P  A  N  D  E  M  O  N  I  U  M

                                                      D O C U M E N T

                                 Globalization and the New World Order


From:
Review of International Affairs
A monthly journal published by the FPI RTY International Politics
Founded in June 1950
Volume 1, Nr. 1082-83, July-August 1999, Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia
 

Prof. Dr. Ljubiša Mitrovic, Philosophical Faculty of the University of Niš:

Globalization and the New World Order

The contemporary world at the end of the 20th century is confronted with an unpromising outlook and an uncertain fate of the mankind. The last decade of this century has been marked by the implosion of socialism, the crisis of the welfare state and the Euromodel of social development, with a simultaneous expansion of neoliberalism as the Anglo-Saxon model of piogress, and an increasingly aggressive onset of the forces of the new world order on the globe’s political scene. The official international order, reposing on the UN and its institutions, is being openly challenged and is ushering a process of anomy in international relations where sheer force stands above right and justice.
After the Second World War, in addition to the UN as its official structure laid down in 1945, at least another three sub-systems barged into each other as alternative projects of international relations, i.e. global world order. These were:
I. “Soviet’ — in the form of a socialist community and socialism as the world process;
   2. “Anglo-American” — in the form of Westernization, globalization and a new world
       order;
  3. The project of an order championed by the nonaligned movement.
Following the collapse of socialism and the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the balance of forces in the world was altered. Projects of pro-socialist and non-aligned orientation were brushed aside and the United States imposed itself as the only global power with its own project and practice of unipolarism, the new world order and global planetary domination.
Notwithstanding the process of globalization, the world system is torn along hostile class and social lines. The contemporary transnational and corporate capitalism, anxious to multiply its profits, is charged with numerous contradictions and conflicts. Seeking global domination, the forces of the unbridled mega-capital are trying to reshape not only the economic but also the military and political map of the world. It is in this context that we should view the metamorphosis of the NATO
from a defensive to an offensive alliance, and the resurrection of the “gunboat diplomacy” at the end of the 20th century. A new lease on life is being given to Clausewitz’s description of the war as “politics being conducted by other means~~ and to geopolitical projects and conflicts.
The task of global sociology, i.e. the sociology of international relations is to recognize behind the silhouettes and masks on the political scene, within the existing social and historical processes, the essence of their tendencies and actors, to reveal the direction and sense of their struggle. Sociology of international relations, in that sense, must help us abandon the illusion of a one-dimensional and harmonious perception of the ~orld and to explain scientifically the current dynamics of international relations.
 
 

1. MONDLALISM, GLOBALIZATION AND NEOIMPERIALISM:
TRENDS AND ACTORS

Mondialization or globalization is the process of interdependence of contemporary states within the world system. Mondialization is not a new world phcnotnenon. Interaction of the societies is as old as the history of mankind, although its mechanisms and effects differed in different epochs. There is an essential difference between interaction among societies of the old precapitalist times and those in the process of mondialization, which had arrived with capitalism or the contemporary global world society.
There are three distinct phases in the expansion and mondialization of capitalism:
1. the phase of mercantile and liberal capitalism (1500- 1800);
   2.  the phase of industrial capitalism, including monopoly and state capitalism
            (1800-1950);
   3 . the phase of mondialized capitalism (from 1950 onwards).
Neomarxist Samir Amin, in his study Defense from Mondialization, shows that imperialism is not just one single phase but a permanent feature of capitalism (1) which manifests itself differently. Its basic nature is revealed in its desire to expand and to dominate and subjugate other peoples. Samir Amin showed how the inequitable exchange of labor between North and South, between the center and periphery, fosters unequal relationships of dependence and how mechanisms of imperialist mondialization are being established. This author is particularly interested in international economic relations in the era of contemporary global corporate capitalism. Under the neoliberal countenance of the contemporary capitalism, as seen in Reaganism and Thatcherism, he exposes its neoimperialist essence, i.e. the quest for the planetary dictatorship in the service of the transnational mega-capital.

