Samiam's Favorite Links on globalization from Diigo

First Press

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 15:23:47 -0000

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A NATO for the World Economy: An Argument for a Trans-Atlantic Free-Trade Zone - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 07:37:55 -0000

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A Superpower in Decline: America's Middle Class Has Become Globalization's Loser - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 07:37:55 -0000

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An interview with Samuel Huntington

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 07:37:54 -0000

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If Not Civilizations, What? Huntington

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 07:37:53 -0000

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Researching Globalization

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 13:53:40 -0000

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Address by V. Havel

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 04:19:40 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Some estimates foresee as many as forty billion people living on the Earth toward the end of the coming century and expect that such a number can constitute a serious threat to the very existence of life on this planet. Various non-renewable resources, whether it be fuel or other raw materials, are being consumed at an ever faster pace; entire species are dying out; and, humankind is knowingly depriving itself of such a vital substance as oxygen. At the same time, globalization is progressing at an almost dizzying speed, which means that our planet finds itself - probably for the first time in its history - increasingly covered by a coat of one single civilization. It is becoming a unified and electronically interconnected information, communication, finance and business environment, in which not only news but also billions of dollars; cultural values, or pseudo-values; beneficial as well as harmful properties; and, sound as well as ill-advised attitudes toward life travel at the velocity of light. An extremely dangerous phenomenon consists in the fact that the uniformising pressure which the increasingly globalized civilization brings to bear on the rapidly growing population generates many new social antagonisms. The endeavour of various communities to defend their identity and uniqueness under these conditions multiplies conflicts among cultures, ethnic groups and traditions of civilization. The gigantic urban agglomerations, into which the progress of civilization inevitably compresses the human race, destroy natural, easily surveyable human communities, and thus also natural tools of moral societal self-control, which logically leads to a further growth of the crime rate. Along with global trade, and with an increasingly sophisticated technology, possibilities arise also for an unprecedented advancement of organized crime and terrorism.

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The Myth of Global Conflict

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03:45:11 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

What the myth of ethnic conflict would say are ever-present tensions are in fact the products of political choices. Negative stereotyping, fear of another group, killing lest one be killed--these are the doings of so-called leaders, and can be undone by them as well. Believing otherwise, and assuming that such conflicts are the natural consequences of human depravity in some quarters of the world, leads to perverse thinking and perverse policy. It makes violence seem characteristic of a people or region, rather than the consequence of specific political acts. Thinking this way excuses inaction, as when U.S. president Bill Clinton, seeking to retreat from the hard-line Balkan policy of candidate Clinton, began to claim that Bosnians and Serbs were killing each other because of their ethnic and religious differences. Because it paints all sides as less rational and less modern (more tribal, more ethnic) than "we" are, it makes it easier to tolerate their suffering. Because it assumes that "those people" would naturally follow their leaders' call to kill, it distracts us from the central and difficult question of just how and why people are sometimes led to commit such horrifying deeds.

Nigeria

second set of reasons for social peace or social conflict. States do make choices, particularly about political processes, that ease or exacerbate intergroup tensions. As political scientist Donald Horowitz has pointed out, if we consider only their starting conditions, Malaysia ought to have experienced considerable interethnic violence (for the reasons given above), whereas Sri Lanka, where Tamils and Sinhalese had mingled in the British-trained elite, should have been spared such violence. And yet Malaysia has largely managed to avoid it while Sri Lanka has not. The crucial difference, writes Horowitz, was in the emerging political systems in the two countries. Malaysian politicians constructed a multiethnic political coalition, which fostered ties between Chinese and Malay leaders and forced political candidates to seek the large middle electoral ground. In Sri Lanka, as we saw earlier, Sinhalese-speakers formed a chauvinist nationalist movement, and after early cooperation Tamils and Sinhalese split apart to form ethnically based political parties. Extreme factions appeared on the wings of each party, forcing party leaders to drift in their directions.

olonial Indonesia

of Indonesia.

Indonesia

First there are the "raw materials" for social peace that countries possess at the time of independence. Countries in which one group has been exploiting all others (such as Rwanda and Burundi) start off with scores to settle, while countries with no such clearly dominating group (such as Indonesia) have an initial advantage in building political consensus. So-called centralized polities, with two or three large groups that continually polarize national politics, are less stable than "dispersed" systems, in which each of many smaller groups is forced to seek out allies to achieve its goals. And if the major ethnic groups share a language or religion, or if they have worked together in a revolutionary struggle, they have a bridge already in place that they can use to build political cooperation.

