| |
COMMENTARY
Globalization wounded in
'war on terror'
By Mark Engler
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus)
To be radical, in the
oldest sense of the word, is to go to the root. One
strength of truly progressive analysis is that it places
what appear to be isolated events in a larger context.
It seeks to make connections between seemingly disparate
political issues by revealing underlying ideological
frameworks.
And so it has been a central task in
the era post-September 11, 2001, for activists to
demonstrate how the "war against terror" and the drive
for corporate globalization are one and the same - how
peace and global justice movements share vital common
ground. That these two issues are connected, in a
fundamental way, is an article of faith for the
political left, reinforced by the fact that many
participants in globalization protests have also
mobilized against the Bush administration's militarism.
All such articles of faith deserve a bit of
critical skepticism, so I would like to offer a
constructive challenge. Many of the arguments wedding
the war in Iraq with a strategy for neo-liberal
expansion are not readily convincing. They risk reading
causality into tangential relationships. And, in their
drive to connect, they overlook important disjunctures
between the Bush administration's foreign policy and the
policy preferred by many business elites. Activists have
good reason to look again at the neo-conservative hawks
now in power and to consider whether they have outdone
the corporate globalists of earlier years or whether
they have betrayed them.
Arguing for a
link
Let's start by examining some of the
strongest arguments for the link between the "war on
terror" and corporate globalization. First, the White
House has been eager to make big business a partner in
the execution of the Iraq war and the subsequent
occupation. This has been most prominently evidenced by
the high-priced reconstruction contracts snatched up by
well-connected companies such as Halliburton and
Bechtel.
Second, President George W Bush has
advanced a neo-liberal agenda domestically by cutting
taxes for the wealthy and further eroding social safety
nets. His administration has employed the rhetoric of
the "war on terror" to attack unions - most notably in
the summer of 2002, when it threatened to intervene for
"national security" purposes in a west-coast
dockworkers' strike. Activists are also correct to note
that the war abroad has been used to suppress dissent at
home. Of the US$87 billion passed by Congress last
October for the occupation of Iraq, $8.5 million went
for policing the protests in Miami opposing the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Moreover,
conservatives attack both anti-war and globalization
protesters as unpatriotic and helpful to terrorists.
Finally, activists have seen a connection
between war and corporate globalization in the
privatization of Iraq's economy. Political commentators
Naomi Klein and Antonia Juhasz, among others, have
detailed how the occupation allowed the US governing
authority to restructure the country's economy based on
strict neo-liberal principles. Following what The
Economist magazine called a "wish-list that foreign
investors and donor agencies dream of for developing
markets", Washington instituted measures providing for
the privatization of 200 Iraqi state firms, for 100%
foreign ownership in Iraqi companies outside the oil
sector, for full repatriation of profits, and for a 15%
cap on corporate taxes.
Juhasz explained in a
July article for Foreign Policy in Focus titled "The
handover that wasn't" that the executive orders issued
by US administrator Paul Bremer will be difficult to
overturn even though a transfer of sovereignty has
officially taken place. Not only is the interim
government prohibited "from taking 'any actions
affecting Iraq's destiny' beyond the election of an
Iraqi government", but, as Juhasz wrote, the occupiers
have stacked "every ministry with US-appointed
authorities with five-year terms - well into the period
of the new, elected government".
How deep a
connection?
Although these attempts to link
neo-conservative militarism and corporate globalization
have merit, each of them has important weaknesses.
First, let's consider war profiteering. Though
corporations do exhibit shameless opportunism in seizing
business opportunities created by US military action,
this does not connect war and globalization in a deep
way. As Robert Jensen recently argued in his critique of
Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's over-reliance on
this argument both leads to a weak explanation of the
causes of war and overlooks Democratic Party patronage
of the military-industrial complex:
"A family
member of a soldier who died asks, 'for what?' and Moore
cuts to the subject of war profiteering ... Does Moore
really want us to believe that a major war was launched
so that Halliburton and other companies could increase
[their] profits for a few years? Yes, war profiteering
happens, but it is not the reason nations go to war.
This kind of distorted analysis helps keep viewers'
attention focused on the Bush administration...not the
routine way in which corporate America makes money off
the misnamed Department of Defense, no matter who is in
the White House."
A focus on profiteering risks
ignoring the stated neo-conservative goal of reinforcing
US hegemony in the Middle East and beyond, something far
more significant than short-term kickbacks to corporate
sponsors. Also, it assumes that the objectives of
specific businesses such as Halliburton and US arms
contractors accurately reflect the general interests of
all multinational corporations, an idea that deserves
scrutiny.
