Immanuel Wallerstein • 2008 | Center for a World in Balance

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Immanuel Wallerstein - 2008

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.

What Have the Zapatistas Accomplished? (1 January 2008)

On January 1, 1994, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), commonly called the Zapatistas, led an insurrection in San Cristobal de las Casas in the state of Chiapas in Mexico. Just under fourteen years later, the EZLN convened an international colloquium on December 13-17, 2007 in the same city on the theme "Planet Earth: Antisystemic Movements" - a sort of stock-taking, both global and local, of their objectives. I myself participated in this colloquium, as did many other activists and intellectuals. In the course of the colloquium, Subcommandant Marcos gave a series of six talks, which are available on the internet.

In a sense, what everyone was asking, including Marcos, is what have the Zapatistas accomplished and what are the future prospects of antisystemic movements - in Chiapas and in the world? The answer to this question is not simple. Let us start the story on January 1, 1994. That day was chosen for the beginning of the insurrection because it was the day on which the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) came into effect. The slogan that day was !Ya basta! ("Enough is enough"). The Zapatistas were saying from the outset that their five-century- long protest against injustice and humiliation and demand for autonomy was linked today organically to the worldwide struggle against neo-liberalism and imperialism of which NAFTA was both a part and a symbol.

Chiapas, let us remember, is perhaps the poorest region of Mexico and its population is composed overwhelmingly of so-called indigenous peoples. The first Catholic bishop of Chiapas was Bartolomé de Las Casas, the sixteenth-century Dominican priest who devoted his life to defending vigorously (before the Church and the Spanish monarchy) the rights of the Indians to equal treatment. From the days of Las Casas until 1994, the Indians never saw that right acknowledged. The EZLN decided to try different methods. So were they more successful? We should look at the impact of the movement in three arenas: in Mexico as a political arena; in the world-system as a whole; in the realm of theorizing about antisystemic movements.

First, Mexico: Armed insurrection as a tactic was suspended after twelve days. It has never been resumed. And it is clear that it will not be unless the Mexican army or right-wing paramilitaries massively attack autonomous Zapatista communities. On the other hand, the truce agreement reached with the Mexican government - the so-called San Andrés accords providing for the recognition of autonomy for the indigenous communities - was never implemented by the government.

In 2001, the Zapatistas led a peaceful march across Mexico to the capital, hoping thereby to force the Mexican Congress to legislate the essential of the accords. The march was spectacular but the Mexican Congress failed to act. In 2005, the Zapatistas launched "the other campaign," an effort to mobilize an alliance of Zapatistas with groups in other provinces with more or less similar objectives - again spectacular but it did not change the actual politics of the Mexican government.

In 2006, the Zapatistas pointedly refused to endorse the left-of-center candidate for the presidency, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was running in a tight election against the proclaimed winner, the very conservative Felipe Calderón. This action was the one that caused most controversy with Zapatista sympathizers in Mexico and the rest of the world, many of whom felt that it cost López Obrador the election. The Zapatista position derived from their deep sense that electoral politics does not pay. The Zapatistas have been critical of all the left-of-center presidents in Latin America, from Lula in Brazil to Chávez in Venezuela, on the grounds that they were all top-down movements which changed nothing fundamental at the base for the oppressed majority. The only Latin American government which the Zapatistas speak well of is that of Cuba, because it is the only government they consider to be truly anti-capitalist.

On the other hand, within Mexico, the Zapatistas have managed to establish de facto autonomous indigenous communities which operate well, albeit they are besieged and constantly menaced by the Mexican army. The political sophistication and determination of these communities is impressive. Will this however last in the absence of serious political change in Mexico, especially in the light of increasing pressure on the rights of the Indians to control their own land? This is the unresolved issue.

The picture on the world scene is somewhat different. There is no question that the Zapatista insurrection of 1994 became a major inspiration for antisystemic movements throughout the world. It is unquestionably a key turning-point in the process that led to the demonstrations in 1999 at Seattle that caused the failure of the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a failure from which the WTO has never recovered. If today the WTO finds itself semi-moribund as a result of a North-South deadlock, the Zapatistas can claim some credit.

Seattle in turn led to the creation in 2001 of the World Social Forum (WSF), which has become the principal meeting-ground of the world's antisystemic movements. And if the Zapatistas themselves have never attended any WSF meeting because technically they are an armed force, the Zapatistas have remained an iconic movement within the WSF, a sort of inspirational force.

The Zapatistas from the beginning have said that their objectives and concerns were worldwide - intergalactic in their jargon - and they offered support to movements everywhere and asked actively for support from movements everywhere. They have been very successful in this. And if some worldwide support has suffered fatigue of late, the December 2007 colloquium was clearly an attempt to resuscitate these alliances.

In many ways, however, the most important contribution of the Zapatistas - and the most contested - has been in the theoretical realm. It was striking that in the six talks that Marcos gave in December, the first devoted itself to the importance of theorizing in the social sciences. What do the Zapatistas say about how to analyze the world?

First of all, they emphasize that the basic thing that is wrong with the world today is that it is a capitalist world, and that the basic thing to change is that, something they insist will require a real struggle. Now the Zapatistas are surely not the first ones to argue this. So what do they add to this? They are part of a post-1968 view that the traditional analyses of the Old Left were too narrow, in that they seemed to emphasize only the problems and struggles of the urban industrial proletariat. Marcos devoted one whole talk to the struggles of women for their rights. He devoted another to the crucial importance of control of the land by the world's rural workers.

And quite strikingly he placed several talks under the rubric, "neither core nor periphery" - rejecting the idea of a priority for one or the other, either in terms of power or of intellectual analysis. The Zapatistas are proclaiming that the struggle for rights of every oppressed group is equally important, and the struggle must be fought on all fronts at the same time.

They also say that the movements themselves must be internally democratic. The slogan is "mandar obedeciendo," which might be translated "lead by obeying the voice and wishes of those whom one is leading." This is easy to say and hard to do, but it is a cry against the historic verticalism of left movements. This leads them to a "horizontalism" in the relations between different movements. Some of their followers say that they are opposed to taking state power ever. While they are deeply skeptical of taking state power via the "lesser evil," they are willing to make exceptions, as in the case of Cuba.

Was the Zapatista insurrection a success? The only answer is in the apocryphal story about the answer that Zhou En-lai is supposed to have given to the question: "What do you think of the French Revolution?" Answer: "It is too early to tell."

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

These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]

Kenya: Stable Democracy or Meltdown? (15 January 2008)

On December 27, 2007, there were presidential and parliamentary elections in Kenya. The outside world was largely indifferent. Then suddenly the headlines spoke of ethnic violence on a large scale. The Western press spoke of the danger of a "meltdown" and the pervasiveness in Africa of ethnic conflicts. There were urgent appeals for the two opposing leaders to come together and make a compromise. This has not yet happened and is unlikely to happen.

What took place? If we start with the immediate situation, it seems rather clear that the opposition party - the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) led by Raila Odinga - swept the parliamentary elections, and the government party - the Party of National Unity (PNU) led by outgoing president Mwai Kibaki - suffered a major defeat. The Vice-President of Kenya and over 20 ministers in the outgoing government were defeated in their parliamentary candidacies. The PNU elected 42 deputies, less than a fifth of the seats and the ODM won 99.

It seemed reasonable to assume that Odinga beat Kibaki in the presidential election. But after three days of counting, the electoral commission asserted that Kibaki had squeaked in. The immediate reaction in Kenya was that Kibaki stole the election. His furtive swearing-in on December 30, his refusal to allow any serious outside mediator to review the situation, the open doubts of international observers all seemed to point to his attempt to create a fait accompli in the hope that the turmoil will die down. Will it?

For many years now, but particularly in the last five years, Kenya was touted in the Western press and by Western governments as a "stable democracy," unlike so many other African states. One might remember that the other state that used to get this accolade was the Ivory Coast, which has descended into a continuing civil war in recent years. What does it mean to be called a "stable democracy"? It seems to mean a government that is reliably pro-Western and wide open to Western investment. Kenya has fit that bill, as did the Ivory Coast. The Ivory Coast has melted down, and now it seems that Kenya may be doing the same thing.

A look at post-1945 history might explain how naive and unuseful is this kind of assessment. Among the seven states in British East and Central Africa, the only one to have had a serious guerrilla movement was Kenya. It was called the Mau Mau and it took the British many years to suppress it. The Mau Mau were a peasant movement among the largest ethnic group in Kenya, the Kikuyu. The Kikuyu feel they are owed something in return for this insurrection. Mwai Kibaki is a Kikuyu.

After independence, Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya and a Kikuyu died. He was succeeded by his Vice-President, Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, who proceeded to establish a kleptocratic, dictatorial regime which lasted quite a long time. The Kikuyu were more or less squeezed out of power. So were the second-largest group, the Luo. The leader of the Luo was Oginga Odinga (father of Raila Odinga). He had a socialist program, and his movement was suppressed.

By 2002, the Kenyan people had enough of arap Moi and his Western supporters thought it might be time to encourage a facade of democracy. The one-party regime ceded place to an electoral contest. Kibaki and Raila Odinga joined together with others to establish a National Rainbow Coalition (NRC), dedicated, they said, to ending corruption and ending as well the freeze on distribution of posts and money to only one ethnic group. Kibaki won the election. The people celebrated.

But 2002 was also the moment of Bush's war on terrorism. The United States recruited Kibaki as a key ally. He was rewarded with much outside money, and endless praise from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The years 2002-2007 were a period of considerable economic growth on neo-liberal premises. But Kibaki reneged on all his promises. The economic growth did not filter down to the rural poor and the large numbers in the urban ghettos. Kibaki fired the man he had appointed to expose corruption. And he squeezed out Odinga and other allies in the NRC.

So when there were new elections in 2007, the ODM and Odinga won handily. The fact that arap Moi now endorsed Kibaki was of no use. The ODM emphasized the crass inequalities in Kenya. It called for a renewed war against corruption. And it entered into an understanding with the Muslim community in Kenya that they would stop renditions. It was obvious that this program appealed to the voters, but not to Kibaki. So he stole the election. And the United States and Great Britain are trying hard to make this electoral theft work.

Of course, in the face of such blatant behavior, violence broke out. It took an ethnic form. Somehow the Western press seems to think this is an African specialty. Have they never heard of race riots in the United States? Have they never looked at Catholic-Protestant violence in northern Ireland? What happens in such situations is that the poor in the urban ghettos and the rural area hit out at each other, while the upper strata in their gated communities carry on obliviously.

Raila Odinga is no angel and no revolutionary. But he won the election, and the reason he did was because he was opposing the neo-liberal corruption of Kibaki. Odinga is playing a very restrained role, a bit like that of Al Gore in 2000. And he might be no more successful. Kibaki says that he'll hold new elections if the courts tell him to, but Odinga says that the courts are in his pocket.

So much for stable democracies.

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.]

2008: The Demise of Neoliberal Globalization (1 February 2008)

The ideology of neoliberal globalization has been on a roll since the early 1980s. It was not in fact a new idea in the history of the modern world-system, although it claimed to be one. It was rather the very old idea that the governments of the world should get out of the way of large, efficient enterprises in their efforts to prevail in the world market. The first policy implication was that governments, all governments, should permit these corporations freely to cross every frontier with their goods and their capital. The second policy implication was that the governments, all governments, should renounce any role as owners themselves of these productive enterprises, privatizing whatever they own. And the third policy implication was that governments, all governments, should minimize, if not eliminate, any and all kinds of social welfare transfer payments to their populations. This old idea had always been cyclically in fashion.

In the 1980s, these ideas were proposed as a counterview to the equally old Keynesian and/or socialist views that had been prevailing in most countries around the world: that economies should be mixed (state plus private enterprises); that governments should protect their citizens from the depredations of foreign-owned quasi-monopolist corporations; and that governments should try to equalize life chances by transferring benefits to their less well-off residents (especially education, health, and lifetime guarantees of income levels), which required of course taxation of better-off residents and corporate enterprises.

The program of neoliberal globalization took advantage of the worldwide profit stagnation that began after a long period of unprecedented global expansion in the post-1945 period up to the beginning of the 1970s, which had encouraged the Keynesian and/or socialist views to dominate policy. The profit stagnation created balance-of-payments problems for a very large number of the world's governments, especially in the global South and the so-called socialist bloc of nations. The neoliberal counteroffensive was led by the right-wing governments of the United States and Great Britain (Reagan and Thatcher) plus the two main intergovernmental financial agencies - the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and these jointly created and enforced what came to be called the Washington Consensus. The slogan of this global joint policy was coined by Mrs. Thatcher: TINA, or There is No Alternative. The slogan was intended to convey to all governments that they had to fall in line with the policy recommendations, or they would be punished by slow growth and the refusal of international assistance in any difficulties they might face.

The Washington Consensus promised renewed economic growth to everyone and a way out of the global profit stagnation. Politically, the proponents of neoliberal globalization were highly successful. Government after government - in the global South, in the socialist bloc, and in the strong Western countries - privatized industries, opened their frontiers to trade and financial transactions, and cut back on the welfare state. Socialist ideas, even Keynesian ideas, were largely discredited in public opinion and renounced by political elites. The most dramatic visible consequence was the fall of the Communist regimes in east-central Europe and the former Soviet Union plus the adoption of a market-friendly policy by still-nominally socialist China.

The only problem with this great political success was that it was not matched by economic success. The profit stagnation in industrial enterprises worldwide continued. The surge upward of the stock markets everywhere was based not on productive profits but largely on speculative financial manipulations. The distribution of income worldwide and within countries became very skewed - a massive increase in the income of the top 10% and especially of the top 1% of the world's populations, but a decline in real income of much of the rest of the world's populations.

Disillusionment with the glories of an unrestrained "market" began to set in by the mid-1990s. This could be seen in many developments: the return to power of more social-welfare-oriented governments in many countries; the turn back to calling for government protectionist policies, especially by labor movements and organizations of rural workers; the worldwide growth of an alterglobalization movement whose slogan was "another world is possible."

This political reaction grew slowly but steadily. Meanwhile, the proponents of neoliberal globalization not only persisted but increased their pressure with the regime of George W. Bush. Bush's government pushed simultaneously more distorted income distribution (via very large tax cuts for the very well-off) and a foreign policy of unilateral macho militarism (the Iraq invasion). It financed this by a fantastic expansion of borrowing (indebtedness) via the sale of U.S. treasury bonds to the controllers of world energy supplies and low-cost production facilities.

