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Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 06:56:03 +1300
From: janice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Towards A New Century--Le Monde Diplomatique
LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - January 1999
LEADER
Towards a new century
by IGNACIO RAMONET
As we approach the start of a new century, how best to sum up the
state of the world in which we live? The United States now dominates
the world as no country has done before. It has overwhelming
supremacy in the five key areas of power: political, economic,
technological, cultural and military. In the Middle East it has just given
the world a threefold display of its hegemony: bombing Iraq and its
people without serious cause, ignoring (if not dismissing) international
legality embodied in the United Nations, and enrolling the once proud
forces of Great Britain as simple auxiliaries.
But this display of power is deceptive. The US does not have the
option of occupying Iraq militarily, even if technically it can do so.
Military supremacy does not automatically translate into territorial
conquests which have become politically non-viable, too costly, and
disastrous in media terms. The media now have a prime strategic role.
As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has put it, CNN has become
the sixth member of the UN Security Council.
What's more, in this neo-liberal age being a superpower doesn't
guarantee a decent level of human development. The US has 32
million people with a life expectancy of less than 60 years; 40 million
without medical cover; 45 million living below the poverty line; and 52
million who cannot read or write. And the European Union, with its
euro and all its wealth, has 50 million people living in poverty and 18
million unemployed.
All over the world, poverty is the rule and a decent income the
exception. Inequality has become one of the abiding characteristics of
our time. And it is getting worse, as the gap between rich and poor
increases. The 225 largest fortunes in the world total more than
$1,000 billion - equivalent to the annual income of 47% of the poorest
of the world population (2.5 billion people). We now have individuals
who are richer than whole countries: the wealth of the world's 15
richest people exceeds the total GDP of sub-Saharan Africa.
Since the start of the 20th century the number of countries has grown
from about 40 to nearly 200 (see Pascal Boniface's article in this
issue). Yet our world continues to be dominated by the same seven or
eight countries that were running it at the end of the 19th century. Out
of the dozens of states that emerged from the dismantling of the old
colonial empires, just three (South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan)
have reached levels of development comparable with those of the
information-economy countries. The others are stuck in a state of
chronic underdevelopment.
It will be extremely hard for them to break out of this since the raw
materials on which most of their economies depend are falling
dramatically in price. And some natural materials (metals and fibres)
are now either falling out of use or being replaced with substitutes. In
Japan for instance, consumption of raw materials by unit of
production has fallen by 40% since 1973.
The new wealth of nations is built on brains, know-how, research and
the capacity for innovation, and no longer on the production of raw
materials. You could even say that in the post-industrial age the three
traditional measures of power - the size of a country, its population
and its wealth in terms of raw materials - are no longer advantages but
handicaps. Countries that are large, heavily populated and rich in raw
materials - like India, China, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan,
Mexico and Russia - are paradoxically among the world's poorest. The
United States is the exception that no longer confirms the rule.
There is an increasing air of generalised chaos afflicting more and
more countries with economic stagnation or endemic violence (since
1989, the end of the cold war, there have been around 60 separate
armed conflicts, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths and more
than 17 million refugees). It has got to the point where (in the
Comoros and Puerto Rico, for instance) we are seeing people turning
their backs on the struggle for independence and calling for a return of
the old colonial power or absorption into the metropolitan country...
The third world has ceased to exist as a political entity.
All this gives a sense of the crisis of politics and the nation-state at a
time when the second industrial revolution, the globalisation of the
economy and major technological change are transforming the world
as we know it. There is also an upsurge in the number of giant firms
whose economic weight is sometimes greater than that of whole
countries. The turnover of General Motors, for instance, exceeds the
GDP of Denmark; Exxon-Mobil's turnover is greater than that of
Austria. Each of the world's 100 largest companies sells more than
any of the 120 poorest countries in the world export. And the 23 most
powerful sell more than Southern giants such as India, Brazil,
Indonesia or Mexico. These firms now control 70% of the world's
trade.
The people running these companies and the big finance and media
groups have power in the real sense of the word. Through their
powerful lobbying activities they exercise a huge weight on political
decision-making. They can use democracy for their own ends.
Just when they are most needed, the traditional countervailing powers
(political parties, trade unions, a free press) are not much in evidence.
Yet people long to hear of bold great initiatives that will, in the coming
century, re-establish the precedence of the social contract over the
private one.
Translated by Ed Emery
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1999 Le Monde diplomatique
Globalisation is not about trade. It is about power and control.
It is about the reshaping of the world into one without borders
ruled by a dictatorship of the worlds most powerful central
banks, commercial banks and multinational companies. It
is an attempt to undo a century of social progress and to
alter the distribution of income from inequitable to inhuman.
Paul Hellyer
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