In contrast to the order prevailing between 1950 and 1990 — that was characterized by co-existence of: (a) Euromodel of the welfare state (a kind of compromise between labor and capital), (b) national-liberation movements of modernization of the Third World, and (c) the Soviet model of socialism — the contemporary setting bears the brunt of erosion and implosion of all three models of society, and of aggressive expansion of unbridled mega-capital forces. Nowadays, we have a revolution of information and communication, of financial markets and information networks, as well as a recrudescence of imperialist ambitions of the most powerful states of the world center. This is seen notably in a specific connivance between the financial oligarchy and the forces of the military-industrial complex and the tycoons in the mass media industry. It is in the interests of these forces that the ideology of neoliberalism, globalism and neoimperial planetary domination was developed. It mirrors the aspiration of the oligopolists to dominate the economic, ecological and communication resources of the contemporary world, to exploit the world of labor and enrich themselves on surplus labor and extra profits. The United States is seeking to preserve international inequalities and extend its world hegemony. Through its ideologists, Zbignew Brzezinski and others, it advocates the concept of imperialist mondialization, i.e. a global domination of the world.
The theory and ideology of globalism was developed by Zbignew Brzezinski in his works Between Two Epochs (1970) and The Grand Chessboard (1997). In these and his other works, this “Richelieu of transnational capitalism”, as he is called, lays out his theory of a technotronic society, of the US as the “global disseminator of the technotronic revolution” in the world. According to Brzezinski, the world has entered the stage of globalism which will be the ideology of the 21st century.

Globalism takes man as citizen of the Earth, member of one single world community.(2) This cosmopolitan vision of globalism runs against nation-states sovereignties. In this sense, globalism is an expression of the interests of the transnational corporations and the United States which is yearning to become a leader in the global unification of the world.
Globalization, as the developmental mega-trend, expresses the dialectical process of planetary expansion of certain activities and forms of association which cover the entire world, their mutual liaison and dependence. In the contemporary world society, as the expression of scientific and technological development and international division of labor, internationalization of numerous activities and sectors of the society — technology, economy, communication, politics, culture, ecology
has been carried out. Increasingly, reference is being made to the phenomenon of global changes which cannot be successfully resolved within the boundaries of one single country, state or nation, but call for their solution at the regional or planetary level. Globalization. as a complex process, covers different domains and has different dimensions. One may speak of such dimensions of globalization as, for example, technological, economic, political, informative, or cultural globalization. Globalization as a process and dialectical social relationship can also be analyzed through an interaction of the system of nation-states, world capitalist economy, international division of labor, world military order and cultural and communicational globalization. (3) Globalization itself, as an expression of scientific and technological progress, is not a negative phenomenon, especially when its effects on society development do not deny the identity of national and cultural collectivitics, but synthesize them dialectically, unify and democratically integrate them. It should, however, be pointed out that monopoly forces can use globalization for neoimperialist purposes of domination and subjugation of peoples, and against mankind. (4) There is a great deal of criticism on the part of neomarxists and postmarxists against the negative effects of the process of mondialization and globalization. (5)
 
 

2. GENESIS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND THE POSITION OF THE
         NATION-STATES

All attempts by the UN, following World War II, to establish new and just international economic relationships have unfortunately failed because they were sabotaged by the rich. The last such attempt was seen in the activity of the well-known Brandt’s Commission for the South. In its report the Commision pointed out the depth of the chasm separating the North from the South and the necessity of building a just international order, which would be more solidary and responsible for the development of the developing and underdeveloped countries in the world. (6) With the implosion of socialism, abolition of a bipolar balance of forces in the world in 1989, and the marginalization of the non-aligned movement, it was clear that the last barriers against uncontrolled expansion and against an aggressive onslaught of the megacapital forces had fallen down. George Bush in 1989 at the University of Texas, expressed this globalizing tendency as the building of a new world order. Of course, he meant an order that would serve the rich and the powerful: world financial oligarchy, transnational corporations and the military-industrial complex.
Instead of the announced development in the direction of the building of a multipolar world, we are now faced with the process of unipolarity. Namely, the US have instrumentalized and privatized numerous institutions of the UN (the World Bank, the IMF, Security Council, the Hague Tribunal). They retained the NATO structure to serve as the military whip to enforce discipline and obedience in the world. This alliance, which at first was formed as a defensive union of Western countries, has now turned into an aggressive organization serving American goals in the building of the new world order. Following the pulling down of the Berlin Wall and the disbandment of the Warsaw Treaty, the NATO lost its original meaning and has turned into the untamed shrew, the iron fist of the American policy for reshaping the world in the service of cosmopolitan capitalism. The forces of the NATO are today in function of the theory and practice of limited sovereignty which are championed by the masters of the new world order, of the US as the world policeman leading the struggle against freedom and independence of the nation-states.