It looked good on paper, if all one read were the figures on the stock markets. But it was a super-credit bubble that was bound to burst, and is now bursting. The Iraq invasion (plus Afghanistan plus Pakistan) are proving a great military and political fiasco. The economic solidity of the United States has been discredited, causing a radical fall in the dollar. And the stock markets of the world are trembling as they face the pricking of the bubble.

So what are the policy conclusions that governments and populations are drawing? There seem to be four in the offing. The first is the end of the role of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world, which renders impossible the continuance of the policy of super-indebtedness of both the government of the United States and its consumers. The second is the return to a high degree of protectionism, both in the global North and the global South. The third is the return of state acquisition of failing enterprises and the implementation of Keynesian measures. The last is the return of more social-welfare redistributive policies.

The political balance is swinging back. Neoliberal globalization will be written about ten years from now as a cyclical swing in the history of the capitalist world-economy. The real question is not whether this phase is over but whether the swing back will be able, as in the past, to restore a state of relative equilibrium in the world-system. Or has too much damage been done? And are we now in for more violent chaos in the world-economy and therefore in the world-system as a whole?

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.]

Walking Away: The Least Bad Option (15 February 2008)

Except for a hardy band of neo-con optimists and the official apologists of the Bush regime, almost everyone is agreed today that the United States has gotten itself into a nasty, self-wounding mess in Iraq where it is fighting a drawn-out guerrilla war it cannot win. At the same time, a very large number of the critics of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, both in the United States and in Europe, repeatedly say that nonetheless the United States cannot just "walk away." What not walking away means is not very clear, but it seems to mean maintaining U.S. troops and bases in Iraq for a considerable length of time while the United States tries, vainly, to enable the Iraqi government under its tutelage to assert some kind of reasonable control over its territory and restore a modicum of peaceful life to its citizens.

Let us explore why it is said that the United States cannot just "walk away." There is a long list of supposed consequences that all seem plausible on the surface. One is that it would result in unconstrained civil war in Iraq. This may be true, although many Iraqis feel that they are already living in precisely such a civil war, even with U.S. troops on the scene.

A second reason is that it would mean the takeover by Al-Qaeda-like jihadists in Iraq. This is a remote possibility, although it is not too plausible. In any case, it is the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq that has provided the main basis for recruitment of Iraqis into such organizations. They weren't there at all in the days of Saddam Hussein. The U.S. invasion led to their emergence within Iraq. As for Afghanistan, the Taliban were indeed there before U.S. troops came in. They lost power in the central government as a result of the invasion. But they seem to be in the process of regaining it now, despite the presence of U.S. and NATO troops in some number. Furthermore, how long the NATO troops will be willing to stay is most uncertain.

A third reason is that a U.S. withdrawal would mean the strengthening of Iran's position in Iraq and more generally in the Middle East. Again, this may be true, but most serious analysts feel that Iran has already been the biggest beneficiary of the U.S. invasion. It destroyed a serious opponent of Iran, Saddam Hussein. It has placed Shia and Kurdish groups in considerable power in Iraq, groups that have had close links with Iran and will probably continue to maintain and strengthen these links. There is no indication that the U.S. presence is weakening Iran's position. Quite the contrary.

A fourth reason is that withdrawal would hurt U.S. access to the oil supplies of the Middle East. However, the U.S. presence has led to a decrease, not an increase, in Iraqi production, which will not resume seriously as long as the war is going on. Furthermore, the decline in U.S. power resulting from the failed invasion has led Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other producers to begin to expand their role as a supplier of oil to China, India, and other countries, at the long-run expense of U.S. access.

A fifth reason is that withdrawal of U.S. troops and bases would be an incredible humiliation of the United States, an acknowledgement of its defeat and loss of power. Furthermore, it would be seen as a "betrayal" by all those members of the military who fought and died in Iraq. This is undoubtedly true. The question is whether this is not already happening anyway. And the even bigger question is whether it "supports" those who have fought and died to have still more persons fight and die, in a war that will not be won.

Let us explore the alternatives that lie before the United States. The only two truly realistic alternatives are eviction by the Iraqi government or "walking away." With all the talk about irreconcilable ethnic rivalries in Iraq, we should not neglect the strength of Iraqi nationalism among both Sunni and Shia. After 2009, when they will see that the probable Democratic administration of the United States will continue to waffle about withdrawal, the pressure to find a united front of Sunni and Shia, which can only be constructed on the basis of the need to get out from under the U.S. omnipresence, is likely to become enormous. We already are witnessing the quiet negotiations that are going on in this regard. As for the Kurds, provided they retain a reasonable amount of autonomy, they will reluctantly settle for such autonomy as the best option they have in the situation that now exists. I consider this the most probable outcome of the present situation.

What then would be the plus in "walking away"? First let us clarify what this means. It means a statement by the U.S. government that it will withdraw all troops without exception and shut down all bases in Iraq within say six months of the date of announcement. Is this better than being evicted (that is, asked formally to leave) by a new government, resulting from a new nationalist alliance within Iraq? Yes, of course. U.S. withdrawal would mark the first step on the long and difficult path to healing the United States of the sicknesses brought on by its imperial addiction, the first step in a painful effort to restore the good name of the United States in the world community.

Walking away will indeed be difficult and painful. But it is just as necessary for the United States to withdraw as it is for an alcoholic to withdraw, taking the first step on the path to total renunciation of the addiction.

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 He Change? (1 March 2008)

It now seems highly probable, although not yet certain, that Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president. And it seems highly probable that he would win a contest with John McCain. It also seems almost certain that the Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives will be enlarged. Thus, it seems that Obama would enter office with a relatively strong mandate from the voters.

If one asks how Obama, who entered the race some six months ago as a young and unlikely victor, has been able to achieve this, the answer seems clear. He has emphasized the theme of "change" and this theme seems to have resonated with the voters, including many who have not voted before. Of course, change is an ambiguous term, and its meaning varies according to those who embrace it. But it seems that the theme of "change" responds to a high degree of discomfort in the United States with the present overall situation in the country and the world. The two zones of maximum discomfort are the war in Iraq and the state of the economy.

What a majority of voters seems to be saying is that they think the war in Iraq is a quagmire, and that it was a mistake to have invaded the country. As for the economy, the voters seem to be saying that their actual standard of living has been going down and they are very afraid that it will go down still further. So, basically, they are rejecting the main lines of argument of the Bush regime, and are blaming it in large part for their discomforts. What specific changes the voters want seems less clear, but they want something.

Obama has a second appeal beyond embracing the theme of change. It is a question of style. He says he is willing to talk with anyone - with presumed unfriendly forces internationally, with presumed allies internationally, and with persons from all political factions internally. This contrasts with Bush's repeated insistence that there are all kinds of groups with whom the United States should never "negotiate."

There is a second kind of stylistic appeal of Obama. He says, over and over, "Yes, we can!" This is a theme borrowed from the legendary leader of Hispanic farm workers, Cesar Chavez, whose slogan was "!Sí, se puede!" This theme appeals particularly to all those who have felt marginalized in the U.S. political system, and who find this theme one that empowers them.

So, now that Obama seems so near to becoming president, there has begun to be considerable discussion in the press, on the internet, and in public debate about what kinds of changes Obama actually intends to undertake. This seems to me the wrong question. The real question is what kind of changes Obama can make, a quite different question.

Obama's record is that of a liberal Democrat who opposed the Iraq war and whose mode of action has always been left-of-center, sometimes forcefully, sometimes very prudently. He certainly intends to bring a different style to the White House. How radically different a policy he intends to implement is far less clear. But even supposing that he is more politically radical than he seems to be on the surface, the question still remains, what can he do? Presidents of the United States can undoubtedly affect policy in important ways - George W. Bush has proved that - but they are also prisoners of their office. It is therefore worth reviewing what are the options in foreign policy, in economic policy, and in that looser arena we might call cultural policy.

In foreign policy, the most immediate and overwhelming issue is the Middle East - not only vis-à-vis Iraq, but also vis-à-vis Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Israel/Palestine. Bush has worked hard to bind the hands of his successor. But Bush has made the error of thinking that U.S. policy in the Middle East is primarily in the hands of the U.S. government. I do not think this is true any longer. There is a whirlwind of forces in this region that are far beyond the limited power of the United States government to channel their directions.

Anti-American nationalism is slowly but surely gathering enormous steam in Iraq. The Taliban are creeping back into de facto power in Afghanistan, and threatening as a by-product to disrupt the functioning of NATO as an international force. In Pakistan, it seems that the United States is reduced to praying quietly that its ever less popular friend, Pervez Musharraf, can weather the storm. The Iranians have decided that they can simply defy the United States without incurring any real danger. And both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are on ever-shakier ground, internally and internationally. Condoleezza Rice is largely being ignored by everyone. Will Obama's Secretary of State be treated differently?

If the whirlwind undoes U.S. policies in the region, then even if U.S. forces are withdrawn from Iraq, will it follow that western Europe, Russia, China, and Latin America will actually move closer to the United States, even if they will appreciate Obama's friendlier and more intelligent style? The underlying geopolitical trends are against the United States. Obama can do better than Bush, but how much better?

The story is not too different when we look at the state of the U.S. economy. No doubt, a Democratic administration will have a different policy on taxation, on health care, on the environment. And probably the poorer 80% of the population will be better off. But the manufacturing jobs are not going to return, even if the United States scuttles its neoliberal trade pacts. In this arena, too, there is a whirlwind, one that is perhaps even more powerful than the geopolitical whirlwind in the Middle East, and the United States does not control its unfolding.

That leaves one arena in which Obama may have some leeway, what I called loosely the cultural arena. His campaign has been mobilizing a popular force that is both gaining strength and autonomy. It is that of people saying "yes, we can." Obama may have been of help in igniting the force, but it is becoming a self-driven force that will now have much impact on what he does as president. In a broad sense, it is a force that will be pushing him, as president, to the left, both directly and via its impact on members of Congress.

It is very difficult to say exactly where this force would push Obama. But its impact may turn out to be comparable to that of the so-called religious right on Republican party policies in the last thirty years. Martin Luther King, Jr. said "I have a dream." The dream was of a different United States with different priorities and far more egalitarian mores. If this next period leads to even a partial realization of such a dream, it will of course have a long-term impact on the role the United States plays, and wishes to play, in the world-system. It will have a long-term impact on the kind of economic structures the United States maintains for itself and the world maintains for itself.

Change is indeed possible, and potentially a very positive change. It all depends far less on Obama than on the rest of us. But Obama might, only might, give us the space in which the "we" of "yes, we can" can push him and the United States.

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.]

When Henry Kissinger Opines (15 March 2008)

When Henry Kissinger opines in an op-ed in the Washington Post, it behooves us all to pay attention. There is a message there. Kissinger has always presented himself as the supreme "realist" proponent on U.S. imperial policy. But he has also always taken care not to distance himself too far from the conservative political Establishment.

Hence, when he opines, he is both telling us where policy is moving and pushing it slightly in a "realist" path, in conjunction with allies inside the administration. He is thus preparing us for a shift in policy. He has now written about Pakistan. What is he telling us?

First of all, he notes the stakes for the United States in Pakistan. It is a nuclear power that is incapable of maintaining control at home and therefore one that could "turn into the wildcard of international diplomacy." Everyone knows this, he says, but "the remedy has proved elusive." Recent U.S. policy has been to favor a coalition of Musharraf and the civilian parties - a "laudable goal" but not a "practical" one. Elections in a country that does not have a civil society "sharpen" rather than solve crises. Elections, it seems, too often result in electing the wrong people.

For Kissinger, there are nothing but "feudal" forces at play in Pakistan - large landholders in Sindh province (Bhutto's party), commercial classes in the Punjab (Sharif's party), and the military. The struggle among them is like that of the Italian city-states during the Renaissance - shifting alliances and no sense of the "general good." The military are the arbiters in the end. Ergo what? Any attempt by the United States to "manipulate" the political process is likely to "backfire." The "evolution of the immediate political process is beyond our reach."

Yes, Musharraf has been a loyal ally and the United States cannot afford to dissociate itself from him, for it would send a bad message to other loyal allies. But at the same time, it is Musharraf's task - "not ours" - to deal with the results of the election. In short, he is on his own. The United States should not worry about Pakistan politics, only about so-called "national security questions" - control of the nuclear weapons and resistance to terrorists (Islamic radicals).

Realism, it seems, is not much of a detailed guide to action. It instructs us as to the limits of what the United States can do. Democratic evolution - an "important objective" - is on a "different time scale" from national security. So, put it off. Rather, the United States should make a deal with whoever comes out on top - if it can.

Kissinger's op-ed was published in the same week that Admiral Fallon resigned from command of U.S. forces in the entire Middle East region. It seems he has said, too often and too loudly, that military action by the United States in Iran is not possible, as a "practical" possibility. Another "realist"? It seems also that Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been saying the same thing, if more discreetly. And it seems that Mullen's predecessor, General Pace, also said the same thing.

Bush and Cheney wish to insist publicly that the military option is on the table, even if it is really off the table. They seem to think this will frighten the Iranians and appease the Israelis. The trouble is that no one believes Bush and Cheney any more, even about what they say they might do, and probably really want to do.

Macho militarism isn't working for the United States these days. Realism as an imperial alternative seems pretty close to a desperate ploy. But are there any other ploys left for the United States in the Middle East?

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.]

Wall Street is Really Predicated on Greed (1 April 2008)

It is not I who is saying that Wall Street is really predicated on greed, but Stephen Raphael. And who is Stephen Raphael? He is a former member of the Board of Bear Stearns, the Wall Street bank that collapsed last month. And where did Raphael say this? In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, which is more or less the house journal of Wall Street. And what was Raphael's point? It was to explain (or was it to excuse?) the collapse of the firm. "This could happen to any firm," he said.

Yes, indeed it could. And it did. Meanwhile, while this was happening, the chairman of the firm, Jimmy Caynes, was nonchalantly playing bridge in a tournament. Not too smart for a greedy banker. As a result, he lost most of his personal fortune, and another greedy firm, JPMorgan Chase, came in like a vulture and made a killing. Oh, incidentally, some 14,000 employees of Bear Stearns are, or will soon be, out of a job.

Is then capitalism nothing but greed? No, there are other things to it, but greed plays a very big role. And greed, by definition, works for some at the expense of others. So, some firms are going bankrupt these days - on Wall Street, and elsewhere in the world - and others are not. The United States as a country is going bankrupt, and others are not. The United States doesn't call it that, but that is the truth of it.

