Anti-racism protesters in Brooklyn, New York, demanding justice for the killing of African American, George Floyd. May 2021. Credit: UN News/Shirin Yaseen

By Walden Bello and Isabel Ortiz
NEW YORK, Dec 15 2021 (IPS)

In recent years, the world has been shaken by protests. From the Arab Spring to the social uprisings in Chile and Latin America, the world has seen a dramatic rise in protests. In a polarized world, the COVID-19 pandemic has only accentuated feelings of outrage and discontent.

New research brings evidence of this by analyzing nearly three thousand protests since the beginning of the 21st century, in over a hundred countries covering more than 93 percent of the world population.

Beginning in 2006, there was a steady rise in overall protests each year up to 2020. As the global financial crisis began to unfold in 2007-08, demonstrations increased, and further intensified after 2010 with the worldwide adoption of austerity cuts.

Frustration grew over the lack of decent jobs, inadequate social protection and public services, unfair taxation and a perceived lack of real democracy and accountability of decision makers to the people.

This led to a new and more political wave of protests in 2016, often becoming “omnibus protests” (protests addressing multiple issues) against the political and economic status quo. Polls worldwide reflect dissatisfaction with democracies and lack of trust in governments.

Increasingly, demonstrations are not only the purview of activists and trade unionists, but have become an outlet for the middle classes, women, youths, pensioners, indigenous and racial groups. These citizens do not consider themselves activists and yet they protest because they feel disenfranchised by official processes and political parties.

Decades of neoliberal policies have generated huge inequalities and eroded the incomes and the welfare of both the lower and middle classes, fueling feelings of injustice, disappointment with malfunctioning democracies, and frustration with failures of economic and social development.

Whist the media often portrays protests as sporadic, disorganized riots, most of the world protests studied were planned, with clearly articulated demands. The main cause of discontent (in 1503 protests) relates to the failure of democracies and political systems, lack of real democracy, accountability and justice; corruption; as well as the perceived power of a deep government or oligarchy, sovereignty and patriotic issues; and protests against wars, the surveillance of citizens, and anti-socialism/communism.

A second cause relates to economic justice, expressing grievance and outrage against unequal austerity cuts and policy reforms (1,484 protests), demanding improved jobs, wages and labor conditions, better public services and housing, agrarian and tax justice; and against corporate influence, deregulation, privatization, inequality and low living standards; as well as against pension reforms, high energy and food prices.

The third main cause of protests is the demand for civil rights (1,360 protests) on indigenous and racial rights; women’s rights; labor rights; LGBT and sexual rights; right to the commons (digital, cultural, atmospheric); immigrants’ rights; freedom of assembly, speech, and press; prisoners’ rights and religious issues.

A last cluster of protests encompases demands for global Justice (897 protests) on issues such as environmental and climate justice; against the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the European Union/European Central Bank; against imperialism (United States, China); against free trade or the G20 – demanding a better and more equitable world order.

Not only has the number of protests increased, but also the number of protestors. Crowd estimates suggest that at least 52 events had one million or more protesters.

The period 2006-2020 has evinced some of the largest protests in world history; the largest recorded was the 2020 strike in India against the government’s plan to liberalize farming and labor, estimated to have involved 250 million protestors.

The second decade of the 21st century has also seen a global rise of the far right, attracting dissatisfied citizens to a radical right “counterrevolution” that typically includes an assault on the tenets of liberal democracy by authoritarian leaders.

Falling into this category were the QAnon protests in 2020 in the United States and globally; opposition to Muslims, migrants, and refugees in Europe; and the protests against the Workers Party in Brazil in 2013 and 2015.

While the rhetoric is anti-elite, far right politics does not seek significant structural power change, rather directing the popular fire and fury against minorities, denying rights to migrants, blacks, gays or Muslims, who are depicted as a threat to the jobs, security and values of the majority.

Other rallying cries include calls for personal freedoms (to carry a gun, not to wear a mask, not to be quarantined), nationalism, and the promotion of traditional values. To counter radical right authoritarianism, societies must fight misinformation and expose the contradictions of far right politics.

Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of protests have made progressive demands for real democracy, civil rights, economic and global justice. Peaceful protests are a fundamental aspect of a vibrant democracy. Historically, protests have been a means to achieve fundamental rights at the national and international level.

While new research shows that global political instability is increasing, there are solutions. Governments need to listen to the grievances coming from protesters and act upon them. The demands of people around the world have much in common and ask for no more than established Human Rights and internationally agreed UN development goals.

Walden Bello is Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and co-chair of the Bangkok-based progressive institute, Focus on the Global South.

Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, and former director of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF.

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A favela in Brazil, where the health system is not ready for coronavirus and social distancing difficult.

By Isabel Ortiz and Walden Bello
NEW YORK and MANILA, Apr 22 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has created an unprecedented human and economic crisis. Governments are taking strong actions, enforcing quarantines to reduce contagion, testing populations, building emergency intensive care units. Governments have also launched large fiscal stimulus plans to protect jobs and the economy, as well as temporary social protection programs such as income/food support, subsidies to utilities and care services.

But in many countries, even stronger actions are needed if we are to protect lives and jobs. States must respond adequately to this public emergency. Citizens must question if the measures implemented by their governments are sufficient and adequate.

The following are important issues for citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) to watch out at the country level:

1. It is time to invest in universal public health, not only emergency support. Given COVID-19, governments are advised to ramp up public health expenditures. Indeed, respirators, tests and masks are necessary, but countries need more than just emergency support. There is a risk that, as governments will become indebted, they continue with austerity cuts and privatizations that have been eroding public health systems in recent years, returning to a situation where millions are excluded from healthcare.



Isabel Ortiz

2. Stimulating the economy and employment. This is much necessary to support job-generating enterprises during the COVID-19 lockdown. However, citizens need to be vigilant that fiscal stimulus do not go to the wrong hands, to large corporations avoiding taxes, to cronies, to the untaxed financial sector. If public funds are given to companies, it should be with strict conditions to stop tax evasion and share buybacks, undergo adequate regulation, cut obnoxious management bonusses, pay living wages and preserve employment.
3. Providing social protection, income and food support to people. These measures are extremely urgent if people are to be quarantined and are unable to telework. In developing countries, most work precariously in the informal economy and isolation is not possible, households will suffer hunger with no income. Given the low living conditions in most developing countries, policymakers should consider the need for universal social protection floors.
4. Governments need more executive powers to implement these measures. States and public policies have been weakened over the last decades by deregulations, privatizations and budget cuts. Better planning, better resources and better public policies for all citizens are needed, but it is important to ensure that far right and authoritarian leaders do not use the need for decisive executive action to grab more power for their own ends (eg. Brazil, Hungary, India, Philippines, US).

