Saturday, February 23, 2002

Why Are Globalizers So Provincial? [January 31, 2002] " ... today's volume of international trade and investment is huge by historical standards. ... Yet globalization remains provincial ... A smattering of rich countries exercises leadership in international organizations and world markets ... These global institutions are, at their highest levels, surprisingly parochial." "Three groups of developing countries coexist today. The poorest have too few skills to create professionally managed firms and are in dire need of poverty alleviation — one of the forum's core concerns. The richest group ... started the postwar period with manufacturing experience. This history helped them build domestically owned enterprises ... The great majority of developing countries occupy a middle ground: they now have manufacturing experience, and they want their companies to emulate those of the successful developing nations. What enabled [?] ... business and government worked closely together to strengthen domestic industry. Foreign enterprises were discouraged ... State-owned banks lent money at subsidized rates ... subsidies were allocated ... State support [was] ... tied to strict performance standards and closely monitored." " ... the types of promotional measures used successfully by countries like Taiwan and Thailand no longer have the support of international organizations. ... now identified as protectionist and unfair. To join the international trading system, nations must now agree to ... a level playing field and ... must disallow government intervention in the economy ... the advantage of accepting the doctrine and rules of a level playing field is access to world markets. The disadvantage is a loss of the freedom to subsidize company formation " " ... the opportunity to stimulate debate on whether the one-size-fits-all principle is too rigid to allow newcomers to enter the world trading system and prosper in it." ... [more] 2:40:36 PM    comment  []

The Limits of Power [January 31, 2002] [Editorial] The application of power and intimidation has returned to the forefront of American foreign policy. ... Not since America's humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam more than a quarter-century ago has our foreign policy relied so heavily on non-nuclear military force, or the threat of it, to defend American interests around the world." " ... an assertive new military doctrine that includes the threat of armed intervention against nations that are developing weapons that may put the United States in peril. ... Bush Doctrine implies a pre-emptive use of conventional force  ... This is a radical departure ... Traditionally, the United States has employed its military forces in retaliation for an attack rather than striking first itself." " ... American power commands new respect overseas these days." " ... The problem comes if ... Mr. Bush determines he has to use force to destroy the weapons programs that diplomacy fails to control or overthrow the governments that build them. ... there is no way to assure that the backlash abroad would not be worse than the original threats, including the loss of allied support, a deepening of antagonism toward the United States and anarchy in the target countries themselves." ... [more] 2:26:17 PM    comment  []

What Is America's Place in the World Now? " ... pretty much every cherished notion about America's role in the world must be revised  ... 'The idea that national security is national, or homeland security, is a revolution in strategic thinking.' ... 'A new imperial moment has arrived ... The chaos out there in the world is too threatening to ignore, and the existing tools for dealing with chaos have been tried and found wanting.'" "The logic for a new kind of imperialism ... the decolonalization of the 1940's and 1950's left a power vacuum in much of the world. The principal mechanisms the world has devised to deal with them — foreign aid, nongovernmental institutions, the World Bank, the United Nations — have not succeeded in dealing with the most troublesome and difficult cases. 'The problem isn't going away ... World population is going to go from six to eight billion. All that growth is going to happen in poor countries. You are going to get more state failures. They do threaten our interests: drugs in Columbia and Afghanistan, the diamond trade in Sierra Leone, with the criminal elements that come from clandestine trade. After Sept. 11, these are not things we can simply ignore.'" " ... neo-imperialists ... see a world in which readiness to send troops to distant parts of the world to maintain or re-establish order becomes increasingly common. ... 'Whatever else you can say about empire, it had the advantage of maintaining order and suppressing anarchy'" " ... other thinkers argue that extending American power is precisely the problem. ... 'an ironic possibility: that the very preponderance of American power may now make us not more secure but less secure ... failed states are not just a humanitarian problem, they are a national security problem ... States that have virtually collapsed ... are breeding grounds of instability, mass migration and murder as well as terrorism.'" "Power is the currency of the international system ... and the United States should use it when it sees fit. To [others] that definition of power is too narrow. American influence in the world ... rests as much on culture — democracy, human rights, feminism, movies, consumerism — as on military hardware. ... what the terrorists 'really object to is American ideas, American culture.' Ultimately, the differences between the multilateralists the unilateralists, the neo-imperialists, the minimalists and all the others "ists" may not be as sharp as many make out. ... democracy in the third world has emerged as a major diplomatic issue. 'It's increasingly clear that the failure of the Arab states to improve the lives of their citizens has created a great fund of discontent and the solution is ultimately democratization' ... " ... [more] 2:07:39 PM    comment  []