Is it always like this? No, not always. Just half the time. Let us review how Wall Street and the United States got into this particular disastrous corner. It all started out well - for Wall Street and for the United States in 1945. The war was over. The war was won. And the United States was the only industrial power whose factories were intact, untouched by wartime damage. There were destroyed cities elsewhere, and actual hunger in Europe and Asia.

The United States was set to do well, and it did do well, very well. It could outproduce the world, and get the rewards. It made a deal with the Soviet Union - we call it rhetorically Yalta - so that there would be no nuclear wars that could really damage the United States. And, at home, the big manufacturers made a deal with the big unions so that there would be no destructive strikes to interfere with the profitable production. Rosy times loomed, and the standard of living went up dramatically. Actually, the years after the war proved to be fairly rosy times for most of the world. It was the moment of the greatest expansion of production, of profit, of population, and yes of general welfare in the history of the capitalist world-economy. The French called it the "thirty glorious years."

Must all good things come to an end? Well, cyclically, in the five hundred years of the modern world-system, I fear this has always been true. When everyone begins to cash in on economic expansion, the rate of profit has to go down. Profit from production depends on relative monopolization of the leading industries. But if too many countries have steel factories or auto factories (the leading industries of the time), there is too much competition. And, despite all the nonsensical slogans, competition is not good for capitalists. It reduces the profits.

And when profits get hit too hard, the world-system enters into one of its periodic periods of stagnation. This happened circa 1970. And, in case you hadn't noticed, things have not been rosy since then, despite once again all the nonsensical slogans. What happens in a period of worldwide economic stagnation? The factories begin to move out of the erstwhile locales (like the United States, but also Germany, France, Great Britain, and Japan) to other countries (like South Korea, India, Brazil, and Taiwan) in search of lower costs of production. It seems good for the new places of steel and auto production, but it means layoffs in the old centers of production.

But runaway factories are not the whole story. What do big capitalists do, if they want to make money, in times of lower profits from production? They start to shift their money from productive enterprises to financial enterprises. That is to say, they begin to speculate. And, in a time of speculation, greed knows no limits. So we have junk bonds and takeovers and subprime mortgages and hedge funds and all those curious things with curious names. It seems that even Robert Rubin, one of the really big people in the financial world, admitted recently that he doesn't know what a "liquidity put" is.

The underlying story - from 1970 on - has been that of debt, greater and greater debt. Corporations borrow, individuals borrow, states borrow. They all live above their real incomes. And, if you're in a position to borrow (it's called credit), you can live high on the hog, as they say. But debts have a small downside. At some point, you're expected to repay debts. If you don't, there is a "debt crisis" or a "bankruptcy" or, if you're a country with a currency, a dramatic decline in the exchange rate.

This is what we call a bubble. And if you blow up a balloon long enough, no matter how good it feels, at some point the balloon bursts. It is bursting now. And everyone is frightened, as well they might be. When the bubble really bursts, it is really painful. The thing is, it is usually more painful for some than for others, even if it is painful for everyone.

At the moment, it might turn out to be most painful for the United States - as a country, and for its capitalists, and above all for its ordinary citizens. It seems the United States has been spending not billions of dollars but trillions of dollars on some wars in the Middle East it has been losing. And it seems that even the wealthiest country in the world doesn't have in its coffers trillions of dollars. So it has borrowed them. And it seems that its credit in 2008 is not as good as it was in 1945. It seems that the creditors are today reluctant to throw good money after bad. It seems that the United States might be going bankrupt, like Bear Stearns.

Will the United States be bought out by China or by Qatar or by Norway, or by a combination of all of them at $2 or even $10 a share? What will happen to those very expensive toys that the United States keeps buying, like military bases in a hundred countries, and those airplanes and ships and superduper guns the United States constantly orders to replace yesterday's toys? Who will feed the people on the breadlines?

Come back next decade, and let me know.

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.]

France Back in NATO? Is this for real? (15 April 2008)

Nicolas Sarkozy has gone out of his way to sound pro-American. He made a special visit in 2007 to Kennebunkport to have a cozy meeting with George W. Bush. Since neither spoke the other's language, they must have had translators. So perhaps I might be allowed to try to translate what has been going on.

Yes, Sarkozy is using a discourse that sounds much better to American ears than that of any of his predecessors for a long time. Yes, it is now old reliable Germany with a conservative chancellor who seems to be worrying the United States government far more than old unreliable anti-American France. And yes, Sarkozy seems to share the same rhetoric that Bush uses about Iran, Afghanistan, and Israel (though not yet Iraq).

But note a few reservations that have been quietly slipped into the discourse. The French are sending 800 more troops to Afghanistan, but only to the eastern region. This liberates some American troops to be sent down to the south, which is the truly dangerous region. The Canadians have insisted on reinforcements in the south, where they have been virtually alone holding the fort, or else they said they would pull out altogether. The Germans, British, and Dutch all refused to send their troops to the south. For this they were denounced by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Now France has kindly made it possible for the Americans to fulfill the mission it had asked other countries to fulfill. Quelle générosité d'esprit!

And yes, France voted at the NATO meeting to endorse the U.S. proposal to establish missile defense operations in Poland and the Czech Republic. But France loudly joined Germany (and Great Britain, Benelux, Spain, and Italy) in refusing to allow the applications of Georgia and Ukraine for NATO membership to move forward on the grounds that it would be provocative to Russia. France thus allowed George W. Bush to try his luck at settling this matter directly with Vladimir Putin. Quelle générosité d'esprit!

And France said that it would now become a "full and entire" participant in NATO, because - or was it on the proviso that - the United States now endorses the principle of a unified European defense force, always to be sure one that would be linked somehow to NATO. Considering that the United States has been fighting tooth and nail for the last twenty years against the idea of a unified European defense force, this seems like not a small proviso. It's true that President Bush verbally endorsed the idea at the recent Bucharest meeting of NATO. But, as Le Monde warned in its editorial of April 4 on "France and NATO," Bush's speech was only a speech. "Before rescinding the 1966 decision [of France's withdrawal from the integrated command of NATO], Mr. Sarkozy should receive some real American guarantees, not just a speech." In any case, Sarkozy said in his speech at Bucharest that a European defense force was both his "ambition" and his "priority." So, it's clear the matter is not yet really sewn up.

When on March 7, 1966, General De Gaulle withdrew France from the integrated command structure of NATO, he accomplished one major thing. All American troops plus the headquarters of NATO had to leave France. Actually, it was not a sudden decision. France had been slowly withdrawing from the integrated structure for years before. And when France exploded their nuclear weapons, De Gaulle announced they were to be used to protect France tous azimuts (in all directions), which was not exactly pleasant for the United States to hear. But De Gaulle was careful to say that France remained part of NATO - just a sovereign part of NATO, with no French troops under American command.

Just as getting out of the NATO integrated command was a gradual process, so has been its full reintegration. It was Jacques Chirac, not Nicolas Sarkozy, who started the process in 1995, by having France rejoin the military committee of NATO. And as we can see, France has not yet gone much further than that. As France was never really out of NATO, it is not now going to be really in.

What then is the point of this loud display of policy change? Le Monde started its editorial with the phrase, "Symbols matter." De Gaulle had made one symbolic statement - that of an independent French foreign policy. What is Sarkozy trying to symbolize today? It is not, as Le Monde pointed out, actual reintegration since, for all effects and purposes, France is already largely reintegrated.

There are two possible answers to this question. On the one hand, Sarkozy has been undertaking a generational makeover of the French right. He was opposed in his ascent to power within the right by all the remaining (now aging) Gaullist cadres. He seems to be trying to purge the omnipresence of De Gaulle in French political reality, and relegate him to the museum status he recently achieved in the so-called De Gaulle historial at the military museum of Les Invalides in Paris. This is possibly a dangerous game for Sarkozy to play, since probably for another ten years or so, the figure of De Gaulle will continue to loom large among the French right.

The other possible answer is that he is trying to fulfill the Gaullist heritage by stealth. It is clear that a unified European defense force is very Gaullist in tonality. After all, one can mouth whatever assurances one wants about how this force would complement and never oppose NATO. But what it means is that, once it is created, the Europeans could vote to dissolve NATO and be left not only with the European Union and the euro, but with a meaningful armed force. And this armed force could conceivably make a deal with Russia.

In any case, it is far too early for U.S. neo-cons to gloat about recuperating France into their fold.

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.]

Race, Gender, and Class in American Politics: Anything New? (1 May 2008)

Throughout the world, May 1 is celebrated as May Day - the international workers' day. The only exception is the United States. The irony is that May Day is celebrated in memory of an American event - the Haymarket Riot in Chicago. On May 1, 1886, in many U.S. cities workers engaged in a general strike in support of an eight-hour day. In Chicago, 80,000 workers marched down Michigan Avenue. On the fourth day of the demonstrations, at the very end of a rally in Haymarket Square, violence broke out. Its origin is contested to this day, but some policemen were killed. Subsequently, leaders of the strike were arrested and four were executed for what was termed murder. Although they were German immigrants to the United States, they died singing not The Star-Spangled Banner but La Marseillaise, an expression of international class solidarity. Despite this, politicians in the United States have always tried to downplay the importance of class conflict as a defining issue of U.S. politics, which is why the United States does not celebrate May Day.

In 2008, there is a fiercely contested election for the presidency in the United States. There is a primary contest in the Democratic Party between a woman and an African-American. The Republican candidate is a White male. In the beginning, everyone denied that either race or gender was an issue. But as the contest has become prolonged and more fierce, both race and gender as themes have come to the fore. Everyone is still denying that class is an issue.

The intersection between race, gender, and class is an old story in the modern world-system. It has been central to the political history of the United States. In 1848, a year of major political upheaval throughout the world, France was having the first serious social revolution in modern history, and in much of Europe there were nationalist uprisings, which historians have come to call "the springtime of the nations." In the United States, the most important event was the Seneca Falls Convention, generally regarded as the founding moment of U.S. feminism. Its famous "Declaration of Sentiments" of July 19-20, 1848, echoing the "Declaration of Independence," begins: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." Among the grievances listed were the fact that women were deprived of "the first right of a citizen, elective franchise," a franchise that was given (this complaint foreshadowing future conflicts) to "ignorant and degraded men - both natives and foreigners."

The leading African-American figure of the period, Frederick Douglass, attended Seneca Falls to offer the support of the African-American community - then still largely slaves - to the cause of women's rights. Later in 1872, Douglass would be the vice-presidential candidate of the Equal Rights Party, on a ticket headed by Victoria Woodhull. This was the first time either a woman or an African-American would run for these offices.

When, however, after the Civil War, the U.S. Congress adopted the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which made unconstitutional the exclusion from voting of African-American male citizens, the women's movement was dismayed that they were not included. Wendell Phillips, one of the leaders of the U.S. abolitionist movement, famously told them in May, 1865 that the demands of women's suffrage should not be pressed at the moment, for "this is the Negro's hour." Many women suffragists did not stand by mute. As a response, Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony supported the presidential campaign of George Francis Train, a known racist, who however advocated women's suffrage. The outcome was a profound split in the feminist movement.

As the women's movement became more conservative on all social/labor issues in the second half of the nineteenth century, so did it on all ethnic/racial issues. In the course of this conservative shift, many feminists abandoned the natural rights argument. They began to argue that women be given the vote "to balance the impact of the foreign born." In 1903, the main women's movement came out for an "educational requirement" for the vote (to the notable but lonely dissent of Charlotte Perkins Gilman). At the height of this tension, some suffragists even resorted to crude racism. For example, they issued a poster of a brutish-looking Negro porter sitting next to a refined-looking White lady with a caption that read "He can vote; why can't I?"

In all this conflict between the victims of inequality (race versus gender), there was virtually no talk of class, although the vast majority of both African-Americans and women were working class, as they still are today. Thus it is that an avowedly conservative Republican candidate, who has throughout his career voted to support the interests of the upper classes and against all legislation that would be in the interests of the working classes (called in the United States the "middle class"), can hope to attract some working-class voters who are not ready to accept the idea that either a woman or an African-American can be the president of the United States.

Is there anything new? Well, yes there is. The very idea that the two possible candidates of the Democratic Party are a woman and an African-American is something that was unthinkable a mere decade ago. The election of one or the other may yet turn out to be unthinkable. But that depends on the degree to which the Democratic Party can organize its campaign around class issues, which are delicately called issues of "the economy." If it does, it will probably sweep the elections. If it does not, the contest will be close.

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 Far Left Has Latin America Moved? (15 May 2008)

Everyone seems to agree that Latin America has moved leftward in the period after 2000. But what does this mean?

If one looks at the elections throughout Latin America, parties to the left of center have won them in a large number of countries since 2000 - most notably in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and most recently Paraguay. There are of course important differences between the situations in these countries. Some of these governments seem pretty close to the center. Others talk a more revolutionary language. And there are a few exceptions - notably Colombia, Peru, and Mexico (although in Mexico, the conservative government won the last elections with about the same degree of legitimacy as Bush won the 2000 elections in the United States). The real question is not whether Latin America has moved left, but how far left has Latin America moved.

There are, it seems to me, four different kinds of evidence that one could put forward to say that Latin America has moved leftward. The first is that all of these governments have in one way or another sought to distance themselves from the United States to one degree or another. The Bush administration would have preferred in all of these cases that their electoral opponents had won. In the past, when unfriendly governments came to power in Latin America, the United States tended to work to bring about their replacement, indeed their overthrow. But the decline of U.S. power in the world-system, and in particular the preoccupation of the United States with the wars it has been losing in the Middle East, seems to have sapped it of the political energy with which to move decisively in Latin America in ways it had previously. The failed coup against Chavez in 2002 is good evidence of this.

How have these governments put distance between themselves and the United States? There have been a series of ways. In 2003, the United States was unable to persuade the two Latin American members of the U.N. Security Council at the time (Chile and Mexico) to support the resolution it sought to obtain to legitimize the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In the last election of the Secretary-General of the Organization of American States (OAS), the U.S.-supported candidate lost, which had never before happened in the history of the OAS. And when the one sure friend of the United States in Latin America today, Colombia, got into a severe quarrel this year with Venezuela and Ecuador, the other Latin American states in effect sided with Ecuador and Venezuela. Ecuador is now refusing to renew the U.S. military base that is located there.

