Political and Economic Foundations in Global Studies 9781315717333, 9780765644220, 9780765644237

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Figures
Tables
Notes on Contributors
Editors and authors
Contributors
About This Book and Series
Outline of the Book
Special Features of This Innovative Series
Part One: Background, Theories, and Contexts
1. What Is Global Studies? A Political and Economic Perspective
Layers of Analysis
An Interdisciplinary Project
The Importance of Economic and Political
Global Studies at Work: Food Security
Organization of the
References and Further Research
2. Historical Foundations
Beyond the West
Consequences of Empire
A Revolutionary Age
World Wars and the End of Empire
A New World Order?
References and Further Reading
3. U.S. Globalism and the Present World Order
The End of History?
Washington Consensus?
Jihad vs. McWorld?
Countering American Hegemony
The European Project and Global Order
A Beijing Consensus?
References and Further Research
4. Key Concepts and Processes: Empire and Imperialism
The Evolution of “Empire”
The Critique of Imperialism
Postcolonial Imperialism
References and Further Research
5. Key Concepts and Processes: Development
Development
The Evolution of Market-Led Growth Models
Alternatives to Market-Led Growth
Alternative Policy Initiatives
Conclusion
References and Further Research
6. Key Concepts and Processes: Security
Realism and the Nation-State
Collective Security and the American Century
The Cold War
End of the Cold War and Challenges to Traditional Security
References and Further Research
7. Key Concepts and Processes: Sustainability
Environmental Sustainability
Civil Society and NGOs
Conclusion
References and Bibliography
8. Key Concepts and Processes: Governance
Possibilities for Coordination
International Organizations
Informal Arrangements and Governing Norms
Conclusion
References and Further Research
Part Two: Case Studies
9. Introduction to the Case Studies
10. Regional and Global Impacts of Post-Gaddafi Libya
Fallout from the Arab Spring
From Pariah to Partner
Lasting Tensions
The Arms Problem
Africa and the Tuareg Challenge
An Engine for Regional Unrest
Instability Beyond North Africa
The European Connection
Conclusion
Note
References and Further Research
11. The Anti-Apartheid Movement in the Western World: Segregation, Revolution, and the Creation of a Global Civil Society
Segregation in a Liberal Era
The African National Congress and Resistance to Apartheid
Globalizing the Struggle
Soweto and the Revival of the South African Revolution
The Success of the International Anti-Apartheid Movement
Conclusion
References and Further Research
12. The Treaty of Waitangi and the Waitangi Tribunal: Globalization and Decolonization in New Zealand
Changing Ideological Frameworks
Developing a Human Rights Regime
Past into Present
Conclusion
References and Further Research
13. The Causes and Consequences of International Migration: The View from Europe
Explaining International Migration
The Causes of International Migration and the Case of Postwar Europe
The Causes of International Migration in Europe Today
Winners and Losers: The Effects of Migration on Sending Countries
Winners and Losers: The Effects of Migration on European Countries
Conclusion
References and Further Research
14. Patterns of Fear: Hegemony, Globalization, and the U.S.–Japan Trade Conflict, 1971–1996
The Economic Miracle in Japan
The Rise of Japan as an Economic Rival
The Real Challenge from Japan
Conclusion
References and Further Research
15. Globalization and Transnational Capitalism
The U.S. Auto Industry
Apple’s Global Empire
The Globalization of Finance and the Role of Technology
Conclusion
References and Further Research
16. When Weak States Win: Providing Opportunities at the WTO
GATT and the DSM
Power Matters
The Evolution of GATT
The WTO and the DSM
How the DSM Works
New Evidence
Future Research
Conclusion
References and Further Research
17. Conclusion to the Case Studies
Index

Citation preview

Political and Economic Foundations in Global Studies Political and Economic Foundations in Global Studies provides an innovative introductory examination of the global forces shaping the world today, seen through political and economic lenses. Along with its companion, Social and Cultural Foundations in Global Studies, the book exposes students to the historical contours of, and the key concepts and processes that underlie, the interconnections among individuals, societies, organizations, and governments. As in the rest of Routledge’s Global Studies series, the Foundations books employ a two-­part strategy: conceptual underpinnings explored in the first part are enlivened by case studies in the second. Special features magnify the utility of the text: • • • •

Text boxes are employed to expand and emphasize specific material: they are used to open up the coverage to related topics or to call attention to especially critical material, such as historical milestones or key vocabulary. Resource boxes offer links that point readers to sources—mostly online—on the topics discussed and establish a rich archive of additional material for readers to draw on. At the same time, back-­of-chapter References and Further Research lists help students to trace the material used by authors or to follow more general leads relating to the topics covered in the chapters. Images highlight specific details of the case studies, helping to bring the subjects alive.

Michael R. Anderson is an Associate Professor of Instruction and Director of the International Relations and Global Studies program at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests focus on trans-­Pacific intellectual networks and diplomacy in the twentieth century. He also serves as Associate Editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of the History of Amer­ ican Foreign Policy, and he is a board member of the Austin chapter of the United Nations Association–USA. Stephanie S. Holmsten is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the International Relations and Global Studies program at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the election of women and ethnic minorities around the world. Her recent work appears in Com­ parative Political Studies. She is also interested in innovative teaching methods, particularly team-­based learning, which earned her the 2017 Harry Ransom Award for Teaching Excellence.

Foundations in Global Studies

Series Editor: Valerie Tomaselli, MTM Publishing

Recent Books in the Series Political and Economic Foundations in Global Studies Editors: Michael R. Anderson and Stephanie S. Holmsten Environment and Sustainability in a Globalizing World Editor: Andrea Nightingale, Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences Latin America in the World: An Introduction Editors: Daniel J. Greenberg and Antonia Garcia-­Rodriguez, Pace University Social and Cultural Foundations in Global Studies Authors: Eve Stoddard and John Collins, St. Lawrence University East Asia in the World: An Introduction Editor: Anne Prescott, Five College Center for East Asian Studies at Smith College The Middle East in the World: An Introduction Editor: Lucia Volk, San Francisco State University South Asia in the World: An Introduction Editor: Susan Snow Wadley, Syracuse University

Political and Economic Foundations in Global Studies Edited by Michael R. Anderson and Stephanie S. Holmsten

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Selection and editorial matter, Michael R. Anderson and Stephanie S. Holmsten; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Michael R. Anderson and Stephanie S. Holmsten to be identified as the authors of the editorial matter, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data Names: Anderson, Michael R., editor. | Holmsten, Stephanie S., editor. Title: Political and economic foundations in global studies / edited by Michael R. Anderson and Stephanie S. Holmsten. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Foundations in global studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018056642 (print) | LCCN 2019005056 (ebook) | ISBN 9781315717333 (E-book) | ISBN 9780765644220 (hbk) | ISBN 9780765644237 (pbk) | ISBN 9781315717333 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Globalization–Political aspects. | Globalization–Economic aspects. | World politics–21st century. | International economic relations. Classification: LCC JZ1318 (ebook) | LCC JZ1318 .P638 2019 (print) | DDC 327–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056642 ISBN: 978-0-765-64422-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-765-64423-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-71733-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents

List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors About This Book and Series

vii viii ix

Part One: Background, Theories, and Contexts

1

  1. What Is Global Studies? A Political and Economic Perspective

3

M i c hael R . A nders o n and S tephanie S . H o lmsten

  2. Historical Foundations

15

M i c hael R . A nders o n

  3. U.S. Globalism and the Present World Order

27

M i c hael R . A nders o n

  4. Key Concepts and Processes: Empire and Imperialism

41

M i c hael R . A nders o n

  5. Key Concepts and Processes: Development

50

S tephanie S . H o lmsten

  6. Key Concepts and Processes: Security

67

M i c hael R . A nders o n and S tephanie S . H o lmsten

  7. Key Concepts and Processes: Sustainability

83

S tephanie S . H o lmsten

  8. Key Concepts and Processes: Governance S tephanie S . H o lmsten

97

vi   contents

Part Two: Case Studies

115

  9. Introduction to the Case Studies

117

MICHAEL R. ANDERSON

10. Regional and Global Impacts of Post-­Gaddafi Libya

120

B rand o n G entr y

11. The Anti-­Apartheid Movement in the Western World: Segregation, Revolution, and the Creation of a Global Civil Society

133

R . J o seph P arr o tt

12. The Treaty of Waitangi and the Waitangi Tribunal: Globalization and Decolonization in New Zealand

144

S ean K illen

13. The Causes and Consequences of International Migration: The View from Europe

154

J o hn D . G raeber

14. Patterns of Fear: Hegemony, Globalization, and the U.S.–Japan Trade Conflict, 1971–1996

170

J o hn T a y l o r V urpillat

15. Globalization and Transnational Capitalism

183

J err y H arris

16. When Weak States Win: Providing Opportunities at the WTO

193

S tephanie S . H o lmsten

17. Conclusion to the Case Studies

207

MICHAEL R. ANDERSON

Index

209

Illustrations

Figures 10.1 Rally in Benghazi in Support of the Protests in Libya in February 2011 10.2 Map of the Sahel and Northern Africa 11.1 ANC Leader Oliver Tambo Meets with Prime Minister Dries van Agt of the Netherlands 12.1 The Ceremonial Meeting House on the Grounds Commemorating the Centenary of the Signing of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi 13.1 Refugees from the Wars in Syria and Iraq Arriving from Turkey on the Greek Island of Lesbos in 2015 14.1 A Shipbuilding Factory of Mitsubishi 15.1 An Electronics Factory in Shenzhen, China, in 2005 16.1 Bales of Cotton Lined up in a Cotton Field in Brooks County, Georgia

121 127 136 145 156 172 188 197

Tables 15.1 15.2 16.1 16.2 16.3

Selected Auto Corporations (TNI), 2004–2016 Apple’s Global Supply Chain: Where the iPhone is Made (as of 2014) Dispute Cases by Region (January 1995–2018) Dispute Cases by Income Level (January 1995–2018) Disputes Initiated by Developing Countries as of May 2015

185 186 202 202 203

Contributors

Editors and authors Michael R. Anderson (editor and author) is an associate professor of instruction and Director of the International Relations and Global Studies program at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests focus on trans-­Pacific intellectual networks and diplomacy in the twentieth century. He also serves as Associate Editor of the Oxford Research Encyclope­ dia of the History of Amer­ican Foreign Policy, and he is a board member of the Austin chapter of the United Nations Association–USA. Stephanie S. Holmsten (editor and author) is an assistant professor of instruction in the International Relations and Global Studies program at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the election of women and ethnic minorities around the world. Her recent work appears in Comparative Political Studies. She is also interested in innovative teaching methods, particularly team-­based learning, which earned her the 2017 Harry Ransom Award for Teaching Excellence.

Contributors Brandon Gentry has served as an international relations and security analyst specializing in Middle East affairs, with over a decade of experience in the public and private sectors. John D. Graeber is an assistant professor of political science at High Point University in North Carolina. His research focuses on the politics of immigration and citizenship in Europe and he has published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Jerry Harris serves as National Secretary of the Global Studies Association of North America and on the board of Taylor & Francis’s journal Globalizations. He is author, among other works, of The Dialectics of Globalization: Economic and Political Conflict in a Trans­ national World (Cambridge Scholars, 2008). His most recent book Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy was published by Clarity Press in 2016. Sean Killen is a PhD candidate in the Department of History, University of Texas at Austin. His research interests focus on South Asian intellectual and legal networks and their connections to British imperialism and international organizations in the early and mid-­twentieth century. R. Joseph Parrott is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Ohio State University. His work focuses on Amer­ican diplomatic history and European decolonization, especially in Africa. His article “A Luta Continua: Radical Filmmaking, Pan-­African Liberation, and Communal Empowerment” was published in Race and Class. John Taylor Vurpillat is an adjunct faculty member at Central Texas College. His research interests focus on diplomatic relations related to international monetary policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

About This Book and Series

Political and Economic Foundations in Global Studies provides an innovative introductory examination of the global forces shaping the world today, seen particularly through political and economic lenses. Along with its companion, Social and Cultural Foundations in Global Studies, the book is meant to expose students to the historical contours of, and the key concepts and processes that underlie, the interconnections among individuals, societies, organizations, and governments. As in the rest of Routledge’s Global Studies series, the Foundations books employ a straightforward two-­part strategy: conceptual and theoretical underpinnings explored in the first part are enlivened by case studies in the second part. The rationale is simple: explore theory and then see it in action.

Outline of the Book Part One: Background, Theories, and Contexts opens with an investigation of the political and economic perspectives in global studies, exploring it as an interdisciplinary mode of inquiry, employing methodologies from history, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, and geography, along with regional area studies. It also describes the layers of analysis—that of the nation-­state, international organizations, and individuals—as the core objects of study targeted by global studies scholars. This introductory chapter is followed by an exploration of the roots of today’s global political and economic order, particularly as it relates to the allocation of power and resources. Chapter 3 brings the narrative up to date, investigating the contemporary context, with a particular focus on the critical role of the United States in shaping the ideas and institutions associated with today’s political and economic climate. Part One of this volume concludes with five chapters on concepts and processes that are critical in understanding the political and economic context of global studies—empire and imperialism; development; security; sustainability; and governance. Throughout Part One, the intertwining among disciplines is emphasized, as is the fact that the political and economic perspectives used to explore global phenomena cannot be completely disconnected from social and cultural lenses—a caution also noted in the companion volume. In fact, the factors determining social and cultural relations influence the distribution and allocation of political and economic strength in ways hard to disentangle—and vice versa. The case studies in Part Two also explore this interweaving. Just as they illustrate the conceptual underpinnings covered in Part One, they reflect the multidisciplinary approach that characterizes global studies and illustrate how wide is the range of political and economic phenomena to which these methodologies can be applied. The list of case studies, all high-­interest topics that resonate with today’s readers, includes such subjects as the international context of the anti-­apartheid movement in South Africa; how the position of the Māori in contemporary New Zealand has helped, among other things, to shape contemporary ideas about human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples; and the transnational outflow of immigrants from North

x   About This Book and Series

Africa and the Middle East and their effects on Europe. As a set, the case studies aim to illuminate the ways different aspects of political and economic analysis are employed in global studies. Given their historical and geographical range, as well as their interdisciplinary scope, the case studies will help readers understand how global and local forces have come to shape the contemporary world.

Special Features of This Innovative Series Several tools are used throughout the book—and the series—that augment coverage: • •

• •

Text boxes are employed to expand and emphasize specific material: they are used to open up the coverage to related topics or to call attention to especially critical material, such as historical milestones or key vocabulary. Resource boxes, set in a grey background, offer links that point readers to sources—mostly online—on the topics discussed. The links, which are live in the ebook version, include connections to timely data, reports on recent events, official sites, local and country-­based media, and visual material. Taken together, they establish a rich archive of additional material for readers to draw on. The URLs included are known to be current as of January 1, 2018, and in the case of expired URLs, enough information has been provided for the reader to locate the same, or similarly useful, resources. At the same time, back-­of-chapter References and Further Research lists help students to trace the material used by authors or to follow more general leads relating to the topics covered in the chapters. Images highlight specific details of the case studies, helping to bring the subjects alive. The captions and source notes for the photos will also help readers seek additional resources on the case studies as their interest dictates.

These special features—along with the simple two-­part strategy of employing case studies to explore concepts and theory—aim to chart an innovative path of high-­interest and enhanced utility for readers. They are the cornerstones of the entire Foundations in Global Studies series.

PART ONE

Background, Theories, and Contexts

1

What Is Global Studies? A Political and Economic Perspective Michael R. Anderson and Stephanie S. Holmsten Global studies is an approach to studying the world that recognizes the complexities of human interactions—interactions that occur among individuals and groups, in the market, through the nation-­state, and at the supranational level. This perspective thus gives attention both to structural matters (such as capitalism) as well as to the role of individual experience in our interconnected world. While more traditional approaches to international affairs have privileged the state and governmental actors, global studies attempts to highlight the complex interactions among transnational forces, the state, and non-­state actors. Individuals, nation-­states, and international organizations are in a constant conversation to define the nature of our world. Global studies programs, which have proliferated in schools and universities in the last two decades, use different scholarly methodologies to explore these networks of actors and their sources of power. Many scholars involved in global studies also use their analytical frameworks and tools to scrutinize the conceptual underpinnings of globalization, a term often used to refer to these networks. Rather than a discrete discipline, global studies is an interdisciplinary project that integrates a variety of fields to describe and analyze the nature of society and international affairs.

Layers of Analysis Three levels of analysis—the nation-­state, international organizations, and individuals—are critical in the political and economic foundations of global studies. The first, the role of nation-­ states, remains central to global studies, even though much debate takes place about how relevant the nation-­state is in today’s globalizing world. The decisions of nation-­states affect the nature of the global order. Important decisions such as whether to go to war, how to resolve conflict, patterns of trade, human rights enforcements, and environmental regulations are largely the responsibility of states. In addition, the structure of the state, its political and economic organization, shape the way that individuals experience the world around them. Political systems affect how individuals translate their preferences into policies, who is included in the policymaking process, and who is left out, while economic systems determine access to goods, distribution of resources, and economic growth. Scholars at work in global studies explore systems of inclusion and representation, how resources are allocated and who is included in the governing process. Global studies also shines a light on the ways that nation-­states are constrained and shaped by international institutions, which influence the nature of global affairs in a variety of ways, especially insofar as they generate a framework of expectations and legal mandates to govern the global space. International organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, for instance, influence domestic policy changes through loan commitments

4   Michael Anderson and Stephanie Holmsten

that require economic and political adjustments. And the World Trade Organization promotes efforts to reduce trade barriers, encouraging greater integration of national markets into the global economy. Scholars explore the ways in which international agreements and arrangements can also promote ideas that generate new state initiatives. For example, international affairs scholar Martha Finnemore studied the ways that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “taught” states the importance of national science-­ policy organizations, thus motivating policy reform by changing the norm about the modern nation-­state. Globalization also exerts influence at the individual level, where the impact of global institutions and nation-­states is experienced firsthand. Global studies scholars, therefore, explore the experiences of individuals to understand how international norms and institutions, translated through state action, create opportunities and challenges for particular communities and groups, as well as identify new voices and alternative ideas about the effect of globalization. Globalization has brought about an increase in the level of interconnectedness among individuals, through travel, communication, and sharing of ideas. This increased interconnectedness has drawn individuals closer to each other, fueling deeper understanding of people around the world. Yet, interconnectedness has also created conflict when such connections challenge traditional values. In some regions of the world, economic integration has also created economic vulnerabilities, as local industries lose out to global producers, workers compete on an international scale, and wealthy individuals capitalize on the opportunities while low-­income people face greater challenges. The result of rising inequality, economic instability, and cultural pressures can generate a backlash against integration from individuals whose economic and social stability has come under threat due to globalization. Global studies highlights individuals’ experiences and pays attention to the voices of those impacted by globalization to better understand the nature of our world today.

Civil Society The term civil society refers to individuals, informal groups of activists, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in issues relating to citizens’ interests and concerns, particularly as they relate to official government policies. Larry Diamond, a political scientist who studies the emergence and consolidation of democracy, defines civil society as “the realm of organized social life that is open, voluntary, self-­generating, at least partially self-­supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules” (1999, 221). Civil society includes the activities of individuals outside the state as they come together as citizens to share their views, and often to use those collective views to influence political institutions. Civil society includes, among others, the following types of groups. •

• •

Local, grassroots organizations focus on particular communities, such as neighborhood associations, parent–teacher associations, or clean-­up projects and housing projects such as People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH Buffalo, http://pushbuffalo.org/), or on specific issue areas, such as labor rights, gun rights, food issues, environmental issues, and many more. Some local organizations also attempt to address global issues, such as the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which raised concerns about the effects of NAFTA (the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agreement) on Indians in Chiapas, Mexico. International organizations draw membership from across the world to tackle a global issue; examples include Amnesty International (amnestyusa.org), Human Rights Watch (hrw.org), and Greenpeace (greenpeace.org).

What Is Global Studies?   5

•

Other organizations are constituted in less formal ways when individuals mobilize around a particular moment in time, such as the Arab Spring uprisings or Black Lives Matter. Such organizations utilize social media to initiate activity, and they may develop more formal institutions over time for lasting power.

Research into civil society allows global studies scholars insight into the impact of the global order on communities and community groups. In addition, global studies recognizes the power of individuals to shape the international order through advocacy at the local, national, and international levels.

An Interdisciplinary Project Global studies takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the world around us. This interdisciplinarity allows scholars the flexibility to study the complexity of the global order, incorporate a variety of actors in their analyses, and evaluate the changes effected by these actors at different levels. The discrete academic disciplines of history, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, and geography, along with regional area studies programs, have changed over time and are continually increasing their analytical breadth, adding knowledge and research to the study of the international order. Global studies joins in the important work of these disciplines and other interdisciplinary approaches to emphasize their interconnected nature. James Mittelman, the founding chair of Amer­ican University’s Comparative and Regional Studies program, argues that state-­centered thinking in international studies has provided useful frameworks for the analysis of power, “smart power,” rising power, and contestation. Insights into civil society, revolution, and social movements from regional studies, meanwhile, contribute to global studies of subaltern voices—voices of those not in power—which are often left behind in state-­centered analyses of elite opinion and behavior. The multifaceted nature of global studies—and indeed of globalization itself—demands that scholars investigate a wide variety of factors, whether economic, political, historical, or social, and to gather best practices for such investigations from the traditional disciplines. For Mittelman, global studies encourages attention to historic and current forms of “empire, imperialism, sub-­imperialism, and the governance of capitalism” (2013, 516). To explore these dynamics, global studies enters into a conversation across disciplines to ask what we can learn from history, economics, political science, sociology, geography, and area studies. As a result of this interdisciplinary perspective, the field employs varied models of analysis as well as diverse forms of data, from ethnography and archival research to quantitative cross-­national analysis.

Globalization and Global Studies The term globalization recognizes the deepening of social relations across the world, the integration of markets, the influence of international arrangements, such as the G-­20 and G-­7, and the changing nature of the international order. In many ways, it is a word that describes the character of the international order today. Global studies explores the nature of this interconnectedness, recognizing various actors and acknowledging that globalization is a process of dual forces, of coming together and breaking apart. While interconnectedness can affirm the universality of humanity, it can also invigorate the defense of distinct local traditions and customs. The philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah, for instance, has argued in this direction in Cosmopolitanism (2006), stating we should seek to “intertwine”

6   Michael Anderson and Stephanie Holmsten

u­ niversal concern for humanity and respect for culturally based differences, the two strands of cosmopolitanism. The concept of globalization encourages an investigation into the level of interconnectedness in the world today, whether economic, political, cultural, or social. At the same time, however, globalization is not necessarily an inherent tendency of human nature, or the natural state of the international order. Rather than a given, levels of interconnectedness may grow or shrink, often as a result of international, national, and local policy decisions. Scholars should remain attentive to the ebb and flow of integration and inquisitive about which areas remain integrative, and which are isolating.

The Importance of Economic and Political Power Considering various levels of analysis and academic approaches, global studies also commonly investigates political and economic phenomena by asking about power. Who has power? In what ways is power expressed? Individuals and groups can exert power to influence national policies from the bottom up, demanding inclusion, representation, or accommodation of their interests. National political leaders shape incentives for individuals through legislation that provides political and economic opportunities, rewarding some constituents and punishing others. International arrangements shape state behavior by generating norms for appropriate conduct and by monitoring compliance with international agreements. Policy decisions at the national level must respond to the demands of the citizens while abiding by international norms. For example, national policy regarding economic growth, trade flows, and the balance between protectionism and openness are made in the context of both domestic interests and the global marketplace. Global studies seeks to explore these interrelated systems of power, the contestation about the allocation of resources, and the structural forces that shape the international order. To see the global studies model in action, we now turn to an example of a contemporary debate with global political and economic consequences: food security and the rise of genetically modified organisms.

Global Studies at Work: Food Security As global demand for food has risen, food insecurity has increased, occupying journalistic as well as scholarly attention. The issues they investigate surrounding food and food security include a complex, global network of producers and consumers; historical trade patterns and modern-­day production technology; and the confluence of national policy, local preferences and global trading rules and norms. To investigate an issue that spans the globe, a transnational approach is needed. As food security also includes historical and sociological traditions, economic considerations, political decisions, and science and technology, we also need insights from a variety of disciplines. And the study of food security benefits from attention to multiple levels of analysis—from the individual household, where food insecurity is intimately experienced, to national policies that aim to balance demands of consumers and producers alike; from international norms for free trade to alternatives such as fair trade, locally sourced, and organic foods. A Global Phenomenon The demand for food is increasing around the world because of a variety of global trends, including increasing population, urbanization, and economic growth among developing

What Is Global Studies?   7

c­ ountries. Climate change is also causing a decline in food production in some regions of the world that have historically provided food, according to a 2014 report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Changes in food production combined with increasing food demand can cause greater food insecurity around the globe, especially where there is little political initiative or financial resources to adapt to climate change. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), about 795 million people were undernourished in 2015. Food insecurity persists in regions where economic growth has slowed or is less inclusive, as well as in countries with political instability, most notably in central Africa and western Asia. The FAO’s 2015 State of Food Insecurity in the World is available at www.fao. org/3/a-­i4646e.pdf. A 2017 report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, is available here: www.fao.org/state-­of-food-­security-nutrition/en/. Food crises are not only national crises: they tend to occur regionally and have global impacts as well. During the 2008 food crisis, many countries experienced both sharp increases in food prices and declining food production. In the wake of the crisis, many food producers focused on meeting growing domestic needs and as a result reduced exports abroad. This affected countries like Saudi Arabia that have been largely dependent on buying food from foreign suppliers to satisfy domestic demand, and found that food imports were declining. In response, King Abdullah, then Saudi Arabia’s ruler, urged domestic companies to acquire land from abroad to grow food for export to Saudi Arabia. One company, Saudi Star Agricultural Development, founded by a Saudi millionaire, responded by investing up to $2.5 billion in Ethiopia to develop a rice-­farming project, according to Ethiopian news reports (see Tigrai Online 2011). The Middle East is not the only region in the world interested in bolstering its food security by looking abroad. The 2008 food crisis caused an international response that has included investment in land and food production across the globe. China also has invested in “offshore” agriculture—especially in Africa, but also in Latin America and other parts Asia. The country’s “Go Out” strategy involves increases in foreign direct investment, including buying foreign land to grow food for China’s growing population. According to Elizabeth Economy (2013) of the Council on Foreign Relations, and other analysts, China is facing critical land and water shortages. With close to 20 percent of the world’s population but only 7 percent of the world’s arable land, China’s concern for food security has shaped its modern history. Today, it is the third largest purchaser of land abroad, behind the United Kingdom and the United States (Economy 2013). Seeking arable land abroad, it aims to ensure domestic food security by avoiding dependence on the international market. Global studies asks us to consider the larger power dynamics at work in such trends within historical and contemporary contexts. How do present-­day “land grabs” fit into a longer pattern of imperialism and exploitation of less developed parts of the world over the past few centuries? How does the competition for available agricultural land relate to questions regarding resource scarcity, geopolitical strategy, and the prospect for the emergence of a multipolar world order? Interdisciplinary Investigations The impacts of food shortages and international investment in land and production are multifaceted, and demand a multidisciplinary approach in order to fully appreciate the intricacies of the policy opportunities and challenges at play. Indeed, international investment in food

8   Michael Anderson and Stephanie Holmsten

­production has powerful economic implications. China’s actions abroad may come with potential benefits for the host countries, particularly if the investment improves infrastructures such as roads, ports, schools, and clinics. China has pledged to help improve African agriculture ­production by providing, over the next few years, up to 3,000 experts for technical assistance, training for 2,000 African agricultural technicians, and fourteen major agricultural technology centers. It has already provided development loans of up to $14 billion in at least seven countries. Chinese companies have built roads, railways, hospitals, schools, and water systems in Angola, as well as two hydropower plants in Congo and Ghana. It is also providing investment funds for health care, according to Deborah Brautigam (2010), sending 1,500 health-­care professionals to Africa and building thirty antimalarial clinics. There are political considerations as well. Critics of China’s investments argue that this practice, which some have called “land grabs,” exploits countries with weak property rights that should not be selling land to foreign investors when so many of their own people go hungry each year. There have in fact been local and national efforts to curb these practices. In Kazakhstan in 2010, for example, protests were held over Chinese plans to lease 1 million hectares (close to 2.5 million acres) of farmland. Similarly, substantial opposition in the Philippines thwarted China’s attempt to lease at least 1.2 million hectares, or 3 million acres (USCC 2012). Some countries are considering formal measures to prevent Chinese land grabs. Brazil, for instance, considered an outright ban on China’s purchase of Brazilian land in 2015, but later backed down and allowed foreign ownership. Efforts to ensure food security are not new. In fact, technology has been applied to increase food production at various times in recent history. Taking a global studies approach allows us also to look at the science and politics behind food crises, and to apply a historical lens as well. The Green Revolution, for instance, led to a remarkable increase in food production in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Starting in the 1940s and led by the scientific research of the U.S. agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the Green Revolution applied science and technology to the development of high-­yielding varieties of grain crops. The benefits of these new varieties, which were first introduced in Mexico, allowed that country to move from a net grain importer to producing the majority of its own domestic demand for grains. These innovations soon spread to other areas of the developing world including, most notably, in India. Applying Levels of Analysis to Food Security Global in nature, and interdisciplinary in perspective, the study of food security is also, as mentioned above, attentive to various levels of analysis. What are the causes of such crises, and what are the responsibilities of national and international actors to alleviate hunger? What about the role of multinational corporations? International corporations work within national policies that are shaped by local consumers and their preferences. Such interaction among global, national, and local considerations can be seen in a recent, and controversial, innovation in food production: genetically modified (GM) crops and organisms (GMOs). In the late 1990s, science was again applied to food production, as it was in the mid-­century during the Green Revolution, in the development of GM crops: biotechnology (Bt) was used to manipulate crops at the DNA level to enhance particularly beneficial qualities. Roundup Ready® soybeans, for example, developed by Monsanto, can survive the application of Roundup herbicides, enabling farmers to fight weeds while preserving their soybean crop. Similarly, Bt corn contains a genetically engineered toxin that is particularly harmful to insect predators. According to the USDA (2017), close to 93 percent of soybeans and 85 percent of corn produced in the United States has been genetically modified to resist the application of herbicides, and 75 percent of corn has been modified to resist insects.

What Is Global Studies?   9

Online resources from Monsanto on its Roundup Ready® crops and technology for insect and drought tolerance include: • •

“Seeds” (www.monsanto.com/products/pages/monsanto-­agricultural-seeds.aspx). “Roundup Ready Soybean Patent Expiration” (www.monsanto.com/newsviews/ pages/roundup-­ready-patent-­expiration.aspx).

A number of NGOs have organized campaigns to raise awareness regarding concerns about the health effects of genetically modified crops, including the following: • • •

GMO Awareness (www.gmo-­awareness.com) provides links to numerous U.S. and international efforts to curb the application of GMO technology. GRAIN (www.grain.org) is an international organization that promotes sustainable agricultural practices. Oxfam’s GROW campaign (www.oxfam.org/en/campaigns/grow) focuses on improving access to food, and claims that GMOs are not a viable answer to food sustainability.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ruled that genetically modified corn and soybeans are as safe and nutritious as traditional corn and soybeans, and has decided to treat GM crops as “substantively equivalent” to traditional crops. As a result, no additional labeling is required by the FDA. Supporters of GM crops argue that there are many benefits, including greater crop yields, reduced dependence on insecticides, and new attributes such as iron or vitamin A that might help combat hunger and malnutrition. Critics of GM crops raise concerns about potential negative health effects of these largely under-­tested varieties, especially for people and children with allergies. There are also concerned about seed ownership, since GM technology farmers depend on seeds manufactured by global companies such as Monsanto and DuPont, instead of traditional practices. New seeds may also crowd out the use and protection of heirloom seeds, and may require increased mechanization, mono-­cropping, and greater pesticide use. For more on the FDA’s approach to regulating GMO-­based foods, see its web page “How FDA Regulates Food from Genetically Engineered Plants” (www.fda.gov/Food/ IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GEPlants/ucm461831.htm). In addition, the production of GM crops must be studied in its global context. Debates about the safety of these crops occur among nations and within international institutions. In 1999, Europe refused to buy U.S. corn and soybean crops that contained GMOs because of fears of latent health effects and potential environmental problems, such as increased use of herbicides and cross-­crop contamination of the technology. In 2002, when more than four million people in southern Africa were threatened with food shortages (FAO 2002), the United States responded by offering to provide food aid, but the governments of Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe rejected the aid because of concerns that the food would contain GMOs. The primary consumer of agricultural exports from these African economies is the European Union (EU). Under pressure from consumers, the EU (as well as Japan) has resisted importing genetically modified crops. As a result, these African governments were concerned that the use of GMOs from the United States would reduce the sale of food crops to Europe.

10   Michael Anderson and Stephanie Holmsten

In May 2003 the United States filed a case before the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that the EU restrictions against the importation of GM crops were in violation of WTO agreements because they imposed trade restrictions on U.S. food imports. The WTO ruled in favor of the United States and requested that the EU remove its moratorium on GM crops. Yet a significant number of EU countries continue to reject the growing of GM crops on their own lands, in a clear sign of distrust of the safety assurances of the biotech industry and more GM-­ friendly states. Agricultural production affects local food consumption and is shaped by local preferences, but food is also affected by national policies to regulate food safety and distribute food aid. Such aid is then shaped by international laws and norms relating to food security and development. All these levels of analysis are critical in the study of food security. In considering these various frameworks, global studies investigates the inherent structures of the global order in which such issues are identified and addressed. Concluding Thoughts on Food Security What are our assumptions about the role of the state in supporting food security? What is the effect of foreign investment in developing economies? Does foreign intervention produce dependency? Global studies seeks to examine the underlying processes involved in food security—and in other areas, such as trade, migration, and the exchange of ideas—by studying global, national, and local experiences, particularly in the context of the expression of power and influence that both create and solve the pressing issues of the day. As the above discussion demonstrates, a global studies approach offers the breadth needed to consider the multiplicity of factors involved in the pressing issues that we face today. Just as local conditions and experiences are important, national policies can shape the opportunities and challenges that communities face. And, as seen in the investigation of food security, it is critical to examine local and national conditions within a broader, global framework.

Organization of the Book The above discussion has introduced the fundamental cross-­disciplinary methodologies, multilayered approaches, and transregional lenses involved in economic and political investigations in global studies. The following chapters in Part One of this book, which focuses on historical, theoretical, and conceptual underpinnings, explore the background to this analytical model and its components in more depth. Chapter 2: Historical Foundations provides an overview of political and economic globalization in historical perspective. The reinterpretation of the past within a global framework is a critical starting point for any present-­day analysis of global challenges. In the past few decades, historians and social scientists have developed new understandings of the ways in which people, goods, capital, and ideas have moved across national borders and forged political identities and economic relationships that do not neatly map onto a purely state-­centered understanding of the world. This new global history is therefore fundamentally transnational rather than strictly international. Nation-­states are important actors in this story, but they are not the only actors. Merchants and traders, corporations and consumers, and lawyers and activists, among many others, have forged connections around the world that have created networks which at times have reinforced state-­centered power, but at other times have worked independently to further their own agendas. Another major element of this new global history is the reframing of the past few centuries away from a Western-­centered narrative and toward a more holistic understanding of the birth of the modern world. It is a mistake to presume that Europeans were the only primary actors in this drama, with other peoples (nonwhite and/or colonial) taking up only minor parts.

What Is Global Studies?   11

Instead, recent scholarship has suggested that Europeans integrated themselves into preexisting Afro-­Eurasian networks, and that non-­European peoples continued to exercise a decisive role in the development of colonialism and industrialization. Clearly, the development of globalization is a process with deep roots and a complicated lineage. Chapter 3: U.S. Globalism and the Present World Order brings us to current considerations of the political and economic institutions, organizations, and movements that shape our world. More than twenty years ago, with the end of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, some geopolitical analysts in the West assumed that the fundamental debates over the best political organization and economic arrangements had been decided decisively in favor of democracy and capitalism. Yet, in the two decades since the collapse of international communism, there remains considerable and wide-­ranging debate over these questions. The idea of democracy may be a popular one in many parts of the world, but there are significant political and economic obstacles in achieving this vision. Proponents of democracy tout its many positive ramifications, but democracy promotion as foreign policy has come under fire as a form of neo-­imperialism. Capitalism, meanwhile, has lifted billions out of poverty, yet it also has exacerbated inequality around the world. This chapter surveys the various alternative political and economic visions of leaders in Latin America, Russia, and China, and assesses their ability to challenge U.S.-based policies that have informally guided policymakers and shaped the modern international order over the past generation. With political dysfunction and economic uncertainty in major Western capitals, there is less confidence in the Amer­ican model as a path forward for other countries, and there is little consensus over the potential outlines of a future global order. Part One of this volume concludes with five chapters on concepts and processes that are critical in understanding the political and economic context of global studies. The first, Chapter 4, focuses on the idea of “empire” as a way of understanding political and economic power in the modern world. Empires have existed since antiquity, and the various understandings and interpretations of “imperial” practices have changed significantly over time. From the Romans in the first century ce to the British in the nineteenth century, the presence of empire was taken for granted. But, over the past century, the imperial idea has become increasingly discredited, and with the decline of European colonialism in the twentieth century, many believe we now live in a post-­imperial world. Still, as this chapter shows, empire remains a powerful and malleable concept that continues to prove its relevance in shaping the debate over Amer­ican global power, as well as our understanding of the winners and losers associated with modern economic globalization. The second conceptual chapter, Chapter 5, focuses on debates over the meaning of “development” in the modern world, and the larger effort to create economic growth and well-­being among peoples in diverse settings. Although Westerners can claim to be the originators of the language of development, it has since become a global lexicon, shared among academics, activists, and policymakers. Yet there remains considerable debate about the best approaches to tackle poverty and overcome social and economic inequalities between the Global North and South. Much of this debate takes place within the setting of a larger conversation regarding the virtues and drawbacks of global capitalism. One of the key issues this chapter addresses is the appropriate role of the state in relation to the market when it comes to encouraging economic growth. Different schools of thought have put forward distinct answers to this question, from state-­focused developmental activists to pro-­market “neoliberals” who advocate for minimal state involvement. This chapter also explores the ways in which international institutions like the United Nations have attempted to find a consensus position on global development goals for the twenty-­first century. “Security” is the theme taken up in Chapter 6. In the study of international relations, international security is a key subfield. Traditional approaches to security studies have focused upon

12   Michael Anderson and Stephanie Holmsten

state-­centered concerns; that is, how to protect and defend national interests against external threats. For much of the latter half of the twentieth century, the Cold War standoff between the nuclear-­armed United States and Soviet Union defined the field. Since 2001, states have been increasingly concerned with protecting their citizens against the threat of terrorist attacks. But, in recent years, scholars and policymakers have started to look more closely at the concept of security from a non-­state-centered approach, and to take seriously the idea of “human security,” meaning the safety and well-­being of all peoples, regardless of national identities and boundaries. From this global, rather than merely international, perspective, this chapter examines the way in which political rights, economic opportunities, and environmental factors all play a role in affecting security. With this view, we can take a fresh look at the causes of conflict and the potential avenues toward a more durable peace. Creating a stable and secure world is only possible if it is also sustainable—the theme of Chapter 7. “Sustainability” has emerged since the 1980s as a key reference point in global debates, yet it remains an elusive and contested idea. For some, sustainability is primarily a matter of development. From this perspective, the priority is to create economic growth without stripping away resources required for future generations to enjoy. For others, sustainability is primarily a matter of social justice. From this perspective, the priority is to reallocate present resources so that global wealth is more equitably shared among the poor and rich within nations, and between the Global North and South. For still others, sustainability is primarily a matter of environmentalism. From this perspective, the priority is to make a more radical shift in our human-­centered worldview, and instead embrace an ecologically centered one. The specter of the consequences of human-­created climate change has provided particular urgency to this last viewpoint. This chapter also examines the role of civil society and non-­state actors, especially NGOs, in the effort to put sustainability on the global policy agenda. With the proliferation of people, ideas, and money across national borders, along with the establishment of international political and economic organizations, creating effective “global governance” is an imperative for building a peaceful and sustainable world. This effort is at the heart of the last conceptual chapter of this volume, Chapter 8. The concept of state sovereignty stands as a pillar of the contemporary international system, as the idea confers upon states the right of exclusive and complete control over their citizens. But in the present age of globalization, states are enmeshed in complex international arrangements subject to global norms, laws, and regulations, making control of their citizens far from complete or exclusive. This chapter examines the interplay among states and international organizations as a way of reassessing global norms and policies in the present age. The reconsideration of sovereignty is a central component of efforts to create a more robust system of global governance that recognizes the interdependence of the world’s peoples when it comes to international political and economic policy decisions. Part Two consists of case-­study chapters, each addressing a different topic related to the broad political and economic themes addressed in Part One, and each written by a different contributor. The diverse methodological approaches evident in these case studies mirror the multidisciplinary nature of global studies. Some chapters take a historical perspective, while others are decidedly contemporary. Some draw upon scholarship in the humanities, while others focus upon the social sciences. Some deal with matters related to international diplomacy, while others center the analysis upon non-­state actors. Some seek to heighten our awareness of transnational flows and movements, while others are more directly interested in policy implications. The thread connecting each of these case-­study chapters is an interest in widening the analytical framework to encompass the globe—that is, to assess the implications of these cases beyond that of the nation or the region. More than anything else, these case studies allow us to see the connections between the local and the global.

What Is Global Studies?   13

The topics touched on include the regional and global effects of post-­Gaddafi Libya; the transnational anti-­apartheid movement and its contribution to global civil society; globalization and decolonization in New Zealand, especially as it relates to the Māori peoples; international migration from a European perspective; the political and economic consequences of globalization, from trade conflicts to the rise of finance and technology; and, finally, the role of small and large states in the WTO. A more detailed introduction of all the case studies can be found in Chapter 9, which opens Part Two.

References and Further Research Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W. W. Norton. Barnett, Michael, and Martha Finnemore. 1999. “The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations.” International Organization 53, no. 4: 699–732. Brautigam, Deborah. 2010. “Africa’s Eastern Promise.” Foreign Affairs, January 5. Diamond, Larry. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Economy, Elizabeth. 2012. “China’s Global Quest for Resources and Implications for the United States.” Testimony before the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), January 26. www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/1.26.12mang_testimony.pdf. Economy, Elizabeth. 2013. “China’s Water Challenge: Implications for the U.S. Rebalance to Asia.” Prepared statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Washington, DC: Council of Foreign Relations, July 24. www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ Economy_Testimony.pdf. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 2002. “Food Crisis Threatens Several Countries in Southern Africa.” Rome: FAO, April 16. www.fao.org/english/newsroom/news/2002/ 3874-en.html. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 2011. The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture. London: FAO/Earthscan. www.fao.org/docrep/017/ i1688e/i1688e.pdf. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 2012. Global Trends and Future Challenges for the Work of the Organization, Web Annex. Rome: FAO. www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/ e694c0d1-71dd-404a-8660-5d4fd967a03c/. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 2015. The State of Food Insecurity in the World. Rome: FAO. www.fao.org/3/a-­i4646e.pdf. Finnemore, Martha. 1993. “International Organizations as Teachers of Norms: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and Science Policy.” International Organization 47, no. 4: 565–597. Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.” International Organization 52, no. 4: 887–917. Gillis, Justin. 2013. “Climate Change Seen Posing Risk to Food Supplies.” New York Times, November 1. www.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/science/earth/science-­p anel-warns-­o f-risks-­t o-food-­s upply-from-­ climate-change.html?_r=0. Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree About Climate Change. New York: Cambridge University Press. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2014. Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers. Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC. www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-­report/ar5/syr/ AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf. Klare, Michael T. 2012. The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources. New York: Metropolitan Books. Landler, Mark. 2013. “Obama Seeks New U.S. Role in Climate Debate.” New York Times, July 2. www. nytimes.com/2013/07/03/us/politics/obama-­seeks-to-­reassert-us-­role-in-­climate-debate.html. Lynch, Diahanna, and David Vogel. 2001. “The Regulation of GMOs in Europe and the United States: A Case-­Study of Contemporary European Regulatory Politics.” Washington, DC: Council on Foreign

14   Michael Anderson and Stephanie Holmsten Relations, April 5. www.cfr.org/agricultural-­policy/regulation-­gmos-europe-­united-states-­case-study-­ contemporary-european-­regulatory-politics/p8688#. Mittelman, James. 2004. “What Is Critical Globalization Studies?” International Studies Perspectives 5: 219–230. Mittelman, James. 2013. “What’s in a Name? Global International and Regional Studies.” Globalizations 10, no. 4: 515–519. Monsanto Company. 2013. “Weed Management: Roundup Ready System.” St. Louis, MO: Monsanto. www.roundupreadyplus.com/. Myers, Steven. 2013. “Russia Seizes Greenpeace Ship and Crew for Investigation.” New York Times, September 20. www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/world/europe/russia-­seizes-greenpeace-­ship-for-­investigation. html. Ogden, Chris, ed. 2013. Handbook of China’s Governance and Domestic Politics. New York: Routledge. Ozone Secretariat of the United Nations Environment Programme. “Key Achievements of the Montreal Protocol to Date.” Nairobi, Kenya: Ozone Secretariat of the United Nations Environment Programme. http://ozone.unep.org/Publications/MP_Key_Achievements-­E.pdf. Rodrik, Dani. 2011. The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: W. W. Norton. Stiglitz, Joseph. 2002. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton. Tigrai Online. 2011. “Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc Will Invest 2.5 Billion in Ethiopia Rice Farm.” Tigrai Online, March 23. www.tigraionline.com/articles/article110314.html. USCC (United States-­China Economic and Security Review Commission). 2012. “Hearing: China’s Global Quest for Resources and Implications for the United States.” Washington, DC: USCC, January 26. www.uscc.gov/Hearings/hearing-­china%E2%80%99s-global-­quest-resources-­and-implications-­ united-states. USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture). 2017. “Adoption of Genetically Engineered Crops in the U.S.” Washington, DC: USDA. www.ers.usda.gov/data-­products/adoption-­of-genetically-­engineered-crops-­ in-the-­us/recent-­trends-in-­ge-adoption.aspx#.UqILHRZ9nww.

2

Historical Foundations Michael R. Anderson A core premise of global studies insists that humanity is connected across regions and states— that we are linked, inextricably, through a web of human migration, economic relationships, political institutions, and environmental conditions. With this in mind, any understanding of our contemporary world must have a global perspective, rather than a purely local, national, or regional one. Many of us take for granted the fact that we live in an age defined by this deep integration and interconnection that has come to be called “globalization.” But a comprehensive global studies approach encourages us to delve deeper in order to gain a fuller understanding of the processes that have shaped our contemporary era. The “global” in modern times is not merely a reflection of our present moment; it in fact represents the accumulation of interactions over many centuries. In recent years, historians have begun to turn their attention to the subject of globalization in world history. Debates have raged over the matter of origins. Did globalization begin in 1945, with the end of World War II? Perhaps it was in 1850, during the height of the Industrial Revolution? Maybe in 1492, with Columbus’s landing in the so-­called New World? Or did globalization first start as far back as 1000 ce, with the creation of new transregional trading routes connecting Europe, Africa, and the Middle East? This chapter does not attempt to determine the precise starting point of globalization, but simply to recognize the importance of viewing globalization as a long-­term historical process with many different actors and influences. In the following discussion, we trace the evolution of political and economic developments over the past several centuries that continue to have global consequences. Understanding the historical roots of our contemporary political and economic order entails a perspective concerned largely with themes such as power and justice. Given the parameters of this study, and the limitation of space, other major world-­historical themes, such as changes in technology, the environment, gender, and religion, must play a smaller role in these pages. Instead, what we are most concerned with here is understanding the ways in which humans have organized themselves into political units (empires, nations, international organizations) and how they have allocated resources (goods and capital) over time. The intent of this chapter is to convey a sense of the complexity of the origins of the global political and economic order, and its ever-­ shifting dynamics.

Beyond the West More than fifty years have passed since the appearance of William H. McNeill’s seminal work of world history, The Rise of the West (1963). This book has served as a foundational text for generations of students interested in tracing broad historical trends over time and space. McNeill put forward an innovative argument, citing contact with strangers as the key factor shaping historical change on a global scale. In tracing the long-­standing connections among so

16   Michael R. Anderson

many civilizations, McNeill’s analysis can be seen as a critical antecedent to a contemporary global studies perspective. But, as McNeill himself noted on the twenty-­fifth anniversary of the book’s publication, The Rise of the West is a flawed and dated work, inasmuch as it reflected an unconscious bias toward the supposed winners of civilizational struggle. At the time of the book’s writing, the United States was the dominant global superpower, and the vast majority of its citizens saw themselves as inheritors of Western civilization. The task of an ambitious world historian at the time was to work out how and why civilizational contact resulted in such a triumph for the West. To McNeill’s great credit, he publicly revisited his work in order to assess where he failed to note the centrality of non-­Western peoples during certain historical eras (the Chinese between 1000 and 1500, for instance). The Rise of the West ushered in a new generation of scholarship interested in writing world history from a global perspective, rather than a purely European-­focused one. This new scholarship also challenged prevailing disciplinary boundaries, bringing together economic history and the social sciences in order to reassess the meaning of “the West” and its political and economic trajectory over time. Perhaps the most influential of these works was Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World-­System (1974), the first volume of a decades-­long project to evaluate the structures of our modern world through the lens of capitalism. In Wallerstein’s formulation, a “world-­system” based around a single division of labor as a result of market trade emerged in Europe around 1500, and regions within this system were identified as “core,” “peripheral,” and “semi-­peripheral,” based upon their status within this capitalist world economy. Northern Europe first emerged as the core area of the world economy (higher-­skill agricultural production with tenant farmers), Eastern Europe served as a peripheral area (focusing on exports of grains, wood, and cotton, and on the use of slavery), while Mediterranean Europe was deemed a semi-­peripheral area, specializing in high-­cost industrial products (silks) and a reliance on sharecropping for labor control. Wallerstein posited that this European-­based “world-­system” encompassed other parts of the world by the eighteenth century and laid the foundations of contemporary global capitalism, with its stark differentiation between developed (core) and underdeveloped (peripheral) parts of the world. Wallerstein’s The Modern World-­System is available on Project Muse, at https://muse. jhu.edu/book/25877. Wallerstein, like McNeill, helped integrate the history of the West into a broader global context, and yet, also like McNeill, the world-­system perspective places Europe at the center of its analysis. As a sociologist, Wallerstein was interested in the same questions as McNeill: why and how did the West come to dominate—politically, economically, and otherwise—the modern world? But, as we contemplate the political and economic conditions of the present day, we see that much has changed in recent years. The United States and other Western nations continue to be important actors on the world stage, but other powers are on the rise and asking for a larger role, most notably the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The growing power of these countries means that they may not only wish to add their voices to the international stage, but perhaps to rewrite the script as well. Rather than following the same narrative that presumes the inherent superiority of the West, scholars of global history have begun to dig deeper into the past, and they have unearthed a complex set of relationships between the “West” and “East” that can help us better understand our present age of globalization. Perspective is everything. If one limits one’s field of vision to the world since 1500, it is true that the grand narrative of global history is largely one of Western triumph. Yet what if

Historical Foundations   17

one sees a world-­system in place for 5,000 rather than merely 500 years, as the scholar Andre Gunder Frank (Frank and Gills 1993) has posited? From this vantage point, Western preeminence would be merely the last chapter in a much longer human saga largely dominated by Asian and Eurasian peoples. One could make an argument that from the first moments that Mesopotamian traders made contact with Egyptian peoples, around 3000 bce, political and economic development in any one place was tied to conditions elsewhere. And for thousands of years afterward, it was the East (whether “Near,” “Middle,” or “Far”) that served as the main driver of these interactions. While the great classical civilizations (Rome, Persia, China) built up expansive territorial trade networks, these largely took place within imperial systems. But by the seventh century ce, Arab merchants were making inroads well beyond their own regions. As noted by the historian Peter N. Stearns (2010), these Arabs, aided by new technology, engaged in the first substantial “transregional” trading routes, creating an East–West exchange network that now linked China and India to the Middle East and Africa. And the goods in demand—from ivory and gold in Africa, to rugs and jewelry in the Middle East, to cloth and spices in India—were not only being delivered to the wealthiest members of society, but increasingly to a broader set of consumers who began to crave foreign items for themselves. Furthermore, these new interactions necessitated new means of regulating trade. Arab commercial law quickly gained wide acceptance in multiple states as a practical matter for keeping an orderly flow of commerce. Thus, as early as ce 1000 we can already see the way in which political and legal institutions changed as a result of new economic imperatives. The World Digital Library (www.wdl.org/en/) provides access to more than 11,000 searchable items, including cultural treasures and historical documents, from 1200 bce to today. Travels of the Lute (http://library2.utm.utoronto.ca/travelsofthelute/) is a digital humanities resource for teaching and learning about world history. Rather than a single capitalist world-­system emerging from Europe, a multi-­centered network of commerce and finance existed in and around the eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, according to Janet Abu-­Lughod in Before European Hegemony (1989). The dominant empire at this time was that of the Mongols, whose power stretched from Iran to China, though interregional commercial ties were not dependent upon any one hub. Abu-­Lughod’s analysis of this time is important to the student of global studies for at least two reasons. First, it upends the Eurocentric narrative of globalization. She notes that Europeans incorporated themselves into preexisting Eurasian networks, rather than being the creators of such networks. Second, it posits the feasibility of a world-­system without a hegemonic power. As we contemplate the advent of a “post-­Amer­ican world,” one marked by multipolarity and the rise of non-­Western states, this past may also serve as a kind of prologue for the next era of globalization. Transregional trade among Asia, the Middle East, and Africa helped spur Chinese emperors (especially the Yuan dynasty, c.1271–1368) to commission the first treasure fleets, and, by the early fifteenth century, China had taken the global lead in seafaring prowess. A series of expeditions between 1405 and 1433—many decades before Columbus’s voyages to the New World—made landings in India, East Africa, and Indonesia. At its height, this “Great Fleet” consisted of several “junks” more than 400 feet long, along with dozens of supply ships and other support vessels. Chinese technology, resources, and population were unsurpassed at the time. Had these expansionist policies continued, it seems likely that China, not Europe, would

18   Michael R. Anderson

have made the first outside contact with the Americas and become the leading colonial power in the New World. Instead, various factors converged to convince Chinese rulers to disinvest in these overseas ventures by 1500, and their turn inward had enormous consequences for subsequent world history. While historians continue to debate the true reason for this Chinese retreat, there is little doubt that China’s withdrawal from its dominant position on the seas provided an opening for European powers to take the lead in a new global imperial era.

Consequences of Empire The rise of European overseas empires—Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Britain—engendered numerous developments in political control and economic organization. First, the centralization of state power was a critical factor in allowing European states to project influence beyond their shores. The unification of Christian Spain through the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469, for instance, created a kind of political unity that allowed the state’s leaders to turn their attention away from internal divisions and toward overseas expansion. European states enlarged their bureaucracies and maintained extensive rules and record-­keeping bodies in order to track their ever-­growing possessions in the Americas and Asia. One of the most important ways that European states were able to assert control over far-­ flung areas was through an innovative business development: the chartered company. In 1602, merchants and mercenaries in the Dutch Republic teamed up to found the United East India Company, an organization designed to eliminate competition among numerous other trading companies and to help the United Provinces establish dominance over rivals in the Asian spice trade. Through the hiring of soldiers as well as sailors and a wide mandate to employ force as necessary, the Company was able to subdue local resistance to Dutch efforts, and before long the United East India Company held a monopoly on the valuable nutmeg and pepper markets from the Indonesian archipelago. With the blessing of the Dutch government, this supposedly private company made enormous sums for its investors until its decline more than a century later. The Dutch were not alone in this innovation: the British East India Company, which focused its efforts on the textiles and silk of the Indian subcontinent, grew even more powerful by the eighteenth century and acted essentially as an agent for British strategic and economic interests in the region. These international trading companies, whose public–private partnerships and vast wealth created enormous political influence, were the direct antecedents of today’s multinational corporations. Colonial control was not simply directed from European capitals; it was also dependent upon local officials and circumstances and relied on a complex interaction of collaboration and concessions in specific contexts. While it is true that European development rested on the expropriation of wealth from other parts of the world, the historian Richard Drayton (2002) has made it clear that relations between the center and periphery of empire, whether they were economic or cultural, military or political, mattered a great deal. What Drayton calls the “collaboration of labor” with economic integration during these years rested on the backs of African slaves, who, as a source of both labor and currency, helped shape the sugar plantation system in Brazil and the Caribbean, and propelled a new era of global trade and the production of a whole host of new goods and services, from shipping to insurance to banking. The Atlantic slave economy affected far more than simply the slave trade itself; indeed, it shaped the very scope and nature of the supposed “free labor” farming regions of North America. And its impact did not end with the ending of slavery in the nineteenth century, or even the end of formal empire in the twentieth. The “division-­of labor imperialism” created during these years can be seen in the modern manifestation of global capitalism, with its endless quest for cheaper labor and the growing inequalities of wealth attendant within that system.

Historical Foundations   19

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the power of joint-­stock corporations like the East India Companies and the full development of the Atlantic slave economy provided the foundations for what the historian C. A. Bayly (2004) has argued was the turn away from “archaic” forms of globalization and toward its “modern” variety. Whereas economic interaction among peoples in earlier centuries had been largely based on kinship ties, defined by family and religious networks, and predominantly defined through the desires of elites, these social and cultural factors were now subsumed under the growing power of capitalist exchange. What constituted this break? Global business enterprises had now commodified value. As production systems expanded to encompass larger parts of the world, consumption patterns similarly flattened out, and new classes of consumers were created who desired the same kinds of goods in order to establish their social status. The priorities of this economics-­driven world-­system, in no small sense, continue to dominate our contemporary world. Founded in 1982, the World History Association, or WHA (www.thewha.org/) is the most prominent organization for teaching and research support in world history. The WHA website includes a book list (at www.thewha.org/resource-­links/bibliographies-­ recommended-books) that is particularly helpful in exploring the conceptual approach taken in this chapter.

