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Beyond empire and terror: critical reflections on the political economy of world order

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 9; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1356346042000257778

1469-9923

Robert W. Cox,

Russia and Soviet political economy

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. xv–xvi. In Strange, The Retreat of the State, p. xv, she referred to 'the new realism of the Stopford–Strange analysis of corporate strategies and state development policies' and cited Peter Drucker as using the term 'to describe fundamental technological and managerial changes of recent years'. The term 'new realism' was in the title of a book, Robert W. Cox (ed.), The New Realism: Perspectives on Multilateralism and World Order (Macmillan for the UN University Press, 1997), to which Susan Strange contributed a chapter entitled 'Territory, state, authority and economy: a new realist ontology of global political economy'. A notable instance is the formation of the transnational academic organisation, PEKEA, Political and Ethical Knowledge on Economic Activities, which was launched at an international conference held at the headquarters of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America in Santiago de Chile, September 2002, with Professor Marc Humbert, Faculté de sciences économiques, Université de Rennes as President of the steering committee. As a forerunner, one could cite René Passet, L'économique et le vivant (Payot, 1979), the work of an economist seeking to reinvent economics as subordinate to both the biosphere and human social relations. T. M. Knox (trans.), Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Oxford University Press, 1967), p.13. The concept of 'soft power' comes from Joseph S. Nye, Jr, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (Basic Books, 1990), p. 32, which he defines as 'intangible power resources such as culture, ideology and institutions' or those aspects of a dominant power that are attractive to people beyond its borders. Nye was arguing against the thesis that American hegemony was in decline as a result of the rising costs and waning usefulness of military power. 'Hard power' includes military and economic coercion capability. The former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lloyd Axworthy, appropriated the concept of 'soft power' in his pursuit of 'human security' through such projects as the land mines treaty as a primary goal of Canadian foreign policy. Two recent books discuss the emergence of this latent force: Martin Shaw, Theory of the Global State: Globality as an Unfinished Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire (Harvard University Press, 2000). Shaw focuses on the political and institutional aspects of the emergence of the 'global state' in a spirit of benign inevitability. Hardt and Negri look more to cultural and knowledge aspects and to a dialectic in which the 'multitude'—a post‐Marxist name for all those subject to power—will ultimately overcome 'transcendence' whether in the form of God, the state or 'Empire'. A liberal imperialist perspective that justifies 'Empire' as the enforcer of moral law and human rights is the theme of Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation‐building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan (Penguin Canada, 2003). Guglielmo Ferrero, The Principles of Power: The Great Political Crises of History, trans. by Theodore R. Jaeckel (Putnam, 1942), pp. 41 and 135. See also The Reconstruction of Europe: Talleyrand and the Congress of Vienna, trans. by Theodore R. Jaeckel (Putnam, 1941). Eric Helleiner, States and the Reemergence of Global Finance: From Bretton Woods to the 1990s (Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 13–14, 183–5; and Randall D. Germain, The International Organization of Credit: States and Global Finance in the World Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 78 and 110–11. Commenting on rumours that the US Secretary of the Treasury might be behind a policy of allowing the dollar to decline on world markets, The Economist of 24 May 2003 wrote: 'The brutal reality is that, with a current account deficit of around $500 billion a year, America needs to attract quantities of foreign money. The risk is that, if foreign investors believe the Bush team is intent on pushing the dollar down, they will become much less keen to hold American assets. That, in turn, could punish stock and bond markets.' The Economist's worries had a precedent in the stock market crash of 1987 that followed upon the Reagan administration 'talking the dollar down' in the hope, to cite Helleiner, 'that this would both devalue the US external debt and prompt foreign governments to begin expansionary policies that would help reduce the US deficit without requiring the United States to arrest its growth', p. 184. Private investors began to pull out of US investments, which led to fears for a uncontrollable collapse of the dollar. The policy was checked by the Louvre agreement of February 1987 in which the USA agreed to defend the dollar in concert with foreign central banks and to reduce its budget deficit, which was seen as the cause of the trade deficit. Japanese investors continued to reduce their US investments. By mid October, when unexpectedly high US trade deficit figures were published, stock markets, beginning in Tokyo, collapsed around the world. The Savings and Loans banking fiasco occurred in the context of banking deregulation, real estate speculation and the rapacious capitalism of the Reagan era. It transformed the original idea of local savings institutions designed to provide loans for home ownership into an opportunity for speculation, money laundering and covert transfers of funds. Not surprisingly, organised crime, arms dealers and the CIA as well as unscrupulous financial operators availed themselves of the opportunity. Two accounts by investigative journalists are Kathleen Day, S&L Hell: The People and Politics behind the $1 Trillion Savings and Loan Scandal (W.W. Norton, 1993); and Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker & Paul Muolo, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans (McGraw‐Hill, 1989). Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Henry Holt, 2000), pp. 221–9; and Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (Norton, 2002), pp. 89–132. Michael Richardson, 'West snaps up Asian businesses', International Herald Tribune, 20–21 June 1998, wrote: 'As East Asia's financial and economic crisis deepens, Western companies are buying Asian businesses at a record rate to increase their strategic presence in the region and outflank rivals, especially from Japan, executives and analysts say … The fight for corporate advantage in Asia is a part of a global competitive fight that is intensifying in many key industries … Concern that Asians will lose control of their economic destiny has already been voiced by officials and other critics of foreign takeovers in a number of East Asian countries, including Malaysia, Thailand and South Korea.' On this theme, see Eric Helleiner, 'Still an extraordinary power, but for how much longer? The United States in world finance,' in: Thomas C. Lawton, James N. Rosenau & Amy C. Verdun, Strange Power: Shaping the Parameters of International Relations and International Political Economy (Ashgate, 2000), pp. 229–48; also David P. Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony: The Future of the Western Alliance (Basic Books, 1987). Susan Strange compared US and Japanese financial power in 'Finance, Information and Power', Review of International Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1990), reproduced in Roger Tooze & Christopher May (eds), Authority and Markets: Susan Strange's Writings on International Political Economy (Palgrave, 2002), pp. 78–85. Philip S. Golub, 'Pékin s'impose dans une Asie convalescente', Le Monde diplomatique, Octobre 2003, pp. 14–15. The arrangement was agreed among ASEAN+3 (Japan, China and South Korea) at Chiang Mai, Thailand, in May 2000 and is known as the Chiang Mai Initiative. A sceptical comment on the progress of the euro is in Howard M. Wachtel, 'L'euro ne fait pas encore le poids', Le Monde diplomatique, Octobre 2003. That perception emerged during the Clinton presidency and Madeleine Albright's tenure as Secretary of State. It appeared in the US veto of the candidacy of Boutros Boutros Ghali for a second term as Secretary‐General of the United Nations, a reappointment supported by all members of the Security Council but the United States; and the subsequent election of Kofi Annan as the candidate favoured by the United States. US dominance of the United Nations was also evident in the inability of the United Nations, reflecting US reluctance, to act to prevent the genocide in Rwanda. In contrast, the refusal by the Security Council to endorse the invasion of Iraq by US and British forces can be seen as a prise de conscience of the danger to the United Nations of succumbing to overt US unilateralism. Le Monde, 15–16 June 2003. Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double‐Edged Sword (W.W. Norton, 1997). On the English School, see Richard Little, 'The English School vs. American Realism: A Meeting of Minds or Divided by a Common Language?', Review of International Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2003), pp. 443–60. Michael Adams, Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values (Penguin Canada, 2003), p. x. Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en amérique, 2 vols (Gallimard, 1951). The American sociologist Robert D. Putnam has suggested that civil society in the USA has lost much of the spirit of association once noted by de Tocqueville as its salient characteristic. He sees this as being replaced by non‐participation in group activities and a privatising or individualising of leisure time. He calls this a decline of 'social capital' which refers to networks, norms and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. See Robert D. Putnam, 'Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1995), pp. 65–78. Adams, Fire and Ice, p. 39. The method employed in this survey differs from the opinion survey that asks respondents about their political choices. Its questions focus on basic orientations towards life, e.g. deference to authority and status, ostentatious consumption, religiosity, altruism, acceptance of violence, tolerance of diversity, etc. The results reveal clusters of people with similar orientations which become predictors of behaviour. Lipset, American Exceptionalism, p. 62. The Irgun is remembered for the bombing of the King David Hotel, the site of the British military command in Palestine. The Stern Gang is best remembered for two notorious assassinations, that of Lord Moyne, the British Resident in the Middle East, in 1944, and of Count Bernadotte, the UN appointed mediator to the Palestine conflict, in 1948, as well as for its participation, along with the Irgun earlier that year, in the massacre at Deir Yassin, an event that has acquired symbolic meaning for Palestinians as the demonstration of Zionist intentions to drive them out of the land claimed by the newly founded state of Israel. The FLQ aimed to liberate Quebec not only from the rest of Canada but also from capitalism. It was influenced by national liberation movements in the Third World and was committed to use propaganda and violence to pursue its goals. In 1970 its members kidnapped Quebec Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte and British trade commissioner James Cross. Pierre Laporte was killed by his captors, but James Cross was released in a deal that allowed some of the kidnappers to leave Canada. On this, see, among a vast literature, Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents. Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers to US President Bill Clinton and subsequently Chief Economist and Senior Vice‐president of the World Bank. The 'battle in Seattle' refers to the anti‐globalisation, anti‐multinational corporation demonstrations from a variety of civil society groups that paralysed the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, 30 November–3 December 1999. Germain, in International Organization of Credit, p. 25 and footnote, writes: 'There are now three PFCs [principal financial centres] of global importance where New York once stood alone throughout most of the post‐war period. International financial intermediation is no longer dominated by one particular type of monetary agent, but parcelled out between several types of agents specializing in banking facilities, long‐term securities, equities, and innovative financial services. Public authorities no longer command unassailable authority over private monetary agents through their extensive regulatory grip over international capital movements; the power of private monetary agents increasingly shapes the context of state action within the international organization of credit. And finally, the hierarchical concentration of state power in the hands of the American government has been broken in terms of inter‐state relations. Here, as elsewhere in international politics, the eclipse of American dominance makes itself felt.' Germain calls this process 'decentralized globalization' which he defines as 'the development of multiple concentrations of public and private authority connected by a highly integrated set of mutually sustaining, cross‐cutting financial practices'. Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony, p. 220. Additional informationNotes on contributorsRobert W. Cox This is the text of a lecture given by Robert W. Cox at the University of Sheffield on 6 November 2003 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the foundation of the University's Political Economy Research Centre (PERC). This is the text of a lecture given by Robert W. Cox at the University of Sheffield on 6 November 2003 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the foundation of the University's Political Economy Research Centre (PERC).