The second kind of evidence for a leftward trend has been the acute rise in political importance and power of the indigenous movements throughout Latin America - most notably in Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Central America. The indigenous populations of Latin America have long been the most oppressed sectors of the population and have for the most part been kept out of the political structures. But today we have an indigenous president in Bolivia, which represents a veritable social revolution. The strength of these movements in both the Andean zone and the Mayan areas of Central America has become a major factor in their politics, and an enduring one.

The third kind of evidence has been the survival, and indeed resurgence, of liberation theology. The Vatican moved to suppress these movements during the last three papacies with at least the same vigor as the United States used against left governments in the 1950s and 1960s. Theologians have been silenced and sympathetic bishops carefully replaced by distinctly unsympathetic ones. Nonetheless, Catholic movements inspired by liberation theology continue to flourish in Brazil. The presidents of Ecuador and Paraguay have emerged from that tradition. And the inroads of Protestant evangelical groups in Latin America may be moving the Vatican to become more tolerant of the liberation theologians, who are at least Catholics, and may help to stem this loss of the faithful to the church.

Finally, Brazil has been pursuing a reasonably successful effort to become a leader of a regional South American bloc. This may not seem in itself a leftward move. But in the context of a worldwide process of multipolarization, the establishment of such regional zones weakens the power not only of the United States but of the entire North in terms of North-South relations. Brazil's leadership of the so-called G-20 countries has been a major factor in the evisceration of the World Trade Organization's ability to implement a neoliberal agenda.

So, what does this all add up to? Certainly not a "revolution" in the traditional meaning of the term. What it means is that the median point in Latin American politics, the locus of the "center," has moved considerably to the left of where it was a mere decade ago. This must be put in the context of a worldwide movement. This shifting leftward is going on in the Middle East and East Asia as well. Indeed, it is going on in the United States. The impact of the world economic recession, soon probably to become even more severe, will no doubt push these tendencies even further.

Will there be no reaction by forces of the right? No doubt there will. In Latin America, we see it today in the attempt of the wealthier and "whiter" eastern regions to secede from Bolivia and get out from under the majority indigenous populations who have finally won power in the central government. We are in for shaky times politically, in Latin America as elsewhere. But the left is in a far stronger position to fight these battles today in Latin America than they have been for half a century.

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 the War Will End in Iraq (1 June 2008)

All eyes are on the U.S. presidential campaign, in which the candidates have taken quite different positions concerning the war in Iraq. This is the wrong place to look. I believe it is fairly certain that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. And his views of the war in Iraq are almost the polar opposite of those of his rival, John McCain. Obama was opposed to the U.S. invasion from the outset. He believes continuing the war is harmful to everyone - to the United States, to Iraq, to the rest of the world. And he says he will seek to withdraw all U.S. troops in sixteen months.

Once in office, Obama will no doubt find that the definition of withdrawing troops will be a matter of great controversy in the United States, and that it will be less easy than he claims to achieve his objective, were it a matter only of the internal politics of the United States. However, ending the war in Iraq will not be up to Obama, or up to the United States. The key to ending the war in Iraq is what happens in Iraqi politics, not in U.S. politics.

I shall make the rash prediction that sometime in 2009 (or 2010 at the very latest), the Prime Minister of Iraq will be Muqtada al-Sadr, and that al-Sadr will bring the war to an end. Here is what is most likely to happen. The world media remind us each day of what are now seen as definitive cleavages in the Iraqi body politic. There are three main ethnic groups - the Shi'a, the Sunni Arabs, and the Kurds. Each of them is primarily located in a specific geographic zone. The main exception is the capital city of Baghdad, which has mixed Sunni-Shi'a population, although even here they are geographically concentrated in specific parts of the city.

In addition, as we all seem to know by now, each of these zones has internal divisions. There are multiple Shi'a parties, who each seem to have a militia at its disposal, and have long-standing antagonisms. The two principal ones are the group led by al-Sadr and the one known as SCIRI, led by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. The Sunni areas have a less clearcut picture. There are the sheikhs and the ex-Baathists, connected with various politicians in the Iraqi legislature. And there is also a small but important group of jihadists, largely non-Iraqi, linked somehow to al-Qaeda. And in the Kurdish zone, there are two competing parties, plus Christian and Turkmen minorities.

Actually, this kind of complicated array is no more diverse than one finds in many countries all around the world. Think of how one would describe the array of groups involved in U.S. politics. So, if we are to understand what is likely to happen in Iraq, we have to cut through this diversity to get at the most salient issue or issues.

It seems to me that the most salient issue in Iraq today for Iraqis is whether or not Iraq will survive as a unified state and as one that will be able to recover its strong position, economically and geopolitically, in the region. Who is against this? Actually, there are only two groups who are seriously hostile to a renewed and revivified Iraqi nationalism - the Kurds and the Shi'a forces led by al-Hakim. The latter dream of an autonomous, indeed independent, southern Iraq, which they would dominate and within which there are rich oil resources. They want to cut all ties to the Sunni regions. And they want to weaken seriously the al-Sadr camp which, although it is strong in that region, is virtually uncontested in Baghdad. Were Baghdad cut off from that region, the al-Hakim camp believe they could eventually destroy the al-Sadr camp.

The Kurds of course dream of an independent Kurdish state. But they are eminently pragmatic people. They know that a landlocked Kurdish state would find it hard to survive. Turkey would probably invade, and so might Iran. The United States would probably do very little, and would be quite embarrassed by it all. And Israel would be irrelevant. So the Kurds are clearly ready to settle for continuing de facto autonomy within a unified Iraq. To be sure, they are still quarreling with the others over who would control Kirkuk. I doubt that they will get Kirkuk, and I suspect that the most that they will do about it is to grumble loudly.

Now let us look at the others. The Sunni Arab forces are also, by and large, quite realistic. They realize that it is impossible to return to an Iraq that they govern unilaterally. What they really want now is their fair share of the state political machinery and of its resources (since their zone has virtually no oil, at least up to now). While they cannot hope to have a Sunni-dominated Iraq, they can hope to have an Iraq restored to its former prominent role in the Arab world, and they would clearly benefit, individually and collectively, from such a restoration.

So, in the end, the key group is the Shi'a. Muqtada al-Sadr has been quite clear from the beginning that he wants a unified Iraq. For one thing, this is the only way his people in Baghdad can survive and flourish. For another, he believes in Iraq. To be sure, he and his followers suffered mightily under the Baathists. But he is open to dealing with reformed and much weakened Baathists. And he has demonstrated this clearly over the last two years. He gave moral support to the people of Falluja when they were under assault by the U.S. forces two years ago. And they reciprocated in the recent fighting in Baghdad, when his forces were under assault by the same U.S. forces.

That leaves one major player, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most important spiritual leader of the Shi'a in Iraq. Al-Sistani has played a careful political game ever since the U.S. invasion. His priority has been to hold the Shi'a together. Most of the time he says nothing. But at crucial moments he is ready to intervene. When the U.S. proconsul of yesteryear, L. Paul Bremer, wanted to create an Iraqi government more or less by his fiat, al-Sistani insisted on elections, and the United States had to back down. As a result, he got a government dominated by the Shi'a. When too much fighting occurred between the al-Hakim camp and the al-Sadr camp, he brokered a calm.

What does al-Sistani want? Theologically, he wants Najaf, his site, to become once again the theological center of the Shi'a religious world, as opposed to Qom in Iran, which has come to assume this role, especially since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Geopolitically, this requires a strong Iraq, capable of relating to Iran as an equal. And to get a strong Iraq, he needs a united Iraq, and essentially one that gets the U.S. invaders out.

Currently, the United States is trying to get Iraq to sign a long-term military accord that would guarantee U.S. bases indefinitely. The current prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, is trying to maneuver this without a vote even by parliament. Muqtada al-Sadr is calling for a referendum. And so, it seems, is al-Sistani. A referendum, of course, guarantees a defeat for the accord.

So, in 2009, it would seem logical that al-Sadr, al-Sistani, the Sunni, and even the Kurds will come together on a plank of national unity and U.S. total withdrawal without long-term bases. Muqtada al-Sadr will implement this as Prime Minister. Al-Hakim will be unhappy, but kept in line by al-Sistani. The Iranians will be ambivalent. The U.S. public and pundits will be amazed at the relative calm in Iraq. And President Obama and the Pentagon won't have too much choice. They will graciously assent. They may even proclaim "victory."

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.]

Obama's Victory? How Big? How Far? (15 June 2008)

Let no one underestimate it. Barack Obama has won big. He has not only won the Democratic nomination for president. He is going to sweep the elections with a large majority of the Electoral College and a considerable increase in Democratic strength in both houses of the Congress. Before we analyze how far he will go, can go - that is, how much of a change this will actually mean - we must spell out how real is his electoral triumph.

In the long drawn-out contest between him and Hillary Clinton, both the polls and the results showed that each was stronger in certain categories of voters. Obama had greater strength among the younger, the more educated, the African-Americans of course, and the politically further left. But he also seemed more attractive to independent and Republican crossover voters. Clinton had greater strength among the older, the less educated voters, the women of course, the Latinos, and the politically more centrist.

However, the real decision was made by the superdelegates. And they voted on a quite different basis. They seemed convinced that he would be a stronger candidate, and could actually win in some traditionally Republican areas. Or even if he couldn't win a majority in these states, he could help Democratic candidates for Congress to win. It is quite striking that he drew strong support from superdelegates in precisely these states, many of whom were individually among the more centrist, least left-oriented Democratic leaders. Since these superdelegates were anchored in their local situations, they are telling us something of U.S. political realities of 2008.

I have just done an analysis comparing McCain's state by state strength in the latest polls and Bush's proportion of the actual votes in 2004. In 45 of the 50 states, McCain is weaker, often much weaker, than Bush was. And in the other five, he is about the same. Of course, if Bush had won a state by a large margin, McCain will still win it albeit by a smaller one. But in the states that were close in 2004, the tide is in Obama's favor.

Furthermore, we have to realize that McCain is currently at the top of his strength. The Democratic Party is now reunifying and hungry for winning. Obama will lose almost none of the traditional Democratic percentages among women and Jews. He will increase the national percentage among Latinos and will bring in a very large number of young people and African-Americans who otherwise would not have voted. He will also get the votes of the considerable number of independents and Republicans disillusioned with Bush. The people who will vote against Obama because he is African-American were almost all already going to vote Republican. This issue is behind him, not in front of him.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are still deeply divided and quite morose. The Christian right still doesn't trust McCain, and so far is dragging its feet. And we forget too easily the defection of the libertarians. Ron Paul is planning on a convention fight. And while he will of course lose it, his supporters are already disgruntled. With Bob Barr running on a Libertarian Party slate, many of Paul's supporters will vote for him. Barr may be to McCain in 2008 what Nader was to Gore in 2000 - just strong enough to deny him a few states. And in general, McCain's line on the plunging U.S. economy is going to lose him a lot of the support he counts on obtaining among so-called Reagan Democrats.

If one analyzes the situation in detail, state by state, the only state that voted Democratic in 2004 in which McCain seems to be competitive today is Michigan. The states that Bush won in 2004 in which Obama is competitive are numerous - Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, and maybe Nevada, North Carolina, and Montana. He's even doing well enough in Mississippi that Republicans will have to invest money and time campaigning there. If Obama won all the competitive states except Michigan, he'd have 310-333 electoral votes. He needs 270.

The picture looks even better in senatorial races, where Democrats might win in some states in which Obama cannot quite make it - for example, Kentucky, where the Republican minority leader in the Senate is in serious trouble in this very Republican state.

Now what will this mean? Obama is not planning some revolutionary turnabout in U.S. politics. He is surrounded by a lot of conventional Democratic politicians and advisors. But he will be swept into power by a wave of enthusiasm for change that the United States has not seen since Kennedy's election. True, there is only so much he can do on the world scene, despite the fact that he will be cheered on by the entire rest of the world. The global geopolitical anarchy is far beyond the control of any American president today.

But he will be pushed to make important changes within the United States. Of course, the very election of an African-American will represent a remarkable cultural change, and cannot fail to have a great impact. His electors will expect him to launch the equivalent of another New Deal internally - health care coverage, tax restructuring, job creation, salvaging the pensions. How much he can do depends in part on the global recession, which is largely beyond his control, but even so forceful leadership can play an important role up to a point. The example of Roosevelt shows us that.

The biggest unknown is how far he will go to dismantle the quasi-police state structures that the Bush regime has instituted under the umbrella of a war against terrorism. This involves far more than appointing better judges. It means a radical revising of both legislation and executive policies and exposing the ultra-secret rules and practices to the light of day. Much can be done, as we know from what was accomplished in the 1970s, reining in the CIA and the FBI. But the situation is worse now and requires more. History may well judge Obama most of all on what he does in this domain. Up to now, he has been quite silent about this arena.

Obama has won big. His election will mark - mark, not cause - the end of the counterrevolution of the world right of the 1980s. He has rekindled hope, and created space for a more progressive world. But this space is structurally cramped by the constraints of an ever more anarchic world-system. The basic question is not whether he will transform the world and/or restore U.S. leadership in the world-system - he will do neither - but whether he will do as much as it is possible to do in allowing us all to push our way forward. Even if this is less than the world might wish he could do.

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.]

When the Tough Decide to Become Diplomatic (1 July 2008)

President George W. Bush and his neo-con coterie made it a point of pride that their relationship to regimes they did not like was one of toughness, not of soft-soap diplomacy. In his State of the Union speech in 2002, Bush denounced the "Axis of Evil" - composed of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea - and indicated that the United States would act to dismantle their regimes, not to negotiate with them.

Shortly thereafter Bush suspended the Agreed Framework of 1994 that the Clinton administration had negotiated with North Korea, in response to which North Korea restarted its nuclear reactor and ended its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). After that, the United States refused to hold bilateral talks with North Korea, insisting that all discussions occur through the so-called six-party talks (the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia) as the only form of contact.

In 2006, North Korea officially exploded a nuclear weapon. Soon afterwards, the United States started bilateral meetings with North Korea, which they had previously refused. In June 2008, the first concrete results of these negotiations were announced. North Korea blew up a nuclear tower and the United States removed North Korea from the sanctions of the Trading-with-the-Enemy Act, and shipped food assistance. This was considered on the U.S. side "incremental progress."

The return of the United States to diplomacy and its acceptance of incremental progress was denounced by neo-cons now outside the U.S. government, like John Bolton, as "a sad, sad day" in which the United States had been "taken to the cleaners." Vice-President Cheney is considered to have lost the internal battle with advocates of negotiations like Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Defense Gates. Supporters of the decision in the administration hailed it as a "diplomatic success." Others pointed out that, had the United States not suspended the Agreed Framework, North Korea might never have been able to explode the nuclear weapon. Hence, they argued, non-negotiation had actually facilitated, rather than prevented, North Korea's becoming a nuclear power.

