WHO’S IN CHARGE?
Who’s in charge of this planet, anyway?
Watching the news, attending civic meetings, noting the state of schools and hospitals in decay, or reading the ticker tape of the ever-moving stock markets, you, like me, may feel confounded. It’s hard to know who—if anyone—is pulling the strings as events whiz by at breakneck pace.
Some would say it’s the United States of America itself—the world’s current superpower. U.S. military, economic, and political power have for many years been driving a host of changes on this planet, including dramatic shifts in international alliances and institutions. Historically, the United States has played a major role in creating the multilateral system, while nowadays it is more inclined to brazenly act on its own.
Some say it’s the Group of Eight, often referred to as the G-8: the leaders of the eight richest countries in the world who get together every six months or so and think about coordinating their economic plans. But lately, the economy has been so screwy, that it seems they don’t know how to fix it. And with divisions in their ranks over the war on Iraq, this group of global leaders may be sidelined for the time being.
Many observers would suggest a global power shift is emerging, with the European Union (EU) very deliberately forging an economic and political federation to counter U.S. hegemony. In part, the Bush administration’s unilateral warmongering may be just as deliberately intending to disrupt such European unity. China and India, too, along with other Third World allies, have been accumulating political, economic, and military clout with which to challenge U.S. power. And some predict a new era of Latin American cooperation, marked by popular labor-friendly reformist governments in Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, and potentially Bolivia consolidating their interests and wealth.
Plenty of analysts might advise us to “Follow the money!” to get to the bottom of this, pointing to the central bankers of the U.S., German, and Japanese governments, whose dollars and Euros and yen are considered the only precious currencies in the world. A nation’s economy supposedly benefits from gaining these “hard currencies,” as they are called, through exports, because they, more than other currencies, may be readily reinvested in the global economy.
Quite possibly, it’s Citigroup and a handful of other private banking corporations whose executives sit in powerful positions within the G-8 governments, and whose computers charge rent as all data entriescross their screens. So far, they’ve managed to consolidate their financial empire into ever-greater pyramid schemes, but these are notoriously unsustainable without constantly issuing new credit. And sooner or later, credit bubbles tend to burst.
Lots of people would indicate it’s the Fortune 500 companies, which have been merging and acquiring each other and political power such that they dominate the international marketplace and financial flows worldwide. When the transnational conglomerates can’t bargain or buy their way past government regulations, they use their influence to deploy international economic organizations—particularly the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF)—as agencies for commercial promotion.
Some say that the WTO controls the global economy on behalf of the corporations. Founded in 1994, the WTO inherited the trade rules of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its mandate to encourage commerce by lowering tariffs—the duties charged at the border on imports—and limiting how governments regulate food safety and other “nontariff barriers” to trade. The WTO added a bunch of new rules, too, freeing up the trading companies to do more international business with less interference from national governments.
Others might add that the World Bank and IMF support this private business agenda by lending funds contributed by the taxpayers of the industrialized countries to subsidize commercial enterprise. The World Bank finances the building of dams and harbors and roads needed to extract the natural resources of developing countries. Once extracted, these resources are sold to the mining, timber, shipping, and financial sectors that are increasingly made up of global companies. The IMF makes short-term loans to cover governments’ cash flow problems. These loans are usually offered on the condition that the troubled government invests in export development instead of education, health, and human development, so as to ensure cash will flow in to pay off the loan. As a result, the business climate may improve—ripening the cherry for picking by foreign corporations—but local communities are left with the bill while the World Bank and IMF take control of their government’s purse strings, seemingly forever.
Very few think the United Nations (UN) runs the world, although it demonstrated remarkable resistance in the Security Council to U.S. militancy against Iraq. Peace and human rights, food security, world health, child welfare, labor law, scientific and cultural and educational development, environmental protection, and so forth—all these are protected by international law as part of the UN’s mandate. But the UN serves largely a moral force, because, alas, these global social agreements tend to be violated, especially by the United States. Put simply, the UN lacks enforcement capacity. Perhaps more important, it lacks the financial capability to invest and create incentives directed toward these and other goals for a more equitable future.
