A nice little thought piece from Le Monde>
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
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