the last five years (except that of the coca farmers), but came on board cautiously after others had fought and won. They see him as someone who won't really nationalize Bolivia's resources but merely settle for increased rents. And they see him as another Lula, that is, as someone who will fail to meet popular expectations on social issues.

Then there is the U.S. right who essentially agree with the analysis of the first group. They see Morales as a dangerous lackey of Chavez who will stir up anti-U.S. sentiment throughout Latin America, and hinder foreign investment. The U.S. government in the previous election threatened to cut off all aid to Bolivia if Morales were elected. He wasn't elected then. But this time, when he got a stunning 54% of the vote on the first ballot, the U.S. officially has been quieter, but not at all happy.

And then there are some non-left Latin American intellectuals who essentially agree with the second group, but of course not from the same standpoint. It is striking that both Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru and Jorge Castañeda of Mexico wrote op-ed pieces after the election, agreeing with the second group that Morales could turn out to be more like Lula than like Chavez, and that therefore the U.S. government should tone down its hostility and court him. The Financial Times took the same line.

The election of Morales has to be put into the overall context of elections throughout Latin America in recent years: not only Lula in Brazil and Chavez in Venezuela, but Tabaré in Uruguay, Kirchner in Argentina, even Bachelet in Chile, as well as the probable election this year of Lopez Obrador in Mexico and maybe even Ortega in Nicaragua. These are all elections about whose results the U.S. government was not happy. In each case, Washington would have preferred a more conservative opponent. To be sure, not one of those elected is a Che Guevara. But the sum of all of them has definitely moved Latin America to the left, if not to the far left.

Is moving to the center-left but not to the far left really a conquest of the left? That depends on whether the tendency picks up momentum. And this depends in part on what happens far beyond Latin America - in the Middle East, in Europe, in the United States itself. Evo Morales got off to a splendid start with a very forthright and militant speech at his inauguration. For those on the left in Latin America and elsewhere, the victory of Morales is a moment for two cheers, waiting to see if he will be able to fulfill the program he has laid out, in which case it will turn out to be three.

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.]

Iran and the Bomb (15 February 2006)

Much of the discussion about Iran's nuclear program is quite simply hysterical. Witness the statement of Sen. John McCain just this month: "There's only one thing worse than military action and that's a nuclear-armed Iran." One is tempted to respond with Shakespeare's title: "Much ado about nothing." Except that there's an awful lot of "ado" and some people in high places seem to be serious about engaging in military action to stop Iran from securing nuclear weapons. So we have to ask why is this so important, and so important to whom?

First of all, why should we consider it to be a catastrophe if tomorrow Iran has nuclear weapons? There are today nine countries known to possess nuclear weapons - the U.S., Great Britain, Russia, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. What would change if Iran became the tenth? Who would be menaced by Iran? Which country might they bomb? At the present time, there is no indication of any kind that Iran is or intends to be militarily aggressive. To be sure, the current president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made very hostile statements about Israel. But does anyone think he intends to bomb Israel, or that Iran has the military capacity to do so? Rhetoric and intentions are two different things.

But if Iran doesn't intend to use the bomb, why would Iran want to have it? There are some obvious reasons. Of the nine countries that have the bomb, all but one have bases close enough to use it against Iran. The Iranian government would have to be very naive not to worry about this. Furthermore, they can easily deduce from U.S. policy of the last five years that the U.S. invaded Iraq but not North Korea, and that one of the greatest differences between the two was that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons and that North Korea did.

A second obvious reason is Iranian nationalism. We must remember that Iranian aspirations to be a nuclear power did not start with the current president. They go all the way back before the Iranian revolution to the days of the Shah of Iran. Obviously, today a "middle" power of the size of Iran will enhance its geopolitical strength if it's a member of the nuclear club. Iran has its national interests, as all other states do, and it clearly wishes to play a central role in its region.

But does this in itself menace the peace of the world or of the region? When the Soviet Union had its first nuclear explosion in 1949, the lamentations of the Western world were very loud. But it is clear in retrospect that the single factor which most contributed to the non-occurrence of an American-Soviet war from 1949 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the fact that both powers had nuclear weapons. It was the fear of mutual destruction that guaranteed that neither would use nuclear weapons, despite all the acute tensions from the Berlin blockade to the Cuban so-called missile crisis to the war in Afghanistan. The fact that both India and Pakistan have the bomb has been a very strong constraint on their conflict over Kashmir.

Why would not the balance of terror operate equally well in the Middle East? Why would not the possession by Iran of nuclear weapons be an element in pacifying the Middle East rather than the reverse? The only answer offered is that the Iranian government is not sufficiently "rational" to abstain from using the bomb. But this is clearly nonsense - racist nonsense, one should add. The present Iranian regime is at least as politically sophisticated as the Bush regime, and is a lot less vocally militarist.

Then, why is everyone making so much fuss? Henry Kissinger explained it over a year ago and Thomas Friedman has recently repeated it in The New York Times. It is quite clear that, once Iran has nuclear weapons, the dike will have been breached, and a good 10-15 other countries will work very fast to acquire such weapons. There are some obvious candidates: South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq (yes, Iraq), South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, and many European countries. In 2015, there may be twenty-five nuclear powers.

Is this dangerous? Of course, it is, in the sense that there are always crazy individuals and groups who might get access to the buttons that need to be pushed. But these crazy people or groups exist in the present nine nuclear countries and I personally do not believe there are more of them in the next fifteen. Nuclear disarmament is an objective that is urgent, but not nuclear disarmament of just part of the world - nuclear disarmament of everyone.

The reason that the United States in particular is so agitated about Iran's potential nuclear armament is that the spread of nuclear weapons to so-called middle countries clearly reduces the military strength of the United States. But that doesn't mean that it threatens the peace of the world. Should we then worry about an invasion of Iran by the United States or an Israeli attack? Not really, because the U.S. does not now have the military strength to engage in such an attack, because the Iraqi regime would not support it, and because Israel can't do it alone. So, much ado about nothing.

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.]

Major Storm Clouds Gathering (1 March 2006)

The level of agitation is rising everywhere, and the world-system has never been more anarchic than now. We may be going over the edge.

The bombing of the Askari Mosque in Iraq resulted not only in an immediate and large surge in intra-group violence in Iraq, but has probably derailed the efforts of the U.S. Ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, to bring about Sunni participation in the Iraqi government. This could mean a failure to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority vote to establish the government and therefore new elections, which would be very difficult to arrange in the present climate. At the very same time, the U.S. Army has demoted the single Iraqi unit previously thought capable of military operations without U.S. support to one that still needs U.S. support. The United States is now being openly criticized - indeed attacked - by the principal Shia parties, creating for the first time a pan-Iraqi hostility to U.S. presence and objectives in Iraq. And the British in Basra are now as limited in their ability to control the situation as the Americans in Baghdad.

Everyone, everywhere is discussing the issue of the famous cartoons published by Jyllands-Posten in Denmark. Most of the discussion in the Western world has missed the point. Everyone seems to be debating the issue of freedom of the press versus responsibility of the press. That is an old debate, and frankly rather beside the main issue of the moment. The main issue is why people are so extremely agitated about this issue, not only in the Muslim world but in the Western world. This seems to be more than the usual issue of blasphemy.

It seems to be clear that the Danish publication of the cartoons, and their republication by a number of other Western journals, reflects at the very least exasperation with the Muslim populations in their midst and for many outright racist xenophobia. Fear and anger abound. And there are growing numbers of people in Denmark, but not only in Denmark, who would like somehow to rid their countries of Muslim populations, or at the very least stop the inflow.

And the violent reaction throughout the Muslim world reflects more than the mere issue of a protest against the visual portrayal of Muhammad. The cartoons are rather the excuse for the expression of a degree of anger and fear of Western intrusion into their countries that has overflowed. The attempts of Muslim governments to channel this anger, by themselves leading the attack, has backfired in that the demonstrators have now turned actively against them, as in Pakistan, where President Musharraf's erstwhile Islamist supporters are now calling for his resignation.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is being assailed in the Western world to a degree not previously known. Suddenly the prison at Guantanamo is a matter of widespread concern, and condemnation. This is coming not merely from the usual left critics of the Bush regime, but from the governments of Great Britain, France, and Germany, from the United Nations, and from human rights groups across the world. They are calling for shutting down the base immediately, and either bringing the inmates to trial or releasing them. Their language is suddenly very strong, not that the Bush regime is ready to concede the case.

The blow-up over the prospect of a Dubai firm owning some of the operations in U.S. ports is in part an internal U.S. electoral game, but in part a matter of irrational hysteria about Arabs owning anything in the United States. Security at the ports is indeed lax, but it is not the companies who own the operations but the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that ensures security, and would continue to do so, however poorly they have been doing it.

What seems the culminating blow to the Bush regime is to have the elder statesman of the U.S. conservative movement, William Buckley, write an article in conservatism's premier review, National Review, in which he says: "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed." He calls for the "acknowledgment of defeat." If one of the leaders of the pro-war camp wants to acknowledge defeat, Bush is indeed in very great trouble. But also, it means that things are falling apart within the United States. In the words of William Butler Yeats, when "things fall apart, the centre cannot hold."

The reaction thus far of the neo-con cabal in the Bush regime, led by Vice-President Cheney, himself in increasing trouble with the U.S. public, has been to plunge ahead as if nothing had happened. They are advocating war on Iran (unlikely they will succeed even in launching it, but nonetheless). And now Cheney wants the U.S., which has accumulated enemy after enemy, to take on Putin and Russia as well. Cheney is the U.S.'s Samson, pulling down the temple. He may only succeed in stimulating a U.S. civil war.

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 and India: New Best Friends? (15 March 2006)

George W. Bush has gone to India and concluded an agreement which many analysts are hailing as historic and a turning-point in the geopolitics of the world-system. On the face of it, this trip (which some have even compared to Nixon's meeting with Mao in Beijing) does seem to mark a major shift in attitudes by both countries. But perhaps there is less there than appears to be on the surface.

In the post-1945 world-system, India was in many ways a very disturbing element from the point of view of the United States. It was the original "non-aligned" power in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. And the United States did not appreciate the consistent, forthright way the Indians argued their case. The United States considered India's non-alignment a de facto favoring of the Soviet Union, and after 1948 began to favor Pakistan in order to create difficulties for India.

The Indian National Congress was a national liberation movement, in many ways the model for movements throughout Asia and Africa. The policies of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and of his immediate successors, combined non-alignment, active support for anticolonial movements everywhere, and a variant of social-democracy internally. India also was interested in strengthening its military capacity. Since the United Statees wouldn't help its military ambitions, India bought arms and airplanes from the Soviet Union, which was a further irritant to the United States.