Cultural diversity does, of course, present challenges to national integration and social peace. Why do some countries succeed at meeting those challenges while others fail? Two sets of reasons seem most important, and they swamp the mere fact of ethnic and cultural diversity.

f Indonesia, it is

Indonesia

This brings us to the third mistaken assumption: that ethnic diversity brings with it political instability and the likelihood of violence. To the contrary, greater ethnic diversity is not associated with greater interethnic conflict. Some of the world's most ethnically diverse states, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan, though not without internal conflict and political repression, have suffered little interethnic violence, while countries with very slight differences in language or culture (the former [End Page 10] Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda) have had the bloodiest such conflicts. It is the number of ethnic groups and their relationships to power, not diversity per se, that strongly affect political stability.

Croats

Kosovo

Serbs

Rwandan

Indonesians

Rwanda and the Balkans

A reader might say at this point: Fine, ethnic identities are modern and created, but today people surely do target members of other ethnic [End Page 7] groups for violence, do they not? The answer is: Less than we usually think, and when they do, it is only after a long period of being prepared, pushed, and threatened by leaders who control the army and the airwaves. It is fear and hate generated from the top, and not ethnic differences, that finally push people to commit acts of violence. People may come to fear or resent another group for a variety of reasons, especially when social and economic change seems to favor the other group. And yet such competition and resentment "at the ground level" usually does not lead to intergroup violence without an intervening push from the top.

Rwanda and Burundi

Sri Lanka

It was the colonial powers, and the independent states succeeding them, which declared that each and every person had an "ethnic identity" that determined his or her place within the colony or the postcolonial system. Even such a seemingly small event as the taking of a census created the idea of a colony-wide ethnic category to which one belonged and had loyalties. (And this was not the case just in Africa: some historians of India attribute the birth of Hindu nationalism to the first British census, when people began to think of themselves as members of Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh populations.) The colonial powers--Belgians, Germans, French, British, and Dutch--also realized that, given their small numbers in their dominions, they could effectively govern and exploit only by seeking out "partners" from among local people, sometimes from minority or Christianized groups. But then the state had to separate its partners from all others, thereby creating firmly bounded "ethnic groups."

ethnic thinking in political life is a product of modern conflicts over power and resources, and not an ancient impediment to political modernity.

"Ethnicity" becomes "nationalism" when it includes aspirations to gain a monopoly of land, resources, and power. But nationalism, too, is a learned and frequently manipulated set of ideas, and not a primordial sentiment.

the roots of the current Balkan violence lie not in primordial ethnic and religious differences but rather in modern attempts to rally people around nationalist ideas.

Surely the Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians are distinct ethnic groups destined to clash throughout history, are they not? Yet it is often forgotten how small the differences are among the currently warring factions in the Balkans. Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians all speak the same language (Italy has greater linguistic diversity) and have lived side by side, most often in peace, for centuries. Although it is common to say that they are separated by religion--Croats being Roman Catholic, Serbs Orthodox Christian, and Bosnians Muslim--in fact each population includes sizeable numbers of the other two religions. The three religions have indeed become symbols of group differences, but religious differences have not, by themselves, caused intergroup conflict. Rising rates of intermarriage (as high as 30 percent in Bosnia) would have led to the gradual blurring of contrasts across these lines.

Nowhere does this notion seem more apt than in the former Yugoslavia.

The view that ethnicity is ancient and unchanging emerges these days in the potent images of the cauldron and the tribe. Out of the violence in Eastern Europe came images of the region as a bubbling cauldron of ethnonationalist sentiments that were sure to boil over unless suppressed by strong states.

Although people have had identities--deriving from religion, birthplace, language, and so on--for as long as humans have had culture, they have begun to see themselves as members of vast ethnic groups, opposed to other such groups, only during the modern period of colonization and state-building

Contrary to the first assumption, ethnicity is a product of modern politics.

In speaking about local group conflicts we tend to make three assumptions: first, that ethnic identities are ancient and unchanging; second, that these identities motivate people to persecute and kill; and third, that ethnic diversity itself inevitably leads to violence. All three are mistaken.