As for the "war at home", there is no
question that the Bush administration has used the
specter of terrorism to push a regressive domestic
agenda. However, this can also be considered
opportunistic behavior rather than evidence of a
systematic relationship between war and globalization.
Republican realists who opposed the invasion have
generally promoted tax cuts and the USA Patriot (Uniting
and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools
Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act, while
many stalwart globalizers from the former administration
of Bill Clinton have fought these domestic measures.
There is little reason to think that the war in Iraq was
a necessary condition for advancing Bush's domestic
neo-liberalism, even if it provided politically
convenient cover for many actions.
Does
capital gain?
The forced privatization of Iraq's
economy provides the most vivid link between war and
neo-liberalism. Yet to determine whether this
restructuring is representative of a larger trend - of a
new phase of corporate globalization in which the
"freeing" of markets will be more militaristically
regulated - we must look at the wider state of trade and
development policy under Bush. Activists often point to
the president himself as a bridge between globalization
and militarism, as someone who vocally supports both
free trade and preemptive war. However, the Bush
administration's actions in the trade arena have often
contradicted its rhetoric, distinguishing it from its
globalist predecessors.
"Globalization" has
always been a vague term, employed for many different
purposes. Confusion over the use of the word has often
muddled analysis of the state of the global economy. In
the 1990s, "corporate globalization" most frequently
referred to a "rules-based" international order,
designed for the benefit of multinational corporations
and regulated primarily by a set of multilateral
financial institutions.
Particularly since
September 11, 2001, Bush's globalization policy has been
quite different from what characterized the Clinton
years. As in its military actions, the current
administration has shown a penchant for go-it-alone
nationalism in its economic negotiations. This has led
to a type of bare-knuckles promotion of US interests
distinct from the multilateralist model of global
capitalism advanced in the 1990s. As a result of this
shift, as well as a concurrent global economic downturn,
trade talks in recent years have been combative, tense,
and often unproductive.
Actually, much of the
business elite would prefer Clinton's multilateralist
globalization to Bush's imperial version. Prior to the
war, many corporate leaders feared that the invasion of
Iraq would be bad for business. Writing from the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in February 2003,
Newsday reporter Laurie Garrett observed that "The rich
- whether they are French or Chinese or just about
anybody - are livid about the Iraq crisis primarily
because they believe it will sink their financial
fortunes." Noted Garrett, "When [US Secretary of State]
Colin Powell gave the speech of his life, trying to win
over the non-American delegates, the sharpest attack on
his comments came not from Amnesty International or some
Islamic representative - it came from the head of the
largest bank in the Netherlands!"
And corporate
worries persisted as the war effort went forward. After
the invasion had begun, the Washington Post reported on
March 23, 2003: "Discord over Iraq war is putting
uncomfortable strains on economic links between the
United States and Europe, a relationship that many view
as a cornerstone of global prosperity. Guardians of
trans-Atlantic harmony are scrambling to keep the
diplomatic rift from poisoning economic ties." The
article continued, "The animosity that has flared of
late appears almost certain to seep into trans-Atlantic
trade and investment issues."
Of greatest
concern in the Washington Post article was that
"lingering acrimony among top policymakers will spark
tit-for-tat trade wars and wreck the US-Europe
cooperation needed to strike a worldwide trade accord
that could help spur global growth". A dispute over US
steel tariffs provides a prime illustration of just such
a trade war. Bush's March 2002 decision to institute
protective tariffs against foreign steel sparked harsh
rebukes and an immediate complaint to the World Trade
Organization by the European Union, Brazil, China,
Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.
The WTO ultimately ruled against the tariffs last
November.
Similarly, nationalist resistance on
the part of the US to opening its markets played a major
role in deadlocking talks at last September's WTO
ministerial meet in Cancun, Mexico. Since then, the
institution has floundered. The same US intransigence
appeared again at November's FTAA ministerial meet in
Miami, derailing the once-seemingly inevitable trade
pact and forcing Washington to pursue much smaller,
bilateral agreements with individual nations.
One can argue that the Bush administration's
economic nationalism has effectively defended US
interests, but few will contend that it has bolstered
the international financial institutions. And not many
European corporations or other multinational enterprises
based outside the United States - previously stalwart
partners in the global expansion of corporate power -
will praise the current US economic policy.