The Indian National Congress, however, underwent the same kind of disabling disillusionments that similar movements elsewhere suffered in the 1970s and 1980s. By the 1990s, Congress had lost its sheen, and a rightwing, Hindu supremacist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), governed India from 1996 to 2004. Congress, in the post-Cold War era, no longer proclaimed nonalignment nor anticolonial solidarity nor much that resembled social-democracy.

In the last five years, there have been important changes in both countries. On the one hand, India's economic development has made her a major locus of outsourcing for U.S. informatics. Indians in the United States who have made considerable money in informatics and other professions have maintained their ties with India, and being a conservative group politically, have urged upon the Indian government closer ties with the United States.

On the other hand, the United States has become quite isolated politically because of the policies of the Bush regime. India is now one of the very few countries where polls report a majority having favorable views of the United States. This is not to say that there is no longer a very large group with unfavorable views, but India has been moving in the opposite direction from the United States's traditional allies like western Europe or South Korea.

All this provides the background for the trip, the culmination of negotiations between India and the United States concerning U.S. assistance to India's nuclear program. India was one of only three countries that had refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty. The other two were Pakistan and Israel. All three countries have developed nuclear weapons. Up to now, the official U.S. position had been strong disapproval of India's nuclear program and, when India exploded bombs in 1998, the United States curbed the export of nuclear technology to India.

The United States has now reversed its position. By this agreement, the United States agreed to sell both nuclear fuel and technology to India, despite the fact that India still will not sign the non-proliferation treaty. To be sure, the assistance will only be for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and provides for inspections, but only of plants engaged in developing peaceful uses. And India will decide which plants are for peaceful uses and which for military uses. Bush has hailed the agreement as the beginning of a "strategic partnership."

What India gets out of this agreement is very obvious. They get needed technical assistance that allows them to speed up their nuclear program. And they get de facto recognition as being a legitimate nuclear power, more or less in the same category as the five permanent members of the Security Council. To get this, they have given up almost nothing.

What the United States gets out of this agreement is less obvious. It is said that the United States wants to build up India as a counterweight to China's potential military and political strength in Asia. Perhaps. And the United States gets a friendly nod from a major power, something in very short supply these years.

But the treaty has immediately drawn much fire. Within India, all those who are against the geopolitical tilt towards the United States are unhappy, and this includes coalition partners of Congress in the legislature. And within the United States it has drawn fire from the whole political spectrum on the grounds that it liquidates de facto the non-proliferation treaty. Furthermore, of course, it undoes the whole basis of the arguments concerning Iran, since Iran is really asking for the same thing India has gotten. And of course, Pakistan is very unhappy, since Bush made it clear right away that the United States was not thinking of a similar arrangement with Pakistan.

The real question is what will be the result of all of this. Critics in the U.S. Congress are already poised to impose conditions for approval of the treaty. And it is quite likely that, if they prevail (which is probable), India will reject the conditions. If that happens, the warmer feelings of the Indian government for the United States will likely vanish, but at the same time the relations between the United States and Pakistan, already strained, will have deteriorated further.

India will emerge ahead in any case. Russia has already offered to sell nuclear fuel to India, something that the United States has in the past sought to prevent. But the United States no longer has any good argument. Furthermore, its weak case against Iran is now considerably undermined. And the North Korean government is no doubt chortling.

The bottom line of the historic breakthrough -- many pluses for India, and an additional setback for U.S. diplomacy. Far from a strategic partnership, the treaty distributes further grains abrading the U.S. geopolitical position.

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.]

Immigration: Backlash to the Backlash? (1 April 2006)

The immigration story in the modern world is now a long, repetitive one. People migrate, legally or illegally, for obvious reasons. Economic betterment and escape from persecution are the two principal ones. They migrate where they can, and where economic and political prospects for them are best. This is a major world process, especially if one adds in the migration from rural areas to urban ones within state boundaries.

The recipient areas/countries have always been ambivalent about these migrants. On the one hand, they may fill needs for additional labor, either at the relatively unskilled level or in particular, skilled niches. On the other hand, migrants bring in cultural habits that are different from those of the area to which they migrate and sometimes are reluctant to shed these habits.

So, quite frequently in the receiving places, there is a backlash. Migrants are accused of many sins. Some are economic, such as taking away jobs from the natives population in the place or driving down rates of remuneration. Some are social, such as engaging in cultural practices that are seen as abhorrent by the "natives" or increasing the crime rate.

When the world or local situation is one of increased unemployment in general because of stagnation in the world-economy, the presumed sins become more of a public issue and there is a popular (or populist) pressure to enact legislation that will limit entry to the area/country somehow, criminalize illegal migration, and somehow expel the migrants (or large portions of them).

This is occurring dramatically now in the United States, but not in the United States alone. This backlash has been a political phenomenon of some importance in much of Europe, and even in various receiving zones in the rest of the world, such as South Africa, for example. When this occurs, as now in the United States, the two sides are easy to discern.

Those in favor of stringent state action against migrants (and not only against illegal migrants) express themselves in xenophobic language, and get support based on a generalized sense of economic and social insecurity in the working and middle classes. This group tends to favor building walls and expulsions of various kinds. They usually are located in more conservative political forces but attract support from some groups that normally support parties more on the left.

Those opposed to stringent state action are in fact two quite different groups. There are the business elites who welcome migrants in the belief that this enables them to keep wage rates down. And to some extent they are right. They thus want migrants to have the right to enter and to work. But they are not anxious that migrants have political rights, which would enable them to fight for higher remuneration. The second group is quite the opposite. It is composed of the targeted groups plus those on the left who favor increasing, not decreasing, social and political rights for the migrants.

As I noted, this is an old story in the modern world. What may be different today is that there is beginning to be a backlash to the backlash. In France, last November, there was an important "rebellion of the underclass" - youths in the ghettos rising up to demand their place in the sun (see Commentary No. 174, Dec. 1, 2005: "The French Riots: Rebellion of the Underclass"). While the rebellion shook the government, which could only contain it after one month of effort, it did not rouse widespread support among the French left, who observed it but did not join it. In the United States, the passage of very repressive legislation by the House of Representatives stimulated the largest demonstration that has ever occurred on this issue. A half million Latinos marched in Los Angeles (and smaller numbers in other cities) in protest. So far, the U.S. left has observed it but has not joined it.

But then, look at what happened in France in March this year. The government introduced a measure without consulting anyone enacting the so-called Contrat Première Embauche (CPE or "First Employment Contract"), authorizing enterprises to hire youth under 26 and permitting them to fire them without explanation within the first two years of employment. This created an important exception to the droit du travail (right to a job), a major conquest of French workers in the post-1945 years. From the government's point of view, this was in part a response to the November rebellion, one of whose complaints was the extremely high unemployment rate of the youth in the ghettos. But, of course, easing the droit du travail has long been a major demand of the employers' association (MEDEF), and this law was seen by them (as some acknowledged publicly) as a first step in eliminating altogether the employment guarantees in general.

As soon as the CPE was enacted, there was a major reaction - from the students, from the trade-unions, and yes, from the ghettos. The public demonstrations have been massive. The political struggle is in progress, but it seems likely that the government will be forced to back down. However, what is truly important about what's going on in France is that a backlash about the rights and economic opportunities of migrants has escalated into a backlash about neo-liberalism and its impact on the whole of the population. This means that the issue of concern primarily from a minority of the population has been transformed into an issue that concerns the majority of the population. What happened in France may well occur 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.]

Attack Iran: Can They Be Serious? (15 April 2006)

I have been arguing for quite some time now that the talk of a U.S. military attack on Iran was essentially bluster, and that it could not occur because it would be totally irrational from the point of view of the United States and because of the strong opposition of the leadership of the armed forces. Yet just recently, Seymour Hersh wrote an article in The New Yorker, in which he lays out the worries and fears of U.S. military leadership that such an attack is actually envisaged by President Bush. And even worse, he says that, in direct response to military objections, the president would not rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons to penetrate deeply into the bunkers where nuclear apparatuses are stored.

This article has attracted an astonishing amount of coverage. And similar stories then appeared in the Washington Post and the Associated Press. Immediately, the President said this was "wild speculation," although he did not say that this option was unthinkable. The Foreign Minister of Great Britain, Jack Straw, did however say that an assault on Iran was "inconceivable" and plans to use nuclear weapons "completely nuts."

So whom are we to believe? Hersh, it is well-known, has cultivated long relationships with senior military figures (as well as with senior CIA figures), and has had a very good record about revealing things which turned out to be true. The President has had a very bad record about telling the truth in the past five years. And Jack Straw's record is not that much better. So, it is incumbent on us at least to review the arguments.

Why an attack would be irrational - I insist, from the point of view of the United States - seems very clear to me. First, at a moment in time when U.S. military energy seems insufficient to do what the United States is trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, an attack on Iran would stretch military resources still further, and perhaps well beyond a snapping point. Secondly, according to all the analyses I've read, the Iranian defenses are so well-constructed and distributed geographically that no aerial assault (however massive) could wipe it out completely. It could at most slow down the process.

Then, there's the Iranian response. Even if they aren't in a position yet to drop their own nuclear devices anywhere, they have a strong influence in Afghanistan and especially Iraq. They can wreak further havoc there, and the attack can tilt moderately pro-American elements, like some of the Shi'a in Iraq, into a militantly negative attitude.

And then there's the fallout. Clearly, such an attack will not intimidate potential nuclear proliferators. It will make them all speed up. Iran can rapidly move politically from a state held a bit at distance by Arab states to being the hero of the Muslim world, with all the consequences that will have in the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Palestine, and even Egypt.

Let us not forget oil. The disruption of Iranian supply - a major portion of the world's oil - would almost certainly raise oil prices from its present high of circa $60 a barrel to $100. And that will have untold and unpredictable negative consequences for the world-economy, not least of all for the U.S. economy.

The allies? Even the faithful ally, Great Britain, has indicated very strongly to the United States that they do not favor a military attack, however much they are committed to trying to stop Iran's acquiring nuclear bombs.

And finally there is the overall impact on the U.S. position in the world. Just this week, France's think tank on foreign affairs, IRIS, did a balance-sheet on the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was called "quasi-catastrophic" for the U.S., resulting in the "hyperpower" having become "hyperentangled and hyperunpopular." The French like to use the prefix "hyper-" to indicate one degree higher than the prefix "super-." In short, after three years of quasi-catastrophe, why would the United States seek to make it still worse?

Yet, despite all this, it seems U.S. senior military officers are deeply worried. Hersh says that the Joint Chiefs of Staff is considering a formal letter of opposition to the President. This past month a series of senior retired generals who served in Iraq have called for the resignation of Secretary Rumsfeld. The timing cannot have been accidental.

Why then are these officers afraid? Hersh gives us one explanation. They think that President Bush has a "messianic" complex. As we know, people with messianic complexes are dangerous, especially if they have their finger on nuclear weapons and control the strongest military machine in the world.