As Noam Chomsky has shown in his studies What Uncle Sam Really Wants? (1992) and World Orders —Old and New (1994) (7), the US are making use of their international technological preponderance to continue robbing the world and imposing planetary dictatorship in the interests of a handful of the richest countries and their big bourgeoisie. For this reason all those countries, institutions, movements, organizations and individuals in the world who want independence, freedom and justice are their targets. This is why an assault upon the European model of social development and institutions of a welfare state, independent governments and national liberation movements, trade unions and leftwing parties is being made. In other words, under attack are all institutions and organizations which are in favor of the world of labor and defense of national sovereignty and in opposition to the US imperial hegemony.
Chomsky in his analysis reveals various mechanisms of action of the “forces of the new world order” in numerous countries of the world, particularly in Latin America, Asia and Africa, designed to bring down independent governments and install vassal satellite regimes. He shows how Monroe’s doctrine of “America to the Americans”, proclaimed in 1823, has cynically, at the end of the 20th century, transformed itself into the right of the Americans to intervene everywhere and for everything in the world. Chomsky ended his studies with a strong condemnation of the masters of the new world movement but also with the finding that this is basically not a new but the old order clothed in a new garb.
That the conception and practice of the foreign policy is more or less an expression of the logic of the domestic policy of a country, is best shown by the study of Zbignew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (1997). Namely, the uncontrolled forces of the world mega-capital want to thrust themselves upon the world not only through the neoliberal philosophy of economic development but also through new international relations and by redrawing the political map of the world. In this study Brzezinski unflinchingly presents and reveals the ambitious and aggressive plans of the US to become the global leader in the 21st century who will govern the world, determine the position and role of others, regional and local actors alike. Skillfully betting on the card of ethnic and religious conflicts in the “ethnic cocktail” areas, i.e. in the states having nationally mixed populations, the United States provoke and manage the crises and conflicts, using them for their own geostrategical aims. Their geostrategical goal is obviously to keep Europe in a checkmate position and during the 21st century to conquer Russia and Euro-asia. In this context of geostrategical games, the Balkans is the gateway for the further penetration of the NATO to the East. (8)
The aggressive neoimperialism has a longer history than is customarily claimed. Namely, the US, immediately after the setting up of the United Nations Organization, simultaneously began forming a new transnational military power structure of NATO in 1949. In his study, Tomorrow’s Equilibrium (1957), Robert Strauss Huppe elaborated a concept of the US strategic domination in the world. According to him, the most important question for the US is the unification of the globe under their leadership. The leader in that global unification should be the United States their military might being the first and irreplaceable attribute of that sort of leadership.(9) The consummated theoretical conception of transnational imperialism and the US struggle for a global domination in the 21St century is contained in Brzezinski’s study, The Grand Chesshoard (1997). In this study he openly states that the old-fashioned United Nations Organization should be supplanted by a newly formed Security Council, expressing the new structure of power.
Neomarxjst Samir Amin, in his study Defense from Mondialization (1998) and in Capitalism, Imperialism, Mondialization (1998), analyzes relationship between the process of the development of capitalism, mondtaltzation and imperialism through history to the present time. His analysis shows how — through a system of inequitable exchange of labor and unfair distribution of social power — the processes of globalization are instrumentalized for imperialist purposes by the forces of big capital and particularly by the US.
Samir Amin reveals that the US performs its neoimperialist role through five monopolies:
 I. monopoly in the sphere of new technologies;
2. control over world finances;
3. control of natural resources;
4. monopoly in the UN and its principal institutions (the IMF, the World Bank);
5. monopoly of military power. (10)
Notwithstanding the new world order being legitimized by a mythical form of free market, democracy, open society and human rights, its socio-economic being is the expression of the interests of the forces of megacapital, transnational corporations, financial oligarchy and the forces of the military-industrial complex.
The new world order’s strategical mechanisms of the enforcement of its will are:
1. the imposition of the neoliberal model of development and transition, in the form of
        dependent modernization and neocolonialism;
2. the process of globalization which annuls state sovereignty of the nation-states;
3. the forms of cultural imperialism (by Westernization of the world as its
        modernization);
4. the instigation of internal conflicts (ethnic and religious particularisms) and
        instability, and managing and using them for its own geostrategical interests;
5. the direct military intervention to bring down legal democratic regimes and to install
        satellite elites which will promote and serve its imperialist interests.
In this case war really is seen just as Clausewitz once saw it, as the “continuation of a policy by other means".
In the face of such a structure and distribution of social and political power at the end of the century, we may wonder where the mankind is going to? Analysts foresee four possible scenarios for the development of future international relations:
I.      unipolarism — i.e. planetary dictatorship by the new world order and the United
        States;
2. return to bipolarism;
3. geopolitical chaos and the third world war;
4. multipolarism -- a democratic polycentric structure of relationships.
Unfortunately, although the last mentioned option is optimal and just for the development of equitable international relations, it is today being suppressed by aggressive neoimperialism of the forces of the new world order and the aspiration of the US to effect a global domination. Such a world order (new/old) is not an international democratic order, since it is being built on diktat of the transnational mega-capital and is in the interests of the developed states of the “world center”. It serves a rich minority and upholds an unfair redistribution of power among states, instead of being democratically constituted on a free association of peoples and states and through a free alliance of the processes of democracy and integration in the world. (11) Hence, it is today necessary to develop a broad democratic anti-imperialist world movement capable of preventing the birth of a system of planetary dictatorship, i.e. neofascism, and at the same time being able to clear the way to an authentic alternative in the development of mankind as the community of equal peoples and nations.