What changed between 2002 and 2006, such that the United States went from the "tough" line to the "diplomatic" approach? That's easy to discern. The war in Iraq was a fiasco, which (with Afghanistan) absorbed all of the U.S. military apparatus. When the North Koreans exploded a nuclear weapon, the U.S. military made it very clear to President Bush that there was no way they could also take on North Korea in military action. So, once North Korea had the bomb, diplomacy was the only real choice. Bush swallowed hard, but what else could he do? Will this "diplomacy" work, in the sense of getting North Korea to divest itself of all nuclear weapons? Perhaps not. But what else can the United States do?

Now look at Israel. Israel has always preferred the tough line to diplomacy. First, they wouldn't admit there was a Palestine with which to negotiate. Then, they wouldn't talk to Yasser Arafat and the PLO until they "recognized" Israel and renounced all violence. Then, when the first Intifada showed Israel that it now faced a serious problem of internal rebellion by the Palestinians, it agreed to the so-called Oslo accords, which established a very limited and constricted form of de facto control by the Palestinian Authority of some parts of Gaza and the West Bank. Then, after the second Intifada, Israel boycotted Arafat again, and only resumed desultory negotiations with Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas.

In 2006, there were elections in Palestine. Abbas's party, Fatah, was defeated by Hamas, whose official position was to refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the state of Israel. So the "tough" line was reinstituted by Israel. They would not negotiate in any way with a Hamas government, unless and until it revised its basic position. The U.S. government supported this position all the way.

In 2007, Palestine imploded. Abbas, as president, fired the Hamas prime minister. Hamas refused to accept the legitimacy of this action. The net outcome was that Hamas took over complete control of Gaza and Abbas's forces more or less controlled the West Bank. There were now two governments. The Israelis and the United States recognized only the Abbas government and sought to isolate Hamas and therefore Gaza in every way, instituting a tight control of entrance of people and goods into and out of Gaza.

On the world scene, Israel and the United States insisted that everyone else observe their total boycott of Hamas, which the European Union and the United Nations largely did. They even insisted that individuals observe the boycott. When an advisor of Barack Obama revealed that, in his full-time job capacity, he was obliged to meet with Hamas and had been doing this, immediate pressure was placed on Obama to cut links with this advisor, which he did.

Now, all of a sudden, Israel's tough line has ceded place to diplomacy. On June 18, Hamas and Israel entered into a formal truce, in which each side pledged to cease all military actions against the other side, and border restrictions were to be lifted. The U.S. government endorsed this action. The Israeli cabinet voted it with only four abstentions. To be sure, immediately, the hard-liners in Israel and in the U.S. Jewish community denounced this agreement for the same reasons that the neo-cons denounced the U.S. agreement with North Korea. They said the truce wouldn't work because it wouldn't last. Perhaps. And, on June 29, Israel followed this up with a second diplomatic deal with Hizbullah. Israel agreed to a very controversial exchange of prisoners. For two captured Israeli soldiers probably now dead, Israel is releasing a major figure of Hizbullah, responsible for murders of Israelis.

Why did Israel shift from a tough line to diplomacy? There were no doubt many electoral considerations internal to Israel. But the real reason is that the Israelis found that they were unable militarily to bring Palestinian shelling of Israeli towns to an end. And everyone was drawing conclusions from this. Abbas reopened negotiations with Hamas. The Egyptians were pressing the Israelis and the Americans to negotiate with Hamas. And, of course, the Israelis are in a weaker diplomatic position than they would have been two years ago, not to speak of in the days of Arafat. Meanwhile, the French drew the conclusion that it was now safe to be urging serious concessions by Israel. Will American politicians, inside and outside of government, be as bold? As for Hizbullah, the Israelis tried to destroy them militarily and failed completely. It was an embarrassing show of the limits of Israeli military power.

Tough lines work if you have the power to enforce them. Diplomacy is something forced upon the stronger party in a two-way conflict. The United States in North Korea and the Israelis in Gaza/Palestine and Lebanon are now learning that - a bit late. But better late than never. Will the rest of us now be allowed to advocate and engage in the same kind of diplomatic relations that the Bush regime and the Israeli government have legitimized?

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.]

Has the 'Surge' in Iraq Worked? (15 July 2008)

In 2006, things seemed to be going badly for the U.S. military efforts in Iraq. The Iraq war became a top issue in the 2006 Congressional elections in the United States. It is generally agreed that the Republicans did poorly in those elections, largely because the U.S. electorate had become disillusioned with the viability and therefore the worthwhileness of the U.S. invasion.

On December 11, 2006, a stellar bi-partisan committee of Establishment figures headed by James A. Baker and Lee Hamilton issued a report calling for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops and direct discussions with Iran and Syria about all outstanding issues in the Middle East.

Despite very wide political support for the Baker-Hamilton recommendations, President Bush decided on a quite different response to the faltering military situation, a response that has come to be called the "surge." Basically, the surge strategy was not to withdraw troops but to increase troops, and to seek in various ways to reduce radically the violence both against U.S. troops and against Iraqis.

Now, some eighteen months later, the Bush regime and Republican candidate John McCain are hailing the success of the surge. It is true that attacks on U.S. military are radically down from where they were eighteen months ago. It is also true that violence against Iraqis is somewhat, and selectively, down. As a result, there has been a change in U.S. public opinion. The polls show that the number of people who think that the war was a "mistake" is about the same, and they still favor a phased withdrawal. What has changed is the degree of anxiety or urgency the U.S. public feels. Iraq is no longer their number one concern. Attention has shifted radically to the poor state of the world-economy and particularly of the U.S. economy. The net result in U.S. electoral politics is that McCain is not attracting undecided voters on the basis of the success of the surge but neither is Obama any longer drawing many undecided voters on the basis of his promise to withdraw troops.

That still leaves the question: Has the surge really worked? I suppose if one looks exclusively at short-run casualty figures in Iraq, one could argue it did. It would work even better if the United States could send in another 200,000 troops. But the United States does not have another 200,000 troops to send in. And its collaborating countries have been withdrawing their troops, not sending more in. Of course, if you bribe a whole lot of Sunni sheiks, they will be on the U.S. side for the time being. And if you institutionalize ethnic expulsions, as in Baghdad, there is less room for some of the kinds of inter-Iraqi violence that had been previously occurring. And if Moktada al-Sadr thinks it is wiser to bide his time, there will be a temporary reduction in the kind of violence that had been occurring before.

But look at what has happened elsewhere in the Middle East because of the surge. In November of 2006, the United States and NATO had been congratulating themselves on the success of their efforts in Afghanistan. But since then, two things have happened. The number of U.S. casualties has soared, passing now those in Iraq. So has violence against Afghans. Suddenly the Taliban are back in a big way. And now, for the first time since 2001, the pundits are talking about the possibility of the U.S. losing the war in Afghanistan as well as Iraq.

And look at Pakistan. Since November 2006, the country has had relatively democratic elections, which brought to power a legislature hostile to President Musharraf, still the person on whom the Bush regime is relying to pursue a policy favorable to U.S. interests. Musharraf, as a consequence, has been struggling to keep his head above water. One of the ways in which he has done this is to make a tacit deal with the Islamist forces in the northwest frontier region that favor and harbor both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Recently, these forces almost occupied the largest urban center in the region. They are in any case very strong, and are actively helping the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Then look at Iran. Iran is huffing and puffing. So is Israel about Iran. So is Dick Cheney. The fact is, however, that Iran is stronger than ever. And they have been strengthening in every way their links with the two groups in Iraq upon which U.S. hopes are based - the al-Maliki government and the Kurds. Iran actually shares many interests with the United States in Afghanistan. But the United States is unable to take advantage of this geopolitical alliance because it insists on seeing Iran as the evil demon in the Middle East.

Now look again at Iraq. The United States had hoped that, with the surge so "successful," they could get Iraq to sign this year a status-of-forces agreement, which would lock in the stationing of U.S. troops and U.S. bases in Iraq for decades to come. Instead, al-Maliki has made it clear that not only won't Iraq sign more than a brief interim agreement but that it won't do even that unless the United States commits to a timetable for withdrawal, something anathema to both Bush and McCain.

I could go on - about Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, the Gulf states. The fact is that the United States is decidedly weaker everywhere in the Middle East in the eighteen months since the surge began. Has it not been in part, maybe in large part, precisely because of the surge? The Middle East today is like a large geopolitical balloon. If you squeeze it at one point, the air will simply displace itself to another point. And the balloon is getting more fragile all the time. It is on the verge of bursting.

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.]

Afghanistan: Shoals Ahead for President Obama (1 August 2008)

Obama has founded his campaign and become attractive to the American voters in large part on the basis of his position on the Iraq war. He opposed it publicly since 2002. He has called it a "dumb" war. He voted against the "surge." He has called for a withdrawal over 16 months of all combat troops. He has refused to agree that it was wrong to oppose the surge.

While doing all that, he has always argued that the United States should do more in Afghanistan. This explicitly includes sending 10,000 more troops as soon as possible. He does not seem to think that the war there is somehow dumb. He does seem to think that the United States can "win" that war - with more troops and with more assistance from NATO. Once president, he may be in for a rude surprise.

Obama would do well to reflect upon the recent interview in Le Monde given by Gérard Chaliand. Chaliand is a leading geostrategist, specializing in so-called irregular wars. He knows Afghanistan exceedingly well, having been in and out of there over the last thirty years. He spent much time with the mujahidin during their struggle against Soviet troops in the 1980s. He currently spends several months a year in Kabul at the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies, of which he was one of the founders.

He is very clear on the military situation. "Victory is impossible in Afghanistan....Today, one must try to negotiate. There is no other solution." Why? Because the Taliban control the local powers throughout the east and south of the country, where Pashtun populations prevail. Doubling the number of Western troops, doubling the projected size of the government's army, and spending far more than the present 10% of outside aid for economic development might change the situation. But Chaliand doubts, and so do I, that this is politically likely for the United States and the NATO countries. The German Foreign Minister has already warned Obama not to press Germany for more troops to fight the Taliban. It is not that the Taliban can win either, says Chaliand. Rather there is a "military impasse." The Taliban, who are geopolitically astute, are patiently waiting until the West "gets tired of a war that drags on."

To see how the United States has got itself into this cul-de-sac, we have to go back a little bit into history. Since the nineteenth century, Afghanistan has been the focal point of the "great game" between Russia and Great Britain (now succeeded by the United States). No one has ever gained long-term control over this crucial zone of transit.

Today, Afghanistan has on its border a state called Pakistan, which has a large Pashtun population precisely on the border. Pakistan's prime geopolitical interest is to have a friendly Afghanistan, lest India - but also Russia, the United States, and/or Iran - come to dominate it. Pakistan has been supporting in one way or another the Pashtun majority, which today means the Taliban. Pakistan is not about to stop doing this.

Under President Carter, the United States decided to try to oust a so-called Communist government deemed too close to Russia. We know now, via the release of archives from the Carter administration as well as via a famous interview given ten years ago by Zbigniew Brzezinski, then Carter's National Security Advisor, that U.S. support of the mujahidin predated by at least six months the intrusion of Soviet troops. Indeed, one of the objectives was precisely to lure the Soviet Union into intervening militarily on the correct assumption that this would ultimately badly misfire and weaken the Soviet regime at home. Bravo! It did that. But the U.S. policy also at the same time spawned both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban - a classic case of blowback for the United States. In any case, none other than Brzezinski is warning Obama against repeating the Soviet error.

So, Obama is promising something today he is in no position to deliver. It is all very well for him to receive the implicit endorsement of the Iraqi government for his Iraq proposals. He is riding high on that, and will reap credit from the U.S. and world public for his stance. But he can undo that credit by failing to deliver on an impossible promise concerning Afghanistan. His gang of 300 advisors is not serving him very well on this issue. Obama knows how to be prudent when necessary. He is not being very prudent at all on Afghanistan.

These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]

Geopolitical Chess: Background to a Mini-war in the Caucasus (1 August 2008)

The world has been witness this month to a mini-war in the Caucasus, and the rhetoric has been passionate, if largely irrelevant. Geopolitics is a gigantic series of two-player chess games, in which the players seek positional advantage. In these games, it is crucial to know the current rules that govern the moves. Knights are not allowed to move diagonally.

From 1945 to 1989, the principal chess game was that between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was called the Cold War, and the basic rules were called metaphorically "Yalta." The most important rule concerned a line that divided Europe into two zones of influence. It was called by Winston Churchill the "Iron Curtain" and ran from Stettin to Trieste. The rule was that, no matter how much turmoil was instigated in Europe by the pawns, there was to be no actual warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union. And at the end of each instance of turmoil, the pieces were to be returned to where they were at the outset. This rule was observed meticulously right up to the collapse of the Communisms in 1989, which was most notably marked by the destruction of the Berlin wall.

It is perfectly true, as everyone observed at the time, that the Yalta rules were abrogated in 1989 and that the game between the United States and (as of 1991) Russia had changed radically. The major problem since then is that the United States misunderstood the new rules of the game. It proclaimed itself, and was proclaimed by many others, the lone superpower. In terms of chess rules, this was interpreted to mean that the United States was free to move about the chessboard as it saw fit, and in particular to transfer former Soviet pawns to its sphere of influence. Under Clinton, and even more spectacularly under George W. Bush, the United States proceeded to play the game this way.

There was only one problem with this: The United States was not the lone superpower; it was no longer even a superpower at all. The end of the Cold War meant that the United States had been demoted from being one of two superpowers to being one strong state in a truly multilateral distribution of real power in the interstate system. Many large countries were now able to play their own chess games without clearing their moves with one of the two erstwhile superpowers. And they began to do so.

Two major geopolitical decisions were made in the Clinton years. First, the United States pushed hard, and more or less successfully, for the incorporation of erstwhile Soviet satellites into NATO membership. These countries were themselves anxious to join, even though the key western European countries - Germany and France - were somewhat reluctant to go down this path. They saw the U.S. maneuver as one aimed in part at them, seeking to limit their newly-acquired freedom of geopolitical action.

The second key U.S. decision was to become an active player in the boundary realignments within the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This culminated in a decision to sanction, and enforce with their troops, the de facto secession of Kosovo from Serbia.