A Revolutionary Age By the end of the eighteenth century, the world was grappling with twin revolutions that transformed the global political and economic landscape. First came democratic upheavals in the Amer­ican colonies, and later in France, the consequences of which would threaten the traditional political order of monarchies worldwide. Then came the onset of the Industrial Revolution, which would transform international business, and indeed everyday life, through the introduction of new technologies in transportation and communication. The two phenomena often worked to spur each other along during the nineteenth century—new political ideas could gain traction far more quickly in an era defined by the popular press, the telegraph, and the railroad; and the rising standard of living brought about by the expansion of goods and services could spur new demands for broader political participation. Nevertheless, these years witnessed continued disparity in wealth and political rights in the world. The practice of slavery died out only after a protracted, bloody struggle, and a resurgence in formal imperialism toward the end of the nineteenth century brought new areas of the map under European colonial control. The immediate context that led the Amer­ican colonist Thomas Jefferson to proclaim “all men are created equal” in 1776 may have been the result of specific grievances against the British monarch, King George III, yet the spirit animating those words derived from developments in political philosophy over the previous decades that privileged the “natural rights” of citizens over the inherited position of royal heads of state. The global consequences of the Amer­ican Revolution were immediately felt, first in France beginning in 1789, but elsewhere in the Americas as well, as independence movements throughout South America cast off Spanish rule and established new nation-­states by the 1820s. The contagion of democracy unleashed through this period even found a willing host in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-­Domingue (Haiti), where former slaves demanded, and eventually won, their independence from France in 1804. The ironies of the age were manifest: Haitian revolutionaries like Toussaint L’Ouverture were motivated by the spirit of democracy in the United States and France, and yet leaders in the United States, including Jefferson, were ambivalent at best about the prospect of democratic principles extending to nonwhite peoples, especially given the large

20   Michael R. Anderson

enslaved population still living in the southern section of the country. Not for the last time would the proponents of democratic sentiments find themselves at odds over the global consequences of their beliefs. The rise of democratic sentiment went hand-­in-hand with the rise of nationalism as the most powerful political developments of the nineteenth century. Giuseppe Mazzini, the founding leader of the “Young Italy” movement in the 1830s, aimed to overthrow Austrian imperial rule and thereby unite the various Italian states under a democratic nation-­state. But this patriotic association was not the ultimate goal for Mazzini and his followers. They believed that true nationalism—based on representative governments—would become the basis for a larger international understanding. Despotic rulers had an insatiable appetite for personal wealth and glory, and thus continually propelled their peoples into conflict. Nation-­ states constructed on the principle of democracy, on the other hand, would be far more inclined toward mutual trust and cooperation. Thus, in addition to his work in Italy, Mazzini helped create “Young Europe” associations among refugees from Poland and Germany, with the long-­term hope of the creation of an international federation of democracies. Mazzini’s legacy can be seen not only as an early proponent of the idea behind the European Union, but also as an advocate of what is today known among political scientists as democratic peace theory. If the promoters of democratic nation-­states promised a new era of peace and understanding among the peoples of the world, so too did the proponents of industrialization, imbued with evangelical fervor over the possibilities for a new economic age. The Industrial Revolution’s beginnings can be traced to the Scottish inventor James Watt’s improved steam engine in the 1770s, which allowed for the generation of power away from waterways and opened up vast new swaths of the world for potential manufacturing and development. Within a few decades, the application of steam power to ships and the development of railroads dramatically shortened the length of time required to transport goods. The invention of the telegraph (1837), meanwhile, held out the possibility of practically instantaneous communication around the world, especially after the completion of the undersea transatlantic cable network by the 1860s. Other developments, such as the creation of the refrigerated container, allowed manufacturers to transport perishable items over great distances with no risk of spoilage. By the late nineteenth century, these rapid advancements appeared to have conquered time and space, and they fostered a kind of technological utopianism that prefigured the discussions, 100 years later, regarding the coming of the Internet age. European empires shifted policies in reaction to the rapidly changing economic climate of the nineteenth century. As a result of the ideas of Adam Smith and other economists, the gospel of free trade, stressing the reduction of tariffs and other barriers to international trade, now replaced older conceptions of closed mercantilist policies that had walled off imperial systems from one another. Great Britain, in particular, wholeheartedly embraced the free-­trade model and applied it not only at home but across the globe. In the wake of the loss of the Amer­ican colonies, Britain focused on enlarging its economic influence on markets rather than attempting to conquer and hold new territory. In this way historians have identified a kind of “informal empire” that Britain exerted over supposedly independent nations, such as Argentina, in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. This turn toward informal empire did not necessarily mean a kinder or gentler system of control, however. When China objected to British merchants’ attempts to smuggle opium from India into the country, the formidable British navy was unleashed to protect and defend this lucrative trade. The First Opium War, fought between 1839 and 1842, resulted in the deaths of about 18,000–20,000 Chinese (and only dozens of Britons). The Chinese government was brought to its knees, agreeing to pay damages to the British government for lost revenue, open five ports to trade, and provide other concessions. These “unequal treaties” remained a source

Historical Foundations   21

of shame for China and fueled simmering resentment against Britain in particular, and the West more broadly, that manifested itself in dramatic fashion in subsequent decades. Global capitalism may have been in ascendance in the nineteenth century, yet critics were already assembling. The German philosopher and journalist Karl Marx articulated a radical critique of capitalism while writing from several cities around Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century, including London, where he penned many of his most famous works, including Das Kapital. Marx viewed the capitalist system as inherently unequal, designed to exploit the labor of the working classes (the proletariat). Nationalism, in his view, merely served to create false divisions among peoples and prevent worker solidarity across borders. His solution was nothing less than to promote a revolutionary vanguard to sweep away capitalism and usher in the next stage of history, communism, in which the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie” would be replaced by proletarian rule, and eventually a classless society in which all political states would wither away and humankind would be provided for, “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his need.” Marxism represented the most significant challenge to global capitalism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, inspiring the international labor movement, two major communist revolutions (Russia in 1917, China in 1949), and countless other “Third World” leaders in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, who were eager to throw off the shackles of imperialism (whether formal or informal) and reimagine the fundamentals of international political economy. While the communist model may not have survived the twentieth century, the Marxist critique of capitalism still resonates among many who remain dissatisfied with the perpetuation of political and economic inequalities. Whereas Marxists offered a radical alternative to the contemporary political order, more moderate figures in the late nineteenth century simply sought to make the existing order more functional in an era of economic globalization. The rise of individual nation-­states had propelled the creation of state-­centered rules and regulations, but these were insufficient in an age in which goods and services were being exchanged across borders. To send a letter internationally in the mid-­nineteenth century, for instance, required the purchase of postage stamps from each country through which the letter needed to travel. The creation of the General (later Universal) Postal Union in 1874 addressed this issue, so that, for the first time, standard rates for international mail applied across all nations. Other international political cooperation resulted from the demands of inventors, whose patents only held legal sway in the country of their citizenship. The 1883 Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property allowed any signatory country to make available patent and copyright privileges to anyone, regardless of citizen status. The legal provisions for liability for ships on the high seas were murky until 1897, when the Comité Maritime International (CMI) was formally established as the first international organization designed exclusively to handle issues surrounding maritime law and related commercial practices. In the same spirit, states came to see the economic benefits of international political cooperation in the service of standardizing time, weight, and measurements. Agreeing to international time standards or postage rates was a minor hurdle compared to the more serious political challenge of mitigating the causes and symptoms of international conflict. But optimists abounded during this transformative age, claiming that the progress of civilization could overcome even the most intractable of problems. Just as an international coalition of activists had persuaded the British Empire to abandon slavery in the early years of the nineteenth century, at the close of the century attention turned to the cause of peace, through the related movements of disarmament and arbitration. Prominent non-­state actors like the British muckraking journalist W. T. Stead and the Austrian noblewoman Bertha von Suttner joined the cause and persuaded a number of countries to send delegates to The Hague (the Netherlands) in 1899, and again in 1907, for international conventions on the limitation of arms, the principle of arbitration, and the rules of war. Many of the ideas discussed at The

22   Michael R. Anderson

Hague, such as the prohibition on the use of poisonous gases, would later be codified in international law. The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague would attempt to resolve international disputes before they erupted into war. But for all of the idealism associated with the conferences at The Hague and the utopian spirit of the age, underlying forces were at work that would propel the world into bloody conflict over the next several decades. The nineteenth century may have sped industrial production and compressed time and space through revolutions in communication and transportation, but the trappings of civilization had not transformed humankind’s age-­old capacity to turn political disputes into war. Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is available on a variety of websites, including the Marxist Internet Archive (www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/smith-­adam/works/wealth-­of-nations/index.htm). Marx’s Das Kapital is also available at the Marxist Internet Archive. Volume 1, for instance, can be accessed at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/.

World Wars and the End of Empire In terms of lives lost, World War I (1914–1918), also called the Great War, was felt most acutely on the European continent, where casualty figures put the total dead and wounded from both sides of the war at upward of thirty million. In terms of political and economic consequence, the ramifications of the war were global in scope. The defeat of the Central Powers brought about the breakup of the Austro-­Hungarian and Ottoman empires, leaving a trail of new nation-­states and other semi-­autonomous political units (“mandates”) in their wake. French and British strategic objectives determined the new boundary lines of the modern Middle East, with consequences that reverberate down to the present day. The humiliating peace terms imposed on Germany helped incubate a new generation of militarist sentiment that would explode twenty years later in an even larger global war. And the entry of the United States into the war in 1917 on behalf of the Allied Powers signaled a profound shift in geopolitical power. As the world’s largest creditor by the war’s end, and with European states in disarray, the United States found itself in the novel position of being a decisive actor on the world stage. The Amer­ican President Woodrow Wilson, more than any other international figure of the time, articulated the broad political aims of the Great War when he concluded that the postwar world must be made “safe for democracy.” Like Thomas Jefferson’s inspiring words 140 years earlier, Wilson’s bold pronouncement and support for the “self-­determination” of nations had consequences beyond his control. Many parts of the world in 1919, especially in Africa and Asia, were still defined by colonialism, but the rhetorical foundation for such control was quickly eroding. As the historian Erez Manela (2007) has argued, Wilson’s democratic language was seized upon by many in the non-­Western world who hoped that the peace following the Great War would herald a new dawn in international politics. Their hopes were mainly dashed. The young Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh traveled to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 seeking to press for international recognition of Vietnamese rights in French-­controlled Indochina, only to be ignored by the conference leaders. China wished to regain control of treaty ports that had been taken from the defeated German nation; instead, the Versailles peace settlement turned over those territorial rights to Japan, which was in an alliance with Great Britain at the time. Indians living under British control began to push in earnest for “home rule” (self-­government within the Indian Empire) during the war, but authorities rebuffed their movement. Indeed, it was in April 1919, at the height of the “Wilsonian moment,” that British

Historical Foundations   23

brigadier-­general Reginald Dyer gave orders to open fire on a crowd of peaceful protestors in the northern Indian town of Amritsar, killing 379 people and wounding over 1,200 in a brutal assertion of colonial domination. “Democracy” and “self-­determination” thus rang hollow for millions of the world’s people still living under the yoke of imperial control. Even within the West, the Great Powers had vastly different ideas about how to manage an increasingly connected economic system during the 1920s and 1930s, undermining efforts to create a truly integrated global political and economic order. As economic uncertainty gave way to worldwide crisis by the early 1930s, nations wrestled with the question of the relationship between the state and the economy. A social-­democratic capitalist model, promoted by the United States and Western Europe during the middle decades of the twentieth century, touted the virtues of balancing the interest of free markets with a concern for social inequalities and the necessity for expanding the safety net for the poor, elderly, and sick. Fascist states, like those in 1930s Germany, Italy, and Spain, promoted a corporatist model that upheld private enterprise as a vehicle for expanding the power of the state and creating the conditions for economic self-­sufficiency, or autarky. The socialist model promoted by the Soviet Union, meanwhile, eliminated the distinction between the state and the economy, as state-­owned enterprises guided the development of the national economy. These fundamental divisions over political orders and economic policies marked the years of the global economic depression of the 1930s. National competition gave rise to economic protectionism and the plummeting of world trade during these years, while escalating the likelihood of armed conflict among rival political ideologies. It took a second world war (1939–1945) to not only subdue the German and Japanese war machines, but also to put into place a global political and economic framework that would shape the second half of the twentieth century. This framework would largely be determined by the concurrent rise of Amer­ican power and the retreat of European imperialism. Wilsonian democratic rhetoric found a new home in the voice of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, whose “Four Freedoms” speech in 1941 promoted civil liberties and economic mobility for all humankind. But it was the unfolding of the war itself, more than any world leader’s words, which had the most profound impact in undermining Western colonialism, especially in Asia. Most notably, the Japanese Empire, which had touted its Greater East Asia Co-­Prosperity Sphere in Southeast Asia as an alternative to Western control (and a useful mask for its own expansionist agenda), demonstrated the weakness of the Western defenses as Dutch, French, British, and Amer­ican colonial possessions fell in rapid succession into the hands of the Japanese. In particular, the fall of Singapore—Britain’s primary naval base in the Pacific, with a supposedly unassailable position—sent a profound shock to those who believed in the inherent superiority of Western arms, tactics, and technology. In a matter of three days in February 1942, the Japanese overwhelmed 90,000 troops stationed at the base and forced their surrender, the largest in British military history. The psychological impact of the battle upon East–West relations was as profound as its strategic importance. While Britain and the other Allied countries eventually prevailed in the war, their prewar colonial position would never be fully recaptured. The war had undermined irrevocably the old imperial order. Other developments far from the European and Pacific theaters of war laid the economic foundations for the postwar world. In July 1944, at a grand hotel in the secluded mountains of New Hampshire, hundreds of delegates from forty-­four Allied countries (collectively known as the “United Nations”) met to lay out the ground rules for future international trade and finance. Finance ministers and economic advisers at the Bretton Woods Conference, as it came to be known, wished to create a more coordinated system of global capitalism to set a path toward gradual, shared prosperity, rather than the fits and starts that had characterized economic growth in recent decades. In addition to stabilizing the international monetary system by making the U.S. dollar the international currency standard (and by fixing its value to gold at

24   Michael R. Anderson

$35 per ounce), the delegates also created two international agencies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF ) and the World Bank, designed to work in tandem to stabilize currencies, offer debt relief, and provide a source of loans for reconstruction and development. Although the Bretton Woods “system” for monetary stabilization ended in the early 1970s, the IMF and World Bank continue to serve as critical (if controversial) international institutions in the effort to manage everything from the European debt crisis to the coordination of foreign aid in sub-­ Saharan Africa. The United Nations wartime alliance transformed itself into the United Nations international organization by the end of the war, specifically through the signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco in June 1945. According to the UN Charter, two of the primary purposes of this international organization are (1) to preserve peace and security in the world, and (2) to harmonize relations among the world’s states under the principle of sovereign equality and self-­ determination. The UN Security Council, consisting of five permanent members, addresses itself to this first purpose; the General Assembly, meanwhile, serves as a deliberative body with practically every sovereign state represented by one vote. While the Security Council is often stymied from action through the veto power of any one of its members, and the General Assembly can become mired in endless debate, the United Nations continues to serve (along with the international organizations named above, as well as the G-­20 meetings, discussed elsewhere) as an essential linchpin of contemporary global governance, providing international legitimacy for humanitarian military intervention or medical assistance that no other organization can muster. The Internet Modern History Sourcebook (http://legacy.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/modsbook.asp) provides online access to hundreds of text-­based sources. History Masters (www.mastersinhistory.net/top-­50-world-­history-blogs.html) features a large array of blogs on a number of topics related to world history. Despite the work of these postwar planners at Bretton Woods and San Francisco, the world was not truly united in a global economic and political order in the years following World War II. Instead, it lay mired in a “Cold War” between rival superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and their divergent political and economic ideologies. In a confidential 1950 document, NSC-­68, Amer­ican policymakers contrasted the Western, democratic, and capitalist “free” world with the Soviet Union’s “slave society.” Communist rhetoric, meanwhile, charged U.S.-led capitalism, with its compliant international organizations, as a force for neo-­ imperialism, and argued that the supposed superiority of democratic governments masked gross economic and social inequalities within these states. As the historian Odd Arne Westad makes clear in The Global Cold War (2005), this superpower rivalry went beyond a “First World” conflict and instead made the “Third World”—the former colonized areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America—central in the battle for hearts and minds. But even as the Cold War elevated the stakes for political and economic choices made in these underdeveloped nations, Cold War­centered mentalities failed to recognize the particular concerns of these individual nations as they navigated development through the often treacherous waters of ethnic and religious divisions, political corruption, poor health services, and inadequate educational institutions—the sad legacies of the postcolonial state. The Cold War may have defined the international political context into the 1980s, yet the priorities of this ideological struggle often overlooked more fundamental political and economic changes taking place as a result of new states’ tentative steps into the world of globalization.

Historical Foundations   25

A New World Order? With the collapse of the Soviet Union and other Communist-­led states around the world in the early 1990s, many Western commentators triumphantly proclaimed victory for the Amer­ican-­ led political and economic order, defined by democratic politics and a neoliberal “Washington Consensus” that privileged privatization, deregulation, and free trade. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, this liberal democratic model in many ways had replaced the social democratic model championed by many Western countries from earlier years. The liberal model championed market forces above all to promote growth, with rather less concern for state-­sponsored measures to combat inequality. During the 1980s, welfare systems in Europe and the United States came under attack as inefficient and an infringement of the capitalist system. Financial institutions were freed from regulations in order to increase capital flows and generate new forms of wealth. But this push toward neoliberalism faced a backlash by the 1990s, as labor and environmental activists exposed the negative consequences of such policies on wages, working conditions, and the sustainability of Earth’s resources. The aftermath of the global financial crisis has only exacerbated these deeper questions about the wisdom of the neoliberal approach (the subject of our next chapter). Democratic varieties of capitalism (whether social democratic or liberal democratic) are not the only models for the contemporary world. As the political scientists Barry Buzan and George Lawson (2014) have noted, authoritarian states—whether they be monarchies, single-­ party regimes, military juntas, or dictatorships—continue to exist, and to defy those who see a global movement toward democracy. “Competitive authoritarian” states such as Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, Iran, Venezuela, Tanzania, Kenya, and even Russia gesture toward electoral competition while keeping a firm hand on political control through manipulation of the media and businesses. Still another prominent example, China can be considered a “state bureaucratic” model. Capitalism may have triumphed in the aftermath of the Cold War, but there is no singular version of capitalism that has emerged victorious. In the years ahead, policymakers and citizens will continue to be presented with a vast array of political choices, between the democratic and authoritarian, to help guide their economic policies. It is the convergence of these decisions that will shape the political and economic dimensions of our world in the coming decades.

References and Further Reading Abu-­Lughod, Janet L. 1989. Before European Hegemony: The World System a.d. 1250–1350. New York: Oxford University Press. Bayly, C. A. 2004. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. Malden, MA: Wiley-­Blackwell. Beaud, Michel. 2001. A History of Capitalism: 1500–2000. New York: Monthly Review Press. Bowen, H. V., Margarette Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby, eds. 2000. The Worlds of the East India Company. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell. Braudel, Fernand. 1992. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century. Vol. 3, The Perspective of the World. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Buzan, Barry, and George Lawson. 2014. “Capitalism and the Emergent World Order.” International Affairs 90, no. 1: 71–91. Chaudhuri, K. N. 1990. Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drayton, Richard. 2002. “The Collaboration of Labor: Slaves, Empires, and Globalizations in the Atlantic World, ca. 1600–1850.” In Globalization in World History, edited by A. G. Hopkins, 99–115. New York: Norton. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1998. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

26   Michael R. Anderson Frank, Andre Gunder, and Barry K. Gills, eds. 1993. The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? New York: Routledge. Gran, Peter. 1996. Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Hopkins, A. G., ed. 2002. Globalization in World History. London: Pimlico. McNeill, William H. 1963/1991. The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community; With a Retrospective Essay. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Manela, Erez. 2007. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-­Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pomeranz, Kenneth. 2000. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stearns, Peter N. 2010. Globalization in World History. New York: Routledge. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-­System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-­Economy in the 16th Century. New York: Academic Press. Westad, Odd Arne. 2005. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3

U.S. Globalism and the Present World Order Michael R. Anderson As noted in a previous chapter, the contemporary world has been shaped over the centuries through numerous interactions that have crossed national and regional lines and defied traditional assumptions about the unique historical trajectory of “the West.” Yet, while the benefits of studying these developments in a global context are clear, we also must acknowledge that the modern era is not simply an autonomously operating system. The present world is the product of specific actors, with differing levels of power and diverse political and economic agendas. From this perspective, one cannot neglect the singular importance of the United States in shaping the ideas and institutions associated with today’s political and economic climate. Since the end of World War II, the United States has wielded the lion’s share of power relative to the rest of the world’s states. The Amer­ican nation-­state has shown a particular interest in building a global political and economic order to maximize its own influence around the world, and to promote a particular vision of freedom and prosperity based on individual liberties and free-­market policies. Globalization, some have argued, has thus reflected a kind of implicit “Amer­icanization.” Yet, even as we recognize the importance of the United States in shaping the contemporary political and economic debate, it is increasingly clear that the United States does not monopolize the global conversation. New ideas regarding the relationship between the individual and the state, as well as between the government and the economy, are challenging those laid out by the United States during the “Amer­ican Century,” a term coined in 1941 by Henry Luce, the publisher of Life magazine. As we enter a new multipolar era, the prospect of a singular political and economic global order defined by Amer­ican interests and ideals has receded from view, and in its place we see a far more complex mix of ideologies, policies, and practices.

The “Amer­ican Century” The term “Amer­ican Century” was coined on February 17, 1941, by Life magazine publisher Henry Luce. Then the editor-­in-chief of the magazine, Luce proposed in his editorial that the United States should take a leading role on the international stage during the first years of World War II. And, indeed, in the decades that followed, beginning with its entry into the war and its critical help in bringing victory to the Allied powers, the United States did exercise its political, economic, and cultural clout around the world in various ways. Yet the idea of an Amer­ican Century is more rhetorical than analytical in its assessment of Amer­ican power in the latter half of the twentieth century. Scholars such as Walter LaFeber are skeptical regarding the degree to which the United States really

28   Michael R. Anderson

was able to shape global events to its own purposes during the Cold War. Nevertheless, even into the twenty-­first century, aspiring U.S. presidential candidates from both major parties include references to extending or promoting the Amer­ican Century as a central element of their foreign policy agendas.

The issue of Life in which Luce’s essay was published can be found at Google Books (https://books.google.com/) by searching on the terms “Amer­ican Century Luce”; his essay begins on page 61.

The End of History? In 1989 the Amer­ican political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote an article in the National Interest titled “The End of History?” The title reflected the ideological climate as the Cold War wound its way toward a peaceful conclusion. As Communist control began to crumble across the former Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe, Fukuyama suggested that the broad debates about international politics and economics that had defined the modern era to that point had been decisively settled in the West’s favor. The political model of liberal democracy had triumphed over authoritarianism, in his view, while the economic postulates of free-­ market capitalism had won out over the doctrines of socialism. Fukuyama argued that while policymakers around the world would still have serious differences over resource allocation, and countries at times would still engage in threatening behavior, the end of the Cold War nevertheless appeared to herald a new era in which a broad global consensus was beginning to emerge, and that long-­term peace and prosperity was more achievable than ever before. For a retrospective conversation surrounding the “end of history” debate, see a special edition of the digital commons website Open Democracy, at www.opendemocracy.net/ democracy-­fukuyama/issue.jsp. Implicit in Fukuyama’s analysis was the belief in the unique and privileged position of the United States in maintaining this global order. Contemporaneous events in the geopolitical sphere encouraged Amer­ican policymakers to join academics in their optimistic assessment about this consensus. In 1990 President George H. W. Bush of the United States led a coalition of nations to stand against the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s August invasion and occupation of its Persian Gulf neighbor, Kuwait. Within days of the invasion of Kuwait, the United States was joined by all the major powers in the world in condemning the actions of Hussein and imposing sanctions on the Iraqi regime. An international coalition quickly emerged that eventually resulted in Operation Desert Storm, an Amer­ican-­led effort in January 1991 to oust Iraq from Kuwait, with clear and immediate success. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, President Bush proudly spoke about a “new world order” that would replace the decades-­long Cold War, and quoted Winston Churchill in proclaiming that such a long-­sought world, organized around “the principles of justice and fair play,” was finally within reach. President Bush’s vision for a new world order might have been rhetorically based in decades-­old lofty sentiments espousing universal ideals, but it was also grounded in the hard reality of Amer­ican global dominance in the early 1990s. Like Fukuyama, Bush envisioned a future in which broad international consensus had emerged around the major questions of the day, spurred on by the decline of the Soviet Union as a geopolitical counterweight to the United

U.S. Globalism and the Present World Order   29

States. For many decades, the Soviet Union, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), had prevented the United States and other Western nations from coordinated action in the United Nations Security Council, where the USSR served as one of the council’s five permanent members, each of which wielded veto power on any major votes. But when the Soviets joined the Amer­icans in authorizing the United Nations to use military force against Iraq in 1991, Bush seized this moment to recognize that the “bipolar” world order was coming to an end. (Indeed, the Soviet Union itself would dissolve completely by the end of that year.) Within this moment arose a unipolar international system, defined in large measure by the interests and ideas of the world’s remaining superpower, the United States. The January 1991 speech to the U.S. Congress in which President George H. W. Bush discussed his vision for a “new world order” is available online from the Amer­ican Presidency Project, at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=19253. During the 1990s, Amer­ican policymakers adopted thinking about political and economic questions in a global perspective, in large part because they understood the United States to be the vital life force of this newly reconfigured world-­system. In January 1997, at her Senate confirmation hearing to become the U.S. secretary of state, Madeleine K. Albright spoke of America’s place in the global network as “the center of this system” and described the country as the “dynamic hub of the global economy.” The following year, in an interview on the Today Show, Albright uttered a more forthright declaration: “We are America. We are the indispensable nation.” The foreign policy implications of this kind of thinking for the United States was clear: the country had a right and a responsibility to lead the world in this new age of globalization. The United States could embrace international law, manage international organizations, and promote economic interdependence for the purposes of expanding Amer­ican power in the world. For most of the twentieth century, the United States had an expansive notion of the definition of “national interest,” and it justified interventions abroad in the name of anticommunism. But now, in the post-­Cold War world, Amer­ican policymakers shifted their primary focus to economic questions and turned their attention to the liberalization of the global economy. In 1993 the United States, Canada, and Mexico finalized negotiations for the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which reduced tariffs for various goods and services traveling between state borders on the continent and eased capital investment among the three North Amer­ican nations. Two years later, the United States played a leading role in the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), an international governmental organization dedicated to lowering tariffs and other trade barriers around the world, replacing and expanding upon the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which had regulated international trade since 1947. The effort to bring all of the major world economies under a single set of rules for trade was bolstered with the acceptance of China into the WTO in 2001.

Washington Consensus? As the leading global superpower, the United States was interested not only in managing the trading relationships among nations, but also in shaping economic policies within nations in order to create a more seamless global economic system. How should countries beset by economic problems best achieve growth, low inflation, and a reasonable income distribution? Washington-­ based think tanks, along with the Federal Reserve Board and leading Amer­ican financial institutions, believed that they had the answer an interlocking set of policy prescriptions that came to be

30   Michael R. Anderson

known as the “Washington Consensus,” a term coined by economist John Williamson in 1990. Policies encompassed by this consensus included tighter fiscal discipline, the reduction of marginal tax rates, the privatization of state-­run businesses, the deregulation of private businesses, and the securing of property rights. Williamson initially laid out these principles to help guide specific Latin Amer­ican countries facing economic troubles, but within a few years Amer­ican policymakers and economists had embraced these policies as an overarching set of ideas for all nations. In the 1980s and 1990s, the policies making up the Washington Consensus became the basis for what some have called the “neoliberal” agenda to minimize state involvement in the economy. According to this view, the state should restrict its activities in order to allow people and businesses to seek their economic self-­interest via naturally self-­regulating and efficient market mechanisms. While the neoliberal agenda focused on reforms in the economic sphere, politics were nevertheless important in its implementation. By the mid-­1990s, advocates of the Washington Consensus began to realize that economic reform was impossible without a political context that encouraged the freeing of markets and the creation of a level playing field for competition. Economists began to turn their attention to the governance of states and the performance of political institutions as directly relevant to the performance of economies. After all, citizens would be less likely to invest in their countries if they distrusted the political system. Corruption at elite institutions sapped the growth potential of countries and hindered the ability of new ideas to forge innovative practices in state and private bureaucracies. Governments that were unresponsive to the needs of their citizens and stacked the deck in favor of a privileged few might experience short-­term economic success, but in the long run these states would fall behind more inclusive countries. Political inclusion and economic liberalization, in other words, needed to develop in tandem. The neoliberal agenda may have positioned itself as a “consensus,” but opposition to its political and economic objectives emerged as quickly as its policies took root. On January 1, 1994, the day that NAFTA came into effect, a small group of guerrillas operating in the southern Mexican province of Chiapas rose up in protest. Calling themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army, they launched a rebellion against the ruling party in Mexico, claiming that the implementation of NAFTA would only serve to further subjugate economically the people of Mexico to its northern neighbor, as well as to global institutions like the WTO. The Zapatistas’ leader, known to outsiders only as “Subcomandante Marcos,” was a charismatic, shadowy figure who appeared in public in a ski mask, smoked a pipe, and delivered eloquent missives about the perils of free-­market capitalism upon the poor and indigenous peoples of the world. Making clear that their movement was not merely a local act of resistance, the Zapatistas launched a solidarity network that resulted in an international conference in 1996, the First International Meeting for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, with thousands of activist-­ participants from dozens of countries. No longer could one claim that the political and economic policies espoused by the Washington Consensus had universal acceptance among the world’s peoples. To read more about the alternative economic vision propounded by the Zapatistas, see the “Zapatismo” page on the website of the Mexico Solidarity Network (www.mexico solidarity.org/programs/alternativeeconomy/zapatismo/en). As the so-­called “anti-­globalization” movement grew, it expanded into the developed world, and protestors soon began to organize counter-­summits at the meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF ), World Bank, and other major international organizations. There, activists

U.S. Globalism and the Present World Order   31

challenged the fundamental belief that the neoliberal agenda was the only path to prosperity. In addition to concerns for indigenous peoples, protestors drew attention to the negative effects of economic globalization on protection of labor rights and the ecological health of the planet. In the late fall of 1999, tens of thousands of activists descended upon Seattle, Washington, on the occasion of a WTO Ministerial Conference. Street protests erupted outside the WTO conference, resulting in major disruptions at the event and causing the mayor of Seattle to impose a state of emergency. Worldwide news coverage of the event served to open up more widespread debate concerning the purpose and practices of the WTO and similar international organizations that had previously been ignored in mainstream media outlets. In early 2001, activists founded the World Social Forum (WSF ) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, as a direct counterpart to the World Economic Forum, usually held in Davos, Switzerland. The WSF ’s motto, “Another World Is Possible,” made clear that rather than being simply “anti-­globalization,” the forum served to promote a kind of “alter-­globalization,” one that prioritized social justice, environmental protection, and worker rights over the neoliberal emphasis upon liberalization, deregulation, and privatization. The rise of the alter-­globalization movement by the late 1990s proved that the kind of global ideological consensus that had been touted by scholars and promoted by Western policymakers for the previous ten years was in fact a chimera. The positing of such a consensus was a convenient construct that had allowed powerful political and financial elites to proclaim that their vision for world order was one that was universally desired, rather than a specific agenda made possible through unique circumstances in the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Yet it was not until the terrorist operatives of al-­Qaeda hijacked four jet airliners in the United States on September 11, 2001, and carried out their murderous missions in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC, that news headlines announced that proclamations about the “end of history” were premature. History had not come to an end, Amer­icans were now informed. The precise contours of this new historical age, however, were not yet clear.

Jihad vs. McWorld? The attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States may have restarted “history” in the minds of many Westerners, but the subsequent “global war on terror” had the effect of sidelining the growing “alter-­globalization” movement that had been questioning the dominant political and economic global agenda of the United States and its supporters. Whereas previous years had pitted the forces of market liberalism against those committed to global justice, scholars now turned their attention to those violent extremists who wished to turn back the clock on modernity altogether. Benjamin Barber’s 1992 article and subsequent 1995 book, Jihad vs. McWorld, encapsulated one popular view of the central conflict for this new age. The forces of tribalism were arrayed against the forces of globalism, according to Barber, and they were locked in mortal conflict. The former looked to harden ethnic and religious differences, he argued, and to spurn the modern world’s emphasis on interdependence and cooperation. The latter, meanwhile, championed the uniformity and homogeneity that come with global integration. Neither tendency, in Barber’s analysis, was conducive to a truly democratic world. Yet, in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks, any critique of current global political and economic conditions was suspicious. In the words of U.S. President George W. Bush in a September 20, 2001, address to a joint session of Congress, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” To many, 9/11 marked a sharp break in world history. Bush administration officials justified controversial foreign policy decisions—not least the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003—as necessary measures in the context of the so-­called war on terror. They condemned opponents as maintaining a “September 10th” outlook that was now hopelessly out of date, and

32   Michael R. Anderson

that failed to recognize the novel challenges of this new era. Yet, viewed in another way, the Bush administration’s responses in the wake of the 9/11 attacks could be seen as an extension of Amer­ican expansionist foreign policy from previous decades. In this analysis, one could argue that policymakers for many years had defined U.S. national security interests through a broad commitment to the maintenance of a particular political and economic order in the world, one that privileged liberal democratic values and free and open markets. Those who opposed this vision—whether communists or Islamic jihadists—threatened this order and thus created the basis for U.S. intervention. Action by Amer­ican governmental officials in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 supported the argument that the neoliberal agenda of the 1990s had not been eclipsed, but merely transformed, for this new geopolitical moment. Iraqi companies that had been state-­ owned were quickly privatized under the watchful eye of U.S. ambassador Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Other administration officials touted the possibility of the development of a U.S.–Middle East Free Trade Area that would resemble the provisions of NAFTA and other similar groupings. The privatization of Iraqi businesses, deregulation of the country’s economic markets, and the opening up of Iraq to foreign investment all corresponded to the policy prescriptions that were made clear in the Washington Consensus. As the sociologist Manfred Steger has noted, the ideology of “market globalism,” so pervasive in the 1990s, had transformed itself into an ideology of “imperial globalism”— caustically defined by Steger as “a neoliberal structural adjustment program by military means” (2009, 39). The war on terror, in other words, was only the latest guise through which the United States attempted to impose an Amer­ican-­led political and economic vision upon the rest of the world. Indeed, in the months before the Iraq invasion, the Bush administration issued a national security manifesto that asserted the United States’ right to intervene militarily abroad before threats were fully formed—a stunning and unprecedented justification of unilateral, preventive power around the globe. This policy paper, titled “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America” (NSS), was released in September 2002 and quickly became known as the Bush Doctrine, the president’s signature foreign policy statement. Eschewing concerns about international law or deference to global governance organizations (unlike the approach of Bush’s father in the first Gulf War), the NSS justified Amer­ican military action to head off growing and gathering threats, no matter how remote, in part because of the inherent goodness and righteousness of the Amer­ican political and economic model for the world, based on “freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.” The lack of conceptual clarity over the repeated use of the term “freedom” in the NSS paper served a purpose as well, casually allowing an Amer­ican-­centered perspective to speak on behalf of all humankind. A little more than two years later, on the occasion of Bush’s second presidential inauguration, the Amer­ican president issued a clarion call for the promotion of democracy worldwide, a global mission statement for the United States that was breathtaking in its ambition. In his address, Bush boldly proclaimed, “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world.” Bush borrowed language from a previous Amer­ican president, Woodrow Wilson, who similarly championed the prospect of ushering in a world “safe for democracy” when he requested the commitment of Amer­ican forces to the Allied cause in World War I. When Wilson spoke to Congress in April 1917, the United States was still in the very early stages of shifting “Manifest Destiny” rhetoric from its continental-­based origins to a worldwide imperative. But, in January 2005, Bush spoke to the Amer­ican people as a president imbued with a sense of Amer­ican virtue, still filled with righteous anger at the attacks visited upon U.S. soil a little more than three years earlier, and still confident in the country’s ability, despite early setbacks in Iraq, to enact his “freedom agenda.” The speech

U.S. Globalism and the Present World Order   33

served as a high-­water mark of Amer­ican globalist rhetoric, and, with hindsight, as a stark testament to the vast gap between ambition and achievable results. The January 2005 second inaugural address in which President George W. Bush outlined his global “freedom agenda” can be found on the website of Yale University’s Avalon Project (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/gbush2.asp).

Countering Amer­ican Hegemony A quarter of a century after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we see a far more complex set of political and economic conditions facing the world than the one envisioned by Francis Fukuyama at that time. On the one hand, the number of democratic states has risen to new heights since the end of the Cold War. According to the watchdog organization Freedom House, 123 electoral democracies existed in 2016, or 63 percent of the total number of countries in the world, a percentage as high as any measured since 1989. Yet the organization acknowledges that an open electoral process alone does not fully measure the degree of political and economic freedom within a state. In order to make this judgment, Freedom House assesses other factors, such as the ability to express beliefs without fear of state sanction; the right to assemble and freely associate with others; and access to the rule of law and to economic opportunities, such as the acquisition of private property. With this more comprehensive ratings system, a more nuanced picture emerges, featuring a number of states in the international system demonstrating strong authoritarian state controls within an ostensible framework of open elections and open-­market capitalism. Amid this complexity, one simple conclusion can be drawn: the United States’ ability to organize and manage a prospective world order is considerably diminished from the optimistic projects of 1989, and even 2005. President George W. Bush launched a Greater Middle East Initiative for democracy promotion as an idealistic complement to the military invasion of Iraq. Yet, unsurprisingly, the Amer­ican-­led forcible overthrow of the Iraqi government and subsequent military occupation did little to enhance the United States’ standing as a political model to follow among the peoples of the Middle East. Some years later, with a series of political uprisings in the region that toppled several long-­standing authoritarian rulers during the “Arab Spring” of 2011, many Western commentators wondered whether Bush’s freedom agenda was finally bearing fruit. But the takeaways from this moment were twofold: first, that the origin and success of the anti-­authoritarian movements in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East were the product of internal dissent with political corruption and economic hardships, not the result of Amer­ican prodding; and, second, that the overthrow of an unpopular authoritarian ruler was no guarantee of political freedom in the future. Indeed, the chaos unleashed through many of these uprisings has in some cases left countries less “free” than ever, and subject to the whims of organized political parties with an overtly illiberal agenda. The very idea of a freedom agenda has served the purposes of anti-­Western leaders around the world who have wished to shore up their standing among their citizens by providing an opportunity to stand up to Amer­ican “imperialists” and expose Amer­ican hypocrisies regarding the country’s supposed commitment to democracy. In Iran, state-­supported demonstrations against the United States have been a staple of the Islamic regime’s source of power for many decades. Iran’s political and religious leaders draw upon memories of 1953, when the Central Intelligence Agency helped engineer the overthrow of the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstall the Amer­ican-­friendly monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran. In 1979, religious hardliners finally ousted the shah and installed

34   Michael R. Anderson

an Islamic government, which encouraged cries of “Death to America!” at every opportunity. Only in late 2013 did Iran’s newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani, begin to cool the rhetoric and reach out to U.S. President Barack Obama to discuss potential cooperation on numerous regional issues, including an international agreement, reached in 2015, to limit Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities. But the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency in 2016 has renewed tensions with Iran and further polarized relations with other Islamic states. In Latin America, the legacy of U.S. military and economic expansionism has caused similar distrust regarding Amer­ican calls for political transformation. Hugo Chávez, who served as Venezuela’s president from 1999 until his death in 2013, capitalized on his country’s oil-­rich assets to create popular social welfare programs and organize regional opposition to Western neoliberal policies. Drawing from the inspiration of the nineteenth-­century South Amer­ican nationalist leader Simón Bolívar, Chávez signed a pact with Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2004 that created the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), a grouping of a handful of Latin Amer­ican countries committed to reviving the notion of a unified South Amer­ican continent in order to counter the creeping hegemony of the United States. The ALBA model promotes a kind of modern socialism that emphasizes “participatory” and “protagonist” democracy at the expense of “representative democracy,” often by establishing communes at a local level that report directly to the president. This approach to governance moves away from the institutional focus of most Western-­based democracies, and enhances power at the executive level. Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, emphasized this “Bolivarian alternative” as a regional counterpoint to hemispheric-­wide cooperative efforts by the United States, such as the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). But a sharp economic downturn and subsequent political crisis in Venezuela have called into question this Bolivarian alternative to U.S. hemispheric leadership. The most recent prominent critic of Amer­ican global hegemony is President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the chief successor state to the Soviet Union, who has set about in recent years to clamp down on civil liberties within his own country and embrace an authoritarian model of state capitalism. Putin may gesture toward electoral competition (cycling away from the presidency for a term before cycling back in), yet he maintains firm political control through his manipulation of media providers and prominent businesses. Political scientists have compared the “competitive authoritarianism” of Putin’s Russia not only to Iran and Venezuela, but also to Malaysia, Singapore, and Kenya. And like Venezuela’s late leader, Putin recognizes that in the modern world, defined by interaction across national borders, it is not enough to have control over one’s own country; regional partners are critical if one’s agenda hopes to stand against the political and economic order envisioned by the United States. To this end, Putin has openly embraced Russian intellectuals who have called for a more expansive Russian foreign policy, looking east rather than west. In 2011 Putin announced his support for the creation of a “Eurasia Union” to serve as a bridge between the rest of Europe and the Asia-­Pacific region, and which would expand upon the current customs union among Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus to include other former Soviet republics. To Western critics, Putin’s Eurasian agenda represents Soviet-­era nostalgia and an effort to subvert global ideas and institutions. The 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine provided a dramatic illustration of this tension. The geopolitical observer Stewart Patrick of the Council on Foreign Relations has described the crisis in Ukraine as one of the most threatening to world order, because it challenges some fundamental norms concerning contemporary world politics, especially the principles of state sovereignty and nonintervention. The insertion of Russian troops into Crimea, in advance of the contested vote that returned the province to Russia after having been a part of Ukrainian sovereign territory since 1954, was a clear violation of UN Charter provisions. The use of Russian military force within Ukrainian borders further undermined one of the key elements of state sovereignty:

U.S. Globalism and the Present World Order   35

monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Another destabilizing aspect of this crisis has been the further undermining of international organizations, most notably the United Nations, whose Security Council once again has been unable to act as an effective guarantor of collective security, thanks to the Russian veto. But to condemn Russia for destabilizing geopolitical stability and undermining international collective security is to overlook the fact that the United States and its partners have contributed their fair share to this global malady in recent years. In 2002–2003, during the months before the outbreak of the Iraq War, the Bush administration sought the approval of the United Nations for military action to disarm Saddam Hussein of his supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. But after failing to secure the votes for a final UN resolution authorizing the use of force, the United States and its “coalition of the willing” nevertheless decided to move forward with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a clearly illegal action from the perspective of the UN Charter. In 2011, during a civil uprising in Libya, the United States and other nations sought and received UN approval to enforce a no-­fly zone and levy economic sanctions on the Muammar Gaddafi regime, which at the time had been threatening the lives of its citizens. Under the auspices of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, however, an international military coalition did far more than simply protect citizens from extermination; it ultimately aided rebel forces in the overthrow of Gaddafi. This too, strictly speaking, was a violation of the principle of sovereignty, as these actions went beyond the language stipulated in the UN resolution. Yet, few in the West complained about the manipulation of this resolution’s language that resulted in the violent demise of an isolated and eccentric North African dictator. Iraq, Libya, and now the Ukraine are all recent examples of a well-­known fact of life in geopolitics: that international law traditionally has been no match for great-­power interest. The end of the Cold War brought great hope to some that world politics would no longer be governed by the naked self-­interest of powerful states, and instead be subsumed within the greater good of the “international community,” defined by the norms and organizations that were created for the post-­World War II world and led by a benign hegemon, the United States. Yet this consensus never truly took root, and the United States, meanwhile, suffered the setbacks of imperial overstretch. Critics have exposed the Western foundations of the contemporary political order, and authoritarian rulers have challenged its legitimacy. Yet, for now, there appears to be no serious contender to replace this global web of ideas and institutions, despite the efforts of Chávez and Putin. As we move ever forward into a multipolar era, the challenge of creating a truly coherent and consensual global order will only grow more acute.

The European Project and Global Order One cannot fully assess the contemporary world’s political and economic landscape simply by looking at the United States and its detractors in South America, the Middle East, and Russia. The decades-­long movement on the European continent for integration remains a powerful model for those willing to limit state sovereignty in the name of cooperation on behalf of prosperity and peace. European state rivalry brought about some of the bloodiest conflicts of the twentieth century, and yet within a few years after World War II, traditional foes France and Germany engineered an historic reconciliation to build economic cooperation, and eventually solidarity, across the continent. The development of European-­wide organizations—the Coal and Steel Community, the European Economic Community, and eventually the European Union (EU)—reflected an audacious vision by those who saw tremendous value in attempting to transform a balance-­of-power political model to a more community-­based approach. The relationship of the EU to the contemporary neoliberal moment is a complicated one. On the one hand, Europe has served as a key model for other regional efforts in liberalizing trade and opening up markets. The United States has been one of the most prominent backers of

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European integration, and it has championed the establishment of more powerful European-­ wide political and economic institutions to facilitate the movement of people, goods, services, and capital around the continent. European economic success has derived from an embrace of consumerism and technological advances. On the other hand, many European states have diverged from the fiscal policies embraced by Amer­ican policymakers since the 1980s. Relatively high marginal tax rates, robust public spending, and powerful labor unions have been hallmarks of several European states, whereas the United States has eschewed this “social democratic” model in favor of lower tax rates, privatization, and the hollowing out of labor rights. Conservatives in the United States have looked askance at the prospect of a single European state that might challenge the model of Amer­ican-­style capitalism. Optimism surrounding the European project in recent years has fallen considerably as a result of the 2008 global economic downturn and the European debt crisis that followed, both of which have tested the limits of continental solidarity. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which formally created the EU, established specific criteria for countries that wished to enter the so-­ called Eurozone and accept a common European currency, the euro, which launched in the year 2000. But, in the wake of the worldwide financial disaster in 2008, many states on the European periphery (most notably Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain) experienced major budget crises that threatened their solvency, which in turn threatened the very core of the European project. It was only through the coordinated efforts of the EU and the IMF that bailout packages propped up these weakened economies and allowed the Eurozone to survive. But these bailouts came with a high price tag: a demand for structural adjustments, including the implementation of deep budget cuts. Millions of Europeans now faced the prospect of an age of austerity with bleak growth projections for the considerable future. Given this state of affairs, activists from both the left and right stepped in to challenge the political and economic consensus that has driven the European project to date. In the spring of 2011, anger in Spain at the dire labor market—21 percent overall unemployment rates, with youth unemployment double that figure, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics— boiled over into the streets. A grassroots citizen organization calling itself Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now) demanded an end to austerity, the creation of a new European constitution, and a more participatory form of democracy. A series of mass demonstrations in cities around Spain gave rise to the May 15 (15M) movement, employing tactics that fellow protestors around Europe and even North America came to adopt over the following months: filling city squares, occupying major financial districts, and rejecting traditional political hierarchies in favor of ad hoc citizen coalitions. The height of this transregional activism took place on October 15, 2011, when hundreds of thousands of people in more than 900 cities across the globe engaged in mass demonstrations under the slogan “United for Global Change.” A manifesto issued on behalf of the “people’s assemblies” from around the world placed their respective struggles in a distinctly global context, and demanded that international institutions like the IMF and the WTO enact democratic reforms or be overturned. The result of this activism has been a mass mobilization of disaffected youth and workers, a growing sense of solidarity with the concerns of developing countries in the Global South, and a more public debate about the origins and consequences of economic inequality in today’s world. Primary documents related to the “15M” protest movement in Spain and elsewhere can be found on the group’s website, at www.15m.cc/p/english.html. Right-­wing nationalist movements in European states have also seen their popularity spike in the wake of the debt crisis. Long skeptical of European integration, national populist leaders on

U.S. Globalism and the Present World Order   37

the Continent have quickly garnered support among ethnic nationalists, who blame the economic troubles on the rising tide of immigration, especially from Muslim-­majority states. The neo-­Nazi “Golden Dawn” party in Greece holds several seats in the national legislature, with active branches in towns all over the country. The right-­wing nationalist “Jobbik” in Hungary stands as the country’s third-­largest political party. And in France, the anti-­immigrant National Front party has made a swift resurgence under the leadership of the charismatic Marine Le Pen. These nationalist political parties are gaining traction not only within their own countries’ legislative bodies, but in the European Parliament itself. In May 2014 the National Front won twenty-­five of France’s seventy-­four seats in the EU’s legislative body, a huge jump from the party’s previous representation (three). And, most sensationally, a referendum in the United Kingdom on June 23, 2016, resulted in a narrow victory for those advocating for British withdrawal from the EU. The surprise results of the “Brexit” referendum reverberated around the world and led many commentators to ponder the consequences not only for Europe, but for the foundations of the broader political and economic global order since World War II. As a report in the New York Times noted two days after the referendum, Britain’s promised exit from the EU “weakens a bloc that is the world’s single biggest market, as well as an anchor of global democracy” (Yardley et al., 2016). Most ominously, the results of the referendum portended a strengthening of nationalist and populist sentiment at the expense of international alliance building and the support for open societies. Far-­right nationalist leaders across Europe cheered the prospect of “Brexit,” as the vote lent weight to their own criticisms of the EU and promised the renewal of a call for enhanced state sovereignty. In the United States, then-­presidential candidate Donald Trump celebrated the outcome of the referendum and promised, if elected, to turn the United States away from policies encouraging political and economic integration. “The nation-­state remains the true foundation of happiness and harmony,” Trump asserted in a foreign-­policy speech earlier that spring. “We will no longer surrender the interests of this country or its people to the false song of globalism” (New York Times Election 2016 Archive). For a full transcript of presidential candidate Trump’s remarks on nationalism and US foreign policy, see the New York Times 2016 Election archive here: www.nytimes. com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-­trump-foreign-­policy.html. The crisis in Europe is troubling not only for EU advocates, who are now facing the prospect of subversion from within, but also for those around the world who advocate for meaningful political and economic governance across national boundaries. The EU has served as a global model for the voluntary relinquishing of state sovereignty in exchange for the benefits of regional cooperation. Other regional associations around the globe have drawn inspiration from its groundbreaking efforts, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the African Union (AU), and the Common Market in South America (MERCOSUR). Yet, no other regional grouping has come close to developing the kind of independent, continent-­wide institutions to sustain deep integration that the EU has. For the European idea to be cast into doubt at this moment could imperil efforts to generate the kinds of institutions required to meet contemporary political and economic challenges—from climate change to human rights—that transcend state borders.

A Beijing Consensus? In recent years, it has become almost a commonplace to say that humanity’s future will not be determined by the West, but instead by “the rest”—especially, the so-­called BRICS nations

38   Michael R. Anderson

(Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Political paralysis in the United States and economic dysfunction in Europe have made these traditional Western centers of power less desirable models to follow in the developing world. Perhaps more importantly, the gap between the Western powers and developing nations has been narrowing at a remarkable rate. Economic forecasters at Goldman Sachs predict that BRICS countries will match the economic output of the most industrialized nations of the world within twenty years. Taken together, all of this signals a rapid recalibration of global power in the coming decades. There are already clear signs that these developing states will be striking their own path forward on political and economic policy matters, not hewing to the neoliberal world order promoted by the United States during the past few decades. The BRICS countries have followed a different path to development than Western nations, and there is no reason to believe that they will hold the same ideological commitment to liberal democracy and free-­market capitalism. China’s rise is perhaps the most revealing and salient example of this trend. Founded upon the principles of revolutionary Marxism in 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), under the leadership of Mao Zedong, initially attempted to transform its agrarian economy into an industrialized one through its own homegrown collectivization projects. During the country’s Great Leap Forward (1958–1960), Mao attempted to organize Chinese peasants into village cooperatives and force them to engage in industrial production from makeshift blast furnaces scattered throughout the countryside. The experiment proved to be a costly failure, resulting in shoddy and unusable tools. Even more critically, the loss of agricultural labor and the centralized promotion of shoddy planting techniques created a devastating shortage of food, culminating in a famine that killed tens of millions. Mao’s authoritarian rule, combined with an outdated ideological commitment to complete state control over all manner of production and distribution, hampered China’s growth for several generations. By the late 1970s, a new generation of Chinese state leaders, most notably Communist Party chairman Deng Xiaoping, took a bold and practical new direction in kick-­starting the country’s development. Party officials abandoned efforts at economic self-­sufficiency and instead initiated a series of reforms that opened up the country’s economy to foreign direct investment (FDI). At the same time, Chinese leaders used surplus capital to gain access to foreign markets and natural resources. In abandoning many aspects of Marxist economics, Deng eschewed ideological purity in favor of pragmatic development policies, at one point famously saying, “It doesn’t matter whether it is a yellow cat or a black cat; a cat that catches mice is a good cat.” By the time of its accession to membership in the WTO in 2001, China had fully incorporated itself into the global capitalist economy. During the following decade the country experienced growth rates envied throughout the world. In February 2011, China formally overtook Japan to become the world’s second-­largest economy, and experts predict China will surpass the United States as the largest economy by the year 2030. China’s unique developmental trajectory has left it with a decidedly mixed economic model: a rising number of privately run businesses, alongside a number of state-­owned enterprises. The Chinese Communist Party is encouraging entrepreneurs to establish businesses and new markets in some sectors of the economy, while also maintaining direct state control and ownership in other sectors. Elements of socialism and capitalism thus run together and defy easy categorization. What is far easier to categorize is China’s political situation: an authoritarian, single-­party state, under the centralized control of the Chinese Communist Party, just as it has existed since 1949. In this state, political opponents are routinely silenced and exiled, demonstrations are quashed (most notoriously, during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989), and allegations of human rights abuses are rampant. Party leaders are especially sensitive to public criticism, and they therefore maintain an active censorship program in broadcast and social media outlets. Critics claim that political reforms in China have lagged far behind the economic reforms of the past thirty years, and that a rising middle class will inevitably pressure

U.S. Globalism and the Present World Order   39

the Communist Party to implement greater protections for individual civil liberties and force it to open up the political process to competing political parties. For now, however, Chinese rulers have successfully kept meaningful political reform at bay as they bet on their continued success in delivering significant economic gains to the people of China. A feature essay on China’s political and economic conditions and its prospects for international respect, titled “What China Wants,” can be found on the website of The Economist, at www.economist.com/news/essays/21609649-china-­becomes-again-­worlds-largest­economy-it-­wants-respect-­it-enjoyed-­centuries-past-­it-does-­not. From a global perspective, does the Chinese blending of authoritarianism and state-­directed capitalism have the potential to serve as a replacement to the Western model of liberal democracy and the free market? Does China’s development strategy constitute a “Beijing consensus” that others may follow? The question is perhaps an unfair one, as China apparently has no such global ambitions comparable to the Western neoliberal agenda of the immediate post-­ Cold War era. The appeal of building ties with China, at least in some quarters of the world, lies in the country’s relative lack of interest in imposing its political or economic orthodoxies as a cost of doing business. In its “Go Out” strategy, China has been concerned with making money, not with preaching the virtues of a particular political or economic model. In Asia, this has made it easier to forge relations with states such as Vietnam and Myanmar to its south, and with Russia to its northwest. In Africa, meanwhile, China has shown a willingness to make significant investments in the continent in its push for mineral extraction and land acquisition. Whereas U.S. officials often hector African leaders about democracy and human rights within their respective countries, Chinese policymakers pay little attention to the internal affairs of other nations—much as they would like their own domestic policies to be respected. For countries concerned about protecting state sovereignty in an age of globalization, China serves as an example to emulate. China’s hands-­off approach to issues like civil liberties and labor relations may make it popular among authoritarian leaders with whom the country does business, but it does little to endear itself to those fighting around the world for women’s rights, social justice, or environmental protection. China’s desire not to patronize also means that it does not take a strong public stance on many of the most important global challenges of the day. China’s main agenda is clear: it is guided by what is good for China. But as China “goes out” in search of markets and resources, its failure to articulate a broader set of political, economic, and social goals for the world means that it risks being seen purely as a selfish and extractive power, no better than the Western imperialists of old. And if China does hope to help shape the future world order, it must demonstrate that its political and economic vision takes into account the interest of a diverse set of people and interests well beyond its national borders. Surveying contemporary political and economic conditions from a global perspective is no easy task, especially given the uncertain geopolitical moment in which we live. Is humanity moving toward a new age of global consensus, as the former Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations Kishore Mahbubani believes? In The Great Convergence (2013), Mahbubani offers an optimistic perspective on the future of world politics. He bases his optimism on a case for the “logic of one world”; that is, once humanity comes to recognize that we are all invested in economic globalization, then we will make the necessary adjustments to our governing institutions and rise above nationalist concerns. But, if the logic is so clear, why does this challenge seem so formidable? As we have already seen, we are living through an era in which power is

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shifting away from the West. As the political scientist Charles Kupchan (2012) notes, however, rising powers like China are not trying simply to incorporate themselves into an existing world order; they have arrived onstage with very different perspectives regarding good governance and the state’s relationship to the economy. These perspectives will not reconcile themselves any too soon, and they likely will produce some degree of international conflict. So, rather than “convergence” on the biggest political and economic questions of the day, we should expect to find ourselves living in what Kupchan calls “no one’s world” for the foreseeable future. Brace yourselves.