The current position of nation-states is determined by a number of internal and external factors, among which the placement in the international division of labor and geopolitical position prevail. It should be pointed out, however, that at the end of the 20th century the sovereignty of nation-states is being assailed both from outside and from inside. From outside, influenced by globalization and its protagonists a deterritorialization of sovereignty is taking place (it is divided up and transferred to supranational and transnational regional and international organizations and institutions). From inside, it is disintegrated through the destructive action of the forces of tribal particularism (separatism by ethnic and religious movements) in pursuit of autonomy and secession. In this connection Christopher Lasch, in his study The Revolt by the Elites: And Betrayal of Democracy (1995), writes: “The weakening of the nation-states is immanent to both of these phenomena — movement towards unification and an apparently contradictry movement towards fragmentation. The state can no longer prevent ethnic conflicts nor, on the other hand, can stop the forces leading to globalization. Ideological nationalism is attacked from both sides: from the partisans of ethnic and racial particularism, and also from those who claim that the only hope for peace is in the internationalization of everything, from weights and measures to artistic imagination.”(12) The forces of the new world order are instrumentalizing, for their geostrategical needs and goals, both of these two processes — globalization as well as internal ethnic and religious conflicts — in order to destroy the sovereignty of the small and independent states and to subject them to their neoimperialist interests. In such situation and exposed to numerous pressures a number of these countries sees salvation in regional integrations which mitigate these conflicts both from outside and inside.
 