Still, is this enough? Whatever the case with Bush, we also need to know the motivations of those around him - the militarists and the neo-conservative intellectuals. What can they be saying to themselves that counters all the obvious arguments against a military intervention? One is that they have nothing to lose. If the United States does not intervene, Iran will indeed have nuclear weapons sometime soon. They are not at all resigned to this prospect, because it would undoubtedly reduce the political clout of the United States in the region. But is a reduction of U.S. clout worth Armageddon?

Then some of them may be thinking in narrow electoral terms. An attack, if properly timed, might lift Bush's approval ratings temporarily, rattle the already too pro-war Democrats, and be enough to ensure Republican victory in the Congressional elections of 2006, thereby ruling out the idea of impeachment.

And there is Israel. The Israeli government and their friends in the United Statees state openly that they cannot accept the idea of a nuclear Iran and have long threatened an air attack if necessary. That they have even less possibility of pulling this off successfully than the United States only means that they have been concentrating on getting the United States to do it. The defense of Israel has been a primary concern of the United States, and especially of the Bush regime. And why is Israel so fearful? Do they really think Iran is going to bomb them? I doubt it, but they do think that if they are not the very strongest military power in the Middle East, their political strength is diminished. And of course they are right.

So, will the United States attack? or won't it? In general, I tend to think that rationality wins out in most political decisions, but sometimes it doesn't. Or maybe some people have, not a messianic complex, but a Samson complex.

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 and China: Wary Rivals (1 May 2006)

President Hu Jintao of the People's Republic of China has just completed a visit to the United States. Before he came, President Bush said that the two countries had a "complicated" relationship. For once, Bush had it right.

President Hu made three main stops: Seattle, Washington, and New Haven. The choice of places to visit illustrates well the nature of the historic relationship between the United States and China. The stop in New Haven, to visit Yale University, was homage to the oldest links between the two countries. The first Americans to visit China were New England merchants and their clipper ships, seeking trade. New England also sent missionaries - both religious and medical. In 1835, Peter Parker, a graduate of Yale College and Yale Medical School, opened the Ophthalmic Infirmary in Canton (now Guangzhou), the first Western-style hospital in China. Two decades later in 1854, Yung Wing became the first Chinese to graduate from an American university. He had been sent to Yale by a Christian missionary located in Hong Kong. Since then Yale has cultivated a particular interest in China.

By visiting New Haven, President Hu was acknowledging this history. But China no longer receives United States missionaries - religious or medical. Now it engages in graduate student exchange with Yale and other institutions worldwide. The past, however one evaluates it, is the past.

The present was represented by the visit to Washington. We should note various small details about this visit. First of all, it was not a state visit, which is what President Hu had wanted it to be - a small but significant rebuff by Bush. Secondly, President Hu did not visit Crawford, Texas, which is what President Bush had wanted. I suppose Bush wanted to look Hu in the eyes (as he says he did Putin at Crawford) and decide whether or not Hu was trustworthy. Bush had to forego this possibility. This was a small but significant rebuff by Hu.

The meeting in Washington was around an agenda of things Bush wanted from Hu: first of all, support for strong action on nuclear development in both Iran and North Korea; secondly, various economic measures that might reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China; thirdly, some clemency to various political prisoners in China. All Hu specifically wanted was some assurance that the United States would somehow sanction Taiwan should it declare independence.

The result was zero to zero. Bush got virtually nothing from Hu, and Hu in return got nothing from Bush. This was all done politely but unflinchingly. Obviously, neither side wanted to do or say anything that would transform a "complicated" relationship into a hostile one, despite the fact that each man was under some domestic pressure to move in that direction.

Behind this wary rivalry lies some medium-run assumptions on each side. The U.S. government sees China as an "emerging" power - of growing importance in the economic, political, and military spheres. It likes the economic development, seeing China as an important trade partner, is dubious about the growing political strength, and fears the growing military strength. It is banking, I think, on a prediction that the economic role will tame the military role and that the Communist Party of China will decline in influence (or even disappear altogether) in the next twenty years.

China also has a bet on the future. It sees the United States as a giant in decline - economic decline, political decline, and military decline. It believes it needs to keep the giant unprovoked in the present, and merely bide its time, so that twenty years from now, when the U.S. star has dimmed, its own star will be shining brightly.

This brings us to the third stop on the trip - Seattle. Seattle is the locus of the two major U.S. industries in which China maintains a great interest - Microsoft and Boeing. No doubt the Chinese think they will one day exceed both. But for the moment, it needs their products and their technical expertise. So China is cultivating them (it has just announced it will buy 150 Boeing planes) and they of course are cultivating China. Indeed, such industries constitute the major political support in the United States for continuing links with China against the ideological hawks who want openly to proclaim China an enemy, now and not waiting for the future.

In terms of political style, China has always been the land of the long horizon and therefore of patience. The United States has always been the land of urgent progress and therefore of impatience. We shall see which style is more fitting for our era.

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.]

Walls and the World (15 May 2006)

Walls are in the press again, and are controversial again - walls on the border between the United States and Mexico, walls to encircle Israeli settlements in the West Bank. These are walls that people in authority advocate building. But just about twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and famously said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Why do we build walls? Basically two reasons - to keep people out and to keep people in. Walls usually are built at the edge of one's jurisdiction - the jurisdiction of a governmental authority, the jurisdiction of private property. There are two questions we have to ask about walls. Are they moral? Are they effective? There is wide and deep disagreement on the answer to these two questions.

Let us start with the walls that are designed to keep people out. Why do we want to keep people out? The simple answer is that we have something that we think other people want and that we don't want to share with them. Since borders are merely lines on the ground, they are inherently porous. One solution is to build a wall that makes it difficult to cross the line - to enter the country or the property - and thereby to protect it from what we consider the illegitimate and illegal trespass/entry/seizure of what we consider that we own.

In the case of the wall the United States has been building along its border with Mexico, it is trying to make it more difficult for Mexicans and other Latin Americans to enter the United States without specific permission (a visa). And they of course are trying in most cases to enter in order to seek work or perhaps to achieve family reunion. The justification for the wall is that, were there not a system of visas, immigration into the wealthy country would be torrential and threaten the standard of living of the country into which people were immigrating. A system of visas limits the number (as well of course as choosing the types of persons who may enter), and the walls are there to prevent the outsiders from not passing through the sieve of the visas.

At the individual level, the equivalent is the creation of so-called gated communities, in which property owners in a locality create walls to keep out uninvited strangers, and hire private police forces to enforce this restriction. We call them gated communities in rich countries. But these days in large numbers of urban communities in the countries of the South, persons who live in wealthier houses erect individual walls to keep out intruders, walls that are often reinforced with barbed wire, fierce dogs, and sometimes private police. The justification is usually that the local governmental police force is inadequate to do the job of protecting attacks on persons and private property.

Now let's look at the other motive - to keep people in. When the German Democratic Republic erected the Berlin wall in 1961, the reason was political. There had been a steady exodus of persons to the Federal German Republic via the Berlin subway system. This was politically embarrassing to the authorities of the German Democratic Republic. So they built a wall, one that stayed in place until 1989. When Reagan called for the wall to be torn down, he was asserting the right of persons to emigrate, to leave where they were, for whatever reason.

That particular wall did come down. When it did, the persons behind the wall (figuratively all those who lived under Communist regimes in east-central Europe and the Soviet Union) found that they had acquired the right to emigrate, but not the right to immigrate. To immigrate, they still needed visas. And to this day, it is not at all easy to obtain these visas. So some of them legally emigrate but now illegally immigrate.

In the case of Israeli walls, the explanation offered is that they are being built to reduce the ability of Palestinians to engage in violent actions in these zones. But the walls are not being built at the edge of a jurisdiction. They are being built to create a jurisdiction, a way of creating de facto borders.

So, back to our two questions. Are walls moral? Are walls effective? The morality of walls constructed to keep people out comes down to the morality of property rights. And the morality of property rights is a question of how the property was acquired. The owners of the property claim it was the result of their hard labor, and others often argue that it was the result of theft, aggression, or other illegitimate (if not illegal) seizure. There is no generic answer to this question, and in practice the answer in particular cases is the result of political negotiations and political compromises.

Of course, one might think that persons committed to the endless virtues of the free market should feel that individual movement should be governed by the market and not by monopolies (restriction of rights of access through a system of visas, for example). But in practice, few advocates of the free market ever say this. They claim that goods and capital should move freely, but they tend not to extend this market principle to the movement of people.

And one might think that persons committed to social equalities ought to be in favor of sharing with everyone. But in practice, many advocates of social equalities, especially those in rich countries, wish to limit the social equalities to those already inside a particular country, and not open it to the entire world. The slogan seems to be protect our rights, property, and jobs, not the rights, property, and jobs of the entire world.

As for effectiveness, walls are effective in the short run to keep many (not all) people out, and to keep many (not all) people in. But in the middle run, walls are politically abrasive and magnify injustice, and therefore tend to force further negotiations. The one sure thing we can say about walls is that they are certainly neither friendly nor charitable nor a sign of freedom.

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.]

Whose Century is the 21st Century? (1 June 2006)

In 1941, Henry Luce proclaimed the twentieth century the American century. And most analysts have agreed with him ever since. Of course, the twentieth century was more than merely the American century. It was the century of the decolonization of Asia and Africa. It was the century of the flourishing of both fascism and communism as political movements. And it was the century of both the Great Depression and the incredible, unprecedented expansion of the world-economy in the 25 years after the end of the Second World War.

But nonetheless, it was the American century. The United States became the unquestioned hegemonic power in the period 1945-1970 and shaped a world-system to its liking. The United States became the premier economic producer, the dominant political force, and the cultural center of the world-system. The United States, in short, ran the show, at least for a while.

Now, the United States is in visible decline. More and more analysts are willing to say this openly, even if the official line of the U.S. establishment is to deny this vigorously, just as a certain portion of the world left insists on the continued hegemony of the United States. But clear-minded realists on all sides recognize that the U.S. star is growing dimmer. The question that underlies all serious prognostication is then, whose century is the twenty-first century?

Of course, it is only 2006, and a bit early to answer this question with any sense of certainty. But nonetheless, political leaders everywhere are making bets on the answer and shaping their policies accordingly. If we rephrase the question to ask merely what may the world look like in, for example, 2025, we may at least be able to say something intelligent.

There are basically three sets of answers to the question of what the world will look like in 2025. The first is that the United States will enjoy one last fling, a revival of power, and will continue to rule the roost in the absence of any serious military contender. The second is that China will displace the United States as the world's superpower. The third is that the world will become an arena of anarchic and relatively unpredictable multi-polar disorder. Let us examine the plausibility of each of these three predictions.