McDonald's and McDonnell
Douglas
Returning to the case of Iraq, there is
no question that the US occupying authority has
opportunistically used its power to impose "free market"
reforms on Iraq's economy. But this alone is not reason
to assume that Bush's militarism represents the new face
of globalization. In fact, this assumption has produced
some wobbly analysis. For example, Arundhati Roy has
argued that it was international grassroots pressure
against the advance of corporate globalization that
forced those in power to adopt a more militaristic
posture. In a January 2003 address to the World Social
Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Roy argued: "We may not
have stopped [empire] in its tracks - yet - but we have
stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have
forced it into the open. It now stands before us on the
world's stage in all its brutish, iniquitous nakedness."
There are several problems with this assertion.
First, it closely equates empire and corporate
globalization with US nationalist ambitions, something
quite different from the usual global-justice
interpretation of a dominant corporate empire that
operates largely outside the power of a diminished
nation-state. Roy's analysis leaves little room for
business people who would argue that Bush's economic
nationalism and warmongering make for bad capitalism and
that global corporations would be better off with a
Clinton- or Kerry-style multilateralist in office.
It also contradicts the viewpoint that Iraq was
an elective war, waged in pursuit of an extreme
neo-conservative ideological vision of US dominance that
is out of step not just with leftists but with the
approach favored by most business and foreign-policy
elites. And Roy's assertion appears to overlook the fact
that the more subtle mechanisms of corporate
globalization - ie, conditions imposed by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank -
are still functioning quietly and effectively,
constraining the potentially autonomous economic policy
of such countries as Brazil, for example.
If
anything, social-movement pressure is probably forcing
empire back into its closet. In recent months, President
Bush has scrambled to internationalize the occupation of
Iraq and to temper his nationalism in trade talks,
bringing institutions such as the UN and IMF back on to
center stage in his foreign policy. If John Kerry is
elected next month, he will no doubt push even further
in a multilateralist direction in both arenas, a move
that will comfort many business people.
In his
1999 book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, New York
Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote: "The hidden hand
of the market will never work without a hidden fist ...
McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas,
the designer of the US Air Force F-15. And the hidden
fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's
technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air
Force, Navy and Marine Corps."
Activists have
frequently quoted this view, coming from a mainstream
observer, as vindication of their arguments linking
militarism and corporate expansion. However, it is
important to note that Friedman was writing about the
Clinton years, an era in which a multilateral consensus
around a post-Cold War US military dominance was being
carefully cultivated.
The Bush administration's
post-September 11 decision to take the fist out of
hiding and wield it in a widely unpopular war
significantly shook the international order that for
years had provided a climate of business stability. In
doing so, President Bush has arguably illustrated the
manner in which McDonald's and McDonnell Douglas's
interests collide. Indeed, by privileging specific
sectors of the US economy such as energy companies and
arms contractors, the White House has rattled the global
marketplace in which US financial capital and
consumer-based industries must operate.
Competing globalizations
Part of the
confusion surrounding the analysis of Iraq comes from
sloppy use of the term "globalization". Dissenters to
the neo-liberal order have long argued that they are not
opposed to globalization, but are advocates of a very
different type of globalization from that favored by
corporate free traders or IMF economists; namely, a
globalization of justice and solidarity. Appreciating
this lesson about the diversity of globalizations also
requires recognizing that national and business
interests are not entirely united in their vision of an
ideal world order. Diverse nations and corporations
often present competing interests. Clinton's corporate
version of globalization and Bush's imperial one are
less a continuous progression in foreign policy than
they are dissonant visions of international economics.
The current administration's militarism is not linked to
Clinton's rules-based economic order; rather it
represents a departure from it that may soon be
reversed.
But let's move beyond the concept of
globalization and look for a deeper level of connection.
Ultimately, there is an ongoing need to develop coherent
theories of how the struggle to control limited oil
reserves will shape the future of capitalist economics.
(The war in Iraq is related to this, not because it is a
bid to seize ownership of Iraq's oilfields, but because
it is another step in Washington's protracted efforts to
manipulate and control Middle Eastern politics.) It is
also important to consider how war plays into the
boom-and-bust business cycle that has long affected both
the US and global economies.
To refocus on these
questions can open a new discussion about war and the
global economy, one not commonly featured in current
anti-war critiques. Combating the crass corporate
favoritism and neo-conservative aggression of the Bush
administration is a worthy goal in its own right. But
because there are many who will oppose George Bush while
eagerly anticipating a return to the high times of an
earlier neo-liberalism, the struggle to build an
alternative globalization will continue for many
Novembers to come.
Mark
Engler, a writer based in New York, is a
commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus. He can be
reached at DemocracyUprising.com. Research
assistance for this article was provided by Jason Rowe.
Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus.
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