References and Further Research Bacevich, Andrew J. 2002. Amer­ican Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Barber, Benjamin R. 1995. Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism’s Challenge to Democracy. New York: Ballantine. Freedom House. 2017. “Freedom in the World 2017. Populists and Autocrats: The Dual Threat to Global Democracy.” Washington, D.C. https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FH_FIW_2017_Report_ Final.pdf. Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. “The End of History.” National Interest 16 (summer): 3–18. Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Avon. Kupchan, Charles A. 2012. No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. New York: Oxford University Press. Mahbubani, Kishore. 2013. The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World. New York: PublicAffairs. Mazlish, Bruce. 2006. The New Global History. New York: Routledge. Rodrik, Dani. 2011. The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: W. W. Norton. Serra, Narcís, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, eds. 2008. The Washington Consensus Reconsidered: Towards a New Global Governance. New York: Oxford University Press. Steger, Manfred. 2009. Globalisms: The Great Ideological Struggle of the Twenty-­First Century. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Yardley, Jim, Alison Smale, Jane Perlez, and Ben Hubbard. 2016. “Britain Rattles Postwar Order and Its Place as Pillar of Stability.” New York Times, June 25. www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/world/europe/ britain-­rattles-postwar-­order-and-­its-place-­as-pillar-­of-stability.html. Zakaria, Fareed. 2012. The Post-­Amer­ican World: Release 2.0. New York: W. W. Norton.

4

Key Concepts and Processes: Empire and Imperialism Michael R. Anderson It is safe to say most people who deploy the words empire and imperial are not usually paying a compliment. In 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the Soviet Union to be an “evil empire,” triggering associations with the foreboding Galactic Empire featured in the recently released movie Star Wars. Since the end of the Cold War, the tables have turned, and many critics of U.S. foreign policy have asserted that the country’s global reach and quest for domination should be viewed through the framework of imperialism. More recently, China’s quest for resources in the developing world has led to accusations of “empire-­building.” In the present age of globalization, states are not the only entities that have been tagged with the E-­word. The journalist Steve Coll’s monumental 2012 exposé of the ExxonMobil Corporation declared the oil giant to be a “private empire” for its ability to exert influence on the global stage. Empire and imperial may be common epithets, but these terms are rarely discussed with conceptual clarity. What constitutes an empire, exactly? Can we identify common characteristics, or is it simply a derogatory term used to describe an international actor that is big and domineering? Who or what is eligible for such a designation: states, corporations, or perhaps the modern capitalist system itself? Can a state or corporation act imperially without being an empire? If so, how do we differentiate an imperial action from other efforts to wield power on the international stage? In popular and policymaking circles alike, empire and imperial are charged words, designed to provoke rather than analyze dispassionately. As a result, the use of these words often brings more heat than light. The purpose of this chapter is to bring greater analytical rigor and historical contextualization to these concepts. In assessing the global political and economic power of states and nonstate actors today, the importance of history should be self-­evident. As noted in previous chapters, powerful states for centuries have vied for advantage over one another, and this has resulted in the assertion of informal influence and even direct control over vast swaths of the globe in search of markets, labor, and natural resources. Scholars have come to call this process “imperialism,” and they have come to designate the states that act in this way as “empires.” Whereas European states were central to the development of this imperial system over the past few centuries, in recent years the United States has come to occupy the focal point for scholars of imperialism. Is the United States indeed an inheritor of European colonial practices of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Or with the passing of the colonial era and the flowering of the current age of globalization, can it be argued that we are living in a truly post-­imperial world and that we should seek to use a different set of concepts? Only through a more careful consideration of the historical development of the ideas of empire and imperialism can we begin to answer these and other related questions.

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“Empire” and “Imperialism” Simplified “Empire, then, is a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, by economic, social, or cultural dependence. Imperialism is simply the process or policy of establishing or maintaining an empire.” —Michael W. Doyle, Empires (Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 45

The Evolution of “Empire” “Empire” has had a long and convoluted history. Ancient Greeks saw empire embodied in the militaristic and coercive nature of their rivals, the Persians, and set it in contrast to the more democratic practices of the Greeks’ own polity, the city-­state. With the rise of the Romans, however, the idea of empire (imperium) took on a less pejorative cast, and instead simply described the right, or authority, to rule over others. By the time of the transition of the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus Caesar (27 bce to ce 14), the idea of empire became associated with a single authority figure (the emperor) in possession of a vast quantity of land, ruling over a diverse set of peoples through force of arms. Following this basic model, other instances of empire can be found in world history over the following centuries, from the Mongol Empire (ce 1206–1368) in Central and East Asia, to its Chinese successor during the Ming dynasty (ce 1368–1644) and the Ottoman Empire (c. ce 1300–1922) in modern-­day Turkey and beyond. In each of these cases, rulers succeeded (for a time) in centralizing control over huge swaths of territory and engineered political and economic practices to perpetuate their absolute authority. In Europe, meanwhile, the Holy Roman Empire (ce 962–1806) diverged from this model, inasmuch as centralized control was limited by the overlapping kingdoms and territories within it, as well as the competing religious authority of the pope. (As the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire famously noted, the Holy Roman Empire was “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.”) By the sixteenth century, a new concept of empire in Europe had supplanted the continental varieties exhibited in Asia. Maritime exploration by Portugal, Spain, France, and England contributed to a dramatic surge in interest in the acquisition of overseas territories, especially in the “New World” of North and South America. Bolstered by newly consolidated nation-­states, advances in navigation and sailing technology, and the forced labor of African slaves, these large European powers began to compete with one another for mineral wealth and agricultural production in the Americas. Their object was not simply political control over territories, but economic gain through resource extraction. The guiding principle behind these overseas ventures became known as mercantilism, a theory of economic nationalism that held that state power and wealth were dependent upon the accumulation of mineral and agricultural resources. Colonial empires allowed powerful European states to extract these resources at a low price, allowing for the cheap production of goods at home and thus domination of the export market. A new class of merchants in Europe exerted greater control over the policies of these nation-­ states, and this mercantile class worked alongside their respective nations’ rulers to invest huge sums in raising armies and navies to control shipping and trade, and to form monopolies over overseas markets in order to gain advantages over their European rivals. Unsurprisingly, these new maritime empires frequently clashed with one another. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, conflicts raged from the New World to the Old. The year 1776 was a momentous one in world history in general, and in the history of imperialism in particular. The Amer­ican colonists’ issuance of the Declaration of Independence in July of that year announced the beginning of the end of British colonial rule in North America.

Key Concepts and Processes: Empire   43

Meanwhile, the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations advocated that nations should abandon mercantilist policies in favor of free trade. These two documents, each in its own way, foretold a transformation of the British Empire, which by then had surpassed its European rivals in size and wealth. No longer could Great Britain rely on direct control of its Amer­ican colonies to exert influence; indeed, no longer was mercantilism the unchallenged approach to expanding national wealth and power. The age of empire was not over, but it would be transformed radically in the coming decades. The independence of the Amer­ican colonies following the Revolutionary War (1775–1783) may have been a blow against the British Empire, but it did not challenge the idea of empire itself. Instead, the Amer­ican founding fathers envisioned a new kind of empire—an “empire of liberty,” in the words of Thomas Jefferson. Instead of an overseas empire dedicated to the control of colonists and the extraction of resources, the Amer­ican experiment offered the possibility of a continental republic stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean under the banner of democratic government, one that would be achieved over the course of the following decades. Christian ideology also gave justification to the westward movement of peoples, and the rhetoric of “Manifest Destiny” often masked the decidedly undemocratic practices that accompanied this nineteenth-­century expansion, which involved the forced removal and extermination of native peoples, the plundering of natural resources in the service of state control and industrial interests, hostility toward neighboring states, and acquiescence regarding the enslavement of millions of people from Africa or of African descent. The continental empire of Jefferson’s dreams may have been based in pacific rhetoric, but its realization involved the employment of naked power and the subjugation of others that have characterized all imperial ventures. As the concept of empire was undergoing a democratic makeover in the United States during the nineteenth century, the project of imperialism in Great Britain was likewise shifting from the formal acquisition of territory to exploring other means of control, largely as a result of the revolution in economic thinking brought about by Adam Smith’s paean to free enterprise. The historians John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson argued in their important 1953 article “The Imperialism of Free Trade” that by the mid-­nineteenth century the British Empire was an entity that was far more than its formal possessions, the spots on the globe usually drawn in red. Robinson and Gallagher concluded that nineteenth-­century British policymakers were interested first and foremost in protecting commercial interests. This meant expanding free trade wherever possible for businessmen and investors, rather than following mercantilist policies popular in previous centuries. In being at the forefront of industrialization with a currency that served as the foundation of a global financial system, Britain was best positioned to profit from the opening up of markets, such as those in Latin America. Britain came to realize that it need not formally acquire territory in order to make money and expand its power. As long as Britain had willing collaborators around the world, it could exert its dominion informally. Only when collaboration broke down, as in China during the 1840s or Egypt during the 1880s, did Britain resort to military force and occupation. It is this form of nineteenth-­century British free-­market imperialism that would become one of the pillars of Amer­ican power in the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries. If the mid-­nineteenth century was marked by the domination of “informal empire” based upon free-­trade policies, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a resurgence of formal empire marked by military occupation and outright annexation of large swaths of less developed parts of the world, especially in Africa and Asia. This era of “new imperialism” was evident most dramatically when European powers—France, Portugal, Germany, Great Britain, and King Leopold II of Belgium (who privately controlled the Congo Free State)—engaged in a “scramble for Africa” beginning in the 1870s. By the early 1880s, competition among these powers escalated to the point that German chancellor Otto von Bismarck was forced to convene

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a conference in Berlin in order to settle the Europeans’ overlapping territorial claims (African nations were not invited to participate.) During this era, imperialism was not merely a fact of life among European leaders, but a project celebrated and promoted among many Western elites. European rulers touted the virtues of imperial policies as a means for strengthening their respective nations. No longer could it be argued that European nations had simply acquired their overseas territories “in a fit of absence of mind,” in the words of contemporary British historian J. R. Seeley. By the late nineteenth century, imperialism was on the lips of policymakers and people alike, and advocates and detractors alike turned their attention to the project of imperialism: its origins, its various practices, and its political and economic consequences. The website of the Centre for Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter (UK) offers the “Imperial & Global Forum” (http://imperialglobalexeter.com/), which includes blog posts, podcasts, and even online courses.

The Critique of Imperialism Why engage in imperialism, especially of the formal variety that involved the annexation of territory and the exploitation of colonies? Promoters such as British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli touted pro-­imperial policies as a way of bridging class differences and bringing a country’s people together, as he did during his famous “One Nation” speech in Manchester in 1872. But by the turn of the twentieth century, critics pushed back against this idea, noting that imperial policies favored some in the metropole (home country) over others. The English liberal economist J. A. Hobson penned a damning critique of the new imperialism in 1902, as Britain neared the end of a costly and grisly war to subdue the Dutch-­speaking “Boer” settlers in southern Africa. Hobson argued that imperial ventures overwhelmingly benefited financial elites, not the common man. Not only were the benefits unequally allocated, but the costs of empire were high both for Britain (overburdening military and naval resources; undermining advancements in social welfare) and for the world (inhibiting the growth of liberty and national identity in undeveloped regions of the globe; blocking attempts to build international cooperation and peace). More radical critics, such as Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik revolutionary in Russia, postulated that imperialism was not a policy that could be reformed (as Hobson believed), but instead represented the inevitable product of international capitalism, and would only hasten the coming of worldwide socialism. The German economist Joseph Schumpeter, writing (like Lenin) in 1917, put forth a different explanation for imperialism that relied on the emerging field of sociology. Capitalism certainly produces competition, Schumpeter acknowledged, but capitalism also generally favors peaceful trade over war. What, then, would account for the outbreak of this more aggressive imperial era? Schumpeter believed that the root of imperialism lay in the changing outlook of certain social classes as a result of industrialization. The rise of new capitalist classes had upended a traditional social order that had once been based around a feudal system of lords and vassals. In pre-­capitalist times, elites established and maintained their social position through acts of dominance over others. The impulse toward imperialism in contemporary times, Schumpeter argued, was in many ways an irrational and unconscious assertion of control by a particular class of elites, along with the military. Imperialism did not arise because of capitalism, in other words; the desire to control and dominate others has much deeper roots. Another explanation for the surge in interest in imperialism during these years can be attributed to new theories about national identity and civilizational order. The latter decades of the nineteenth century was a period during which competition among European states took place

Key Concepts and Processes: Empire   45

within a context of rising nationalism—that is, the promotion of a distinctive national identity based on ethnic, racial, and linguistic commonalities. The actions of these states, therefore, did not simply reflect the policies of their leaders, but, according to the theories of the day, the collective attributes of their people. At the same time that nationalism was creating stronger and divergent identities among the peoples of Europe, social Darwinist theories promoted the idea that civilizations must either demonstrate their fitness for the struggle of life or be left behind. Imperial policies that promoted the subjugation of others could therefore be justified according to the logic of the “survival of the fittest.” Those who had the ability to seize control of other lands had the authority to do so, since they had proven themselves to be the stronger, fitter people. Domination of others need not be justified beyond itself, in other words—might made right. The end of the nineteenth century saw the high tide of the imperial idea in the West. Colonial wars at the turn of the twentieth century forced a reconsideration of the righteousness of these imperial projects. High-­flown rhetoric, such as the English poet Rudyard Kipling’s notion of the Anglo-­Saxon’s “white man’s burden,” had advocated the taking on of colonies in order to maintain international order and demonstrate the virtues of Western civilization. In practice, however, the maintenance of empire proved to be a bloody business, imposed not through virtuous conduct but at the point of a gun. In an effort to reclaim control over the Sudan in eastern Africa, British troops in 1898 defeated an army of about 50,000 so-­called dervishes at the Battle of Omdurman. The British, aided by the recently invented Maxim gun, mowed down many thousands of combatants while suffering only a few dozen casualties themselves. On the other side of the world, the United States seized control of Spain’s colonial possessions in the Western Hemisphere, but quickly found itself fighting a brutal guerrilla war against Filipino insurgents. Accusations of the mistreatment of prisoners of war at the hands of U.S. soldiers made their way back to the United States, where the public at large quickly soured on the decision to enter the colonial “game.” By the early years of the twentieth century, it was no longer enough for great powers to assert civilizational superiority to justify their imperial actions. Indeed, they were increasingly sensitive to domestic and international opinion questioning the benefits of imperial rule regarding colonized peoples. If the idea of empire were to survive, imperialists needed to demonstrate to their critics that territorial conquest could also lead to the expansion of liberty and economic development. The British colonial administrator Lord Lugard, who served as governor-­general of Nigeria, espoused this reformist view in his book The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, published in 1922. The purpose of the imperial project, in Lugard’s view, was twofold: to enhance the power and prestige of the colonizing nation, and to enhance the welfare of native peoples. The two were compatible, according to Lugard, who went on to advocate a policy of “indirect rule,” whereby colonial leaders kept in place existing tribal structures and traditions. British officials, in this scenario, set down the broad rules of the colonial state, and then used handpicked, local collaborators to keep order. Indirect rule did not necessarily create a kinder and gentler imperialism in practice, but it did provide a fig leaf of self-­ governance in an otherwise overtly exploitative system. The concept of imperialism underwent additional transformation in the wake of World War I (1914–1918). In declaring Amer­ican support for the Allied nations in 1917, the Amer­ican President Woodrow Wilson pledged to make the world “safe for democracy,” yet his words proved to be a false promise to the millions under the yoke of colonial control. The defeat and subsequent dismantling of the German and Ottoman empires by the war’s end left large tracts of land in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia without states of their own. The victorious Allies, however, were unconvinced that the peoples living there were prepared for self-­rule. A compromise ensued, in which these former German and Ottoman territories were governed as “mandates” by various Allied countries, under the supervision of the newly created League of

46   Michael R. Anderson

Nations. As a practical matter, the British and French empires were simply augmented through the addition of these mandated territories, and the League of Nations did little to promote the transition to self-­rule. Yet, an important principle was established—that of international oversight and accountability. The practice of imperialism with impunity was increasingly untenable during this new era of internationalism. Since the sixteenth century, the concept of imperialism had been intimately intertwined with the dominance of Western powers across the globe. But with the rise of the Japanese Empire in the 1930s and its expansion into East and Southeast Asia by the early 1940s, imperialism was no longer seen as purely a white man’s game. Reflecting the times, the Japanese marketed their expansionist policies not as a hostile takeover, but rather as a collective regional effort, the “Greater East Asia Co-­Prosperity Sphere.” Japan’s rapid annexation of British, French, Dutch, and Amer­ican colonial holdings in Southeast Asia, meanwhile, fatally undercut any residual faith in the power of the Western imperial order. By the end of World War II in 1945, the Japanese Empire lay in ruins, yet before it collapsed it had done far more than any previous critics of empire to destroy the underlying racial or civilizational justification for imperial control. In the years after 1945, the idea of empire rapidly fell into disfavor. Asian and later African peoples asserted their independence from colonial rule and established sovereign nations in rapid succession. The European imperial systems, which had established themselves over hundreds of years, collapsed in fits and starts, in some places peacefully and in other places in paroxysms of violence. The United States and the Soviet Union, meanwhile, fell over themselves to assert their adherence to anticolonial principles. In the Cold War’s battle for “hearts and minds,” the two great superpowers worked hard to establish their commitment to the principle of self-­rule, and they used the term imperialist as an epithet to malign the other’s supposed true intent of dominating the world. The age of empire, it seemed, was over. But, even as old flags came down and new ones were hoisted, it became clear that long-­standing systems of domination and control had not ended with the many declarations of formal independence. Western states continued to exert a preponderance of power on the world stage, while financial institutions, multinational corporations, and international organizations promoted a specific world order based on the dictates of global capitalism. An age of colonialism may have ended, but the concept of imperialism remained important in defining power relations in the postwar era. United Nations Resolution 1514 (XV), the “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples,” labeled foreign imperial rule “a denial of fundamental human rights.” The document is available on “The United Nations and Decolonization” web page, at www.un.org/en/decolonization/declaration.shtml.

Postcolonial Imperialism Toward the end of the 1976 Wim Wenders film Kings of the Road, one of the German characters, enamored by the trappings of Amer­ican culture, like rock and roll and Jim Beam whiskey, proclaims, “The Yanks have colonized our subconscious!” This moment captures the nature of the conversation about U.S. power in the world after World War II. Amer­ican influence was often hard to measure, but it was easily felt by an increasing number of people around the world, as the country’s military presence, economic policies, and cultural products went global in the latter half of the twentieth century. As this volume has discussed elsewhere, there is no disputing the vast disparity in power and resources between the United States and the rest of the world during these years. But was the United States after World War II in fact a colonizer of minds? Was it, and is it still, an empire?

Key Concepts and Processes: Empire   47

The answer is yes, according to the historian Victoria de Grazia (2005), who argues that the United States was indeed an “irresistible empire” based on its ability to impose a set of market principles upon the rest of the world, particularly in Europe, in the years after World War II. In de Grazia’s formulation, the United States subverted the sovereignty of other nations, it claimed the authority to make global norms based on its own political and economic interests, and it essentially imposed a consumer-­oriented capitalism on other nations as a tool toward the construction of Amer­ican global leadership. From the variety chain store to the Hollywood star system, the United States managed to undermine traditional cultural practices and upend them with a radically egalitarian ethos that held out the promise of individual fulfillment through material consumption: the Amer­ican Dream, universalized. The notion of an “irresistible empire” complicates our traditional understanding of imperialism, in which coercion and domination were transparent and readily acknowledged by colonizers and colonized alike. The postwar United States acted not as a traditional imperial power, but as something else: a hegemon—that is, a rule- and norm-­establishing leader in the international system, a state whose predominance was justified as the natural product of superior political and economic arrangements, rather than merely the threat of brute force. The early twentieth-­century Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci developed the modern conception of hegemony to denote the ability of the ruling classes to convince subordinates of the righteousness and naturalness of the current social order and thereby stave off revolution. Hegemony, in other words, depended upon the consent of the governed, whether implicit or overt. The subordinate subjects in a hegemonic system have convinced themselves that the rule of the hegemon is necessary and just. The successful hegemon, meanwhile, must continue to demonstrate that its leadership is a necessary precondition for order, peace, and prosperity for all members of the system. For a Marxist interpretation of “Imperial America” in the post-­Cold War context, see John Bellamy Foster’s article “Imperial America and War,” published in 2003 in the Monthly Review and available online at http://monthlyreview.org/2003/05/01/imperial-­ america-and-­war/. One of the core features of a traditional empire is the presence of a ruler with supreme dominion over others. Yet, in the case of the United States after World War II, policymakers acted less often out of unilateral conviction and more frequently as the by-­product of complex interplay among international actors. Great Britain and Canada, for instance, prodded the United States into fuller participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; established 1949), which guaranteed the defense of Western Europe against communist aggression. Europeans actively sought an Amer­ican, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, to be NATO’s supreme commander and generally courted greater Amer­ican strategic involvement in their region. So, rather than being an “irresistible” empire in Europe with hegemonic intentions, perhaps the United States was, in the words of the historian Geir Lundestad (1986), more of an “empire by invitation,” a reluctant power drawn to act through the cajoling and manipulations of allies. This formulation may help us better understand the actions of this superpower with great resources, but one that was either unwilling or unable to bend the world to its wishes, despite repeated calls for the creation of an “Amer­ican Century.” (See Chapter 3 for more on the “Amer­ican Century.”) With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the early 1990s, it certainly appeared that the United States reigned supreme on the world stage. And, with the Amer­ican-­led invasions and subsequent occupations of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003),

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many believed that they were seeing the return of an earlier age of empire. Books from various perspectives sprang up to declare the existence of United States imperialism. The international relations professor, Andrew J. Bacevich, in his Amer­ican Empire (2002), argued that U.S. foreign policy for generations has been committed to imposing a particular political and economic order upon the world, and that the United States uses its military might in the service of this strategy. Like many other critics of Amer­ican power, Bacevich employed the word empire to jar awake U.S. citizens, to urge them to reckon with their country’s actions abroad, and to pull back from empire’s globalizing (and unattainable) ambitions. Other authors have used the term for very different purposes. The British historian Niall Ferguson, in Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire (2004), provocatively argued that U.S. citizens should indeed awaken to their own country’s imperial status, not to dismantle it but rather to embrace empire as a stabilizing and progressive force on the world stage. Whether critical or celebratory, however, these books were generally more interested in commenting on Amer­ican power than in advancing our understanding of the concept of empire. Niall Ferguson’s argument that the United States is an “empire in denial” is presented in his 2003 article “America: An Empire in Denial.” It can be accessed at the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education, at http://chronicle.com/article/America-­an-Empire-­inDenial/29867. Current events have certainly clouded our ability to pierce the fog of rhetoric over empire, or to arrive at any kind of conceptual breakthroughs. This is not for lack of effort. The most notable recent book to reframe the contemporary debate over empire is titled, appropriately enough, Empire (2000), an ambitious work by the political philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Hardt and Negri argue that a new global order—based on the dictates of global capitalism and the diffusion of peoples—has created a condition they call “Empire” (differentiated from the lower-­case empires of the past). This “Empire,” whose components include not only the United States, but also multinational corporations, sovereign nation-­states, and a host of international institutions and deterritorializing apparatuses of rule, “progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers” (p. xii). Hardt and Negri’s book, written from a Marxist perspective, views this totalizing force through the lens of the struggle of power and resistance, and idealistically foresees the emergence of a so-­called “multitude” to challenge and eventually overcome “Empire.” While most works about empire suffer from a preoccupation with geopolitics at the expense of conceptual clarity, the authors of Empire fail to compare this “Empire” to past empires. Rigorous theorizing at the expense of empirical comparison also has its pitfalls: namely, a failure to engage with the specific ways in which empires across time do or do not align. For a discussion of Amer­ican empire in the context of global capitalism, see the article “Democratic Empire” by Martijn Konings, published online in 2013 by Jacobin and available at www.jacobinmag.com/2013/07/democratic-­empire/. The reports of the death of empire and imperialism have been greatly exaggerated. We continue to use these concepts decades after the collapse and stigmatization of the old colonial order. This is partially a result of the flexibility of the terms, which can encompass both direct and indirect rule, and formal control and informal influence. Yet empire and imperialism also keep their tenacious hold in our discussions of global affairs because of their ideological utility,

Key Concepts and Processes: Empire   49

as shorthand for all manner of power plays in the international arena. Perhaps because of the rhetorical temptation, this chapter argues that the words empire and imperialism should be used with caution. Students of global studies who are tempted to employ these terms in their own work would be wise to avoid facile and sweeping generalizations about the perceived motivations of present-­day geopolitical actors, and instead focus upon the impact of their actions. An unequal balance of power is not per se evidence of imperialism; one must demonstrate evidence of a loss of sovereignty and the effective control of one political state by another. “Imperialism” is easily deployed as an epithet, but scholars and policymakers alike must be careful to support their arguments with conceptual clarity and appropriate historical analogy.

References and Further Research Bacevich, Andrew J. 2002. Amer­ican Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Coll, Steve. 2012. Private Empire: ExxonMobil and Amer­ican Power. New York: Penguin. De Grazia, Victoria. 2005. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth-­Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Doyle, Michael W. 1986. Empires. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Ferguson, Niall. 2004. Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire. New York: Penguin. Gallagher, John, and Ronald Robinson. 1953. “The Imperialism of Free Trade.” Economic History Review 6, no. 1: 1–15. Gramsci, Antonio. 2011. Prison Notebooks. 3 vols. New York: Columbia University Press. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hobson, J. A. 1902. Imperialism: A Study. London: J. Pott. Lenin, V. I. 1917/1939. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. New York: International Publishers. Lugard, Frederick John Dealtry. 1922. The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa. London: William Blackwood & Sons. Lundestad, Geir. 1986. “Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952.” Journal of Peace Research 23, no. 3 (September): 263–267. Morganthau, Hans. 1948. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Muldoon, James. 1999. Empire and Order: The Concept of Empire, 800–1800. New York: St. Martin’s. Pagden, Anthony. 2003. Peoples and Empires. New York: Modern Library. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1917/1951. Imperialism and Social Classes. Translated by Heinz Norden. Edited by Paul M. Sweezy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seeley, John Robert. 1883. The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures. London: Macmillan. Smith, Adam. 1776/1982. The Wealth of Nations Books I–III. London: Penguin Classics. Thornton, A. P. 1959. The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies. London: Macmillan.

5

Key Concepts and Processes: Development Stephanie S. Holmsten Central to the story of the twenty-­first century has been a particular way of thinking about our economic order. Free trade, market liberalism, and more generally, capitalism, have emerged as the dominant paradigms for achieving economic growth. National policies attempt to promote domestic production and expand markets abroad, while consumers enjoy the benefits of global trade such as new products and technological innovation. The proponents of globalization commonly assume that global trade will produce economic growth. Yet, more than 815 million people suffer from chronic hunger in the world today (FAO et al. 2017). Despite ever-­ expanding trade, greater interconnectedness, and technological innovations, millions of people are not able to make ends meet. Policymakers and researchers have sought to understand and overcome the root causes of income inequality and global poverty to improve the livelihoods of individuals around the world through development. In the most general of terms, development is primarily, and simply, the pursuit of well-­being. But what is “well-­being?” Is well-­being about the strength of the national economy and the opportunities that individuals have to make a living? Or is well-­ being about the health of society, adequate social services, and infrastructure, and the distribution of resources throughout society? Maybe well-­being also includes meaningful political incorporation, and the ability to influence the factors that affect our lives. And once we decide what well-­being includes, how do we get it? How is well-­being produced? This chapter aims to explore the concept of development and competing theories about economic growth and well-­being. We’ll define development, based on the common understanding of the idea among grassroots organizations and international institutions that focus on development. We will also consider the evolution of ideas about development, economic growth, and the global market, looking at the foundational ideas from modernization theory. Then we will trace historical critiques of market-­led growth, particularly dependency theory, and consider the current status of the development model. In what ways do our theories about development still rest on assumptions about the benefits of capitalism, the market, and the promise that economic growth will alleviate poverty? How has market-­led growth been challenged in recent decades, and how have new ideas emerged within the development community that accommodate these critiques?

Development The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) seeks to promote “development.” To the UNDP, this means tackling “multidimensional poverty, inequality, and exclusion, while enhancing knowledge, skill, and production technologies to enlarge peoples’ choices, reduce risk, and sustain development gains” (www.undp.org). Development as we know it today

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c­ ertainly includes a variety of economic, political, and social achievements, including poverty alleviation, promoting equality, and ensuring political representation.

Useful Terms and Measurements in the Development Agenda The following terms, with explanations, will help you understand and contextualize the discussion in this chapter. Development. Development refers to the quality of economic, political, and social choices that individuals face. Economic development traditionally focuses on the growth of a country’s gross national product (GNP), and on the size and health of the national economy. In 1990, in a realignment, however, the United Nations published its first Human Development Report, which suggested that human well-­being is achieved not only with national economic growth, but also with attention to the quality of individuals’ lives. The report’s Human Development Index offered a new way to measure development and incorporated additional indicators measuring education, longevity, and income per person. An additional contribution to the concept of development was made in 1999 by Amartya Sen, a professor of economics and philosophy and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. In Development as Freedom, Sen describes development as expanding the “real freedoms” that people enjoy. In particular, “development as freedom” measures not only economic growth (GNP and GNP per capita) and social indicators (education and health care), but also political and civil rights. Development includes economic, social, and political opportunities to influence the factors that affect one’s life. This chapter considers development to be the advancement of economic opportunities, social well-­being, and meaningful political participation. Low-­income countries. The World Bank publishes an annual classification of national economies based on the gross national income (GNI) per capita of each country. Low-­income countries include all countries with a GNI per capita of $1,005 or less in 2016. Lower-­middle-income countries have a GNI per capita between $1,006 and $3,955; upper-­middle-income countries have a GNI per capita between $3,956 and $12,235; and high-­income countries have a GNI per capita of $12,236 or more. For the most current classification, check the World Bank data blog (blogs.worldbank.org). In 2017 there were thirty-­one low-­income countries (about 14 percent of the world’s economies). This chapter uses the term low-­income to recognize the quantitative nature of this classification. Such economies have experienced years of slow or stagnant economic growth, and as a result they struggle against persistent hunger and poverty. We avoid using the term underdevelopment. While this term appropriately suggests a lack of economic and political development, it also implies that low-­income countries merely lag behind high-­income countries, and with greater investment will also reach a state of “development.” For an insightful critique of the idea of development, see Gilbert Rist’s The History of Development (2014). Poverty. In most research, extreme poverty is defined as people living on $1.25 a day or less. The UNDP released a new measure of poverty in 2010, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which includes measures of education, health care, and living standards. This broader definition of poverty aims to assist donors in more appropriately targeting aid where it is most needed. The Bread for the World Institute reported in 2015 that nearly 1.2 billion people in developing countries lived in extreme poverty, living on less than $1.25 a day. The institute also reported that in developing countries, 13.5 percent of the population was undernourished, including

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more than 100 million children under age five. According to the same report, of all children whose undernourishment had led to stunted growth, 90 percent lived in just thirty-­six countries, mostly in sub-­Saharan Africa and Asia. Asia is the continent with the highest number of hungry people. In sub-­Saharan Africa one in four people is hungry, the highest percentage in the world. The institute found that each year, 2.6 million children die from hunger-­related causes. The FAO’s 2017 State of Food Security and Nutrition report, coauthored by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, UNICEF, World Food Programme, and World Health Organization (www.fao.org/state-­of-food-­security-nutrition/en/) provides additional material, including summaries, maps, datasets, and more. A PDF of the report is available at: www.fao.org/3/a-­I7695e.pdf. Not all countries in sub-­Saharan Africa are struggling with persistent poverty and stagnant economic growth. Remarkable efforts to nurture peace and prosperity are evident across the continent. For example, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was established to investigate human rights violations during the apartheid era, remains a model to other countries for overcoming ethnic tensions and conflict (see Shea 2000 for more analysis). Developed by the national government of Botswana, the Sustainable Budget Index monitors the income earned in that country from the mining industry to ensure that it is reinvested into national development. By monitoring earnings and investing them into long-­term development, the country has been able to avoid the “resource curse”—the tendency for wealth from natural resources to result in stagnant economic and political development (for more on this, see Chapter 7). According to a World Bank study conducted after three decades of the project, the index resulted in growth per capita of 35 percent between 1995 and 2005. The effects of poverty and inequality can be substantial, according to evidence compiled by the UNDP (2010). Infant mortality is much more frequent among the poorest households, roughly doubling among the poorest 20 percent of households. In Indonesia and Nicaragua, infant deaths are three times more common among the poorest 20 percent. Childhood vaccination rates are also lower among the poorest households, as only two out of every five households receive full treatment, which the majority (two out of three) of the richest households receive. Malnutrition causes the death of 45 percent of children under the age of five in these countries. Income inequality does not exist only in developing countries; it is a factor in high-­income countries as well. In the United States, 49.1 million people, including 15.8 million children, or roughly 14.3 percent of U.S. households, struggle to put food on the table, according to the Bread for the World Institute. The top 10 percent of the wealthiest households earn close to half of the country’s income, while the bottom 90 percent of U.S. households earn 53 percent of the income, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ 2017 report on income inequality. In terms of wealth, which includes assets in addition to income, the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. households hold 75 percent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 90 percent of households have only a quarter of the wealth. These disparities matter for families, as wealth provides access to good schools for children, health care for families, and other means for improving well-­being. For those at the bottom, the loss of a job, a health-­care crisis, or car or home repairs can drive families into bankruptcy, There are reasons for hope, however. According to the 2017 Hunger Report by the Bread for the World Institute, remarkable progress on alleviating hunger and poverty has been made over the last two decades. The rate of hunger has been nearly cut in half, falling from one in four people in 1990 to one in nine in 2015. Based on the 2017 FAO et al. report, the number of

Key Concepts and Processes: Development   53

hungry people today has fallen by nearly 135 million people since 2003. Certainly when the economy is stronger, more families are able to find jobs and put food on the table. The percentage of hungry people in the United States is down, particularly among children, because their parents had been able to find jobs in the stronger economy of the early 2000s. But they remain vulnerable when the economy slumps, as it did in 2008, when the percent of U.S. households struggling to put food on the table rose from 11 percent in 2007 to its recent high of 14.9 percent in 2011, according to research by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (2018). Evidence of progress aside, persistent poverty and inequality around the world have drawn attention from political scientists, economists, and others concerned about the sustainability of the global order. This chapter will explore the changing ideas about development, economic growth, and the global market. First, we consider ideas that focus on the market and economic growth, and then explore broader concepts of development and well-­being.

The Evolution of Market-­Led Growth Models People have exchanged goods and engaged in trade for millennia, but only in the last couple of centuries have scholars placed this activity under a particular economic ideology known as capitalism. Today capitalism serves as the dominant economic theory of our international system. It relies on economic growth achieved through global, free markets. Guided by the unhindered exchange of goods and services between buyers and sellers, anchored by private property, in a free-­market economy, the demands of buyers and production possibilities of sellers determine the value of land, labor, and capital. Proponents of the free market describe capitalism as a successful wealth-­creating system, as the free market inherently rewards efficiency and creates incentives for innovation and technological advancement, as described by Joseph Schumpeter, an economist and political scientist writing in the early-­twentieth century. Capitalism feeds on a process of “creative destruction” that destroys the inefficient to make room for the new and adaptable. Critics of capitalism point out its tendency to concentrate wealth and power among the most efficient and adaptable, and as a result increase income inequality and disparity between the rich and the poor. We see the free market at work today throughout the global economy. Today’s global economy is characterized by open markets, relatively unrestricted capital flows, and the dominant activities of multinational firms, according to Robert Gilpin, scholar of the international political economy and author of Global Political Economy. Over the past decades, indeed, international markets have become remarkably integrated, largely guided by the tenets of free market capitalism. This integration has only deepened since the early 1990s, from the “sharply divided international economy during the Cold War to an increasingly integrated global capitalist economy,” according to Gilpin (2000, 7). Where did this idea of the free market come from? Mercantilism (a concept we discuss later in this chapter) was the dominant paradigm when Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations in 1776. In his book, Smith attacked mercantilism as an ineffective economic system that would ultimately lead to economic stagnation. To remedy stagnation and lackluster growth, Smith argued that the free market needed to be unleashed from the control of the Crown. The invisible hand of the free market would more efficiently allocate resources and generate sustained economic growth than the controlled and stifled exchange of mercantilism. If seller and buyer could trade freely, according to Adam Smith, their exchange would set the optimal price and production of goods and services, producing efficiency and increasing growth. Smith’s insights were critical in the development of new thinking known as economic liberalism, centered on individual freedom and open markets. Smith’s critique of mercantilism was also supported by broader developments produced by industrialization. Revolutions in industrial production, particularly new uses of power such as

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the steam engine and mechanized tools such as the power loom, propelled British manufacturing forward. British manufacturers looked abroad for more consumers and sought a reduction in the mercantilist trade barriers that raised the cost of imported goods. Importing cheaper goods would lower the cost of the raw materials they needed for manufacturing. In addition, cheaper imports would lower food costs for workers, thereby reducing the cost of living for workers and allowing manufacturers to pay workers less. Industrialists were joined by British international banks in their call for freer trade, as bankers also looked abroad to make their services available to foreigners. Advances in transportation, which reduced the cost of shipping goods abroad, supported industrialists’ efforts to dismantle mercantilism. The prominence of the free market in Great Britain was marked in 1846 when the international interests of industrialists won out over the British farmers, and the tariffs barriers of the Corn Laws were abolished. Other countries joined Great Britain in reducing trade barriers. A network of trade treaties followed the model of the Cobden-­Chevalier Treaty, which lowered trade barriers between Britain and France, and average tariffs fell in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. In addition to ending high tariffs among continental countries, Britain also attempted to open markets across the globe. As political economist Dani Rodrik (2011) explains, Britain signed a treaty with the Ottoman Empire (present-­day Turkey) in 1838 that forced the country to lower import duties, while Britain’s First Opium War with China (1839–1842) forcibly opened that country up to the imports of opium from the British Empire. Link to Dani Rodrik’s blog (http://rodrik.typepad.com/) for more on his viewpoints concerning the positive and negative effects of globalization. The experience of market-­led economic growth in Europe informed academics and policymakers for decades. Modernization theory ultimately draws on the Anglo-­Amer­ican experience to describe where growth comes from in our modern, global economy. Drawing from W. W. Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth, first published in 1960, modernization theorists argued that traditional subsistence, agricultural economies would move toward an integrated market economy through key stages. Traditional societies begin to “take-­off ” with the development of more productive agricultural methods and advances in technology, increasing the demand for raw materials from abroad and creating new opportunities for social mobility. As national economies grow, urbanization and industrialization increase, and new secondary sectors begin to emerge. Diversification pushes the economy toward maturity, when multiple industries expand and modern transportation and social infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, develop. The final stage of development is the dominance of mass consumption, the ability of the industrial base to produce high-­value consumer goods, such as automobiles, and increased levels of disposable income. For more information about modernization theory, and recent works about it, see “What to Read on Modernization Theory” by Sheri Berman, on the Foreign Affairs website (www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2009-03-12/what-­read-modernization-­theory). As a result of this economic transformation, social structures become more complex as new groups emerge. Some scholars argue that, as a result of these new groups, democracy is likely to follow industrialization. Two key social changes that occur during industrialization may produce this pressure toward democracy. First, new producers generate economic wealth

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through their ownership of capital, and this capital is independent from the traditional land-­ owning elites. These new actors begin to negotiate with the state, demanding greater influence in shaping state policy. The state, in turn, is willing to negotiate because the state stands to gain new revenue through a beneficial relationship with this emerging capitalist class. Barrington Moore argues in Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966) that this capitalist class is the central agency for democracy—in his widely quoted phrasing, “no bourgeoisie, no democracy.” Second, in addition to economic elites, a working class emerges, because processes of production require labor and the active participation of workers. Industrialization draws workers from the farms to the cities, particularly into the industrial centers of cities, transforming a society from agrarian to industrial. As workers come together in the factories and in their neighborhoods, they begin to mobilize to demand political participation. This mobilization is facilitated by urbanization, but also by improvements in technology and city infrastructure. These improvements, including such aspects of modern life as the newspaper and education, facilitate communication among workers and recruitment to new political groups. As a result, economic growth brings about a fundamental social transformation, and a command government no longer works. There is great debate, though, about whether economic growth is necessary for such democratic, political development. Seymour Lipset (1959) provides the first, and to date most definitive, study of evidence that democracy is related to economic growth. The implication from Lipset’s findings is that when poor authoritarian regimes begin to experience economic growth, they will likely also experience a political transformation toward democracy. Therefore, investment from abroad in economic growth may also nurture democratic transitions. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi (1997) modify Lipset’s argument. They find that democracy emerges at all levels of development, as measured by GDP (gross domestic product) per capita. But authoritarian regimes can also be maintained at high levels of growth. As Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and George Downs (2005) explain, authoritarian regimes make strategic use of the revenue generated by economic growth to provide public goods that appease the public and fund repressive capabilities that dampen opposition. Przeworski and Limongi conclude that economic growth sustains democracy, but does not necessitate its emergence. Modernization theory, at its core, suggests that nations will progress from agricultural societies through capitalist development to diversified, modern, consumption-­based economies. And in the progress, profound social and political changes occur that can produce political development toward democracy. A central implication of modernization theory, therefore, is that economic growth, through industrialization, is the proper desired path for nation-­states to take today. This emphasis on economic modernization is reflected in more recent policy efforts to move countries toward open, free-­market economies, such as neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. By the late 1970s, the study of economics was undergoing significant changes, and these changes produced a revival of economic models based on market-­led growth, called neoliberalism. New economic thought at the time saw economics as a rational science that studied the decisions made by rational individuals who make cost–benefit analyses to achieve their aims. According to these assumptions, individuals attempt to maximize their utility and respond to market incentives similarly. If all individuals act rationally, there is no inherent difference between the potential for economic growth in developing and developed countries. The reason that low-­income countries fail to grow is because their governments engage in economic activities that interfere in the marketplace of rational actors and are themselves the source of “underdevelopment” in low-­income economies. Through fiscal irresponsibility and government debt, government actions and policies distort market incentives. The government must step out of the way and allow market forces to bring competition and encourage the efficient allocation of resources.

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Neoliberalism pointed to the rapid and remarkable success of the newly industrialized countries (NICs) of East and Southeast Asia as evidence of the benefits of market-­led growth. After World War II, Japan had risen from a periphery country that largely exported raw materials, including silk, yarn, tea, and fish, to an economy supporting a per capita income comparable to the United States and Europe. Then, in the 1960s, the four Asian “tigers” of Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong, not much richer than countries in sub-­Saharan Africa in the 1950s, began to grow at remarkable rates. In the 1970s, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and China joined this group, with growth rates increasing by 8–9 percent from the mid-­1960s to 1997—compared to growth rates in Europe and the United States of only 2–3 percent. Neoliberal observers credited the role of the market, and pointed to critical factors such as exporting manufactured goods and maintaining open trade that supported growth in the region. The success of Asian economies through export-­led growth contrasted with the failure of Latin Amer­ican economies at the time. In the 1960s and 1970s, many Latin Amer­ican countries, including Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, borrowed huge sums of money from international creditors for industrialization and infrastructure programs. Borrowing was made easy because private banks had an influx of cash from oil-­rich countries, and so began lending. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), created in 1960, had successfully coordinated the production of oil among petroleum-­exporting countries to create a cartel of sorts to manage the global price of oil. The success of OPEC led to a rise in petroleum prices and a flood of dollars into the petroleum-­exporting countries. These new dollars, often referred to as “petrodollars,” were channeled into Western banks, which rushed to lend to poor countries. Meanwhile, the governments of many rich countries were providing loans to support countries that they saw as potential allies in the Cold War. The combination of petrodollars and Cold War politics produced a lending environment in which little regard was paid to how the money would be spent or whether the borrowing country was ruled by a corrupt or oppressive regime. Eventually a developing country debt crisis emerged. The external debt of Latin America quadrupled from $75 billion in 1975 to $315 billion in 1983—an increase equal to 50 percent of the GDP in the region. As evidence of the growing debt problem, Mexico announced in August 1982 that it could not pay what was due on its dollar-­denominated external debt, mainly to U.S. commercial banks, and requested a ninety-­day moratorium on debt repayments. Throughout the early 1980s, Mexico experienced an economic decline, as its external debt grew to more than 50 percent of GDP. External debt service—what was due on both interest and principle—cost more than half of the value of all total exports. The value of the peso fell by 50 percent, and in the fall of 1982 the government took control of the banks, fearing bankruptcy. After Mexico announced that it could no longer service its external debt, the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF ) provided multibillion dollar loans. Mexico agreed to a stabilization program as a condition for the IMF loan. The reforms included a reduction of trade barriers, privatization of state-­owned companies, and foreign investment liberalization. Such conditions, called structural adjustment policies, were applied to IMF loans throughout the 1980s and 1990s to encourage liberalization, privatization, and deregulation. In 1990 the economist John Williamson dubbed these types of neoliberal policies the “Washington Consensus”—a set of prescriptions rooted in a strong faith in free, unfettered markets, and aimed at reducing the role of government in developing nations. Beginning in the 1990s, advocates of the Washington Consensus worked to de-­emphasize the role of the state and focused on privatization, liberalization, and price stability. Combinations of these policies became standard requirements for international loans, and are still used in large part today. Trade liberalization remains the common policy prescription for economic growth, which as discussed above is largely seen as the solution to persistent poverty. Market-­led growth models

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draw attention to the “well-­being” of the national economy, measured as GDP or GDP per capita, and privilege policy efforts that open domestic markets to competition abroad. As a “consensus,” these models are unidirectional: they emanate from the West and drive policymaking priorities throughout the developing world. To what extent do these models remain relevant today? In what ways have they been challenged? Thomas Friedman writes about the potential benefits of globalization in The Lexus and the Olive Tree (2000). He can be followed through his writings at the New York Times (http://friedman.blogs.nytimes.com/). Jagdish Bhagwati also challenged globalization critics in In Defense of Globalization (2004). You can follow Bhagwati through his frequent writings for Project Syndicate (www.project-­syndicate.org).

Alternatives to Market-­Led Growth While market-­led models of growth have been dominant for decades, they have not gone unchallenged. In fact, over the years a variety of robust, alternative ideas about how best to achieve social well-­being have been proposed. These alternatives call for broader definitions of growth, and point to innovation occurring outside the West. Mercantilism, and neo-­ mercantilism, as well as Marxism and dependency theory, shift the emphasis from market-­led growth to concerns about other aspects of the economic, political, and social order. Mercantilism and neo-­mercantilism remind us of the power of the state in managing trade, and the importance of national priorities and concerns over the demands of the global market. Marxism draws our attention to the impact of the economic order on our social order, in particular the marginalization of workers. Dependency theory argues that the economic order perpetuates current, economic disparities between less industrialized, low-­income countries, and more industrialized, high-­income countries. This section concludes with evidence from the last two decades that these alternative models have motivated meaningful change within the development community and among international institutions, suggesting that the market-­led growth model is not the only game in town today.

Growing Opposition to Globalization During the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in 1999, held in Seattle, Washington, protestors filled the streets, taking many observers by surprise. Motivated by a host of issues, they called for deep changes to the global order. With a variety of objectives, activists presented their concerns about how globalization was affecting their lives. The protestors’ efforts disrupted the WTO conference, making so much noise in the streets that the meetings had to stop, according to the protestors. (A victory for their efforts!) Expressing concerns about a wide range of issues, these protestors represented a growing critique about the global order. Before the pre-­eminence of free-­market capitalism, the main guiding principle for the economy in the preceding two centuries was mercantilism, dominant between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries when absolute monarchs ruled the world. Central to mercantilism was the demand, by the Crown, to accumulate hard currency. The power of the monarchy was sustained first and foremost by wealth, and wealth was secured with money. Wealth was generated

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through extracting resources from abroad and maintaining a positive balance of trade. Under mercantilism, monarchs opened new trade routes through military might and thereby secured profits for the Crown. Royal armies oversaw the extraction of natural resources, such those of Belgium that extracted rubber from the Congo, while royal charters funded explorers. Not only did the Crown finance the expansion of trade, but empires also protected their own markets with high tariff barriers and strict restrictions on the flow of goods to ensure that they had markets in which to sell their goods and dependable sources for supplies of necessary raw materials. Open trade was largely limited to raw materials and dominated by the extraction of materials from abroad to fuel the imperial economies, such as cotton from the Americas and tea and silk from India. Under mercantilism, trade expanded, though largely supported by the military might of monarchy. All this activity served to launch the world into a profoundly new global era, but it was hardly the free trade advocated by Adam Smith. Monarchies shaped the flow of trade to serve their interests, particularly the demand for hard currency and a positive balance of trade. Neo-­mercantilist trade policies today similarly promote an active role for the state in managing trade and global economic integration for the benefit of national economies, but in a profoundly different context today than under monarchies of centuries ago. Today, states with small or emerging markets use tariff barriers to protect young industries and help them grow before competing with global producers. Offending norms about trade liberalization, neo-­ mercantilist policies privilege trade policies that promote national well-­being over policies that ensure market integration. As such, trade barriers serve the interests of the country, rather than the pleasure of the market, they challenge the conventional wisdom about open markets and economic growth. Marxism is another alternative economic model that raises important questions about the impact of the capitalist, economic order and to this day remains the seminal fulcrum of criticism against capitalism. Writing in the mid- to late nineteenth century, Karl Marx identified a fundamental flaw of capitalism. For Marx, individuals living in a capitalist society are not truly free, but instead alienated from themselves and each other through the division of labor and of society into classes. In Marxian terms, the capital owners (bourgeoisie) exploit the workers (proletariat) through the process of capitalism that returns a portion of the value of the goods produced to the worker, a proportion necessary to sustain the worker. But, through production, labor produces more than the value paid to the worker. The remaining value, or surplus value, is given to the capitalist owner. The result is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the capitalist. The only way to liberate the worker from this structural alienation, according to Marx, is to destroy the class structure that capitalism creates. Communism, according to Marx, offered an alternative structure that would end the subjugation of the worker. Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Russian Communist Party and leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, furthered the claims of Marxism by conflating his nationalist project with the affirmation of workers’ rights. Marxism–Leninism has remained a salient critique of capitalism and imperialism since these early days of resistance. The main tenets of Lenin’s thesis on imperialism still ring true among anti-­globalization activists today. Lenin argued that the most powerful countries in the world use colonialism and imperialism to divide the globe into territorial possession. Capitalism, particularly the necessity of financial capital, demands overseas expansion and has led to the monopolization of resources by powerful states. The push to increase profits drives owners to seek cheap labor abroad. Given the nature of capitalism, Marxism–Leninism predicts a worldwide revolution led by workers as a result of the inherent exploitation produced by the global expansion of capital and monopolization. These ideas raise fundamental concerns about the outcomes of capitalism, and suggest that more attention must be paid to ensuring the well-­being of society.

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Dependency theorists, similarly, ask important questions about the impact of market-­ oriented models of growth, and here scholars pay particular attention to global disparities in wealth between high-­income countries and low-­income countries (sometimes called developed and developing countries, respectively). In the early 1950s, a group of economists at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) initiated a research program focused on exploring the growing divergence in income and living standards between the wealthy industrialized North and the poorer developing countries of the South. Argentina is an example. Argentina was among the richest nations of the world in 1850, with a GDP per capita of $245, comparable to that of countries in North America with an average GDP per capita of $239. Yet, a century later, Argentina’s economy was mired in debt and stagnant growth, while the economies of Canada and the United States had experienced remarkable economic growth. By the 1950s, it was difficult to ignore the widening gap between countries in the Global North and South, as well as the growing gap between high-­income and low-­income people within developing countries. Leading the analysis on dependency theory, the Argentine economist Raúl Prebisch argued that the global marketplace has an inherent exploitative structure, with an industrial, hegemonic center and an agrarian, dependent periphery. Prebisch argued that the patterns of global trade expanded the wealth of the North and dampened growth in the South because of the unequal exchange of industrial goods versus agricultural goods. As dependency theory developed in the 1960s and 1970s, scholars focused on imperialism and the colonial legacy that left many countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin Amer­ican at a structural disadvantage. More information on Raúl Prebisch’s ideas on dependency and international trade can be found at “Raúl Prebisch: Latin America’s Keynes,” a web page published by The Economist at www.economist.com/node/13226316. Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory similarly speaks to the structure of our world today that, he argues, promotes the interests of core states, i.e., highly industrialized countries, at the expense of the periphery states, i.e., low-­income countries. The “underdeveloped” periphery states are stuck in a system that ensures their dependency on the core industrialized nations through the extraction of natural resources from the periphery to the core. The global system, according to Wallerstein, is led by the industrialized North, economic and political elites, and multinational corporations and international organizations that maintain this structure to their advantage—and to the disadvantage of the Global South. From neo-­mercantilism and Marxist–Leninism to dependency theory and world systems theory, these arguments draw attention to alternative approaches to the current model of market-­ led growth. These alternatives include the importance of national priorities in managing economic integration and the role of the state in the market. They also include greater attention to the distribution of wealth within society, and among states. Rather than a singular focus on the market and economic growth, these alternatives demand human-­centered models of development.

Alternative Policy Initiatives Important policy initiatives have resulted from these alternatives to market-­led growth. This section will consider state-­centered policies that emphasize a strong state to sustain national well-­being through managed market integration. We will also identify a variety of human-­ centered policies that demonstrate ways in which attention to society and individual well-­being is placed alongside attention to the market and economic growth.

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State-­Centered Policies Even during the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions, the conventional wisdom among policymakers and economists was that the state had an important role to play in managing the global market. Such ideas were evident in development economics that emerged during decolonization after World War II, from 1945 to the 1970s, and emphasized the central role of an activist government to buffer the country from the impact of the global market. Development economists attempted to provide a strategy to lift less developed countries out of poverty, and, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, recommended trade protection and import substitutions to build an industrial capability behind high-­tariff walls. Import-­substituting industrialization (ISI; also referred to as import substitution industrialization) aimed to help change the diminishing terms of trade that many developing countries experienced by creating an industrial sector through substituting domestic manufactured goods for imports. This model of growth also advocated an increase in international lending. Industrialized nations would provide aid through institutions such as UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) to promote domestic growth. Rather than the supremacy of the market, development economics affirms national policies that protect domestic interests from the challenges of the global market, which stands in stark contrast to neoliberalism. Development economics also draws different conclusions from the growth of the Asian tigers than neoliberalism, arguing that this growth happened because of state action, and that governments played a central role in the development of the economies in Asia. Government support included tariffs, import quotas, and export subsidies that nurtured the exporting industries, for example. Governments also helped fund research and development through low-­interest loans and, as a result of government guidance of the economy, produced very large industrial firms. The role of the government was central in creating an entrepreneurial class, previously nonexistent, by identifying critical economic areas for development and exposing priority sectors to international competition to force efficiency. Development economics went out of fashion in the 1980s and 1990s, with the dominance of neoliberalism. But a growing, sustained challenge to neoliberalism has reemerged in the early twenty-­first century in a new model, called the developmental state. Again, experiences in Asia motivate these new ideas. Emerging economies in East Asia grew tremendously in the 1990s as they opened up financially and attracted foreign loans and investment. Several Asian nations, including Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea, were favorites of international investors, attracting large inflows of money, which allowed them to import more than they exported. This investment largely came in the form of short-­term commercial bank loans, which helped to fund domestic booms. But, by 1997 and 1998, these countries had experienced a sudden reversal of international capital flows. In late 1996 it was becoming clear that far too many office buildings had been built, and the real estate markets and stock markets throughout the region were in decline. Foreign banks that had been lending heavily to Asian companies stopped offering loans, and demanded immediate repayment, and foreign investors began to pull out. The journalist and international affairs commentator Thomas Friedman (2000) calls these short-­term investors the “electronic herd.” No investor wants to be the last one to try to take his or her funds out of a failing economy, so when one investor flees, the others quickly follow. The feared crisis in Asia thus became a self-­fulfilling prophesy. As confidence in these economies collapsed, they experienced sharp economic decline. Between 1996 and 1998, the Asian economics that were once the main attraction for lenders and investors went from having a growth rate of 7 percent to a decline of 8.1 percent. Private firms announced they were bankrupt and banks closed. Currency values fell throughout the region, causing a drop in purchasing power. The Indonesian rupiah, for example, lost 85 percent of its value. Few if any major companies were solvent. Unemployment soared. The

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GDP of many nations across the region plummeted. In South Korea, urban poverty almost tripled. In Indonesia, unemployment rates increased tenfold. In Thailand, GDP fell by 11 percent. Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia, severely hit by the Asian crisis, asked the IMF for help. The IMF loans required that borrowing countries implement economic plans that followed neoliberal recommendations of market liberalization. Interestingly, Malaysia did not accept a loan from the IMF. Instead, Malaysia instituted capital controls to manage its market and buffer the local economy from the boom and bust cycles of unrestrained capital flows, which was in direct contrast to the IMF recommendations. According to neoliberalism, the cause of the crisis was weaknesses in the domestic economy, and particularly mismanagement by the government. Unhealthy relationships between the government and big-­business conglomerates, such as chaebols in Korea and corporate groups in Indonesia and Thailand, created an environment of nontransparency, family dominance, and blurring of ownership and management. A heavy dependence on exports created vulnerabilities and the banking sector lacked proper supervision. These factors were symptoms of political backwardness and the lack of a true, modern, market economy, according to neoliberalism. Other scholars offered a different explanation of the crisis. Joseph Stiglitz (2007), a leading critic of neoliberalism, argued that the increasing international integration of markets, particularly excessively rapid financial and capital market liberalization, was the single most important cause of the crisis. The Asian financial crisis was a new type of crisis caused by the integration of capital and financial markets—a crisis of the “capital account.” Transactions in these markets include stocks, bonds, and currency deposits—all forms of investment in which individuals and firms essentially loan money in the present with hopes of being repaid in the future. These investments from abroad can indeed help developing countries grow, especially when they lack the savings and capital investment for growth. While this investment may be useful for growth, this kind of capital investment moves in and out quickly and tends to be “pro-­ cyclical.” When times are good, often immediately after market liberalization, investment comes in and the domestic economy grows. But, often, too much money comes in, so that when the economy shows signs of weakness, too much money leaves, too quickly. As a result, the open, uncontrolled capital market can harm emerging economics. Instead of open markets, Stiglitz argues, many emerging economies should find effective ways to harness the benefits of the market while limiting their exposure to the more damaging aspects of an open economy.