This notion misrepresents the genesis of conflict and ignores the ability of diverse people to coexist. The very phrase "ethnic conflict" misguides us. It has become a shorthand way to speak about any and all violent confrontations between groups of people living in the same country. Some of these conflicts involve ethnic or cultural identity, but most are about getting more power, land, or other resources. They do not result from ethnic diversity; thinking that they do sends us off in pursuit of the wrong policies, tolerating rulers who incite riots and suppress ethnic differences.

They all share, however, the idea that the world's current conflicts are fueled by age-old ethnic loyalties and cultural differences.

Much recent discussion of international affairs has been based on the misleading assumption that the world is fraught with primordial ethnic conflict.

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The Atlantic Online | March 1992 | Jihad vs. McWorld | Benjamin R. Barber

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 02:46:50 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

All national economies are now vulnerable to the inroads of larger, transnational markets within which trade is free, currencies are convertible, access to banking is open, and contracts are enforceable under law. In Europe, Asia, Africa, the South Pacific, and the Americas such markets are eroding national sovereignty and giving rise to entities—international banks, trade associations, transnational lobbies like OPEC and Greenpeace, world news services like CNN and the BBC, and multinational corporations that increasingly lack a meaningful national identity—that neither reflect nor respect nationhood as an organizing or regulative principle.

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American Foreign Policy Toward the Muslim World -- Interview Transcript. Summer/Fall 2001 - Foreign Policy Studies

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:52:00 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

the world of over one billion Muslims, most of whom are not Arabs, is very diverse, with differing priorities and cultures. Moreover, the Islamic world, like other parts of the world, is dominated by states, which are driven by their own interests and priorities and often have more conflict among themselves than with the West.

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The Clash of Ignorance

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:44:58 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Huntington's assumption that his perspective, which is to survey the entire world from a perch outside all ordinary attachments and hidden loyalties, is the correct one, as if everyone else were scurrying around looking for the answers that he has already found. In fact, Huntington is an ideologist, someone who wants to make "civilizations" and "identities" into what they are not: shut-down, sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human history, and that over centuries have made it possible for that history not only to contain wars of religion and imperial conquest but also to be one of exchange, cross-fertilization and sharing.

This far less visible history is ignored in the rush to highlight the ludicrously compressed and constricted warfare that "the clash of civilizations" argues is the reality. When he published his book by the same title in 1996, Huntington tried to give his argument a little more subtlety and many, many more footnotes; all he did, however, was confuse himself and demonstrate what a clumsy writer and inelegant thinker he was.

In this belligerent kind of thought, he relies heavily on a 1990 article by the veteran Orientalist Bernard Lewis, whose ideological colors are manifest in its title, "The Roots of Muslim Rage."

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Clash of Civilizations and Its Critiques

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:05:17 -0000

Comments:

Discussion on Huntington's Clash of Civilizations? posted by samiam

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Huntington: Clash of Civilizations

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:28:14 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

West will increasingly have to accommodate these non-Western modern civilizations whose power approaches that of the West but whose values and interests differ significantly from those of the West. This will require the West to maintain the economic and military power necessary to protect its interests in relation to these civilizations. It will also, however, require the West to develop a more profound understanding of the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see their interests. It will require an effort to identify elements of commonality between Western and other civilizations.

In the short term it is clearly in the interest of the West to promote greater cooperation and unity within its own civilization, particularly between its European and North American components; to incorporate into the West societies in Eastern Europe and Latin America whose cultures are close to those of the West; to promote and maintain cooperative relations with Russia and Japan; to prevent escalation of local inter-civilization conflicts into major inter-civilization wars; to limit the expansion of the military strength of Confucian and Islamic states; to moderate the reduction of counter military capabilities and maintain military superiority in East and Southwest Asia; to exploit differences and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic states; to support in other civilizations groups sympathetic to Western values and interests; to strengthen international institutions that reflect and legitimate Western interests and values and to promote the involvement of non-Western states in those institutions.

differences between civilizations are real and important; civilization-consciousness is increasing; conflict between civilizations will supplant ideological and other forms of conflict as the dominant global form of conflict; international relations, historically a game played out within Western civilization, will increasingly be de-Westernized and become a game in which non-Western civilizations are actors and not simply objects; successful political, security and economic international institutions are more likely to develop within civilizations than across civilizations; conflicts between groups in different civilizations will be more frequent, more sustained and more violent than conflicts between groups in the same civilization; violent conflicts between groups in different civilizations are the most likely and most dangerous source of escalation that could lead to global wars; the paramount axis of world politics will be the relations between "the West and the Rest"; the elites in some torn non-Western countries will try to make their countries part of the West, but in most cases face major obstacles to accomplishing this; a central focus of conflict for the immediate future will be between the West and several Islamic-Confucian states.