The United States on top? There are three reasons to doubt this. The first, an economic reason, is the fragility of the U.S. dollar as the sole reserve currency in the world-economy. The dollar is sustained now by massive infusions of bond purchases by Japan, China, Korea, and other countries. It is highly unlikely that this will continue. When the dollar falls dramatically, it may momentarily increase the sale of manufactured goods, but the United States will lose its command on world wealth and its ability to expand the deficit without serious immediate penalty. The standard of living will fall and there will be an influx of new reserve currencies, including the euro and the yen.

The second reason is military. Both Afghanistan and especially Iraq have demonstrated in the last few years that it is not enough to have airplanes, ships, and bombs. A nation must also have a very large land force to overcome local resistance. The United States does not have such a force, and will not have one, due to internal political reasons. Hence, it is doomed to lose such wars.

The third reason is political. Nations throughout the world are drawing the logical conclusion that they can now defy the United States politically. Take the latest instance: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which brings together Russia, China, and four Central Asian republics, is about to expand to include India, Pakistan, Mongolia, and Iran. Iran has been invited at the very moment that the United States is trying to organize a worldwide campaign against the regime. The Boston Globe has called this correctly "an anti-Bush alliance" and a "tectonic shift in geopolitics."

Will China then emerge on top by 2025? To be sure, China is doing quite well economically, is expanding its military force considerably, and is even beginning to play a serious political role in regions far from its borders. China will undoubtedly be much stronger in 2025; however, China faces three problems that it must overcome.

The first problem is internal. China is not politically stabilized. The one-party structure has the force of economic success and nationalist sentiment in its favor. But it faces the discontent of about half of the population that has been left behind, and the discontent of the other half about the limits on their internal political freedom.

China's second problem concerns the world-economy. The incredible expansion of consumption in China (along with that of India) will take its toll both on the world's ecology and on the possibilities of capital accumulation. Too many consumers and too many producers will have severe repercussions on worldwide profit levels.

The third problem lies with China's neighbors. Were China to accomplish the reintegration of Taiwan, help arrange the reunification of the Koreas, and come to terms (psychologically and politically) with Japan, there might be an East Asian unified geopolitical structure that could assume a hegemonic position.

All three of these problems can be overcome, but it will not be easy. And the odds that China can overcome these difficulties by 2025 are uncertain.

The last scenario is that of multi-polar anarchy and wild economic fluctuations. Given the inability of maintaining an old hegemonic power, the difficulty of establishing a new one, and the crisis in worldwide capital accumulation, this third scenario appears the most likely.

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.]

How Has Latin America Moved Left? (15 June 2006)

The discussion on the leftward trend of Latin America in recent years reflects all the confusion, worldwide, about what it means to be on the left in the twenty-first century. The confusion is among all wings of world political opinion. There are various explanations for this confusion. The most obvious reason is that different people are measuring different things as the criterion of moving left. The second is that no such political tendency is perfectly linear. It always reflects ups and downs, but that doesn't mean that there isn't an overall trend. And the third reason is that politicians notoriously speak multiple languages to different audiences, but that doesn't mean one cannot discern bottom lines.

The first thing to distinguish among criteria is whether we are speaking of a given regime's position on geopolitical issues or their internal policies. Of course the two are linked. But nonetheless regimes are not necessarily consistent. For Latin America the main geopolitical issue is their attitude towards and relationship with the United States. There seems little question that, on this issue, the vast majority of Latin American states have moved a considerable distance since 2000. One only has to ask the U.S. Department of State about it. They are quite aware that their voice is no longer heard with the respect and fear it once was. This is more than a matter of Chavez's strident tones. We can see this even in the volatile actions and largely centrist views of the present government in Ecuador. The fact is that openly rightwing candidates do not win elections any more, except in Colombia. This simply wasn't true as recently as a decade ago.

The second thing to look at is the position of the various regimes on questions relating to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the multiple propositions for free trade agreements offered by the United States. If the WTO is stymied in its present negotiations, if the IMF matters a lot less than it did a decade ago, and if the United States can get nowhere in the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), it is in large part due to the numerous "left-of-center" governments in Latin America which have put obstacles in their way. This is not the doing of Cuba but of Brazil and Argentina. Even in Peru, the newly-elected very centrist president, Alan Garcia, who defeated Ollanta Humala (openly endorsed by Chavez), said in his first post-victory declaration that he was going to review critically every clause of the bilateral free trade agreement the previous Peruvian government had been negotiating with the United States.

Those who criticize the various new Latin American regimes from the left tend to emphasize what they have been doing internally more than their geopolitical stances. There are several critical "internal" issues. The first is the rights of the so-called indigenous populations. This has been a political issue in Latin American countries for over two centuries. But it is only today that there is beginning to be a breakthrough in terms of their rights. This is in large part the result of the increased consciousness and political mobilization of these populations.

Of course, this varies country by country. And the power of indigenous populations is in part related to their demographic strength. Still, notice what has been happening. Presidential candidates of indigenous origins have been elected in a number of countries. Their mobilization was a crucial factor in the election of Evo Morales, himself of these origins, in Bolivia. Their mobilization has made it difficult for Ecuador to stay in its traditionally rightwing political position. We need scarcely mention the obvious case of Mexico, which now lives and operates within the context of a situation changed fundamentally by the Zapatista rebellion. Even in a country which has a rather small percentage of indigenous peoples, such as Chile, their struggle has now become a major issue with which the government must contend.

The second issue, often closely allied to the first one, is that of land reform. Here the left critics of the concept of a leftward turn have probably their strongest case. The fact is that the Brazilian Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) has in effect reneged on its pledges to carry out some significant reform. And, in consequence, its crucial supporter, the Movimento dos Sem Terras (MST), has moved further and further away from the PT. But the new Bolivian government has just announced that it will move forward on land reform. And if it does, this should create a big boost for such movements in other countries.

The third internal issue is the control of natural resources (not only mining and energy but water). This doesn't always mean outright nationalization but it certainly means a significant degree of state control and a significant national retention of income generated. Here too, bit by bit, albeit often slowly, there has been movement. One need only read the screams about protectionism to see that this is a reality with which multinationals know they have to come to terms today. In past decades, they could easily arrange friendly coups d'état. This has become very difficult, as Venezuela has demonstrated.

The fourth internal issue is the degree to which the new regimes allocate significant additional resources to education at all levels and to health-related structures. Here too, as with land reform, the results so far have been limited, although one of the reasons has been lack of governmental resources, something which may be overcome by measures in other domains. We have to reserve judgment on this account.

Finally, there is the question of the degree to which the military is being constrained from direct interference in the national decision-making processes. Latin America today is very different indeed from the epoch, not so long ago, of military coups supported by the United States, and military regimes specializing in torture. Indeed, the amnesties that the military arranged for themselves when they returned to the barracks are being revoked, slowly and carefully but up to this point successfully.

So, what is the overall picture? Latin America has definitely moved left from where it was. Whether this will continue and amplify in the next decade is a function both of the evolving world geopolitical picture and the degree to which left social movements within Latin America will maintain cohesion and put forward lucid programs.

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 Worries of the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (1 July 2006)

The U.S. government tries to keep a brave face about Iraq. It regularly claims it is making progress in its objectives. The recent publication in the press of a June 6 memo that U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad sent to the Secretary of State shows internal discussion that is much more pessimistic. It relates the multiple and growing problems of the Iraqi staff who work for the U.S. government in the ultra-protected Green Zone. It is not a happy story. The Iraqi staff is complaining, says Khalilzad, that "Islamist and/or militia groups have been negatively affecting their daily routine."

Female employees are under great pressure to wear so-called modest dress, sometimes more extreme than that required in Iran. One of them reports that the taxi driver who brings her to work daily has informed her that "he cannot let her ride unless she wears a headcover." In addition to the multiple pressures concerning dresswear (for men as well - no shorts), the employees complain of daily lack of power in their apartments and of having to spend 12 hours on a Saturday on lines for gas.

The situation has become so risky for the employees that they are hiding their employment from everyone, including their own families. They do not use cellphones outside the Green Zone, or even carry them, because this is a dangerous giveaway, especially for females. They reply only in Arabic if called by the Embassy at home. The Embassy has, as a result, ceased calling them at all because they've decided it blows their "cover." Nor can the Iraqi employees be used to translate if press cameras are there.

To enter the Green Zone, the employees must pass checkpoints. Since April the Iraqi guards at these checkpoints have been more "militia-like" and "taunting." One employee asked the Embassy to give her press credentials rather than an employee pass, so that these guards cannot hold up her pass publicly, loudly proclaiming her status to bystanders. "Such information is a death sentence if heard by the wrong people."

Nor are these problems only true of those living in poorer districts. It has affected the so-called "upscale" districts in Baghdad as well, the nearest of which has become an "unrecognizable ghost town" because of fear of being on the streets and growing emigration of the Iraqi middle class. Employees report that their safety depends on their relations with what are in effect neighborhood governments, in which "even local mukhtars have been displaced or coopted by militias." One result is that "people no longer trust most neighbors."

In turn the U.S. Embassy is no longer sure it trusts its very apprehensive Iraqi employees. "We fear they may exaggerate developments or steer us towards news that comports with their own worldview." It makes for a dysfunctional workplace. The Ambassador feels it necessary to report the view of an Arab newspaper editor that "ethnic cleansing...is taking place in almost every Iraqi province."

But the most extraordinary segment of the cable needs to be reproduced in full: "More recently, we have begun shredding documents printed out that show local staff surnames. In March, a few staff members approached us to ask what provisions would we make for them if we evacuate."

Shredding documents? If the United States evacuates? Obviously, the Iraqi employees are remembering Saigon in 1975 as Vietnamese employees of the U.S. embassy and armed forces struggled to get on departing helicopters. Are we already coming to that point? It seems some of the Iraqi employees of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad think so, and the U.S. ambassador is so informing Washington.

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.]

Whom Has North Korea Provoked? (15 July 2006)

On July 6, 2006, North Korea launched six short-range missiles and one long-range one that failed. Around the world, thunderous critics said that this was a "provocation." Since then, North Korea has exhibited extraordinary calm, while everyone else has engaged in hectic verbal action.

There is first of all the United States, whose reaction has been described by The New York Times as "Bush's Shift: Being Patient With Foes." Vice-President Cheney downplayed the North Korean threat, saying that North Korean technology was "rudimentary." President Bush said that the U.S. was using diplomacy. "You know, the problem with diplomacy, it takes a while to get something done."

The diplomacy has been conducted largely by Christopher Hill, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Asian and Pacific Affairs. It has consisted of contacts with four nations in the so-called "six-party talks" - China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan. Mr. Hill has been trying to get these countries to put pressure of various kinds on North Korea to cease missile tests and return to the six-party talks as well as to support a strong resolution in the U.N. Security Council, should North Korea not do so. On July 12, Mr. Hill said he was "discouraged" by the lack of response from North Korea. He did not add that he was probably also discouraged by the positions of China, South Korea, and Russia.