Many believe it’s still national governments that make international decisions. While individual nation-states do have a voice and voting power in the existing framework of global governance, it’s no secret that the World Bank and IMF have voting schemes weighted according to the financial contributions of the participating governments—so the poorer nations have virtually no say at all! And even though the WTO and all the UN treaties are set up according to a one nation-one vote scheme—except that many European nations now vote together as the EU—a few states with bigger economies tend to bully the others. Another glaring shortcoming is that indigenous peoples’ governments are excluded from the definition of nation-states under the current multilateral system.
Whoever is running this planet, more and more people seem to agree that the rulers are not doing a very good job. The harsh reality faced by billions of people on this planet is one of dire poverty, and the past decade of modern globalization has intensified, not rectified, the inequities. During this time, the number of billionaires nearly tripled as the gap between the income of top corporate executives and average workers grew by a factor of ten—from 42:1 to 419:1. The miseries of war, infant mortality, childhood labor, inadequate food and water, poor sanitation, inadequate health care, and political oppression are increasingly the lot of most people on Earth.
Everywhere we turn, there is instability, insecurity, and uncertainty. Even middle-class Americans feel vulnerable and wonder what it will take to regain control over their lives, families, and communities. The September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington left the entire world searching to understand the “roots of violence,” shredding capitalist complacency after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Organized groups frustrated with real and perceived injustices, inequities, and discrimination are lashing out against other citizens—with al-Qaeda at one extreme and the Bush administration at another. As a new government formed in Afghanistan, tribal groups there struggled to find an acceptable balance of power, and yet the United States continues to meddle in their internal affairs and enlarge the scope of its campaign against terrorism and the “axis of evil.” Inside the United States, the new USA PATRIOT Act rescinds a host of basic civil rights and enables the government to label “antiglobalization” organizations as “terrorist.” And when President Bush finally attacked Iraq without UN support, the violence not only led to the killing and maiming of thousands of civilians and soldiers, it castrated the basic authority and relevance of the UN’s multilateral mission.
At the same time, there is a growing debate among human rights groups and constitutional scholars about these matters, a new interest in Islamic culture, strengthened support for peace in the Middle East, greater clarity about the oil trade, and an increased understanding of U.S. responsibility to the international community. Peace rallies have been organized on every continent against the war on Iraq, and the Internet-assisted global campaign to wage peace has even prompted one of the original founders of the UN, Robert Muller, to exclaim with a tear in his eye: “Never before in the history of the world has there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue and conversation about the very legitimacy of war.”
All over the world, there is a much greater awareness of our collective interdependence, as well as the mechanics of global governance. In response to the expanding war on terror, public education campaigns regarding the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and UN are scrutinizing not just the economic roots of violence, but also the elements of democratic reconstruction and the differences between unilateral and multilateral peacekeeping and warmongering. Everyone is asking, How can we go about altering the balance of power on Earth justly?
There are at least three very distinct responses to this question. One, a traditional revolutionary response, asserts that those who are raking in billions of dollars from the unjust system will continue to be unwilling to improve their habits without being forced to through insurgency and direct confrontation. A second response pursues evolutionary adaptation, asserting that a series of modest reforms add up to real change. A third response asserts that a major nonviolent political shift is possible by coordinating well-organized movements in every country that would unite to abolish the existing institutions and re-create a decentralized system of democratic governance spanning the planet. Large segments of civil society can be found arguing for each of these views.
As the twenty-first century unfolds, we are likely to see more violence as well as political upheaval and incremental reform—and hopefully a rather different world than the one we now know. We can guess that it will turn out to be less than ideal, but it seems destined to be more responsive to the public. Together, the diverse strands of global civil society tend to agree that we must strive to bring about a more just and democratic approach to governance at every level, global to local, but perhaps most of all at the national level.
This is our project.