Additionally, it is important for citizens and CSOs to push for the following measures at the global level:

5. Support for global public health, at stake is the survival of the planet. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the weak state of global public health systems – generally overburdened, underfunded and understaffed because of earlier austerity policies and privatizations. There is urgent need to improve the global governance of health, including the strengthening the WHO and UN agencies that support the extension of public health systems, as well as CSOs monitoring progress.
6. Put pressure on the international financial institutions such as the IMF and the development banks, so their policies support universal public health systems, jobs and social protection floors at present as well as after the COVID-19 emergency, including resources and fiscal space to finance them.
7. Given high sovereign debt levels, continue lobbying for debt forgiveness or radical debt relief to ensure that countries get the needed financing; or at least a debt moratoria, and later debt restructuring/relief.
8. Watch out that new debt and fiscal deficits created to respond to COVID-19 do not result in a new round of austerity cuts with negative social impacts that will undermine public health systems, jobs and social protection.
9. Ensure capital controls. Capital is flying North to safety, to the US, to Europe. Developing countries are going to be hard hit, not only because of the capital drain but also from the fall of commodity prices and others. Capital controls are easy to implement, with immediate results.



Walden Bello

10. A Global Marshall Plan, or a Global Green New Deal. Global problems require global solutions; after the WW2, the US implemented a Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. This time, no country alone can or should finance a global plan, it can be built as part of a progressive multilateralism. There are many ways to finance it, solidarity taxes to wealth may well be a best way to reduce inequalities and even up world’s development. It can be complemented by other measures such as issuing more Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) at the international organizations.

The coronavirus pandemic has provided stark evidence of the weaknesses and extreme injustices of our world. We must not return to “normality”, a world where half of its population is living below the poverty line of $5.50 a day. We must move away from an inequitable model based on unregulated finance and corporate power, blind to harmful social and environmental impacts. We must back away from a system that disregards the work of health staff, cleaners, garbage collectors, farmers, and instead reward with huge salaries corporate managers, football players, and others who do not perform any essential activity. Now citizens have the opportunity to move forward.

As countries and enterprises recuperate from the crisis, they will have to rethink their economic model, including fewer links with global supply chains, and more links closer to home. It will be an important time for citizens and CSOs to press for “deglobalization”, making the domestic market again the center of gravity of the economy by preserving local production with decent jobs and green investments, and question global supply chains based on taking advantage of cheaper wages, lesser taxes and environmental regulations elsewhere.

Now is the time for citizens to ensure that world leaders forcefully respond to the COVID-19 crisis, in accordance with human rights. This time it cannot be like many earlier crisis experiences, where insufficient support was provided, or ended in the wrong hands, bailing out banks not the population. Citizens and CSOs have a very important role to play to ensure that governments respond to people.

Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, and former director of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF.

Walden Bello is senior analyst at the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and the International Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Last year, the Philippines brought a complaint against China’s aggressive actions in the West Philippine Sea to the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal. It was a master stroke by the Philippine government.

The Chinese “were really unprepared for that and were really embarrassed by it,” one of Vietnam’s top experts on Chinese diplomacy told me during my recent visit to Hanoi to give a series of lectures on foreign policy and economic issues.None of the key players in East Asia today may want war. But neither did any of the Great Powers on the eve of the First World War.

The move put China on the defensive, said another Vietnamese analyst, and was one of the factors that prompted Beijing last year to agree in principle to hold discussions with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on a Code of Conduct for the disputed body of water – known in the Philippines as the West Philippine Sea, in Vietnam as the East Sea, and in China as the South China Sea.

The budding cooperation between Vietnam and the Philippines is the latest development stemming from China’s aggressive territorial claims in the region.

In 2009, China put forward the so-called “Nine-Dash Line” map in which it claimed the whole of the South China Sea, leaving four other countries that border on the strategic body of water with nothing more than their 12-mile territorial seas.

In pursuit of Beijing’s goals, Chinese maritime surveillance ships have driven Filipino fisherfolk from Scarborough Shoal, which lies within the Philippines’ 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). In the most recent incident, the Chinese tried to disperse Filipino fishing boats approaching the shoal with water cannons.

Chinese government ships have also reportedly chased off Filipino boats trying to replenish a garrison on Ayungin Shoal in the Spratly Islands.

The Philippines and Vietnam are natural allies in their common struggle against China’s drive for hegemony in East Asia. Already partners in ASEAN, the two are likely to be driven closer together by Beijing’s increasingly brazen displays of power as it enforces its claim to some 80 percent of the South China Sea.

Both have also drawn closer to the United States, seeking to use Washington to balance China’s growing military presence in the region.

Vietnam has played the U.S. card more adroitly, however, relying on the Philippines to explicitly invite an expanded U.S. military presence on its soil and seas, something the Vietnamese would not themselves allow. But despite a common interest in containing China, both countries should avoid turning the conflict into a superpower conflict between the United States and China.

Figuring out Beijing’s Motives

The Vietnamese offered several schools of thought on China’s territorial claims. The first sees the Nine-Dash Line as delineating the maritime borders of China and not necessarily possession of the islands in the area.

The second interprets it as saying only that the islands and other terrestrial formations in the area belong to China, leaving the status of the surrounding waters ambiguous. A third opinion is that the map asserts that both the islands and surrounding waters belong to China.

A fourth perspective sees the Nine-Dash Line as an aggressive negotiating device.

According to a diplomat and academic expert who has first-hand experience negotiating with the Chinese, Beijing’s style of resolving territorial issues has the following steps: “First,” he said, “the two parties agree on the principles guiding negotiations. Second, both sides draw up their maps reflecting their respective territorial claims, with China pushing its territorial claims as far as possible.

“Third, they compare the maps to identify overlapping or disputed areas. Fourth, the parties negotiate to resolve the disputed areas. Fifth, if there is agreement, draw up a new map. Finally, they go to the United Nations to legalise the new map.”

Despite varying views on China’s intentions, however, the Vietnamese are one on two key points: 1) that the Nine-Dash Line claim is illegal, and 2) that owing to the number of parties and overlapping claims involved in the South China Sea dispute, only multilateral negotiations can set the basis for a lasting comprehensive solution.

Also, whatever may be their different readings of China’s motives for advancing its Nine-Dash Line claims, there seems to be a consensus among Vietnamese officials and experts that China’s strategic aim is to eventually assert its full control of the South China Sea.

In other words, Beijing’s aim is to legally transform the area into a domestic waterway governed by Chinese domestic laws.

Some of Beijing’s acts are explicit, such as the establishment of Sansha City as a domestic governing unit for the whole South China Sea and the recent passage of a fisheries law requiring non-Chinese vessels fishing in the area to obtain a license from the Chinese government.

Others are more ambiguous, such as Beijing’s views on the issue of freedom of navigation in the disputed area. Ambiguity serves their purpose at a time that they do not yet have the capability to match their power to their ambition.

“But there is no doubt that when they reach that point, of having the power to impose their ambition,” said one Vietnamese analyst, “they will subject the area to Chinese domestic law.”

The United States: From Enemy to Ally?

In an irony of history, the Vietnamese have welcomed Washington’s plans to increase the U.S. military footprint in the region to “balance” China. Once an enemy, Hanoi now has good security relations with the United States, whose navy Vietnam has invited to use the former Soviet naval base at Cam Ranh Bay for logistical and ship repair needs.

For the same reason, the Vietnamese approve of the U.S. military’s controversial build-up in the Philippines. I was told that as a long-time ally of the United States, it was the role of the Philippines to ask the United States to increase its military presence in the Western Pacific.

But inviting the United States to have a larger military presence is counterproductive if the aim is to resolve regional territorial disputes with China.

