Bollettino

We�ve just finished a review of Niall Ferguson�s Empire for the National Post.
Ferguson is a fascinating historian. We took a few potshots at him in the review, since we don�t view being merely laudatory as an interesting response to a book this good. One of the things the book did remind us of was that the first wave of globalisation, which gained force in the latter half of the 19th century, was broken by the Conservatives, not be anti-globalizing leftists. Joseph Chamberlain devised a tariff happy Conservative-Unionist platform that lost to the Liberals in the Post Boer period, but that ultimately pointed British policy in the direction of setting up cozy Empire trade barriers. Ferguson is no ideologue about this issue. He points out that the trade barriers probably cushioned Great Britain from the magnitude of slump that afflicted both Germany and the U.S.

We aren�t ideologues on this issue, either. We�d like to see labor and environmental groups internationalized on the lines of capital � so we want globalization to proceed on one level, at least. However, it is hard not to see that the fads of the moment � the boycott of French goods, the pressure to annul Saddam�s debt, etc. � are crystallizing into the traditional nationalist objection to globalization; and that that objection is always poisonous. The NYT has been running a series of little articles about the War views of various CEOs. The conventional wisdom is that the lack of War views stems from the internationalization of these CEO�s companies. Well, watch out for what you wish for. When the Battle in Seattle was shaping up, we were all for the anti-globalizing forces. But we were for them as a brake on the impoverishment of the American working class. We find it very worrisome that anti free trade rhetoric is now being appropriated by the right. In fact, the much vaunted re-building of Iraq, if it happens (and we have our doubts that Iraq will be rebuilt anytime soon, especially under Smilin� Jay Garner � rebuilding is notoriously hard to do in the midst of insurgency), might be a tipping point for the retreat from free trade, especially as the American government tries to game the rules to punish European companies for European politics.

Ronnie Lipschutz has a provocative essay on this topic which begins:

"At the beginning of the 21st century," the history books of the future may record,
"the United States made its bid for Imperium. The attacks of September 11, 2001
brought home to Washington, DC the very real risks of a largely self-regulating global
market system, including both the disaffection it generated and the openings it
provided to those disaffected. In the wake of September 11th, Washington has been
putting in place a new global system in which the United States is not only hegemonic
but also establishes rules that will bind all other countries. Within Imperium,
international law is unnecessary because there is no longer an international system or
global republic, and there are no sovereign territories. This essay is intended more as
a provocation than a systematic analysis of a process underway. It raises questions
about the policies, methods, and intentions of the United States and argues that the bid
for Imperium is connected with the processes of globalization and the vulnerabilities
that it has created. The self-disciplining structure of global neo-liberal
governmentality has failed and, to remedy this, the Bush Administration is seeking to
re-establish sovereignty abroad and, perhaps, a police state at home.�

We are far from a police state yet � but the thesis that the neo-liberalism of the nineties is under concerted attack by the Bush administration bears looking into. We were especially reminded of pre-1914 rhetoric by today�s meeting in St. Petersburg of the Coalition of the Unwilling. It doesn�t seem to occur to American commentators that France and Germany could accrue any advantages outside of the American sphere. It is as if America tacitly owned the world. This is evidently not true. While it is true that French investors, like investors world wide, have put a large bet on the U.S. economy, it is evidently a mature economy. The disadvantages for France in disobeying the dictates of the Bush-ites have been much publicized, but just the gaudiness of the use of force has the effect of making France, Germany and Russia that much more bound together. The idea of hostile trade blocs smells like the 1920s all over again.