By Walden Bello and - -
MANILA, Dec 31 2005 (IPS)

For the thousands of representatives of global civil society gathering in Mumbai, India, for the World Social Forum from January 16-22, Washington is the world\’s number one problem, writes Walden Bello, professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines, executive director of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South, and a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award for 2003. But the US they confront today is not quite the same cocksure superpower of yesterday. The Iraq quagmire and the collapse of the WTO Cancun ministerial were just two manifestations of that fatal disease of empires: over-extension. Then there is the failure to consolidate a dependent regime in Afghanistan and to stabilise the Palestine situation, the boost given to Islamic extremism by US-led invasions; the unravelling of the Atlantic Alliance that won the Cold War; plus the emergence of anti-US, anti-free-market regimes in Brazil and Venezuela. Is the US in a no-win situation? Bello asks in this article. The crowds in Mumbai will undoubtedly continue to regard the US as a mortal threat to global peace and justice, but they will also be cheered by the increasing difficulties of an arrogant empire that failed to see that decline is inevitable and that the challenge is not to resist the process but to manage it deftly.

For the thousands of representatives of global civil society who will be gathering in Mumbai, India, for the World Social Forum from January 16-21, Washington is the world’s number one problem.

Yet what a difference a year makes! The US they confront today is not quite the same cocksure superpower of yesterday. The Iraq quagmire and the collapse of the Cancun ministerial of the WTO in mid-September were just two manifestations of that fatal disease of empires: over-extension.

Other critical indicators include the inability to consolidate a dependent regime in Afghanistan, the utter failure to stabilise the Palestine situation, the paradoxical boost given to Islamic extremism by US-led invasions; the unravelling of the Atlantic Alliance that won the Cold War; the emergence in Washington’s own ”backyard” of the anti-US, anti-free-market regimes of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela; and the rise of a massive transborder civil society movement.

Against such challenges to its hegemony, the US’s absolute superiority in nuclear and conventional warfare capability counts for little.

Is the US in a no-win situation?

For much of the post-World War II period, the dominant bipartisan faction of the US political elite exhibited the Roman recognition that a ”moral vision” was central to imperial management. National Security Memorandum 68, the defining document of the Cold War, was not simply a national security strategy; it was an ideological vision that spoke of a ”long twilight struggle” against communism for the loyalties of the peoples and countries throughout the world.

In contrast, the current administration’s National Security Strategy document speaks of the country’s mission mainly as one of defending the American way of life from its enemies abroad and arrogates the right to strike against even potential threats in pursuit of American interests.

Even when the reigning neoconservatives speak about extending democracy to the Middle East, they cannot dispel the impression that they see democracy in the light of realpolitik — as a mechanism to destroy Arab unity in order to assure the existence of Israel and guarantee US access to oil.

Can a more sophisticated administration undo the damage to US imperial management wrought by the Bush presidency by bringing back mutilateralism and a ”moral” dimension to empire?

It will be difficult for a reinvigorated US-led coalition politics to douse the wildfire of an Islamic fundamentalist reaction that will eventually bring down or seriously erode the staying power of US allies like the Saudi and Gulf elites.

Going back to the Cold War era promise of extending democracy is unlikely to work with disenchanted people who have seen US-supported elite-controlled democracies in places like Pakistan and the Philippines become obstacles to economic and social equality.

To revert to the Clinton era of promising prosperity via accelerated globalisation won’t work either since the overwhelming evidence is that, as even the World Bank admits, poverty and inequality increased globally in the 1990s, which was a decade of accelerated globalisation.

And the future?

Militarily, there is no doubt that Washington will retain absolute superiority in military might, but the ability to transform military power into effective intervention will decline as the ”Iraq syndrome” takes hold. The break-up of the Atlantic Alliance is irreversible. Europe will most likely move towards creating a European Defense Force independent of NATO, though it will not challenge US strategic superiority.

Politically, however, Europe will increasingly slip out of the US orbit and present an alternative pole, pursuing regional self-interest via a liberal, diplomacy-oriented, and multilateral approach.

In terms of economic strength, the US will remain the dominant power over the next two decades, but it is likely to slip as the source of its hegemony –the global framework for transnational capitalist cooperation to which the WTO is central– is eroded. Bilateral or regional trade arrangements are likely to proliferate, but the most dynamic ones may not be those integrating weak economies with one superpower like the US or EU but regional economic arrangements among developing countries.

Such formations as Mercosur in Latin America, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Group of 21 will increasingly reflect the key lessons that developing countries have learned over the last 25 years of destabilising globalisation: that trade policy must be subordinated to development, that technology must be liberated from stringent intellectual property rules, that capital controls are necessary, that development demands not less but more state intervention. And, above all, that the weak must hang together or they will hang separately.

Among the developing countries, China is, of course, in a category by itself. Indeed, China is one of the winners of the Bush era. It has managed to be on the side of everybody on key economic and political conflicts and thus on the side of nobody but China.

The other big winner of the last few years is global civil society, a force whose most dynamic expression is the World Social Forum that is meeting in Mumbai. This rapidly expanding trans-border network that spans the North and the South is the main force for peace, democracy, fair trade, justice, human rights, and sustainable development. Governments as disparate as Beijing and Washington deride its claims. Corporations hate it. And multilateral agencies find themselves compelled to adopt its language of ”rights”. But its increasing ability to delegitimise power and cut into corporate bottom lines is a fact of international relations that they will have to live with.

The crowds in Mumbai will undoubtedly continue to regard the US as a mortal threat to global peace and justice, but they will also be cheered by the increasing difficulties of an arrogant empire that failed to see that decline is inevitable and that the challenge is not to resist the process but to manage it deftly. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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