The only country which seemed really agitated by the North Korean missile tests was Japan. There, Shinzo Abe, who is battling within the governing party to become the next Prime Minister, and whose self-presentation is that of a tough Japanese nationalist, said Japan should consider whether a "preventive" attack on North Korea was compatible with the Japanese constitution. Japan formally asked the Security Council to impose sanctions.

Of course, North Korea denounced Abe and Japan, but not half so loudly and publicly as did the spokesman of the South Korean and Chinese governments. South Korea did urge North Korea to make "wise judgments" to avert disaster, which was rather mild language. But South Korea accused Tokyo of "arrogance and outrageous rhetoric that further intensifies the crisis on the Korean peninsula," which was less mild. Nor were the Chinese gentler with Abe and Japan. Abe, they said, was "pouring oil on the fire." They added: "This practice is extremely irresponsible and incomprehensible and it will only seriously disrupt international diplomatic efforts and accelerate tensions in north-east Asia." Russia seems to share this view.

So consequence number one of the North Korean missile test was a public exacerbation of the political quarrels of both China and South Korea with Japan, quarrels that have been increasing over the past few years. For the United States, it means it has to navigate between what have been its two major allies in East Asia - Japan and South Korea. As for a U.N. resolution, it is most unlikely anything close to the Japanese version will be adopted.

On the home front, George Bush is running into trouble with his own supporters. In the latest issue of The Weekly Standard, leading journal of the neo-conservatives, editor William Kristol was scathing about Bush. He quotes Bush as telling the North Koreans they have a "choice to make" - or else. Kristol says that Kim Jong-Il has in fact already made his choice, but "what price will [he] pay?" In effect, says Kristol, none. "What was 'unacceptable' to President Bush a week ago (a North Korean missile launch) has been accepted."

Kristol ends his editorial with the highest insult he has in his repertory. He calls Bush's current foreign policy "Clintonian." As a final flourish, Kristol says: "The real choice isn't Kim Jong-Il's. It's Presidents Bush's." The New York Times has a different take on what Bush has been doing: "Mr. Bush is discovering the limits of his own pre-emption doctrine - and the frustrations of its alternative."

Meanwhile, to very little public notice, India launched its own long-range missile test on July 9, only three days after the North Korean launches. For the first time, India now has a missile that can land in China. This missile test was not denounced by anyone as a provocation. Journalists have talked of it as "a strategic step to keep China in check."

So we have a geopolitical situation in which some countries are denounced for launching missile tests and others are not (not only India of course but, for example, the United States). But those who are denounced for launching missile tests hear the denunciations as hollow, since even the United States seems hesitant to threaten war with a country that has even "rudimentary" nuclear weapons. And very quietly the Israeli government has been toning down its previous pressures on the United States to do "something" about Iran.

The realities of geopolitical limitations on military bravura are painful to learn and harder still to accept. If politics, as they say, is the art of the possible, what is possible today?

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.]

What Can Israel Achieve? (1 August 2006)

The State of Israel was established in 1948. Ever since, there has been continuous violence between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and between Israel and its neighbors. Sometimes, the violence was low-level and even latent. And every once in a while, the violence escalated into open warfare, as now. Whenever full-scale violence broke out, there was an immediate debate about what started it, as though that mattered. We are now in the midst of warfare between Israel and Palestine in Gaza and between Israel and Lebanon. And the world is engaged in its usual futile debate about how to reduce the open state of warfare to low-level violence.

Every Israeli government has wished to create a situation in which the world and Israel's neighbors recognize its existence as a state and intergroup/interstate violence ceases. Israel has never been able to achieve this. When the level of violence is relatively low, the Israeli public is split about what strategy to pursue. But when it escalates into warfare, the Jewish Israelis and world Jewry tend to rally around the government.

In reality, Israel's basic strategy since 1948 has been to rely on two things in the pursuit of its objectives: a strong military, and strong outside Western support. So far this strategy has worked in one sense: Israel still survives. The question is how much longer this strategy will in fact continue to work.

The source of outside support has shifted over time. We forget completely that in 1948 the crucial military support for Israel came from the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites. When the Soviet Union pulled back, it was France that came to fill the role. France was engaged in a revolution in Algeria, and it saw Israel as a crucial element in defeating the Algerian national liberation movement. But when Algeria became independent in 1962, France dropped Israel because it then sought to maintain ties with a now-independent Algeria.

It is only after that moment that the United States moved into its present total support of Israel. One major element in this turn-around was the Israeli military victory in the Six Days War in 1967. In this war, Israel conquered all the territories of the old British Mandate of Palestine, as well as more. It proved its ability to be a strong military presence in the region. It transformed the attitude of world Jewry from one in which only about 50% really approved of the creation of Israel into one which had the support of the large majority of world Jewry, for whom Israel had now become a source of pride. This is the moment when the Holocaust became a major ideological justification for Israel and its policies.

After 1967, the Israeli governments never felt they had to negotiate anything with the Palestinians or with the Arab world. They offered one-sided settlements but these were always on Israeli terms. Israel wouldn't negotiate with Nasser. Then it wouldn't negotiate with Arafat. And now it won't negotiate with so-called terrorists. Instead, it has relied on successive shows of military strength.

Israel is now engaged in the exact same catastrophic blunder, from its own point of view, as George Bush's invasion of Iraq. Bush thought that a show of military strength would establish U.S. presence unquestionably in Iraq and intimidate the rest of the world. Bush has discovered that Iraqi resistance was far more formidable militarily than anticipated, that American political allies in Iraq were far less reliable than he assumed they would be, and that the U.S. public's support of the war was far more fragile than he expected. The United States is heading towards a humiliating withdrawal from Iraq.

Israel's current military campaign is a direct parallel of Bush's invasion of Iraq. The Israeli generals are already noting that Hizbullah's military is far more formidable than anticipated, that U.S. allies in the region are already taking wide distance from the United States and Israel (note the Iraqi government's support of Lebanon and now that of the Saudi government), and soon will discover that the Israeli public's support is more fragile than expected. Already the Israeli government is reluctant to send land troops into Lebanon, largely because of what it thinks will be the reaction of its own people inside Israel. Israel is heading towards a humiliating truce arrangement.

What the Israeli governments do not realize is that neither Hamas nor Hizbullah need Israel. It is Israel that needs them, and needs them desperately. If Israel wants not to become a Crusader state that is in the end extinguished, it is only Hamas and Hizbullah that can guarantee the survival of Israel. It is only when Israel is able to come to terms with them, as the deeply-rooted spokespersons of Palestinian and Arab nationalism, that Israel can live in peace.

Achieving a stable peace settlement will be extremely difficult. But the pillars of Israel's present strategy - its own military strength and the unconditional support of the United States - constitute a very thin reed. Its military advantage is diminishing and will diminish steadily in the years to come. And in the post-Iraqi years, the United States may well drop Israel in the same way that France did in the 1960s.

Israel's only real guarantee will be that of the Palestinians. And to get this guarantee, Israel will need to rethink fundamentally its strategy for survival.

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.]

Five Reasons Why Great Military Powers Lose Wars (15 August 2006)

The United States is today the greatest military power in the world. Israel is today the greatest military power located in the Middle East. One of the most obvious temptations of military superiority is to use military force when one wants to accomplish something which is resisted politically. The United States decided to use force against Iraq in 2003. Israel decided to use force against Lebanon in 2006. In both cases, the governments made these decisions, calculating that they could surely win the military conflict, and win it quickly.

Normally, the greatest military power in the world or in a given region can indeed win such military engagements, and win them quickly. That is what we mean when we say they are the greatest military power. But winning depends on a situation in which the military gap between the two states is truly overwhelming. If it is less than overwhelming, the decision to resort to military force can backfire, and backfire badly. This is so for five reasons.

1) If the weaker power turns out to have enough power to slow down the process, and even more to bog it down, then the primary result of the military engagement is to show up the limits of the presumed superior military strength of the greatest military power. Indeed the lesson that the world draws from such a situation is that the greatest military power is militarily weaker than most people had presumed. Other countries draw political conclusions from such a show of less than overwhelming military power.

2) A prolonged war is always, and inevitably, a nasty war. The greatest military power engages in actions that begin to seem offensive morally. If the war is truly short, such offenses are quickly forgotten. But if the war drags on, they become more and more a part of the generalized perception not only in the two countries engaged in the war, but in the rest of the world. The greatest military power begins to lose whatever moral edge it claimed and with which it was credited previously in world public opinion. Slowly but surely, countries that had been more or less on the side of the greatest military power begin to take their distance, and sometimes even express political and moral anger.

3) At the outset, a very large majority of public opinion in the greatest military power usually backs its government's decision to go to war. This backing takes the form of patriotic fervor and great moral approval of their government. But such internal public approval is supported by the belief that the war is not merely just in their eyes but that the war will also be won swiftly, and therefore relatively painlessly.

When the war begins to bog down, there are two groups in the population of the greatest military power who begin to withdraw support from their government. There are those who think that the government hasn't tried hard enough and is basically incompetent. They call for escalating still further the military assault. If this turns out to be for any reason impossible, this group often draws the conclusion that they should pull back entirely from the war. There is a second group who begin to have moral doubts about the war, and begin to urge pulling back not because the government is ineffective but because it is morally wrong. Even though these two groups of internal critics are saying opposite things, and are at considerable odds with each other, the two discontents add up to considerable internal pressure on the government to change its policy.

By the time the warfare is really bogged down, the government of the strongest military power is in a lose-lose situation. If it pulls back, it loses. And if it doesn't pull back, it loses. The result at first is paralysis (called "staying the course") and then humiliation. If the sense of humiliation is sufficiently great, it can lead to extreme internal tensions within the country that had been thought of as the strongest military power.

4) The longer such a situation goes on, the more expensive it becomes -- expensive in human lives (of the greatest military power), and expensive economically. The more expensive it becomes, the more the government begins to lose internal support. The country against whom the war is being fought is no doubt damaged physically, often to an extreme degree. But the damage to the strongest military power turns out to be very great as well, even if it is less likely to take the form of the destruction of infrastructure.

5) As all of this occurs -- the demonstration of less military strength than was believed previously, the loss of moral edge, the increasing withdrawal of internal support, the increasing cost to the greatest military power -- the outcome is that the overall political position in the world-system of the greatest military power declines, sometimes precipitously.

The political conclusion one has to draw from these five reasons is that the greatest military power better be really sure that its military edge is really overwhelming before it brings down such negative results on itself.