A larger U.S. presence would transform the regional context into a superpower conflict, thus marginalising the territorial question and the possibility for its resolution.

Moreover, inviting Washington to plant an even bigger military footprint in the Philippines would convert the country into a frontline state like Afghanistan and Pakistan, with all the terrible consequences such a status entails – including the subordination of our economic development to the strategic-military priorities of a superpower.

Finally, a balance of power situation is unstable and prone to generate conflict, since although no one may want a war, the dynamics of conflict may run out of everyone’s control and lead to one. China’s aggressive territorial claims, the U.S. “Pivot to Asia,” and Japan’s opportunistic moves add up to a volatile brew.

Many observers note that the Asia-Pacific military-political situation is becoming like that of Europe at the end of the 19^th century, with the emergence of a similarly fluid configuration of balance-of-power politics.

None of the key players in East Asia today may want war. But neither did any of the Great Powers on the eve of the First World War. The problem is that in a situation of fierce rivalry among powers that hate one another, an incident may trigger an uncontrollable chain of events that may result in a regional war, or worse.

Walden Bello is a representative of Akbayan (Citizens’ Action Party) in the Philippine House of Representatives. He was the author of the House resolution renaming the South China Sea the West Philippine Sea. An earlier version of this commentary was published by Foreign Policy In Focus.

By Walden Bello and - -
MANILA, Nov 2 2010 (IPS)

For more than half a century, the gushing wound of Palestine has assaulted the global conscience, continuously reminding people everywhere of the imperial atrocities of Israel and the US in the Middle East and other areas.

However, we are yet to see a just resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In this moment of reflection and gathering, the question is who bears responsibility for such a protracted humanitarian tragedy if not the “Empire”.

In the last 200 years, French and British colonizers subdivided the region into separate spheres of influence. In the early 20th century, the British laid the foundation for the rise of a “Zionist” exclusionary state, with active French military assistance and partnership. The birth of the colonial settler state of Israel in 1948, though under the auspices of the United Nations, was masterminded by the US. Israel’s blatant land grabs during the Six Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973 could not have been carried out without the unconditional support of the US.

Most deserving of condemnation is the impunity with which Israel conducts its vicious military operations in Palestine, thanks to the blind, unwavering, and unconditional support of the US. It is precisely this culture of impunity that results in the reckless pounding of Palestinian homes and the massacre of innocent individuals in Lebanon, West Bank, and Gaza. The imperial hypocrisy involved is despicable. How can the ‘mighty’ and ‘benevolent’ America speak of ‘democratizing’ the Middle East – through its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq -when it turns a blind-eye to crimes against humanity perpetrated by its regional ideological ally, Israel?

In his famous Cairo speech, President Barack Obama promised a new era in US relations with the Islamic world. In fairness to him, Obama is among the few recent American presidents to have focused on the peace process right off the bat, signalling a more constructive vision for the region. However, Obama’s eloquence is yet to translate into a substantive change in the perennial, unexamined support for Israel. The White House has failed to exert effective and sustained diplomatic pressure on the hardliners — Netanyahu, Lieberman and his acolytes- who have captured the Israeli state apparatus.

However, our hopes for a freer and more just world should be anchored in a propitious development: the imperial decline of an enfeebled arrogant America. The global financial crisis has exposed the weak foundations of the real US economy.

In the context of the Middle East, what we are witnessing today is not only the gradual decline of American power, but also the increasing isolation of Israel. The rise of anti-Israeli hardliners in Iran, growing discontent on the so-called “Arab street” with their subservient governments, and the emergence of a more ‘assertive’ Turkey are fundamentally altering the balance of power in the Middle East. America’s decline is creating a huge regional political vacuum, which is being increasingly filled by regional powers -mainly Iran, Turkey, and even Qatar- though some, like India, have used their increasingly important global profile to shore up US influence in the region.

The deepening crisis in occupied Palestine, instability in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the proliferation of piracy and terrorism across the region have encouraged local powers to step in and resolve conflicts on their own more nuanced, farsighted, and hopefully more constructive terms. What these regional powers understand is that while the US can leave whenever the going gets tough -as in the Vietnam War- they will be left to clean up America’s mess. Thus the local powers’ consideration of building a more constructive security and conflict-resolution framework to bring about stability and a just peace in the region.

Ironically, while America preaches democracy and human rights in Iraq and Afghanistan, or in Iran, it says little about gross human rights violations in allied Arab autocracies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It is precisely such hypocrisy that has frustrated growing numbers of young Arabs, and even the educated middle class, and radicalized them against the US. Although the Arab autocrats seem to be reluctant to confront Israel on the issue of Palestine, the ‘Arab Street’ is neither pacified nor indifferent.

While the Arab states remained submissive toward Israel, the emergence of a new player, Hezbollah in Lebanon, gave hope, inflicting two military defeats on Israel, in 1992, which it forced to withdraw from Lebanon, and in the summer of 2006, when it defeated the invading Israeli Defense Force. This did much to revive Arab pride and demonstrate to Israel that the military equation is changing and the only hope for Israel’s survival in the end lies in a just, negotiated solution to the Palestine issue.

At the end of the day, the twilight of the empire, the growing isolation of Israel, the rise of Iran and Turkey, the growing radicalization of the Arab peoples, and the rise of new actors like Hezbollah and Hamas will contribute to moving the region toward a just and viable and long-term solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nonetheless, unless President Obama begins to discipline the hardliners in Israel, a just and peaceful solution is highly improbable. This is Obama’s chance to prove that his eloquence is not just hot air but instead reflects a genuine commitment to bring about a just and lasting peace in the region. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Walden Bello is a member of the House of Representatives of Philippines representing Akbayan Citizens’ Action Party and senior analyst of Focus on the Global South; Richard Heydarian, is a political scientist and expert on Middle Eastern affairs.

Excerpt:

By Ignacio Ramonet, Walden Bello, and - -
MANILA, Nov 16 2009 (IPS)

The recent collapse of the global economy, caused by among other things the lack of regulation of financial markets, has further eroded the credibility of neoliberalism. And yet it continues to exercise a strong influence on the majority of economists and economic managers, for whom, despite its obvious shortcomings, it remains the default discourse.

Why the continuing invocation of neoliberal mantras when the promises of this doctrinaire approach have been contradicted at almost every turn by reality?

Neoliberalism is a perspective that champions the market as the prime regulator of economic activity and seeks to limit the intervention of the state in economic life to a minimum.

In recent times neoliberalism has become identified with economics, given its hegemony as a paradigm within the discipline, that is, its exclusion of other perspectives as legitimate ways of doing economics.

Since economics is regarded in many quarters as a hard science, much like physics -being, for instance, the only social science for which there is a Nobel Prize- neoliberalism has had a tremendous and pervasive influence not only in academic circles but in policy circles as well. While the University of Chicago, home to neoliberal economic guru Milton Friedman, became the font of academic wisdom, in technocratic circles the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were seen as the key institutions that translated this theory into policy with a set of practical prescriptions that were applicable to all economies.

It is surprising to realise how recently neoliberalism became a hegemonic paradigm. As late as the mid-1970s Keynesian economics, which promoted a good dose of state intervention as necessary for stability and steady growth, was the orthodoxy. In what used to be known as the Third World, developmentalism, which prescribed Keynesian economics to economies that were still insufficiently penetrated and transformed by capitalism, was the dominant approach. There was a conservative brand of developmentalism and a progressive one, but both saw the state, rather than the market, as the central mechanism of development.

