Economic Globalisation as Religious War

Michael McKinley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134319657
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Using a critical theory approach to analyze the globalization of the world economy, this provocative and topical new book presents economic globalization not as a recent development, but rather as a familiar process that has occurred throughout history. Michael McKinley argues that it is ultimately a self-serving, arbitrary and destructive imperial project that should be viewed as a religious war.

Part I

1
Neo-liberal war

Casus belli, promises of progress, strategies of dominance, fraud

It is difficult to be original in describing the character, or the context, of the present. That it is a war that has been underway longer than the two World Wars of the twentieth century is not in doubt. That its casus belli was, and remains neo-liberalism is not in doubt: at every turn, on every available occasion, the belief is repeated among the world’s major economic actors that this doctrine is both an imperative and the only acceptable principle on which to organise human – which is to say, social, political, and economic life. Indeed, so dogmatically is it affirmed that the steps to conducting an offensive in its name are virtually little more than reflexes, loosely automatic responses to the stimuli of power and opportunity. In time, and because of the scope of breadth and depth of the offensive, the physics of the vortex came into play. States, organisations, communities and people were irresistibly drawn into its constant round of frenetic activity, rapid change and destruction. Yet, at no stage did its strategists require it to undergo the one test of political action, namely, whether it made things better, or stopped them getting worse for the great majority of people who would have to bear its consequences.

This refusal constitutes a criminal abdication of command responsibility, not least towards the global South (though increasingly, if not with the same immediate consequences, in the global North as well). And the reason is clear: in the first instance, it must be understood that global inequality, that is, within and between states, is not just an issue in economic globalisation, it is the central, defining issue against which all grand strategies for humankind must perforce be judged. Absent efficacy on this issue and the strategy at hand is no more than a charade; should it make matters worse, it is an immoral charade. Thus, second, it is sufficient to recall that, what the North promised at the outset, and continues to promise to this day, at least in a declaratory sense, is that the South will enjoy a northerly transition from its current parlous state to a state of affluence and political reasonableness (always given sufficient time, pain, and if need be, menaces). If this were not the case, then it would be insulting to the South for academics, professionals, business people, international and non-governmental organisations, and commentators to arrange, convene and write on the theme of this division since it would make of its members little more than voyeurs, or worse, dilettantes.

It is, therefore, outrageous that any strategic assessment of the project must report that, having been constantly being put to the test, and found to be failing, the promise is subordinated to matters of more immediate concern to the North (and its adjunct, the West) which cause it to veer off into other directions, or even the familiar political void which attends the global political questions posed by the very mention of the term ‘South.’ The permanency of the South is thus ensured, thereby raising the question whether its ongoing existence is acceptable and even desired. But neither the dogma which is neo-liberalism, nor the offensive in its name ever abates; indeed, they comprise dreadful constants of chronic grand strategic fraud when it is realised that they pre-dated the Cold War, outlived it, and are operational now in a time in which two facts confront the North’s declarations and promises: the relevant structures and trajectories of politics, demographics, geoeconomics, geostrategy, geopolitics, climate change and resource supply which are heavily weighted against the South’s northerly transition, and the unwelcome but predictable rise of strong southern polarities within the North itself. Writing in 1944, but not about the war then underway for half a decade, but about the conflict which had sundered his own country’s self-congratulatory notions about itself some sixty years earlier, the American poet and biographer, Carl Sandburg, captured the times with typical sensitivity:

It had happened before in other countries among other peoples bewildered by economic necessity, by the mob oratory of politicians and editors, by the ignorance of the educated classes, by the greed of the propertied classes, by elemental instincts touching race and religion, by the capacity of so many men, women, and children for hating what they do not understand while believing they do understand completely and perfectly what no one understands except tentatively and hazardously.¹

The present, then, as seen with the help of Sandburg, is as much, if not more than, any other time in history, a time of deceits, of opposites and oppositions, of reality masquerading as science, of unchallengeable wisdom, and of contradictions and paradoxes. But it is like no other war in many other ways as well. The Theatre of Operations, and thus, the Campaign, and thus, even the Front, is everywhere, recalling the boastful motto of the Royal Artillery – ubique – making it more truly a World War than either of its two named predecessors. The principal casualties are non-combatants, but that, too, is to commit an anachronism because no distinctions are apparent, certainly none are made, and in any case, none are possible, because everyone is in the line of fire. Moved by the possibility of such a state of affairs in the middle of the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes wrote his defence of absolute monarchy, The Leviathan, never conceiving of the possibility that, in certain forms, the governance he advocated might realise what he feared most – ‘a known disposition’ to fighting a ‘war of every man against every man.’

The argument, in greater detail, takes the following form. It begins with a brief survey of the major ‘vision,’ ‘guidance’ and ‘national strategy’ documents, and broad-ranging, unclassified intelligence assessments starting in 1988, and coming through to 2006, which outline continuities, fractures and preoccupations in the US view of the global political world, now, and into the (apparently) foreseeable future of 2025. In effect, what this survey does is abstract from these documents a sense of the significance of the North–South divide in security terms; simultaneously, it reveals the nature of threats that exist in, and to global politics from the perspective of Washington, DC.