Russia, even under Yeltsin, was quite unhappy about both these U.S. actions. However, the political and economic disarray of Russia during the Yeltsin years was such that the most it could do was complain, somewhat feebly it should be added.

The coming to power of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin was more or less simultaneous. Bush decided to push the lone superpower tactics (the United States can move its pieces as it alone decides) much further than had Clinton. First, Bush in 2001 withdrew from the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Then he announced that the United States would not move to ratify two new treaties signed in the Clinton years: the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the agreed changes in the SALT II nuclear disarmament treaty. Then Bush announced that the United States would move forward with its National Missile Defense system.

And of course, Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. As part of this engagement, the United States sought and obtained rights to military bases and overflight rights in the Central Asian republics that formerly were part of the Soviet Union. In addition, the United States promoted the construction of pipelines for Central Asian and Caucasian oil and natural gas that would bypass Russia. And finally, the United States entered into an agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic to establish missile defense sites, ostensibly to guard against Iranian missiles. Russia, however, regarded them as aimed at her.

Putin decided to push back much more effectually than Yeltsin. As a prudent player, however, he moved first to strengthen his home base - restoring effective central authority and reinvigorating the Russian military. At this point, the tides in the world-economy changed, and Russia suddenly became a wealthy and powerful controller not only of oil production but of the natural gas so needed by western European countries.

Putin thereupon began to act. He entered into treaty relationships with China. He maintained close relations with Iran. He began to push the United States out of its Central Asian bases. And he took a very firm stand on the further extension of NATO to two key zones - Ukraine and Georgia.

The breakup of the Soviet Union had led to ethnic secessionist movements in many former republics, including Georgia. When Georgia in 1990 sought to end the autonomous status of its non-Georgian ethnic zones, they promptly proclaimed themselves independent states. They were recognized by no one but Russia guaranteed their de facto autonomy.

The immediate spurs to the current mini-war were twofold. In February, Kosovo formally transformed its de facto autonomy to de jure independence. Its move was supported by and recognized by the United States and many western European countries. Russia warned at the time that the logic of this move applied equally to the de facto secessions in the former Soviet republics. In Georgia, Russia moved immediately, for the first time, to authorize the establishment of direct relations with South Ossetia and Abkhazia in direct response to that of Kosovo.

And in April this year, the United States proposed at the NATO meeting that Georgia and Ukraine be welcomed into a so-called Membership Action Plan. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all opposed this action, saying it would provoke Russia.

Georgia's neoliberal and strongly pro-American president, Mikhail Saakashvili, was now desperate. He saw the reassertion of Georgian authority in South Ossetia (and Abkhazia) receding forever. So, he chose a moment of Russian inattention (Putin at the Olympics, Medvedev on vacation) to invade South Ossetia. Of course, the puny South Ossetian military collapsed completely. Saakashvili expected that he would be forcing the hand of the United States (and indeed of Germany and France as well).

Instead, he got an immediate Russian military response, overwhelming the small Georgian army. What he got from George W. Bush was rhetoric. What, after all, could Bush do? The United States was not a superpower. Its armed forces were tied down in two losing wars in the Middle East. And, most important of all, the United States needed Russia far more than Russia needed the United States. Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, pointedly noted in an op-ed in the Financial Times that Russia was a "partner with the west on...the Middle East, Iran and North Korea."

As for western Europe, Russia essentially controls its gas supplies. It is no accident that it was President Sarkozy of France, not Condoleezza Rice, who negotiated the truce between Georgia and Russia. The truce contained two essential concessions by Georgia. Georgia committed itself to no further use of force in South Ossetia, and the agreement contained no reference to Georgian territorial integrity.

So, Russia emerged far stronger than before. Saakashvili had bet everything he has and was now geopolitically bankrupt. And, as an ironic footnote, Georgia, one of the last U.S. allies in the coalition in Iraq, withdrew all its 2000 troops from Iraq. These troops had been playing a crucial role in Shi'a areas, and would now have to be replaced by U.S. troops, which will have to be withdrawn from other areas.

If one plays geopolitical chess, it is best to know the rules, or one gets out-maneuvered.

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.]

Can NATO Survive Georgia? (1 September 2008)

Amidst all the journalistic brouhaha about a new cold war, most analysts are missing out on the real crisis that has been crystallized by Saakashvili's imprudent excursion into South Ossetia. The very existence of NATO has been put into question.

To understand that, we have to go back to the beginning of NATO as an institution and a concept.

The story began in 1947 when the United Kingdom and France signed the Treaty of Dunkirk, pledging mutual assistance in case of a revival of German military aggression. In 1948, this grouping was expanded to include the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg in the Treaty of Brussels, in a move still designed to defend against Germany. Later that year, the five nations set up the Western Union Defence Organization, with a combined chiefs of staff committee. There are two things to note about these treaties. The United States was not part of them, and they were aimed primarily at Germany, not the Soviet Union.

The founding of NATO in 1949 came in the wake of the Berlin Blockade of 1948. NATO in effect nullified the Western Union defense treaties. It was focused not on the dangers of renewed German militarism but on the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. From the point of view of the United States, NATO served several purposes. It was a message to the Soviet Union that the United States was committed to maintaining the existing boundaries of the division of power in Europe, which had seemed threatened by the Berlin Blockade. It was a method of reconciling the French and the British to the rearmament of West Germany. And it was a way of controlling the military operations of the allies by undoing their nascent military structure and subordinating their troops to a U.S. command.

The political leaders and the majority of the population of western European countries were initially quite favorable to the concept of NATO. For them, it guaranteed that the United States would indeed defend them should the Soviet Union come to think it could violate the Yalta arrangements. And France was now ready to accept West German rearmament as a part of their historic reconciliation. France, however, chafed at the third objective - keeping French troops under U.S. command, which is what led Charles De Gaulle in 1966 to withdraw from the NATO command structure and require its headquarters to move from Paris to Brussels.

Beginning in the 1970s, western Europe had not only gotten over its worries about Germany but had begun to think that the Soviet Union no longer posed an imminent menace of invasion. Various countries, and not only France, began to think of how they could bring a tamer, post-Stalinist Soviet Union into more intensive cooperation with western Europe. This was notably the case with West Germany's Ostpolitik. And when, in the 1980's, the idea was broached of a gas pipeline from the Soviet Union to western Europe, this was favorably received even by the United Kingdom under Margaret Thatcher.

The United States was dismayed by these developments. It unsuccessfully opposed the gas pipeline. It sought to discourage all talk of reviving a European army that was not part of NATO. In general, it became considerably less friendly to the idea of Europe as Europe, one that was separate from a North Atlantic community.

The strain was intensified with the collapse of the communisms in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since NATO had been created as a structure to defend western Europe against a Soviet Union governed by a Communist party, what function did NATO now have? The United States was determined to maintain NATO, and sought a new definition of its role. It was also determined not to permit the emergence of an autonomous European structure, delinked from the United States, and worse still, possibly creating the "common European home" that would include Russia, and which Mikhail Gorbachev had proposed.

The immediate structural question for NATO was the issue of expansion - to include or not the former Soviet satellites, which were now emancipated from their links with the Soviet Union/Russia. The United States pushed hard, almost immediately, for their incorporation into NATO. The western Europeans were less enthusiastic. The former satellites saw their incorporation as their link to the United States, as protection against Russia, and as a gateway to economic betterment. The United States saw their incorporation as a constraint on Russia's possible resurgence but even more as a guarantee that "Europe" would not be able to delink from its U.S. close alliance, since these countries would oppose it. And western Europe was less enthusiastic precisely because they understood what the United States was doing.

The Iraq war exacerbated the situation greatly. Donald Rumsfeld gloated over two Europes - "old" Europe, which was effete and uncooperative, and "new" Europe, which was committed to the same world objectives as the United States. Actually, in the immediate situation of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were three Europes: Rumsfeld's "new" Europe (that is, the former Soviet satellites); those that refused to join the "coalition of the willing" (notably France and Germany); and those western European countries that in 2003 supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq (notably the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy). France and Germany pulled closer, politically, to Putin's Russia in their common opposition to the United States at the United Nations.

The strain continued. When the United States pushed this year for the launching of the process to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, they met strong opposition not only from France and Germany but from the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy as well. Indeed they had strong support in only four of the eastern European states - Poland and the three Baltic states. The other eastern European states were reticent as well.

Then came Saakashvili's march into South Ossetia and Russia's vigorous and successful riposte. Poland and the three Baltic states immediately gave full support to Georgia, and the United States a bit less rapidly raised its rhetorical level, and sent in warships with humanitarian aid.

What did western Europe do? Immediately, and without consulting anyone, President Sarkozy of France negotiated a truce in the fighting, and then got the European Union to endorse this fait accompli. Chancellor Merkel of Germany then got into the act with further negotiations with Russia. Even Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was telephoning Putin. All this while, Condoleezza Rice was out of the real diplomatic picture.

Did the diplomacy work? Only of course up to a point, as controversy continues about where Russian troops are presently stationed and Russia's definitive recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But western European statesmen keep making statements about how one should be careful not to cut off ties with Russia. And it seems the most the western European press can do is to scold Russia that it is they who are breaking friendly relations with western Europe. Most revealing of all is the report in the New York Times that Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states are calling not Rice but Angela Merkel, asking her to use her influence to help resolve the situation. Angela Merkel has made it clear that Germany will not be rushed into approving Georgian membership in NATO.

Most remarkable of all is an op-ed in the Financial Times by Kishore Mahbubani, a senior academic in profoundly pro-Western Singapore. Mahbubani says that 10% of the world is united in condemning Russia, and the other 90% "is bemused by western moralising on Georgia." He says Mao Zedong was right in one thing - the distinction between the primary contradiction and the secondary contradictions with which one must always compromise. "Russia is not close to becoming the primary contradiction the west faces." He ends by saying that it is Western "flawed (strategic) thinking" that is causing the world to be a more dangerous place.

The United States is not yet ready to listen to the sage counsel of its own friends in the non-Western world. Western Europe is grappling its way to understanding what's at stake for them. NATO cannot survive the irrelevance of its strategic activity in what Mahbubani calls the "post cold-war era."

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 New World Geopolitical Order: End of Act I (15 September 2008)

It would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of the agreement on September 8 between Nicolas Sarkozy of France in his capacity as current president of the European Union (EU) and Dmitri Medvedev, President of Russia. It marks the definitive end of Act I of the new world geopolitical order.

What was decided? The Russians agreed to withdraw all their troops from what are called "central Georgian areas" or "Georgia proper," that is, those parts of Georgia the Russians recognize as Georgia. These troops are being replaced by 200 monitors from the EU. This is done on guarantees by the EU that there will be no use of force against South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The issue of Russian recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has been left entirely open. Sarkozy and the EU's Foreign Minister, Javier Solana, "hope" that Russia will agree in the future to allow EU monitors into these two areas. Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said they had made no such promise and that "all future monitoring arrangements would require ratification by the Abhaz and South Ossetian governments." Lavrov said that Russian troops would remain in the two areas "for the foreseeable future." And the secretary of Georgia's National Security Council, Alexander Lomaia, while applauding the clear deadlines for Russian withdrawal from Georgia proper, did note that "the bad news is that [the agreement] doesn't refer to [Georgian] territorial integrity."

This accord was reached between Europe and Russia, and the United States played no diplomatic role whatsoever. Medvedev charged the United States with having given its blessing to the original Georgian action of entering South Ossetia. He said that, by contrast, the Europeans are "our natural partners, our key partners." Georgia's president received the strong encouragement of John McCain, and Vice-President Cheney flew there to say that the United States was giving $1 billion in aid for Georgian reconstruction. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, explaining why this aid would not include military aid and why there would be no economic sanctions against Russia, said that "if we act too precipitously, we could be the ones who are isolated."

So, what is the bottom line? Russia has gotten more or less what it wanted in Georgia. Its "irrevocable" recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia could well be something it might trade in the future for a basic turn-around in Georgia's relations with Russia. If not, not. The fact is that Europe believes it needs to come to terms with Russia, and has ruled out renewing what the Chinese call "the European civil war."

The United States finds it has no real cards to play. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, it finds itself publicly rebuffed by its closest allies. In Iraq, Prime Minister al-Maliki is being a very tough negotiator about the continued presence of U.S. troops, and it is not impossible, barring further major U.S. concessions, that the current agreements that terminate on December 31 will simply run out.

In Afghanistan, President Karzai is so exasperated with the bombing missions of U.S. special troops that he has demanded "a review of the presence of U.S. and NATO troops in the country," in what CBS News calls a "harshly worded statement." The immediate provocation was an air raid in Azizabad that the U.S. army said had few casualties and attacked a Taliban group. The Afghans insisted there were no Taliban there and a large number of civilians were killed. When UN officials and others gave credence to the Afghan version, the senior U.S. general in Afghanistan, David McKiernan, back-tracked on the U.S. position and called for a further high-level U.S. investigation by a general who would come from the United States.

And in Pakistan, President Bush authorized U.S. hot pursuit of Taliban from Afghanistan into Pakistan against the advice of the National Intelligence Council who said it would carry "a high risk of further destabilizing the Pakistani military and government." The incursion brought what the New York Times called "an unusually strong statement" by the chief of the Pakistani army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who said his forces would defend Pakistan's sovereignty "at all costs." Since the U. S. government has been looking on Gen. Kayani as its strong supporter in Pakistan, this is not exactly what the United States has been hoping to hear.

So, ignored in Georgia and under attack by its closest allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the United States is somewhat unhappily entering the realities of the post-Cold War world, in which it has to play by new rules that it seems to find rather unpalatable.

Meanwhile, as an ironic but not unimportant footnote, on September 10, a major development in particle physics was celebrated in Geneva when the European laboratory called CERN achieved a scientific breakthrough after 14 years of work and $8 billion in expense. This was such a major moment in world science that their U.S. counterparts at the Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois opened the champagne bottles at 4:38 in the morning to celebrate. Nonetheless, Pier Oddone, the director of the Fermilab, admitted this was a "bittersweet moment." Until 1993, the United States ruled particle physics. That year, the U.S. Congress, flush with the self-confidence of having "won" the cold war, believed it was too expensive - and no longer geopolitically necessary - to build the kind of supercollider needed for this new advance in particle physics. The Europeans made a different kind of decision, and the United States now finds itself in second place here too.