I believe that are three reasons why neoliberalism, despite its failures, remains dominant.

First, in certain developing countries like the Philippines, corruption continues to be pervasive as an explanation for underdevelopment. Therefore, it is argued, because the state is the source of corruption, increasing the state’s role in the economy, even as a regulator, is viewed with scepticism. Neoliberal discourse ties in very neatly with this corruption theory, with its minimisation of the role of the state in economic life and its assumption that making market relations more dominant in economic transactions at the expense of the state will reduce the opportunities for corruption by both economic and state agents.

For instance, for many Filipinos, and not only in the middle class, it is the corrupt state -and not the relations of inequality spawned by the market and the erosion of national economic interests brought about by the liberalisation of trade and capital markets- that continues to be the main obstacle to the greater good. It is seen as the biggest impediment to development and sustained economic growth. Corruption, of course, must be condemned for moral and political reason, but this supposed correlation between corruption and underdevelopment and poverty has little basis in fact.

Second, despite the deep crisis of neoliberalism, no credible alternative paradigm or discourse has emerged, either locally or internationally. There is nothing like the challenge that Keynesian economics posed to market fundamentalism during the Great Depression in the early 1930s. The challenges posed by star economists like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Dani Rodrik continue to be made within the confines of neoclassical economics, with its equation of social welfare with the reduction of the unit cost of production.

And third, neoliberal economics continues to project a ‘hard science’ image because of the fact that it has been thoroughly mathematised. In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, this extreme formalisation and mathematisation of the discipline has come under criticism from within the economics profession itself, with some contending that methodology rather than substance has become the end of economic practice, and that as a result the discipline has lost its contact with real-world trends and problems. It is worthwhile to note that John Maynard Keynes, a mathematical mind himself, opposed the mathematisation of the discipline precisely because of false sense of solidity that it gave to economics. As his biographer Robert Skidelsky notes, Keynes was “famously sceptical about econometrics”; numbers for him were “simply clues, triggers for the imagination”, rather than the expressions of certainties or probabilities of past and future events.

Getting over neoliberalism, thus, will involve getting beyond the worship of numbers that often shroud the real and beyond the scientism that masks itself as science. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Walden Bello, member of the House of Representatives of the Republic of the Philippines, is president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition and senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

Excerpt:

By Walden Bello
BELEM, Brazil, Jan 26 2009 (IPS)

The World Social Forum meeting this week in this city in Brazil’s Amazon jungle region has an urgent and crucial task: coming up with alternative solutions for the global crisis of capitalism now under way, and pushing for democratic control of the economy and state worldwide, Filipino academic, author and activist Walden Bello tells TerraViva editor Alejandro Kirk in this interview.

IPS: In the context of the current global crisis, what is the World Social Forum’s (WSF) most relevant task? WALDEN BELLO: We are at a very critical historical juncture in which neoliberal capitalism is unravelling and I think that the WSF is a site where very serious discussions should be taking place, in terms of both anticipating what is the likely response of global capitalism as well as pushing forward alternatives to the current crisis. We must really put the task of the WSF in the context of the truly massive global crisis.

IPS: So Belem is to be a crucial stage for the WSF’s future? WB: Yes, definitely. It would be extremely critical for global civil society at this point to respond to this crisis beyond the kind of stabilising solutions you are beginning to see in Europe and the United States.

The capitalist elites are in many ways already going beyond neoliberalism, so I think on the one hand it is really important in Belem to come to a consensus about the crisis of capitalism and we ought to have very serious discussions on how to go beyond (such) solutions. I think we need to contend alternatives from within the system, like an expansion of social democracy for instance.

IPS: How can the WSF come out with such a response and how could it possibly implement it? WB: What you really need to look at seriously, in Belem, is to identify not just a crisis of neoliberalism but a crisis of capitalism. We’re talking about the roots of the crisis being dynamic at the capitalist mode of production. The alternative to that is something we need to seriously come to grips with.

We really need to frame our responses in terms of common universal values, like the question of justice, the question of equity, creating an alternative that really cares for the welfare of people. I think the discussion in Belem will really be very critical in terms of framing the alternatives.

As for implementation, you really need to be quite innovative. We need to be looking at solidly linking our movement across different countries, interacting with respect to the alternatives that are being pushed. It can’t be easy, but this kind of sharing of experiences, creation of networks, sharing of ideas – I think this is something that the forum will play a very critical role at.

IPS: In your writings you seem to avoid classical terms such as socialism, revolution and the like, to describe the kind of society the Forum should be looking forward to. WB: I do not so much shrink from articulating the alternative. We are looking at democratising the ownership of means of production. Whether you call that socialism or people’s democracy, or democratic socialism, what you are really talking about is democratic control of the economy.

We need to be looking at the possible articulation of mixed economies, with different systems of ownership within the economy, which will probably include social enterprises, cooperatives, private enterprise and state enterprises.

That’s one dimension. Another dimension is the question of refocusing on the internal economy, the domestic economy instead of export markets; national economic development. We would be talking about the critical importance of equity, fairly strong mechanisms of income and redistribution. And about an ecologically sustainable alternative. I don’t want to use the term socialism because there are certain connotations of what socialism is all about, that bring up the image of Eastern Europe.

IPS: Is something like this actually happening anywhere in the world right now? WB: I think what we are seeing are efforts along this line in a number of countries, certainly in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. I mean, of course each process has its own particularities, its own dynamics.

I would say that as the crisis deepens – and I think we are at the beginning stages of this crisis – peoples’ struggles are going to go beyond the very traditional mechanisms of stabilisation now under way. So I would imagine that we will see more and more of these efforts, for democratic control and participation as the crisis deepens.

IPS: In this process, developing countries take the lead and the industrialised North stays behind? WB: I wouldn’t say that. I think people are still stunned by the crisis, especially in the United States, Europe and Japan. The crisis is moving very very quickly. I would not discount the emergence of popular movements in these areas of the world.

IPS: There is also the risk of radical right-wing reactions such as those of France and Italy. WB: That is definitely a possibility. What we are going to see is three possibilities: a radicalisation to the left, a radicalisation to the right – this a great danger in the North, in places like Italy and France – or just paralysis. So there is no guarantee that progressive alternatives are going to grow. Progressives, with their knowledge of society and their strategy, must fight for hegemony.

IPS: The German Left party seems to be an exception to the rule. WB: I think that Die Linke in Germany is a very very good example of trying to innovatively grasp the situation, moving from denouncing to pushing beyond social democratic responses to the current situation. Creating a situation to move towards people power, participatory democracy in both the economy and the state.

IPS: You have recently written that the global balance of power is shifting to the South. WB: What I mean is that what we’ve seen over the last decade has been the weakening of the traditional centre economies. We saw that the U.S. went into this consumption, finance-driven form of capitalism, financed by China. Chinese credit has kept the U.S. economy going.

In the last 10 to 15 years, countries like Brazil, China and India have become relatively stronger economic actors with the shift of jobs and capital; they have become the creditors of the North. That’s what I mean in terms of balance of power. I’m not saying they have become the new centre. Hegemonic power continues to be the North , especially the United States.