Rapid Change in the Former Soviet Union The pursuit of rapid privatization, another central tenet of neoliberalism, in the former Soviet Union contributed to the enormous increase in inequality, according to many observers, and thus offers another cautionary tale about the Washington Consensus. In his book The Chastening (2001), the economics journalist Paul Blustein provides compelling evidence for how economic elites in Russia were able to grab former state assets during privatization, taking the lion’s share of the gains available, and then stalled further liberalization that might have generated more widespread economic growth. Capital market liberalization did not lead to faster economic growth, but instead led to increasing political and economic instability. As an antidote to neoliberalism, the developmental state model suggests that an activist state is necessary for achieving economic growth, and argues that the economic success of Japan and other East Asian economies was possible only because the state had played a central role in

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guiding economic development and led rather than followed the market. The state encouraged the development of industrial and economic structures that would not have come about purely through market forces. In Asia, governments used policy tools such as trade protection and government subsidies to provide investment to favored economic sectors. This state involvement helped to generate and sustain economic growth. The World Bank’s own report on rapid growth in Asia, called The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy, published in 1993, studied eight specific countries to identify the patterns of growth in the region. Some chapters in the report detailed hands-­off approaches by some governments, while other chapters considered the more interventionist approaches by other governments. Chapters that focused on the interventionist state affirmed the importance of an activist, developmental state, and so were in direct contrast to neoliberal orthodoxy at the time. The report concluded that there is not one, single model that was employed in Asia for growth, but a variety of approaches that produced growth. The East Asian Miracle report is still seen today as an example of the debate going on at the time about the role of the state in intervening in the market. As a result of the developmental state, policy initiatives not only insert the state back into efforts to create growth and well-­being, but also begin to assert the role of low-­income countries in defining their own prescriptions for development. These developing economies articulated their interests through New International Economic Order (NIEO), in the mid-­1970s, that called for a new system that put at its center the needs of low-­income countries. In more recent years, the Barcelona Development Agenda highlights the growing demand among borrowing countries to have more flexibility to decide which policies they will use to encourage development. The Barcelona Development Agenda was produced by a group of economists from developed and developing countries who met in September 2004 to craft a broad agreement on an alternative agenda to neoliberalism. This emerging post-­Washington Consensus recognizes that there are many different paths to economic growth and many different experiences outside the industrialized countries that might help in future plans for growth. Developing nations should not merely copy the institutions of high-­income countries, but should be allowed flexibility and experimentation in pursuing their goals. The Agenda also emphasized that development means more than simply increasing GDP; it must also include attention to quality of life issues such as health, education, gender equality, and environmental sustainability. Similarly, the Beijing Consensus, a term first introduced in 2004 by Joseph Cooper Ramo, reflects an alternative to the dominance of the Western model. Like the Barcelona Development Agenda, the Beijing Consensus refers to innovation and self-­determination in the pursuit of economic and political developments by markets outside the West. Such initiatives have also led to growing South–South cooperation (SSC) with increasing lending among developing countries. Support among African countries, and with India, China, and other emerging markets, offers alternatives to funding from the traditional lending sources. Calls for greater inclusion of the state to manage the market can also be seen in ideas such as “fair growth” practices recommended by the Center for Global Development researcher Nancy Birdsall and colleagues (2008), through which access to aid and trade is conditioned upon a government’s development of a safety net to support those who are more vulnerable to market competition and trade. Similarly, David Held (2005), who studies global governance and democracy, argues for a resurgence of social democracy, in which political liberties and civil freedoms are emphasized. Processes such as voting, the right to privacy, and free speech and expression help to support societies in which opportunities and freedom for development are possible. Together these initiatives offer evidence that the dominance of neoliberalism is waning, and we are experiencing an increase in more diverse models for development, and sources of support.

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Human-­Centered Growth Critiques of market-­led growth have also urged policymakers to look beyond national level indicators of economic growth to focus more attention on health of society, and human well-­ being. According to Stiglitz, the Washington Consensus encouraged a narrow set of objectives that focused too exclusively on the market, privileging economic growth, particularly increases in GDP, over other important objectives, such as improvements in the standard of living, social infrastructure, gender equality, or the promotion of a democratic and equitable government. New policy initiatives demonstrate a more complex understanding of development, through a wider array of policy initiatives that put human well-­being at the center. The first UN Human Development Report, issued in 1990, attempted to expand the study of poverty and development beyond a simple analysis of income and GNP per capita as a measure of well-­being—to a more holistic and multifaceted “human development.” Indeed, the UN Human Development Index (HDI) report captures a variety of measurements that interpret development holistically, including life expectancy, educational attainment, and income. Investing resources in human capital, such as education and health care, can generate well-­ being, but we have to look beyond GDP to see these important indicators. A graphic explaining the HDI can be found on the UNDP’s website, at http://hdr.undp. org/en/content/human-­development-index-­hdi. The most recent Human Development Report can be accessed online, at http://hdr. undp.org/en. In 1996 the World Bank and IMF announced the creation of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative to relieve the debts of countries with an unsustainable debt burden, usually around 250 percent of GDP. Many of these countries were paying more on debt repayments than on health and education combined. Putting human well-­being above market demands to repay debts, the HIPC initiative, supported by advocacy organizations such as Oxfam and Bread for the World, restructures debt. Under HIPC, the value of the debt is reduced to no more than 150 percent of GDP, the borrowing country is granted longer time to repay the debt, and interest is canceled. According to the World Bank, the HIPC initiative has already reduced debt burdens by considerable degrees and led to an increase in poverty-­reducing expenditures. A 2013 progress report on HIPC stated that the program had reduced debts up to $75 billion from more than thirty­five countries, according to statistical updates by the IMF and World Bank. During the years of debt relief, poverty-­reducing expenditures among these countries increased from $6 billion to more than $30 billion in 2010. According to Jubilee USA, government revenue that is saved from debt relief has been used to double school enrollment in Uganda, for instance, and provide vaccinations for thousands of children in Mozambique. This initiative focuses on promoting social well-­being above market demands for debt repayment. For ongoing advocacy of debt reduction in the world’s poorest countries, check out these organizations: • • • •

ONE Campaign (www.one.org/international/issues/debt-­cancellation/). Jubilee USA (www.jubileeusa.org). Bread for the World (www.bread.org). Oxfam (www.oxfam.org).

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The IMF and the World Bank also monitor progress on debt relief and report their findings on these web pages: • •

“Debt Relief Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative,” IMF (www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/hipc.htm). “Debt Relief—Overview,” World Bank (www.worldbank.org/en/topic/debt/brief/ debt-­relief ).

We also see complex understandings of development reflected in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Today, international development assistance is guided by the principles laid out by the United Nations, which offers a patchwork of key principles and policy outcomes that should direct lending to low-­income countries. In 2000, at the UN’s Millennium Summit, the member nations committed to “making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want.” In recognition of the complexity of development, the Summit gathered the largest group of world leaders and produced a new global commitment to address development. The MDGs identified key strategies for addressing global poverty, and committed signatory nations to particular financial goals. In the Monterrey Consensus, signed in 2001, donor nations agreed to spending 0.7 percent of GNP on development assistance that would be targeted at eight central goals. The goals include addressing hunger and poverty, promoting health, and encouraging gender equality and environmental sustainability. The MDG program set 2015 as its deadline to achieve these goals. As the era of the MDGs came to an end, evidence suggested that the program motivated an effective increase in investment toward ending extreme hunger and poverty in the world. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), a majority of the countries it monitors (72 out of 129) achieved the MDG goals of halving extreme undernourishment. In developing countries, the persistence of undernourishment stood at 12.9 percent in 2015, down from 23.3 percent in 1990. The director of the FAO, Jose Graziano da Silva, argued that this progress suggests that meeting the MDG targets could eliminate widespread hunger. While progress had been made, the UN reevaluated its approach to addressing global poverty in a “post-­2015” analysis. While the MDGs remain at the core of the UN antipoverty and development initiative, new issues are now shaping the global conversation, largely initiated at the 2012 Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also called the 2012 Earth Summit. The resulting document, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, focuses global attention on seventeen “Sustainable Development Goals.” New goals include affordable and clear energy, responsible consumption and production, sustainable cities and communities, attention to freshwater and marine life, and climate action. Two key themes emerged during the Rio + 20 Conference. The first was the importance of civil society, as well as governments and international governmental organizations, in ensuring “inclusive economic development and inclusive social development.” Both the inclusion of civil society—the voices, forums, and organizations that function as a connection of a populace to its governments—in shaping the goals and the improvement of accountability among government and key decision makers are critical next steps toward sustainable development. The second theme articulated at Rio + 20 was attention to sustainability in addressing development issues. Indeed, the Sustainable Development Goals suggest greater attention to social well-­ being, and to the sustainability of development for the health of the planet.

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The UN’s MDGs website (www.un.org/millenniumgoals/) is a gateway to a wide range of information, such as progress on individual goals, case studies, and the like. The UN’s “post-­2015” development agenda can be explored at this UN web page: www.un.org/en/development/desa/development-­beyond-2015.html. The ability of the international community to address persistent poverty and hunger will go a long way toward mitigating criticism about the current global order. Recent efforts to focus on social well-­being and to promote innovation among developing countries demonstrate that the development community is actively learning from past experiences and debating new routes forward. The dominance of one specific model for economic growth, the Washington Consensus, is being challenged.

Conclusion In recent years, public confidence in free market capitalism has taken a hit. Trust in banks across the United States and Europe has been lost as a result of the 2008 financial crisis; questions remain about whether finance capitalism ultimately undermines the common good. The rise of nationalist sentiments suggests the real prospect of a retreat from global capitalism. Will we see the persistence of new ideas about growth and development? What might guide our economic order in the future? The international development scholar Robin Broad, in 2004, looked at the contending theories of economic growth and concluded that the Washington Consensus “no longer prevails” (p. 129). While trade liberalization is still considered a central tool for economic growth and development today, many of the assumptions of the Consensus have been transformed. Indeed, persistent concerns about the distribution of wealth, societal well-­being, and the exploitation of low-­income countries have begun to inform new policy initiatives. New actors are emerging in the development community, including philanthropic efforts, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and countries from the Global South like China. With the proliferation of actors also come new ideas about human-­centered development and the role of the state in promoting well-­being. Therefore, we are seeing the rise of important innovation and contestation today about the nature of the global order and the responsibility to promote human well-­being.

References and Further Research Berman, Sheri. 2009. “What to read on modernization theory”. Foreign Affairs. Bhagwati, Jagdish. 2004. In Defense of Globalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Birdsall, Nancy, Augusto de la Torre, and Rachel Menezes. 2008. Fair Growth: Economic Policies for Latin America’s Poor and Middle-­Income Majority. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. www.cgdev.org/publication/9781933286167-fair-­growth-economic-­policies-latin-­americas-poor-­andmiddle-­income-majority. Blustein, Paul. 2001. The Chastening: Inside the Crisis That Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF. New York: Public Affairs. Bread for the World Institute. 2015. 2015 Hunger Report: When Women Flourish … We Can End Hunger. Washington, DC: Bread for the World Institute. http://hungerreport.org/2015. Bread for the World Institute. 2017. 2017 Hunger Report: Fragile Environments, Resilient Communities. Washington, DC: Bread for the World Institute. http://hungerreport.org/2017. Broad, Robin. 2004. “The Washington Consensus Meets the Global Backlash: Shifting Debates and Policies.” Globalizations 1, no. 2: 129–154. Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and George W. Downs. 2005. “Development and Democracy.” Foreign Affairs 84: 77–86.

66  Stephanie S. Holmsten Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. 2017. “A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality.” www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-­and-inequality/a-­guide-to-­statistics-on-­historical-trends­in-income-­inequality. Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. 2018. “Millions Still Struggle to Afford Food.” www.cbpp.org. FAO, iFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO. 2017. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017: Building Resilience for Peace and Food Security. Rome: FAO. www.fao.org/state-­of-food-­ security-nutrition/en/. Friedman, Thomas L. 2000. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization. New York: Macmillan. Gilpin, Robert. 2000. The Challenge of Global Capitalism: The World Economy in the 21st Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gilpin, Robert. 2001. Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Held, David. 2005. “At the Global Crossroads: The End of the Washington Consensus and the Rise of Global Social Democracy?” Globalizations 2, no. 1: 95–113. International Monetary Fund/World Bank Group. 2013. Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI): Statistical Update. Washington, DC: IMF, April 2. www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2013/041113.pdf. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy.” Amer­ican Political Science Review 53, no. 1: 69–105. Moore, Barrington. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Przeworski, Adam, and Fernando Limongi. 1997. “Modernization: Theories and Facts.” World Politics 44, no. 2: 155–183. Ramo, Joshua Cooper. 2004. “The Beijing Consensus: Notes on the New Physics of Chinese Power.” London: Foreign Policy Centre. Rist, Gilbert. 2014. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. 4th ed. London and New York: Zed Books. Rodrik, Dani. 2011. The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: W. W. Norton. Rostow, Walt Whitman. 1960. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-­Communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Anchor Books. Shea, Dorothy. 2000. The South African Truth Commission: The Politics of Reconciliation. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace. Smith, Adam. 1776. Wealth of Nations. Edited by C. J. Bullock. Vol. X. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1909–1014. Stiglitz, Joseph. 2007. Making Globalization Work. New York: W. W. Norton. United Nations Development Programme. Human Development Report 1990. “Concept and Measurement of Human Development.” http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr1990. United Nations Development Programme. Human Development Report 2010. “The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development.” 20th anniversary edition. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/ files/reports/270/hdr_2010_en_complete_reprint.pdf. United Nations Development Programme. Human Development Report. “UNDP Our Focus: Sustainable Development.” www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-­development.html. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2004. World-­Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. World Bank. 1993. The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy. New York: Oxford University Press. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/975081468244550798/Main-­report. World Bank. “New Country Classification by Income Level.” https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/new-­ country-classifications-­2016. World Foresight Forum. 2011. “The Beijing Consensus: An Alternative Approach to Development.” Issue Brief No. 2. https://hcss.nl/sites/default/files/files/reports/WFF02_Issue_Brief_The_Beijing_ Consensus02.pdf.

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Key Concepts and Processes: Security Michael R. Anderson and Stephanie S. Holmsten What are the sources of peace and war in today’s global order? This chapter will consider how ideas about peace and war, about conflict and security, have changed over time. The interconnected nature of today’s global order may produce conflicting pressures for war and peace, for power and opportunity, and for individuals, nation-­states, and global governance. Greater economic integration can generate ties between economies that discourage war, and modern media technology allows us to be ever more aware of the plights of others around the world. Yet, from ethnic conflict and border disputes to global terrorism and cyberattacks, there are new and persistent threats to peace and stability. In considering changes in ideas about security over time, we begin with two classic international relations theories—one that focuses on the state, and another that focuses on varied interests. We consider the assumptions about key actors and the nature of the international order. We then explore more recent ideas about security. Where is cooperation possible, and where does peace come from? What new ideas about security and well-­being might suggest a new set of key actors and assumptions about the nature of today’s world order?

Realism and the Nation-­State When we study the nature of war and peace in the global order, one of the key actors that executes war and generates peace is the nation-­state. The nation-­state—a collection of individuals governed by a domestic authority—is a relatively modern idea, but the hallmark of the nation-­state, sovereignty, is rooted in the Treaty of Westphalia, an agreement that brought about the end of the Thirty Years War between Protestant and Catholic states within the Holy Roman Empire in 1648. The treaty affirmed the right of ultimate authority by a ruler over his or her territory, particularly the right to choose the religion for the territory, and prohibited interference by outside states in domestic affairs. Today, the nation-­state combines two fundamental assumptions about national identity and governance. A nation is a group of people with a shared identity, sometimes confirmed by the same language, history, culture, or religion, while a state is a set of political institutions with influence over affairs within a particular geographic boundary. Most states around the world provide geographic representation for a dominant national group, hence forming nation-­states. There is growing debate, however, about whether nation-­states truly represent one national identity. As Benedict Andersen argues in Imagined Communities (2006), the very image of a single nationality is a constructed reality that is affirmed by shared stories, myths, and symbols. Scholars of multiculturalism also argue that most states include a variety of national groups and that the role of the state is to affirm and provide balance among these groups. Whether today’s nation-­states represent one or many different groups of people, it is without question that the nation-­state has been central to security studies.

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Realism and Anarchy State-­based notions of security traditionally draw from one classical international relations theory: realism. Each international relations theory provides a set of assumptions about the way that the world is ordered. It is not a political agenda or policy recommendation. Instead, the theories help to explain how the world works. Realism assumes that the nature of international relations is anarchy. Anarchy does not imply chaos, but rather the absence of a central authority. There is no authority above the state, no rules governing a state’s behavior, and therefore no way to anticipate or interpret the actions of other states. As a result of anarchy, each state focuses primarily on securing its own survival in a self-­help environment. The centrality of survival does not necessarily imply “selfish” behavior, but simply that, given the absence of global rules and binding expectations for behavior, each state must largely depend on itself, rather than others, to secure its own borders, resist encroachment, and maintain its existence. In a self-­help environment, each state must rely on its own power to secure itself. In order to secure survival, state power is important, particularly as it is expressed through military might. In this self-­help environment created by anarchy, states face what is known as a security dilemma. In the absence of rules, states must consider any action by one state to secure itself— such as the creation of a buffer from its neighbor, or the strengthening of its defensive capabilities—as potential aggressive behavior. Since each state can only rely on itself for survival, and cannot confidently interpret the actions of other states to secure survival, each state must meet any development of this type as a potential threat to its survival. As a result, anarchy leads to the perpetual possibility of war. Power In realism, the survival of the nation-­state is its main goal, and this includes ensuring its stability and security. Security can best be ensured through power, which is expressed by military capability. Military might and economic strength are keys to maintaining sufficient power and influence to secure survival. Economic growth, a strong national income, and social stability may all be important for maintaining a robust military capability. The size and diversity of the economy, alongside the strength of the military, are important measures of power in realism. Realists also understand the arrangement of power as a means of securing peace. The particular arrangement and number of dominant states in the international order tell us about the potential for stability or war. Dominant countries are often referred to as great powers, hegemons, or superpowers. These terms are used interchangeably to refer to states that enjoy primacy in the international system and have extraordinary influence on the behavior of other states. The leading actor in the system is a dominant power that can exercise influence over others, has few rivals, and leads the international system. Power is expressed in the ability to get others to act in ways that they might not otherwise act. When several dominant states exist, the international order is considered multipolar. One such era occurred between World War I and World War II, with the United States, Great Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and the Soviet Union as powerful states. Following World War II, two dominant powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, created a bipolar system during the Cold War. The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to what some argue is a unipolar world dominated by the United States. Some countries certainly exercise more power than others, but measuring power is a bit more complicated. Scholars debate where such power comes from, but they tend to focus on the economic, military, political, technological, and cultural resources of a state that enable it

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to influence developments in distant places, as well as persuade or coerce other countries to do certain things or refrain from doing other things. “Hard power” refers to the military and economic resources of a state. Scholars, for example, suggest that the unprecedented military and economic capability of the United States after World War II created an “Amer­ican Century,” in which the United States led the global economy for decades. Today, the United States accounts for 40 percent of total global defense expenditures and spends more on its military than the next seven most powerful countries. Other scholars argue that leadership comes in forms other than just military and economic strength. They contend that too much military spending weakens the economy, and such military might must still be translated into realized power. While a hegemon can go it alone, it is often advantageous for it to cooperate. For example, free trade may help U.S.-based companies, but many free trade arrangements allow trading partners to benefit too. Convincing other states to join the arrangement requires constraining the possible gains for powerful states and providing mutual gains for others. The political scientist Joseph Nye (2004) refers to this approach as “soft power.” He argues that while strong states can force others to change, strong states have other, more indirect, ways to influence change that may not depend on economic or military might. Some notions of soft power focus on cultural capital, such as a country’s attractive values and ideas, as powerful tools of influence that may not stem from hard power sources. For example, if a country is admired, then others will follow, regardless of hard power. The Italian communist writer Antonio Gramsci used the term hegemony in his studies of the ways that the working class submitted to the abuses of the ruling class. He found that the ruling class legitimated itself to the working people by conveying moral authority to their actions. The working class then accepted the ruling class, and felt that its decisions were legitimate. “Smart power,” according to Nye, is the ability to balance soft and hard power. While conflict remains likely according to the realism model, there are ways to avoid war. For many scholars of international relations, a balance of power among powerful states provides a stable equilibrium that diminishes the likelihood of war. This bipolar system is created when two powerful states balance against each other, providing a meaningful deterrent and nullifying the benefits of war. Other states join in alliances with one of the powerful states, distributing power throughout the international system. Here we might think of the Cold War, when the United States and Soviet Union faced off against each other but did not go to war directly with each other. Not all scholars agree that bipolarity is necessary for peace, however. Stephen Krasner (1976) argues that stability comes under one hegemonic power, especially when the rising power provides important “coordination goods” and open trade. Consider the British Empire in the nineteenth century. The empire funded exploration and established ports and transportation routes. Using coercive power, it used military might to open ports or encourage treaties. For most of the 1800s, the British pound served as the main currency of trade, just as the U.S. dollar did after World War II. Banks in London, and later in the United States, served as secure places to store currency and acted as guarantors of exchange. The rising hegemon, in this case Britain and then the United States, provided the necessary institutions to promote peace and established the rules for the global order to ensure stability. But why would the hegemon be willing to pay for these coordination goods in order to maintain trade openness? According to Krasner, large states benefit more from trade openness and so are likely to pay the price to create and support it. In Krasner’s argument, there are four main interests of all states: national income, political power, social stability, and economic growth. Both large and small states gain from trade through increasing national income and securing economic growth. But large states are more likely than small ones to gain social stability and political power through trade. Through trade openness, the domestic economy is more exposed to competition from abroad. This can lead to the closing of some industries and

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the expansion of others, as domestic companies compete with those abroad. Such transitions can cause social dislocation, unemployment, and social instability. For large states, a smaller proportion of the economy is involved in trade, as domestic consumption can keep production afloat. In addition, more options for movement exist if one industry fails. Take, for example, the island nation Dominica, with a population of roughly 71,000 and a landmass that is a little smaller than New York City. One-­third of the labor force works in agriculture, and trade is dominated by trading in bananas. The collapse of the banana trade could have a devastating effect on the local economy, and many workers would have nowhere else to go in such a small economy. Where then would these workers find new work? A large economy can absorb dislocated workers better than a small economy can. Therefore, large states are less vulnerable than small states to the social volatility caused by open markets and international competition. In addition, large economies have more leverage in negotiations with other states, because they can issue more credible threats of trade sanctions than small states can. Large states with robust domestic economies can reward or punish the behavior of other states by cutting off trade, limiting imports, or eliminating exports. Small states are more dependent on trade and have a smaller market share, and they thus have fewer ways to make meaningful threats. Therefore, large states gain more from open trade than small states. With gains in national income, economic growth, social stability, and power, a hegemon on the rise is likely to provide the necessary institutions to enhance global trade. The composition of power among states, whether one hegemon on the rise or two powerful states in balance, tells us about the possible tendency toward peace and conflict. Power, particularly measured through economic strength and military capability, is central to understanding the incentives of states to lead through might or collaboration. Research institutions study the relative balance of military and economy might around the world. For up-­to-date information on military capabilities and their implications, as well as data on security, health, education, sustainability, and development, the RAND Corporation is a good resource. RAND is a nonprofit research organization that focuses on public policy solutions to a variety of security-­related topics. Its website (www.rand. org) provides information on these areas of research.

Collective Security and the Amer­ican Century The United States after World War II provides an example of stability created by a hegemon on the rise. Often referred to as the “Amer­ican Century,” the post-­World War II era saw the indisputable rise of the United States as a global leader. Winston Churchill declared in 1945 that “the U.S. stands at this moment at the summit of the world.” The United States had absolute and relative dominance in military, financial, and economic strength, with the largest navy and a long-­range strategic air force. In addition, the United States had more than half of the world’s manufacturing capacity and the only large-­scale advanced industrial economy, fueled by the need to provide war supplies. This period is considered the golden era of Amer­ican capitalism, as the GI Bill financed a well-­educated workforce, the middle class swelled, and Amer­ican society embraced global leadership. What was the nature of U.S. leadership? First, the United States provided crucial support for the Allies during and after the war. The United States provided support through the Lend-­Lease Act (1941–1945), signed under President Franklin Roosevelt; the measure allowed the Allies access to aircraft, land vehicles, and railroad equipment, with the understanding that, after the war, the supplies would be returned or bought. This financial support ended U.S. neutrality,

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and it provided vital assistance to the Allied powers. The United States continued to provide support to Europe after the war. For example, through the Truman Doctrine, the United States committed to providing military aid to Greece and Turkey to resist the spread of communism in the region, after the British were not able to support Greece and Turkey as they had during the war. The United States also offered funding for recovery from the war through the Marshall Plan, starting in June 1947. Major aid was offered to all European states, though only the Western democracies accepted the aid. The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin put pressure on Eastern European nations to refuse the aid, arguing that the plan was not a sign of generosity but of using economic aid for leverage. With support from the Marshall Plan, though, Western Europe experienced remarkable economic growth, coal and steel industries rebounded, and international trade was restored. In addition to providing aid, the United States helped create international institutions such as the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF ), and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization), considered key pillars of the global order. Rather than expressing its power unilaterally, the United States signaled restraint by binding its power within institutions that guaranteed the incorporation of many other states into the global order. The human rights and international affairs scholar John Ruggie (1996) describes the nature of U.S. leadership at this time as seeking to secure its national interests through the construction of an open, liberal order supported by international institutions. The institutions provided opportunities for states to participate, and guaranteed that U.S. power would be mitigated by international rules and common expectations. In some ways, this open, liberal order challenged some of the central tenets of realist assumptions about global security, and hearkened back to Amer­ican idealistic visions of instilling progressive ideals into geopolitics. During World War I, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson famously rejected the realist perspective of clashing state interests when he proposed a permanent international organization dedicated to the maintenance of international security. In Wilson’s view, nations needed to have a fundamental shift in their approach to international relations, moving away from national rivalry and toward a recognition of shared aspirations. “There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace,” he said. Wilson promoted freedom of the seas and national self-­ determination as the hallmarks of his new self-­proclaimed “modern” approach to international affairs, based on the notion that states had shared interests, and could therefore work toward shared goals. President Wilson’s discussion of a “community of power” took place in an extraordinary speech to the United States Senate on January 22, 1917, the full text of which can be found at the World War I Document Archive (https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/ Address_of_the_President_of_the_United_States_to_the_Senate), hosted by the Brigham Young University Library. Wilson was promoting a vision of world peace rooted in the idea of “collective security,” a new notion in the early twentieth century. The political scientist Kenneth Thompson (1953) defined collective security as a method of managing the power relations of nation-­states through a partially centralized system of security arrangements. The fundamental principle upon which collective security is founded provides that an attack on any one state will be regarded as an attack on all states. While the ultimate power remains diffused among independent sovereign states, authority in the specifically defined spheres of maintenance and enforcement of peace is vested in an international body. In the case of Wilson, that body was

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designed as a “League of Nations.” Later, its successor organization, the United Nations, took on this challenge. Chapter VII of the UN Charter authorizes the UN Security Council, if it finds evidence of an act of international aggression, to pass resolutions to use economic sanctions and even military force in order to reinstate international peace. In this way, nation-­states now have the institutional capacity to address conflicts around the world in a collective manner, rather than as individual powers. Research centers at academic institutions offer sharp analyses of Amer­ican power and national security strategies, using multidisciplinary approaches to leverage insights from history, political science, diplomacy, sociology, and geography, as well as regional area expertise. Academic centers around the world can provide timely analysis of current events, and locally hosted panels or conferences bring national and international experts together to discuss timely issues. For example, at the University of Texas at Austin, this trio of institutes considers security issues: • • •

Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law (www.strausscenter. org). William P. Clements, Jr. Center for National Security (www.clementscenter.org). Intelligence Studies Project (https://intelligencestudies.utexas.edu).

The Cold War Unfortunately, the geopolitical reality of the mid-­twentieth century curtailed such visions of true collective security. The international order constructed under the leadership of the United States quickly turned toward one overriding national security objective: containing Soviet power. By the late 1940s, communism had spread through Eastern Europe, but also through popular communist parties and sympathizers in Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. Growing fear in the United States about the spread of communism was confirmed in the fall of 1949 when the Communist leader Mao Zedong gained control of China, the world’s most populous state. That same year, the Soviets conducted a nuclear test. If the United States were a global hegemon, how could the Soviet Union continue to have such success against Western efforts to stop communist expansion? Rather than an Amer­ican Century, some historians, including Walter LaFeber, suggest that the post-­World War II era was instead a bipolar arrangement in which the Soviet Union effectively balanced U.S. leadership. With the spread of communism and the growing military strength of the Soviet Union, the United States faced a true challenger. Fear of the Soviet Union dominated U.S. foreign policy. Churchill described Soviet influence in a speech at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across the Continent.” That same year, George F. Kennan, the State Department’s deputy chief of mission to the Soviet Union, explained Soviet behavior and why the Soviet Union did not support the World Bank and IMF, in the “Long Telegram.” According to Kennan, Soviet power was “impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force.” Kennan wrote that dealing with Soviet communism was “undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably greatest it will ever have to face.” The implication of Kennan’s analysis was that the United States had to address the Soviet Union with force, and that any appeasement in negotiations would be interpreted as a soft spot. Kennan’s telegram informed the crafting of the Truman Doctrine.

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More information about Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech can be found on the website of the International Churchill Society (www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/ speeches/1946-1963-elder-­statesman/the-­sinews-of-­peace/), which also offers access to the BBC radio recording of the speech. The website of the National Security Archive (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//coldwar/ documents/episode-­1/kennan.htm) offers the full text of George F. Kennan’s “Long Telegram.” Evidence of growing fears formed Senator Joseph McCarthy’s argument that U.S. failures to stem the tide of communism was caused by communists who had infiltrated the Amer­ican government. The House Un-­Amer­ican Activities Committee (HUAC), inspired by Senator McCarthy, held hearings in 1947 and 1948 to gather testimony from private individuals, many of whom worked in Hollywood, who were suspected of having communist sympathies. More than 500 people lost their jobs, and many hundreds of people in the movie industry were asked to provide testimony against each other. Writers, directors, and actors were “blacklisted” because of suspected communist leanings. In addition, President Harry S. Truman created the Federal Employees Loyalty Program in 1947, which essentially extended the probe to people working in the federal government. The program created political-­loyalty review boards that examined the “Amer­icanism” of federal employees and recommended termination of those who were suspected of disloyalty and acts of subversion. College professors were also examined for their loyalty, and many liberal professors lost their jobs. National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68) put a fine point on U.S. fears about the Soviet Union. Issued in April of 1950, NSC 68 concluded that the Soviet Union had a “new fanatic faith” that “seeks to impose absolute authority over the rest of the world.” The report predicted that the Soviet Union aimed at total global domination within four or five years. While there was little concern of expansion through direct Soviet military capabilities, U.S. policymakers worried that the Soviet Union could expand endlessly by initiating and supporting communist revolutions around the world. More information on NSC 68 is available from the Office of the Historian, U.S. State Department, at https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/NSC68. The text of NSC 68 can be accessed on the Truman Library website, at www. trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/pdf/10-1.pdf. Events in Korea reinforced U.S. fears. In September 1950, North Korean forces invaded the South and soon took over most of the country. The United Nations, at Truman’s urging, condemned the action and put together a UN force to push back the invasion. Under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur, UN forces drove North Korea back to the 39th parallel. Once at the border, General MacArthur continued his advance northward, coming close to the Chinese border. Mao Zedong would not accept this and intervened on behalf of the North Koreans to push the U.S. forces back to the 38th parallel, the dividing line between the two Koreas established after World War II. After three years of fighting and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, Korea remained divided at the 38th parallel. This conflict, along with others (including the Vietnam War), suggest to some that the United States could not have been a global hegemon at the time, given its failure to overcome its dominant enemy. In addition, the United States abandoned key principles that were affirmed throughout the 1940s, including self-­determination and national sovereignty. The United States intervened in

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Iran in 1953 to support the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the country’s prime minister. Mossadegh, drawing public support in Iran by appealing to Iranian nationalism and anti-­ imperialist sentiments throughout the region, nationalized the Anglo-­Iranian Oil Company. This action was similar to Egyptian President Abdel Nasser’s anti-­British struggles in Egypt, when he nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, on a wave of Pan-­Arabism. In addition to intervening in Iran, the United States supported the removal of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala after Arbenz appropriated land from a U.S. conglomerate, the United Fruit Company. The actions of Mossadegh and Arbenz were interpreted by the United States and others as possible signals of future alliances with the Soviet Union. As a result, the United States aided in the overthrow of these two democratically elected leaders. To many scholars, the Cold War confirmed realist assumptions about the international order. Anarchy in the international order prevented meaningful cooperation and heightened fears about the intentions of others. The United States had to interpret the actions of the Soviet Union as potentially threatening, and the Soviet Union had to respond to each U.S. action with a counteraction. In addition, the Cold War is an example of two global powers balancing against one another. The rise of the United States provoked many states, particularly in Latin America, to tie their fortunes to the United States (an approach called “bandwagoning,” as opposed to “balancing”), while the Soviet Union aimed to balance those alliances through its own “Eastern bloc” of satellite states. The bipolar global order created a balance that averted a direct, global world war between the United States and Soviet Union.

End of the Cold War and Challenges to Traditional Security The end of the Cold War changed many of the long-­held assumptions about the international order. Under U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the Cold War ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. There is a variety of competing explanations for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some scholars have focused on the individuals themselves: Reagan and Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, his counterpart in the Soviet Union. Reagan’s rhetorical toughness and military build-­up may have brought about the demise of the Soviet Union. Others argue that the collapse came because of internal flaws within the Soviet Union that created political erosion. Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika brought increased political and economic liberalization, which created an opening for nationalism and independence movements fueled by ethnic tension. Others saw the end of the Cold War as the inevitable resolution of the battle between communism and democratic capitalism. The National Interest published Francis Fukuyama’s article “The End of History?” in the summer of 1989. Fukuyama argued that the end of the Cold War signaled the outright victory of economic and political liberalism. Fukuyama revisited his 1989 article “The End of History?” in the introduction to his 1992 book titled The End of History and the Last Man, which is available from the Marxists Internet Archive, at www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/ fukuyama.htm. There was hope that the conclusion of this ideological battle would herald convergence and agreement around Western liberal democracy, and also encourage peace and stability. But, rather than peace, the world has experienced intense internal, civil wars. In the early 1990s, for example, ethnic conflict among Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Kosovo Albanians divided Yugoslavia. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-­Herzegovina, and Macedonia pushed for

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i­ndependence from Yugoslavia, but Slobodan Milošević, the leader of the Serbian Communist Party, refused to allow independence. Regardless, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from the republic in 1990 and 1991, respectively, but Serbian-­minorities in both areas resisted independence and declared their desire to join with Serbia. The Yugoslav Army intervened in Croatia, largely in defense of Croatian Serbs, and the ensuing conflict resulted in the death of tens of thousands of people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more. Similarly, in Bosnia, a referendum on independence succeeded in March 1992, but it was resisted by the Serb minority. After months of ethnically motivated conflict, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia were recognized as independent states by the spring of 1992. The Dayton Accords, signed in 1992, created a brief pause in the conflict, but the dispute was not over. Fighting in Bosnia continued for three years before violence erupted in Kosovo, where the majority Albanians formed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and called for independence. The KLA attacked Serbian police forces, followed by retaliation by the Serbian forces that led to the massacre of ethnic Albanians. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared that the United States would not “stand by and watch the Serbian authorities do in Kosovo what they can no longer get away with doing in Bosnia.” UN peacekeepers and NATO military capabilities forced the end of the conflict and the arrest of Milošević, who died awaiting the conclusion of his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague. What did scholars make of this violent period after the conclusion of the Cold War? Samuel Huntington gave us a new way of understanding conflict in what he called the “polarization thesis.” In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (1996), Huntington explained that the sources of conflict have changed over time. In the age of empire, conflicts were between emperors and monarchs. After the French Revolution, conflict occurred between nations. The Cold War was a conflict about ideas. Today, conflict is between different forms of civilizations, predominantly Western and non-­Western civilizations. According to Huntington, most important conflicts in the future will come along “cultural fault lines” that separate different civilizations from one another. Civilizational differences are so foundational for Huntington because they derive from history, language, culture, tradition, and religion. Civilizations tell us how to view relations between God and humanity, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, and parents and children. They give meaning to life and tell us about our identity and responsibilities. As a result of globalization, interactions among people are increasing, bringing greater exposure to different civilizations. With greater exposure comes a greater possibility for conflict along these important lines. Economic and social modernization can cause a dislocation from long-­standing identities. Evidence of Huntington’s argument can be seen in increasing regional arrangements and growing movements to reaffirm local identities and national sentiments. The meaning and implication of Huntington’s work have been intensely debated. Some argue that the notions of the “West” and “non-­West” are flawed because of great diversity within these regions, including the United States and Europe, and nations within Africa, Latin America, and Asia, with varying languages, religions, and cultures. What is the meaning of the “West” or “non-­West?” Instead of culture, some argue, the division is about economic opportunities, geopolitics, or the division between former colonial powers and their colonies. Others suggest that culture and identity are quite moldable and we should not assume that these identities are as primordial as Huntington suggests. Steven Wilkinson (2004), a political scientist who studies ethnic conflict and democracy, particularly in India and South Asia, argues, for example, that conflict between Hindu and Muslim communities in India is often generated by political elites in order to create fear between the groups and motivate voters to support ethnically based political parties. Ethnic identification becomes politically salient after voters are provoked by an incident of ethnic conflict. With the provocation, ethnic identity is heightened and voters act accordingly. But in different times, and without the provocation, such

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­communities have lived together without conflict. Therefore, culture and identity are not absolute, and as such may not serve as the root of conflict unless motivated by other forces. Liberalism What are the implications of these new conflicts after the end of the Cold War? What do we make of Huntington’s argument about culture? According to Bill McSweeney (1999) at the International Peace Studies program at the Irish School of Economics, the end of the Cold War led to a fundamental rethinking of security. The world was no longer bound by the constant tension between two global superpowers. The centrality of an enemy to define state action was diminishing. In its place arose new forces, such as nationalism and identity. Collective identity began to emerge as a force that defined people by nationalism, culture, or ethnicity. Scholarship followed in the pursuit of a better understanding of the individual, culture, identity, and subnational forms of organization and mobilization. The primacy of the nation-­state was challenged. Ideas about individual well-­being and human security were developed that captured this sense of the growing importance of culture, identity, and the individual above and below the state. Liberal scholars draw from these experiences to suggest that nation-­states are not the only actors in international relations. Culture matters. Alternative theories to realism may be instructive as we consider how culture might affect international relations. For liberal scholars of international relations, states are embedded in domestic and international civil society. The interests of states come from contestation among domestic actors, rather than always being defined by security. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye’s (1977) work on complex interdependence helps to explain this approach, offering an effective description of the difference between realists and liberals. While realists assume that states are coherent units, focused on national survival and military strength, liberals see a web of interconnections that affect the hierarchy of state interests and lead to a complicated process of making foreign policy. Liberals see transgovernmental connections among bureaucrats and other government officials who debate policy options and sway the opinion of the administration in different directions at different times, often leading to incoherent foreign policy. States are not necessarily led by one common goal of security. The state interest is created through the political process of interest articulation and debate. Liberals also see transnational connections among businesses, private firms, banks, and others who have concerns regarding foreign policy. Agricultural and textile interests in the United States, for example, have historically preferred trade protection and subsidies, while heavy manufacturing and international banking have preferred trade openness. Jeff Frieden’s work on foreign economic policy applies this approach to analyzing foreign policy, particularly during the interwar period. Liberals argue that issues relevant to foreign policy have become more numerous and more diverse. There is no predictable hierarchy of interests. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in an address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in 1975, said,  Progress in dealing with the traditional agenda is no longer enough. A new and unprecedented kind of issue has emerged. The problems of energy, resources, environment, population, the uses of space and the seas now rank with questions of military security, ideology and territorial rivalry which have traditionally made up the diplomatic agenda. Secretary of State Kissinger’s 1975 speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, along with other speeches by Kissinger during U.S. President Gerald Ford’s administration, can be accessed at the website of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum (www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/dosb/1860.pdf#page=3).

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Not only is the hierarchy of state interests contested, liberals, including Keohane and Nye, argue that there is complex interdependence among states, rather than anarchy. Multiple channels connect society across national borders. Take, for example, informal ties between bureaucrats from different countries who deal with each other directly through meetings, telephone, and e-­mail. Nongovernmental elites communicate through informal exchanges, e-­mail, and conferences. They then make government policies more responsive to each other, at least in theory. With these connections, there are increasing opportunities for cooperation, not only around military strength, but also concerning human rights, market growth, and environmental security. As a result, the possibilities for peace, according to liberals, grow once you relax the assumptions of anarchy. Three main schools of liberal thought exist concerning the origins of peace. First, peace may come through market connections, creating economic alliances that will prevent conflict: free trade promotes dependency, and so trading partners will prefer peace. Second, peace may come through democracy, as elected leaders pay a higher price through elections for threatening or going to war. Third, institutions create connections that dampen the tendency for war. Human Security The idea of security has been stretched and pulled as our world faces new and complex crises. Consider the words of James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, in 2000: “When we think about security, we need to think beyond battalions and borders. We need to think about human security, about winning a different war, the fight against poverty” (quoted in Thomas 2001, 160). In 2000, Michel Camdessus, the managing director of the IMF, said, “Poverty is the ultimate systemic threat facing humanity” (quoted in Thomas 2000, 3). The argument is that pervasive poverty and inequality are threats to the global order. To prevent conflict, we need a comprehensive, equitable, and inclusive approach to development, not just security in a traditional sense. This argument shifts the focus from the nation-­state and its borders to the human being and the individual. According to the United Nations—in particular its UN Development Programme (UNDP) and Responsibility to Protect agreement (see accompanying text box)— the state should be held accountable to protect its people and ensure that basic material needs are met, including food, shelter, education, health, and human dignity.

The United Nations, Human Development, and Security In 1990 the UNDP issued its first Human Development Report. The report suggested that the global order is not only concerned with security, but also with human welfare. Rather than simply measuring economic indicators such as GDP and GDP per capita as signs of growth and health, the UN also created the Human Development Index, which combines measurements of health, education, income, and life expectancy. In addition, the Human Development Report measures inequality and gender parity. The aim is to capture not only economic poverty, but also poverty of opportunity and quality of life. While income poverty is about dollars per day, human poverty is about literacy, life expectancy, education, and political power. The norm of human security was put into practice through a UN agreement defining the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) principle, as first described by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001, and then accepted by all member states at the 2005 UN World Summit. The R2P principle includes three key commitments of nation-­states and the international community in protecting human security. First, the state has the “primary” responsibility for protecting populations from

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“genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleaning, and their incitement.” This means that states should not only secure their borders and promote economic growth, but also consider actions within their borders that may lead to conflict. Second, the international community has the responsibility to support states in fulfilling these responsibilities. This gives the UN and other international actors greater authority over the events within a nation-­state, challenging the supremacy of sovereignty in particular cases. The third pillar is that the international community has a responsibility to use “appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other means,” as stated in the 2005 UN World Summit resolution, to protect people from these crimes. This implies the right and responsibility of the international community to intervene in the internal affairs of nation-­states. The ideas of a unitary state are also challenged by an increasingly interdependent world, where the fates of many countries are tied together. In this vein, large, dominant economies are committed to investing in the well-­being of smaller, emerging economies, so that the notion of one country exercising its will across the world seems inappropriate and antiquated. With the rise of interpersonal connections across borders, the level of national control is eroding. As a result, scholarship has begun to consider “common” security, or security attained through regional interdependence. Constructivism Is it possible that ideas are fundamental to our study of security? How might we think about whether “human security” can change the behavior of nation-­states? An alternative theory to realism and liberalism, known as constructivism, may be helpful. For those who promote the constructivism model, the world is governed by norms, or standards of appropriate behavior. Norms are generated through social practices, the very interactions of people in society. For international relations, this means there is no purely rational, objective nature of the global order. The world exists because we participate in it and bring our wishes to bear upon it, and its order is therefore a product of our interactions. Our interactions affirm particular behaviors, such as the practice of a professor standing at the front of the class and the students sitting in their seats. We affirm this construction by participating in society. These rules may be written or unwritten, but they are widely held and followed at a given time. By interacting, we generate social rules as standards of conduct. We similarly have assumed particular standards of conduct for nation-­states. State behavior and our expectations of states are created through social norms. A leading constructivist, Alexander Wendt, argues that anarchy is “what states make of it” (1999, 6). The very nature of the international order is a product of what states believe about that nature. While anarchy may be the common assumption now, there is no reason not to imagine that instead of anarchy there could be norms about collective security and cooperation. How could the notion of security be rewritten so completely? Is the world largely directed by the actions of nation-­states in securing survival? Or are states complex mechanisms of interest aggregation that seek a variety of benefits in a world where cooperation is possible and likely? There are practical implications to this seemingly theoretical debate. If security is more than borders and military capability, then what is the responsibility of nations to their people and other people around the world? Cosmopolitan Sovereignty Constructivists argue that changing the international order involves an act of imagination—or, more precisely, an act of reimagination—to move us away from one set of conceptual assumptions about the world in favor of another. Proponents of the concept of human security wish to

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enhance all peoples’ well-­being, regardless of their citizenship. Yet a central obstacle in embedding human security into the international order is the dominance of nation-­states and their policymakers’ framing of national security interests as the protection of their own citizens against foreign threats. As this chapter has shown, the international relations theory of realism has relied on a conception of the international order based on the idea of the sovereign state, which asserts for itself the sole right to make laws and use force to defend its interests from outsiders, who are generally viewed as competitors or outright adversaries. State policymakers thus privilege border security and national defense programs, and often ignore or dismiss the plight of non­ citizens. How might a new set of conceptual assumptions allow us to move toward a new global security order based on the protection of all people and not just the national security priorities of individual states? Critics of realism have noted that the world has changed dramatically since the Peace of Westphalia was concluded in 1648. Increasing interdependence and the growth of international institutions and laws have transformed traditional ideas about state sovereignty. States rely on one another to uphold agreements, and most participate in collective security institutions like the United Nations, the core of the modern “liberal” approach to security. These states have agreed in principle that their national interests often coincide with the objectives of other states, and that they should work together to achieve shared goals. The UN and related international organizations, however, continue to base their legitimacy around the voluntary cooperation of individual states. To what extent is it possible to fully implement a human security agenda if national security interests continue to dominate the global order? The political theorist David Held has concluded that we must develop a new conception of legitimate political power based on what he calls “cosmopolitan sovereignty” rather than relying on traditional state sovereignty and voluntary collective action. As a theory of political ethics, cosmopolitanism emphasizes global citizenship over state-­based political identity. According to Held, cosmopolitan sovereignty “challenges the very idea of fixed borders and territories governed by states alone,” and instead recasts the world as organized around “networked realms of public authority” that exist both within states and also beyond state authority (2010, 18–19). Cosmopolitan sovereignty, in other words, privileges democratic politics, humanitarian values, and human rights as the basis for political action at the global level. The project of cosmopolitan sovereignty builds upon several decades of effort to create a legal framework to hold states accountable for the protection of peoples worldwide. World War II was a particularly important watershed in this regard. The horrors of the Nazi Holocaust prompted the United Nations in 1948 to create a convention designed to prevent and punish “genocide,” a newly coined term defined as a set of acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” States that ratified the Genocide Convention were required to take all necessary steps to prevent or stop such crimes from occurring, whether in peace or wartime. Although scholars and policymakers continue to debate whether particular acts fall under the authority of this convention, the Genocide Convention signaled an important moment in setting out the obligations of states to a higher moral standard—namely, the defense of human groups and the assertion of their right to exist. The prosecution of those held responsible for the mass murder of Jews during World War II also helped initiate the precedent for international rather than national courts to adjudicate accusations of wartime crimes. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, served as the forum to try Nazi political and military leaders, while the International Military Tribunal for the Far East served the same function for Japanese wartime leaders. The Nuremberg Tribunal’s charter, in particular, recognized the tribunal’s authority to prosecute three different kinds of crimes: (1) crimes against the peace, or the planning or waging of a war of

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aggression; (2) war crimes, or violations of the rules or customs of war, like the murder or ill-­ treatment of prisoners; and (3) crimes against humanity, or any inhumane act (murder, deportation, enslavement, etc.) committed against civilians before or during the war. Since that time, ad hoc international tribunals have been established to deal with specific cases of criminal prosecutions, most notably stemming from civil conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda in the 1990s. Efforts to create a permanent court to handle accusations of wartime atrocities and major violations of international humanitarian law achieved a major breakthrough with the 1998 Rome Charter establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). More than half of the world’s countries have ratified the charter (which came into effect in 2002), making them parties to the statute and affirming their support of the internationalization of war crimes prosecution. Yet the United States remains the most prominent nonparticipant in the ICC. The United States has gone so far as to pass laws asserting its right to use military force to “rescue” Amer­ican soldiers detained by the ICC at The Hague, and the United States has negotiated dozens of bilateral immunity agreements with other states, which pledge to hand over accused U.S. citizens to the United States rather than the ICC. The Amer­ican government’s unwillingness to support the work of the ICC remains a major obstacle in establishing a worldwide consensus around the prosecution of war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law. Feminist Security Studies Feminist scholars have also challenged the centrality of the nation-­state, and have pushed the field of international relations to consider a broader understanding of security. Posing new questions about power, feminist security studies explores how deeply held assumptions about the role of the state reflect ideal-­type masculine traits such as power, autonomy, rationality, and self-­reliance. When scholars assume the “oughtness” of these traits, they leave behind important considerations about other sources of state behavior and other sites of insecurity. Feminist research invites greater attention to other motivations for state behavior, such as social conventions, morality, and norms, and explores the inherent, systemic biases of state practices. For example, feminist research attempts to identify and describe hierarchies maintained by gendered institutions, processes, and practices that advantage maleness, such as national creation stories about “founding fathers.” Gender symbolism organizes social activity, dividing activities between different groups and creating perceived dichotomies that have nothing to do with sex. As a result, male leaders appear more “natural” than female leaders, who are caught between competing expectations of being a woman (compassionate and gentle) and being a leader (decisive and strong). The impact of feminist security studies is to shift the focus of security from the nation-­state to questions about human security, economic security, and domestic violence. The feminist scholar Ann Tickner (2004) focuses on what she calls “practical knowledge” that comes from studying individuals. She explores the impact of war on women and civilians, and her studies have described insecurities created by security forces, such as wartime rape. Another leading feminist scholar, Cynthia Enloe (2011), explores military households, the impact of military bases on the security of women living in areas around bases, and the gendered nature of export industries, especially textiles. According to Enloe, we must address the “mundane matters” if we are to understand systems of security and insecurity, of peace and development. Attention to social practices, language, and symbols helps the feminist scholar Carol Cohn (1987) study the impact of language on military decisions within the defense industry. Phrases such as “clean bombs,” “collateral damage,” and “surgically clean strikes” reduce anxiety about the decisions being made to drop bombs that cause death and destruction, as there is no mention of

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human lives lost or homes destroyed. Instead, words imply rational decisions, suggest control and power over violent and chaotic acts, and ultimately distance decision makers from the effects of their choices. Feminist security studies draws attention to the power relations implicit in our social practices, and raises new ideas about the importance of the individual story to security studies. Oxford Bibliographies offers additional sources on feminist security studies in an article by Kristen P. Williams, available at www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/ obo-­9780199743292/obo-­9780199743292-0205.xml. As this chapter has shown, traditional perspectives on international security, based on the idea of sovereign states acting in their own self-­interest, must now contend with new approaches to managing the peace and well-­being of the globe. The last century saw not only the rise of a collective security order under the United Nations, but also a reaction to the failure of the UN to handle the many conflicts (both interstate and intrastate) that threaten lives around the world. The voices of those from the developing world, along with feminist activists and cosmopolitan theorists, challenge security studies scholars and policymakers alike to incorporate factors such as social welfare, human rights, and environmental justice alongside long-­standing concerns such as regime stability and weapons proliferation. Only through this more holistic approach can we begin to articulate what it means to be truly secure, as people and as political communities, in this contemporary global age.

References and Further Research Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. New York: Verso. Barber, Benjamin. 1992. “Jihad vs. McWorld.” Atlantic 269, no. 3. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ archive/1992/03/jihad-­vs-mcworld/303882/. Cohn, Carol. 1987. “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12, no. 4: 687–718. Enloe, Cynthia. 2011. “The Mundane Matters.” International Political Sociology 5, no. 4: 447–450. Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.” International Organization 52, no. 4: 887–917. Frieden, Jeff. 1988. “Sectoral Conflict and Foreign Economic Policy, 1914–1940.” International Organization 42, no. 1: 59–90. Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press. Gramsci, Antonio. 2011. Prison Notebooks: Volumes 1, 2 and 3. New York: Columbia University Press. Held, David. 2010. Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Huntington, Samuel. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kaldor, Mary. 1999. New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kennedy, David M. 2012. “The Origins and Uses of Amer­ican Hyperpower.” In The Short Amer­ican Century, edited by Andrew Bacevich, 15–37. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye. 1977. Power and Interdependence. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Kissinger, Henry. 1975. “A New National Partnership.” Address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, January 24, 1975, reprinted in Department of State Bulletin 72 (1860): 199. www.fordlibrary museum.gov/library/document/dosb/1860.pdf#page=3. Krasner, Stephen. 1976. “State Power and the Structure of International Trade.” World Politics 28, no. 3: 317–347.

82   Michael Anderson and Stephanie Holmsten LaFeber, Walter. 2012. “Illusions of an Amer­ican Century”. In The Short Amer­ican Century, edited by Andrew Bacevich, 158–186. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McSweeney, Bill. 1999. Security, Identity and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations. Cambridge Studies in International Relations, Vol. 69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. 2004. “Soft Power and Amer­ican Foreign Policy.” Political Science Quarterly 119, no. 2: 255–270. Ruggie, John Gerard. 1996. Winning the Peace: America and the World Order in the New Era. New York: Columbia University Press. Thomas, Caroline. 2000. Global Governance, Development and Human Security: The Challenge of Poverty and Inequality. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press. Thomas, Caroline. 2001. “Global Governance, Development and Human Security: Exploring the Links.” Third World Quarterly 22, no. 2: 159–175. Thompson, Kenneth W. 1953. “Collective Security Reexamined.” Amer­ican Political Science Review 47, no. 3: 753–772. Tickner, J. Ann. 2004. “Feminist Responses to International Security Studies.” Peace Review 16, no. 1: 43–48. www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1040265042000210148. United Nations. 2005. Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 16 September 2005. 60/1. 2005 World Summit Outcome. www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/60/1. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1967. “International Structure, National Force and Balance of World Power.” Journal of International Affairs 21, no. 2: 215–231. Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilkinson, Steven I. 2004. Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Key Concepts and Processes: Sustainability Stephanie S. Holmsten The sustainability of the current global order depends on the health of the planet, including that of both the people living on it and its ecosystem. As discussed in the previous chapter on Development, disparities still exist, and hunger persists in many places. In addition, our current form of economic growth, reliance on industrialization and fossil fuels in particular, has also depleted the earth’s resources. Growing scientific evidence, including from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), suggests that human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, is causing climate change, as seen in shrinking ice sheets, rising sea levels, warming oceans, and an increasing number of extreme weather events around the globe. These concerns about human and environmental well-­being have led to fundamental questions about the nature of economic development and our capacity to meet the needs of the present while safeguarding the future. Such questions focus on issues of sustainability; that is, an approach to structuring the global order that gives greater attention to the well-­being of individuals and the planet so that our activities allow for sufficient resources in the future. One of the earliest uses of the term sustainability as it is used today was at the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972, which led to the development of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). This program aims to study, monitor, report on, and provide guidance regarding human impacts on the environment, generating explicit calls to change human behavior, particularly industrial and agricultural practices, to accommodate the health of the natural world. Sustainable development was also a central concept in the call for action at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, sometimes called the Rio Summit or Earth Summit. Drawing on the Brundtland Report of 1987, the Rio Summit drew together national leaders and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that sought to rethink economic development in order to stop environmental degradation. According to the Brundtland Report, sustainable development means “meetings the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” A more recent expression of sustainability is seen in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Adopted by world leaders in September 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals build on the UN Millennium Development Goals of 2000, which aim to coordinate donor country efforts to reduce hunger and poverty, and to generate greater opportunities for economic, political, and social well-­being around the world. Sustainability is a concept that can be applied to society and to the environment. The former, what we’ll call “human sustainability,” explores the quality and distribution of economic growth generated by our current economic order. Despite increasing volumes of trade and global economic progress, hunger and poverty have persisted as disparities between the rich and the poor have grown. Some regions of the world, particularly sub-­Saharan Africa, continue to experience low rates of economic growth and political instability. And within countries,

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many households and communities remain disproportionately vulnerable to chronic hunger and undernourishment. In the context of free trade and economic growth, persistent poverty is revealed as an indictment of the current global system. Economic growth that leaves some countries and populations behind is not sustainable. The counterpart to human sustainability is environmental sustainability, the primary concern of this chapter. Here, we will consider the impact of our dependence on nonrenewable resources to fuel the current economic system. Economic growth over the last two centuries has largely depended on the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas to fuel transportation and industrialization. The result of burning fossil fuels is twofold. First, even though new technology—including hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling—makes new oil reserves accessible, evidence suggests that many of our current oil reserves, which are easier to access and cheaper than newly found reserves, are drying up. (See Michael Klare’s The Race for What’s Left [2012] for a thorough examination of this issue.) Second, scientists have found evidence that the burning of fossil fuels causes climate change. Changes in climate, according to the Fifth Assessment Report prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, may affect sea levels, weather patterns, and vegetation and animal life across the globe, which will in turn affect the ability of the planet to produce enough food to feed its growing population. Economic growth that leaves fewer resources for the coming generations is not sustainable. This is the focus of environmental sustainability. This chapter will consider environmental sustainability, and its role in global stability. As in previous chapters, the contributions of the state, the market, and international organizations will be examined. NGOs and civil society will be considered extensively in a separate section at the end, as they have played a relatively large role in sustainability deliberations, debates, and activism.