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 Tiger at Bay: Scary Times Ahead (1 September 2006)

When many years ago, some of us said that the decline of United States hegemony in the world-system was inevitable, unstoppable, and already occurring, we were told by most people that we ignored the obvious overwhelming military and economic strength of the United States. And there were some critics who said that our analyses were harmful because they served as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Then the neo-cons came to power in the Bush presidency, and they implemented their policy of unilateral macho militarism, designed (they said) to restore unquestioned United States hegemony by frightening U.S. enemies and intimidating U.S. friends into unquestioned obedience to U.S. policies in the world arena. The neo-cons had their chance and their wars and have spectacularly failed either to frighten those regarded as enemies or to intimidate erstwhile allies into unquestioned obedience. The U.S. position in the world-system is far weaker today than it was in 2000, the result precisely of the very misguided neo-con policies adopted during the Bush presidency. Today, quite a few people are ready to talk openly about U.S. decline.

So what happens now? There are two places to look: inside the United States, and in the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, governments of all stripes are paying less and less attention to anything the United States says and wants. Madeleine Albright, when she was Secretary of State, said that the United States was "the indispensable nation." This may have been true once, but it is certainly not true now. Now, it's a tiger at bay.

It's not yet fully the "paper tiger" of which Mao Zedong spoke, but it's certainly on its way to being exposed as a tiger crouching in self-defense.

How do other nations treat a tiger at bay? With a great deal of prudence, it must be said. If the United States is no longer capable of getting its way almost anywhere, it is still capable of doing a great deal of damage if it decides to lash out. Iran may defy the United States with aplomb, but it tries to be careful not to humiliate it. China may be feeling its oats and sure that it will get still stronger in the decades to come, but it handles the United States with kid gloves. Hugo Chavez may openly tweak the tiger's nose, but older and wiser Fidel Castro speaks less provocatively. And Italy's new Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, holds Condoleezza Rice's hands while pursuing a foreign policy clearly aimed at strengthening a world role for Europe independent of the United States.

So why are they all so prudent? To answer that, we must look at what is going on in the United States. The de facto chief executive, Dick Cheney, knows what needs to be done from the point of view of the macho militarists, whose leader he is. The United States must "stay the course" and indeed escalate the violence. The alternative is to admit defeat, and Cheney is not someone to do that.

Cheney does however have an acute political problem at home. He and his policies are clearly losing support, massively, within the United States. The scare speeches about terrorists and the accusations of treason launched at his critics no longer seem to be as effective as they once were. The recent victory of war critic Ned Lamont over war defender Joe Lieberman in the Democratic senatorial primary in Connecticut has rattled the U.S. political establishment of both parties. Within days, a very large number of politicians seemed to move some distance in the direction of closing down the Iraq operation.

If, as seems quite possible now, the Democrats win control of both houses of Congress in the November 2006 elections, there risks being a stampede to withdraw, despite the hesitancy of the Democratic congressional leadership. This will be all the more sure if, in various local elections, prominent antiwar candidates win.

What will the Cheney camp do then? One can't expect that they will gracefully acknowledge the coming of a Democratic president in the 2008 elections. They will know that they have probably only two years left to create situations from which it would be almost impossible for the United States to retreat. And since they would not, with a Democratic congress, be able to get any important legislation passed, they will concentrate (even more than now) on trying to use the executive powers of the presidency, under the docile front man, George W. Bush, to stir up military havoc around the world and to reduce radically the sphere of civil liberties within the United States.

The Cheney cabal will however be resisted, on many fronts. The most important locus of resistance will no doubt be the leadership of the U.S. armed forces (with the exception of the Air Force), who clearly think that the current military adventures have greatly overextended U.S. military capacity and are very worried that they will be the ones held for blame later by U.S. public opinion when Rumsfeld and Cheney have disappeared from the newspaper headlines. The Cheney cabal will be resisted as well by big business who see the current policies as having very negative consequences for the U.S. economy.

And of course they will be resisted by the left and center-left within the United States who are feeling reinvigorated, angry, and anxious about the course of U.S. policy. There is a slow but clear radicalization of the left and even the center-left.

When that happens, the militarist right will retaliate very aggressively. When Lamont won the primary, a reader of the Wall Street Journal wrote a letter saying that "we have reached a tipping point in this country - if we allow the left to govern as the majority our country is finished." He calls Republican leaders "inept." He, and many others, will be looking for fiercer leaders.

Everyone worries about civil war in Iraq. How about in the United States? Scary times ahead!

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 Loose Cannon in the Middle East (15 September 2006)

Everyone's attention is in the wrong place. Most analysts, journalists, and political leaders worry about some government doing something truly destabilizing in the Middle East that will launch widespread regional havoc. The standard culprits - differing according to one's political persuasions - are Iraq, Iran, Israel, and the United States. But in fact, for different reasons, none of these countries is likely, now or in the near future, to provoke a scenario that could lead to generalized warfare. Iraq is too engrossed in its civil war and in its attempts to end the U.S. presence to be able to start anything serious. Iran has a quite stable regime and is only trying to make sure that the United States cannot clip its wings. Israel is huffing and puffing about Iran but, after the Lebanon fiasco, is in no position to start anything serious. And the U.S. government is licking its Middle East wounds and seeking primarily to minimize the damage it has already caused to its own interests.

The loose cannon in the Middle East is Pakistan. Reflect on its history. There was a highly secular, highly "modern" political movement in British India, which sought, successfully, to have a largely Muslim zone carved out from British India and be recognized as an independent state. Immediately after the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, they went to war, killed each other in large numbers, and engaged in a massive population exchange. Ever since there has been continuing tension between the two states, especially since they in effect partitioned the large border area of Kashmir, without either side recognizing the legitimacy of the partition.

In the more than half century since then, several important changes have taken place. Pakistan, which was a geographical monstrosity, itself broke in two. Its geographically separated eastern half became the independent state of Bangladesh (with the encouragement of India). India and Pakistan engaged in more wars, which basically changed nothing. (And China and India also had a border war.) During the Cold War, India became a leader of the non-aligned movement, entertaining rather friendly relations with the Soviet Union. As a result, two countries were particularly unhappy with India's foreign policy: the United States and China. Hence, both pursued close relations with Pakistan.

Neither India nor Pakistan signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (the only other non-signatory being Israel). They both developed nuclear weapons. India has had a turbulent and complicated internal political history since 1947. But fundamentally it has remained politically stable, despite its seeming potential for disintegration. For one thing, India has survived multiple changes of government without any sign that the army would step in. The story in Pakistan is quite different. It has had multiple changes in regime, and the army has been responsible for a large number of them. The present regime came into existence as the result of a military coup.

Religion has played a different role in the two countries. In India, Hindu fundamentalism has been very strong and prone to violence, but ultimately it has expressed itself via a political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has largely played by parliamentary rules, in and out of power. And there remains in India a very large Muslim population, one whose votes matter. In Pakistan, Islamic fundamentalists have pursued multiple paths at once. They have created parties to be sure, which have been in and out of power. But they have also created guerilla movements, which (at least initially) were largely active in Kashmir. Even more to the point, they have infiltrated the once purely secular armed forces, and especially its intelligence operations. And they have established de facto autonomous regimes in the so-called Northwest frontier.

Pakistani governments have had to struggle to keep their heads above water. They have been trying to satisfy two different clienteles at the same time: the "modernizing" (that is, Westernizing) strata (professionals, businessmen, academics) on the one hand: and the much more "popular" Islamist groups. This has not been an easy political ball to juggle. One of their key techniques has been to develop an ambiguous but close relationship with the United States, trying to get as much U.S. financial and politico-military support as they could while giving the least possible in return.

One of Osama bin Laden's chief objectives has been to knock the props from under this game of ambiguity. He hoped, with the 9/11 attack, to get the United States to put pressure on Pakistan to be a much more fully-committed ally. And to some extent Osama bin Laden achieved this (due to the crass lack of geopolitical sophistication in the Bush regime). This brought about a clear reaction in Pakistan. The army's attempt to bring "order" to the northwest provinces (and thereby capture Osama bin Laden) has failed and the army has now had to draw back. Meanwhile India has been successful in getting the United States to legitimate their further nuclear development, and the United States refused to do the same for Pakistan, lest it upset the applecart in the improved U.S.-India relationship. So Pakistan has turned to its other old ally, China, to fill in the gap.

Still, President Musharref of Pakistan looks increasingly like a political failure. His army has furtively renewed its support for the Taliban in Afghanistan (of whom Pakistan had been the principal sponsor in the 1990s), and the United States is getting increasingly irritated. If Musharref totters, Pakistan could well next have a truly Islamist regime quite hostile to the United States - this time in a militarily powerful country with nuclear weapons, and one in which Osama bin Laden resides with impunity.

Then what?

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.]

Three Papal Strategies to Revive Christianity (1 October 2006)

Last month, Pope Benedict XVI made a speech in his old university, Regensburg, in Germany. In this speech, he included a brief section in which he quoted an obscure 14th-century Byzantine emperor, who made a hostile analysis of Islam. This short section was very negatively received in the Islamic world and led to riots as well as multiple condemnations. The Pope has apologized, now four times, but only for causing so much consternation. He has stopped short of saying that the assessment of Islam was fundamentally wrong. Since this diplomatic flap, the world's analysts have been debating how someone so intelligent as the pope could have made such an "error." Perhaps it wasn't an error, but deliberate.

Consider the nature of the Roman Catholic Church. It has existed for almost 2000 years. It is a church that believes that it encompasses the truth - both about God and about the necessary role of the Church in the pursuit of God's ends. It believes that its role is to evangelize the entire world and to arrive at a world in which all persons, without exception, are practicing Roman Catholics.

Now consider its history as an institution. In the beginning, it was a church in expansion in terms of the number of adherents to the faith. It spread steadily, primarily throughout Europe and parts of the Middle East, for about a thousand years. Then it faced its first numerically significant schism in the eleventh century, that of the Eastern Orthodox churches. The Roman Catholic Church was as a result largely confined to western and central Europe. In the sixteenth century, the Church faced the Protestant Reformation, which led to the loss of most of northern Europe. And from the eighteenth century on, it began to lose practicing Catholics to what it saw as the cancer of secularism and free-thinking in Europe.

In the post-1945 period, the number of practicing Catholics in the pan-European world dropped dramatically because of the spread of secular values. Not only were Catholics not attending mass in countries the majority of whose populations were nominally Catholic - Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Quebec - but vocations to the priesthood also dropped dramatically. This was true to a lesser extent in largely Catholic Latin America, where however the Church began to lose some ground to evangelical Protestantism. In general, however, in the global South, Church membership was still expanding, because of the combination of higher birth rates there than in Europe and the lesser appeal of secularism. Hence, the Church was no longer primarily European; it was coming to have more members in the global South.

The Church's problem has not been that it was losing ground to other religions. Catholics were not converting to Islam, Judaism, or Buddhism. Nor were Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists converting to Catholicism. The Church's organizational problems were largely within the Christian world. The question for the church since 1945 has been how to react to this sudden and massive organizational shift. There have been three different Papal strategies to reinvigorate the position of the Catholic Church - those of John XXIII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.