IPS: Is this positive for the kind of struggle you call for? WB: It depends. Overall, the less hegemonic countries of the North become, and the more power is diffused to the global system, I think it is a positive development. On the other hand you must realise that these countries (of the South), these economies are controlled by, for all purposes, a capitalist elite, and in many ways, for instance in the case of China, it is less accountable than, say, the elite in the U.S.

So on the one hand the positive thing is a diffusion of power, and on the other we are also talking about these new economy actors that are making a big difference, they are under the domination of a developmental elite. I think the challenge in the North is really for progressive movements to push their agenda, which is more participation and more democratic control of the means of production, of economic decision-making. The agenda is the same for movements both in the North and the South.

IPS: In this context, how do you see the Israeli attack on Palestine? WB: I have held all along that there are certain key struggles that the WSF must take a very strong stand on. Definitely, the Palestinian issue is one of them. The WSF should take a very strong stand condemning Israel and supporting the right of Palestinians to their own state, and supporting the right of return of Palestinians to what is now Israel.

I really feel the WSF can no longer say that we just want to provide a roof for discussions to take place. I have always said that that kind of academic posture will eventually dissipate the spirit of the WSF, and I think that has already happened to some extent.

To really reinforce its soul and continue to provide a strong kind of energy in support of civil society movements, the Palestine issue, and Afghanistan, the issue of capitalism really – these are issues in which the WSF must take a very strong stand.

IPS: Such an approach demands a permanent structure. WB: Yes, I think that we should find ways of really making the International Council a more accountable body. The problem now with the IC is that it is mainly a discussion group rather than a body with real effective powers to move the struggle on.

IPS: Should the IC be an elected body? WB: We can’t be tied to forms, but we really need an International Council that is accountable, that is representative, so to speak. There are various kinds of formal mechanisms. I feel also that we should probably have a more effective kind of Secretariat that is there not organising the next forum but to ensure the implementation of resolutions and the accumulation of lessons.

One of the problems of the WSF has been that there is no sense of accumulation of lessons from one WSF to another, so accountability, accumulation of lessons and decision-making that is democratic – this is the challenge of the WSF. Having said that, despite all the unnevenness and weaknesses of the WSF, it is still a very important mechanism for global civil society to be able to influence the course of global events.

(*This report was published by TerraViva, an independent IPS daily, at the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil.)

Excerpt:

By Walden Bello and - -
MANILA, Jan 21 2009 (IPS)

As the US recession drags Asia down, there has been much speculation about a regional response to the crisis. Seemingly lending substance to this have been a trilateral summit of the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea last December and a flurry of bilateral talks between Japan’s Taro Aso and Korea’s Lee Myung-bak, all of which had economic cooperation at the top of the agenda.

On the face of it, coordinated action by the three could be significant: they account for about three-quarters of East Asia’s GDP and two-thirds of its trade, and each is among the other two’s leading trading partners. There are, however, reasons to be sceptical of recent declarations of cooperation.

First, the idea of Northeast Asian cooperation in the form of a regional trading area has been kicked around for the last 15 years in different formulations, with little movement at all in terms of implementation.

Second, government coordination of economic policies in the face of a crisis does not have a good track record. It was not just the US that vetoed the Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) proposed by Japan during the 1997 financial crisis: China also did for fear it could become a vehicle of Japanese hegemony.

Third, these meetings have been a case of a mountain giving birth to a mouse. The concrete measures agreed upon -to expand use of bilateral swap facilities under the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Plus Three (China, Japan and South Korea) Arrangement and call for the infusion of more capital into the Asian Development Bank (ADB)- were timid compared to the gargantuan task at hand. None of the three named a specific amount they would commit to the ADB, and for nearly a decade now, the institutional evolution of the ASEAN Plus Three formation has been stuck at the level of bilateral swap arrangements to prop up regional currencies subject to speculative attack.

One reason economic cooperation among the Northeast Asian giants has become a hot topic is that it was Chinese demand that pulled the Asian economies, including Korea and Japan, from the depths of stagnation and out of the Asian financial crisis in the first half of this decade. Japan’s first sustained recovery following its collapse into recession in the early 1990s was fuelled by record exports of capital and technology-intensive goods to China. Indeed, China became the main destination for Asia’s exports, with one analysis pointing out that by the middle of the decade, China had become ”the overwhelming driver of export growth in Taiwan and the Philippines, and the majority buyer of products from Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Australia.”

This positive role of the Chinese ‘locomotive’ earlier this decade sparked optimistic talk in academic and policy circles about ‘decoupling’ economic growth in East Asia from that of the US when the latter was threatened with recession because of the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007. Others were less optimistic. Research by economists C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh, for instance, underlined that although China was indeed importing intermediate goods and parts from Japan, Korea, and ASEAN, it was for assembly as finished goods for export to the United States and Europe, not for its domestic market. Thus, ”if demand for Chinese exports from the United States and the EU slows down, as will be likely with a US recession, this will affect not only Chinese manufacturing production but also Chinese demand for imports from these Asian developing countries.”

The swift transmission to Asia of the collapse of their key market has banished all talk of ‘decoupling’. The more accurate term for US-East Asia economic relations today might be a chain gang, linking not only China and the US but a host of other satellite economies, all of whose fates were tied to the deflating balloon of debt-financed middle-class spending in the United States. China’s growth in 2008 fell to 9 per cent, from 11 per cent a year earlier, provoking widespread unemployment and discontent. Japan is now in deep recession, its mighty export-oriented consumer goods industries reeling from plummeting sales. South Korea, the hardest hit, has seen its currency collapse by some 30 per cent relative to the dollar.

The current downturn, many now realise, is no simple recession. For East Asia, there is the added significance that this is the end of an era of export-oriented industrialisation that began in the 1960s, when Korea and Taiwan embarked on a development process that tied their growth to the US market. Encouraged by the World Bank to make ”special efforts” to turn their manufacturing enterprises away from the relatively small markets associated with import substitution toward the much larger opportunities flowing from export promotion, the Southeast Asian countries followed suit in the 1970s and 1980s.

Everybody’s export market was the United States, where, over the last 15 years, a consumer binge fuelled by massive international credit -much of it from China and Japan- extended a boom past its natural life and appeared to portend a never-ending demand for Asian imports. Now that Alan Greenspan’s ”New Economy” has fallen victim to the law of gravity, it will not be easy to reorient the export machines that the Asian economies have become into economic engines serving the domestic market. Income and asset redistribution will be central to that reorientation, and many national elites will fight tooth and nail to avoid that.

Regional integration or the joining of national markets by bringing down tariffs against one another while keeping them up against non-member countries is another remedy for the decline of the US market. The different economic elites, however, are very jealous of their national markets, and government technocrats, who have been the ones promoting the dream of a 1.9 billion East Asian market, have not demonstrated an eagerness to take them on. The current crisis may embolden them to take some first steps, but the distance between the rhetoric of regionalism and the reality of separate markets and independent economic policies will continue to be considerable. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Walden Bello is professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

Excerpt:

By Walden Bello
VITERBO, Italy, Dec 4 2008 (IPS)

With the United States represented by outgoing President George W. Bush, not much can be expected of the Dec. 1-12 international conference on climate change in the Polish city of Poznan, activist Walden Bello, winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize 2003, told IPS.

