Global challenges to the international order
(Originally posted 10 Aoril,
2013 in The Rag Blog)
Harry Targ
We are experiencing a dramatic transformation
of international relations. Central features of it involve the relative decline
of US/NATO hegemony and the growing integration of policy preferences of
countries of the Global South. One element of this story is “dedollarization.”
This 4-minute video below describes what is happening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkMgqg_wFuM&t=5s
These changes pose fundamental questions
about how and in what ways the US peace and justice movements should proceed
(June 4, 2023)
Latin American and African dependency theorists and “bottom-up” historians have argued for a long time that resistance must be part of the understanding of any theory of imperialism.
A whole generation of activists has “grown up”
conversant with the central place of empire in human history. Children of the
Cold War and the “Sixties” generation realized that the United States was the
latest of a multiplicity of imperial powers which sought to dominate and
control human beings, physical space, natural resources, and human labor power.
We learned from the Marxist tradition, radical historians, scholar/activists
with historical roots in Africa, and revolutionaries from the Philippines and Vietnam
to Southern Africa, to Latin America. But we often concluded that imperialism
was hegemonic; that is it was all powerful, beyond challenge.
A “theory of imperialism” for the 21st century should include four
interconnected variables that explain empire building as well as responses to
it.
First, as an original motivation for empire, economic interests are primary.
The most recent imperial power, the United States, needed to secure customers
for its products, outlets for manufacturing investment opportunities, an open
door for financial speculation, and vital natural resources such as oil.
Second, the pursuit of military control parallels and supports the pursuit of
economic domination. The United States, beginning in the 1890s, built a
two-ocean navy to become a Pacific power, as well as institutionalizing its
control of the Western Hemisphere. It crushed revolutionary ferment in the
Philippines during the Spanish, Cuban, American War and began a program of
military intervention in Central American and the Caribbean. The “Asian pivot”
of the 21st century and continued opposition to the Cuban and Bolivarian
revolutions reflect the 100-year extension of the convergence of economics and
militarism in U.S. foreign policy.
Third, as imperial nations flex their muscles on the world stage they need to
rationalize exploitation and military brutality to convince others and their
own citizens of the humanistic goals they wish to achieve. In short, ideology
matters. In the U.S. case, “manifest destiny” and the “city on the hill,” that
is the dogma that the United States has a special mission as a beacon of hope
for the world, have been embedded in the dominant national narrative of the
country for 150 years.
However, what has often been missing from the left-wing theoretical calculus is
an understanding of resistance. Latin American and African dependency theorists
and “bottom-up” historians have argued for a long time that resistance must be
part of the understanding of any theory of imperialism. In fact, the imperial
system is directly related to the level of resistance the imperial power
encounters.
Resistance generates more attempts at economic hegemony, political subversion,
the application of military power, and patterns of “humanitarian
interventionism” and diplomatic techniques, called “soft power,” to defuse it.
But as recent events sugge, resistance of various kinds is spreading throughout
global society.
The impetus for adding resistance to any understanding of imperialism has many
sources including Howard Zinn’s seminal history of popular movements in the
United States, The People’s History of the United States. Zinn argued
convincingly that in each period of American history ruling classes were
challenged, shaped, weakened, and in a few cases defeated because of movements
of indigenous people, workers, women, people of color, middle class
progressives, and others who stood up to challenge the status quo.
More recently, Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations, compiled a
narrative of post-World War II international relations that privileged the
resistance from the Global South. World history was as much shaped by
anti-colonial movements, the construction of the non-aligned movement,
conferences and programs supporting liberation struggles and women’s rights, as
it was by big power contestation. The Prashad book was subtitled A
People’s History of the Third World.
The 21st century has witnessed a variety of forms of resistance to global
hegemony and the perpetuation of neoliberal globalization all across the face
of the globe. First, various forms of systemic resistance have emerged. These
often emphasize the reconfiguration of nation-states and their relationships
that have long been ignored.
The two largest economies in the world, China and India, have experienced
economic growth rates well in excess of the industrial capitalist countries.
China has developed a global export and investment program in Latin America and
Africa that exceeds that of the United States and Europe.
In addition, the rising economic powers have begun a process of global
institution building to rework the international economic institutions and
rules of decision-making on the world stage. On March 26-27, 2013, the BRICS
met in Durban, South Africa. While critical of BRICS shortcomings Patrick Bond,
Senior Professor of Development Studies and Director of the University of
KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, in a collection of readings on the
subject, introduces BRICS with an emphasis on its potential:
In Durban, five heads of state meet to assure the rest of Africa that their countries’ corporations are better investors in infrastructure, mining, oil and agriculture than the traditional European and U.S. multinationals. The Brazil-Russia-India-China-SA summit also includes 16 heads of state from Africa, including notorious tyrants. A new "BRICS bank" will probably be launched. There will be more talk about monetary alternatives to the U.S. dollar.
On the Latin American continent, most residents of the
region are mourning the death of Hugo Chavez, the leader of the Bolivarian
Revolution. Under Chavez’s leadership, inspiration, and support from oil
revenues, Venezuela launched the latest round of state resistance to the
colossus of the north, the United States.
Along with the world’s third largest trade bloc MERCOSUR (Argentina, Brazil,
Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela and associate memberships including Bolivia,
Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru), Latin Americans have participated in the
construction of financial institutions and economic assistance programs to
challenge the traditional hegemony of the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.
The Bolivarian Revolution also has stimulated political change based on various
degrees of grassroots democratization, the construction of workers’
cooperatives, and a shift from neoliberal economic policy to economic populism.
With a growing web of participants, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and, of course, Cuba, the tragic loss of
Chavez will not mean the end to the Bolivarian Revolution. It might lead to its
deepening.
But the story of 21st century resistance is not just about countries,
alliances, new economic institutions that mimic the old. Grassroots social movements
have been spreading like wildfire all across the face of the globe. The story
can begin in many places and at various times: the new social movements of the
1980s; the Zapatistas of the 1990s; the anti-globalization/anti-IMF campaigns
going back to the 1960s and continuing off and on until the new century; or
repeated mass mobilizations against a Free Trade Agreement for the Americas.
Since 2011, the world has been inspired by Arab Spring, workers’ mobilizations
all across the industrial heartland of the United States, student strikes in
Quebec, the state of California, and in Santiago, Chile. Beginning in 2001 mass
organizations from around the world began to assemble in Porto Alegre, Brazil,
billing their meeting of some 10,000 strong, the World Social Forum.
They did not wish to create a common political program. They wished to launch a
global social movement where ideas could be shared, issues and demands from the
base of societies could be raised, and in general the neoliberal global agenda
reinforced at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland could be challenged.
The World Social Forum has been meeting annually ever since in Latin America,
Asia, Africa, and the United States. Most recently, the last week in March,
2013, 50,000 people from 5,000 organizations in 127 countries from five
continents met in Tunis, the site of the protest that sparked Arab Spring two
years ago. Planners wanted to bring mass movements from the Middle East and
North Africa into the collective narrative of this global mobilization.
Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, reported that a Tunisian student, when
asked whether the Social Forum movement should continue, answered in the
affirmative. The student paid homage to the Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed
Bouazizi, who committed suicide and launched Arab Spring. He declared that “for
all those who have died struggling for justice, we must continue to learn from
each other how to build a world that does not respond to the greed of
dictators, bankers or corporations, but to the needs of simple people like
Mohamed Bouazizi.”