I call this the end of Act I because it has sealed the reality of a true multilateral geopolitical arena. Of course, there are still further acts to come. And any faithful playgoer know that Act I merely establishes who are the actors. It is in Act II that we see what really happens. And then there's Act III, the denouement.

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.]

Bolivia: Defeat of the Right (1 October 2008)

In the amazing series of elections in South America in the last five years, the most radical results were in Bolivia, with the election of Evo Morales as President. It is not because Morales stood on the most radical platform. It was rather that, in this country in which the majority of the population are indigenous peoples, this was the very first time that an indigenous person was elected president of the republic. This in itself was a profound social revolution, and was not at all appreciated by the descendants of European immigrants who had always controlled the country.

The big question when Morales was elected was whether he could stay long in office, or whether the Bolivian right, perhaps in collusion with the armed forces, could oust him. He has now demonstrated that he can.

There were three major elements in his program. Bolivia's national income today is primarily drawn from its gas exports, essentially to Brazil and Argentina. The gas is located in the eastern provinces, the so-called Half Moon. And these areas are the ones in which there are the lowest percentages of indigenous peoples. The majority are Euro-descendants. Until Morales came to power, the prices at which the gas was sold were ridiculously low. And the income remained largely with the eastern provincial governments.

So, Morales sought to renegotiate the prices of the gas being exported. And he instituted a hydrocarbon tax so that much more of the income would come to the national government. Morales intended to use the money for social redistribution throughout the country, which would of course significantly benefit the indigenous populations.

In addition, the land in the eastern provinces is exceptionally mal-distributed. Two-thirds of the land are owned by one-sixth of 1% of the population. Morales wished to place a cap on the acreage any one person could own - a form of major agrarian reform.

In foreign policy, Morales attempted to maintain reasonable relations with the United States. He continued to accept the money the U.S. had been giving for anti-narcotic operations, especially since this money went to the armed forces. He did, however, in addition, welcome Venezuelan aid and Cuban doctors. The U.S. government was clearly not happy with Morales and would have preferred to see the Bolivian right return to power.

The strategy of the Bolivian right was to demand more autonomy for the regional governments, ultimately hinting at secession - a project they had never advocated as long as they controlled the central government. They demanded a recall election of Morales. The tactic badly backfired.

Morales accepted the challenge, adding to the recall election the question of whether the nine provincial prefects should also be recalled. In the elections Morales got a whopping 68% support, far greater than the votes he had originally received when he was elected. Seven prefects were returned but two anti-Morales governors were ousted, which has allowed Morales to name successors.

The right in the eastern provinces then sought to block exports of gas. They hoped thereby to induce the Brazilian and Argentine governments to put pressure on Morales. Supporters of Morales then began to demonstrate. The governor of Pando province, Leopoldo Fernández responded with repression. Over 30 demonstrators were killed in the city of El Porvenir. Morales arrested the governor and named a navy admiral as the new prefect.

At this point, President Michelle Bachelet of Chile convened an emergency meeting of the organization of the 12 South American states, UNASUR, to consider the situation. All twelve presidents came to Santiago for the meeting, and unanimously adopted a resolution of "full and complete support for the constitutional government of Evo Morales," denouncing any possible coup d'état. The significance of this resolution was that it was unanimous, being signed even by the deeply pro-American president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe. The resolution was then endorsed by the Grupo Río, composed of 22 countries from all of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Mexico.

UNASUR called for dialogue. Morales called for dialogue himself, even before the UNASUR resolution. The right is stymied. Its last hope was some U.S. intervention. But Bolivia has now expelled the U.S. ambassador, Philip Goldberg, for "conspiring against democracy," that is, with the Bolivian right. The United States is now withdrawing its small aid projects in Bolivia. Russia has offered to enter the breach. The United States is becoming more and more irrelevant in Latin America.

If one asks why even Uribe supported the resolution, it is because no president wants to see the new tactic of secession receiving support. The United States is trying this also in Ecuador, where it has backfired equally, with the great victory of President Rafael Correa's referendum on the constitution.

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 Depression: A Long-Term View (15 October 2008)

The depression has started. Journalists are still coyly enquiring of economists whether or not we may be entering a mere recession. Don't believe it for a minute. We are already at the beginning of a full-blown worldwide depression with extensive unemployment almost everywhere. It may take the form of a classic nominal deflation, with all its negative consequences for ordinary people. Or it might take the form, a bit less likely, of a runaway inflation, which is simply another way in which values deflate, and which is even worse for ordinary people.

Of course everyone is asking what has triggered this depression. Is it the derivatives, which Warren Buffett called "financial weapons of mass destruction"? Or is it the subprime mortgages? Or is it oil speculators? This is a blame game, and of no real importance. This is to concentrate on the dust, as Fernand Braudel called it, of short-term events. If we want to understand what is going on, we need to look at two other temporalities, which are far more revealing. One is that of medium-term cyclical swings. And one is that of the long-term structural trends.

The capitalist world-economy has had, for several hundred years at least, two major forms of cyclical swings. One is the so-called Kondratieff cycles that historically were 50-60 years in length. And the other is the hegemonic cycles which are much longer.

In terms of the hegemonic cycles, the United States was a rising contender for hegemony as of 1873, achieved full hegemonic dominance in 1945, and has been slowly declining since the 1970s. George W. Bush's follies have transformed a slow decline into a precipitate one. And as of now, we are past any semblance of U.S. hegemony. We have entered, as normally happens, a multipolar world. The United States remains a strong power, perhaps still the strongest, but it will continue to decline relative to other powers in the decades to come. There is not much that anyone can do to change this.

The Kondratieff cycles have a different timing. The world came out of the last Kondratieff B-phase in 1945, and then had the strongest A-phase upturn in the history of the modern world-system. It reached its height circa 1967-73, and started on its downturn. This B-phase has gone on much longer than previous B-phases and we are still in it.

The characteristics of a Kondratieff B-phase are well-known and match what the world-economy has been experiencing since the 1970s. Profit rates from productive activities go down, especially in those types of production that have been most profitable. Consequently, capitalists who wish to make really high levels of profit turn to the financial arena, engaging in what is basically speculation. Productive activities, in order not to become too unprofitable, tend to move from core zones to other parts of the world-system, trading lower transactions costs for lower personnel costs. This is why jobs have been disappearing from Detroit, Essen, and Nagoya and factories have been expanding in China, India, and Brazil.

As for the speculative bubbles, some people always make a lot of money in them. But speculative bubbles always burst, sooner or later. If one asks why this Kondratieff B-phase has lasted so long, it is because the powers that be - the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and their collaborators in western Europe and Japan - have intervened in the market regularly and importantly - 1987 (stock market plunge), 1989 (savings-and-loan collapse), 1997 (East Asian financial fall), 1998 (Long Term Capital Management mismanagement), 2001-2002 (Enron) - to shore up the world-economy. They learned the lessons of previous Kondratieff B-phases, and the powers that be thought they could beat the system. But there are intrinsic limits to doing this. And we have now reached them, as Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke are learning to their chagrin and probably amazement. This time, it will not be so easy, probably impossible, to avert the worst.

In the past, once a depression wreaked its havoc, the world-economy picked up again, on the basis of innovations that could be quasi-monopolized for a while. So, when people say that the stock market will rise again, this is what they are thinking will happen, this time as in the past, after all the damage has been done to the world's populations. And maybe it will, in a few years or so.

There is however something new that may interfere with this nice cyclical pattern that has sustained the capitalist system for some 500 years. The structural trends may interfere with the cyclical patterns. The basic structural features of capitalism as a world-system operate by certain rules that can be drawn on a chart as a moving upward equilibrium. The problem, as with all structural equilibria of all systems, is that over time the curves tend to move far from equilibrium and it becomes impossible to bring them back to equilibrium.

What has made the system move so far from equilibrium? In very brief, it is because over 500 years the three basic costs of capitalist production - personnel, inputs, and taxation - have steadily risen as a percentage of possible sales price, such that today they make it impossible to obtain the large profits from quasi-monopolized production that have always been the basis of significant capital accumulation. It is not because capitalism is failing at what it does best. It is precisely because it has been doing it so well that it has finally undermined the basis of future accumulation.

What happens when we reach such a point is that the system bifurcates (in the language of complexity studies). The immediate consequence is high chaotic turbulence, which our world-system is experiencing at the moment and will continue to experience for perhaps another 20-50 years. As everyone pushes in whatever direction they think immediately best for each of them, a new order will emerge out of the chaos along one of two alternate and very different paths.

We can assert with confidence that the present system cannot survive. What we cannot predict is which new order will be chosen to replace it, because it will be the result of an infinity of individual pressures. But sooner or later, a new system will be installed. This will not be a capitalist system but it may be far worse (even more polarizing and hierarchical) or much better (relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian) than such a system. The choice of a new system is the major worldwide political struggle of our times.

As for our immediate short-run ad interim prospects, it is clear what is happening everywhere. We have been moving into a protectionist world (forget about so-called globalization). We have been moving into a much larger direct role of government in production. Even the United States and Great Britain are partially nationalizing the banks and the dying big industries. We are moving into populist government-led redistribution, which can take left-of-center social-democratic forms or far right authoritarian forms. And we are moving into acute social conflict within states, as everyone competes over the smaller pie. In the short-run, it is not, by and large, a pretty picture.

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.]

Dramatic Consequences in Iraq? (1 November 2008)

"Dramatic consequences" are what U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, predicts if, on Jan. 1, 2009, there is no agreement concerning the rights of U.S. troops to operate in Iraq, either via a so-called Status-of-Forces Agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States or, second best, an extension of the United Nations mandate that is at the moment the juridical basis of the presence and rights of U.S. military activity there, but which expires on Dec. 31, 2008.

The negotiations between the United States and Iraq have reached an impasse, as almost everyone now acknowledges. There could be a last-minute breakthrough, but it seems unlikely. It seems more probable that the U.N. Security Council will meet at the very end of December to authorize a time-limited extension of the present mandate. This would throw the question into the hands of the next U.S. president to negotiate. This is not at all what the Bush administration had wanted or ever expected to happen.

A year ago or so, the Bush administration was confident that it could negotiate a SOFA agreement with a presumed-to-be friendly al-Maliki government in Iraq. It wanted an agreement that would more or less renew the current rules governing U.S. military operations in Iraq and one that would also thereby tie the hands of the next U.S. administration for at least several years. The U.S. negotiators proposed an agreement at the level of the two governments, one that would not have to be ratified by the legislatures of either country.

Everything went wrong with this plan. First of all, the legislatures insisted that they wanted to be part of the arrangements, especially the Iraqi legislature. Secondly, there were important political voices within Iraq who were against any arrangement that would keep U.S. forces in Iraq. These included, of course, the group led by Moktada al-Sadr, who has consistently raised the banner of Iraqi nationalism against a continued U.S. presence.

But al-Sadr was not alone. It turned out that there were serious reservations among all three groups on whom the United States had counted to be sympathetic to an extension - the two main Shi'a parties other than the Sadrists (SCIRI and al-Maliki's party, Dawa), the so-called moderate Sunnis, and of course the Kurds. The rumblings on all sides led Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to take a far tougher line in the negotiations than the United States had anticipated. He started to act as though his greatest worry was that he might be outflanked as an Iraqi nationalist leader by others, and in particular by Moktada al-Sadr.

Al-Maliki therefore made two primary demands in the negotiations. He wanted a firm date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. And he wanted to submit U.S. troops and civilian contractors to Iraqi jurisdiction, whenever they were accused of serious crimes committed outside of legitimate military activity. Both demands were totally anathema to the United States.

But al-Maliki held firm. And after many months he got concessions. There was agreement on a terminal date of 2011 for U.S. combat troops, and there was agreement on Iraqi jurisdiction on behavior in the non-military arena. But the wording of each concession also included escape clauses. The withdrawal in 2011 was to be subject to "conditions on the ground." And Iraqi jurisdiction was to be subject to someone (presumably the United States) deciding that the alleged behavior was indeed outside of legitimate military activity.

The escape hatches turned out to be too much for Iraqi politicians to accept. As one of them recently put it, "they have given with the right hand what they have taken away with the left hand." So, one after the other, they said they would not vote to approve the present "compromise" draft. The most important voice along these lines was Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani who indicated that the present proposal was unacceptable. The largest Shi'a party, SCIRI, refused the draft. The moderate Sunnis and the Kurds indicated that they wanted changes. The entire Iraqi cabinet then voted to insist on amendments. It then indicated that one of the amendments would be to give the Iraqi (and not the U.S.) government the power to decide on whether behavior of Americans was outside legitimate military activity. It doesn't seem that such amendments are at all acceptable to the United States.

In this situation, Secretary of Defense Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have tried to issue careful diplomatic comments. Other Americans were not as restrained. The commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, said that Iraqi reluctance was due to Iranian bribes. Al-Maliki immediately said that Odierno had "risked his position."

Then the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, opined that, without U.S. troop support, Iraqi forces would not "be ready to provide for their own security." The Iraqi government's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, immediately responded angrily that "it is not correct to force Iraqis into making a choice and it is not appropriate to talk with the Iraqis in this way." Other Iraqis were more blunt. They called Mullen's comments about ending all U.S. assistance if a SOFA agreement was not signed a form of "blackmail."

When the United States launched its recent raid against presumed al-Qaeda elements located on Syrian soil, and did this from a base in Iraq, it threw further cold water on the proposed agreement. A prominent Kurdish politician said that the raid was made without the knowledge of the Iraqi government and would give Iraqi's neighbors "a good reason to be concerned about the continued U.S. presence in Iraq." Another amendment the Iraqi cabinet now wants is one forbidding attacks on neighbors by U.S. forces located in Iraq.

Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, has made it clear that Russia would not oppose an extension of U.N. authorization, provided it is the government of Iraq that requests it. Lavrov added that Russia supports "the government of Iraq as far as the need to ensure the sovereignty of Iraq on its own territory is concerned." Why should Russia not do this? Russia is quite happy to see U.S. troops tied down in Iraq for the time being. It constricts U.S. ability to use them anywhere else. In any case, there is a question whether the Iraqi government, if and when it requests an extension of the U.N. mandate, would ask that the new provisions the United States is opposing in the SOFA agreement be included in the extension, in which case the United States might veto the extension.

The person who is quietly relishing what is going on is Moktada al-Sadr. His mere existence as a voice on the Iraqi scene has forced all other Iraqi political forces to express Iraqi nationalist demands more openly and more aggressively. The tide is moving in his direction. It is now quite probable that the Iraqi government will ask the United States to withdraw entirely even before the hypothetical date of 2011 in the present proposal, and very long before the 100 years of which John McCain once spoke.