Walden Bello Credit: Antonio Marafioti/IPS

He sat down with IPS on the sidelines of the VI International Media Forum of Greenaccord, an environmental group based in Italy, to discuss the current financial crisis, global warming and the challenges and opportunities facing U.S. President-elect Barack Obama. Excerpts of the interview follow:

IPS: Obama said recently that the Poznan conference would be vital. Moreover, at the Governors’ Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles, he added that the U.S. would invest 15 billion dollars annually to help the private sector develop and improve alternative energy, and promised to reduce emissions to 1990 levels within 12 years. Do you believe that this is the first step towards ratification of the Kyoto Protocol? WALDEN BELLO: Yes. I think that the Kyoto Protocol will in fact be ratified under the Obama administration, especially now that (the Democrats) have a majority in the Senate…But the Bush administration has always opposed mandatory reductions, so I believe that nothing good is going to happen in Poznan.

The other thing is what level of ambition Obama will have. It is not whether or not the U.S. ratifies the Kyoto Protocol. It is rather what they will commit to, especially when you have the current economic recession and there are a number of forces within the U.S. establishment saying you can’t pay attention to climate change right now…I think it would be a mistake for Obama to listen to them…If the U.S. is ambitious, then Europe will also be ambitious.

IPS: According to a report by The Independent newspaper, more than 60 nations, mainly in the developing world, will have hundreds of millions of “environmental refugees” caused by global warming. Does this mean a worsening situation for poor communities in Africa? WB: Yes, definitely. I think the problem is that communities that have contributed the least to global warming… are also the ones who are suffering the consequences in a major way. So I think this is a very serious problem… It is very important that we create mechanisms that will transfer both technologies as well as money to those communities.

IPS: According to a recent report of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised countries grew by 2.3 percent from 2000 to 2006. However, the Kyoto Protocol was aimed at reducing emissions by 5.2 percent by 2008. What didn’t work? WB: I think several things. One is the level of ambitions of the Kyoto Protocol that has to be lower in terms of reduction. The second thing is the U.S. of course, which did not participate in the global regime of mandatory reductions, and created a lot of problems in terms of the legitimacy of the Kyoto Protocol.

I think we must realise that the Bush administration made a tremendous contribution to the deterioration of the climate. There should be a category of environmental crimes under the International Criminal Court (ICC). Bush should be prosecuted under it.

The incoming Obama administration must be aware that this is the time to have an effective protocol by getting mandatory commitments, particularly from the biggest greenhouse gas polluters, including the United States.

IPS: Developing countries, such as China and India that are about to overtake the U.S. as major producers of greenhouse gases, say that they will cut emissions only when the industrialised countries have done the same. Do you think that the EU and the U.S. should take the initiative? WB: In terms of responsibility for climate change, it has been the North, including Europe and the U.S., which have been most responsible for the historical accumulation of greenhouse gases. So the North should take the first step.

Unless Northern countries do that, India and China are not going to follow. That’s very understandable. Why commit yourself to a mandatory reduction when the key culprits are not willing to do so? This brings us to a negotiation with two phases: First, commitments by the U.S. and the others, and second, India and China, and maybe Brazil, also undertake mandatory reductions.

IPS: The World Bank has been accused of profiting from carbon credits. What do you think the World Bank’s role should be? WB: The World Bank should not have anything to do with the climate change mechanisms. It has a very bad record. The World Bank is spending much more on gasoline than on development or its commitment to alternative energy sources.

The U.N. Environment Programme alone should really be the mechanism for supporting financial initiatives against climate change. It could be a disaster if the World Bank were to take over these functions, apart from the fact that it is controlled by the rich countries and the banks, which are the wrong institutions to deal with climate change.

IPS: What are the limits standing in the way of sustainable development? WB: The real limit to sustainable development is not the lack of resources. The real limits are ideas and political will. If we have ideas and political will, we can achieve things even if we don’t have that many resources. If we have imagination and determination, if we are skilful and smart, we can commit to the welfare of the people and of the environment with wise political strategies.

*With collaboration by Miren Gutiérrez in Rome.

Excerpt:

By Walden Bello
HALIFAX, Canada, Jan 15 2008 (IPS)

In 1992, Dr. Walden Bello issued a macro-economic warning about the so-called Asian miracle in his book “Dragons in Distress”. Six years later, the Asian financial crisis Bello predicted swept the region, throwing millions into poverty.

Walden Bello Credit: indymedia

After receiving a Ph.D from Princeton, he was arrested several times in the United States, peacefully protesting the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship in his home country. Bello is the executive director of Focus on the Global South and a visiting professor in Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Dr. Walden Bello spoke by phone from the Philippines with IPS Canada correspondent Chris Arsenault.

IPS: There seems to be consensus among economists that globalisation, as practiced by the Bretton Woods institutions, leads to greater income inequality but also to significant GDP growth. As one of Asia’s leading critics of the Bretton Woods model, don’t you feel that growth is necessary to pull people out of poverty, even if inequality is an initial byproduct?

Bello: I think that when you aggregate it, in the number of countries where there has been significant GDP growth, on balance, there has been an absolute reduction in poverty. Certainly in the cases of Vietnam and China, there has been an absolute decrease in poverty.

However, certain social groups, especially in the rural areas, and lower-class groups in the cities, have gone into even greater poverty. In all countries in South East Asia and East Asia, you have greater inequality in income distribution. In practical terms, a great imbalance has grown between the cities and the countryside; people in the countryside have lost in absolute and relative terms compared to the city.

Furthermore, we have had tremendous rates of environmental destruction. The gains in terms of poverty reduction have been counterbalanced by these other trends. I am speaking only about East Asia in this regard; the other caveat I would say in regards to Vietnam is that Vietnam has done a better job in containing these contradictions compared to countries like China.

IPS: You have written that, “in the Third World the pendulum has swung so far in the direction of export-oriented production, that it does need to be corrected back towards the domestic market – the balance between the two has been lost in the drive to internationalise our economies.” Is this really true? A lot of economists think the expansion of China’s domestic consumer purchasing power will keep that country’s manufacturing base strong even if its export markets, like the United States, are faced with a recession. Do you think domestic markets in East Asia will be able to absorb current levels of economic activity?

Bello: There are certain groups who have gained in income, including the emerging sectors in the cities, especially the coastal cities. To some extent, they act as a supplement to export-orientated production.

The driving force is still export markets. To maintain that export edge, you have to be able to keep down your labour costs. Keeping down labour costs continues to be the main factor limiting domestic consumption growth. In China, raising the incomes of people is in severe contradiction with the demand of low wages to continue turning out cheap commodities.

There has to be a very significant u-turn to create healthy domestic markets. This turn can only happen with significant measures to redistribute income, to redistribute welfare. This isn’t going to happen so long as you have your eye on being competitive in export markets.

IPS: According to the environmental monitoring group the Worldwatch Institute, China now boasts 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities. What rate of economic growth would be a good balance between pulling people out of poverty and having some degree of environmental sustainability?