Environmental Sustainability As the UN’s recent Sustainable Development Goals articulate, sustainability has now become a critical component in the equation concerning global poverty, stability, and sustainable growth. In addition to questions about poverty, hunger, and other aspects of human development, the sustainability of the present economic model has been called into question, especially in light of the depletion of natural resources considered essential for economic growth and human survival. Evidence suggests that resources such as oil, water, and arable land may be declining at rates that demand renewed attention, and possibly even a new model of economic growth—one that accounts for the availability of such resources to future generations. In addition, the impact of human activity, particularly industrialization, has caused environmental degradation and climate change, which threaten to change the very nature of life on the planet. Economic growth over the past decades has depended on access to coal, oil, and natural gas. Dependence on the burning of fossil fuels has been fundamental to the global economy, including industrial and agricultural production, transportation, and heating and cooling buildings and homes. The Industrial Revolution produced massive new demands for energy, and burning wood, coal, oil, and natural gas has continued to support the global economic order since then. As countries experience economic growth and improved living standards, people demand more energy, with increased use of electrical and gas-­powered appliances and transportation, as well as the capacity to buy and sell goods abroad. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook 2016 (IEO2016), energy demands have increased over the past thirty years, largely among emerging markets, and particularly in Asia. The IEO2016 projects that, at the current rate of increase, energy consumption will rise 48 percent between 2004 and 2040. Transportation demands for shipping goods around the world, increased travel, larger homes, and more appliances all generate upward pressure on energy production.

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The IEO2016 report can be accessed from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s webpage at www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/pdf/0484(2016).pdf. The 2017 report can be accessed at www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/pdf/0484(2017).pdf. There are growing concerns, however, about dependence on fossil fuels. First, this energy source is being depleted faster than it can be replaced. Known as the “peak-­oil argument,” it is suggested that oil production has already reached its peak and is now declining, so that oil reserves can no longer meet growing demand. For example, Michael Klare (2012) argues that the current demand for oil cannot be met by new sources, which are more expensive and harder to find, as mentioned above. In addition, constant demand will push us to develop riskier sources of oil, increasing pressure for higher levels of investment and possibly causing greater environmental damage. If current sources of oil are declining and new sources of oil are harder to get, economic growth in the future must depend on alternative sources of energy, according to the peak oil argument. Second, the burning of fossil fuels increases carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and these greenhouse gases lead to global warming. As ecological economists such as Robert Costanza, Joshua Farley, and Herman Daley (2013) have suggested, the current model of industrial capitalism needs to be updated to include greater accountability for sustainable production that preserves a healthy ecological system. Sustainable economic growth would value clean water, a healthy environment, and future resource availability. Sustainable economic activities would involve food production that accommodates the growing population and the limited resources on which people depend. The availability of natural resources and the quality of the environment are intimately linked to the previous discussion about human development. In fact, the poorest people in the world live in the areas that are most vulnerable to climate change, according to Oxfam America’s website (oxfamamerica.org). Agriculture and the ability to grow food and feed families depend on access to arable land and water. Pollution that affects water sources and climate change that alters where food can be grown will have profound repercussions for those who are most dependent on the land. Where infrastructure is underdeveloped and government budgets are too small, or corrupted by poor leadership, the social safety net is too weak to support people in need. As a result, people in low-­income countries are more vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation and climate change. Reliance upon natural resources for economic growth comes with important political implications. Known as the “resource curse,” dependence on raw, natural resources for export strongly correlates with low levels of economic growth and political development (see Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Weaver 2001). While the discovery of natural resources may seem like a boom for economic growth, in fact Michael Ross (1999), a professor of political science, argues that natural resources have particular characteristics that create economic problems. Between price volatility, declining terms of trade, and the “Dutch disease” (relying on one natural resource to drive economic growth) can be unsustainable.

The Dutch Disease A specific type of resource curse is what’s called the “Dutch Disease.” The concept refers to the detrimental effects of the discovery of a natural resource on all other export industries. Based on the experience of the Netherlands in the 1970s following the discovery of gas reserves in 1959, the theory goes as follows. When a valuable natural resource is

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discovered, global demand for the domestic currency (in this case, the Dutch guilder, before today’s euro) needed to purchase that resource increases. The resulting increase in the value of the domestic currency makes all exports more expensive abroad. As a result of the higher currency value, other export industries experience a sharp decline in demand. In turn, economic activity concentrates around the newly discovered natural resource and dampens other sectors of the economy, leading to stagnant economic growth throughout the entire economy. Dependence on natural resources has important political effects as well. Especially when owned by the government, natural resources provide revenue for a country while reducing the need for the government to collect taxes to finance federal spending. When government revenue is generated without needing to tax the public, the accountability structure between the government and citizens is lost. Citizens have weak incentives to demand transparency, and the government has no incentive to broker a compromise with them to provide services in exchange for their taxes. In addition, the government can use the revenue for social welfare— in effect “buying off ” the public—which may further dampen pressure for political change. Or the government may use the revenue to fund oppressive measures, which will also depress any political mobilization for change. As a result, countries with abundant natural resources tend to show slower growth and create weaker political institutions. For example, as discussed by Nancy Birdsall and Arvind Subramanian in their 2004 Foreign Affairs article about rebuilding Iraq, evidence from countries in Africa and the Middle East warn that Iraq’s reliance on oil could weaken developing political institutions. Climate Change The availability of fossil fuels is not the only concern about the nature of our economic growth and the sustainability of the planet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2014 report finds that changes in global temperatures have caused a decline in food production that will exacerbate food insecurities around the globe. One concrete way in which scientists watch changing global temperatures is by measuring the extent, or size, of the Arctic polar ice cap. The Arctic Council reports thinning in the polar ice cap at the North Pole and a dramatic overall decline in the size of the ice cap over the past thirty years—close to 11 percent per decade since records began in 1979. The lowest recording of the size of the Arctic ice cap to date was taken in 2012, and the difference between 2011 and 2012 was an area the size of the state of Texas. The 2012 ice extent was 49 percent less than the average ice extent for the years 1979–2000. And according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (nsidc.org), the size of the Arctic ice cap reached the seventh-­lowest point in recorded history in November 2016. Such a significant decline can continue to affect the global environment. According to scientists, the Arctic ice cap reflects up to 90 percent of the sun’s radiation, which helps to keep the Arctic cool and global temperatures low. Warming in the Arctic can change weather patterns across the globe, as the cooler temperatures in the Arctic drive the circulation of warm and cold air around the planet, as well as ocean waters. Changes in the temperature in the Arctic can produce changes in precipitation patterns, along with droughts and acute weather conditions such as monsoons and hurricanes. The noted effects of such changes include lower food production as previously fertile areas experience drought. Also, as the oceans become more acidic, patterns of plant and fish life change. Like the Arctic ice cap, the sea ice surrounding Antarctica helps cool the Earth and reflect the sun’s rays. Interestingly, between 2012 and 2014, the extent of the Antarctic sea ice reached

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its maximum extent since records began to be kept in the late 1970s, possibly contradicting the concerns about climate change’s effect on ice caps. While scientists at NASA admit that the growing ice cap in the Antarctic is a bit of a mystery, the growth of the Antarctic sea cap did not set off the decline of the Arctic ice cap in 2014. The sea ice in the Arctic declined twice as fast as the Antarctic ice cap increased between 2012 and 2014. (See the video The Arctic and Antarctic Respond in Different Ways, available at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11703.) For more analysis on the Arctic ice cap, as well as ice cover in Antarctica, consult the National Snow and Ice Data Center (www.nsidc.org). You can also get more information by searching on “Ice” at NASA’s website (www.nasa.gov). Updates on the ice caps can also be found by looking at the Arctic Council’s interactive map, at http://portal.inter-­map.com and www.arctic-­council.org/index.php/en/. The Arctic is also attracting attention because of hopes of exploiting untapped oil and natural gas reserves on the ocean floor. Klare suggests that up to a fifth of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas resources could be found in the Arctic. With changes in global temperatures and ice pack, navigating the Arctic is getting easier, making exploration more possible. As evidence of such changes, two shipping lanes that connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans around the Arctic, the Northeast Passage, and the Northwest Passage, have seen more traffic in recent years as the ice cap diminishes. In addition to scientific evidence, local, state, and national officials are spending money and using new laws to fight the recent effects of climate change. These new initiatives suggest that climate change is having a documented effect on people’s lives. The International Food Policy Research Institute’s 2015 global food report shows that food production is declining due to changes in climate and rainfall, creating deserts in some areas and flooding in others. The changing climate does produce opportunities in new areas, but as rainfall changes, the net level of food production is predicted to fall well below global food demand. In addition, many cities around the world are experiencing rising sea levels. Mohamed Masheed, a former president of the Maldives, has advocated strongly—both during and after his presidency—for the need to address climate change before his island nation, and others like it, are swallowed up by rising sea levels. Cities in the United States, including Miami and New York City, have proposed investing millions of dollars in infrastructure projects to help contain seawater, in response to rising sea levels but also to changing weather patterns, including an increase in the number and severity of hurricanes. In another example, Key West, at the southern tip of Florida, has passed new ordinances that require new buildings to be built higher off the ground and freshwater cisterns to be installed to collect water. Millions of dollars have been spent to install pumps throughout the city to remove excessive rainwater. Then U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel proposed, in the 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, that the “changing climate will have real impacts on our military and the way it executes its missions” (Hagel 2014). The roadmap addresses concerns about coastal installations that are vulnerable to rising seas and increased flooding, increased demand for military operations to provide humanitarian assistance, and ensuring that equipment works under “more extreme weather conditions. Water and Arable Land Human activity affects the planet, including strains on water supplies and arable land. According to the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (WHO and UNICEF 2017), three in ten people around the world, or 2.1 billion, lacked reliable access to

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safe, readily available water at home in 2017. Of the 2.1 billion people, 844 million did not have access to basic drinking water, and 263 million spent more than thirty minutes per trip to collect water from sources outside the home. While water is a renewable resource, recent evidence suggests that the growing demand for it makes it harder to keep up with supplies. Globally, 70 percent of all freshwater is used for agricultural and industrial production—and the percentage is even higher within the developing countries—while up to 95 percent of fresh­ water is diverted for such purposes. Also, the demand for water is growing at a faster rate than population growth, meaning that rising standards of living increase water demand per person. Also, lack of potable water, whether in areas with adequate supplies of freshwater or not, can lead to diseases in developing countries, where 80 percent of all disease is linked to contaminated water. Countries in the Middle East and North Africa are particularly vulnerable, as the region has less than 1 percent of the world’s freshwater, but 5 percent of the world’s population. And population growth is expected to remain high in this region in the coming decades. The 2017 report Progress on Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, published by the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene, a program of the WHO and UNICEF, can be accessed and downloaded from UN Water, at www. unicef.org/publications/index_96611.html. As seen in this region, water scarcity can lead to conflict. Thomas Homer-­Dixon (1994), the chair of global systems at the Center for International Governance Innovation, has suggested that water has the potential to increase war between countries that have high levels of dependence and share a common water supply, such as a lake or river. Water has been used as a tool of power and influence over the past decades, and scholars think this will only increase. In the late 1980s, Turkey imposed a water embargo on Syria because of Syria’s alleged support of Kurdish terrorists in Turkey. More recently, evidence of rising tensions includes conflict between China and India regarding plans to build dams along the Brahmaputra River in India, part of what is known as the Tsangpo in China. China’s desire for increased hydroelectricity for its growing population has raised concerns in India about access to water downriver. Similarly, the Ganges River between India and Bangladesh has been a site of conflict in recent years. Water rights can also pit rural farmers against urban centers. During the Texas drought that started in 2010 and produced the driest year ever in Texas in 2011, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) ended its commitment to sending low-­cost water to rice farmers in eastern Texas. The rice farmers and surrounding communities pointed to the remarkable urban growth in Austin as the key reason that their livelihoods were threatened. One rice farm supporter commented on a local StateImpact Texas blog post that she did not want to see, “one blade of green grass anywhere in Austin” if the LCRA did not send water to the rice farmers. In Pakistan, farmers who were unable to access water sufficient for farming production left their farms and moved to the city for work. Urbanization in Pakistan is at the highest level in South Asia. Close to half of the population will live in urban areas by 2025, according to the United Nations Population Division. Such urban growth puts remarkable strains on housing and urban transportation systems, and on energy supplies. This migration has also exacerbated ethnic tensions, particularly among ethnic Pashtuns and Mohajir. The world’s growing population and expanding markets have also increased the demand for more land. Food demand is expected to increase 50 percent by 2030, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO 2012). Growing demand for land generates incentives for deforestation among both large-­scale and small-­scale farmers for human settlement, cattle pasture, and commercial production, among other uses. For example,

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palm oil, which is used in thousands of products from baked goods to deodorant, is driving major deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia, according to many observers, including the Orangutan Foundation and the Union of Concerned Scientists. When forests are cleared for palm oil production, habitat in these large tropical forests is lost. Carbon emissions are increased as well, adding to global warming. In addition to large-­scale production, as in the case of palm oil, slash-­and-burn techniques used by subsistence farmers also lead to deforestation and the production of CO2. Forest burning is the second-­largest source of CO2 after power generation. Another response to the growing demand for agricultural production is the practice of international “land grabs.” Covered extensively in Michael Klare’s The Race for What’s Left (2012), countries such as China and Saudi Arabia—which are particularly affected by changes in arable land and growing demand for food—are leasing land in some countries in Africa in order to secure food production. Some call these arrangements “land grabs,” because much of the leased land is in countries where land rights are weak and rely on traditional forms of land ownership. Some observers fear that such leasing arrangements take advantage of countries and communities where governments are weak. Other scholars argue that leasing can in fact bring greater investment in development, as foreign firms create greater infrastructure, increase employment, and allow for technology transfer (the adoption of advanced technology and/or techniques by countries on the receiving end of innovations), particularly in rural communities in Africa that have been left behind by other forms of foreign direct investment (see Brautigam 2010). To respond to the growing demand for food, new technologies are being developed that aim to increase the yield of agricultural production. Just as Norman Borlaug used scientific advances to increase crop yields during the Green Revolution of the 1960s, genetically modified (GM) crops bring new opportunities as well as challenges to farmers today. GM foods use new technology not only to increase resistance to disease and pests, but also to fortify agricultural products with missing nutrients, such as vitamin A. However, these technologies are owned and patented by international corporations, including Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), resulting in a growing dependence of small-­scale farmers on global companies. In addition, GM crops depend on high inputs of machinery and modern practices such as monocropping. High-­cost inputs can lead to a concentration of agricultural ownership in the hands of large-­scale producers, pushing many small-­scale producers out, while monocropping can deplete the soil of necessary nutrients for future production. As the above discussion shows, human activity has affected the planet’s environment, including climate patterns, in significant ways. And the rising demands of the world’s growing population have increased the need for water and arable land. Policies geared toward sustainable development would factor conservation concerns into the use of natural resources and aim to ensure that current economic activity accounts for future needs. The United Nations and International Efforts to Address Environmental Issues The United Nations (UN) has long been involved in environmental issues. The Montreal Protocol was one of the first success stories regarding international coordination around climate change. Aimed at protecting the Earth’s ozone layer, and originally signed in 1987, then amended in 1990 and 1992, the protocol is a treaty that requires signatory states to eliminate the production and consumption of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs were used in aerosols, refrigeration, and air conditioning, and they had been shown to thin the ozone layer. A thinner ozone layer allows more of the sun’s radiation to penetrate the atmosphere, leading to increasing global temperatures. The Montreal Protocol is a landmark international agreement because of its widespread adoption and implementation, with nearly 97 percent of CFCs eliminated by 2010. Former UN Secretary-­General Kofi Annan said, even as early as 2003, that the Montreal Protocol was “perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date.”

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Transnational Action on the Arctic Nation-­states have created a variety of international institutions to address environmental degradation, the most important of which date back to the late 1980s. The efforts of the UN, including the Montreal Protocol, are perhaps most prominent in the public’s eye, but other international efforts were launched during this period as well. The first organization ever created to focus only on the Arctic, for instance, started in 1989 and included the eight countries that border the Arctic: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and the United States. The original goal of the institution was to generate a joint effort to manage the fragile Arctic environment. The Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy grew out of the first two years of meetings and aimed to coordinate the sharing of data and scientific efforts to track the environmental impact of development activities in the region. The arrangement was remarkable for two reasons. First, it represented coordination between the United States and Russia during the Cold War. Second, it included indigenous peoples, whose traditional livelihoods depend on the Arctic, in the discussions and negotiations. The arrangement has become a model, in fact, for providing inclusion of indigenous communities in international efforts. With growing attention to the region, the Ottawa Declaration of 1996 formally created the Arctic Council to promote cooperation among the border nations and the indigenous communities around sustainable development and environmental protection. In 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was created to bring leading nations together to address changes in global temperatures through commitments to reducing the emissions of greenhouse gasses, such as CO2. The agreement was strengthened in 1995 when willing countries adopted the Kyoto Protocol, which legally binds developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through reduction commitments that are phased in over time. There are now 195 Parties to the Convention and 191 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The convention instituted facilities and procedures to monitor climate change and assess its impact; it also established plans for emissions reduction and implementation of commitments, along with monitoring and evaluation procedures. Countries must report their efforts, and a compliance system aims to support countries in keeping their commitments. One contentious aspect of the Kyoto Protocol is the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” which places a higher burden on developed nations to make reductions in greenhouse gas emissions than developing countries. In addition to simple pledges of commitments by countries, a variety of mechanisms to reduce emissions have been put in place, such as the following: • • •

When emissions in a country are higher than the level it committed to, it can trade emissions with low-­emitting countries; the goal of this strategy is to keep the overall level equal to the aggregate level envisioned in the protocol. The Adaptation Fund supports projects in developing countries that aim to reduce emissions. The Clean Development Mechanism provides incentives for developed countries to invest in clean projects in developing countries.

Some critics are concerned that such creative solutions for high-­emitting countries simply provide loopholes for their pollution. A final challenge for Kyoto is that the United States has been reluctant to ratify the Protocol. While the Protocol was initially signed by President Bill Clinton, the U.S. Senate, in 1997,

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passed a resolution expressing that it would not ratify it. In 2001 President Bush rejected the treaty, arguing that compliance would hurt the U.S. economy and that the treaty was fundamentally flawed without greater requirements of developing countries to reduce emissions. Some argued that without the inclusion of the United States, one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, the treaty would fail. After the effective end of Kyoto, several attempts to reach a comprehensive international mechanism to address climate change unfolded. It wasn’t until November 2015, however, at the UNFCCC meeting in Paris, that a breakthrough occurred. Both the United States and China, the two largest emitters, were at the table and supported the agreement, and, by October 5, 2016, the threshold needed to ratify the agreement—fifty-­five nations that account for 55 percent of the total global greenhouse gas emissions—was achieved. The United States and China were among those countries to ratify. Thirty days later, the treaty entered into force. The fate of the agreement has been called into question, however, as the administration of the new U.S. president, Donald Trump, has objected to U.S. commitments under the accord and set in motion plans to withdraw from it. The centerpiece of the Paris Agreement is a commitment to hold the increase in global temperature to below two degrees Celsius by reducing greenhouse emissions. One important innovation of the agreement is that each signatory country will determine its own contribution—called “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs)—to this effort. According to the treaty, these contributions should be “ambitious” and “progressive” so that the commitments expand over time, increasing their effects in the future. The agreement states that the contributions to global emissions should be reported every five years to encourage compliance.

A Short History of the Environmental Movement The environmental movement is relatively young, having largely emerged in the 1960s. Before that, however, several important figures helped to lay the foundations for the movement. One was Theodore Roosevelt, who as U.S. president drew attention to the importance of environmental conservation. In 1907 he said, “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others.” The preservationist John Muir focused on setting aside nature for its own sake. He founded the Sierra Club in 1892 and was effective in the creation of a number of national parks, including Yosemite, Sequoia, Mount Rainier, and Grand Canyon. Gifford Pinchot was also active at this time establishing the U.S. Forest Service to manage natural resources for human use. In the second half of the twentieth century, several major catalyst milestones occurred. One of the seminal works in the growth of environmental activism was Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962 during a time of increasing awareness of the human impact on the environment. Carson’s book described declining bird populations caused by the use of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), providing powerful evidence of how human behavior can change the course of nature. The environmental disaster at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, in the 1970s was another wake-­up call. Hooker Chemical had sold land to the Niagara Falls School Board in 1953, after burying tons of toxic waste at the site. In 1962 chemical waste was released after construction began on a housing development, a situation that was aggravated by heavy rainstorms. Reporters from the Niagara Falls Gazette provided evidence in 1976 that toxic chemicals were found in the water system. By 1978 the public health emergency at Love Canal had drawn national and international attention. According to the New York State Health Department

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Commission at the time, it would long be remembered as a “national symbol of a failure to exercise a sense of concern for future generations.” The first Earth Day drew international attention when it was celebrated on April 22, 1970. Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. senator from Wisconsin, was motivated by an oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast to call for a day dedicated to education and awareness about the environment. Many of today’s leading environmental organizations also began to grow during this period. Greenpeace started in 1971 to organize nonviolent action that would raise attention to environmental issues. Such efforts were joined by national legislation in the United States to protect the environment—including the Clean Air Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1972), and the Endangered Species Act (1973)—and in other countries as well. In 1972, completing the connection from individuals, communities, and national bodies to international organizations, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment began and led to the UN Environment Programme in the late 1970s.

Civil Society and NGOs It’s not only international governmental organizations, discussed more extensively in Chapter 8, that shape the international order. NGOs, are increasingly important on the global stage. Here we will briefly consider the role of NGOs in addressing sustainability concerns. NGOs are important actors in today’s world, since such issues as development and environmental sustainability reach across national borders. Solutions to these types of complex issues cannot be provided only by one nation-­state, but must be coordinated among many nation-­ states. When one industry pollutes, the effects can easily spread across borders and through different communities. When development leads to political unrest and instability, persistent poverty must be addressed, not just by the host country, but by all that can make a difference. NGOs are organizations that communicate societal interests to the government authorities, and often focus on issues that have been left out or neglected by the state. Some scholars describe NGOs as operating within society, between the individual and the state, filling what is known as the “public sphere.” The sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas defines the public sphere as a “network for communicating information and points of view” (1998, 360). It is where people come together as citizens to voice their shared concerns in order to influence political institutions. A strong civil society, components of which fill this public sphere, is a critical feature of democracy, as it facilitates a relationship between the state and the public. In the public sphere, civil society can engage in debate about important issues of the day, and it can call on the state to address concerns it has neglected. Civil society helps weave connections between society and the state, and it can be particularly helpful when the state is failing. These demands circulating in public discourse are often expressed through NGOs. NGOs are thus private organizations that act outside the state to channel collective opinions, and they are a critical component of civil society. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers an in-­depth review of Jürgen Habermas’s conceptualization of the public sphere. It is available at https://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/habermas/. NGOs can take a variety of forms, engage in various types of activity, and can be organized around different sorts of causes. For example, some NGOs focus on local issues, such as community groups and neighborhood associations that attempt to improve conditions in particular locales. Other NGOs are international, including Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and the

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World Wildlife Federation. These groups bring together concerned individuals from around the world to address a global problem. Many NGOs focus on one specific issue, such as the National Rifle Association or labor unions, while others focus on broader, more theoretical problems, including “globalization,” such as the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which spoke out against the effects of the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agreement on indigenous communities. Importantly, some NGOs, including many that have forced recent profound political changes, involve largely temporary, ad hoc collections of like-­minded people who mobilize at a particular time to coordinate demonstrations to speak out against specific actions. Examples include marches for and against court case rulings, uprisings against military dictatorships, and protests after voting rights violations. Among such groups are the ad-­hoc organizations that sprung up during the Arab Spring, the series of uprisings against oppressive regimes that began in 2010 in Tunisia and spread for two years across North Africa and the Middle East. Such forms of mobilization represent shared interests, but they are focused on an acute action and often do not sustain continued organization and mobilization. NGOs use a variety of tools to effect change and generate support. An advantage of many issue-­based NGOs is that they are often considered apolitical and unbiased. Because they are seen as committed to a specific mission irrespective of political affiliation, NGOs gain credibility and legitimacy to speak out on particular issues. Drawing on their legitimacy, their popularity helps to increase their membership and their funding. NGOs can also gain an advantage by being focused on practical matters of specific cases and issues. For example, an NGO focused on providing potable water might have extensive expertise in digging wells, and because of this experience and knowledge, its advocacy for wells is generally considered legitimate and above political calculations or concerns. Through expertise and legitimacy, NGOs can effect change by studying issues and shaping the agenda of political debates or organizational meetings. NGOs often utilize the media to spread their messages and raise awareness. In the fall of 2013, for example, Greenpeace activists attempted to board a Russian oil rig in the Arctic to protest drilling in the region by a gas company, an action that drew a lot of attention from news outlets around the world. The media attention increased awareness of Russian efforts to drill for oil in the Arctic, action that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Such media efforts ultimately aim to mobilize support for their cause and to put pressure on governments to take action. The use of the media can frame issues in such a way as to draw attention to their work. The media can also be used to create accountability by monitoring the actions of the state and ensuring compliance with an arrangement. In this way, NGOs can offer policy solutions and help to craft creative responses. However, as described by Michael Bond (2000), there is also a growing backlash against NGOs. While we have mostly described benevolent efforts of NGOs to address global problems like environmental degradation, NGOs can also behave deleteriously. In this view, NGOs are essentially special interests, according to Jessica Matthews (1997). They can be so focused on a single issue that they become blind to the need to coordinate policy, establish links among other issues, or search for trade-­offs. Efforts to preserve sea life, for example, may ignore the needs of fishing communities that depend on marine life for food and economic ventures. In addition, NGOs are dependent on membership for funding and support. As a result, NGOs might not want to work with similarly motivated organizations, fearing competition and a potential loss of members. Such incentives instead reward differentiating one organization from another to keep membership rolls high. The dependence on membership also provokes the tendency in many NGOs to exaggerate their message, regardless of whether the conditions have changed or the mission is out of date, in order to provoke urgency among members. While NGOs can provide useful and necessary links between the state and society, and generate accountability, NGOs themselves may lack accountability, as members do not question the NGO or demand proof of efficacy.

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In terms of the issues discussed in this chapter, there may also be problems of collective action. Issues like development assistance, peace and stability, and environmental sustainability share a common characteristic—known as “free-­riding”—that might lessen the call for communal action. According to Mancur Olson (1971), the logic of collective action is central to understanding the conditions under which people will work together to push for policy change. Olson begins with the assumption that individuals make calculations about the costs and benefits of how they spend their time and energy. This is not to imply selfishness, but simply that we consider what benefits our efforts will produce. This is important when we consider public goods. Public goods are goods that can be enjoyed by everyone (non-­excludable) and one person’s use of the good does not affect another person’s use of it (non-­rivalrous). These characteristics of public goods create disincentives to organize. As an example, if I work hard to ensure that a public park is clean and available, I will enjoy the benefits of my efforts every time I visit the park. But if the park is open to everyone, and my enjoyment of it does not prevent the next person from enjoying it, then my efforts also benefit everyone else. But why should I pay the price for ensuring the availability of a good that everyone can enjoy? Why not let someone else do the work; then I will enjoy it too—taking advantage of a “free ride.” Another example in the environmental area is clean air. I can volunteer in my community for an environmental organization, walk instead of drive, and travel to my nation’s capital to lobby my lawmakers. If my efforts lead to cleaner air, I have worked hard for a good that everyone will enjoy, but that only a few will pay for. Classic examples of the collective action and free-­ride problem also include sharing a natural resource, participating in national defense, and voting in national elections. If each individual follows her or his self-­interest, no one will work for public goods. But Olson is not completely pessimistic about such efforts. Groups can alter the incentives for collective action. Group membership serves as a reward for those who contribute, for example. Contributors are given social rewards in the form of honors and praise. Small groups that gather like-­minded individuals can generate incentives for efforts that address these complex public problems. In aiming to address human development and sustainability, NGOs have attempted to fill in where states have failed, and have supported national efforts where they exist, to raise awareness and provide solutions. Interesting questions are raised, though, both about effectiveness and accountability, in terms of these additional actors. While states remain central to solving these problems, international organizations and NGOs provide support, particularly in terms of mobilizing forces and providing a guiding framework for action. The complexity of such global issues demands complex solutions.

Conclusion In summary, this chapter explores how the health of the planet is a growing concern. Mounting evidence points to the ways human activity, particularly our dependence on fossil fuels, damages the planet and raises questions about how sustainable our global economic system is. What new methods are being used to promote sustainability today? Clearly international organizations, especially the UN, are urging greater commitment to reducing greenhouse gases. Similarly, we see activism within civil society too. NGOs may in fact lead the debate about sustainable development, raising important questions about our economic order, the use of nonrenewable energy sources, and the impact on the environment. Such organizations are also sources of valuable information and expertise about the inequalities that persist around the world. When we draw our attention to such issues and become aware of the ways in which our economic activities and lifestyles affect humanity and the planet, we begin to push our government and the international community to apply all available resources to finding new solutions for these pressing global problems.

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References and Bibliography Birdsall, Nancy, and Arvind Subramanian. 2004. “Saving Iraq from Its Oil.” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 4: 77–89. Bond, Michael. 2000. “The Backlash Against NGOs.” Prospect (April). www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ magazine/thebacklashagainstngos. Brautigam, Deborah. 2010. “Africa’s Eastern Promise.” Foreign Affairs (January 5). www.foreignaffairs. com/articles/africa/2010-01-05/africa-­s-eastern-­promise. Brundtland, Gro Harlem. 1987. Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: “Our Common Future.” New York: United Nations. www.un-­documents.net/our-­common-future.pdf. Carson, Rachel. 1962. Silent Spring. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Costanza, Robert, Joshua Farley, and Herman Daley. 2013. Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-­in-Society-­in-Nature. New York: United Nations Division for Sustainable Development. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Building_a_Sustainable_and_Desirable_ Economy-­in-Society-­in-Nature.pdf. Council on Foreign Relations. 2013. “The Thawing Arctic: Risks and Opportunities.” www.cfr.org/ backgrounder/thawing-­arctic-risks-­and-opportunities. Diamond, Larry, and Jack Mosbacher. 2013. “Petroleum to the People: Africa’s Coming Resource Curse—and How to Avoid It.” Foreign Affairs 92, no. 5: 86–98. Habermas, Jürgen. 1998. Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hagel, Chuck. 2014. “The Department of Defense Must Plan for the National Security Implications of Climate Change.” October 13. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/13/defense-­ department-must-­plan-national-­security-implications-­climate-change. Homer-­Dixon, Thomas F. 1994. “Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases.” International Security 19, no. 1: 5–40. International Food Policy Research Institute. 2015. 2014–2015 Global Food Policy Report. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. www.ifpri.org/publication/2014-2015-global-­foodpolicy-­report. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2013. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Edited by T. F. Stocker, D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S. K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex, and P. M. Midgley. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. www.climatechange2013.org/. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2014. Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers. www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-­report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf. Klare, Michael T. 2012. The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources. New York: Metropolitan Books. Mathews, Jessica T. 1997. “Power Shift.” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 1: 50–66. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). 2014. “Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum.” October 7. www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-­sea-ice-­reaches-new-­recordmaximum. National Snow and Ice Data Center. 2016. “Sea Ice Hits Record Lows.” Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/12/arctic-­and-antarctic-­at-record-­low-levels/. Olson, Mancur. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ross, Michael L. 1999. “The Political Economy of the Resource Curse.” World Politics 51, no. 2: 297–322. Ross, Michael L. 2008. “Blood Barrels: Why Oil Wealth Fuels Conflict.” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 3: 2–8. Sachs, Jeffrey, and Andrew Weaver. 2001. “The Curse of Natural Resources.” European Economic Review 45: 827–838. StateImpact Texas. 2013. “LCRA Approves Plan That Will Likely Cut Off Rice Farmers This Year.” January 8. By Terrence Henry and David Barer. https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2013/01/08/lcra-­ approves-plan-­that-will-­likely-cut-­off-rice-­farmers-this-­year/. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). 2012. Managing Water Under Uncertainty and Risk. United Nations World Water Development Report 4. Paris: UNESCO.

96   Stephanie S. Holmsten www.unesco.org/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/SC/pdf/WWDR4%20Volume%201-Managing%20 Water%20under%20Uncertainty%20and%20Risk.pdf. U.S. Department of Defense. 2014. 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap. www.acq.osd.mil/ie/ download/CCARprint_wForeword_c.pdf. U.S. Energy Information Administration. 2016. International Energy Outlook 2016. Washington, DC: U.S. Energy Information Administration. www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/pdf/0484(2016).pdf. WHO (World Health Organization), and UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). 2017. Progress on Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: 2017 Update and SDG Baselines. Geneva: WHO and UNICEF. www.unicef.org/publications/index_96611.html.

8

Key Concepts and Processes: Governance Stephanie S. Holmsten Over the course of this book, we have considered a handful of key foundational concepts that help us describe the nature of the global order today. This final conceptual chapter addresses the institutions that explicitly and implicitly govern, or attempt to organize, our economic, political, and social lives. “Global governance” refers to processes of decision making and coordination that occur outside the realm of the nation-­state. Such activities can occur above the nation-­state level, through international organizations and agreements, or below it, through civil society— individuals and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in discourse surrounding public concerns. Global governance is not global government. Global governance includes the institutions, rules, and norms that provide guidance and restraint in the global order. In this chapter, we consider governance in the broadest of terms. Governance can occur explicitly in the form of formal agreements like trade pacts, or institutional arrangements that states enter into, such as the United Nations, World Bank, or International Monetary Fund. These agreements bind member states to certain political and economic conditions, typically promoting market-­oriented growth and democratic development. Here we review classic international relations assumptions about state coordination and describe key international institutions today. We also consider the role of normative forces that arrange the world’s economic and political order. In this regard, we consider economic interdependence and democracy as two governing norms that affect the ways that our economic, political, and social lives are organized today. For some scholars, these two norms promote state coordination, and even peace. For global studies scholars, these forces represent two dominant paradigms that shape the global environment in which we interact.

Possibilities for Coordination Before considering forms of global governance, let’s consider what classical international relations theorists say about the possibility of coordination at the global level. For realists, the international order is dominated, in a theoretical sense, by anarchy. Nation-­states are sovereign over their territories, and no authority above the nation-­state exists. International institutions, such as the United Nations (UN) or the Bretton Woods institutions, have little power to constrain state behavior and are largely irrelevant in the face of the interests of powerful countries. For example, the United States conducted operations to rid Iraq of alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 2003 without UN approval. A year later, the UN secretary-­general at the time, Kofi Annan, said that the war was “illegal.” Yet the UN’s disapproval did not hold sway: the war continued for more than a decade, in one form or another, without WMD being found. Given this overriding concern with the exercise of power, secondary issues such as development or environmental degradation often take a back seat.

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For liberals in the international relations arena, realists underestimate the level of coordination among states. According to the liberal perspective, world affairs are affected by many different forms and levels of coordination—from trade and commercial ties to diplomatic and cultural relationships. Conflict is less likely than realists assume because states are tied together in shared interests. From connections among diplomats, other governmental officials, and nongovernmental elites—including those running banks and other corporations—a variety of interests connect states together. These connections form a web of coordination that, when strong, can make states reluctant to go to war against each other. Rather than anarchy, the international order is defined by multiple levels of formal and informal international ties. (For more on the realist and liberal points of view in international relations, see Chapter 6: Security.) In addition to coordination, liberal scholars point to the way that state interests vary according to the domestic and international position of the state. Survival is not the only goal. State interests may depend on domestic politics. Despite U.S. power after World War I, for example, domestic manufacturing and agriculture interests preferred trade protectionism, and as a result the United States was largely isolationist in the interwar period, until domestic pressure from the internationalists within the country began to push for trade liberalization. The implication for liberals is that the interests of states differ according to individuals and groups within society, rather than being derived solely from security needs. And these non-­security interests are wide-­ranging, including those relating to the environment, energy, resources, human rights, and other issues that have global resonance. Given this interconnectedness and range of interests, peace is likely achieved through coordination, according to the liberal viewpoint, with three primary forces encouraging this coordination: formally through international institutions; and informally, through both economic interdependence and democracy. All three forces contribute to global governance. Key actors in these processes include individuals, states, and international organizations. Economic actors can generate connections across national boundaries that affect cooperation and generate alliances. Environmental activists can urge governments to make meaningful commitments to address environmental degradation. The spread of democracy across the globe shows a convergence of norms about state institutions and political representation that form a part of global governance, while international institutions help states coordinate behavior to achieve common goals, and even generate new norms and patterns of expectations that guide the international order and constrain state behavior. The following sections consider each force—international institutions, economic interdependence, and democracy—in depth.

International Organizations According to the international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, institutions are “a set of rules that stipulate the ways in which states should cooperate and compete with each other” (1994–1995, 8). International institutions, also known as international organizations (IOs), are different from international NGOs, in that individuals are the primary members of NGOs. And IOs are different from corporations, in that corporations are led by CEOs (chief executive officers) and managed by boards of directors. In contrast to both, IOs are made up of member states. Liberal scholars suggest that international institutions encourage interstate coordination and overcome the tendency toward war. The literature on IOs falls into three main schools of thought. The first argues that institutions facilitate collaboration among nation-­states because they function on behalf of states acting rationally as they seek gains that can be made through cooperation. For example, trade agreements can provide economic growth for signatory states. Rules of war and peace are mutually beneficial to the negotiating parties. Security arrangements can provide increased

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p­ rotection for member nations. Institutions help to facilitate collaboration so that states can achieve such gains—benefits they could not achieve alone. For the latest research on international institutions, visit the website of the journal International Organization (http://iojournal.org/). A helpful analogy for understanding this role of institutions is the so-­called prisoner’s dilemma, a situation studied in game theory. According to the classic prisoner’s dilemma scenario, two individuals are accused of a crime and are taken into separate rooms to be questioned. The rules of the game—which function as incentives—laid out to each are as follows: if one prisoner confesses, he will be set free, while the partner who does not confess will be given ten years in jail for the crime. If neither one of the prisoners confesses to their crime, each will be given one year of jail time based on the information that the police already has. If both confess, both will be given five years in jail. The best outcome possible for each person is no jail time at all, which occurs if one confesses and the other remains silent. The rational choice for both prisoners, then, is to confess in hopes to going free, and to avoid the worst penalty of ten years in prison for staying silent while the partner confesses. As a result of the incentives, or rules of the game, both prisoners confess. Both are then given five years in jail. The rational behavior, given the incentives, however, leads to a suboptimal outcome. Had the prisoners worked together and remained silent, they could have achieved a better outcome. That is, both could have kept silent and received only one year in jail. Remaining silent, to achieve the better outcome, though, requires coordination. Two things are necessary for such cooperation. First, the prisoners need an opportunity to discuss the situation and develop a plan before making a choice. In international relations, this means negotiations, diplomatic talks, meetings, and conferences. Institutions can be helpful in facilitating such engagement with logistical support such as hosting meetings, setting up a conference space, and staffing the event with note takers, agenda planners, and facilitators. The institutions can, essentially, turn on the lights and host the meeting—leaving the rest to the individual state members to negotiate. Second, the prisoners would need to trust each other. Each prisoner must remain committed to the plan, and stay silent. To build such trust in international relations, forms of reassurance need to be set up to ensure that each party remains committed, and forms of punishment that will be imposed if one party reneges need to be established. International institutions can provide monitoring and oversight, reporting on the commitments of the member nations. For example, nation-­states report to the World Bank about contributions to the institution. Members also provide evidence of compliance with the free-­trade rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Such reporting and monitoring can enhance compliance. The institutions can also provide mechanisms for punishment. The WTO, for example, authorizes sanctions against offending members. At the most basic level, therefore, IOs solve collaboration problems by providing information, reducing the cost of meeting, and monitoring members’ commitments to prevent cheating. Institutions centralize decision making, provide an organizational structure, and offer administrative and technical capacity that enhances coordination. Simply put, IOs help states achieve their goals. A second school of thought pushes the role of the institutions a bit further. IOs can enhance coordination by defining a focal point for consensus around policymaking. Beyond simply facilitating meetings, institutions can use their expertise to identify potential global problems and develop appropriate solutions, essentially leading the way toward common policy goals for

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member states. In so doing, the institutions help to lock in particular arrangements. For example, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision established international standards in 1974 for safe banking practices at a time when different countries were considering other options. Today, the Basel Committee aims to be a “global standard setter” for prudent bank regulations. An earlier example is the role of the Bretton Woods Conference, held in New Hampshire in 1944, which set up new institutions to remake the world financial system following World War II. The World Bank aimed to support economic development in the recovery after the war, raising funds from member states to disperse to weaker economies. The International Monetary Fund (IMF ) established the expectation for monetary stability through a fixed-­exchange-rate regime. And the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which later became the WTO, set requirements for trade liberalization and standards for the reduction of trade barriers. Institutions can be helpful for interstate coordination around a variety of important goals. For example, IOs can also help consolidate democratic reforms, according to the international relations scholar Jon C. Pevehouse (2002). The transition to democracy can be prone to conflict, especially when domestic groups compete for power and the rule of law is too weak to manage the emerging political activity. New leaders may turn to claims of nationalism whose appeals for support are based on political exclusion. According to international relations scholars Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder (2002, 2005), such nationalist appeals can urge leaders, under certain circumstances, to make bold claims to deal militarily with external threats. In such precarious transitions, new democratic leaders can signal their commitment to maintaining democracy by joining regional organizations that require democratic practices of members and whose membership includes strong democracies. The European Union (EU), for example, requires members to be “liberal, free market democracies.” In the Western Hemisphere, MERCOSUR (El Mercado Común del Sur, or Common Market of the South) and the Organization of Amer­ican States have similar requirements. Websites for the IOs mentioned above are as follows: Basel Committee on Banking Supervision: www.bis.org/bcbs/about.htm IMF: www.imf.org MERCOSUR: www.mercosur.int Organization of Amer­ican States (OAS): www.oas.org World Bank: www.worldbank.org WTO: www.wto.org The final school of thought draws insights from constructivism—a theory of international relations that focuses on the power of ideas to shape state behavior—and its role in how institutions establish norms. Two leading scholars of global governance, Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore (1999), argue that, over time, institutions become autonomous from the member states that created them. Legalization and expertise within the institutions allow them to become independent from state members and channel their actions into new directions that might not have been intended by state members. Institutional bureaucracies make rules, and in doing so they “create social knowledge,” according to Barnett and Finnemore. Social knowledge has the power to shape state behavior by setting up expectations about individuals, states, and international relations. One common example in this school of thought is human rights. Signed in 1948, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) asserted that all individuals are endowed with

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certain undeniable rights, and it established international norms regarding these rights. The declaration helped to shape state behavior in a range of places. The UDHR created formal procedures to discuss and investigate human rights situations in signature countries. As a result, NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch began to expect such rights to be afforded around the world, and activists at these NGOs mobilized. Many scholars point to the case of Argentina as an example of how the UDHR affected state behavior. The military regime led by General Jorge Rafael Videla conducted widespread kidnappings, torture, and murder to suppress political dissidents. The period from roughly 1976 to 1983 is known as the “Dirty War” because of the widespread human rights abuses conducted under the military government. Amnesty International, an NGO focused on supporting human rights, monitored and recorded evidence of human rights violations, such as secret kidnappings and the detention of 5,000 to 6,000 political prisoners who were held without being charged or tried at the hands of the military leadership. The NGO brought the abuses to the attention of the public, and to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who denounced the human rights violations and worked with other nations to cut aid to Argentina as punishment. The situation improved when Argentina invited another NGO focused on human rights, the Inter-­Amer­ican Commission on Human Rights, to visit the country, in exchange for a U.S. commitment to release aid funds. As this case shows, the norms on human rights and institutional mechanisms can change state behavior, and even curtail abuses by a military regime.

More About Constructivism According to the constructivists Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink (1998), a norm is a “standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity.” Norms establish a sense of “oughtness” or “appropriateness.” In addition to Finnemore and Sikkink, other helpful works on constructivism have been written by Alexander Wendt (i.e., 1992). Also, the scholars Lisa Martin and Beth Simmons’s 1998 article titled “Theories and Empirical Studies of International Institutions,” provides a useful overview of studies on  international institutions through the 1990s. All are cited in the end-­of-chapter bibliography. Bretton Woods Institutions These frameworks concerning how international institutions affect cooperation among nation-­ states can be seen in the development of the Bretton Woods institutions, which are responsible for many aspects of today’s global governance. Global leaders from forty-­four nations met in July 1944, at a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to begin to craft an agreement that would establish a new global economic order to avoid a third world war. Two key figures were John Maynard Keynes, a British economist, and Harry Dexter White, a U.S. Treasury official. Together they helped to guide the creation of three institutions that would set the rules for international cooperation and trade liberalization. While the aim was cooperation and liberalization, the institutions also provided flexibility for member states to satisfy domestic needs. Flexibility was necessary because national leaders at the time recognized that the demands of the global economy can at times clash with domestic interests. John Ruggie (1982), a professor of human rights and international affairs, described the solution that was forged in the Bretton Woods institutions to create this balance between the demands of the global market and the domestic needs as “embedded liberalism.” The aim of the institutions was to ensure economic liberalization, but the goal would be embedded within domestic constraints. National efforts to sooth domestic concerns and address the costs of liberalization would be a priority in their efforts to build a collaborative, international system.

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One of the immediate concerns at the Bretton Woods Conference was recovery and development after World War II. The World Bank, also known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, was tasked with providing financial support to help stimulate Europe’s economic recovery after the devastation of the war. But, quite quickly, funding from the United States through the Marshall Plan and additional financial support motivated by Cold War incentives provided sufficient support to European countries. In response, the World Bank shifted its focus to developing countries and began to provide capital for infrastructure and development projects, such as dams, railroads, and schools. The International Development Association (IDA) was added to the World Bank mandate in 1960 to provide long-­term loans at low interest rates to the world’s poorest countries. The IMF was also created at Bretton Woods to foster stability in international trade by providing support during times of balance-­of-payment deficits. A country’s balance of payment is a cumulative account of all its international monetary transactions, tracking all money that is coming into the country (credit), and all money going out (debit). The balance of payment includes the current account, which tracks the flow of goods and services; the capital account, which tracks the exchange of capital assets such as land; and the financial account, which measures investment flows. Generally stated, a country has a surplus in the current account when exports are greater than imports. The IMF lends to a country over a short period of time when it might be experiencing a deficit in its balance of payment account, typically in the form of foreign currency to repair a deficit. This is in contrast to the World Bank, which provides long-­term lending for construction and development projects. In 1974, however, the IMF created the Extended Fund Facility to provide assistance over an extended period of time, much as the World Bank does through the IDA, particularly to countries, usually developing nations, that experience chronic balance of payment problems. The World Bank and IMF have similar voting structures. Each member state has a vote share equal to the contribution that the country makes to the institutions. Their contributions are based on the size of their economies: the larger the economy, the larger the contribution and vote share. The United States provides the greatest contribution, about 18 percent of the World Bank and IMF budget, and so has a vote share of about 17 percent. Japan has the second-­largest vote share, roughly 7 percent. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and China have vote shares of around 4 percent. In addition to stability, the IMF was also tasked with maintaining the fixed exchange rate. Member countries committed to using monetary policy to keep their currencies pegged to a particular value compared to the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar served as the official reserve currency, and was linked to gold at the rate of $35 per ounce of gold. A fixed exchange rate provides stability and predictability to facilitate trade and investment. Without the fixed exchange rate, fluctuations in currency values can disrupt trade and inhibit investment. With a pegged currency, the value of goods is more stable, encouraging greater trade, and investors can predict their return. IMF lending helped economies maintain the value of their currencies at the specified peg. By the mid-­1970s, however, the United States was not able to maintain the value of the dollar at the assigned peg. The pressure from spending on the Vietnam War and social programs was generating inflation. The dollar was no longer worth the value at which it was pegged, and so President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the pegged, or assigned, value of gold. This essentially ended the Bretton Woods arrangement regarding monetary policy; however, the institutions, and their focus on development, stability, and free trade, continue today. The leaders at Bretton Woods also aimed to promote trade liberalization. The interwar period (the period between World War I and World War II) saw a remarkable increase in trade barriers, with national protectionist policies on the rise, including the U.S. Smoot–Hawley Tariff that restricted imports from Europe by up to 40 percent of previous levels. By the end of World War II, concern that such protectionism had significant negative consequences, for

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e­ conomic growth as well as security, was growing, and so the new global order began to roll back the protectionist tendencies and embrace free trade. In this context, the GATT was created in 1947. Another outgrowth of Bretton Woods, GATT aimed to serve as a forum for negotiations concerning the reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade. GATT was one of two trade-­oriented agreements negotiated at the time; the second was the International Trade Organization, which focused on a broad range of trade-­ related issues including rules of employment, business practices, and investment, but was never ratified by many of the key negotiating members, including the United States. GATT went into effect in 1948, and served as the primary governing institution on trade. At its inception, the agreement included twenty-­three countries, covering more than 45,000 tariffs that regulated more than half of the world. The first round of talks produced remarkable changes in trade. Tariffs were reduced, on average, by close to 20 percent. Tariffs between Europe and the United States were lowered to half of prewar levels. As a result, trade exploded. Global trade grew by 8 percent per year, on average, during the 1950s and 1960s. The reduction of trade barriers relied on three key principles: (1) member nations could not discriminate against other member nations—that is, all members were afforded the same privileges of a most-­favored nation; (2) national goods were to be treated equally to international goods, meaning that domestic-­made goods should not have privilege over foreign-­made goods; and (3) reciprocity ensured that all trade agreements were applicable to all GATT members. Despite the normative standards instituted by the Bretton Woods institutions that encouraged trade liberalization and cooperation, the agreements also allowed for exemptions. The institutions thus provided flexibility to accommodate a variety of interests of the individual member states. For example, GATT allowed for the development of regional free trade zones, including the EU. Arguably, regional free-­trade agreements represent preferential trade arrangements that provide most-­favored nation status only to the members of the region. Yet GATT allowed these arrangements. In addition, it allowed for the continuation of agricultural subsidies, particularly in the EU and United States, as well as special provisions for developing countries, such as favorable treatment for certain products exported by developing countries, in recognition of the challenges that emerging markets face in global trade. Developing countries also have longer periods of time for compliance. These provisions safeguarded the trade interests of developing countries, and allowed them to join without making significant sacrifices for trade liberalization.

Bretton Woods Scholars Leading scholars who have explored the history of these institutions and the post-­World War II era include John Ikenberry, John Ruggie, Dani Rodrik, and Jeffry Frieden, as follows: Ikenberry’s After Victory (2001) explores the way U.S. leadership generated international institutions to help establish world order after World War II. • Ruggie’s work on embedded liberalism further examines the nature of the global order (see e.g., 1982). • Rodrik’s work focuses on the economic aspects of the global order today and highlights the potential pressures that fully liberalized trade can place on society (see e.g., 2011). • Frieden describes the rise of international trade and global integration over the past century, with attention to the political and social factors that influenced this evolution (see e.g., 2006). •

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One other major component of GATT was the dispute settlement mechanism, which offered member countries a court-­like proceeding in which they could charge another member with noncompliance. The complainant requested the formation of a panel to explore the potentially offending policy, during which the defendant could explain the purpose of its policy. The panel considered the evidence and issued a ruling about whether or not the policy was in compliance. If the defendant was found to be noncompliant, the panel requested that the defendant change its policy. If the defendant did not make the required changes, the complainant could apply trade sanctions against the defendant. GATT operated on a “one country, one vote” system, in which decisions were made by consensus. Votes were rarely taken. Consensus decision making encouraged efforts to negotiate in order to find the most widely acceptable position. But the cost of consensus was that negotiations could drag on for many years, so that final agreements took significant time to develop. Rounds, or meetings of member states, could carry on for decades without consensus. In addition, consensus decision making is also vulnerable to power imbalances. Critics of GATT pointed out that many decisions were made in “Green Room” negotiations (the director-­ general’s office was green), during which powerful countries hammered out the details and then presented proposals as finished products. Between 1947 and 1994, various rounds of GATT meetings resulted in significant reductions in tariffs and freer trade. Over these decades, membership grew from the initial twenty-­three members to more than 100 members by the late 1970s. Many of these new members were newly independent countries, freed from colonialism with weak domestic industries and in need of significant foreign investment. These new members became frustrated with stagnant growth rates and persistent underdevelopment. Agricultural subsidies in the EU and United States gave significant advantage to farmers in the developed world. In addition, developed countries were becoming impatient with the long time frame that developing countries had to implement trade barriers. Developed countries began to press emerging markets to make greater progress toward liberalization. During the Uruguay Round of GATT, which lasted from 1986 until 1994, a growing sense of crisis developed surrounding the concern that GATT no longer matched the needs of the growing global economy. The result of these concerns was the creation of a new institution, the WTO. The WTO kept the provisions of GATT, but strengthened requirements for trade liberalization by including new tradable goods, such as services and intellectual property rights. The WTO also improved the dispute settlement mechanism with stricter time frames for adjudication and stronger enforcement mechanisms. No longer can one country repeal the panel ruling, as one could under GATT. Instead, it takes all members of the WTO to reject a panel ruling. As a result, panel rulings must be accommodated under the WTO. The Bretton Woods institutions have been one of the primary drivers of international governance since the end of World War II, but the influence of these institutions raises important questions about state sovereignty and the dominance of a particular model of economic growth. From structural adjustment requirements at the World Bank and IMF to WTO rulings against protectionist policies, these institutions can prohibit certain economic practices and favor others. This influence curtails national sovereignty, and creates a policy convergence around a particular economic and political model, a model in recent decades that focuses on market-­led growth through liberalization, deregulation, and privatization. On the other hand, these institutions have gathered evidence of best practices for political and economic development over decades, and offer support and training to high-, middle-, and low-­income countries for a wide-­ range of initiatives, from bank regulation and anti-­corruption reforms, to poverty reduction and gender equality. For many low-­income countries, these institutions provide loans that are not offered by the private market, and provide assistance that is more reliable than aid from private donors or non-­government organizations. In doing so, they serve as pillars of governance around the economic order today.