3. POSSIBLE WAYS OF RECOVERY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA AND THE
        FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA AND THE STRATEGY OF THEIR
        DEVELOPMENT IN TERMS OF GLOBALIZATION

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, since its inception in 1992, has been subjected to political pressures and media demonization, and since May 1992, also to a sui generis economic war, waged through the sanctions.
These various outside pressures and forms of destruction of our country culminated in the open military aggression by the NATO on March 24, 1999. The economic sanctions and the war have devastated the Republic of Serbia’s economy, particularly some of its vital branches (industry, petro-chemical industry, communications and others).
For the renewal and development of the Republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia it is necessary to build a new platform of democratic and mass mobilization of the population and of the most rational use of all the resources and factors of development, in order to initiate the economic recovery for reaching the treshold of normalization. That is a precondition for the opening of a new cycle of their development and reintegration into European economic activities.
In that sense it is necessary to meet the following prerequisites:
1.democratic national unity of the population and its mass mobilization for the
   reconstruction of the country devastated by the war;
   2. redefinition of the development strategy, centered upon a radical reform of the
    economic and political system of society, relying on small and medium size enterprises, and on an active role of the state, as well as on widening and deepening of the process of democratization (through reaffirmation of the institutes of the authentic functional federalism, participative democracy, local and regional self-government);
3. the elaboration of a new demographic policy as the key segment of a national program and development policy of the Republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia;
4. promotion of a program of struggle for the unity of the Serbian people’s cultural space and
    the preservation of their national and cultural identity, irrespective of the current political
    geography, with a radical opening towards the Serbian diaspora and the engagement of its
    human and financial resources for the development of the Republic of Serbia and the
    Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the affirmation of our national interests in the world;
5. redefinition of the science and human resources policies at home, through affirmation of
    the principle of positive selection, larger allocation of means into scientific and
    developmental research; in other words, the genuine reaffirmation in practice of the
    science and human resources as a key leverage of the further development of our society
    and democratic circulation and changing of the elites;
6. implementation of a program of material and spiritual recovery of the country, its further development and active preservation of its sovereignty in contemporary conditions of globalization and ethnic conflicts require that the Republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia elaborate a new project of association to the Balkans and European integration processes as the only way to carry out simultaneously the mitigation and pacification of the growing ethnic and religious conflicts in the Balkans and to open a room for the reform and modernization of the country’s potentials and their strategical formation in accordance with the demands of modern society.

Clearly, the above formulated goals for the revival and development of the Republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia do not have an equal weight and significance.
Yet, it is certain that for stepping out of the present situation, it is necessary to make a radical turnabout in the “foreign policy” of the economic development of the country, which will lead to the removal of the sanctions and the country’s return to international institutions, as well as its reapproachment to regional and European integration processes. It is a prerequisite for the institutions such as the IMF, the World and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, within the framework of the program of renewal and reintegration of the Balkans, through a new “Marshall Plan”, to help the country’s reconstruction. Without it, its own poverty and hopelessness will swirl the country down into the growing social contradictions and conflicts with uncertain repercussions on our internal development, as well into numerous problems of the preservation of our own sovereignty and integrity.

For this reason, it seems that now, at the very start, it is necessary to define precisely what I call the key prerequisite and guideline on program for the reconstruction and development of our country.
Today, regarding the question of regionalization, there are four approaches relative to the area of the Balkans and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia:
1. the American Initiative for Cooperation in SouthEastern Europe (SECI);
2. the initiative of the European Union — a regional approach;
3. regional integration through the so-called Pan-Slavic Community;
4. the autonomous initiative of the Balkan countries on regionalization.
Certainly that these four different projects of regionalization and reintegration of the Balkans have different implications for the development of the Balkan countries, for national and regional sovereignty of the area of the Balkans. Undoubtedly the best development alternative is the building of an autonomous initiative of the Balkan countries for good-neighboriness and cooperation, as a vehicle for inclusion into the processes of the European Union’s integration. However, in politics, one must rely on reality and not on ideal projects, often remote from actual interests and relations in the world. It seems, therefore, that it is now the last minute for our country to make a radical step towards the European Union if it has a bent for accelerated development.
While respecting the peculiarities of the Balkan paradigm of development (13), with the underlying thesis on “organic communities”, and the Pan-Slavic spiritual community, which must be appraised because of our cultural and national identity; and taking a critical view of the American initiative SECI, that beholds the Balkans instrumentally from the standpoint of globalization, it is indispensable for the Balkan peoples and states to enact mutual cooperation and integrate themselves into the European Union and, as much as is possible, build in this context their own autonomous regional concept of development. (14)

Translated by Boško Milosavljevic.
 