John XXIII called for an aggiornamento of the Church, that is a "bringing the Church up to date." The ecumenical council he convened, Vatican II, made many changes in the practice of the Church: a more flexible view about salvation outside the Church, a liturgy that was less Latin-based, a greater role for the bishops collegially. These changes seemed primarily aimed at meeting the implicit and explicit critiques of Catholics in the European world, who wanted the Church to be less out of tune with contemporary Western values. Vatican II was coincident in time with the rise of so-called liberation theology within the Church, particularly in Latin America. Its objective seemed to be to counter the view that the Church had been partisan to ultra-conservative political views.

There was much criticism from within the Church that these reforms had "gone too far." John Paul II re-emphasized traditional Catholic values of sexuality, the role of women in the Church, and the subordination of the bishops to the pope. He attacked liberation theology, and replaced reformist bishops in the pan-European world with more traditionalist ones. His strategy for renewal seemed to focus on the potential for the Church in the global South. For this reason, he placed unusual emphasis on entering into dialogue with other religions. One result would be, he seemed to think, that there would be more access for the Church in non-European regions.

Benedict XVI clearly has a third vision. He agrees with John Paul II on reining in the aggiornamento. But he disagrees that the future of the Church depends on inter-religious dialogue. His strategy focuses on recapturing the traditional base of the Church - its European roots. The speech he gave in Regensburg is essentially an attack on European secularism, and an urgent plea for the revival of a full-throated Catholic doctrine and practice in Europe.

This fits in with his previous criticism of the possible entry of Turkey into the European Union, and his failed insistence that the proposed constitution of the European Union include an explicit reference to the central role of Christianity in Europe. In such a perspective, the use of the anti-Islamic statement of a Byzantine emperor fits in perfectly. It can be seen as a mode of consolidating Europe against an enemy, and thereby encouraging all Europeans to emphasize their Christian roots. He seemed to have been willing to risk Islamic anger in order to consolidate a European base.

Three strategies - aggiornamento, outreach to the global South abetted by ecumenicism, and consolidating a European base on traditional Catholic bases. Which, if any, will be fruitful in the century to come?

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.]

What Difference Will a Democratic Congress Make? (15 October 2006)

It now seems quite likely, short of a major miracle for the Republicans, that the Democrats will win at least one, and probably both, houses of the U.S. Congress in the elections on Nov. 7. What difference will that make? I should say that I personally will vote the Democratic ticket. But like a lot of people, I will vote it primarily as a negative vote against George W. Bush and secondarily against the Republican majority in both houses. I shall do this for many reasons, but first of all because I think the invasion of Iraq was immoral, counterproductive, and in general a fiasco - for the United States, for Iraq, and for the entire world. There are many other complaints I have about the current regime - its attacks on the fundamental liberties of the American people, its retrogressive domestic economic and social policies, and its inept and unwise foreign policy in general. But Iraq tops them all as a reason. So I shall vote in protest, and to try to stop things from getting even worse.

But what will a Democratic Congress do that is better? That, as everyone has remarked, is not at all clear. Indeed, one has to doubt that the Democrats collectively have a really better foreign policy to offer. The primary problem of the leadership of the Democratic party is that they believe, at least as much as the Republicans, that the United States is the center of the world, the font of wisdom, the great defender of world freedom - in short, a deeply virtuous nation in a dangerous world.

Worst of all, they seem to believe that, merely by purging the element of exaggerated unilateralism practiced by the current regime, they will be able to restore the United States to a position of centrality in the world-system, and regain the support of their erstwhile allies and supporters, first of all in western Europe and then everywhere else in the world. They seem really to believe that it's a matter of form, not substance, and that the fault of the Bush regime is that it wasn't good enough at diplomacy.

It's true that not all Democrats feel that way, and indeed for that matter not all Republicans and independents. But at this moment, those who are ready to take a real look at the fallacies of U.S. policies are a minority - furthermore, a minority without a clear agenda themselves and certainly without a major political leader to express an alternate view.

So what will happen? It is probably, not certainly, the case that the United States will be forced to withdraw from Iraq before the presidential election in 2008. It is also almost certainly the case that the Republicans will blame the Democrats for "losing" the war, and the Democrats will say it isn't so. But beyond the usual political claptrap, the withdrawal will come as a deep shock to the American people, even if a majority will see no alternative.

One has to put such a withdrawal in the context of wars the United States has fought since 1945. The Korean War and the first Gulf War ended at the starting line. Neither side really won. The most important war for the United States - in terms of its geopolitical impact, its economic cost, and the emotional involvement of the American people - was Vietnam. And that war, the United States lost. The result has been a deep cleavage in the American people - about "who" lost the war, and whether the war could have been "won," had other policies prevailed.

The so-called Vietnam syndrome has never been healed. With the attacks of September 11, 2001, there was a patriotic upsurge among the American people, and the country seemed temporarily reunified. But George Bush has squandered all that, and no Democratic president can resurrect it. Withdrawal from Iraq will, I predict, be even more traumatic than the flight from Saigon in 1975. Two defeats will be devastating and also persuasive of the real limits of U.S. power.

There are really only two possibilities at that point. One possibility is that there occurs a sort of profound soul-searching which would lead the United States to reevaluate its self-image, its sense of what is possible in the world-system now and in the future, and what kind of values it really believes in. If that happens, maybe forces within the Democratic Party will come forward to incarnate this reevaluation. Or maybe the whole political framework of the United States and its parties will change to reflect such a reevaluation.

But of course there is a second possibility. It is that the nation is overcome with deep anger about the "loss" of its primacy, will seek scapegoats (and find them), and eventually move in the direction of gutting the U.S. Constitution and the liberties it presumes to defend. Something like that happened in Weimar Germany. And while the situation is different in many respects, and while I am not predicting in any sense the emergence of a Nazi party, nonetheless it will be a grievous disaster for the United States and the world if the United States moves to any significant degree in this direction.

It is what the United States thinks about itself and does about itself that matters, not only for the United States but also for the rest of the world. For a wounded elephant can indeed go on a rampage. On the other hand, one can think of times when the rude shock of the kind that a defeat in Iraq would inflict could have the salutary effect of reviving the best in the American tradition - that of a libertarian, socially-conscious people who would once again welcome, in the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty, "the huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

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 North Korean Imbroglio: Who Gains? (1 November 2006)

North Korea has joined the nuclear club, and everyone else claims they are upset. Are they really? There are five actors that really count in this affair: North Korea, the United States, South Korea, China, and Japan. They have all in fact reacted quite differently.

North Korea is undoubtedly the most pleased of all. They set off a nuclear explosion for several obvious reasons. They are persuaded that having a weapon in hand eliminates the likelihood of a United States attack. And it probably does. They also wanted to be taken more seriously as a world actor. And despite appearances in the last few weeks, they have probably accomplished this too. They wanted to show not only the United States but everyone else, specifically including China, that there was nothing much they could do about North Korea's decision, and they seem to have done that. And underlying all this, their primary objective no doubt is the survival of the regime. And they have probably done as much as is within their power to ensure this. But of course they too are not all-powerful.

The general world analysis of the effect of their action is that it will ensure a spread of nuclear armament, first of all in the region. I agree. Within a very short time, I expect Japan to start its program. It will be followed by South Korea. And then - no one mentions this - it will be followed by Taiwan, thus realizing a totally nuclearized Northeast Asia. Is this good or bad? The answer depends on whose perspective you take.

The United States is surely the most unhappy. In a period when U.S. effective power is declining everywhere, the last zone where it still seemed to have a strong edge has been Northeast Asia. No more. The Bush regime hasn't known what to do. It pushed for a rapid punishment of North Korea by the U.N. Security Council. What it came up with was a limp rag - a resolution that, albeit unanimous, might have been written by the North Koreans. Had a Democratic administration agreed to such a resolution, the first person to denounce it for its weakness would have been John Bolton. But since Bolton is Bush's Ambassador to the United Nations, he has hailed the resolution as a great accomplishment. Unpersuaded by Bolton's rhetoric, Condoleezza Rice has made the rounds of Northeast Asia, saying that she can not impose on anyone how they will implement the limp rag. Still she "expects" that China and South Korea will live up to the obligations she presumes they have, which they have no intention of doing and have said so.

Japan claims that it is very unhappy, and shares the U.S. hardline position. Pardon me for being skeptical. Isn't Shinzo Abe the man who became prime minister by promising to make Japan into a "normal" nation? This is code language for changing the constitution, creating a full-fledged army and nuclear weapons. The North Korean nuclear explosion gives Abe the immediate justification, and he will take it. Indeed, U.S. neo-cons are publicly calling on him to take it. They do so because they believe it will strengthen the U.S. position in the region and make more likely military action against North Korea.

But a Japanese nuclear program may well have the opposite consequence. The one thing that has tied Japan most closely to the United States in the last fifty years has been Japan's dependence on the U.S. nuclear shield. Once Japan has its own nuclear weapons, it has the possibility of being more independent. And sooner or later, it will realize this possibility.

China is of course unhappy, and for many reasons. For one thing, North Korea's action exposes the limits of China's power, which seems as helpless as the United States in this situation. For another thing, nuclear proliferation is not in China's interests. It's not worried about North Korea. It's worried about Japan and, above all, Taiwan.

China and South Korea share the desperate desire to see the North Korean regime survive (no "regime change" in their program). They are both banking on the possibility that their various kinds of economic assistance will bring about a slow and mild liberalization of the regime - more of the Deng Xiaopeng than the Gorbachev variety. Whether this is realistic we shall have to see. But do they have any choice except to bank on it, and work for it?

South Korea is in the most difficult position of the five powers. It is the only country in which public opinion seems split down the middle - between the party in power which believes in "engagement" with North Korea and the opposition which wants to replicate the Japanese position of close alignment with the United States. This will undoubtedly be one of the major issues in next year's presidential elections.

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.]

Mother of All Defeats (15 November 2006)

George W. Bush is a high-stakes gambler. When high-stakes gamblers lose, they lose big. George W. Bush has lost big - in Iraq and in the United States.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it seemed that, despite overwhelming military power, the United States might even lose the war. It didn't take too long to see that the United States actually was losing the war. By now, it is obvious that the United States has lost the war, irremediably. The U.S. objective in Iraq was to put in power a stable, friendly government, and one that would allow U.S. military bases. It is clear now that if it is stable, it won't be friendly. And if it is friendly, it won't be stable.

On November 7, the Republican Party lost the midterm elections. As Bush himself said, in all the close races, the margin was very slight, but overall it was a "thumping." The degree of thumping is underlined by the fact that, after the elections, Bush's poll ratings went down still further.

Reason number one was the fact that most Americans felt that the war was going badly in Iraq and they wanted to get the military home. Even in districts where the Democratic candidate did not make this an issue, it played in the background. There were other reasons to be sure. Many centrist voters voted against the Christian right, and having some Democratic candidates who took a more centrist position on the "social" issues didn't hurt.