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The UN Also a byproduct of World War II, the UN is a key actor that creates focal points for state behavior as well as promotes human rights and human development around the world. The UN officially came into existence in 1945 as a new attempt to dampen international conflict and promote peace. After two world wars in two decades, the political will to create a world order that enhanced coordination among states and protected the world from war was strong. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter declares, “All states shall refrain from the threat or use of force in their international relations”—though the charter allows for an exception in cases of self-­defense. The UN was also given authority to enforce peace through diplomatic, economic, and military action. The arrangement is based on the notion of collective security, in which the use of force against one member is considered aggression against all members. As such, states may use force within their borders, but the use of international force is illegal, as it offends state sovereignty. In response to the use of force against one member, all states join together to prevent war. Collective security deters the use of force through fear of significant retaliation. A major contribution to international relations is the effort of UN Peacekeeping Forces. During the Cold War, these peacekeeping missions consisted primarily of unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops. Their tasks included maintaining ceasefires, stabilizing post-­conflict situations, and providing support for political efforts in peaceful solutions to conflict. The first two peacekeeping operations deployed by the UN were in South Asia. In January 1948, the UN established the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) to provide military observers to stop fighting between the two countries in Kashmir, and to monitor a ceasefire there. The UN was also involved in establishing and maintaining a resolution between North and South Korea. When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, the United States called on the UN to use force to get the North Koreans out. The UN forces, though largely supported by U.S. personnel, leadership, and supplies, were seen as an important actor in taking strong action against an aggressor nation. Similarly, UN peacekeepers were deployed in 1956 to resolve the Suez Crisis, after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the British- and French-­owned Suez Canal Company. In response, the British and French, coordinating with Israel, staged a joint military operation and moved troops into the Sinai Peninsula to retake the canal. The United States and Soviet Union responded by demanding a ceasefire. The UN facilitated the evacuation of French, British, and Israeli troops from the region and maintained a peacekeeping force in Sinai until 1967. The UN was involved in additional missions during the Cold War. For example, it assisted in the withdrawal of colonial Belgian forces from the Congo in 1960. This mission included 20,000 military personnel and resulted in the loss of 250 personnel, including the UN Secretary-­General Dag Hammarskjold, demonstrating the risks involved in bringing a conflict to an end. UN peacekeepers were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. On that occasion, the Nobel Committee acknowledged that  the Peacekeeping Forces through their efforts have made important contributions towards the realization of one of the fundamental tenets of the United Nations. Thus, the world organization has come to play a more central part in world affairs and has been invested with increasing trust. In the post-­Cold War era, UN missions took on additional responsibilities, particularly to offer humanitarian protection or manage failed states. The Security Council authorized a total of twenty new operations, raising the number of peacekeepers from 11,000 to 75,000 between 1989 and 1994. The UN shifted and expanded its operations generally from observational tasks to “multidimensional” efforts. Peacekeepers took on complex tasks relating to sustainable development, such as building meaningful institutions of governance; monitoring human

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rights; and disarming, demobilizing, and reintegrating former combatants. In addition, the nature of conflicts that the UN responded to also changed, covering not only state conflict, but civil wars as well. Peacekeeping operations were conducted in Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Namibia, and many other conflict zones. Forces were used to implement complex peace agreements, reorganize military and police forces, monitor elections, and help build democratic institutions. The growing number of failed states drew UN forces into these new roles. When a state fails to maintain control over its territory, political anarchy within the state can lead to competing claims for authority. Weak state authority can also have economic and social consequences, leading to increased suffering and the potential for refugees moving to neighboring states. This was the case in Somalia from 1992 to 1993, for example, when the UN intervened to help reestablish a functioning economy; address persistent poverty; disarm militias; provide food, education, and shelter; and host elections. The UN also encourages important norms, especially human rights and human security, that govern expectations for state behavior. The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights endows every individual with rights, such as the right to life; freedom from slavery and torture; political freedoms of association, thought, and religion; and civil freedoms. Also, a new international security and human rights norm, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) agreement, an outcome of the 2005 UN World Summit, outlines the responsibility of states to protect people from “genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.” Under R2P, if a state fails to ensure these rights, the international community has the responsibility to intervene. The UN’s influence, therefore, can be seen in establishing expectations for state behavior. But debate remains about whether the UN deters power politics and reshapes the global order into something that can function above the interests of powerful nations. When large and powerful states can intervene without UN approval, as in the case of the United States in Iraq in 2003, or when member states do not intervene even in the face of extreme crisis, as in Rwanda in 1994, the UN seems relatively insignificant in the face of powerful state interests. Does the UN make a difference by promoting certain norms and expectations? Or are nation-­ states still the dominant actors in global affairs? It is possible that a more important question looking ahead will be under what conditions the UN will matter for global affairs. Are there particular issues that the UN is well suited to address? Are there particular circumstances in which countries will turn to the UN for support? As many have argued, UN approval provides legitimacy, and consequently it is still an important actor in global governance today. The G-­7 (or 8) and the G-­20 In 1974 the US hosted a series of informal meetings in the library of the White House. Senior officials from France, Italy, West Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States gathered. The following year, the French president invited leaders from these leading six economies to a summit to initiate what was then called the Group of Six, or G-­6. These meetings were prompted by two important global events. First, the fixed-­exchange-rate regime stabilized through the IMF and rooted in the U.S. dollar was over. This essentially rendered part of the Bretton Woods agreement null and void. Second, the oil shock of 1973 demonstrated the vulnerability of industrialized economies to the influence of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on global oil supplies. OPEC flexed its muscles in the early 1970s by reducing oil supplies in response to Western support for Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. After Egypt and Syria launched a surprise military attack against Israel, the United States provided supplies to Israel. Because of OPEC’s moves, the price of oil increased from $3 per barrel to $12 per barrel. In response to the oil shock and the collapse of the Bretton Woods currency exchange mechanism, the G-­6 was established to reinvigorate cooperation among the six leading industrialized countries.

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Less formal than the Bretton Woods institutions and the UN, the G-­6 was an agreement by the leading six economies to meet every year to discuss pressing issues. The first meeting was held in 1975. Canada was added to the membership in 1976, creating the G-­7. The Soviet Union was added as the eighth member in 1998. As a result of Russian intervention in Ukraine and Crimea in 2014, though, Russian participation was suspended, and the G-­8 returned to the G-­7 format. Annual meetings today cover issues such as economic growth, crisis management, global security, energy, and terrorism. No decisions are made and no votes are taken, but the meetings are another forum for cooperation among powerful nations. Critiques of the G-­7 have focused on questions of membership and accountability. Nonmember countries raise concerns about the elite nature of G-­7 membership, and NGOs argue that the informal institution is undemocratic. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, growing pressure from emerging economies in Latin America and Asia in particular pushed for greater inclusion in global institutions. In response to the Asian financial crisis of 1995, the then G-­8 members announced the creation of the G-­20 in 1999. The G-­20 includes emerging markets such as Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, and Indonesia. It includes nineteen of the world’s largest economies, roughly 85 percent of global GDP (gross domestic product), and two-­thirds of the world’s population. But even more importantly, the G-­20 represents an attempt to bring the world’s emerging economies into a forum for decision making along with established economies. Organized like the G-­7, the G-­20 holds annual meetings to discuss key global issues, while holding no formal votes. Yet the discussions held during the meetings can have tangible effect on national policy. When issues are discussed and solutions are identified, national leaders make verbal commitments to coordinate their countries’ policies to converge around the solutions. These leaders may be held accountable to upholding these verbal commitments, and are therefore bound by the, albeit informal, discussions of the G-­20. According to a report by the Brookings Institution and New York University (Gowan, Jones, and O’Brien 2011), the G-­20 has been effective in negotiating key changes at the IMF that shifted more voting power toward rising Asian economies, which has generated a new flow of revenue to the IMF. At the 2011 G-­20 Summit, members also agreed on new efforts to safeguard against global financial imbalances by creating a set of early warning indicators, and a plan to set new rules for capital safeguards for banks. Such efforts, to reform the IMF and prevent imbalances, provide examples of the central role that the G-­20 can play in generating important coordination in the global order today. With the power of emerging markets, including China, India, and Brazil, the G-­20 may be a more appropriate vehicle than the G-­7 to tackle the most pressing issues of the day. Concluding Thoughts on IOs The international institutions discussed above, and others, shape the nature of the global order by binding member states to particular commitments, whether to humanitarian assistance, trade, or cooperation around conflict, peace, and development. Formal institutions coordinate international efforts, for example, during humanitarian crises or conflict resolution, and they set goals for state collaboration such as trade liberalization. Thus, IOs shape the activities of nation-­states. The institutions also promote particular norms that affect what we expect from each other, the state, and the international community. For example, human rights define a particular set of responsibilities concerning the treatment of people, and create demands on the international community and nation-­states to uphold these commitments. International institutions, therefore, engage in governance, setting expectations that identify common goals and appropriate means to reach those goals.

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Keeping up with current events in international relations includes reading reliable daily papers, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In addition, analysis of the news on a weekly or monthly basis can be found in these magazines and journals: The Economist (www.economist.com) Foreign Affairs (www.foreignaffairs.com/) Foreign Policy (https://foreignpolicy.com/). It is also helpful to read news analysis from research institutions and policy think tanks. There are many such dependable institutions, including: Brookings Institution (www.brookings.edu/) CATO Institute (www.cato.org/) Center for Strategic and International Studies (www.csis.org/) Council on Foreign Relations (www.cfr.org/). IOs also have useful websites, including: IMF (www.imf.org) Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (www.oecd.org) United Nations (www.un.org) World Bank (www.worldbank.org).

Informal Arrangements and Governing Norms We now turn our attention to two other forces that set particular expectations for the world today: economic interdependence and democracy. These forces are not formalized in international agreements, and formal rules of membership do not exist. But these forces can promote specific forms of coordination. In classical international relations theory, they can promote peace among nation-­states. For global studies scholars, economic interdependence and democracy work as dominant paradigms that define the nature of economic and political order. Economic Interdependence According to a liberal line of analysis, economic interdependence among states has helped to lessen conflict and war. The reasons are straightforward. In modern liberal economies, countries specialize, producing certain goods they have competitive advantages in because of natural resources, efficiencies in the labor market, and the like. While most economies do not embrace free trade completely, it is common that countries depend on each other for certain goods. Take rare earth elements, for example, which are so important in many of today’s most advanced technologies, including cell phones. Most rare earth elements come from China. Does this dependence affect foreign policy? Consider Russia’s provision of natural gas to the EU as another example. Many policy analysts are concerned that dependence on Russia for natural gas has shaped and softened the EU’s foreign policy toward Russia, and toward the Russian premier Vladimir Putin in particular. The extent to which conflict disrupts normal trading patterns, economically dependent states are less likely to go to war. In addition, trade increases communication among trading nations and sets expectations for certain behavior. Trading generates a web of communications, increasing the availability of

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information about the trading partner, that can enhance cooperation and generate expectations for collaborative behavior over time. Indeed, many trade agreements include requirements for shared behavior, such as mutual military support or political accountability. For example, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), formed in 1975 among sixteen Anglophone and Francophone countries in Africa, has led to increases of up to 43 percent in trade among member states by promoting greater economic integration through free-­trade areas and common macroeconomic policies. The establishment of ECOWAS also included a nonaggression pact to preserve peace among member states. As a result of this provision and the interconnected economies in the region, ECOWAS sent troops to Liberia during that country’s 1990 civil war and is largely credited with containing the conflict. MERCOSUR provides coordination among several Latin Amer­ican countries to help achieve economic development. Many of these arrangements not only promote trade coordination, but also include requirements for political change, such as instituting free and fair elections and military cooperation, including intervening on behalf of other member states. Regional free-­trade agreements have increasingly been initiated in recent decades. The North Amer­ican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was created in 1993 to promote trade among the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was created in 1967. Founding members included Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. During the Cold War, these countries saw benefits to coordinating economic and cultural policies to promote stability in the region, and to compete with the power of China. The Asia-­Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) was created in 1989 and includes the United States, Japan, and China, among other countries. Some scholars suggest that the United States was eager to create APEC to provide an alternative to ASEAN and ensure a U.S. presence in the region. These arrangements represent governance, while not global, certainly at the regional level as they established shared behavior toward freer trade, as well as political and economic stability. Democracy Since the mid-­1970s, democracy has spread extensively around the world, with the toppling of authoritarian regimes and the movements toward democracy in many regions of the world, including Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Samuel Huntington (1991) calls this the “third wave of democracy.” The third wave began in 1974 with the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and included the historic democratic transitions in Latin America as military forces continued to withdraw from power. Such political transitions continued in the 1980s—among Asia-­Pacific countries (Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan) from 1986 to 1988, and then in Eastern Europe with the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. This was not the first time in history that democracy spread widely, in a condensed period of time. The first wave, according to Huntington, began in the early nineteenth century as democratic institutions developed, gradually drawing from ideas that were developed during the Amer­ican and French revolutions. The democracies that were established—many of them in Europe—during this first wave provided suffrage, or the right to vote, to the majority of males. In the case of the United States, suffrage was extended to white males. Huntington argues that the second wave started at the end of the World War II, as Allied occupation promoted democratic institutions in nations such as West Germany, Italy, and Korea. According to many, at the peak of this second wave, in 1962, thirty-­six recognized democracies existed in the world. What are the essential aspects of a democracy today? Following Samuel Huntington, a system is democratic when “its most powerful collective decision makers are selected through fair, honest, and periodic elections in which candidates freely compete for votes” (1991, 7). But what makes for free and fair elections? According to most political scientists, a “free

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e­ lection” means that legal barriers to entry into the political arena are low and suffrage is extended to the majority of society, so that all adults have the right to vote without coercion or fear of it. Democracy, therefore, is not merely about holding elections. There are, in fact, finer measurements of democracy. Take, for example, Russia’s elections, where the media is largely captured by the state; elections under Yaweri Kaguta Museveni in Uganda, where only one party exists; or elections in Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe won for more than thirty-­five years before resigning in 2017. While voters went to the polls in these countries, the meaningfulness of the elections, in terms of being “free,” might be considered hollow. Liberal democracy requires civil rights, such as freedoms of speech, movement, assembly, and association. Elections are only meaningful when they include effective participation, freedom of expression, and freedom to organize. Candidates and supporters from different parties should have substantial freedom to campaign and generate support. Also, opposition to those currently in power should be possible; indeed, it should be allowed to thrive. Elections should also be administered by a neutral authority that attempts to fight fraud and root out coercion. A free media is also necessary to provide information and accountability. In addition, elected officials must have supreme authority over the laws of the country, free from infringement by other actors such as economic elites, the military, or international interests. At a very minimum, democracy is a process that includes political contestation, inclusion, and democratic sovereignty. The Freedom House website (https://freedomhouse.org) provides information on global trends in democracy, as well as detailed analysis of country cases. Data is updated annually.

The Basic Components of Democracy Drawing on the work of the political theorist Robert Dahl (1982, 1998), this list outlines the political characteristics and institutions required in a democracy: • Control over government decisions is constitutionally vested in elected officials. • Elected officials are chosen through free, fair, and frequent elections. • Practically all adults have the right to vote and the right to run for office. • Citizens have the right to express themselves without fear of punishment. • Citizens have the right to seek out alternative sources of information, which should exist outside government control. • Citizens have the right to form independent associations or organizations. The political scientists Philippe Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl (1991) add a final requirement: • Popularly elected officials must be free of overriding opposition from unelected officials—referring mainly to military officers, entrenched civil servants, or state bureaucrats with the autonomy to act independently of elected officials. Particularly important in this discussion is that, while democracy is a domestic political arrangement, the spread of democracy has implications for the global order. First, democracy

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tends to favor individualism and market capitalism. While not inherent in democracy, today’s dominant model of democracy, liberal democracy, prioritizes individual rights, equality before the law, free speech, civil liberty, and protection for private property, as well as representative government. Many of the powerful democracies today also embrace market liberalism. As a result, democracy acts as a symbol of a particular political and economic arrangement that largely draws from the Western experience. Critics of democracy describe the spread of democracy from the West to countries in the Global South as evidence of modern day imperialism. Indeed, democracy promotion has been a consistent feature of U.S. foreign policy, arguably rooted in Manifest Destiny of the mid-­ nineteenth century, which defended U.S. expansion through the Western hemisphere. Democracy promotion was particularly salient to Allied efforts during the Cold War to push back against Communism, the rival model. Today democracy promotion as foreign policy is largely motivated by assumptions of the democratic peace theory, which argues that democracies are less likely to go to war, so that the spread of democracy may reduce international conflict and produce greater international peace and coordination. How does the spread of democracy produce peace? Scholars have identified a handful of mechanisms within democracy that lead to peace. First, democratic institutions constrain leaders through “audience costs,” a concept made popular in a 1994 article by James Fearon. Democratically elected leaders are held accountable for their actions at the ballot box, and elected officials therefore tend to be concerned about the preferences of their audience, the electorate. The loss of public approval is costly for a democratically elected leader. A popular president can command greater attention from Congress, just as an unpopular president can find it hard to shape the legislative agenda. Public opinion can also shape national elections, and approval of a foreign policy objective can be a major component of approval ratings. In a democracy, as mentioned above, the cost of war is carried by the citizens, whether through military service, taxes, or economic hardship. Voters are therefore less likely to support war. When voters are less likely to support war, political officials are less likely to enter into a war. Second, research has also shown that democracies are likely to comply with international agreements. Similar to assumptions about audience cost, this argument claims that democratically elected leaders enter into agreements because they serve the interest of key domestic constituencies. As a result, the supporting constituencies have an incentive to monitor compliance. Given transparency within democratic policymaking, the public can witness compliance and, through elections, punish noncompliance. A third reason that democracy might promote peace focuses on the tendency of liberal democracies to value individualism, the rule of law, and property rights. This strength of such domestic institutions promotes trade and economic stability, which builds economic interconnectedness. If trade enhances coordination, then the extent to which democracy encourages trade, democracy also increases interconnectedness and coordination. Despite this evidence, new democracies, or those countries transitioning away from authoritarianism, are an exception. In fact, democracies in transition can be just as war-­prone as nondemocracies. Mansfield and Snyder (2002, 2005) find that countries in transition from authoritarianism to democracy may be more likely to resort to war when newly elected national leaders in young democracies use nationalist rhetoric and belligerent politics to mobilize political support. Weak institutions make it likely that leaders will depend on such populist strategies to generate legitimacy, making domestic rivalries more contentious and external foes easy targets for saber rattling. Democracy promotion can, in fact, cause instability and war. Not only can new democracies revert to conflict, democracy promotion as a tool of foreign policy can generate a backlash against Western imperialism. Does democracy promotion support nascent interests in changes to political institutions? Or does democracy promotion inherently sacrifice national sovereignty

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when promoters dictate particular domestic arrangements? There is little doubt that democracy still holds a privileged position today as the preferred political model, and for good reason. Ensuring widespread political incorporation and greater accountability of a government to its people have become common assumptions in today’s world. In that way, democracy is a norm that governs our expectations about state behavior and serves as the basis for many claims to political rights and incorporation.

Conclusion As explained in this chapter, global governance refers to the institutions, rules, and norms that shape the nature of the global order. Regional and international institutions provide frameworks that guide state behavior and set up shared expectations for reaching common goals. International trade provides opportunities for coordination among states and the creation of alliances through trade connections. The spread of democracy also provides a form of global governance, as established democracies may be less likely to go to war, and are more likely to maintain their international commitments and promote cooperation. Debates persist about the balance among these actors, and about the extent to which the state remains the dominant actor in the international arena. Key questions remain about when and why states choose to coordinate, and under what conditions individuals and institutions shape national behavior, generating norms and expectations for the responsibilities of nation-­states.

References and Further Research Barnett, Michael N., and Martha Finnemore. 1999. “The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations.” International Organization 53, no. 4: 699–732. Dahl, Robert. 1982. Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Dahl, Robert. 1998. On Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. DeYoung, Karen. 1977. “Carter Aide in Argentina to Gauge Rights Impact.” Washington Post, March 31. www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/03/31/carter-­a ide-in-­a rgentina-to-­g auge-rights-­ impact/7352a3e5-5e6b-483b-9d6a-df4983caaeba/?utm_term=.7541e267988b. Fearon, James D. 1994. “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes.” Amer­ican Political Science Review 88, no. 3: 577–592. Finnemore, Martha. 1993. “International Organizations as Teachers of Norms: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and Science Policy.” International Organization 47, no. 4: 565–597. Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.” International Organization 52, no. 4: 887–917. Freedom House. 2017. Freedom in the World 2017/Populists and Autocrats: The Dual Threat to Democracy. Washington, DC: Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-­world/freedom-­ world-2017. Frieden, Jeffry. 2006. Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century. New York: W. W. Norton. Gowan, Richard, Bruce Jones, and Emily O’Brien. 2011. “The G8 and the Threat of Bloc Politics in the International System.” Managing Global Order Paper. Washington, DC: Brooking Institutions. www. brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/05/24-g8-summit-­jones. Huntington, Samuel. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Ikenberry, John. 2001. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kant, Immanuel, with Pauline Kleingeld, Jeremy Waldron, Michael Doyle, and Allen Wood. 2006. Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Key Concepts and Processes: Governance   113 Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye. 1977. Power and Interdependence. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Mansfield, Edward, and Jack Snyder. 2002. “Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength and War.” International Organization 56, no. 2: 297–337. Mansfield, Edward, and Jack Snyder. 2005. Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Martin, Lisa L., and Beth A. Simmons. 1998. “Theories and Empirical Studies of International Institutions.” International Organization 52, no. 4: 729–757. Mearsheimer, John J. 1994–1995. “The False Promise of International Institutions.” International Security 19, no. 3: 5–49. Oneal, John, Bruce Russett, and Michael Berbaum. 2003. “Causes of Peace: Democracy, Interdepen­ dence, and International Organizations, 1885–1992.” International Studies Quarterly 47, no. 3: 371–393. Pevehouse, Jon C. 2002. “With a Little Help from my Friends? Regional Organizations and the Consolidation of Democracy.” Amer­ican Journal of Political Science 46, no. 3: 611–626. Rodrik, Dani. 2011. The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: W. W. Norton. Ruggie, John G. 1982. “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic System.” International Organization 36, no. 2: 379–415. Schmitter, Philippe C., and Terry Lynn Karl. 1991. “What Democracy Is … and Is Not.” Journal of Democracy 2, no. 3: 75–88. Schumpeter, Joseph. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers. Tomz, Michael. 2007. “Domestic Audience Costs in International Relations: An Experimental Approach.” International Organization 61, no. 4: 821–840. Wendt, Alexander. 1992. “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics.” International Organization 46, no. 2: 391–425.

PART TWO

Case Studies

9

Introduction to the Case Studies Michael R. Anderson The case studies, as mentioned in the opening chapter, are intended to show how the various perspectives of political and economic analysis are applied to the study of global processes. They range across disciplines, geographies, and time periods—all in an attempt to help the reader see the relationship between the global and local forces at work in today’s world. Brandon Gentry’s opening case-­study contribution, “Regional and Global Impacts of Post-­ Gaddafi Libya,” assesses the international security situation in the aftermath of the overthrow and execution of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s long-­standing dictator, in October 2011. Gentry makes clear that the consequences of humanitarian intervention and regime change can be truly global in scope as transnational networks of criminals and political extremists flood into a security vacuum. In a region marked by porous borders and weak states, the chaotic aftermath of the downfall of Gaddafi led to the flow of Libyan weapons into other conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East, creating heightened security concerns in the West. The disruption of Libya’s oil exports, moreover, renewed concerns in Europe and elsewhere about foreign energy dependence on Russia and Iran. Furthermore, in May of 2014, Libyan officials recently threatened Europe with a “flood” of African immigrants if the European Union (EU) does not pledge greater support to the country’s efforts to rebuild itself. The political and economic consequences for global security continue to reverberate. Smugglers and gangs may thrive in our ever-­more connected world, but so too can activists struggling for progressive change. R. Joseph Parrott’s case study, “The Anti-­Apartheid Movement in the Western World: Segregation, Revolution, and the Creation of a Global Civil Society,” demonstrates the ways in which nonstate actors around the world were essential players in the movement to challenge and dismantle the racially segregationist policies known as apartheid carried out by the minority white South African government against the black majority between 1948 and 1994. Following the imprisonment of individuals actively opposing apartheid in South Africa, a global activist network took up the struggle, and key allies eventually found willing partners in multinational corporations and, eventually, governmental leaders around the world. In the end, the white South African leadership came to realize that the country’s government could not afford to resist global norms on behalf of racial equality if it wished to remain an integrated part of the global economy. This chapter in world history reinforces a powerful message that political change in any one country can occur because of international pressure, and that international pressure can originate from civil society, not just through official, state-­level channels. The quest for political rights and representation is also at the heart of Sean Killen’s case-­ study chapter, “The Treaty of Waitangi and the Waitangi Tribunal: Globalization and Decolonization in New Zealand.” In 1840, British officials granted sovereign status to the indigenous peoples of New Zealand, known as the Māori. But, as this chapter shows, the meaning of sovereignty remained a contested one for many decades, and the country’s development often left its indigenous peoples on the margins of society. By the 1970s, Māori peoples were able to

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draw upon the institutional machinery of the United Nations and emerging support from fellow indigenous peoples’ land claims elsewhere in the world to forge a global network advocating on behalf of their rights. Unlike South Africa, New Zealand embraced the emerging consensus by human rights activists and international lawyers, and collaborated with the Māori rather than resist their claims. As Killen notes, the story of the Māori in New Zealand demonstrates the benefits of a process of “internal decolonization” in order to allow for the existence of multiple national identities within a single state. John D. Graeber’s chapter, “The Causes and Consequences of International Migration: The View from Europe,” assesses the importance of the increased movement of peoples across borders to larger political and economic changes taking place across the globe. This chapter concentrates its analysis on Europe, where individual countries actively welcomed immigrants as a way to reboot their respective economies following the devastation of World War II. The creation of the EU, and specifically the implementation of the Schengen Convention (1995), eliminated border checks and permitted people to move and work freely within the EU. Yet while the economic incentives for liberalizing migration may be clear, the political blowback can be swift and sharp. In recent decades, the influx of migrants has bolstered the fortunes of hard-­right, anti-­immigrant political parties, many of which wish to dismantle the regional integrative machinery built up over the past half-­century. Thus, Europe finds itself in a bind that other regions of the world may soon be facing as they struggle to negotiate the economic promise of open borders alongside political conditions frequently driven by nationalism and xenophobia. The tension between global economic interdependence and nationalist political culture is also a prominent theme of John Taylor Vurpillat’s “Patterns of Fear: Hegemony, Globalization, and the U.S.–Japan Trade Conflict, 1971–1996.” This chapter illustrates the way that U.S. policymakers, media outlets, and often the public at large frequently portrayed Japan as an economic rival rather than as a fellow facilitator in the creation of a globally interdependent economic system during the latter part of the twentieth century. Fears about a Japanese “takeover” of Amer­ican real estate and Hollywood movie studios led to breathless headlines in U.S. magazines and threats of a trade war. Ultimately, the trade conflict diminished as the Amer­ican economy recovered and the Japanese economy faltered. What broader lessons can be learned from this episode, especially in the context of the rise of China today? Vurpillat suggests that economic interdependence between nations creates incentives to compromise, yet domestic constituents often only see the threat of foreign competition. The emergence of a new economic superpower such as China certainly creates political friction, but common interests in maintaining an open and integrated global economy are inclined to prevail. Jerry Harris’s chapter, “Globalization and Transnational Capitalism,” offers another perspective on why an integrated global economy remains sacrosanct: because transnational corporations demand it. Harris contends that states (however powerful they may be) do not control, own, or direct global capitalism; instead, transnational corporations operate according to their own imperatives and agendas. In a close examination of two such U.S.-based corporations, General Motors (automobiles) and Apple (computers), this chapter demonstrates that while these businesses may often be associated with Amer­ican power in the world, they are deeply embedded in global supply chains and assembly lines, and should thus be seen as transnational rather than the product of their home countries. These corporations are beholden to global stockholders, and are therefore willing to do whatever it takes to maximize profitability, including cutting costs on the backs of laborers worldwide. In a coda, Harris also analyzes the transnational financial system, particularly currency markets, in terms of lack of traditional nation-­state oversight. This chapter offers a ringing call to reshape the global political and economic agenda in favor of social justice.

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What are the chances of opening new discussions about the distribution of global power and the allocation of resources, given the current configuration of the international system of governance? Do international organizations merely act as a fig leaf to cover the actions of powerful states and corporations as they exploit the weak and vulnerable and further degrade the planet’s health? The final case study, “When Weak States Win: Providing Opportunities at the WTO” by Stephanie S. Holmsten, provides insight into the workings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), specifically its dispute settlement mechanism. This chapter explores how large international institutions, in general, can produce surprising consequences, and in this case at least allow developing countries a greater voice against nationalist politics from the leading states. International organizations may be imperfect vessels, but they can serve as an important means through which incremental political and economic reforms can be enacted at the global level.

10

Regional and Global Impacts of Post-­Gaddafi Libya Brandon Gentry As the consequences of Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall in 2011 reverberate far beyond Libya’s borders, the Libyan revolution has brought greater security concerns to the region than at any time since 2001. The North African country’s transformation from an autocratic dictatorship to a resource-­rich, weapons-­abundant, sectarian-­divided failed state has enhanced its global profile. Once operating on the margins of the international community, Libya now holds a central place in regional and global security concerns in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. While porous borders and an insufficient state security apparatus make Libya a convenient waypoint for smugglers and militants, its location on the Mediterranean coast makes it a de facto partner in European affairs, especially in immigration matters. Its abundant petroleum and natural gas reserves keep Libya a central player in international energy markets. This case study will examine Libya’s development from a terrorism-­sponsoring pariah state to a key player in regional and global geopolitics, focusing on the fallout from the collapse of the Gaddafi regime during the Arab Spring in 2011. It will also address the role post-­Gaddafi Libya plays in international security, economic affairs, and international migration, as well as the ways in which Europe, Africa, and the Middle East have been forced to reassess Libya’s position in relation to their own interests.

Fallout from the Arab Spring In December 2010, an unemployed vegetable merchant in Tunisia set himself on fire to protest government corruption and abuse, sparking a wave of popular demonstrations. Within months, protesters throughout the Arab world, angry at the region’s autocratic regimes, launched what came to be known as the “Arab Spring.” Throughout 2011 and 2012, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, and others experienced major political upheaval, significantly altering the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East and North Africa. In the span of several months, demonstrators—and in some cases, armed rebels—shook the region with demands for major changes to long-­standing Arab political and power structures: • •

Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh all saw their decades-­long presidential terms end in early 2011. Ben Ali stepped down in January 2011; Mubarak and Saleh resigned in February 2011. Pro-­democracy demonstrators—who also demanded expanded rights for the Sunni-­ruled country’s Shia majority—took to the streets of Bahrain in January 2011, forcing King Hamad bin Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa to request troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to help quell the unrest.

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•

•

In January 2011, mass protests erupted against Bashar al-­Assad’s Baath regime in Syria; by the summer of 2011, a civil war between anti-­regime militia forces (including Islamist militants from throughout the Middle East) and Baathist troops (backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters) had broken out. By late 2017, the Syrian civil war had claimed the lives of nearly 500,000 people and resulted in more than five million refugees (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 2018). In Libya, February 2011 saw the first protests against the rule of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi; these protests grew in strength and intensity, building to a full-­fledged armed rebellion, NATO air and missile strikes in support of anti-­Gaddafi forces, and Gaddafi’s capture and execution at the hands of anti-­regime rebels in October 2011.

From Pariah to Partner For much of Gaddafi’s forty-­two-year rule of Libya, the country was isolated from both the West and the Arab world, its pariah status stemming from Gaddafi’s authoritarian domestic policies, his sponsorship of state terrorism, and his vehemently anti-­Israeli foreign policy. Soon after taking power in a bloodless military coup in 1969, Gaddafi began to demonstrate his anti-­ Western and pan-­Arab tendencies. He expelled Italians living in Libya and built the Libyan government around his antidemocratic, anticapitalist, and highly authoritarian Green Book manifesto. Gaddafi tried—and failed—to establish unified anti-­Western Arab states with

Figure 10.1  Rally in Benghazi in Support of the Protests in Libya in February 2011. Source: Wikimedia/Maher27777. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Egyptian_youth_at_the_ Benghazi_rally.JPG.

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Sudan, Tunisia, and Egypt (with whom Libya fought a brief and highly unsuccessful border war in 1977). The Green Book, a distillation of Muammar Gaddafi’s political philosophy, can be found online at http://openanthropology.org/libya/gaddafi-­green-book.pdf. An outspoken opponent of Israel, Gaddafi expelled hundreds of thousands of Egyptian workers from Libya during the 1970s in response to the Egyptian-­led Middle East peace effort culminating in the Camp David Accords. He likewise expelled tens of thousands of Palestinians in the late 1990s during peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Gaddafi would eventually become frustrated with his fellow Arab leaders and turn away from the Arab world, seeking instead to cultivate Libyan influence and unity in Africa. Gaddafi violently suppressed domestic dissent, using Libyan security forces at home and abroad to hunt down, imprison, and assassinate dissidents and outspoken exiles. As an example of Gaddafi’s heavy-­handed security policies, approximately 1,200 inmates of the Abu Salim prison were massacred in retaliation for an attempted jailbreak in 1996. Gaddafi’s support for and use of international terrorism was the main driver behind Libya’s pariah status. The Gaddafi regime provided weapons and other resources to the Irish Republican Army, Basque separatists, the Sandinistas, the Italian Red Brigades, and other militant organizations around the world. The Gaddafi government’s alleged responsibility for the 1986 Berlin nightclub bombing, killing two Amer­ican soldiers; the 1988 midair bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people; and the 1989 bombing of the French UTA flight 772 in Niger, killing 170 people, led to U.S.- and United Nations-­imposed travel and energy sanctions, frozen Libyan assets, and air and arms embargoes. For more information on the 1996 massacre at Abu Salim prison, see the 2006 article “Libya: June 1996 Killings at Abu Salim Prison,” published by Human Rights Watch and available at www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/06/27/libya-­june-1996-killings-­abu-salim-­ prison. For more information on Muammar Gaddafi’s sponsorship and conduct of state terrorism, see “How Libya Got Off the List,” published by the Council on Foreign Relations on October 16, 2007, and available at www.cfr.org/libya/libya-­got-off-­list/p10855. In 2003 and 2004, Gaddafi, seeking an easing of tensions with European nations, accepted responsibility for the Pan Am 103 and UTA 772 bombings and offered monetary compensation to the families of those killed. Additionally, he agreed to halt Libya’s illegal chemical and biological weapons programs. Consequently, the United Nations and United States lifted sanctions against Libya, initiating Libya’s reengagement with the West. The post-­9/11 “global war on terror” saw Libya transformed from rogue state to “a critical ally in U.S. counterterrorism efforts,” according to a 2009 U.S. State Department memo released by WikiLeaks in 2011. Libya’s operations against the al-­Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a radical Sunni Islamist militant organization with a long history of anti-­Gaddafi operations, drew Gaddafi and Washington together. The United States allegedly helped Gaddafi track down anti-­regime elements. According to some reports, Amer­ican intelligence services captured and tortured LIFG fighters before delivering them to Gaddafi for imprisonment and further interrogation.

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For more information on U.S. counterterrorism cooperation with Libya in the years following 9/11, see “US: Torture and Rendition to Gaddafi’s Libya,” published by Human Rights Watch on September 6, 2012, and available at www.hrw.org/news/2012/09/05/ us-­torture-and-­rendition-gaddafi-­s-libya.

Lasting Tensions Despite Gaddafi’s efforts to patch up relations with the West, U.S.–Libya relations remained strained in the years preceding the 2011 revolution. Gaddafi’s persistent and intense anti-­Israel position remained a source of tension, as did his close relationship with Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, one of the most fervently anti-­Amer­ican figures in the Western Hemisphere. In 2009, while speaking to students at Georgetown University, Gaddafi discussed the possible nationalization of foreign oil firms operating in Libya. U.S. energy companies active in the country, such as ConocoPhillips, Marathon, and Hess, were clearly concerned. In 2010 diplomatic relations between Tripoli and Washington were damaged following anti-­Gaddafi comments made by a U.S. State Department official; in response, Gaddafi threatened to grant Chinese and Russian energy companies preferential access to Libyan oil and gas fields over Amer­ican firms. Given the tumultuous nature of the U.S.–Libya relationship, it was no surprise that, in early 2011, Washington and NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) condemned Gaddafi’s brutal suppression of anti-­regime demonstrations and backed rebel forces. Following Gaddafi’s capture and death at the hands of anti-­regime militants in October 2011, a power vacuum quickly emerged in Libya as numerous militias and tribal groups fought to maintain control of territory and lucrative energy resources. The interim post-­Gaddafi government, known as the National Transitional Council, struggled to exert authority in the face of a fractious and chaotic collection of heavily armed fighters.

The Arms Problem Under Gaddafi, Libyan military forces scattered arms caches throughout the country, storing large amounts of assault rifles, ammunition, grenades, rockets, and other weapons in underground bunkers. During the 2011 clashes, former Libyan military personnel defected to the rebel cause, and the caches became a valuable source of firepower for anti-­Gaddafi fighters. Once liberated, the arms caches were poorly secured, and the resulting flow of weapons into the region galvanized existing political opposition currents, separatist movements, and transnational militant groups. For more information on the spread of Libyan arms after Gaddafi’s fall, see the following articles: • •

“Inside Gaddafi’s Secret Underground Arsenal,” Wired, March 3, 2011 (www.wired. co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/03/libya-­gaddafi-secret-­underground-weapons-­arsenal/ viewall). “Where Are Libya’s Anti-­aircraft Missiles?” Popular Mechanics, April 13, 2011 (www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/weapons/where-­are-libyas-­antiaircraft-­missiles-5557406).

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• •

“Smuggled Libyan Weapons Flood into Egypt,” Washington Post, October 12, 2011 (www.washingtonpost.com/world/libyan-­weapons-flooded-­egypts-black-­weaponsmarket/2011/10/12/gIQA2YQufL_story.html). “Lebanon Impounds Ship Carrying Libyan Weapons,” Reuters, April 28, 2012 (www. reuters.com/article/2012/04/28/syria-­lebanon-ship-­idUSL6E8FS1CT20120428).

The proliferation of Libyan weapons has further militarized existing political opposition and radical movements in Africa and the Middle East and allowed other violent and irregular actors to pursue their own objectives. Gaddafi’s fall was followed by a troubled political transition that remains marred by violence between rival factions and militias, resulting in a power vacuum in one of the region’s most militarized states. In early 2011, regional media reports claimed that assault rifles, ammunition, mortars, mines, and plastic explosives began crossing Libya’s borders into Algeria, Egypt, Niger, and Mali. Established illicit trafficking networks traversing the Sahel’s ancient East–West trade routes, along with associated networks that link the North to the South, have facilitated this trend. The porous borders throughout the territories in question also helped ensure that the relatively free flow of illicit trade would continue unimpeded. The increasing availability of arms has also provided aspiring militants with the opportunity to establish their own fringe factions. Weapons traffickers have also benefited from the additional sources of supply and increasingly diverse selections of arms. For more information on illicit trade routes and trafficking in the Sahel region, see “Traffickers and Terrorists: Drugs and Violent Jihad in Mali and the Wider Sahel,” published by the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office in October 2013, and available at www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/256619/ Oct_2013_Traffickers_and_Terrorists.pdf. The threat of man-­portable air-­defense systems (MANPADS) from Libya falling into the hands of al-­Qaeda or other radical Islamist militant groups has caused additional anxiety in the region. The ease of use of these weapons and their ability to strike military and commercial aircraft make them attractive to terrorists. In 2002, al-­Qaeda-linked terrorists attempted to destroy an Israeli passenger airliner leaving Mombasa, Kenya. Although the attack was unsuccessful, the vulnerability of commercial aircraft to surface-­to-air missile systems became clear. Anti-­Gaddafi forces were seen brandishing 1970s-vintage SA-­7 Russian MANPADS on television broadcasts in early 2011, and documents discovered in Libya in September 2011 indicated that Russia had provided Gaddafi with several hundred advanced—and unaccounted for—SA-­24 “Grinch” surface-­to-air missile systems. In March 2011, Chad’s president Idriss Déby claimed that Libyan MANPADS had fallen into the hands of al-­Qaeda-linked militants. Malian officials echoed Déby’s claims. A number of unconfirmed reports circulated in regional media outlets claiming that various North African regional militant groups had acquired MANPADS in 2012 and 2013. Algerian officials reported in February 2012 that they had confiscated numerous Russian surface-­to-air missile systems in Algeria’s southern regions. As reported by Reuters on March 11, 2014 (see link in accompanying resource box), the United Nations issued a report that same month claiming that MANPADS from Libyan caches had been traced to conflicts in Chad, Mali, Tunisia, the Central African Republic, and Lebanon— and that attempts had been made to funnel Libyan MANPADS to Syrian rebels engaged in a civil war with Bashar al-­Assad’s Baath regime.

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For more information on the movement of MANPADS from post-­Gaddafi Libya to other countries, see “Shoulder-­Launched Anti-­aircraft Missiles Flow Abroad from Libya: U.N.,” published by Reuters on March 11, 2014, and available at www.reuters.com/ article/2014/03/11/us-­libya-crisis-­un-idUSBREA2A1MY20140311.

Africa and the Tuareg Challenge Gaddafi was in power for over forty years, and his absence is being felt on many levels. Despite his government’s isolation from the larger Arab and Western worlds, the former Libyan army colonel actively cultivated close ties with his African neighbors to the south, using Libya’s considerable oil wealth to promote infrastructure development projects, broker peace deals, and provide employment to impoverished and disenfranchised minority groups, such as the Tuaregs. Libya’s new provisional government is unlikely—and largely unable—to continue Gaddafi’s policies toward Libya’s African neighbors, policies on which many of those neighbors had come to depend economically, politically, and socially. This, combined with the influx of Libyan small and light arms into the region and the subsequent strengthening of numerous antigovernment and separatist militant groups, clouds the security, political, and economic outlook for the Sahel and Northwest Africa. For more information on the Tuareg people, their relationship with the Malian state, and their situation within the greater Sahel region, see “Tuareg Migration: A Critical Component of Crisis in the Sahel,” published by the Migration Policy Institute on May 30, 2013, and available at www.migrationpolicy.org/article/tuareg-­migration-critical-­ component-crisis-­sahel. Gaddafi employed thousands of Tuareg mercenaries from Mali, Niger, and Chad to bolster the Libyan military while fortifying his own power base within the Libyan security apparatus. This provided a steady income for the Tuareg populations, who provided remittances back to their impoverished home communities. Following the collapse of Gaddafi’s regime, the repatriation of these generally well-­trained, heavily armed, battle-­hardened, and politicized Tuaregs remains a major challenge. In January 2012, a separatist Tuareg rebellion broke out in northern Mali. In March 2012, Malian military officers launched a coup against the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré in response to what they claimed was the mismanagement of the military response to the rebellion. By April 2012, Tuareg rebels, allied with a variety of Islamist militants, had gained control of most of northern Mali, prompting a joint French–Malian military campaign to recapture the north in January 2013. The Tuareg separatist and Islamist-­led violence in Northwest Africa and the Sahel is unlikely to recede in the near term. The desperate poverty of the region, where drought and expanding desertification have ravaged the agrarian economy and frequent kidnappings have decimated the foreign tourist trade, provides few legitimate and viable employment opportunities to Tuareg mercenaries returning from years of service—and employment—in Libya. These populations have been ignored and marginalized by their governments for decades, resulting in extreme resentment and a steady process of politicization. In late 2013 and early 2014, Tuareg and Berber tribesmen effectively shut down numerous Libyan oil fields in an effort to negotiate greater concessions and oil revenues from the Libyan government, exacerbating Libya’s post-­revolution energy production crisis.

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The flow of weapons from Libya to Tuareg separatists and the numerous radical Islamist organizations with whom they are occasionally allied ensures an extended period of instability punctuated by attacks against government facilities, military installations, and Western commercial facilities. The January 2013 attack led by al-­Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) against a natural gas plant in southern Algeria and the May 2013 suicide bombing of a French uranium mine and a military barracks in Niger by the AQIM-­affiliated Movement of Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) are harbingers of what is in store. To learn more about how Libya’s instability is having a global impact, see the following articles: •

• • •

“Nigerian Islamist Militants Return from Mali with Weapons, Skills,” Washington Post, May 31, 2013 (www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/nigerian-­islamistmilitants-­return-from-­mali-with-­weapons-skills/2013/05/31/d377579e-c628-11e29cd9-3b9a22a4000a_story.html). “President Says Libya Harbors Chadian Mercenaries,” Reuters, April 27, 2013 (www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/27/us-­chad-libya-­idUSBRE93Q08E20130427). “The Adventures of a Libyan Weapons Dealer in Syria,” Reuters, June 18, 2013 (www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/18/us-­libya-syria-­idUSBRE95H0WC20130618). “Europe Rethinks Dependence on Libyan oil,” Christian Science Monitor, February 23, 2011 (www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0223/Europe-­rethinks-dependence-­onLibyan-­oil).

An Engine for Regional Unrest Instability in countries throughout Africa and the Middle East has been exacerbated by post-­ Gaddafi Libya’s failure to adequately secure its weapons or address its other security challenges, including porous borders, a disorganized security apparatus, and ethnic and sectarian discord. As the number of militant groups in the region grows, the demand for weapons increases, bolstering the illicit trade networks that have long existed alongside legitimate trade relationships in the region. The Sahel and Northwest Africa have been focal points of arms trafficking since the 1990s, and narcotics trafficking—especially of cocaine and cannabis resin—has been on the rise since the early 2000s. The region in question is widely perceived as a global hub of narcotics trafficking that encompasses links to Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-­Saharan Africa, and Europe. Organized criminal networks—often incorporating networks of underpaid and corrupt government officials and regional security personnel—have exploited the growing instability to expand their operations, assisted by the influx of Libyan small arms into the region. Mali, which has experienced severe unrest since January 2012—including ethnic Tuareg-­led insurrections, radical Islamist insurgency, and a military-­led coup d’état—has been the most dramatic example of the region’s post-­Gaddafi volatility. The political leadership in Bamako, the country’s capital, has long disenfranchised Mali’s Tuaregs. Despite French and Malian efforts, northern Mali remains a militant stronghold. Tuareg separatist groups such as the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), the Arab Movement of Azawad (MAA), and the Islamic Movement of Azawad (MIA) exist alongside— and increasingly clash with—regional Islamist extremist groups such as AQIM, MUJAO, Ansar Dine, and others. The MIA is a splinter group of Ansar Dine, having broken from that group in January 2013 and renounced its tactics and ties to AQIM. Similarly, the MAA was

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Figure 10.2  Map of the Sahel and Northern Africa. Source: Base map from Wikimedia (Munion; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_ Sahel.png) with edits by Valerie/MTM.

formed as a secular alternative to the more Islamist-­oriented MNLA. These groups, all benefiting from the influx of weapons from liberated Libyan caches, have created an atmosphere of ongoing violence in Mali, complicating the region’s prospects for stability. In Nigeria, the radical Islamist militant group Boko Haram has steadily enhanced its capabilities since first emerging in northern Nigeria in 2002, killing hundreds of military and civilian personnel in terrorist attacks against security forces, churches, and schools, and kidnapping both Westerners and Nigerian schoolgirls. Today, Boko Haram is one of Africa’s most feared and destabilizing militant groups, thanks in part to Libyan weapons. According to reports, Boko Haram fighters participating in the 2012 Malian separatist campaign returned to Nigeria equipped with weapons obtained from Libyan arms caches. The specter of antigovernment violence also haunts Chad. The Union of Resistance Forces (UFR) threatened in March 2013 to renew its militant campaign against the Déby regime, despite having agreed to lay down its arms in 2010. There has been speculation that arms from Libya have encouraged the UFR’s saber-­rattling, and Déby—who has survived multiple coups, including an alleged attempt by two generals and two legislators to take over the country in May 2014—has accused Libya of harboring UFR rebels. Niger faces an uncertain future in the wake of the Libyan collapse. In May 2013, MUJAO militants launched a suicide bombing—the first attack of its kind in Niger—against a Nigerien army base and French uranium mine operated by Areva in northern Niger. The group claimed that the operation was designed to punish the government in Niamey, Niger’s capital, for deploying a contingent of peacekeepers to Mali. The attacks—which Niger claimed were launched from Libya—raised concerns in both Niger and Europe about the safety of Niger’s

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uranium deposits. France—which derives the majority of its electricity from nuclear power— receives about 40 percent of its uranium from Niger. Niger also has a history of rebel-­led violence directed at its uranium and oil sector. Since 2007 the Tuareg-­based Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ) has threatened to attack oil and uranium operations in the country unless Niamey provides the MNJ with a greater share of national energy revenues. MNJ has kidnapped Chinese and French workers at oil and uranium facilities, and many fear that the instability in Libya will provide the MNJ with additional resources and an increased operational capacity. Algeria has experienced a noticeable uptick of violence since 2011, including the January 2013 attack against the Tigantourine natural gas facility in Amenas in eastern Algeria, along the Algerian–Libyan border. The attack at Amenas was orchestrated by militants associated with an offshoot of AQIM known as al-­Mulathameen (The Masked Brigade), led by the smuggler and former AQIM regional commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar. Sources indicate that the weapons used in the Amenas attack originated primarily in Libya. In May 2014, in a sign of Algeria’s concern over Libya-­based militancy, Algerian military personnel joined U.S. and French special forces units in a joint anti-­terrorism mission designed to root out Islamist militancy in southern Libya. In March 2015, two Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) gunmen killed twenty tourists and one security guard in a shooting at a museum in Tunis, Tunisia. According to Tunisian officials, the militants had received weapons and training at a camp in Libya (Squires 2015). This attack underscores the reach and threat of ISIS, which spread beyond its home territory in the Middle East to occupy the Libyan coastal city of Derna in November 2014 (Banco 2014), as well as the regional threat posed by Libya’s security situation.

Instability Beyond North Africa Arab countries outside North Africa have not escaped the consequences of Libya’s instability, especially with regard to Libyan weapons. This has been of particular concern for Middle Eastern countries dealing with regional Islamist militant movements such as al-­Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and ISIS. Libyan weapons have crossed the Libya–Egypt border, bound for arms markets in the Sinai Peninsula. The increase in violence in the Sinai region has been attributed to the influx of smuggled Libyan arms. Given the instability and uncertainty that has marked Egypt’s post-­ Mubarak period, an abundance of Libyan weapons in the hands of dedicated anti-­regime forces, such as the Sinai’s Bedouin tribesmen, is unwelcome. Syria has also seen an influx of Libyan weapons. In April 2012, Lebanon impounded a ship loaded with Libyan arms bound for anti-­Assad rebels. Weapons dealers claim that Libyan munitions—including MANPADS—enter Syria via chartered flights from North Africa into neighboring countries like Turkey and Jordan. In September 2013, the Libyan prime minister, Ali Zeidan, urged Great Britain to help stem the flow of Libyan weapons to Syria, saying, “It is now an international matter and we do need assistance in order to perform this task because we are now facing a battle with international terrorism that extends from Afghanistan to Mali” (BBC News, 2013). The role of Libyan weapons in the Syrian civil war is especially troubling given the brutality and effectiveness of ISIS. In 2014 ISIS emerged as one of the most formidable radical Sunni Islamist organizations since al-­Qaeda, taking control of Mosul and other cities in the oil-­ rich northern territories of Iraq, and seriously threatening the stability of an already fragile post-­Baath government there. ISIS stands to benefit from Libyan firepower, leveraging the steady stream of smuggled North African weapons in its campaign to establish a Sunni Islamist caliphate in the region. Should Iraq’s military forces fail to effectively challenge the ISIS

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fighters, the United States threatens to be drawn once again into Iraq, or risk the establishment of a Taliban-­like government in the strategically vital Persian Gulf. As Islamist and anti-­Islamist forces fight for control of post-­Gaddafi Libya, there are signs that the country is devolving into a proxy battleground for pro- and anti-­Islamist governments throughout the Muslim world. Beginning in 2011, Libyan officials reported that Qatar, a suspected supporter of Islamist militias in Palestine and Syria, was arming Muslim Brotherhood-­ affiliated Islamist fighters in Libya. In June 2014, Khalifa Belqasim Hafter—a former Libyan general and anti-­Gaddafi activist, and the current leader of Libya’s anti-­Islamist armed movement—accused Turkey, as well as Qatar, of funding and arming the Islamist militia umbrella organization Libya Dawn. In August 2014, the deeply anti-­Islamist UAE launched airstrikes against Libya Dawn forces in Libya, allegedly using Egyptian airfields in the operations. As in Syria, pro-­Islamist countries like Turkey and Qatar are using Libya to challenge the anti-­Islamist and anti-­Muslim Brotherhood vision supported by Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and others. To learn more about the proxy war being fought between pro- and anti-­Islamist countries in Libya, see the following articles: • • •

“Libya U.N. Envoy Says Qatar Arming Islamists,” Reuters, November 18, 2011 (www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/18/us-­libya-qatar-­idUSTRE7AH15R20111118). “Hifter Accuses Turkey of Supporting Terror in Libya,” Al-­Monitor, June 24, 2014 (www.al-­monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/idiz-­haftar-accuses-­turkey-terrorism-­ libya-qatar-­erdogan.html). “Arab Nations Strike in Libya, Surprising U.S.,” New York Times, August 25, 2014 (www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/world/africa/egypt-­and-united-­arab-emirates-­said-to-­ have-secretly-­carried-out-­libya-airstrikes.html?_r=0).

The European Connection Given its position on the Mediterranean Sea and its proximity to southern Europe, Libya has a direct impact on European affairs, and it was this calculus that prompted the NATO-­led airstrikes against Gaddafi in 2011. However, the chaotic post-­Gaddafi environment has created several problems for Europe. Libya is Africa’s most oil-­abundant nation, with proven reserves of more than forty-­seven billion barrels in 2012. As a member of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), it is a key contributor to the global oil supply. In the months following the ouster of Gaddafi, Libya’s oil production dropped from 1.6 million barrels per day (BPD) to zero BPD, prompting the International Energy Agency to release sixty million barrels of oil from its global emergency fund to stabilize global oil prices (USEIA 2012). Though Libya’s production capacities have increased, major disruptions continue, as armed militias, separatists, and other discontents regularly shut down refineries and ports in order to gain political leverage and enhance control of regional resources. For more information on the 2014 Ukraine crisis, see “Ukraine in Crisis,” published by the Council on Foreign Relations on August 25, 2014, and available at www.cfr.org/ ukraine/ukraine-­crisis/p32540.

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The disruption to Libya’s oil production capacity is especially worrisome to European countries, which have come to view North Africa as an alternative to Russian and Iranian imports. Spain, France, and Italy, for instance, each received over 10 percent of their total petroleum imports from Libya under Gaddafi, and Libyan petroleum represented 22 percent of Italy’s pre-­ 2011 petroleum imports (Cala 2011). In the wake of the 2014 Ukraine crisis, dependence on Russian oil and natural gas is especially risky, throwing into sharp relief the continuing unreliability of Libyan sources. In May 2014 the price per barrel of crude oil topped $104, driven primarily by conflicts in Ukraine and Libya. Immigration is another issue in which the fortunes of Libya and Europe intersect. Libya has long been a gateway for illegal immigration into southern Europe, as African citizens and refugees attempt to cross the Mediterranean from the Libyan coast into Malta or Sicily. Whereas Gaddafi had selectively controlled this immigration in order to exert influence on Europe, the post-­Gaddafi government has threatened a “flood” of African immigrants in order to pressure the EU into taking a more active role in Libya’s security situation. In May 2014 the interim interior minister, Salah Mazek, told reporters,  With regards to illegal immigration, I am warning the world, and the European Union in particular, that if they do not shoulder the responsibility with us, the state of Libya will take a position on this matter that could facilitate the quick passage of this flood of people through Libya since God has made us a transit point for this flood. (Al Jazeera 2014) The number of illegal immigrants from Libya to Italy continued to increase throughout much of 2016, raising serious humanitarian and security concerns. For more information on illegal immigration from Libya to Italy, see “Surge in Number of Migrants Trying to Reach Italy from Libya,” published in the Guardian on February 18, 2015, and available at www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/18/thousands-­ofmigrants-­nearly-die-­in-a-­week-trying-­to-reach-­italy-from-­libya. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees maintains an Operational Portal on Refugee Situations (https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations) that offers a wide range of statistical information. It also publishes regular updates on immigration from Libya to Italy and other parts of the EU. See, for instance, “Italy Sea Arrivals Dashboard: February 2017” at this link: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/55938. Following the 2008 global financial crisis and the resulting high unemployment rates, inflation, and austerity measures that swept Europe, European public opinion is in favor of limiting immigration. This is especially true in southern Europe. A May 2014 Pew Research Center public opinion survey found that 86 percent of Greek respondents, 80 percent of Italian respondents, and 57 percent of French respondents supported anti-­immigration policies (Stokes 2014). The January 2015 attack on the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in which radical Islamist gunmen angered over the newspaper’s depictions of the Prophet Muhammad killed twelve people at the newspaper’s Paris offices, further heightened concerns over Islamist militancy in Europe. Right-­wing political groups, many of which maintain hardline anti-­immigration platforms, capitalized on the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in order to expand their influence and constituency. In the context of the rising influence of Europe’s far-­right political movements, a strong increase in illegal African immigration from Libyan shores could

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serve to further embolden Europe’s far right. This in turn could have serious consequences for the EU itself. Most of Europe’s far-­right parties are fundamentally skeptical of the EU as a concept, and with a greater level of political power they could weaken, or even dissolve, the union.

Conclusion Libya’s post-­Gaddafi situation has had both regional and global consequences, demonstrating the interconnected nature of today’s global security, economic, and social spheres. The flow of Libyan weapons to battlefields and conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East has served to galvanize militant and separatist movements, sowing violence, instability, and uncertainty around the world. Libyan fighters have traveled abroad to join transnational militant movements. ISIS has capitalized on Libya’s security and governance vacuums to spread beyond its region of origin to establish a foothold in North Africa. Furthermore, ISIS’s presence in Libya is a major security concern for European nations, who see Libya as a potential launching point for radical Islamist militant operations against targets in Europe. As a major energy producer, the disruption to Libya’s oil and natural gas exports initially contributed to a rise in global energy prices, highlighting the risks inherent in Europe’s dependence on foreign energy. However, steep declines in global oil prices in 2014 and 2015—driven by increases in North Amer­ican production capacity and decreased demand in China and India, among other factors—threaten to further destabilize Libya. Libya’s dependence on oil revenues makes it highly vulnerable to changes in world energy markets, as global fluctuations complicate the local Libyan situation by exacerbating economic and security pressures on the ground. The threat of skyrocketing levels of illegal immigration to Europe via Libya complicates the European political calculus at a time when far-­right anti-­immigration parties are on the rise. Especially in the wake of the attacks against the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris and the subsequent rise in influence among right-­wing political movements throughout Europe, ongoing illegal immigration from Libya could serve to further empower European right-­wing movements and significantly impact the political landscape throughout the EU. The 2016 United Kingdom EU membership referendum, also known as the Brexit vote, is a stark example of this trend: studies indicate that a significant portion of the voters supporting the successful campaign for Britain’s exit from the EU were motivated by an anti-­immigrant worldview (Johnston 2017). Major shifts in this political landscape could, in turn, impact diplomatic, economic, and security relations between Europe and the United States. From pariah state to source of international uncertainty, Libya has undergone a unique, and difficult, transformation, the full consequences of which have yet to be seen.

Note Portions of this case study were originally published in Helios Global’s World Trends Watch (in the article titled “Small Arms and Light Weapons Proliferation from Libya Threatens Stability in the Sahel and Northwest Africa,” www.heliosglobalinc.com/world-­trends-watch/?p=232) and have been reproduced with the permission of Helios Global, Inc. Copyright 2013 Helios Global, Inc.

References and Further Research Al Jazeera. 2014. “Libya Threatens EU over African Immigrants.” May 11. www.aljazeera.com/news/ middleeast/2014/05/libya-­threatens-eu-­over-african-­immigrants-201451151638149598.html. Banco, Erin. 2014. “ISIS Establishes Stronghold in Derna, Libya,” International Business Times, November 10. www.ibtimes.com/isis-­establishes-stronghold-­derna-libya-­1721425. BBC News. 2013. “Libya Wants UK Help to Halt Syria Arms Smuggling.” September 17. www.bbc. com/news/uk-­politics-24129896.