--------------
(1) S. Amin, La Défense contre Ia Mondialisation (Defense from Mondialization), Paris,
     1998. p. 157.

(2) S. Avramov, Trilateralna komisija — svetska vlada lii svetska tiranija? (Trilateral
     Commission — a World Government or a World Tyranny’?), Veternik, 1998, p. 64.

(3)  A. Giddens, Posledica modernosti (The Consequences of Modernity), Belgrade: “Filip
      Vitnjk”, 1998, pp. 74-81.

(4) Social analysts of our time have contradictory views on the phenomenon of globalization. Thus, for example, Giuseppe Boffa, in his study The Last Illusion the West and the Victory over Communism, writes critically about globalization between the myth and the reality. He says that “globalization is unceasing since the proliferation of information techniques or of modem instruments of communication cannot and should not be halted, so more than one possible policy is resulting from that. All will depend on the choices which people, governments, social movements and parties will know how to follow. This is today a big stake in of the political struggle.’ He also points out the accompanying negative effects of the processes of globalization and neoliberal development in the world, including a frightful growth of unemployment, social inequalities and internationalization of crime (the birth of “a real criminal economy in the world” and “growing globalization of financial capital”), renewal and upsurge of nationalism, but also the revamping up of geopolitical and geostrategic conflicts. See G. Boffa, Poslednja iIuzija (The Last Illusion), Niš: “Prosveta”, 1998, pp. 170-185.

(5) More on such criticisms can be seen in the studies by Samir Amin, La Défense contre Ia Mondialisation, Paris, 1998; Ernest Mandel, Trois Cents Ans de Capitalisme (Three Hundred Years of Capitalism), Paris, 1998, and Pierre Bourdier, La Misère du Monde (Misery of the World), Paris, 1992.

(6) Willy Brandt and als., Sjever i Jug — program opstanka (North and South — a
     Programme of Survival), Zagreb Globus, 1982, p 36.

(7) Noam Chomsky, Šta to (u stvari) ho?e Amerika? (What Uncle Sam Really Wants?),
     Belgrade: Institute of Political Studies, 1994, and Svetski poredak — stari i novi (World
     Orders Old and New), Belgrade: SKC, 1996.

(8) Z. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard — American Primacy and Its Geostrategic
     Imperatives, Washington, D. C., 1997.

(9) Milan V. Petkovic, Sila I mo? u medunarodnim odnosima (Force and Power in
     International Relations), Belgrade: “Kalekom”, 1997, pp. 76-77.

(10) S. Amin, “Capitalisme, imperialisme, mondialisation”, Le manifeste communiste — 150
        ans après, Paris: Rencontre lnternationale, Contributions publiées — 2eme dossier 1998,
       p. 59.

(11) Jelica Štambuk, “Izmedu diplomatije i sile” (Between Diplomacy and Force), Smisao,
       No. 6, 1999, pp. 39-41.

(12) Christopher Lasch, Pobuna elitai i  izdaja demokratjje (The Revolt of the Elites and the
       Betrayal of Democracy), Novi Sad: ‘Svetovi”, 1996. p. 49.

(13) Blagoje Babic, Prelaz u tranziciju (The Passage to Transition), Belgrade: “Prometej’,
       1996, p. 8.

(14) The author, Branislava Alendar, may have been right when she claimed that the road to Europe through the Balkans might be very long and uncertain and that “this speed will above depend on the question of the maturity of the nation and its capacity for cooperation and integration, a capacity that will be above all determined in the Balkans. Once they have affirmed themselves in the Balkans, their way to Europe will be open...” See Branislava Alendar, “Put za Evropu preko Balkana može dugo da traje” (Road to Europe through the Balkans might last long), Balkan ‘97, Belgrade: Evropski pokret u Srbiji, 1997, p. 153.



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