In this new form of arms competition, one side is developing its arms and the other side is attempting not to balance but to limit and prevent that arms build-up while at the same time reducing its own military capabilities.

A new form of arms competition is thus occurring between Islamic-Confucian states and the West.

A Confucian-Islamic military connection has thus come into being, designed to promote acquisition by its members of the weapons and weapons technologies needed to counter the military powers of the West.

Centrally important to the development of counter-West military capabilities is the sustained expansion of China's military power and its means to create military power. Buoyed by spectacular economic development, China is rapidly increasing its military spending and vigorously moving forward with the modernization of its armed forces.

Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and missiles are viewed, probably erroneously, as the potential equalizer of superior Western conventional power.

The non-Western nations, on the other hand, assert their right to acquire and to deploy whatever weapons they think necessary for their security.

The West promotes nonproliferation as a universal norm and nonproliferation treaties and inspections as means of realizing that norm. It also threatens a variety of sanctions against those who promote the spread of sophisticated weapons and proposes some benefits for those who do not. The attention of the West focuses, naturally on nations that are actually or potentially hostile to the West.

In the post-Cold War world the primary objective of arms control is to prevent the development by non-Western societies of military capabilities that could threaten Western interests. The West attempts to do this through international agreements, economic pressure and controls on the transfer of arms and weapons technologies.

One result is the emergence of what Charles Krauthammer has called "Weapon States," and the Weapon States are not Western states. Another result is the redefinition of arms control, which is a Western concept and a Western goal

Those countries that for reason of culture and power do not wish to, or cannot, join the West compete with the West by developing their own economic, military and political power. They do this by promoting their internal development and by cooperating with other non-Western countries. The most prominent form of this cooperation is the Confucian-Islamic connection that has emerged to challenge Western interests, values and power.

Australia's future, they argue, is with the dynamic economies of East Asia. But, as I have suggested, close economic cooperation normally requires a common cultural base. In addition, none of the three conditions necessary for a torn country to join another civilization is likely to exist in Australia's case.

To redefine its civilization identity, a torn country must meet three requirements. First, its political and economic elite has to be generally supportive of and enthusiastic about the move. Second, its public has to be willing to acquiesce in the redefinition. Third, the dominant groups in the recipient civilization have to be willing to embrace the convert. All three requirements in large part exist with respect to Mexico. The first two in large part exist with respect to Turkey. It is not clear that any of them exist with respect to Russia's joining the West.

President Yeltsin is adopting Western principles and goals and seeking to make Russia a "normal" country and a part of the West. Yet both the Russian elite and the Russian public are divided on this issue.

Globally the most important torn country is Russia.

Mexico as in Turkey, significant elements in society resist the redefinition of their country's identity. In Turkey, European-oriented leaders have to make gestures to Islam (Ozal's pilgrimage to Mecca); so also Mexico's North American-oriented leaders have to make gestures to those who hold Mexico to be a Latin American country (Salinas' Ibero-American Guadalajara summit).

Mexico has stopped defining itself by its opposition to the United States and is instead attempting to imitate the United States and to join it in the North American Free Trade Area.

IN THE FUTURE, as people differentiate themselves by civilization, countries with large numbers of people of different civilizations, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, are candidates for dismemberment. Some other countries have a fair degree of cultural homogeneity but are divided over whether their society belongs to one civilization or another. These are town countries.

The central axis of world politics in the future is likely to be, in Kishore Mahbubani's phrase, the conflict between "the West and the Rest" and the responses of non-Western civilizations to Western power and values.

Western concepts differ fundamentally from those prevalent in other civilizations. Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures. Western efforts to propagate each ideas produce instead a reaction against "human rights imperialism" and a reaffirmation of indigenous values, as can be seen in the support for religious fundamentalism by the younger generation in non-Western cultures. The very notion that there could be a "universal civilization" is a Western idea, directly at odds with the particularism of most Asian societies and their emphasis on what distinguishes one people from another.