132   Brandon Gentry Cala, Andres. 2011. “Europe Rethinks Dependence on Libyan Oil.” Christian Science Monitor, February 23. www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0223/Europe-­rethinks-dependence-­on-Libyan-­oil. Chivvis, Christopher S., Keith Crane, Peter Mandaville, and Jeffrey Martini. 2012. Libya’s Post-­Qaddafi Transition: The Nation-­Building Challenge. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. www.rand.org/ pubs/research_reports/RR129.html. Hilsum, Lindsey. 2012. Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution. New York: Penguin. Johnston, Ian. 2017. “Brexit: Anti-­immigrant Prejudice Major Factor in Deciding Vote, Study Finds.” Independent, June 21. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-­racism-immigrant-­prejudicemajor-­factor-leave-­vote-win-­study-a7801676.html. Squires, Nick. 2015. “Tunisian Museum Gunmen Went to Libya for Weapons Training.” Telegraph, March 20. Stokes, Bruce. 2014. “Key Takeaways from the European Union Survey.” Pew Research Center, May 12. www.pewresearch.org/fact-­tank/2014/05/12/5-key-­takeaways-from-­the-european-­union-survey/. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2018. Syria Regional Refugee Response. http://data2. unhcr.org/en/situations/syria. USEIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration). 2012. “Country Analysis Briefs: Libya.” Washington, DC: USEIA. www.eia.gov/countries/analysisbriefs/cabs/Libya/pdf. Vandewalle, Dirk J. 1998. Libya Since Independence: Oil and State-­Building. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

11

The Anti-­Apartheid Movement in the Western World: Segregation, Revolution, and the Creation of a Global Civil Society R. Joseph Parrott From 1948 until its collapse in 1994, the practice of apartheid in South Africa became a matter of international importance. Meaning “separateness” in Afrikaans—the language of most governing whites in the country—apartheid’s policies of strict segregation developed in opposition to global trends of egalitarianism, decolonization, and popular self-­determination. In the increasingly integrated postwar world, new information networks, supranational organizations, and personal linkages expressed deep dissatisfaction with the policy. The nonwhite majority of South Africa used the slow rise of global approbation to weaken the minority government that relied economically, politically, and militarily on foreign allies. The growth of this international solidarity against apartheid complemented a domestic revolution that championed more representative, democratic governance. The isolation of South Africa at the international level—and the important effects this had on domestic policy—demonstrates the increasing interconnectedness of the globe and the weakening of traditionally sacrosanct concepts of sovereignty. That discrete popular movements helped build this international political consensus also illustrates the decentralization of foreign policymaking and hints at the emerging contours of a global civil society.

Segregation in a Liberal Era When apartheid became the governing philosophy of South Africa in 1948, it drew on an ingrained history of racial segregation. Afrikaners are the descendants of the Dutch settlers that first colonized South Africa beginning in the mid-­seventeenth century, but the British Empire dominated the country for much of its modern history. These European settlements expanded even though African peoples already occupied the land. Though Africans—including the famed Shaka Zulu—resisted foreign encroachment, the discovery of gold and diamonds in the last quarter of the nineteenth century fueled European expansion. A desire for cheap labor to work the mines, ideas of racial superiority, and insecurity led the independent Afrikaner states and British colonies to establish regulations on African travel and professional opportunities, though the severity of these laws differed from region to region. After Britain unified South Africa and granted it autonomy within the empire in 1910, the minority white government continued to refine the system by integrating the various regional laws, creating “native reserves,” and controlling African access to skilled jobs. Enforcement varied from administration to administration, as did effectiveness. This disjointed system showed its limitations during World War II, when it failed to manage the inflow of black South Africans into the cities. The quick pace of change unnerved white urbanites fearful of

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increased African militancy and angered Afrikaner farmers who were losing access to seasonal labor. These groups expressed their concern at the ballot box in 1948. The Afrikaner National Party (NP) that took office in that year nationalized and codified existing laws into the single system of apartheid, one of the most extensive forms of segregation the world has ever seen. The NP had long used racial appeals to gain support from white voters, and it parlayed postwar fears of African equality, economic depression, and communist subversion into over forty years of uninterrupted rule. After its victory in 1948, the new government passed laws aimed at separating the races into discrete physical, social, political, and economic enclaves. Regulations under apartheid controlled where people of African, Asian (mostly Indian), and “colored” (mixed race) heritage could live, as well as what jobs were available to them. The government banned intermarriage and created wholly separate, generally unequal education systems. It grouped citizens into racial “nations,” forcibly relocating Africans into reserves and townships according to ethnic identities that had receded in importance for many city dwellers. It also classified blacks laboring in industrial and mining sectors as “migrant” workers, due to their supposed membership in separate tribal nations, and forced them to live in barracks. Mandatory passbooks for all nonwhite men and women working in urban areas controlled movement and independence. Decrees like the Suppression of Communism Act provided the government with arbitrary powers of detention and imprisonment to be used against any individual or party who challenged the unjust laws. This deep government infiltration into the lives of its citizens produced two main ways of life within the state: a self-­ consciously modern, economically prosperous white culture, and an often hidden, deeply impoverished black subculture that existed in the countryside and on the fringes of cities. South Africa’s decision to reinforce its system of racial discrimination directly challenged broader global trends encouraging greater domestic equality and international parity between nations. The Cold War pitted East versus West in an ideological competition over which system could best address the needs of citizens, including the just distribution of political and economic power. In many countries around the world, minorities took advantage of this context to demand greater control of their own affairs and equal participation in national life. In the United States, this call for inclusion was reflected in the civil rights movement, while native rights campaigns emerged in Latin America, Australia, and even the Nordic countries. At the same time, decolonization transformed the world map. Asians, Africans, and Latin Amer­icans demanded political and economic independence from Europe, while the emergence of influential postcolonial states like Egypt, China, and India challenged the bipolarity of the Cold War. These states supported national self-­determination and majority rule without demanding adherence to either capitalism or communism. This new “Third World” or “tricontinental” bloc provided influential international allies to disenfranchised populations in countries like South Africa. In this era of multilevel challenges to the traditional dominance of Europe and its cultural descendants, apartheid’s consolidation of white privilege served as a startling anachronism. For additional information on apartheid, consult these resources: • • •

Michigan State University’s Overcoming Apartheid Project (http://overcomingapartheid. msu.edu/) provides introductory essays accompanied by digitized maps, videos, photos, documents, and oral histories. The BBC has archived a number of programs on daily life under apartheid originally broadcast from the 1950s until the 1990s (www.bbc.co.uk/archive/apartheid/). The website of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg (www.apartheidmuseum. org/resources) has educator and student introductions, as well as a short overview of apartheid.

Anti-Apartheid in the Western World   135

The African National Congress and Resistance to Apartheid Not surprisingly, many in South Africa did not accept apartheid willingly. As had occurred across the colonial world, organizations representing the political interests of disenfranchised peoples challenged discriminatory government policies. Indigenous Africans, the mixed-­race community, Indians, and even liberal whites used existing organizations and formed new ones to express their objections to the laws. The most important of these groups was the African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress. Relatively quiescent for much of its first thirty years, the ANC became more active under the leadership of the liberal A. B. Xuma, though it continued to believe it could work with the pre-­NP government. In the 1940s, the dynamic membership of the party’s Youth League, including Nelson Mandela and his future law partner Oliver Tambo, moved the heretofore moderate party to adopt broad-­based confrontational politics. They were partly inspired by the Indian community’s tradition of nonviolent protest, first cultivated by Mahatma Gandhi during his residence in South Africa at the turn of the century, which reached new heights in the two-­ year passive resistance campaign of 1946. In response to the NP’s 1948 electoral victory, the Youth League effectively took leadership of the ANC and implemented its own Programme of Action that challenged the government through boycotts, strikes, and acts of civil disobedience. For more information on nonviolent protest in South Africa, the ANC, and the Freedom Charter consult South African History Online (SAHO) (www.sahistory.org.za/), a nonprofit collaborative effort that aims to build a nonpartisan “people’s history” of South Africa, primarily for secondary school students. The website has articles, timelines, and documents on many topics, including an extensive section on the development, membership, and activities of the ANC (www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/african-­nationalcongress-­anc). SAHO also has articles on the development of passive resistance in the Indian community and throughout South Africa (www.sahistory.org.za/article/passive-­resistancesouth-­africa). The ANC’s official website (www.anc.org.za/the-­freedom-charter) provides a copy of the Freedom Charter and a short history of its development. The goal was to replace the minority government with a multiracial polity. During the ANC-­ led Defiance Campaign, thousands of Africans and Indians embraced civil disobedience by refusing to adhere to apartheid statutes, notably the invasive pass laws requiring nonwhite South Africans to carry government-­issued IDs at all times. The mass protests did not overturn apartheid, but they helped launch a new era of multiracial cooperation. In 1955 the ANC president, Albert Luthuli, helped formalize the coalition of anti-­apartheid groups in the Congress Alliance, which included the South African Indian Congress and the underground South African Communist Party (SACP), among others. The coalition demanded equal rights, land redistribution, fair wages, and universal access to education in its foundational document, the Freedom Charter. Though the Congress Alliance’s mass strikes and boycotts proved effective at garnering national and international attention to its demands, the nonracial organizing was not universally popular among activists and inspired new groups to adopt similar tactics in pursuit of different ends. The most successful was the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a black-­ nationalist splinter of the ANC formed in 1959. While the PAC competed against the ANC for followers in the townships, their shared commitment to mass disobedience advanced some common goals. The rivalry placed even greater pressure on the NP to abandon apartheid.

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Rather than accommodate these popular demands, the minority government of South Africa responded violently. While the NP attempted to silence dissidents through harassment, arrests, and physical assault, protests continued unabated. In 1960, one large demonstration against passbooks in Sharpeville, a township south of the mining capital of Johannesburg, ended in the death of sixty-­nine protesters. Africans launched mass demonstrations in solidarity with Sharpe­ville and to express their anger at police brutality. In response, frightened policymakers passed even more draconian laws to maintain control. They declared a state of emergency and banned both the ANC and PAC. Forced underground, much of the ANC membership came to believe that the strategy of nonviolent protest had run its course, despite the objections of President Luthuli (who received a Nobel Peace Prize that year). In 1961 militant ANC youth formed Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation, or MK) under Nelson Mandela to match force with force. Mandela traveled extensively in the free countries of Africa, acquiring weapons and training for the armed struggle until his arrest and imprisonment in 1962. Armed resistance to apartheid would have to wait. The indefinite detention of nationalists like Mandela, and the executions of others, effectively ended ANC activity in South Africa for over a decade, but the party continued to seek international support in exile. A handful of leaders, including Oliver Tambo, had escaped to Europe, the Americas, and independent parts of Africa, where they worked to continue the liberation struggle through four strategies, or “pillars”: mass mobilization in South Africa, armed insurrection, the creation of a viable political underground, and an international campaign to isolate the apartheid state. The government’s ruthless and effective response to African dissent

Figure 11.1  ANC Leader Oliver Tambo (Right), Exiled in Europe, Meets with Prime Minister Dries van Agt of the Netherlands at his Official Residence in the Hague in 1981. Source: Wikimedia/Rob C. Croes, Anefo. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Premier_Van_ Agt_(CDA)_heeft_Oliver_Tambo,_voorzitter_van_het_African_National_Congress,_ontvangen_in_het_ Catshuis.jpg.

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at the beginning of the 1960s had made these first three strategies nearly impossible to accomplish in the short term. The ANC had little access to the people of South Africa, and attempts by the MK to infiltrate the country from neighboring states failed repeatedly. Yet, in protecting its way of life through violence, South Africa undermined the already tenuous legitimacy of apartheid and provided the Congress Alliance with the political fodder it needed to find allies abroad. Over the next two decades, Tambo and his compatriots would build an international network of sympathizers among nations that had repudiated the racialism central to the NP agenda.

Globalizing the Struggle The international arena would become the location of the anti-­apartheid movement’s early victories, but success was slow in coming. From its earliest years, the ANC had looked to the global sphere to place moral and political pressure on the South African government. There had been some unsuccessful appeals to the League of Nations early in the century, but progress did not occur until the announcement of apartheid in 1948. By then, the international system had become more receptive to black South African demands for equality. The United Nations (UN) had enshrined the ideal of self-­determination in its charter in 1945, while decolonization spread rapidly after India’s achievement of independence in 1947. Moreover, the ideological nature of the Cold War rivalry helped undermine traditional concepts of sovereignty, making internal concerns of international importance. Western governments feared that rejecting calls for popular governance and equal development could easily invite Soviet influence, since the Communist state positioned itself as the champion of colonized and marginalized people. As decolonization and the civil rights movement pushed Europeans and Amer­icans to address problems of segregation and racial inequality at home, they expected their allies to follow suit in their own countries. South African apartheid challenged these liberalizing trends, even as the NP aligned itself with the anticommunism of the Western alliance. Although foreign governments expressed concern about apartheid, most hesitated to involve themselves in the domestic affairs of autonomous states. The traditional importance of sovereignty outweighed moral or social concerns. This was especially true within the Western alliance, which considered South Africa an important if sometimes difficult ally in its Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union. The reliably anticommunist NP government guaranteed countries like the United States access to valuable minerals and provided a bulwark against the rise of communism among disenfranchised Africans. Even the Soviet Union hesitated at first to provide much more than rhetorical support to the anti-­apartheid cause, fearing an escalation of tensions with Western states. Only the former colonies of Asia and Africa—such as India, Algeria, Ghana, and Tanzania—provided meaningful aid. India became a vocal champion of nonwhite South Africans and the ANC in the UN, while Algeria and Tanzania provided sanctuary, military training, and supplies after 1960. Numerous other countries—including Egypt, Zambia, and China—helped the ANC and PAC, but these former colonies lacked the economic and political influence to place meaningful pressure on South Africa. They did, however, succeed in excluding South Africa from international organizations such as the International Labour Organization, the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA), and the British Commonwealth. To place economic and political pressure on the South African government, the ANC needed to persuade the government’s major economic, military, and diplomatic partners— notably the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany—to support its aims. As a party in exile, the stateless ANC was not defined by national borders and did not accept official Western recalcitrance. The party used new mass communication methods, increasingly affordable means of international travel, and the supranational sponsorship of the UN to

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develop ­contacts with civil society groups such as churches, European anticolonialists, and ethnic minorities in Western states. Solidarity arose in Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere, fueled in part by the anti-­apartheid movement’s natural affinity with domestic campaigns for civil rights and poverty reduction. Religious humanitarian groups flocked to the cause, but the ANC exiles pushed for the creation of broader international solidarity. Beginning in the 1950s, grassroots allies placed democratic pressures on their governments to support desegregation and self-­determination abroad. Noteworthy organizations in this early period included the Amer­ican Committee on Africa (ACOA, originally called Amer­ icans for South African Resistance) and the Anti-­Apartheid Movement (AAM) in the United Kingdom. Though often small, they created the foundations for larger movements by illustrating the realities of apartheid, publicizing the multiracial platforms of parties like the ANC, and urging local action to isolate the NP government. British and Swedish groups also had some success launching boycotts of South African goods. Solidarity faltered after South Africa banned dissident parties, but the ANC continued to raise its profile in Europe and North America. Over the next two decades, interest in the anti-­apartheid struggle grew. After the radical year of 1968, a new generation turned their attention to the ongoing problem of global racial inequality illustrated most clearly by the colonial and white dominated states of southern Africa. The deeply unpopular Vietnam War broke down Cold War barriers against supporting leftist nationalist parties in the developing world, opening the door for the ANC and SACP to find new allies. These new activists developed relations with established organizations, pulling centrist and religious groups in more radical directions. Movements in Sweden and the Netherlands, outside and at the fringes of the Cold War alliance, proved particularly successful in organizing against colonialism and minority rule in southern Africa. They demanded that businesses in their countries cease operations in South Africa, South West Africa (Namibia), Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and the Portuguese colonies (Mozambique, Angola, and the West African state of Guinea-­Bissau). Boycotts targeted South African exports such as oranges, as well as key foreign imports like oil, that literally fueled the apartheid economy, while voters and a handful of politicians introduced the cause of African self-­determination into mainstream political campaigns. Socialist and religious parties in Western governments took notice of the popular outrage. Sweden began providing humanitarian aid to liberation movements in 1970, and to the ANC in 1973. The Netherlands and the other Nordic countries followed suit, as did major international organizations like the World Council of Churches. Governments—especially those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—still hesitated to cut ties with the South African government, but some were committing themselves to the cause of liberation. For those seeking more information on the ANC and South African anti-­apartheid organizing, the following resources are helpful: • • •

The South African Democracy Education Trust has produced a massive scholarly overview of the struggle against apartheid and made some articles available online, at www.sadet.co.za/road_democracy.html. The ANC has reproduced a number of documents on its website, stretching from the early 1900s until the present. To access, go to www.anc.org.za/index.php, select “documents,” and then “collections.” The Digital Innovation South Africa project (www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/) has digitized original documents, music, videos, poetry, oral histories, and historical studies on modern South Africa.

Anti-Apartheid in the Western World   139

The United States also saw increased interest in South Africa, but not to the level of Europe. Students protesting the war in Vietnam on college campuses came to see the official alliance with the NP government as part of a single imperial policy championing Amer­ican interests at the expense of nonwhite peoples. African Amer­icans, inspired by the Pan-­African nationalism of the Black Power movement, organized mass protests that attracted thousands of supporters nationwide and contributed tens of thousands of dollars to African revolutionaries. These very public displays attracted the attention of elected officials in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress, who began collaborating with community activists. This new, broad front of religious, radicals, blacks, and legislators put pressure on multinational companies to end business operations in southern Africa, on institutions to divest from such firms, and on governments to end cooperation with the NP. The Amer­ican movement had expanded since the 1950s, but it lacked the influence of those in Europe. It could not yet compel the federal government to back liberation movements. By the 1970s, there was a growing knowledge and interest in apartheid waiting to be fully mobilized. What the international movement lacked was a political party actively waging a war against inequality in South Africa that could provide a focus for foreign activities.

Soweto and the Revival of the South African Revolution The spark needed to reenergize both the domestic and international anti-­apartheid campaigns appeared in 1976 in the township of Soweto, located outside Johannesburg. On June 16, an estimated 20,000 students left their classrooms to attend a mass protest at a nearby stadium. They objected to the recent decree forcing blacks to learn Afrikaans in schools, which they overwhelmingly associated with the apartheid policy of the NP. The students’ decision to exit their classrooms would have global implications when the government decided to suppress the demonstration, providing a stark example of the violence needed to sustain apartheid. The youth protest in Soweto emerged from the Black Consciousness movement, a popular movement formed in the early 1960s. Led by the charismatic Steve Biko, it drew on an array of international intellectuals to articulate a theory of resistance that involved both political and psychological change. Amer­ican Black Power thinkers such as Malcolm X, anticolonial writers like the Caribbean-­born Algerian revolutionary Frantz Fanon, and African socialists such as Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere inspired Biko to argue that apartheid dominated the majority population by devaluing African identity. He felt blacks needed to reassert their racial dignity through cultural renovation and black-­led political movements. Only this could achieve real equality. Privileging Afrikaans over local African languages in schools, Biko and others argued, was the latest instance of marginalizing black identity. Beginning in late April 1976, student strikers influenced by the Black Consciousness movement demanded a return to the mixture of English and local languages for instruction. As students gathered for a nonviolent protest on June 16, they were confronted by police, who fired into the crowd. Violence escalated as township residents attacked police stations, administration buildings, and state operated beer halls—all daily symbols of government control. Police quelled the rebellion with lethal force. By the next day, at least 176 people had been killed, with some estimates topping 500 deaths. The deep social tensions that inspired the Soweto riots combined with other South African trends to reinvigorate the struggle against apartheid over the next decade. The comparatively quiet period of the 1960s coincided with a rise in the level of economic prosperity among blacks, but a drop in global gold prices and the rising cost of oil in the early 1970s pushed South Africa into a recession. Africans and other minorities were particularly affected. Beginning in 1973, black labor unions had staged widespread protests in manufacturing centers. Amid this general unrest, the student riots and repressive police response inspired major work

140   R. Joseph Parrott

strikes and rebellions in other townships. By the end of 1976, the government admitted that more than 500 people had been killed across the country, though this number was likely much higher. The Black Consciousness movement shattered the relative peace of the 1960s, but it lacked strong coordination. As such, it was unable to achieve meaningful cooperation with unions, hampering the creation of a single protest structure. It suffered an additional blow with news of Steve Biko’s death in September 1977. Under government orders not to travel because of his political actions, the thirty-­year-old activist was detained by police on his way back from a political-­organizing trip and brutally interrogated to the point that he lapsed into a fatal coma. South African authorities ineffectually claimed he had died from a hunger strike, but Biko was one of many anti-­apartheid agitators to perish in official custody during this period. Though deprived of an effective leader, the riots of 1976 combined with the galvanizing death of Biko to revive a militant activism and begin building unity among youth, labor, and other elements of society hostile to the apartheid government. This opposition increased as the NP reaffirmed its commitment to apartheid. The country’s reliance on cheap African labor prevented a turn to mechanization and innovation in the industrial sectors, slowing South Africa’s industrial modernization and hurting competitiveness (partially exacerbated by the impact of international boycotts and sanctions). A general economic malaise settled over the country. Daily hardships helped lower the barriers for participation in domestic revolts. In an attempt to win the hearts and minds of blacks, the government eased certain labor and movement controls. These measures fueled uncontrolled growth in some cities and empowered black labor unions, which inspired further protests. Government attempts to appease domestic and international criticism included the creation of a tricameral legislature that gave control of education and health matters to Indian and colored groups, while continuing to marginalize black Africans. The majority population rejected this attempt at papering over apartheid, launching coalitions to protest NP policies. The United Democratic Front (UDF ) formed around the multiracial, class-­inclusive Freedom Charter championed by the ANC. In contrast, the National Forum reflected the same racial distrust that divided the PAC from the ANC in the 1950s, incorporating Black Consciousness and workers movements into a black-­led leftist organization. These confederations united myriad local protest groups in order to increase their mobilizing ability and political voice. They succeeded, even if unanimity was not achieved. Growing resistance in the 1980s provided the necessary context for armed rebellion against apartheid. The success of the UDF and its “charterist” principles led to renewed popular support for the exiled ANC. The MK could now infiltrate South Africa from bases in the neighboring free states of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Attacks on infrastructure and the Defence Force headquarters in South Africa’s capital of Pretoria announced the ANC’s return to the population and the wider world. Youthful violence engulfed townships, targeting authorities and sometimes devolving into mob justice against Africans suspected of collaboration. The government responded with greater police presence in many areas, toleration of antirevolutionary vigilantes, and support to ethnic organizations antagonistic to the ANC, such as the Inkatha Freedom Party. By 1987 a violent stalemate prevailed in South Africa, where the government had lost the ability to suppress dissent, but advocates of “people power” and majority rule did not have sufficient force to achieve a change in government.

The Success of the International Anti-­Apartheid Movement The Soweto uprisings and the subsequent popular rebellion against apartheid reinvigorated the global solidarity movement. The ANC’s African, Asian, and Eastern European allies provided much of the military aid needed to wage war, but the 1970s and 1980s would witness a global crusade against apartheid. Soweto occurred at an important moment in the African struggle for

Anti-Apartheid in the Western World   141

self-­determination. The year before, Portugal, the last European empire, had granted independence to Angola and Mozambique after more than a decade of fighting. These events and the Amer­ican intervention against the Communist government of Angola focused international attention on the region. Organizations like the AAM, ACOA, and the Swedish Africa Groups took advantage of the moment to educate their countries on the problems of southern Africa, and of apartheid in particular. When news of the Soweto protests reached international audiences, people were outraged by the deaths of peacefully protesting students. Established anticolonial groups like the influential Dutch Angola Comité shifted their focus to concentrate almost exclusively on apartheid, while new organizations, like the African Amer­ican lobbying group TransAfrica, formed. Even politicians began to rally around the cause, as evidenced in the creation of the transnational Association of Western European Parliamentarians Against Apartheid in 1984. A global movement was beginning to emerge that united popular Western movements with the communist and developing worlds. Occasionally, ideological, racial, and personal rivalries would hamper international solidarity, as it had the domestic anti-­apartheid struggle, but hundreds of discrete organizations cooperated to isolate the NP government. Rallies, concerts, and marches against apartheid attracted tens of thousands across Europe and the Americas. Mass movements now had the power to demand that multinational companies cease operations in South Africa and that governments end their support for the NP government. During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of multinational corporations attempted to assuage popular criticism by adopting a corporate code of conduct known as the Sullivan Principles. These businesses claimed to benefit black South Africans by adhering to seven promises, including integration of facilities, fair compensation, inclusion of nonwhites in management, and the improvement of the quality of life of workers. Such practices informed a larger policy of “constructive engagement” championed by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which claimed that domestic reform was more likely to occur by increasing South Africa’s ties with democratic, multiracial countries like the United States. Rejecting such compromises, the ANC believed that any economic or political exchanges reinforced apartheid, and that only complete isolation would coerce the NP to abandon segregation. This debate often pitted popular movements and parliamentary/legislative coalitions against the executive branches and cabinets, with the latter pair rejecting calls for sanctions. Swaying reluctant governments to back forceful isolation of apartheid required a concentrated effort to raise the issue from the grassroots to the national level. In the United States, for example, activists linked anti-­apartheid organizing with local issues such as civil rights, union organizing, corporate responsibility movements, and religious humanitarianism. Idealistic students rallied to the cause. They applied pressure through major media campaigns and public protests, forcing universities and cities to divest from companies operating in South Africa and boycott imports from the country. These small victories attracted the attention of congressional representatives, who proposed sanction laws. The ANC and exiled African nationalists supported these efforts and sometimes participated directly in organizing. TransAfrica and the Washington Office on Africa lobbied the U.S. Congress. In 1986 the legislature finally passed laws banning trade and investment with South Africa. As had happened in the Netherlands shortly before, the executive branch under President Ronald Reagan vetoed the bill, but Congress succeeded in establishing the sanctions law with an overwhelming majority vote. The United States was not the first Western country to pass economic sanctions (Sweden had ended new investments as early as 1979, with a number of countries following), but it represented a major victory for the anti-­apartheid movement. Other previously reluctant nations followed the United States, notably Japan and some European nations. The global anti-­apartheid movement had effectively isolated South Africa and its minority government.

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For additional information on the international anti-­apartheid struggle, consult these resources: •

• • •

Michigan State University’s African Activist Archive (http://africanactivist.msu. edu/) has thousands of documents, photos, and posters on Amer­ican and European organizing around South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and the former Portuguese colonies. The Anti-­Apartheid Movement in the United Kingdom (www.aamarchives.org/) provides documents and interviews. The Nordic Africa Institute in Sweden (www.liberationafrica.se/) has produced a number of books on regional anti-­apartheid organizing, available as PDFs for free. The website of Connie Field’s seven-­episode series Have You Heard From Johannesburg (www.clarityfilms.org/haveyouheardfromjohannesburg) includes an interactive timeline and biographies of interviewees.

This international isolation helped break the impasse between the domestic revolution and NP government. Sanctions deepened economic difficulties, and a long-­standing international arms embargo—strengthened in the United States by the 1986 law—prevented the South African authorities from using the latest technology to combat ANC and popular attacks. Under the relatively moderate premier F. W. de Klerk, the NP made political concessions in an attempt to retain power. De Klerk eliminated a number of laws used to preserve apartheid, but the most dramatic moves were the legalizing of the ANC and the release of Nelson Mandela after three decades of imprisonment. The party hoped these concessions would ease international pressure and convince moderate blacks to abandon the armed campaigns. The NP gained fleeting support for its policies, but liberalization proved far more beneficial to Mandela, the ANC’s newly elected president. Having become an international icon while imprisoned, Mandela was able to unite the South African movement behind a peaceful strategy and influence foreign allies. Mandela, de Klerk, and a few key lieutenants in their parties launched negotiations and kept them going through a tumultuous period in the 1990s. Finally, in 1994, the two parties came to an agreement in the town of Kempton Park that produced a new constitution. A transitional council would oversee the creation of a new democratic state. A Government of National Unity comprising all parties receiving sufficient votes for the National Assembly would rule for the first five years. A Bill of Rights permanently guaranteed racial, gender, and sexual equality, while nine new provinces replaced the conglomeration of black homelands. The creation of the new democratic state effectively ended apartheid after more than forty years.

Conclusion Apartheid collapsed in the face of domestic opposition with strong international support. The NP’s policy of total segregation clashed with a global shift toward greater equality and democratic governance. Such a domestic policy would not have invited close scrutiny in earlier eras, but this was not the case in the unique circumstances of the postwar world. The deep interconnectedness of the international system, the expansion of multinational corporations, and the creation of supranational organizations like the UN placed new limitations on the sovereign powers of individual states. South Africa depended economically, militarily, and politically on allies to maintain domestic stability. The shift toward more progressive racial policies threatened those linkages and cast South Africa as a pariah state. Resistance groups like the ANC

Anti-Apartheid in the Western World   143

were able to use international outrage against apartheid to fund their rebellions and weaken the minority government. In Europe and the Americas, this pressure emerged only slowly at the governmental level, even as populations rallied around the ANC and the anti-­apartheid movement. The Swedish historian Håkan Thörn (2009) has referred to the development of this transnational consensus as the first manifestation of a global civil society, in which revolutionaries, activist networks, multinational corporations, and states negotiate in a common political arena. Official policy actively pressured South Africa only after grassroots movements mobilized their power as constituents and consumers to demand that elected representatives and powerful companies reflect popular opinion. This slow process required the ANC to actively cooperate with discrete foreign groups like ACOA, AAM, and others. Patient organizing, extensive travel, and informational campaigns were the tools that helped dismantle apartheid. International isolation complemented the armed and political struggles of the ANC and South African dissenters, convincing the NP authorities to seek accommodation. In so doing, the global anti-­apartheid movement effectively pushed South Africa into accepting multiracial and democratic governance. South African apartheid claimed the right to segregate its population on the basis of national sovereignty, but it could not challenge global norms within an international system that included multinational corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and transnational movements alongside sovereign states.

References and Further Research Allen, John. 2008. Desmond Tutu: Rabble Rouser for Peace, the Authorized Biography. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books. Borstelmann, Thomas. 1993. Apartheid’s Reluctant Uncle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davenport, Rodney, and Christopher Saunders. 2000. South Africa: A Modern History. 5th ed. London: Macmillan. Dubow, Saul. 2012. South Africa’s Struggle for Human Rights. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Dubow, Saul. 2014. Apartheid, 1948–1994. New York: Oxford University Press. Ellis, Stephen. 2013. External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960–1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gerhart, Gail M. 1979. Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Glaser, Clive. 2013. The ANC Youth League. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Guha, Ramachandra. 2014. Gandhi Before India. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hostetter, David. 2009. Movement Matters: Amer­ican Antiapartheid Activism and the Rise of Multicultural Politics. New York: Routledge. Mandela, Nelson. 1994. Long Walk to Freedom. New York: Little, Brown. Nesbitt, Francis Njubi. 2004. Race for Sanctions: African Amer­icans Against Apartheid, 1946–1994. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Sellström, Tor. 1999–2002. Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa. 2 vols. Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. South African Democracy Education Trust, ed. 2008. The Road to Democracy in South Africa. Vol. 3, International Solidarity. Pretoria, South Africa: UNISA Press. Thörn, Håkan. 2009. Anti-­Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Worden, Nigel. 2007. The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Apartheid, Democracy. 4th ed. Oxford: Wiley-­Blackwell.

12

The Treaty of Waitangi and the Waitangi Tribunal: Globalization and Decolonization in New Zealand Sean Killen The concept of globalization in both popular and scholarly debates has become just capacious enough to encompass everything and to mean nothing. Discussions of globalization usually describe the world as “globalized,” as though a destination had been reached; interconnectedness is often conflated with integration. These discussions sometimes invoke a concomitant newness and either the threat or the opportunity presented by a globalized world order (see Held and McGrew 2003). The political, economic, and legal questions for which globalization has become the answer are real enough, and too important for careless treatment. The supranational facet of contemporary economic and political arrangements and debates over the allowable reach of international institutions has raised new questions about classic interpretations of international relations and law. As seen in the news, international migrants can be designated by states as refugees with legitimate reasons to flee political repression and violence, or as “illegal immigrants” who are returned to their countries of origin. International trade agreements can be viewed by citizens of affected countries as a boon to economic activity or as a means of moving jobs to locations with lower wages and fewer labor protections so as to enrich multinational corporations. The international legal regime dealing with war and peace has been reshaped since September 11, 2001, by fears of global terrorism. A common argument about globalization is that this process has eroded the power of nation-­states, but state power is evident in all of these examples, even if states must contend with vibrant non-­state actors both at home and abroad. The supposed newness and the variable reach and speed of the process of globalization are ripe for the specificity of historical inquiry (see Hopkins 2002, Hopkins 2006). Decolonization, the consequent creation of new states, and Britain’s turn toward Europe, starting with its 1961 attempted entry into the European Economic Community (EEC), have prompted questions about sovereignty and political representation that have demanded new and revised national histories (see Pocock 2005). These changes impact the former British settler colony of New Zealand and the relationship between the current white population and the indigenous Māori population profoundly. An examination of the Māori’s place in contemporary New Zealand society offers fertile ground for expanding our understanding of the relationships among four sociohistorical developments that have impacted that society: the expansion of the ideological framework for human rights, and of international institutional mechanisms for considering human rights claims; attempts by the New Zealand government to provide redress for historical Māori grievances; revisionist interpretations of New Zealand’s history in the wake of Britain’s turn toward Europe and away from its imperial past;

WAITANGI TREATY AND TRIBUNAL   145

and Māori involvement in the creation of a transnational articulation of the idea of self-­ determination in the form of indigenous rights.

Changing Ideological Frameworks The Treaty of Waitangi Act of 1975 created the Waitangi Tribunal, “to make recommendations on claims relating to the practical application of the Treaty [of Waitangi of 1840] and to determine whether certain matters are inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty.” The Tribunal’s purpose, as stated on its website, is to make “recommendations on claims brought by Māori relating to actions or omissions of the Crown, which breach the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi.” Both statements imply a complicated relationship between the Māori and the New Zealand government. Are the Māori citizens or sovereigns? The initial relationship between the British and the Māori was one of sovereign equals. Captain William Hobson signed the Treaty of Waitangi with Māori tribal leaders on February 6, 1840. The British Parliament had ruled that the treaty was necessary because the Māori had attained sovereignty after British Resident James Busby drafted and signed with Māori chiefs the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand in 1835 (see Brookfield 2006). Competing understandings of the status of the Māori under the treaty and concomitant land-­rights disputes caused significant problems between settlers and the Māori almost immediately. These early conflicts laid the foundation for relations between white New Zealanders and the Māori. It was an unstable foundation supported by two pillars, one shaky and the other eroding.

Figure 12.1  The Ceremonial Meeting House on the Grounds Commemorating the Centenary of the Signing of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. Source: W. Bulach/Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:00_27_0568_Waitangi_NZL_-_ Maori-Versammlungshaus.jpg.

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The text of the Treaty of Waitangi Act of 1975 is available on the New Zealand government’s “Legislation” web page (www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1975/0114/latest/ DLM435368.html), where you can also search for other New Zealand legislation discussed in this chapter. To learn more about the Waitangi Tribunal and its work, visit the Tribunal’s website (www.waitangitribunal.govt.nz/). Visit the national Archives of New Zealand website (http://archives.govt.nz/ provenance-­of-power/te-­tiriti-o-­waitangi/view-­te-tiriti-­o-waitangi-­online) to see both the English and Māori versions of the original treaty, as well as a contemporary English translation of the Māori version. First, the British understanding of Crown sovereignty written into the Treaty of Waitangi lost its meaning in translation. “Sovereignty” was translated into the Māori text as rangatiratanga, which was understood by the Māori as implying equality (see McHugh 2004). Second, by 1840 the Enlightenment-­era cosmopolitan appreciation for historical diversity was steadily losing ground to the liberal idea of progress (O’Brien 1997). The English political philosopher John Locke’s conception of individual property rights in land, coupled with a dualistic notion of improvement that was both moral and material, led the British to see collectively held Māori land as underutilized. This attitude was common in all of the British self-­governing settler colonies (commonly referred to as the Dominions) and in the United States. Despite the nominal sovereignty accorded the Māori under the Treaty of Waitangi, settlers’ political and economic wants encouraged the New Zealand Land Company to coerce the sale of land. Lockean notions of land use were enshrined in law in 1865, when the Native Land Court Act promoted the individualization of Māori collective title to land, undermining traditional land rights and placing alienated land on the auction block (see Brookfield 2006). Similar legal rulings existed in the laws of Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, and judges from the various jurisdictions often cited one another to advance exclusionist laws in their home legal systems. This sort of dispossession, overlaid with a thin veneer of legality, had been criticized in 1837 by the British Parliament’s Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes. Even John Stuart Mill, a supporter of imperialism’s liberal civilizing mission, who had been elected to Parliament in 1865, characterized the dispossession of the Māori as evidence of “the overbearing and insolent disregard of the rights and feelings of inferiors which is the common characteristic of John Bull when he thinks he cannot be resisted” ([1866] 1972, 1135–1136). The loss of land and growing numbers of settlers sparked the New Zealand Wars, which lasted from 1845 until 1870. The Māori fought the British and the settlers to a standstill. Nevertheless, by 1870, three facts set the stage for a long period in which white New Zealanders and the Māori lived largely separate lives of “improvement” and impoverishment. First, the settlers outnumbered the Māori, and the demographic trend was in the settlers’ favor. Second, the originally divided structure of New Zealand government had been integrated, thereby reducing tensions both between Parliament and New Zealand, and between the governor and the provinces. Finally, New Zealand was able to raise foreign capital for domestic investments for land-­intensive economic development that propelled further alienation of Māori land (see Belich 1996). In 1877 Chief Justice James Prendergast, arguing around the law and state practice, declared the treaty a “simple nullity” (Wi Parata v. Wellington 1877). The New Zealand History website (https://nzhistory.govt.nz/the-­chief-justice-­declaresthat-­the-treaty-­of-waitangi-­is-worthless-­and-a-­simple-nullity) contains more information on Chief Justice Prendergast’s ruling in Wi Parata v. Wellington, along with a wealth of material on all aspects of New Zealand’s history.

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Developing a Human Rights Regime The statutory creation of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975 as the institutional apparatus for the redress of Māori grievances marked a turning point in relations between Māori and white New Zealanders (Pakeha), made possible partly because the European turn in British political life starting in the 1960s had become fatal to New Zealanders’ idea of Greater Britain. Britain had refused to join the EEC in 1957 because of a dispute over granting equal trade privileges within the Commonwealth, and Britain’s first application in 1961 was denied by French veto. British entry into the EEC in 1973 challenged New Zealanders’ historical understanding of themselves, and this prompted a wave of revisionist history that minimized ties to Britain and created new mental space for a relationship between the Māori and Pakeha (see Pocock 2005). New Zealand responded to Britain’s European turn by seeking greater independence from British influence in economic and foreign affairs, joining the International Monetary Fund in 1961, signing a free-­trade agreement with Australia in 1965, and confronting France over nuclear testing in the South Pacific. New Zealand also sent troops to Vietnam in 1965 to aid the United States, just when that conflict was becoming connected to issues of decolonization, civil rights in the United States, and the anti-­apartheid movement (see Louis 2002). At home, the government faced both antiwar protests and Māori protests over poor social and economic conditions. Māori privation and a shift of the Māori population into visible, urban areas starting in the 1950s joined with the revisionist historical endeavor to place the question of the role of the Māori in New Zealand society in a prominent position. The trajectory of international politics magnified the force of this trend. The growing wave of decolonization and the entry into the United Nations of numerous newly created states put the issues of colonialism, racism, and minority rights on the international agenda. The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples on December 14, 1960, affirming that “[a]ll peoples have the right to self-­determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development” (UNGA Res. 1514 [XV]). The admission of nineteen new states to the UN in 1960 had tilted the organization decisively toward support for independence. Independence, not simply self-­government, was the explicit goal articulated in Resolution 1514. The UN condemned apartheid in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) on December 21, 1965. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) were opened for signature on December 16, 1966. Article 1, paragraph 1 of each Covenant restated, in the exact language used in UNGA Resolution 1514, that “[a]ll peoples have the right to self-­determination.” The Covenants were negotiated and signed separately, but one UNGA Resolution, 2200A, was used to open both for signature. The Covenants entered into force in 1976, achieving what had been a goal for many since the 1940s by enshrining in international law the norms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New Zealand signed in 1978. The section of the UN website titled “The United Nations and Decolonization” (www. un.org/en/decolonization/declaration.shtml) contains the text of Resolution 1514 and other documents related to international affairs and decolonization. The downloadable text of the CERD is on the website of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), at www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/ Pages/CERD.aspx. Go to the website of the OHCHR for the text of the ICCPR (www.ohchr.org/en/ professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx) and the text of the ICESCR (www.ohchr.org/EN/ ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx), and to search for other information about international human rights.

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Human rights had appeared in Western Cold War rhetoric in the early 1970s, partly as a response to international anticolonial sentiment. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling in the Western Sahara case in 1972 had supported indigenous peoples’ land claims. But Article 2 of the ICCPR required New Zealand to act at home “to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind.” The creation of the Waitangi Tribunal was a move in this direction. Article 27 of the ICCPR also proclaimed that  [i]n those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise [sic] their own religion, or to use their own language. This statement expressed the concerns of human rights activists and academic researchers who, motivated by their experiences working in South America, formed the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) in 1968 and Survival International in 1969 (Sanders 1989). The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) was formed in the United States in 1974 by representatives of ninety-­seven “Indian tribes and Nations from across North and South America.” The World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) was founded in 1975 by George Manuel, chief of the Shuswap First Nation in Canada (Minde 2008). These groups coalesced to form a nascent indigenous rights movement, largely because Manuel had nurtured contacts with indigenous peoples around the world, including the Māori, when he traveled with Canadian government delegations as the leader of the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB) (see Manuel and Posluns 1974). The conceptualization of indigenous peoples as a category distinct from minorities was the work of Augusto Willemsen Diaz, a Guatemalan lawyer and UN staff member, who argued for the distinction based on indigenous peoples’ discrete national identities (Sanders 1989, 406–407). Diaz’s idea took legal form in the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (Convention No. 169) in 1989 by recognizing indigenous peoples as members of permanent, rather than temporary, societies. You can read the 1974 Declaration of Continuing Independence by the First International Indian Treaty Council at Standing Rock Indian Country on the IITC website, at www. iitc.org/about-­iitc/the-­declaration-of-­continuing-independence-­june-1974/. The draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that emerged in 1995 was also the result of Diaz’s vision and the network inspired by Manuel; it was mainly “the product of a dialogue between indigenous peoples and the five independent legal experts who comprise the Sub-­Commission-level Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP)” created by the UN Economic and Social Council in May 1982 (Barsh 1996, 785–786). A remarkable confluence in the negotiating approach to the draft Declaration existed among groups from the four former British settler colonies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Indigenous groups from these states worked together closely to argue for strong claims to self-­ determination and autonomous decision-­making power, while the governments collaborated to push back against indigenous claims by invoking fears of weakened sovereignty and self-­ determination-inspired secession (see Magallanes 1999). New Zealand entered into good faith negotiations with indigenous peoples’ groups on the draft Declaration, advocated at the UN for minimizing restrictions on indigenous peoples’ participation, and even included a Māori representative on the government’s delegation (see Barsh 1996).

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This approach, which seemed to emphasize cooperation rather than confrontation, was mirrored in New Zealand during the 1980s and 1990s, albeit partly because the courts started taking seriously Tribunal recommendations and Māori claims under the Treaty of Waitangi. The courts made a series of rulings that compelled the government to negotiate actions that would impact Māori life and land. The Māori and the government became decision-­making partners in the areas of resource management and state enterprises. Public policy debates and the courts even started to demonstrate an acceptance or integration of Māori spiritual practices into decision making. Paul McHugh describes this partnership within the bounds of the state as the indigenization of constitutional law (1999, 465–467). It is something like a return to the Māori understanding of the original treaty, in which the Crown agreed to manage or coordinate affairs among the peoples within the confines of the territorial state, and with outside entities, while the Māori retained authority over their lands and within their social structure. However, this new partnership only extended to the borders of the indivisible, territorial state. New Zealand was one of only four countries, all former settler colonies, to vote against the International Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the UN in September 2007. The government’s reasons for the vote had been explained one year earlier in a joint statement with Australia and the United States:  [T]he provisions for articulating self-­determination for indigenous peoples in this text inappropriately reproduce common Article 1 of the Covenants. Self-­determination … could be misrepresented as conferring a unilateral right of self-­determination and possible secession upon a specific subset of the national populace, thus threatening the political unity, territorial integrity and the stability of existing UN Member States. The New Zealand government was unwilling to cede sovereignty on the international plane by entering into an agreement that might allow institutions or peoples outside the state to influence the course of the Māori–Pakeha partnership at home, or to undermine the universality of human rights by establishing differentiated versions of the right to self-­determination.

Past into Present Sovereignty has been the central issue in New Zealand law since 1840, and it became a central historical concept in the revisionist histories of New Zealand following the British turn toward Europe. The examination of the Māori in light of these developments illuminates differences between the character of contemporary globalization and its modern predecessor (see Hopkins 2008). The new legal infrastructure of the Waitangi Tribunal was a response to poor economic conditions among the Māori, and to political pressure from the Māori and from historians and legal scholars who had taken up the work of reinterpreting New Zealand’s past. New Zealand’s willingness to support international human rights efforts, along with its cooperative work with the UN on decolonization activities in various Pacific Islands, increased expectations of fairness in New Zealand. An ongoing process of informal decolonization in which New Zealand charted a sovereign future without reference to contemporary Britain eventually entered into a mutually reinforcing relationship, with a new process of internal decolonization, between the New Zealand government and the Māori. But the contemporary, practical shift away from Britain required engagement with the history of British settlement in New Zealand. Only by coming to terms with that history and taking responsibility for decisions made under British auspices could New Zealand free itself of the colonial era. This can best be understood as an example of “overlapping and interacting sequences” of globalization as contemporary policy decisions in the postcolonial environment shaped, and were shaped by, the historical understanding of British–Māori relations at the time of the

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Treaty of Waitangi (Hopkins 2002, 4). The New Zealand government and the Māori had decided “to treat an action in [1840] as possessing authority in the present,” which meant that the Māori had become able to claim “not only rights under [the treaty] but the measure of sovereignty which [its] status as treat[y] affirms to have existed” in the past and to have been “claimable” in the present (Pocock 2005, 230). This appeared to answer the question of Māori citizenship or sovereignty in favor of the latter. This raises the possibility of reintegrating the history of New Zealand into British imperial history in a way that stretches beyond the dates usually allowed by constitutional history, with its focus on dominion status and the Commonwealth. New Zealand could only chart an independent future by resolving conflicts rooted in the past, but contemporary changes in international society impacted the routes open to achieving that independent future. These new institutional mechanisms opened to the Māori, too, as the impact of globalization lessened international political stratification via the expanding and deepening dialogue on human rights. The idea of indigenous peoples and the transnational networks that would be formed to advance an indigenous rights movement had antecedents in international society (see Tennant 1994). The Anti-­Slavery Society and the Aborigines Protection Society advocated for indigenous peoples in the nineteenth century. The League of Nations included a minority protection scheme, albeit an ineffective one, and the attention to the notion of self-­determination that prompted the scheme was probably not intended to extend beyond European minorities (see Mazower 1997). The Haudenosaunee chief Deskaheh, leader of the Cayuga First Nation in Canada, traveled to Geneva using only his Haudenosaunee passport in 1923 to petition for the international recognition of the First Nations. Deskaheh won support from Ireland, Panama, Persia, and Estonia, but ultimately lost his bid for sovereignty. The Māori leader T. W. Ratana was turned away from the League’s offices in Geneva in 1925 when he attempted to petition the League to force British compliance with the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi after having been refused an audience with King George. The International Labour Organization, created as part of the League system, passed the Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention (Convention No. 107) in 1957. It was the first international convention to focus on indigenous populations, and was of its time in its integrationist, modernizing tendencies, which, because of its top-­ down approach, accommodated realistic concerns about cultural distinctiveness only slightly more than older, assimilationist policies (Maul 2009). Visit the website of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (www.un.org/ development/desa/indigenouspeoples/unpfii-­sessions-2.html) for more information on its mandate, and for access to reports on each of its yearly sessions. Go to the website of the International Labour Organization for the texts of ILO Convention 107 (www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ INSTRUMENT_ID:312252) and Convention 169 (www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/fr/f?p= 1000:12100:0::NO::P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID,P12100_LANG_CODE:312314,en:NO). The British turn toward Europe prompted something that earlier constitutional reforms had not, an idea of a completely sovereign New Zealand with physical and ideological space, if New Zealanders created it, for the Māori. New Zealanders, Māori and Pakeha, did demand this space, and the government responded to the demand. The Māori magnified these demands by their participation in international networks that created pressure on the New Zealand government both at home and in international society. The Māori also functioned as a connection between the domestic and international environments, so that decisions in one sphere became

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tightly linked to decisions in the other. This reduced the government’s ability to choose to behave hypocritically with respect to human rights issues by eliding the distinction between domestic and international. The Māori also became something more than the Māori; they became indigenous peoples with common bonds of supranational kinship linking them to indigenous peoples globally.

Conclusion Grappling with the ideological and institutional factors underlying the contemporary identification of the Māori as indigenous peoples and the influence of this identification on the shifting relationship between state and citizen modifies our understanding of decolonization in the settler-­colonial context of New Zealand and points the way toward overcoming the postcolonial insularity of national histories (see Hopkins 1999). The law has served to translate new histories of New Zealand as distinct from Britain and inclusive of the Māori into practical social and economic policy with reference to the nineteenth century. The Waitangi Tribunal has functioned as an institutional mechanism for defining the status of the Māori in New Zealand society by investigating historical claims to land and fisheries and rights-­based claims to equality. These steps have been part of the process of decolonization, which, despite New Zealand’s movements toward political autonomy from the time of World War I, has been long-­standing and ongoing. The redefinition of the Māori as indigenous peoples sharing deterritorialized commonalities with aborigines in Australia, Native Amer­icans in the United States, First Nations in Canada, and other groups in India, Latin America, and Africa forced New Zealand to revisit the national ideology that had been wedded to the state. The New Zealand government pushed back against this definition of the Māori in the name of political sovereignty, but in doing so it was forced to acknowledge and alter discriminatory past practices rooted in the land and nationality. This history of the resolution of disputes surrounding the creation of the nation during the phase of modern globalization identifies internal decolonization as separate from informal decolonization as an aspect of postcolonial globalization in New Zealand. The consequence of internal decolonization in New Zealand has been the creation of space for multiple national ideologies to reside in the same bounded territorial space that is the state. This might be true in all former settler colonies. The postwar international institutions that were created to mediate problems related to sovereignty and economic and political integration are firmly grounded in the existence of the state. It might seem that these institutions have failed if sovereignty within the state can be divided, and New Zealand’s government seems to agree. But these institutions are not really the point. They are no more immutable or eternal than the state, no matter how much we might wish for the stability that immutability appears to offer. And if we focus on the deepening and widening interconnectedness that is characteristic of the globalizing process, an examination of the Māori’s changing place in New Zealand society is a hopeful story.

References and Further Research Primary Sources Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. UNGA Res. 1514 (XV) (adopted December 14, 1960, on a vote of eighty-­nine in favor, nine abstentions, and no opposition). International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (adopted December 21, 1965, entered into force January 4, 1969), 660 United Nations Treaty Series 195 (CERD). International Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. UNGA Res. 61/295 (October 2, 2007).

152   Sean Killen International Court of Justice. 1975. Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion. I.C.J. Reports 1975, G.L. No. 61, October 16, 1975, 12. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted December 16, 1966, entered into force March 23, 1976), 999 United Nations Treaty Series 171 (ICCPR). International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted December 16, 1966, entered into force January 3, 1976), 993 United Nations Treaty Series 3 (ICESCR). International Indian Treaty Council. 1974. Declaration of Continuing Independence (Standing Rock SD, June 1974). International Labour Organization. 1989. Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 1989 (Convention No. 169), 383 United Nations Treaty Series 1650. International Labour Organization. 1957. Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention 1957 (Convention No. 107), 328 United Nations Treaty Series 247. Mill, John Stuart. (1866) 1972. Letter to Henry Samuel Chapman, January 7, 1866. In The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. Vol. 16, 1135–1136. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 2006. “Statement by H.E. Ambassador Rosemary Banks on behalf of Australia, New Zealand and the United States” (October 16). New Zealand Parliament. 1975. Treaty of Waitangi Act. United Kingdom. 1837. Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements), HC (425). Wi Parata v. Bishop of Wellington (1877), 3 N.Z. Jurist Reports (New Series), 72 (Supreme Court of New Zealand).

Secondary Sources Ahdar, Rex. 2003. “Indigenous Spiritual Concerns and the Secular State: Some New Zealand Developments.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 23, no. 4: 611–637. Barsh, Russel Lawrence. 1996. “Indigenous Peoples and the UN Commission on Human Rights: A Case of the Immovable Object and the Irresistible Force.” Human Rights Quarterly 18, no. 4: 782–813. Belich, James. 1996. Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders, from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Brookfield, F. M. 2006. Waitangi and Indigenous Rights: Revolution, Law, and Legitimation. Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press. Held, David, and Anthony McGrew, eds. 2003. The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity. Hopkins, A. G. 1999. “Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History.” Past and Present 164: 198–243. Hopkins, A. G., ed. 2002. Globalization in World History. New York: Norton. Hopkins, A. G., ed. 2006. Global History: Interactions Between the Universal and the Local. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hopkins, A. G. 2008. “Rethinking Decolonization.” Past and Present 200: 211–247. Louis, William Roger, 2002. “The Dissolution of the British Empire in the Era of Vietnam.” Amer­ican Historical Review 107, no. 1: 1–25. McHugh, Paul. 1991. The Māori Magna Carta: New Zealand Law and the Treaty of Waitangi. Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press. McHugh, Paul. 1999. “From Sovereignty Talk to Settlement Time: The Constitutional Setting of Māori Claims in the 1990s.” In Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, edited by Paul Havemann, 447–467. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McHugh, Paul. 2004. Aboriginal Societies and the Common Law: A History of Sovereignty, Status, and Self-­Determination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Magallanes, Catherine J. Iorns, 1999. “International Human Rights and their Impact on Domestic Law in Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.” In Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, edited by Paul Havemann, 235–276. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manuel, George, and M. Posluns. 1974. The Fourth World: An Indian Reality. Don Mills, ON: Collier-­ Macmillan Canada.

WAITANGI TREATY AND TRIBUNAL   153 Maul, Daniel. 2009. “ ‘Help Them Move the ILO Way’: The International Labor Organization and the Modernization Discourse in the Era of Decolonization and the Cold War.” Diplomatic History 33, no. 3: 387–404. Mazower, Mark. 1997. “Minorities and the League of Nations in Interwar Europe.” Daedalus 126, no. 2: 47–61. Minde, Henry. 2008. “The Destination and the Journey: Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations from the 1960s through 1985.” In Indigenous Peoples: Self-­Determination, Knowledge, Indigeneity, edited by Henry Minde, 59–60. Delft, Netherlands: Eburon Academic Publishers. O’Brien, Karen. 1997. Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pocock, J. G. A. 2005. The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sanders, Douglas. 1989. “The UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations.” Human Rights Quarterly 11, no. 3: 406–433. Sharp, Andrew. 2002. “Blood, Custom, and Consent: Three Kinds of Māori Groups and the Challenges They Present to Governments.” In “Liberal Democracy and Tribal Peoples: Group Rights in Aotearoa/ New Zealand.” Special issue, University of Toronto Law Journal 52, no. 1: 9–37. Tennant, Chris. 1994. “Indigenous Peoples, International Institutions, and the International Legal Literature from 1945–1993.” Human Rights Quarterly 16, no. 1: 1–57.

13

The Causes and Consequences of International Migration: The View from Europe John D. Graeber Humans have always been on the move. From the earliest hunters and gatherers, to the European colonization of the Americas, to the enormous growth of Chinese cities in the twenty-­ first century, migration has a long history. However, the scale of migration in the current period of globalization is unprecedented. According to the United Nations (2016), some 244 million people were living outside their country of birth in 2015, and nearly 71 percent of migrants resided in high-­income countries. Approximately two-­thirds of this stock originated from the developing world. While the United States, Canada, and Australia were founded by and have long experienced the phenomenon of immigration, most countries of the developed world, and even many within the developing world, are being transformed politically and economically by immigration today. The countries of Europe have experienced this transformation within their societies perhaps more starkly and more quickly than any other region today. According to Eurostat (2018b), some 57.3 million residents, or 11.2 percent of the total European population, were foreign-­born at the beginning of 2017, and two-­thirds of them originated from outside the European Union (EU). Given the relatively high levels of ethnic homogeneity and a lack of notable non-­European immigrant populations within most European countries following World War II, this has been a remarkably dramatic development over the course of six short decades. As Europe struggles to manage and eventually integrate the vast numbers of asylum seekers that have begun to cross its borders in recent years, migration’s political and economic effects on the European continent have been, and will continue to be, profound. This case study will investigate the causes and consequences of migration today. I will first review the theoretical explanations for why people migrate, along with the individual, national, and structural factors that compel such movement across borders. I will then explore the economic and political effects of international migration on sending and receiving countries. To illustrate these theoretical processes, the discussion will focus on Europe and its experience with immigration since World War II. I will argue that the postwar economic and political development of many European countries can only be understood with reference to the migratory flows that occurred in these decades, including the political and economic motivations that facilitated them. Furthermore, I will discuss the effects of migration on Europe in recent years, how EU integration at home and political instability abroad have facilitated such migration flows, and ultimately why Europe’s political and economic future largely depends on European countries’ management of migration.