Bello: I want to say very strongly that we have to focus on a new paradigm of environmental sustainability. I am not talking about achieving 6-10 percent GDP growth, and just changing the driver from export markets to the domestic economy. I am talking about a whole reorientation.

I am really thinking about bringing growth rates, as measured in the traditional way, down to 2-3 percent. You can only do that with significant redistribution of the benefits of growth, so as to fulfill a large number of social demands with a relatively low growth rate.

My sense is that, so long as you have good government policies that support equitable distribution, you can achieve higher standards of living, even with growth rates that are not high in traditional terms. Certainly, the kind of 10 percent growth that China has been enjoying is out of the question; even 6-8 percent growth is out.

IPS: One position paper from your organisation, Focus on the Global South, touts ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, as a possible regional integration model that might work in South East Asia and other regions. Do you think ALBA would even be possible without large amounts of Venezuelan oil and the petro-dollars that come with it? Basing a regional development strategy around crude oil exports to the U.S. isn’t necessarily the most sustainable practice.

Bello: The principles of ALBA, not necessary the wealth base, are what need to be reproduced; not everyone has those petro-dollars and environmentally it’s questionable as a long-run strategy.

The less powerful economies should have greater privileges than the more powerful economies, so regional cooperation increases their [lower income countries’] capacity rather than eroding it. ALBA focuses on building a regional market based on import substitution and technology sharing.

Certainly there are things that aren’t present in ALBA at the present time that would also be important to reproduce in other regional associations. The lesson we should be taking from ALBA is the move away from free trade towards genuine economic cooperation.

IPS: Currently, most observers agree that China is not in a colonial relationship with other smaller and weaker nations in South East Asia. However, China is on track to displace the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2050 and some worry that China could become a metropolis gaining markets and raw materials from a South East Asian hinterland. Do you think China is on course to becoming a neo-colonial power?

Bello: Definitely, unless there is more real planning, setting firm the principles of mutual and equitable relationships, on the part of China in terms of its relations with other countries.

China needs to create standards and policies for its transnational corporations operating abroad. Unless these things happen, the old colonial relationship could be reproduced.

There is tremendous demand in China for raw materials and a whole bunch of other things; China has the capital to export. The structural drives for a new periphery- metropolis are there; they need to be countered by policies, strong counteractive state policies from China. We have the opportunity at this point to have new relations between developing countries and China that do not reproduce the old colonial relationship. But we have to act soon.

Excerpt:

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)

Excerpt:

By Walden Bello and - -
BANGKOK, Dec 31 2004 (IPS)

The mood of this year\’s World Social Forum is likely to be affected by the tsunami tragedy in South as well as the changed national context in the host country: the fiscally-conservative policies adopted by the Lula government, which have generated high unemployment and little growth, writes Walden Bello. executive director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South. In this article, Bello writes that the debate over the effects of globalisation has long been won by its critics, yet neoliberal policies continue to reign in most developing countries, often in the guise of World Bank-sponsored macroeconomic strategies. Bello writes that the war in Iraq will be a central concern of the meeting. It was, after all, at a WSF-related event, the 2002 European Social Forum in Florence, that the call was issued for the global anti-war march that brought out hundreds of millions of people throughout the world on February 15, 2003. That the WSF has survived and become an institution demonstrates that it has tapped into the vast reservoir of energy of global civil society. This column is part of the special series on \”Globalisation & Human Rights\”, a joint effort of Dignity International (http://www.dignityinternational.org) and the IPS Columnist Service.

Now five years old, the World Social Forum is returning to Porto Alegre, Brazil, after its big success in Mumbai, India. The mood of the thousands of people expected is likely to be affected by the tsunami tragedy in South as well as the changed national context in the host country.

At the last Porto Alegre event, in January 2003, the forum was greatly animated by triumph of the Workers’ Party candidate Lula (Luis Inacio da Silva) in the presidential polls a few months earlier. Today, the Brazilian progressive movement that is the backbone of the Porto Alegre process is dispirited owing to the fiscally-conservative policies adopted by the Lula government, which have generated high unemployment and little growth. From being the hope of the Brazilian masses, Lula has become the darling of Washington and Wall Street owing to his full compliance with the measures proposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The ‘Lula problem’ affects not only Brazilians. Many of the thousands trekking to Porto Alegre are upset at Brazil’s role in reviving the World Trade Organisation. The WTO appeared to have entered an irreversible crisis when its Fifth Ministerial collapsed in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003. To revive the organisation, the United States and the European Union co-opted Brazil, along with India, as partners to create a framework for negotiations for a new Agreement on Agriculture. The result was the so-called July 2004 Framework Agreement that brought the WTO back on its feet. In almost all aspects, the July Framework was a bad deal for the South, but Brazil and India’s endorsement made it difficult for most developing countries to resist its adoption by the WTO’s General Council.

How to deal not only with the WTO but with the whole phenomenon of corporate-driven globalisation will be a central concern cutting through eleven theme areas. The debate over the effects of globalisation has long been won by its critics, with the overwhelming weight of the evidence correlating free market policies with increasing inequality both within and among countries, growing numbers of poor, and weak, unsustainable growth. Yet, like the proverbial hand of the dead engineer on the throttle of a speeding train, neoliberal policies continue to reign in most developing countries, often in the guise of World Bank-sponsored macroeconomic strategies (PRSPs) ostensibly aimed at prioritising poverty reduction but are actually the same old free-market programmes with cosmetic safety nets added on.

Nevertheless, things are changing. Disenchantment with neoliberal policies is most advanced in Latin America, where one neoliberal government after another has been booted out of office by voters or, as in the case of the Sanchez de Lozada government in Bolivia, overthrown by the people. While Brazil has buckled under pressure, other governments such as those in Venezuela and Argentina are leading the way in charting other paths. Argentina, for instance, has frozen most payments to private creditors and seen its economy grow by eight per cent two years in a row. How it did this –”by ignoring or defying economic and political orthodoxy”, as the New York Times puts it– is likely to be one of the topics of hot discussion among forum participants.

As in Mumbai last year, the war in Iraq will be a central concern of the meeting. It was, after all, at a WSF-related event, the European Social Forum (ESF) held in Florence in November 2002, that the call was issued for the global anti-war march that brought out hundreds of millions of people throughout the world on February 15, 2003. But like Brazil’s excitement over Lula, the euphoria accompanying the emergence of a truly global movement for peace has since given way to frustration at being unable to stop the US invasion and force the withdrawal of US troops. This is linked to shock and anger at what many see as the message of the November 2, 2004, elections in the US: the consolidation of an electoral power base in the US from which the Republican right can rule for the foreseeable future.

Frustration will, however, be mixed with a sense of challenge for many. How to coordinate more effectively across borders? How to bring the resistance to the war from demonstrations to massive civil disobedience? How to connect the global peace movement more organically with civil society in the Middle East, which promises to be the strategic battleground in the next few years? How to hook up local struggles with the broader struggles in Iraq and Palestine? These questions will be explored at the Anti-War Assembly and other venues, and the hope of many is that the peace movement will emerge from Porto Alegre less spontaneous and more organised.