As the sole surviving superpower from the Cold War; indeed, the first ever military and economic hyper-power in many respects, an assessment of the quality and character of the view from the US is mandatory. In any case, the US has been the engine of change in economic globalisation to date and there is no credible alternative power that could suffice in this role for the time being. And this is not to ignore the profound problems which beset American power and severely qualify it, now and into the future. It makes little sense to appeal to ‘the global North,’ or ‘the West’ as actors which are internally constituted on an equal basis because, quite simply, they are not: for the most part, when they act effectively, they are led, and subordinate to the United States. Even less does it make sense to invoke the reality of an ‘international community’ which embodies the will to act because, when imperatives to do so have arisen, it has foundered on such challenges, as witness Bosnia, East Timor, Rwanda, and lately, Sudan. Though still in currency, its status is that of illusion, or an elaborate entity akin to The Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland,² content with an occasional, pious invocation and ceremonial honours. Similarly, the European Union, is to be viewed critically: possessed of an ageing population and stagnant levels of economic growth, it is additionally preoccupied with the process of expansion and tendencies which seriously reduce its cohesion, notwithstanding its ambitions to play a major role internationally. Post-Cold War political differences, exacerbated by US unilateralism on such issues as The Kyoto Protocol and the 2003 war against Iraq, have also undermined the solidarity once found in the Trans-Atlantic Alliance. As for the others thought to have, or be gaining influence, Japan remains with an uncertain economic future; China and India, both rising powers, have internal problems which require ongoing attention and resources, and Russia is admitted to the G8 summits as a pretender rather than on economic performance of the type needed. For the history of economic globalisation to the present, and for the foreseeable future, what Jeff Faux calls the ‘Party of Davos’ relies on US financial and military aid as the ultimate guarantors of the neo-liberal globalisation project.³ Essentially, the recent and current global economic regime is, in John Gray’s words, an artefact of American power and, as in its own hyperbole of self, found throughout the vision documents, the US would appear to be indispensable, as detailed by Barry C. Lynn, former executive editor of the magazine, Global Business:

The global economy was created by the American state. Absent a clear-minded effort by the United States to manage this system – in ways amenable to the large majority of the peoples around the world who depend on it – it will slowly fall to pieces.⁴

What becomes apparent with even a brief examination of this literature is that ‘guidance’ and ‘national strategy’ are not necessarily correlated with ‘vision,’ and ‘intelligence.’ Furthermore, if due allowance is made for the common objectives found in all of them, and their paucity of political-economic analysis, there remains a radical disjunction between the documents describing the state of the world – the ‘vision’ documents – and those setting forth US national strategy. If, as logic would determine, the latter should proceed from the former via an explicit acknowledgment of the situation as a whole, the limits it sets to ambition, and action, then it must be concluded that the latter is not only radically incomplete but of uncertain provenance. And if, as is necessary, these visions are augmented with still wider and longer visions (as is done by way of a second investigation), then it is certainly that the doctrinal statements are incapable of expressing anything resembling a realisable grand strategy.

Accounting for this moves the inquiry into its third dimension which is best understood as a syndrome comprising Western and American pessimism, and its hard exoskeleton, strategic denial, in the face of an intractable world in general and a global South beyond both rescue and redemption in particular.⁵ It is a disposition replete with its own support network of academically respectable accommodation, religious consolation (for those so inclined), political disenchantment, and distracting security priorities, though just one of the aforementioned is a necessary and sufficient cause to develop and sustain the prevailing mindset.

Finally, the Great Fraud. By extension, the very question as to whether the US and its western cohorts have a credible grand strategy for both its own future and the real and urgent material improvement of the global South, or is capable of expressing one, and this includes one that others might follow in relation to the latter, is redundant, and especially so if the mantra of solutions routinely proffered for its ills is examined, as they are by way of the third analytical foray. Not wishing to countenance defeat in public statements, nor endure the possibility of guilt for what is denied, the West and the United States enjoin the South to accept responsibility for what others, in the main, have done to it. More, it is to express contrition for its condition by positive acts indicating radical transformation. It is, therefore, to overcome its pathologies by exploiting the opportunities which present themselves in the guise of debt forgiveness, and to accept the salvific grace of neo-liberalism as sacramentally administered by the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and various arrangements such as the regional free trade agreements. Universal education, as defined, and under conditions determined by these neo-liberal arrangements is to proceed alongside a determination to apply new technologies, develop good governance, and the embrace of market reforms.

In all, this is a project that requires the South to be inhabited and governed by people totally indifferent to public affairs which perforce concern them (those that, in ancient Greece, were known as the idiotes, or in current English, idiots), or charlatans. The reasons are straightforward: in the first instance all of the proposals which have the imprimatur of the US are, inferentially, direct and truthful in the expression of their primary objective, the maintenance of US hegemony in the face of various challenges, and the ways this will be effected, and these include all of the above measures; second, any acquaintance with the meaning attached to these means towards the ends of alleviation and improvement, and their consequences as so far experienced, would determine that not only are their protagonists lacking in good faith, in truth they comprise a blatantly dishonest subterfuge for ongoing subjection not least because, in the United States itself, neo-liberalism is steadily ensuring a southerly aspect throughout the country.

By any lights, this is a grand strategic farce. At the declaratory level, it is contemptible in its range of denials and rejections. It recalls Wilfrid Laurier’s reproachful speech in Canada’s House of Commons following the Metis Rebellion:

What is hateful… [are] the men, who, having the enjoyment of power, do not discharge the duties of power; they are the men, who, having the power to redress wrongs, r...

Table of contents

• Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Epilogues
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index