The question is what is going to happen now. Bush is not, and has never been, an ideologue. He is a pragmatic rightwing politician, who does what he thinks necessary to win elections. He has been pretty good at this, and he is aware of the mistakes he has made in recent years - not in geopolitics (where he basically understands nothing and cares about very little), but in U.S. politics, where he has gotten a "thumping." He is adjusting. He has fired Rumsfeld, will back seat Cheney, and (no doubt following Karl Rove's advice) has called for help from the old "realist" wing of the Republican party - his father, James Baker, and the incoming Defense Secretary, Robert Gates. He is hoping to co-opt the Democratic leadership into his revived bipartisan veneer.

Can he do this? Specifically, what can he do about Iraq? And what can he do about the Democratic thrust forward? The short answer on Iraq is that it is hard to see any way he can extricate himself and the United States elegantly from the Iraq fiasco. The Baker-Hamilton commission will soon let us know what "new directions" they see, but I doubt that they can come up with anything that can work.

Some people talk about dividing Iraq into three parts. This is a non-starter. Neither Turkey nor Iran can tolerate an independent Kurdistan, and the Kurds will be far better off in their present de facto autonomy than in fighting a war with neighbors. The majority of the Shia do not want a separate state. For one thing, why have Shia-stan when they can more or less dominate a united Iraq? And in any case, what would happen to Baghdad? And of course, the Sunni are dead opposed. So of course are all Iraq's neighbors, without exception. And as we have seen in Yugoslavia, separate states do not end ethnic conflict; they actually enhance it.

Basically, there are only two ways the United States can withdraw from Iraq with minimal further loss of life and minimal political damage. They can ask Iran to be their intermediary to dampen internal conflict in Iraq, which might work. Or, alternatively, the al-Sadr faction of the Shia and the Sunni resistance can join forces on an anti-American platform and ask the United States politely to leave immediately (that is, kick the United States out), which also might work.

Neither alternative is the least bit palatable to Bush or to the U.S. Congress. But these two alternatives represent probably the best deal the United States can get at this stage. Any other road almost surely leads to an ending in which helicopters ferry people out of the Green Zone to Kuwait.

The one thing that is sure is that there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq as we approach the 2008 elections. The voters and the military made that clear in the 2006 election. Of course there will be a massive blame game - among Republicans as to who lost the 2006 elections, and between Democrats and Republicans as to who lost Iraq. But the word on everyone's mind is "lost."

We can also be sure that bombing either North Korea or Iran is off the real agenda (including for Israel). The U.S. armed forces and the U.S. electorate will not tolerate it (not to speak of the rest of the world). Where will this leave the United States as a world power? It will probably result in a big push towards drawing inward. Already, in the 2006 elections, many candidates won by opposing "free trade" and Iraq was a dirty word. The political temptation will be to go local in emphasis. One of the major side effects will be a notable reduction in U.S. support for Israeli foreign policy, which will be wrenching for Israel.

The Democrats are united on internal economic legislation - higher minimum wages, better and more affordable health care, financial aid to college students. They are also going to push ecology issues and medical advances (stem cell research, for example). If the Republicans hope to recuperate strength, they will have to move their economic program as well as their program on social issues somewhat in a centrist direction.

The result, as is already obvious, is to create major turmoil in the Republican party, while reducing it in the Democratic party - the exact opposite of what has been the case in the last decade. And in early 2009, George W. Bush will fade into the wilderness, remembered (if we bother) for being the front man for the mother of all defeats - in Iraq, in the world-system, and at home for the Republican party.

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.]

Lessons? Vietnam, Indonesia, and Iraq (1 December 2006)

George W. Bush has just visited Vietnam and Indonesia. He himself and the press in general used the occasion to reflect on the "lessons" from the Vietnam war, meaning what were its implications for U.S. policy in Iraq. It might have been more useful to reflect on the lessons from Indonesia, and the differing receptions Bush got in the two countries.

Vietnam is today one of the few countries in the world where the U.S. Secret Service will allow Bush to travel in a public motorcade. When Bush was there, he said that the Vietnam war should teach the United States patience. In a quote that every news service picked up, he added: "We'll succeed unless we quit."

Only George W. Bush could have said that the lesson he drew from Vietnam about Iraq is that the United States will succeed unless it quits. For, as even he should know, the United States did quit in Vietnam. Was Bush's comment supposed to be a denunciation of Gerald Ford for having quit, for not having had the patience to win? Or was it just a witless restatement of his stay-the-course line in Iraq, despite what happened in Vietnam?

What are the most obvious lessons to be drawn from the long war in Vietnam? One is that the United States was defeated by a small nation that could not begin to match its strength in military hardware. The second is that the long war with Vietnam tore the American people apart and sapped in important ways the long-term economic strength of the United States. The third is that, despite all that or maybe precisely because Vietnam defeated the United States, Vietnam today is one of the most friendly countries in the world to the United States, indeed one of the few friendly countries.

The ostensible reason the United States fought in Vietnam was to oppose Communism and to make sure that there was no "domino effect" of Communism in Southeast Asia. Well, the Communist Party still rules Vietnam today, and they are actually friendly to the United States. And there was no domino effect. So, why did the United States sacrifice all those lives and financial resources? Maybe it would have made more sense not to have gotten involved in the first place.

President Bush proceeded to Indonesia, where he spent a few hours, holed up in a government palace. No motorcades - too dangerous; no staying even one night - too dangerous. So let us review U.S. policy in Indonesia. There, unlike Vietnam, the U.S. intervention was "successful." The CIA helped arrange the overthrow of Sukarno, a leader of the world's "non-aligned" powers - someone the United States felt was too friendly to the Soviet Union. In his place, a rightwing general, Suharto, became the ruler. He promptly engaged in a mass slaughter of the Indonesian Communist Party, the largest in the world outside the states where the Communist Party was the government.

Indonesia is also the state with the largest Muslim population in the world. Indonesian Islam has been, by world standards, of a quite "moderate" variety. But after the fall of the secular government of Sukarno, the Indonesian government has felt the need to take account of the political views of Muslim parties. And in Indonesia there has been the "domino" effect that never occurred in Vietnam. Only the domino effect came from the U.S. policy in Iraq. The United States is seen these days by many, possibly most, Indonesian Muslims as an enemy of Islam, and they are very angry. Had there been a motorcade in Jakarta, it probably would have been stoned. So the Secret Service nixed it.

So, what lessons should we draw? In 2006, one of the world's few remaining Communist governments is a friend, relatively speaking, of the United States. And the country where we arranged to wipe out the Communist Party is a country in which it is physically dangerous for the U.S. president to set foot.

Will the U.S. president who visits Iraq in twenty years get the kind of reception George W. Bush got in Vietnam, or the kind Bush got in Indonesia?

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.]

Mexican Turbulence: Uprising or Civil War? (15 December 2006)

Subcomandante Marcos said last month that Mexico is "on the eve of a great uprising or a civil war." He is continuing "the other campaign" launched by the Zapatistas. And Andrés Manuel López Obrador, candidate of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) in the election of June 2, 2006, has asserted very loudly, and to very great public support, that his election was stolen. He has refused to recognize Felipe Calderón who took the presidential oath on December 1, and has established his own competing structure, the "legitimate government" - with offices, a cabinet, and representatives in each region. Meanwhile, what started earlier this year as a teacher's wage strike in Oaxaca morphed into a general anti-capitalist uprising that took over the town under a structure that called itself the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO in Spanish), and demanded minimally the dismissal of the PRI provincial governor, one Ulisses Ruiz. State and federal police eventually moved in with force, put down the uprising, and the leaders of APPO have been arrested.

How did the next-door neighbor of the United States get to a point where its government is actively and vigorously challenged as illegitimate, and where people are discussing whether the legal president can actually last out his six-year term, ending an 80-year period of relative political stability? One has to put together three elements to explain the turbulence: 500 years of oppression of the indigenous peoples of Mexico; the deterioration of Mexico's twentieth-century political institutions; and the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Mexico's basic welfare.

Mexico is a White settler country in which the majority of the population is composed of indigenous Indian peoples plus peoples of so-called mixed blood. Numbers make a difference, especially when the racial/ethnic stratification has remained fairly constant for so long and the gap in living standards is so blatant. The most recent political consequence of this underlying tension has been the emergence of the Zapatistas (the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) in Chiapas in 1994. The Zapatistas have proved themselves to be a lasting, meaningful political force whose "other campaign" that they started last year has begun to have its impact throughout the country. The "other campaign" is not a campaign for electoral power, nor to take over the present Mexican state. It seeks to empower local communities and oppressed groups of every variety (women, peasants and workers, gays) in a struggle against capitalism and imperialism - in Mexico and throughout the world.

There is a second front - the formal political arena established in the wake of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. After a shaky beginning, Mexico settled down into one-party rule under the aegis of the Partido Revolucionaria Institucional (PRI). PRI was at its revolutionary height in the 1930's during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, who nationalized petroleum and pursued agrarian reform by establishing government-backed communal land projects known as ejidos. Ever since 1940, the PRI has moved away from the path of Cárdenas, becoming more and more bureaucratic, conservative, and corrupt. Initially, its only opposition was a Catholic-based, pro-business rightwing party known as the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN).

In 1989, there was a breakaway to the left from PRI with the founding of the PRD. The 1988 candidate for president of the left forces that were to become the PRD was Cárdenas's son, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. It is generally agreed that the 1988 election was stolen by PRI, but the left did not fight this indignity. In 2000, the candidate of PAN, Vicente Fox, won, finally ousting PRI from presidential power and sending it on a precipitate political decline. When the PRD candidate in 2006, López Obrador was said to be defeated, he did not fade away passively like Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1988. Instead, he has sought actively to delegitimize his opponent's supposed victory.

The Zapatistas and the López Obradistas represent two wings of Mexico's popular opposition. They represent different political strategies, and at the moment are not working in unison with each other. But APPO in Oaxaca indicates the kind of forces that might bring the two together. Both support APPO, and APPO has been totally autonomous from both of them. There may be many more APPO's in the near future.

The final element to put into the picture is NAFTA. Mexico's upper strata have done well under NAFTA. But the lower strata are worse off than ever. One of the many consequences of course has been increased trans-border migration into the United States, which has led to internal turmoil in the United States - between a new "nativist" anti-immigrant movement and an aroused Latino political constituency. If the world-economy takes a further downward turn in the coming year or two, Mexico's legal government may face a drastic fall in income and find it difficult to weather the storm. And the two turbulences - that of Mexico and the United States - may join forces.

"Double, double, toil and trouble/Fire burn and cauldron bubble," intoned the witches in Macbeth.

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.]

2011 Center for a World in Balance