Differences in power and struggles for military, economic and institutional power are thus one source of conflict between the West and other civilizations. Differences in culture, that is basic values and beliefs, are a second source of conflict.

The West in effect is using international institutions, military power and economic resources to run the world in ways that will maintain Western predominance, protect Western interests and promote Western political and economic values.

THE WEST IS NOW at an extraordinary peak of power in relation to other civilizations. In superpower opponent has disappeared from the map. Military conflict among Western states is unthinkable, and Western military power is unrivaled. Apart from Japan, the West faces no economic challenge. It dominates international economic institutions. Global political and security issues are effectively settled by a directorate of the United States, Britain and France, world economic issues by a directorate of the United States, Germany and Japan, all of which maintain extraordinarily close relations with each other to the exclusion of lesser and largely non-Western countries.

In the coming years, the local conflicts most likely to escalate into major wars will be those, as in Bosnia and the Caucasus, along the fault lines between civilizations. The next world war, if there is one, will be a war between civilizations.

Common membership in a civilization reduces the probability of violence in situations where it might otherwise occur.

Conflicts and violence will also occur between states and groups within the same civilization. Such conflicts, however, are likely to be less intense and less likely to expand than conflicts between civilizations.

In the 1990s the Yugoslav conflict is provoking intervention from countries that are Muslim, Orthodox and Western Christian.

The governments of Saudi Arabia and other countries felt under increasing pressure from fundamentalist groups in their own societies to provide more vigorous support for the Bosnians.

Islamic governments and groups, on the other hand, castigated the West for not coming to the defense of the Bosnians.

Third, with respect to the fighting in the former Yugoslavia, Western publics manifested sympathy and support for the Bosnian Muslims and the horrors they suffered at the hands of the Serbs. Relatively little concern was expressed, however, over Croatian attacks on Muslims and participation in the dismemberment of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Russian troops fought on the Side of the Armenians, and Azerbaijan accused the "Russian government of turning 180 degrees" toward support for Christian Armenia.

Second, the kin-country syndrome also appeared in conflicts in the former Soviet Union.

Muslims contrasted Western actions against Iraq with the West's failure to protect Bosnians against Serbs and to impose sanctions on Israel for violating U.N. resolutions. The West, they allege, was using a double standard. A world of clashing civilizations, however, is inevitably a world of double standards: people apply one standard to their kin-countries and a different standard to others.

The rallying of substantial sections of Arab elites and publics behind Saddam Hussein called those Arab governments in the anti-Iraq coalition to moderate their activities and temper their public statements.

First, in the Gulf War one Arab state invaded another and then fought a coalition of Arab, Western and other states.

THE KIN-COUNTRY SYNDROME GROUPS OR STATES belonging to one civilization that become involved in war with people from a different civilization naturally try to rally support from other members of their own civilization.

proliferation of ethnic conflict, epitomized at the extreme in "ethnic cleansing," has not been totally random. It has been most frequent and most violent between groups belonging to different civilizations.

The interactions between civilizations vary greatly in the extent to which they are likely to be characterized by violence.

With the Cold War over, the underlying differences between China and the United States have reasserted themselves in areas such as human rights, trade and weapons proliferation. These differences are unlikely to moderate. A "new cold war," Deng Xaioping reportedly asserted in 1991, is under way between China and America.

The economic issues between the United States and Europe are no less serious than those between the United States and Japan, but they do not have thesame political salience and emotional intensity because the differences between American culture and European culture are so much less than those between American civilization and Japanese civilization.

The same phrase has been applied to the increasingly difficult relations between Japan and the United States

The historic clash between Muslim and Hindu in the subcontinent manifests itself now not only is the rivalry between Pakistan and India but also in intensifying religious strife within India between increasingly militant Hindu groups and India's substantial Muslim minority.

On the northern border of Islam, conflict has increasingly erupted between Orthodox and Muslim peoples, including the carnage of Bosnia and Sarajevo

Historically, the other great antagonistic interaction of Arab Islamic civilization has been with the pagan, animist, and now increasingly Christian black peoples to the south.

On both sides the interaction between Islam and the West is seen as a clash of civilizations.

Those relations are also complicated by demography. The spectacular population growth in Arab countries, particularly in North Africa, has led to increased migration to Western Europe.

In the Arab world, in short, Western democracy strengthens anti-Western political forces. This may be a passing phenomenon, but it surely complicates relations between Islamic countries and the West.

This centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline

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