Will there be "dramatic consequences"? The world will judge. So of course will the Iraqis. And so will U.S. public opinion. But dramatic or not, it is probably going to happen.

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.]

Obama's Victory - Fear and Hope (15 November 2008)

The whole of the United States and indeed the whole world was watching, and almost all of it was cheering, the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. Although, during the electoral campaign, everyone tried to play down the centrality of the racial issue, on Nov. 4 it seemed that no one could talk of anything else. There are three central questions about what most commentators are calling this "historic event": How important is it? What explains the victory? What is likely to happen now?

On the evening of November 4, an immense crowd assembled in Grant Park, Chicago, to hear Obama's acceptance speech. All those who were watching U.S. television saw the camera zoom in on Jesse Jackson, who was in tears. Those tears reflect the virtually unanimous view of all African-Americans, who regard Obama's election as the moment of their definitive integration into the U.S. electoral process. They do not believe that racism has disappeared. But a symbolic barrier has been crossed, first of all for them, and then for all the rest of us.

Their sentiment is quite parallel to the feelings of Africans in South Africa on April 27, 1994 when they voted to elect Nelson Mandela president of their country. It has not mattered that Mandela, as president, did not fulfill the whole promise of his party. It will not matter if Obama does not fulfill the whole promise of his campaign. In the United States, as in South Africa, a new day has dawned. Even if it is an imperfect day, it is a better day than before. The African-Americans, but also the Hispanics and the young people in general, voted for Obama out of hope - a diffuse hope, but a real one.

How did Obama win? He won the way anyone wins in a large, complex political situation. He put together a large coalition of many different political forces. In this case, the gamut ran from fairly far left to right of center. He would not have won without that enormous range of support. And, of course, now that he has won, all the different groups want him to govern as each prefers, which is of course not possible.

Who are these different elements, and why did they support him? On the left, even the far left, they voted for Obama because of deep anger about the damage the Bush regime inflicted on the United States and the world, and the genuine fear that McCain would have been no better, perhaps worse. On the center-right, independents and many Republicans voted for him most of all because they had become aghast at the ever-increasing dominance of the Christian right in Republican party politics, a sentiment that was underlined by the choice of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential candidate. These people voted for Obama because they were afraid of McCain/Palin and because Obama convinced them that he was a solid and sensible pragmatist.

And in-between these two groups were the so-called Reagan Democrats, largely industrial workers, often Catholics, often racist, who had tended to desert their Democratic party roots in recent elections because they viewed the party as having moved too far left and disapproved of its positions on social questions. These voters moved back to the Democratic party not because their outlook had changed, but because of fear. They were deeply afraid of the economic depression into which the United States has moved, and thought that their only hope was in a new New Deal. They voted for the Democrats despite the fact that Obama was an African-American. Fear conquered racism.

And what will Obama do now? What can Obama do now? It is still too early to be sure. It seems clear that he will move quickly to take advantage of a crisis situation, as his new Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, put it. I suspect we shall see a dramatic set of initiatives in the traditional first 100 days. And some of what Obama does may be surprising.

Still, there are two situations, the two biggest, that are largely beyond his control - the transformed geopolitics of the world-system, and the catastrophic world economic situation. Yes, the world received Obama's victory with joy, but also with prudence. It is notable that two major centers of power issued statements on the geopolitical scene that were quite forthright. Both the European Union in a unanimous statement and President Lula of Brazil said they looked forward to renewing collaboration with the United States, but this time as equals, not as junior partners.

Obama will pull out of Iraq more or less as promised, if for no other reason than the fact that the Iraqi government will insist upon it. He will try to find a graceful exit from Afghanistan, which will not be too easy. But whether he will do something significant in relation to the Israel/Palestine deadlock and whether he can look forward to a more stable Pakistan is very unsure. And he will have less to say about it than he may think. Can Obama accept the fact that the United States is no longer the world's leader, merely a partner with other power centers? And, even if he can, can he somehow get the American people to accept this new reality?

As for the depression, it will no doubt have to play out its course. Obama, like all the other major leaders in the world, is a captain on a very stormy sea, and can do relatively little more than try to keep his ship from sinking altogether.

Where Obama has some leeway is in the internal U.S. situation. There are three things where he is expected to act and can act, if he is ready to be bold. One is job creation. This can only be done effectively in the short run through government action. And it would be best done by investing in reconstructing the degraded infrastructure of the United States, and in measures to reverse environmental decline.

The second is the establishment, at last, of a decent health care structure in the United States, in which everyone, without exception, will be covered, and in which there will be considerable emphasis on preventive medicine.

And the third area is in undoing all the damage that has been done to basic civil liberties in the United States by the Bush administration, but also by prior administrations. This requires an overhauling both of the Department of Justice and the legal and paralegal apparatus that has been constructed in the last eight, but also the last thirty, years.

If Obama acts decisively in these three arenas, then we might say that this was a truly historic election, one in which the change that occurred was more than symbolic. But if he fails here, the letdown will be momentous.

Many are trying to divert his attention into the arenas in which he cannot do much, and in which his best position would be that of a lower profile, the acceptance of new world reality. There is much about Obama's future actions to fear, and much that offers hope.

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.]

Iraq: The Thirteenth Hour (1 December 2008)

The Iraq Parliament on November 27 voted 149-35 to ratify the Status-of-Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the United States. As the vote was being taken, the Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, is quoted as saying: "I remind you that in Iraq things have not happened at the eleventh hour, but at the thirteenth hour." In other words, the key moment is yet to come.

What actually happened? The Iraqi Parliament has 275 members. Those present for the vote were only 198. Those who voted in favor of the text were 149, or a bare majority of the members. The 149 included the members from the two mainstream Shi'a parties (SCIRI and the Prime Minister's party, Dawa), the two Kurdish parties and, crucially, members of the Sunni-based Iraqi Accord Front (IAF).

The favorable vote of the IAF was crucial because Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani had said he would not endorse the agreement unless it had "wide" support, by which he meant substantial Sunni support. So the Sunni had great bargaining power with Prime Minister al-Maliki, whose political future hinged on getting the SOFA agreement adopted. The IAF got two things from al-Maliki. One was that there would be a national referendum on the agreement in July 2009. The second was the substantial support al-Maliki has been giving to the so-called "support councils" in Sunni tribes. That is, al-Maliki is offering both a bribe and a guarantee against future reprisals against the Sunni tribes who have been giving assistance to the American armed forces in the last year in return for material assistance.

Al-Maliki has emerged as the big political victor and shown himself to be a more able political maneuverer than most analysts had expected. Let us see what he has accomplished by passing the SOFA agreement, an agreement which the Iraqis are calling the "withdrawal agreement." His first accomplishment was to hold the Sadrists in check by co-opting the Sadrist strategy - getting the Americans out of Iraq by making a deal with the Sunnis. Both SCIRI (the other mainstream Shi'a party) and the Kurds are grumbling about a possible al-Maliki "dictatorship" in the making, but they had no choice but to ratify the agreement. The Sadrists have preserved their position-in-waiting by voting loudly against the pact.

What's in the pact? The key elements are a requirement that U.S. forces leave all cities and towns by June 2009, and leave Iraq entirely by December 2011. In addition, all U.S. military action must now be coordinated in advance with the Iraqis, and the United States may not use Iraq as a base to attack neighbors (that is, Syria and Iran).

Why did Bush agree? He had no choice. The alternative was for U.S. forces to be illegal after Dec. 31, 2008 and turn the whole issue over to Obama. The U.S. government was so frightened of U.S. congressional reaction to the details of the pact that they refused before the vote to release an English-language version of the pact. They did not want U.S. public discussion of the pact before the Iraqi parliament voted.

The terms of the pact contain some vague language and the U.S. military says it's counting on its ability to interpret the language in ways that it prefers. It is said that Bush has thereby gotten a better deal than Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan. But this is not true at all. It is in fact worse. Obama's proposal had been that U.S. combat forces leave in 16 months, but had set no date for "training" forces, leaving open the possibility of indefinite stationing of some U.S. forces. The SOFA agreement gets all forces out by December 2011. And Bush, not Obama, signed off on this.

In practice all U.S. forces will depart much sooner than December 2011. This is where the referendum comes in. It will be held in July 2009. U.S. forces must leave cities and towns by June 2009. If they don't, the referendum will surely not pass. If they do, al-Maliki will still have to win the referendum. In order to do that, he will have to take a very tough line with the Americans. Any thought that the U.S. military can "interpret" vague language in its favor is a total illusion. In any case, the referendum may be in trouble, since al-Sistani voiced reservations after the parliamentary vote. Al-Maliki knows that if he yields an inch now to the United States, Moqtada al-Sadr is waiting in the wings.

So al-Maliki has all the chips, and Obama will have none. Obama will have to accede gracefully to the Iraqi demands. These demands will escalate, not become less, as the months go by.

And, by the way, the Ethiopians (U.S. surrogates in Somalia) have just announced that they will pull out their troops by the end of 2008. And President Karzai of Afghanistan has just announced that he wants a formal pull-out date for U.S. and NATO forces there. The general feeling in the region seems to be that talking tough to the United States is not only possible. It pays off. The thirteenth hour is approaching.

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.]

Pakistan: Obama's Nightmare (15 December 2008)

On the evening of Nov. 26, 2008, a small group of 10 persons attacked two luxury hotels and other sites in central Mumbai (India) and, over several days, managed both to kill and hurt a very large number of persons and to create massive material destruction in the city. It took several days before the slaughter was brought to an end. It is widely believed that the attacks were the work of a Pakistani group called Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), a group thought to be similar in motivation to al-Qaeda, perhaps directly linked to it. The world press immediately called the Mumbai massacres the 9/11 of India, a repetition of the attacks al-Qaeda launched against the United States in 2001.

The motivations and strategy of al-Qaeda in 2001 were largely misunderstood in 2001, both by the U.S. government and by analysts. The same thing risks happening now. Al-Qaeda in 2001 was of course seeking to humiliate the United States. But this was, from a strategic point of view, only a secondary motivation. Al-Qaeda has always made clear that its primary objective is the re-creation of the Islamic caliphate. And, as a matter of political strategy, it has considered that the necessary first step is the collapse of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Al-Qaeda considers that these two governments have been the essential political supports of Western (primarily U.S.) political dominance in the greater Middle East, and therefore the biggest obstacles to the re-creation of the caliphate, whose initial geographic base would of course be in this region.

The attack of September 11 can be seen as an attempt to get the U.S. government to engage in political activities that would put pressures on the Saudi and Pakistani governments of a kind that would undermine their political viability. The primary actions of the U.S. government in the region since 2001 - the invasion first of Afghanistan and then of Iraq - certainly met the expectations of al-Qaeda. What has been the result?

The Saudi government has reacted with great political astuteness, fending off U.S. pressures that would have weakened it internally, and has been able thus far to minimize al-Qaeda political success in Saudi Arabia. The Pakistani government has been far less successful. The regime in Islamabad is far weaker in 2008 than its predecessor regime was in 2001, while the political strength of al-Qaeda-type elements has been on a steady rise. The Mumbai attacks seem to have been an effort to weaken the Pakistani state still further. Of course, LET wished to hurt India and those seen as its allies - the United States, Great Britain, and Israel - but this was a secondary objective. The primary objective was to bring down the Pakistani government.

In Pakistan, as in every country of the world, the political elites are nationalist and seek to further the geopolitical interests of their country. This objective is fundamentally different from that of al-Qaeda-like groups, for whom the only legitimate function of a state is to further the re-creation of the caliphate. The persistent refusal of the Western world to understand this distinction has been a major source of al-Qaeda's continuing strength. It is what will turn Pakistan into Obama's nightmare.

What are Pakistan's geopolitical interests? Before anything else, it worries about its principal neighbors, India and Afghanistan. These concerns have fashioned its geopolitical strategy for the last sixty years. Pakistan sought powerful allies against India. It found two historically, the United States and China. Both the United States and China supported Pakistan for one simple reason, to keep India in check. India was seen by both as too close geopolitically to the Soviet Union, with whom both the United States and China were in conflict.

In the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War and the momentary geopolitical weakness of Russia, both the United States and China sought tentatively to obtain closer relations with India. India was geopolitically a more important prize than Pakistan, and Pakistan knew this. One of the ways Pakistan reacted was to expand its role in (and control over) Afghanistan, by supporting the eventually successful Taliban takeover of the country.

What happened after 2001? The United States invaded Afghanistan, ousted the Taliban, and installed a government which had elements friendly to the United States, to Russia, even to Iran, but not at all to Pakistan. At the same time, the United States and India got still cozier, with the new arrangements on nuclear energy. So, the Pakistani government turned a blind eye to the renewal of Taliban strength in the northwest tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. The Taliban elements there, supported by al-Qaeda elements, renewed military operations in Afghanistan - and with considerable success, it should be noted.

The United States became quite upset, pressed the Pakistani army to act militarily against these Taliban/al-Qaeda elements, and itself engaged in direct (albeit covert) military action in this region. The Pakistani government found itself between a rock and a hard place. It had never had much capacity to control matters in the tribal regions. And the attempts it made as a result of U.S. government pressure weakened it still further. But its inefficacy pushed the U.S. military to act even more directly, which led to severe anti-American sentiment even among the most historically pro-American elites.

What can Obama do? Send in troops? Against whom? The Pakistani government itself? It is said that the U.S. government is particularly concerned with the nuclear stockpile that Pakistan has. Would the United States try to seize this stockpile? Any action along these lines - and Obama recklessly hinted at such actions during the electoral campaign - would make the Iraqi fiasco seem like a minor event. It would certainly doom Obama's domestic objectives.

There will be no shortage of people who will counsel him that doing nothing is unacceptable weakness. Is that Obama's only alternative? It seems clear that pursuing his agenda, as he himself has defined it, requires getting out from under the unending and geopolitically fruitless U.S. activities in the Middle East. Iraq will be easy, since the Iraqis will insist on U.S. withdrawal. Afghanistan will be harder, but a political deal is not impossible. Iran can be negotiated. The Israel/Palestine conflict is for the moment unresolvable, and Obama may be able to do little else than let the situation fester still longer.

But Pakistan requires a decision. If a Pakistani government is to survive, it will have to be one that can show it holds its own geopolitically. This will not be at all easy, given the internal situation, and an angry Indian public opinion. If there is anywhere where Obama can act intelligently, this is the place.

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