That the WSF has survived and become an institution is testimony to the fact that it has tapped into the vast reservoir of energy of global civil society. The WSF prides itself as an open space for discussion and debate among different movements. Many feel, however, that what is the source of the WSF strength may also its weakness, and that to keep from becoming ossified it needs as an institution to take more partisan stands on the key issues of the time such as Palestine, Iraq, and the WTO, and translate these stands into action programmes. This debate is likely to be more intense this year than in previous years, but whether it is closer to being resolved remains to be seen.

What distinguishes this year’s WSF from previous years? For one, this year’s forum is completely self-organised by participants, with no central panels organised by the host committee, reflecting a conscious effort to build a space that is horizontal and open, and which encourages cross-fertilisation across political, sectoral, geographic, cultural, and language barriers.

There are likely to be no surprises in Porto Alegre this year. This predictability, say many, will increasingly become a liability for what was once a very exciting space. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

By Walden Bello
Jan 23 2003 (IPS)

The World Social Forum (WSF), to be held January 23-28 for the third year in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has become the prime organisational expression of a surging movement against corporate-driven globalisation and, this year, US plans to launch a war on Iraq, writes Walden Bello, professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines and executive director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South.

This year’s meeting will be the culmination of an exciting year-long global process, including Porto Alegre-style social forums in a number of cities, including Buenos Aires and Caracas, and regional social forums: the European Social Forum in Florence, Italy, on November 6-9, 2002, and the recently- concluded Asian Social Forum (ASF) in Hyderabad, India.

Since Seattle, the anti-corporate globalisation movement has attained critical mass globally, in the sense that its ability to mass forces at significant junctures, such as the December 1999 Seattle WTO ministerial and the July 2001 Genoa meeting of the Group of Eight, enabled it to effect international developments and acquire a high ideological and political profile globally.

Not surprisingly, many of those at the WSF will be coming with one question uppermost in their mind: What can the victory of Lula and the PT teach us about coming to power in our countries? And this year’s WSF will be, in many ways, a celebration of a movement that, by achieving a remarkable measure of political unity amidst diversity, has changed the face of Brazilian politics.

(*) Walden Bello is professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines and executive director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South.

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By Walden Bello and - -
BANGKOK, Dec 31 2002 (IPS)

The World Social Forum (WSF), to be held January 23-28 for the third year in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has become the prime organisational expression of a surging movement against corporate-driven globalisation and, this year, US plans to launch a war on Iraq, writes Walden Bello, professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines and executive director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South. This year\’s meeting will be the culmination of an exciting year-long global process, including Porto Alegre-style social forums in a number of cities, including Buenos Aires and Caracas, and regional social forums: the European Social Forum in Florence, Italy, on November 6-9, 2002, and the recently- concluded Asian Social Forum (ASF) in Hyderabad, India. Since Seattle, the anti-corporate globalisation movement has attained critical mass globally, in the sense that its ability to mass forces at significant junctures, such as the December 1999 Seattle WTO ministerial and the July 2001 Genoa meeting of the Group of Eight, enabled it to effect international developments and acquire a high ideological and political profile globally. Not surprisingly, many of those at the WSF will be coming with one question uppermost in their mind: What can the victory of Lula and the PT teach us about coming to power in our countries? And this year\’s WSF will be, in many ways, a celebration of a movement that, by achieving a remarkable measure of political unity amidst diversity, has changed the face of Brazilian politics.

The World Social Forum (WSF), to be held January 23-28 for the third year in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has become the prime organisational expression of a surging movement against corporate-driven globalisation. Since the events of September 11, 2001, it has also acquired a strong anti-war dimension, and opposition to US plans to launch a war on Iraq is expected to dominate this year’s proceedings.

The Porto Alegre phenomenon has had its share of critics, even among progressives. One prominent American intellectual has characterised it as a gathering mainly of people who want to ”reform” globalisation. Another has blasted it as a forum dominated intellectually and politically by Northern political and social movements.

These criticisms have not, however, deterred the WSF from drawing widespread adherence globally. This year, some 100,000 people are expected to show up, up from 75,000 in 2002 and

This year’s meeting will be the culmination of an exciting year-long global process. A number of cities, including Buenos Aires and Caracas, have held Porto Alegre-style social forums. It was, however, the regional social forums that were the exciting innovation of the year. The European Social Forum (ESF), held in Florence, Italy, on November 6-9, 2002, drew over 40,000 people, more than three times the expected number. Even more amazing was the ESF-sponsored million-person march on november 9 against the planned us war on iraq, which took place with not one of the incidents of mass violence that scaremongerers like italian journalist Oriana Fallaci had predicted.

Equally impressive was the recently concluded Asian Social Forum (ASF) that took place in the historic city of Hyderabad, India, from January 2 to 7, which drew over 14,400 registered participants, mostly from the host country, though there was representation from 41 other countries. Topics included resistance to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dalit (outcaste) rights, the threat of fundamentalist movements, women’s empowerment, food sovereignty, big dams, the Palestinian struggle, natural resource theft, and alternative economics.

Former president of India K.R. Narayanan characterised the message of the ASF as a ”voice for human rights, against violence, and against imperialism, and it is only right that it has come from India because it was India that sounded the death knell for an empire on which the sun was never supposed to set.”

One of the main reasons the Porto Alegre process is gaining such momentum is precisely that is provides a venue where movements and organisations can find ways of working together despite their differences. While the usual ultraleftist groups remain defiantly outside it, the Porto Alegre process in Brazil, Europe, and India has brought to the forefront the common values and aspirations of a variety of political traditions and tendencies.

The Porto Alegre process may be the main expression of the coming together of a movement that has been wandering for a long time in the wilderness of fragmentation and competition. The pendulum, in other words, may now be swinging to the side of unity, driven by the sense that in an increasingly deadly struggle against unilateralist militarisation and aggressive corporate globalisation, movements have not choice but to hang together or they will hang separately.

There is another development that is equally significant. Since Seattle, the anti-corporate globalisation movement has attained critical mass globally, in the sense that its ability to mass forces at significant junctures, such as the December 1999 Seattle WTO ministerial and the July 2001 Genoa meeting of the G-8, enabled it to effect international developments and acquire a high ideological and political profile globally.

Yet being a global actor did not necessarily translate into being a significant actor at the national level, where traditional elites and parties continued to be in a commanding position.

Over the last year, however, the movement has achieved critical mass at the national level in a number of countries, most of them in Latin America.

Not only has espousal of neoliberal policies been a surefire path to electoral disaster, but political parties or movements promoting anti-globalisation policies have achieved electoral power in Ecuador and Brazil, joining the Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela at the forefront of the regional anti-neoliberal struggle. Perhaps most inspiring is the case of Luis Inacio da Silva or Lula in Brazil, who won 63 per cent of the presidential vote last October. Lula is the prime figure in the Workers’ Party (PT), and as everyone knows, the Workers’ Party is the main pillar of the WSF.

Not surprisingly, many of those trekking to Porto Alegre this year will be coming with one question uppermost in their mind: What can the victory of Lula and the PT teach us about coming to power in our countries?

Many personalities of the international progressive movement are slated to come to Porto Alegre. By far the most interesting, most popular, most sought after will be Lula, the personification of the new Latin American left. And this year’s meeting will be, in many ways, a celebration of a movement that, by achieving a remarkable measure of political unity amidst diversity, has changed the face of Brazilian politics. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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