America and Anti-Americans By SALMAN RUSHDIE " ... America finds itself facing a broader ideological adversary that may turn out to be as hard to defeat as militant Islam: anti-Americanism, which is presently becoming more evident everywhere. ... the effectiveness of the American campaign may have made some parts of the world hate America more than they did before." " ... anti-American radicalism feeds off widespread anger over the plight of the Palestinians ... anti-Americanism ... has become too useful a smokescreen for Muslim nations' many defects — their corruption, their incompetence, their oppression of their citizens, their economic, scientific and cultural stagnation. America-hating ... contains a strong streak of hypocrisy, hating most what it desires most ... " " ... Britain and Europe ... the depth of anti-American feeling among large segments of the population. Western anti-Americanism is an altogether more petulant phenomenon than its Islamic counterpart and far more personalized. ... American patriotism, obesity, emotionality, self-centeredness: these are the crucial issues." ... [more] 1:45:04 PM    comment  []

Europe Seethes as the U.S. Flies Solo in World Affairs " ... 'The Europeans think that the United States is so powerful it can't be constrained.' ... Behind the heated accusations of unilateralism, arrogance, bad manners and oversimplification lie cultural and ideological differences ... Mr. Bush ... wants to change the world ... Europe ... wants to continue to manage it." " ... the American proposal to ... move to a new doctrine of pre-emption ... justified by ... potential danger alone ..." " ... 'the U.S. and Europe were slowly drifting apart, but now it looks like they're on a collision course' ... the German president ... warned Americans that international success depended on alliances. ... European officials now sense that they must shout in order to be heard in a warlike, messianic Washington ... America's military weight dwarfs that of the rest of the world, and it is growing heavier ... " " ... the change in the American psyche after Sept. 11 ... 'I don't think we [Europeans] fully comprehend the impact of a grand innocence and a sense of magnificent self-confidence and invulnerability being shattered in that appalling way' ... 'Why not acknowledge foreign aid and nation- building as important tools in the fight against terrorism?'" " ... a gentle warning about the hubris of empire. He recalled Kipling's "Recessional: Far-called our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget. Kipling wrote the poem at the height of British imperial power ... " ... [more] 1:29:55 PM    comment  []

In Argentina, I.M.F. Impasse Heightens Fear on Economy " ... Argentine government says it cannot carry out the economic changes that the fund and other creditors are demanding unless it receives fresh money from abroad first, but foreign lenders say they cannot advance the country any new money until after it has shown some results. ... the economy here, battered by a 50 percent devaluation of the peso, a freeze on bank deposits and a partial default on $141 billion in public debt, remains in a state of suspended animation." " ... a long list of other problems. These include recapitalizing a banking system that has absorbed billions of dollars in losses, amending a new bankruptcy law seen as discriminating against foreign companies, reducing the size of the state bureaucracy and curbing runaway spending by the provinces." " ... 'the I.M.F. has been so seriously burned by Argentina in the past that it is determined to hold Argentina to a higher standard.' ... Argentina's problems as largely self-inflicted, born of borrowing too freely to finance consumption rather than investment." ... [more] 1:12:45 PM    comment  []

On the right side of history [U.S.-European relations re Muslim world] "The EU supposedly fears massive ‘destabilisation’ of the Muslim world. ... The population of the Middle East is growing at a rate six times faster than that of Western Europe ... Islam is turning out ever greater legions of poorly educated young men with little or no economic opportunity at home and every incentive to head to Frankfurt or Marseilles or Luton and drift into Islamic terrorism while living off Euro welfare. ... if you look at even the official figures for Muslim immigration to Europe. If Washington isn’t getting much support for its plans to take out Saddam now, France and Germany and co. are going to be a lot less keen in five or ten years." "'American patriotism, obesity, emotionality, self-centeredness: these are the crucial issues.' ... a continuous stream of preposterous criticism of the Americans has had at its core the assumption that such a demotic [of or pertaining to the common people; popular] culture must necessarily be a profoundly stupid one. ... There’s evidently a powerful psychological need among the non-American Western elites to believe that, if America is big, it must also be blundering; if it’s powerful, it must also be clumsy; if it’s technologically superior, it must also be morally inferior." ... [more] 12:33:44 PM    comment  []