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Explaining International Migration Most traditional explanations of international migration stem from neoclassical economic models. From a strictly economic perspective, geographic differences in the supply of and demand for labor largely drive migration flows, with migrants moving from places with a high supply of labor and low wages to destinations with high demand for labor and higher wages. Generally speaking, relatively high endowments of capital relative to labor in more developed countries creates higher wages in those countries, while relatively higher endowments of labor relative to capital creates lower wages and higher unemployment in less developed countries. Consequently, low wages and high unemployment at home may “push” individuals abroad in search of higher wages and better employment opportunities. Because of the inherent wage differential, individual workers move—are “pulled”—to these more developed countries in search of higher wages, drawing a new supply of labor to the developed countries. Families may diversify their sources of income by assigning certain household members to activities in the local economy while sending others abroad, a decision that may maximize household income and reduce the risks of depending exclusively on the domestic economy. Certainly high unemployment, economic insecurity, and low comparative wages push some migrants from less developed countries to the better opportunities awaiting them in developed countries, and these factors account for a substantial share of international migration today. But other, noneconomic factors may compel movement as well. Poor living conditions, drought or other natural disasters, political and religious persecution, and war may push migrants from their homes in search of a better life elsewhere. Conversely, stable living conditions, political and religious freedom, and greater access to education, welfare, and security abroad may pull migrants from abroad. Consider, for example, the tumultuous and often violent process of decolonization in many countries. In many colonized states, wars of independence and civil wars occurred during and after decolonization, creating economic and political hardship domestically, while simultaneously offering many an exit to the political and economic stability of the former colonial power abroad. Today, persecution, conflict, and political instability in several countries, many of which still struggle with colonial legacies, compel people to leave in search of better lives elsewhere. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2015, 2018) for example, by the end of 2017, nearly 68.5 million people were living displaced from their homes, 28.5 million of whom were living abroad. This represents a 60 percent increase over the number of displaced in 2007, with approximately 16.2 million additional people forced from their homes in 2017 alone. Most dramatically perhaps, war and civil conflict in only three countries—Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan—accounted for over half of these refugee flows. These domestic push factors in countries of origin, coupled with the pull of more political stability and economic prosperity in countries abroad, continues to be a factor driving resettlement and other global migratory flows each year. More information on displaced persons can be found on the website of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR.org), and current news is available at its website RefWorld (www.refworld.org/). The UNHCR report Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2017 (www.unhcr.org/en-­us/statistics/unhcrstats/5b27be547/unhcr-­globaltrends-­2017.html) offers more statistics and analysis of current trends. Another perspective suggests that international migration results not from individual economic choices but from the inherent structure of a global capitalist system. Rather than wage differentials and individual-­level cost–benefit calculations, it is the structural and permanent demand for ever cheaper labor in industrialized countries that pulls migrants toward jobs native workers

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Figure 13.1 Refugees from the Wars in Syria and Iraq Arriving from Turkey on the Greek Island of Lesbos in 2015; Greece Serves as a Transit Point for Immigrants as They Make Their Way to Other Countries in Europe. Source: Wikimedia/Gigia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20151030_Syrians_and_Iraq_refugees_ arrive_at_Skala_Sykamias_Lesvos_Greece_2.jpg.

increasingly will not or cannot afford to do. This “dual labor market theory” argues that the labor market in capitalist economies essentially becomes segmented between a primary and secondary sector, with the latter comprising short-­term, low-­skill, low-­wage, and often informal work that relies increasingly on immigrants to fill. Because employers have strong incentives to cut costs to remain competitive, many of them actively recruit cheap and relatively impermanent immigrant labor for low-­skill jobs. Once begun, however, entire sectors of the advanced industrial economy become structurally dependent on this immigrant labor. As the international migration scholar Aristide Zolberg contends, it is “the dynamics of the transnational capitalist economy … which simultaneously determine both the ‘push’ and the ‘pull’ ” (1989, 407). Similarly, migration flows today can be examined through the lens of world-­systems theory, espoused by the historian-­sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein in the mid-­1970s. Wallerstein (1974) argued that a world-­system of European hegemony had developed since the rise of European colonialism in the sixteenth century, a system consisting of what he called core countries and peripheral countries. The political economy of the core European powers and their colonial regimes required an expansive drive for raw materials, cheaper labor inputs, and new markets in the periphery; this in turn contributed to the uneven development trajectories between the core and periphery and the unequal political-­economic power between the periphery and the core. While colonial regimes initially facilitated this market penetration by their state-­supported firms, after World War II, the subsequent demise of European colonialism, and the global economic restructuring of the 1970s, multinational corporations have helped perpetuate this trend and this imbalance. Today, globalizing multinational firms have the same

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incentives to expand into the global periphery they had during the colonial period, as they are still in search of raw materials, exploitable labor, and new markets for their products. More information on Immanuel Wallerstein’s views, as well as a lengthy bibliography of his works, can be found on his Yale University web page (https://sociology.yale.edu/ people/immanuel-­wallerstein). A world-­systems approach argues that migration results from the expansion of capitalism from the core into the traditional, noncapitalist political economies of countries in the periphery. Market penetration, first by colonial regimes and later by multinational corporations, upends traditional family structures, exploits natural resources, uproots traditional economies, displaces workers from local agrarian communities, and causes more precarious and impoverished living standards for many. The result of this upheaval in the periphery is an inevitable migratory pressure, as more individuals and families are compelled to seek economic opportunity elsewhere. Many of these migrations, not surprisingly, flow back toward the former colonial powers and other countries of the core as part of the cheap and flexible labor source on which their developed economies depend. It is thus the structural reality of economic globalization, heightened competition, and market penetration into less developed countries that created and still perpetuates the migration flows we witness today. What might explain continued migration flows even after the “push and pull” factors diminish or disappear? Perhaps the most important, and arguably the most studied, factor is the development of migration networks across countries. When migrants settle abroad, they often maintain relations with families and friends in their countries of origin. These relations are multifaceted and play a vital role in the migration story. Migrants often provide financial assistance in the form of remittances to those back in the sending country, convey information to other potential migrants back home about employment opportunities in the new location, and offer physical accommodation and support for new migrants. Thus, these networks reduce the risks, costs, and uncertainty of migrating for future waves. The development of migration networks leads to what earlier scholars labeled “chain migration,” whereby the linkages established with previous flows of immigrants facilitate the emigration of future flows and establish broader network linkages. As the sociologist and migration scholar Douglas S. Massey and his colleagues claim, this cumulative process implies that “migration sustains itself in such a way that migration tends to create more migration” (1993, 461). Indeed, as explored in the next section, although European governments have made great efforts to restrict immigration flows in recent decades, migration continues by means of facilitated family reunification, which renders these networks all the more important. For more information on general theories of migration, see the following articles: • • •

George Borjas’s “Economic Theory and International Migration,” International Migration Review (www.jstor.org/stable/2546424?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents). Wayne A. Cornelius and Marc R. Rosenblum’s “Immigration and Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science (www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev. polisci.8.082103.104854). Douglas S. Massey and colleague’s “Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal,” Population and Development Review (www.jstor.org/stable/ 2938462?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents).

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The Causes of International Migration and the Case of Postwar Europe A survey of recent European history reveals that international migration and its causes have played a crucial role in the political and economic trajectory of the continent. One cannot adequately understand Europe’s postwar economic recovery and subsequent development without considering the migration phenomenon on which it was built. In 1945 much of Western Europe had been reduced to rubble, and European economies lay in ruin. Many European countries also lost both their main industrial sectors and a significant proportion of manpower to the war. In order to facilitate postwar reconstruction, overcome acute labor shortages, and regain world power status, many looked abroad. In the first years following the war, Great Britain recruited refugees and former prisoners of war from Poland and elsewhere to work in its factories. This refugee labor was particularly valuable in providing inexpensive, flexible manpower in industries for which recruiting native workers was difficult, such as mining, construction, and domestic services. But Britain, like many other European colonial powers, also began to dismantle its vast overseas empire in the postwar years. For both political and economic reasons, as previously described, the former colonial powers maintained many of the linkages with their former colonies that often permitted in-­migration and settlement in Europe. Although Britain never formally recruited labor from the so-­called New Commonwealth (i.e., the Caribbean, Africa, and Indian subcontinent), its postwar economic resurgence began to pull large numbers of immigrants from these regions into Britain. According to the migration scholars Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller (2009), Britain had a New Commonwealth population of only 218,000 in 1951; that number doubled to 541,000 over the next decade, and it doubled again to 1.2 million by 1971. By relying on migration in the postwar decades, Britain may have been better able to remain a second-­rate world power than it would have been without it. In France, the postwar elite was concerned with three tasks: rebuilding its economy with migrants working in unfilled positions, curtailing population decline, and maintaining its political and economic power internationally through immigration. France created the National Immigration Office (ONI) in 1945 to recruit overseas migrants, and, according to Castles and Miller, an estimated 150,000 seasonal agricultural workers were permitted to enter France annually. As French economic growth and decolonization accelerated in the following decades, the regulated ONI system of labor importation failed to keep up with the demands of employers, who routinely bypassed the office and recruited their own workers abroad and regularized them afterward. Furthermore, rapid decolonization, beginning with Algerian independence in 1962, prompted a massive influx of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. During this time, migrants from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and throughout West Africa enjoyed access to France via a postcolonial quasi-­citizenship status. According to the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE 2011, 99), the number of immigrants increased from almost two million in 1946 to nearly four million by 1975. Migration played an especially critical role in Germany’s postwar recovery. Imperial Germany had recruited foreign labor intensively in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—especially from East Prussia and Poland, but also from Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands—to work in its agricultural and nascent industrial sectors. Nazi Germany likewise relied on economic migrants to fuel its wartime economy. After the war, many employers remained convinced that Germany’s extensive and highly productive use of foreign labor in the past could be a successful economic model in the future as well. Facing a large labor shortage in the 1950s, Germany was in desperate need of workers for the industrial jobs fueling its postwar reconstruction. Without a colonial empire to draw upon, Germany signed numerous “guest worker” agreements with less developed countries of the European periphery, through

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which it could import cheap and temporary labor. Such agreements were signed with Italy in 1955, Greece and Spain in 1960, Turkey in 1961, Morocco in 1963, Portugal in 1964, Tunisia in 1965, and finally Yugoslavia in 1968. With Germany’s postwar Wirtschaftswunder, or “economic miracle,” fueled by migrant labor recruited from abroad, its foreign population skyrocketed. According to the German Federal Statistical Office (2015), there were 686,000 foreigners in Germany in 1960; by 1975 there were nearly four million foreigners living in the country. The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (2005) reckons that from 1956 until the end of its guest worker program in 1973, roughly fourteen million guest workers had been recruited as labor in Germany. Immigration patterns similarly influenced economic recovery in other European countries following the war. The Netherlands experienced both postcolonial and guest worker flows that arrived in several distinct waves. Beginning in the early postwar years, small numbers of migrants from Surinam and the Dutch Antilles and Aruba were arriving in the Netherlands, while the 1950s and early 1960s saw some 300,000 Indonesian Dutch settle there as well. When Surinam prepared to declare independence in the 1970s, an exodus of roughly 150,000 migrants fled the expected instability for the Netherlands. Likewise, in response to pressure from employers for workers to offset labor shortages, the government signed deals with a number of Mediterranean countries, including Spain and Italy initially, followed by Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey, and finally with Morocco. According to Statistics Netherlands (2014), by 1973 the Netherlands had a foreign population of 1.26 million, nearly half of whom were foreign born. Belgium, Luxembourg, and Sweden also recruited foreign labor after the war, mostly from southern Europe and the Mediterranean. The economic recession that began in 1973 led most European countries to formally or informally end their respective guest worker programs and attempt to restrict immigration. However, migration networks and family reunification have stymied state efforts to limit these flows. Britain’s ethnic minority population continued to grow—especially after the British economy stagnated in the late 1960s—not for economic reasons, but owing to family reunification and other forms of chain migration. According to the British Office for National Statistics (2011), Britain’s ethnic minority population hovered around 9.1 million, or almost 17 percent of the population, in 2009. Nearly 2.5 million people in Britain today are of Indian or Pakistani descent, forming 4.5 percent of the total population and constituting its largest ethnic minority groups. In France, the government imposed an immigration stop, yet this only incentivized migrants’ permanent settlement in France rather than prompt their return to the homeland. Because immigrants had a right to family reunification, migrant networks facilitated migratory inflows. Thus, the government “found that its hands were tied both by the law and by the uncontrollable effects of chain migration” (Hollifield 2014, 166). In 2015 some 5.5 million immigrants lived in France. In Germany, the guest worker program had always been premised on the Rotationsprinzip, whereby guest workers would be rotated into jobs for a set time period and then returned home. Yet German employers and guest workers largely resisted these rotations, as they levied significant costs on employers and prevented workers from realizing their longer-­ term economic goals. Thus, both immigrants and guest workers were incentivized to settle in Germany rather than return to their countries of origin. While family members of resident foreigners comprised only 20 percent of Germany’s foreign population in 1961, that figure rose to more than 50 percent by 1975 after the guest worker program had ended. The recruitment stop in 1973 further incentivized settlement, and thus, unexpectedly, the immigrant population of Germany grew from four million in 1973 to almost 4.9 million in 1989, owing to family reunification. According to Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior (2015), there were 8.2 million foreigners living in Germany in 2015. Reflecting their guest worker origins, some 1.5 million people in Germany still hold Turkish citizenship, and nearly three million have Turkish

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heritage. Likewise, in the Netherlands, family reunification provisions remained the primary means by which immigration increased after labor migration ended in 1973. Today, four decades later, Statistics Netherlands (2014) put the size of the non-­Dutch population at around 3.5 million, of which more than half were from a non-­Western country of origin. The foreign-­ born population represented 11 percent of the total population.

The Causes of International Migration in Europe Today European integration has also been an important economic driver of migration within the continent. Since the creation of the European Economic Community in 1957, advocates of European political and economic integration have sought to facilitate the free movement of goods, services, and people across European borders. While the free movement of people proceeded slowly at first, by the 1980s many European leaders were discussing the elimination of border checks and proposing that the free movement of people within the European Community would present economic and political advantages for the continent. Such free movement became a reality in 1995 as a result of the Schengen Convention and was incorporated into the EU framework in the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam. This meant that citizens of all EU member states would enjoy the freedom to live and work anywhere in the EU. By 2016, thanks to EU integration, nearly 20.4 million EU citizens were a resident of a different EU member state from that of their birth, according to Eurostat (2018b). The migratory flows facilitated by the Schengen Convention are most noticeable in post-­ Cold War Eastern Europe. The rapid dismantling of state-­owned enterprises in the East and their restructuring by private corporations from the West resulted in slashed workforces and massive unemployment in the 1990s. This large-­scale economic restructuring in the formerly Communist Eastern European countries pushed many Eastern Europeans to look for better economic opportunities in Western Europe. The formal accession of these countries into the EU and the Schengen area beginning in 2004 led to massive flows of East European workers to the West. According to Eurostat (2018b), nearly 80 percent of Romanian citizens living elsewhere in the EU currently reside in Italy and Spain, and some 65 percent of Polish citizens living abroad have migrated to the United Kingdom or Germany. Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior revealed that in 2015 the number of Romanians and Bulgarians in Germany since their EU accession had increased sixfold and eightfold, respectively, and Poland has been Germany’s top sending country since 1996. According to a recent UK census, there were nearly 600,000 Polish citizens living in the United Kingdom in 2011, a tenfold increase from a decade earlier. Large numbers of Romanians have also migrated to Italy and France. The other main force behind immigration in Europe has been political, primarily in the form of political refugees and asylum seekers. During World War II, Nazi Germany forced the expulsion of several million Poles toward the East, while the Soviet Union did similarly with a number of ethnic populations living throughout Eastern Europe. The war left millions of displaced persons and political expellees in its wake. In what was the largest forced population transfer in history, some twelve to fourteen million ethnic Germans were subsequently expelled from their homelands in Eastern Europe and resettled in West Germany between the end of the war in 1945 and 1950. Mass ethnic minority population transfers also occurred in other European countries, especially in the East. Thus, one underappreciated consequence of the forced migrations of the war was the emergence of ethnically cleansed and much more culturally homogeneous European countries than had existed before the war. The Cold War perpetuated these migratory flows. For geopolitical, ideological, and humanitarian reasons, Western European countries granted residency to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers fleeing the Eastern Bloc. As the immigration scholars Douglas B. Klusmeyer and Demetrios Papademetriou (2009) report, some 5.3 million citizens of the Communist

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German Democratic Republic (East Germany) migrated to West Germany between 1949 and 1992 as political refugees, as well as another three million ethnic German Aussiedler from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Because of its Nazi past, Germany’s constitution, the Basic Law, also promised anyone who had been politically persecuted the right to asylum. This open asylum program resulted in Germany receiving more refugees between 1981 and 1991 than all other Western European countries combined. The dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s posed enormous challenges to European countries and helped recast migration as a security issue. The ethnic cleansings and mass dislocations wrought by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina threatened to overwhelm the capacity of Western European states to absorb them. According to the UNHCR (2000), by 1995 some 700,000 asylum seekers from Bosnia and Herzegovina immigrated to Western Europe as a consequence of the conflicts, with Germany receiving some 345,000 of these. Another 100,000 Kosovar Albanian refugees and asylum seekers had migrated to Western Europe by the time of the Kosovo crisis in 1999. Sweden alone received some 115,900 asylum seekers from Bosnia-­ Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, and Kosovo between 1989 and 1993, half of the total 208,700 it resettled during this period, a volume that even forced the government to begin introducing visa requirements for those countries (Statistics Sweden 2005). In recent years, the world has witnessed how push factors such as instability abroad and the right of free movement engendered by EU integration combine to create new migration challenges in Europe. While the EU generally receives approximately half of the world’s asylum applications in a given year (the United States receives around 7 percent), prolonged conflict, oppression, and instability in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and Eritrea in recent years have begun to generate massive new flows of asylum seekers attempting to reach the European continent. For example, there were 1,260,910 asylum claims in the EU in 2016, up from 626,960 in 2014, and up from a continental low of around 200,000 through much of the previous decade (Eurostat 2015, 2018a). However, for various historical and political reasons, five EU countries—Germany, France, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom, in order of popularity—have accounted for a full 70 percent of these applications over the last decade. In 2016 alone, Germany received 745,155 asylum applicants from these areas, accounting for 60 percent of all first-­time applications in the EU and thus more than all other EU countries combined (Eurostat 2018a). Yet because of the rules governing the borderless Schengen zone, asylum seekers only need to cross Europe’s shared external border—for example, the Greece–Turkey border in the southeast, or the coastline on the Italian island of Lampedusa in the central Mediterranean—in order to claim asylum in these popular destination countries, which now retain little control over their borders. Furthermore, because few border countries want the task of resettling asylum seekers, and few other EU countries have a political interest in shouldering more of the resettlement burden, the task of managing these migration pressures has continued to fall on these top receivers. As discussed below, the management of these new migration pressures has important implications for Europe’s future. This brief survey of European immigration illustrates how the theorized causes of migration have shaped the continent over the last half-­century. On the one hand, push–pull factors are clearly at work. Contrasting levels of economic development and decolonization pulled migrants from poorer countries toward the economic opportunities offered in highly developed European ones after World War II. Schengen and EU enlargement also enabled the economic pull of Western Europe vis-­à-vis Eastern Europe. Likewise, Europe’s experience with asylum, beginning after World War II and escalating most dramatically in the Schengen zone in recent years, demonstrates how political instability at home and political stability in Europe consistently motivate new flows. The establishment of migrant networks has only served to perpetuate these flows. On the other hand, the demand of employers for cheap immigrant labor in the immediate postwar period, facilitated by government recruitment programs, strongly suggests

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that migration became a structurally embedded component of European economic development in subsequent decades. At least through the early 1970s, the industries that fueled much of Europe’s postwar economic recovery clearly benefited from this cheap labor leaving the periphery, and it is difficult to see how such economic recovery and development would have occurred in its absence. The dislocations created by European decolonization and capitalist expansion, subsequent political upheavals in the periphery, and the incentives of employers to maintain labor migration certainly provided the structural conditions that perpetuated migratory flows back to the former states of the core. With EU enlargement pushing Europe’s external border ever closer to Europe’s unstable periphery, these structural conditions have only been further strengthened. For more general facts, history, and statistics on migration specifically in Europe and the EU, see the following: • • •

Randall Hansen’s “Migration to Europe Since 1945: Its History and its Lessons,” Political Quarterly (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-923X.2003. 00579.x/abstract). Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Union (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa. eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home). The Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development (OECD) (www. oecd.org/migration/).

Winners and Losers: The Effects of Migration on Sending Countries So far, this discussion has focused on the causes of migration in Europe’s postwar experience. I turn now to the effects of migration, which affect both Europe and its migrants’ countries of origin. Just as the structural requirements of capitalism led many industries to import cheap labor from abroad in the period surveyed above, globalization today compels firms to compete on an international scale for the world’s “best and brightest,” particularly from the developing world. This implies that less developed countries lose their best workers to the economies of the more developed world rather than retaining them in their own domestic economies—a phenomenon known as “brain drain.” Hence, migrants today tend to have a higher level of education than those who remain in the sending country, a trend that may undermine development. Brain drain is also thought to be one negative effect of EU enlargement, as better-­trained people from Eastern European member states move to Western Europe, where they receive a higher return for their skills and education levels. However, Papademetriou and colleague Philip L. Martin (1991) argue that migration may also foster economic development in the sending country through recruitment, remittances, and return. Initially, labor migration, or recruitment, to receiving countries reduces unemployment in the developing economy of the sending country. As migrants find work abroad, they begin to send remittances to their families and communities back home. When these workers return home, either on a cyclical or permanent basis, they bring valuable training, knowledge, and experience to their countries of origin, which can further aid in the sending country’s development. Of these effects, remittances have received perhaps the most attention. The effects of remittances in development terms are mixed. On the pessimistic side, they may generate new structural forms of dependency in the sending communities of the developing world. They may also

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exacerbate inequality, depending on who exactly receives these flows. But, on the positive side, according to the OECD, they have several clear benefits for sending countries (Straubhaar and Vădean 2005, 24–28). They are thought to help in poverty reduction, for example, as they serve as a significant source of income for poorer households in developing countries, bolstering savings for economic development and having an important stimulating effect on domestic demand, consumer spending, and employment. They are also a stable and strongly countercyclical source of capital for countries, especially during recessions, providing them with the hard currency necessary for imports and other spending. By these standards, migrants are one of the most lucrative “exports” of many developing countries today. Indeed, the World Bank estimates that the worldwide flow of remittances was around $268 billion in 2006. However, because remittances flow through both formal and informal channels, these estimated amounts could be half as large as the true value of remittance flows each year, making remittance flows larger than all foreign direct investment flows, and more than twice as valuable as all official development aid flows to developing countries (Eurostat 2007). Hence, the flows of remittances may help offset the stock of human capital lost to brain drain, if not counter the structural dependencies feared by pessimists. For general information on the economic effects of migration, see the following resources: • • • • •

“International Migration and Development,” World Bank (http://econ.worldbank. org/programs/migration). “Learn About Global Development,” World Bank (http://go.worldbank.org/ 0IK1E5K7U0). “Migration,” OECD (www.oecd.org/migration/). World Migration 2005: Costs and Benefits of International Migration, International Organization for Migration (https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/wmr_ 2005_3.pdf ). Independent Network of Labour Migration and Integration Experts (www.labour migration.eu).

For more information on the political effects of migration and current political debates in Europe, see: • •

Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective, 3rd ed., Stanford University Press (excerpts available at www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=22520&i=Excerpt_from_ Chapter_1_pages). The Migration Policy Institute (www.migrationpolicy.org/regions/europe).

The experience of Europe reveals the important effects on economic development of remittances in its periphery. According to Eurostat (2017), remittance flows from the EU have been quite stable over the last several years, increasing to almost €43.8 billion in 2016, with nearly half of this flowing outside the EU. France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany accounted for over half of total remittances in 2016. Common remittance channels connect Spain to Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia; Germany to Poland and Turkey; France to Morocco, Algeria, and Portugal; Italy to Romania, China, and the Philippines; the United Kingdom to Ireland and India; and Belgium to Morocco. New channels have begun to connect Eastern Europe with countries farther to the east, such as Ukraine and Russia, or to the states of the former Yugoslavia.

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Most European governments recognize two important aspects of these remittances. First, many consider remittances an indirect form of humanitarian assistance to developing countries because of their countercyclical nature and their targeting of poorer households. Second, remittances serve a geopolitical interest because many of these remittance-­receiving countries are also politically unstable and yet lie within arm’s reach of Europe. To the extent that remittances help foster economic development and political stability in their own neighborhood, European countries contribute to their own security interests as well. If recipient countries are EU member states in Eastern Europe, such flows even serve to strengthen the convergence process between the “old” and “new” members.

Winners and Losers: The Effects of Migration on European Countries Migration has had both economic and political effects on European countries. Regarding the former, the traditional neoclassical model predicts net increases to economic welfare, because labor can move to where it is most productive, introducing greater net efficiencies, even if some groups may not directly benefit. In the case of low-­skilled immigration, these flows increase the supply of native low-­skilled labor, putting downward pressure on wages for native low-­skilled laborers in the market, who must now compete with more numerous low-­skilled immigrants for the same jobs. This increased labor market competition theoretically hurts native low-­skilled workers, while it benefits capital owners and migrants. In the case of high-­ skilled immigration, returns to high-­skilled native workers should diminish accordingly. Yet, while empirical studies have revealed mixed results, the net effect on the European labor market generally appears very small if not negligible. However, those economic sectors that are difficult, dangerous, dirty, generally avoided by native workers, and yet sustain the lifestyles of developed countries only survive in large part because of the migrant labor that fills those positions. A second economic effect is that migration can yield either fiscal contributions or fiscal strains. In countries with relatively developed redistributive welfare systems and social safety nets, low-­ skilled immigration may impose a net cost on the public finances of a state, because such immigrants may be more likely to use welfare programs and other public services, and contribute less in taxes, compared to natives. However, immigrants may also pay more taxes into welfare systems than they take out over the course of their lifetimes, especially among the high-­skilled immigrants that Europe increasingly seeks to attract. Although calculating the precise effect of migrants on the fiscal health of a country is extremely complex, and thus no consensus exists in the literature, recent work from the OECD suggests that migration has, on average, neither a positive nor negative fiscal impact on OECD countries (Liebig and Mo 2013). That there are often clear winners and losers from migration implies considerable political effects. Theoretically, low-­skilled and less educated segments of European society, perceiving declining wages in recent decades and increasing competition with low-­skilled migrants, should be the most hostile toward immigration, while high-­skilled natives might oppose low-­ skilled immigration because they pay proportionately more in taxes to support the welfare services frequently used by immigrants. Although migration’s net economic effect on natives remains ambiguous if not positive, this fact is irrelevant if there are strong societal perceptions that migration’s effect is negative. In Europe, migration has increasingly become indicted in public opinion for the economic and social troubles that have plagued European societies, starting with the economic shocks of the 1970s. Because many of the jobs that immigrants initially performed in the postwar decades began disappearing in the 1970s, the unemployment rate among immigrants and their descendants—especially noneconomic migrants and those of the guest

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worker generation—has since become disproportionately higher than among white European natives. As a result, a perception of foreigners as unemployed, welfare dependent, and poorly integrated, not to mention highly visible racially, religiously, and culturally, has grown among many segments of the public, especially native workers whose industrial jobs have likewise disappeared, or those unemployed persons suffering most recently from the economic aftermath of the euro crisis. That a growing number of Europe’s immigrants are Muslim or poor asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa only further exacerbates the perceived cultural threats posed by migration. Partly in response to these perceptions, and partly as a cause of them, extreme-­right parties have surfaced that capitalize on these xenophobic and often Islamophobic sentiments. Far from remaining on the political fringes, many now routinely enjoy electoral success across ever more European countries. One of the most successful and persistent anti-­immigrant parties, Jean-­ Marie Le Pen’s National Front in France, has been among the most successful anti-­immigrant parties in Europe since its founding in the early 1970s. The National Front’s positions on immigration and foreigners even earned Le Pen a place in the presidential run-­off election in 2002. The Freedom Party of Austria, a member of the governing coalition following Austria’s 1999 parliamentary elections, won 20 percent of the votes in the 2013 elections. The Dutch Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, and the Danish People’s Party, along with their Austrian counterpart, are all currently the third-­largest political parties in their respective countries. Other strong anti-­immigrant parties include the Sweden Democrats, Norway’s Progress Party, the True Finns in Finland, the UK Independence Party, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, and the Swiss People’s Party. The result of the growing electoral success of anti-­immigrant populist parties on the right has been profound for European politics. As the political scientist Mark Morjé Howard (2010) and others argue, the mobilization of public opinion by extreme-­right parties on the issues of immigration policy, citizenship policy, and immigrant rights presents a challenge for both conservative and left-­of-center parties. Conservative parties that may otherwise prefer to take a neutral or affirmative stance on immigration can risk losing segments of their base to far-­right parties over the issue. Likewise, because leftist parties draw support from the native-­born working class as well as those with immigration backgrounds, any leftist party perceived to favor immigrant issues at the expense of native-­born labor might lose many of these constituents to far-­right parties. Thus, in many countries today, neither mainstream conservative nor leftist parties are able to support more open immigration policies, and in fact must often take more hard-­line, restrictive positions to satisfy the virulent perceptions of migration among the public. The upsurge in xenophobic rhetoric fostered by these new parties, along with the persistent belief that immigration is out of control, has limited the political ability of European states to implement reasonable immigration policies that respond to pressing modern realities. This is problematic for European governments in three specific issue areas. First, European governments are hamstrung by domestic political debates in the context of EU immigration policy coordination. Thanks to Schengen and EU enlargement, the effective border for most EU member states is now beyond national government control, and is now located along less politically stable and less economically prosperous member states that lack the necessary resources to control these borders. In essence, the borders to Europe’s “Schengenland” are only as strong as their weakest link, meaning that the countries of Europe must cooperate to police their collective border and share responsibilities for immigration and asylum issues. But as the EU struggles to collectively manage the hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving every month on the shores of Italy, Malta, and Greece, or crossing into Hungary or Greece from the Balkans and beyond, public trust in governments’ ability to control immigration has been undermined. While border states call for additional burden sharing among EU members for policing and

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relocating asylum seekers, the often more attractive European states to the north are under domestic pressure to appear tough on migration and limit the already high numbers of asylum applications they receive. These domestic constraints have the potential to limit future EU immigration policy cooperation, which threatens to undermine the Schengen system. Second, European governments face political difficulties creating new policies that facilitate the immigration of desired workers. Similar to the global market forces that compel firms to seek cheap and flexible labor abroad, growing international mobility and the transition to high-­ tech, service-­based economies across much of the developed world has prompted an international competition to lure in the world’s “best and brightest.” Europe’s labor markets, in particular, need more high-­skilled workers in order to boost productivity and competitiveness, as well as to fund the welfare state into the future. Indeed, a number of European countries have developed systems to attract high-­skilled workers: Austria has a new points-­based Red-­ White-Red card, the Dutch have introduced streamlined procedures for high-­skilled immigrants, and the United Kingdom has adopted a point system similar to Canada’s. Strikingly, industries across Europe have pressed their governments to resettle and integrate more of the asylum seekers entering Europe today, many of whom are highly skilled and educated. Unfortunately, large swathes of public opinion persist in viewing immigration in general, and the current migrant crisis in particular, as a threat rather than an opportunity. This public opinion may prevent many governments from fostering an attractive, welcoming atmosphere for the world’s sought-­after migrants, and they may therefore miss the economic opportunity that the current crisis might offer to many industries. Third, and perhaps most importantly, European countries are constrained in their ability to address the demographic trends that pose a dire security challenge in the future. The European population is both aging and shrinking rapidly. According to Eurostat (2011, 2018c, 2018d), the median age in the EU is expected to rise to 47.9 by 2060, compared to 42.6 in 2016, with the share of the working age population declining steadily. The total population of many EU countries is also projected to decline over the next fifty years—in 2015, for example, the total fertility rate in the EU-­28 was 1.58 children per woman. Germany, Italy, Austria, and most of Eastern Europe even have rates dropping below 1.5, well below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. What this means is that, without drastic changes, European economies are likely to stagnate and the welfare systems will come under enormous strain, if not collapse entirely. To some extent, immigration would ameliorate this enormous demographic challenge—as it already has. Between 2005 and 2017, the EU population increased annually by 1.5 million on average due almost exclusively to migration (Eurostat 2018c). Furthermore, immigrants are on average much younger than the native EU population. In 2016 the median age in the EU was 42.6, whereas the median age of immigrants was 27.5 (Eurostat 2018b). Immigrants have much higher fertility rates compared to the non-­immigrant population as well. Thus, immigration has already prevented the European population from toppling over a demographic cliff. However, most population projections for Europe incorporate net immigration figures in their projections. The migration scholar Giampaolo Lanzieri (2011) projects that absolute majorities of the populations of Cyprus and Luxembourg will have a foreign background by 2061; over 30 percent of the populations of Austria, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, and Greece will likewise have a foreign background. Germany’s population is already predicted to shrink from 82.5 million to 65.4 million by 2060, assuming between 100,000 and 200,000 migrants each year. Without immigration, this estimate would sink to 58.7 million (German Federal Statistical Office 2009). The German Council of Economic Experts (2011) reckons over a million migrants per year would be required to maintain a constant demographic structure. Given these figures, European states face a daunting dilemma due to the dramatic rise of extreme-­right parties, whose success has been built in part on rousing anti-­immigrant sentiment

International Migration   167

and maligning the multicultural evolution of their once more homogeneous nation-­states. By taking advantage of the current demographic and economic opportunities presented by the current migrant crisis and facilitating mass migration in the future, Europe could potentially maintain its economic and political edge and forestall the collapse of its welfare states, but only at the expense of an increasingly volatile and xenophobic populace. If modest immigration flows today are problematic domestically, mass flows tomorrow could be socially disastrous as natives are transformed into ethnic minorities in their own countries. However, acquiescing to the nativist public would all but guarantee a gradual dismantling of the European welfare state and economy.

Conclusion In this case study I have discussed the role that European migration plays in the contemporary global context. Of the theoretical perspectives regarding the causes and consequences of migration today, this review has stressed the economic motivations, evolving national interests, and broader political and world-­systemic circumstances that facilitate migration. Using the experience of Europe, I sought to demonstrate how individual-­level, national-­level, and system-­level forces interact to facilitate migratory flows. I further argued that these flows were beneficial in laying the foundations for the reconstruction of Europe in the postwar period, yet new waves of migration resulting from family reunification, EU integration, and asylum seeking from abroad have brought unexpected long-­term challenges for European countries in subsequent decades. To that end, I next illustrated the positive and negative effects of migration on the economies of Europe and on the countries from which their migrants originate. I also highlighted migration’s political consequences, detailing how migration has precipitated profound changes in the European political system, which in turn hinder the ability of European governments to address critical challenges in the coming years. Europe has become structurally dependent on immigration over the last sixty years, and yet it will need to rely on mass immigration over the next sixty years to avoid dramatic economic and political decline. Of course, the experience of Europe is not isolated; it is part of a phenomenon occurring throughout both the developed and developing world. Most of the highly developed economies today are structurally dependent on migration, and their graying populations require migration to sustain their welfare systems, if not their positions of power in the world. But as the emerging economies in Africa, Asia, and South America develop, the same forces that drive migrants to Europe and North America will likewise drive them to these regions in the not-­toodistant future, and they too will experience migration’s benefits as well as its challenges.

References and Further Research Boswell, Christina, and Andrew Geddes. 2011. Migration and Mobility in the European Union. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. British Office for National Statistics. 2011. “Statistical Bulletin: Population Estimates by Ethnic Group 2002—2009.” Newport, UK: Office for National Statistics. Castles, Stephen, and Mark J. Miller. 2009. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Douglas, R. M. 2012. Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Eurostat. 2007. “Eurostat Methodologies and Working Papers: Remittance Flows to and from the EU.” Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. http://ec.europa.eu/ eurostat/en/web/products-­statistical-working-­papers/-/KS-­RA-07-025. Eurostat. 2011. “Demography Report 2010: Older, More Numerous and Diverse Europeans.” Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-­statisticalbooks/-/KE-­ET-10-001.

168   John D. Graeber Eurostat. 2013. “Workers’ Remittances in the EU27: Transfers by Migrants to Their Country of Origin Remained Stable at Nearly 39 bn Euro in 2012.” Luxembourg: Eurostat Press Office. http://ec.europa. eu/eurostat/en/web/products-­press-releases/-/2-10122013-AP. Eurostat. 2015. “Asylum and First Time Asylum Applicants: Annual Aggregated Data.” Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-­datasets/-/ TPS00191. Eurostat. 2017. “Personal Remittances Statistics.” Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-­explained/index.php/Personal_remittances_statistics. Eurostat. 2018a. “Asylum and First Time Asylum Applicants by Citizenship, Age and Sex: Annual Aggregated Data (Rounded).” Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. http://appsso. eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=migr_asyappctza. Eurostat. 2018b. “Migration and Migrant Population Statistics.” Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-­explained/index.php/Migration_and_migrant_ population_statistics. Eurostat. 2018c. “Population and Population Change Statistics.” Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-­explained/index.php/Population_and_population_ change_statistics. Eurostat. 2018d. “Population Structure and Ageing.” Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-­explained/index.php/Population_structure_and_ageing. German Council of Economic Experts. 2011. “Herausforderungen des demografischen Wandels: Expertise im Auftrag der Bundesregierung.” Wiesbaden: Federal Statistical Office. www.sachverstaendigenrat-­ wirtschaft.de/fileadmin/dateiablage/Expertisen/2011/expertise_2011-demografischer-­wandel.pdf. German Federal Ministry of the Interior. 2015. “Migrationsbericht 2013 des Bundesamtes für Migration und Flüchtlinge im Auftrag der Bundesregierung.” Berlin: Federal Ministry of the Interior, Public Relations Office. www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Publikationen/Migrationsberichte/migrationsbericht-­2013. html. German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. 2005. “The Impact of Immigration on Germany’s Society.” Nürnberg: Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/ EN/Publikationen/EMN/KleineStudien/study2004-emn-­e influss-zuwanderung.pdf?__blob= publicationFile. German Federal Statistical Office. 2009. “Bevölkerung Deutschlands bis 2060: Ergebnisse der 12. Koordinierten Bevölkerungsvorausberechnung.” Wiesbaden: Federal Statistical Office. www.destatis.de/ DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/Bevoelkerung/VorausberechnungBevoelkerung/BevoelkerungDeutsch land2060Presse.html. German Federal Statistical Office. 2015. “Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit: Ausländische Bevölkerung, Ergebnisse des Ausländerzentralregisters, Fachserie 1 Reihe 2.” Wiesbaden: Federal Statistical Office. www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/Bevoelkerung/MigrationIntegration/Auslaend Bevoelkerung.html. Givens, Terri. 2005. Voting Radical Right in Western Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hollifield, James F. 2014. “Countries of Immigration: France.” In Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective, edited by Wayne A. Cornelius, Takeyuki Tsuda, Philip L. Martin, and James F. Hollifield, 166. 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Howard, Mark Morjé. 2010. “The Impact of the Far Right on Citizenship Policy in Europe: Explaining Continuity and Change.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36, no. 5: 735–751. INSEE (National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies). 2011. “Fiches Thématiques: Population immigrée.” Paris: INSEE. www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/1374019?sommaire=1374025. International Organization for Migration. 2005. “World Migration 2005: Costs and Benefits of International Migration.” Geneva: International Organization for Migration. https://publications.iom.int/ system/files/pdf/wmr_2005_3.pdf. Klusmeyer, Douglas B., and Demetrios G. Papademetriou. 2009. Immigration Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany: Negotiating Membership and Remaking the Nation. New York: Berghahn. Lanzieri, Giampaolo. 2011. “Fewer, Older and Multicultural? Projections of the EU Populations by Foreign/National Background.” Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. http://ec. europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3888793/5850217/KS-­RA-11-019-EN.PDF.

International Migration   169 Liebig, Thomas, and Jeffrey Mo. 2013. “The Fiscal Impact of Immigration in OECD Countries.” In International Migration Outlook 2013. Paris: OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/migr_outlook-­ 2013-6-en. Massey, Douglas S., Joaquin Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor. 1993. “Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal.” Population and Development Review 19, no. 3: 431–466. Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press. Papademetriou, Demetrios, and Philip Martin, eds. 1991. The Unsettled Relationship: Labor Migration and Economic Development. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Statistics Netherlands. 2014. “Statline Database: Population; Sex, Age, Origin and Generation, 1 January.” http://statline.cbs.nl/. Statistics Sweden. 2005. Population Statistics 2004. Örebro: Statistics Sweden. Straubhaar, Thomas, and Florin P. Vădean. 2005. “International Migrant Remittances and their Role in Development.” In Migration, Remittances, and Development. Paris: OECD. www.oecd.org/els/ mig/38840502.pdf. UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). 2000. The State of the World’s Refugees 2000: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action. Geneva: UNHCR. www.unhcr.org/4a4c754a9.html. UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). 2015. Global Trends, War at War: Forced Displacement in 2014. Geneva: UNHCR. http://unhcr.org/556725e69.html. UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). 2018. Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2017. Geneva: UNHCR. www.unhcr.org/en-­us/statistics/unhcrstats/5b27be547/unhcr-­globaltrends-­2017.html. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. 2013. “International Migration Report 2013.” New York: United Nations. www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/ publications/pdf/migration/migrationreport2013/Full_Document_final.pdf. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. 2016. “International Migration Report 2015: Highlights.” New York: United Nations. www.un.org/en/development/desa/ population/migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2015_Highlights.pdf. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-­System. Vol. 1, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press. World Bank. 2006a. “Global Economic Prospects 2006: Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration.” Washington, DC: World Bank. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/5073014681 42196936/Global-­economic-prospects-­2006-economic-­implications-of-­remittances-and-­migration. World Bank. 2006b. “Migration and Development Brief 2: Remittance Trends 2006.” Washington, DC: World Bank. http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/372901444756856754/MigrationDevelopmentBriefing Nov2006.pdf. Zolberg, Aristide R. 1989. “The Next Waves: Migration Theory for a Changing World.” International Migration Review 23, no. 3: 403–430.

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Patterns of Fear: Hegemony, Globalization, and the U.S.–Japan Trade Conflict, 1971–1996 John Taylor Vurpillat As Japan developed into a strong economic power, there were changes in the way Japanese looked at the United States and in the way Amer­icans looked at Japan. (Yoshio Okawara, Ambassador of Japan to the United States, 1990)

The United States is once again engaged in a great war with Japan … and this battlefield gives enormous advantage to Japan. (Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler Motors, 1984)

How should the United States, as the leading nation-­state of the contemporary international order, respond to the rise of new economic rivals? With the economic ascent of China in the twenty-­first century, this has become one of the great questions asked by international relations observers in the era of globalization. While many Amer­ican journalists, foreign policy hands, and politicians depict a future in which the United States is diminished by Chinese economic power and influence, history offers useful analogies that suggest other possible outcomes. In the decades immediately following World War II, the United States faced a similar challenge from Japan when that country emerged as a leading manufacturer of goods, especially in technology sectors. By the 1970s, exporting those goods to the wider world had rendered Japan a major economic power, ushering in an era of intensifying trade conflict between Japan and the United States. This case study examines the origins and outcomes of that conflict, assessing the extent to which new economic competition in the international order altered the power and influence of the hegemonic power. Between 1973 and 1996, the United States and Japan engaged in a series of heated diplomatic disputes over Japan’s growing share of U.S. markets for high-­technology manufactured goods. These trade disputes involved all manner of Japanese goods—from steel and television sets to Pac-­Man video games. Most contentious and persistent of all was the conflict over automobiles. In the postwar era, Amer­ican auto executives viewed Japan’s key automakers, particularly Toyota, Nissan, and Honda, as producers of cheap cars that more closely resembled toys than automobiles. But beginning in 1979, when severe oil price increases and a deep economic recession hit the United States for the second time in less than a decade, Amer­ican consumers scrambled for inexpensive, fuel-­efficient Japanese cars. As Yoshio Okawara observes, Japan’s share of the U.S. automobile market jumped from 14.5 percent in 1979 to 21 percent in 1980 (1990, 15). Amid frequent factory closures and high unemployment at home, many

U.S.–Japan Trade Conflict   171

Amer­icans linked their own economic distress with the rise of Japan’s high-­growth, export-­led industrial economy. In 1979 the Harvard sociologist Ezra Vogel’s unexpected bestseller Japan as Number One revealed the economic dynamism that allowed Japan to surpass the United States according to several indicators. These conditions set the stage for intense political agitation inside the United States and serious trade conflict across the Pacific.

The Economic Miracle in Japan The clash over automobiles represented only one episode in the much longer history of Japan’s economic transformation since World War II. Japan began this process in 1945 amid the material destruction wrought by war and defeat. Despite these conditions, the Japanese economy grew at an unprecedented rate, averaging 10 percent growth per year from the early 1950s through the early 1970s (Gordon 2007). Economists measure economic output by calculating gross national product (GNP), which represents the total value of all goods and services a country produces in a single year. The rate at which GNP increases year-­to-year is expressed as economic expansion. Japan’s GNP increased from $11 billion in 1950 to $320 billion in 1973, meaning its economy expanded at twice the rate of global economic output (Gordon 2007). By the mid-­1970s, Japan had become the third-­largest economy in the world, behind only the United States and the Soviet Union. Household incomes rose rapidly, creating a consumer society in which a majority of Japanese participated. Most families could afford the three electric treasures of Japanese consumer society—a refrigerator, a washing machine, and a television set. In Japan, observers dubbed this period the “era of high-­speed growth,” or “the economic miracle.” This dramatic socioeconomic transformation has since fostered an intense debate among economists, sociologists, and historians. How did Japan achieve such remarkable results? Among the circumstances behind Japan’s economic miracle, scholars point to four main factors: new entrepreneurship, a well-­educated workforce, a high rate of personal savings among households, and the government’s management of long-­term economic goals. Entrepreneurship bloomed among a new generation of corporate executives, both in historic large firms like Mitsubishi and in newer ones like Honda. Workers were energetic and educated, which favored higher productivity and the ability to learn new skills as high-­technology manufacturing became more sophisticated. Executives and workers alike saved earnings at rates well above those in other industrial countries, providing a growing pool of capital available for investment. This capital allowed many Japanese firms to acquire licenses for technologies developed abroad, accelerating domestic research and reducing development times for new products. Finally, the deep involvement of the government in setting national economic goals, channeling investment into specific high-­growth industries, and protecting domestic manufacturers from foreign competition made Japan unique among the leading capitalist countries of the postwar era. The economic miracle, however, was never a Japanese story alone. Japan’s economic transformation was deeply intertwined with the foreign policy interests of the United States. As in postwar Europe, U.S. officials sought to use economic reconstruction as an instrument of statecraft, improving the strategic position of the United States in East Asia by strengthening the economy of its new ally, Japan. In particular, U.S. planners envisioned installing an Amer­ican-­ style capitalism based on open competition, free trade, and a clear separation of public and private interests. In doing so, they sought to displace the prewar economic order in Japan, defined by close and coordinated relationships between the government and the zaibatsu— Japan’s largest industrial conglomerates. Ultimately, U.S. officials had only limited success with these structural economic reforms. Yet, in significant ways, Japan’s extraordinary growth served larger U.S. priorities to establish stability in East Asia. The transpacific economic

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Figure 14.1  A Shipbuilding Factory of Mitsubishi, One of Japan’s Largest and Oldest Conglomerates. Source: Masoud Akbari/Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mitsubishi_ship_factory_-_ panoramio.jpg.

r­ elationship tied Japan to Amer­ican markets, providing incentives for both sides to deepen diplomatic and security ties. By the late 1970s, many Amer­icans wondered if the United States had succeeded too well with reconstruction in Japan. Nevertheless, the U.S. vision for the postwar order, from its earliest outlines, placed open international economic relations at the center of efforts toward peace, stability, and security. The most important pillar of this U.S. vision was the establishment of free trade among nations. Even before the war, the Atlantic Charter signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 committed the country to free trade in the postwar order. As postwar planning began, Amer­ican free-­trade advocates called for the lowest possible national barriers to trade. Theories linking free trade to international peace and stability, by then, had a long history that extended back to the Scottish Enlightenment and Adam Smith. For Allied planners, however, more recent lessons of history made free trade an urgent matter. A system of free trade, in their view, could thwart the kind of economic nationalism that allowed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to militarize during the 1930s. Amer­ican and British organizers of the postwar economic order sought mainly to establish a system that would prevent another global Great Depression, which they saw as the seedbed for the rise of fascism and military aggression. The terms of the new economic order were set at the Bretton Woods Conference, which took place in New Hampshire in July 1944. The agreement created new institutions designed to restore global capitalism. The International Monetary Fund was established to halt financial

U.S.–Japan Trade Conflict   173

contagions like those that enveloped the world in the 1930s. The World Bank (particularly its International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) was established to provide capital to recovering and developing nations in ways that limited speculative short-­term international capital flows. The U.S. dollar, backed by gold, was made the world’s reserve currency, with other national currencies pegged to the U.S. dollar, creating a system of fixed exchange rates that facilitated international trade and investment. Finally, the Bretton Woods Conference laid out the framework for a system of free trade, established in 1947 under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The free-­trade provisions of GATT allowed Japan to import the raw materials necessary for economic growth. In general, these institutions created the framework for an open international economy. The Bretton Woods system fostered levels of rapid economic growth and global economic integration not experienced since the 1920s. Just as important for Japan was the size and relative openness of U.S. domestic markets to foreign goods. The United States thus helped create the economic conditions necessary for Japan’s postwar transformation. Information on the Bretton Woods system—including its history, institutions, and major provisions—can be found on a web page sponsored by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund called “The Bretton Woods Institutions Turn Sixty” (http:// external.worldbankimflib.org/Bwf/index.htm). U.S. priorities in the Cold War—notably, containing the expansion of Communist regimes backed by the Soviet Union—also shaped Japan’s postwar economy. U.S. interests in maintaining military bases there allowed Japan to channel more resources into nonmilitary economic development. This security arrangement solidified as the Cold War came to East Asia. In October 1949, the Communist leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China after defeating nationalist forces in the Chinese Civil War. To U.S. planners, the loss of mainland China to Mao made Japan increasingly important geopolitically. As a result, the emphasis of the U.S. occupation government shifted from socioeconomic reform to economic recovery in hopes of making Japan the cornerstone of an anti-­Communist line of defense in East Asia. In 1950 the outbreak of the Korean War involved the United States in a three-­year war to drive Communist forces out of South Korea, further cementing this security relationship. The war also stimulated Japan’s economy with increased demand for industrial production. In addition to the short-­term fiscal stimulus of the early Cold War era, the U.S.–Japan security relationship solidified by these events also boosted bilateral trade in ways that favored Japan’s exports to the United States over the next four decades. In examining the documentary record of trade frictions, the historian Alfred Eckes (1999) has shown that the United States prioritized Cold War security interests over domestic economic interests. In trade disputes, the U.S. government consistently refused to enforce its own trade laws with Cold War allies, especially Japan. Thus, in multiple ways, U.S. foreign policy priorities after 1945 aligned to stimulate and sustain the economic miracle in Japan.

The Rise of Japan as an Economic Rival By the early 1970s, trade relations turned sharply away from the mutually beneficial pattern that underpinned the era of high growth in Japan. For the first time since 1945, Amer­ican high-­ technology firms faced serious, sustained competition from Japanese manufacturers. The key measure of this structural change in the world economy was the emergence of year-­to-year U.S. trade deficits. In the 1970s, the U.S. bilateral trade deficit with Japan increased fourfold.

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For analysis and data of U.S. trade deficits, in aggregate and with Japan, refer to these U.S. Census Bureau web resources: • •

“U.S. Trade in Goods and Services: Balance of Payments (BOP) Basis, 1960 to 2013,” U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov/foreign-­trade/statistics/historical/ gands.pdf ). “Trade in Goods with Japan” (1985 to 2013 data available), U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov/foreign-­trade/balance/c5880.html).

As the apparent threat of Japan’s exports moved to the center of Amer­ican politics, the trade deficit number took on potent political meaning. Between 1971 and 1996, many Amer­icans came to view Japan as an economic rival. The years from 1973 to 1982, in particular, were a period of economic distress in the United States, during which successive Amer­ican presidents seemed powerless in the face of rising inflation and unemployment at home. For Amer­icans accustomed to high wages, low unemployment, and cheap oil, the economic shocks of the 1970s had important material and psychological consequences, raising questions about the future of the United States and challenging Amer­icans’ assumptions about their way of business and government. For many Japanese, a U.S. decline suggested that the Japanese way, which had produced the economic miracle and a more durable economic recovery in the 1970s, represented a superior method for economic management and social well-­being. This is the context in which serious conflicts over the U.S. trade deficit emerged. U.S. policymakers, who had regularly ignored Amer­ican firms injured by Japanese trade in the early years of the Cold War, took a great interest in readjusting trade relations beginning in the 1970s. The United States engaged Japan repeatedly in negotiations that focused on three areas of trade adjustment: (1) the protection of specific Amer­ican industries without raising formal tariff barriers, (2) opening Japan’s protected domestic markets to Amer­ican-­made goods in order to reduce U.S. trade deficits, and (3) making broader multilateral agreements to improve the competitiveness of Amer­ican manufacturers in overseas markets generally. In two decades of trade conflict, U.S. negotiators won many significant concessions from Japan. These diplomatic successes, however, failed to significantly alter the fundamental trajectory of increasing market share for Japan’s high-­technology goods in the United States and the resulting U.S. bilateral trade deficits with Japan. Efforts to protect individual Amer­ican industries from Japan’s competition represented the first area of trade adjustment pursued by the United States. Starting in the early 1970s, the U.S. government faced growing pressure to fight the trade practices of Japan’s leading exporters. In particular, Amer­ican manufacturers accused Japanese rivals of “dumping,” or selling goods in U.S. markets at prices below cost in order to gain a larger market share. The initial wave of Amer­ican anger toward Japanese goods was channeled into the Trade Act of 1974, which gave the executive branch greater power to penalize incidents of dumping. As a result, over the next two decades, Japan conceded to a series of multiyear agreements on steel (1976), televisions (1977), and automobiles (1981); many of these were renewed by Japan each time the agreements expired during the 1980s. These so-­called voluntary export restrictions (VERs) committed Japan to quantitative limits on exports to the United States, saving Amer­ican firms from full exposure to Japanese competition. The agreements were significant diplomatic achievements, especially given the burdens imposed on the United States by its role as chief architect of the international economic system founded on free-­trade principles. Among these agreements, the restriction on automobiles was most significant to the United States, economically and psychologically. For most of the

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twentieth century, Detroit automakers had been the central symbol of Amer­ican progress and prosperity. Even with these protections in place, they struggled to compete with Japanese cars in terms of quality, price, and fuel efficiency. In addition, securing the VERs from Japanese manufacturers came at a cost, fueling broad popular anger in Japan toward the United States. After one such concession by Japan, Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone went to great lengths to explain the trade deal in a televised address to the Japanese people. For many Japanese, it seemed as though the United States had tilted the playing field—it wanted free trade and free markets only when those policies benefited America’s bottom line. Following the success of the 1981 agreement restricting Japanese automobile exports to the United States, official U.S. efforts shifted focus to a second area of trade adjustment: opening Japan’s domestic markets to Amer­ican-­made goods. As U.S. trade deficits became a regular fixture of the world economy in the 1970s and 1980s, many economists and trade officials on both sides of the Pacific concluded that any significant alteration to this trend required broad policies to restructure both national economies. After 1984 this argument was only strengthened by the fact that Japanese goods continued to gain U.S. market share—even as the U.S. economy rebounded from high inflation and recession. By 1985, despite this recovery, U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz admitted that “our $37 billion trade deficit with Japan is causing intense friction between our two nations” (Okawara 1990, 94). U.S. officials interested in opening Japan to Amer­ican goods naturally focused on changes to the Japanese economy. In 1979 an economic summit between the two countries produced a joint communiqué agreeing on the need to reduce U.S.–Japan trade imbalances. Unsatisfied with such nonbinding statements, the United Auto Workers and Ford Motor Company filed dumping complaints against Japanese manufacturers in 1980. During the same period, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill to establish quantitative import quotas on Japanese goods. As the U.S. economy worsened, these incidents suggested that the United States might abandon its long-­standing support for free trade. In 1971 President Richard Nixon, by severing the U.S. dollar from gold, had already shown the willingness of the United States to unilaterally abandon aspects of the international economic system established at Bretton Woods. In 1980 many observers wondered if free trade would be next. Rather than abandon free trade, however, the United States redoubled efforts to open foreign markets to Amer­ican-­made goods and improve U.S. trade deficits. These initiatives, especially after 1981, were one part of the broader economic agenda of President Ronald Reagan. Reagan brought to office a wave of new conservative economic thinking that viewed the deregulation of industry and the dramatic reduction of tax rates as central to restoring Amer­ican economic supremacy. These changes did little to restore the U.S. industrial base being lost to new foreign competition. Nevertheless, the tight monetary policy of the Federal Reserve eventually tamed inflation and restored economic growth to the U.S. economy. The economic rebound under President Reagan created a powerful consensus that viewed tax cuts and deregulation as the foundations of economic prosperity. During the 1980s, this new thinking was extended to trade relations, targeting the continuing U.S. bilateral trade deficits. In 1985 trade officials began market-­oriented sector-­selective (MOSS) negotiations on general trade adjustments with Japan. In 1986 the United States won a significant victory, securing concessions from Japan to open its domestic markets to Amer­ican-­made semiconductors. One of the most thorough efforts at general trade adjustment was the Structural Impediments Initiative of 1989. To reduce Japan’s trade surpluses, the United States asked Japan to reduce household savings rates, shorten workweeks in order to stimulate domestic consumption, and limit business collusion among keiretsu, historic alliances among suppliers and manufacturers in Japan’s domestic economy that limited the access of Amer­ican firms to Japanese markets.

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Japan did make significant changes to policies governing its economy during the 1980s, deregulating financial markets and coordinating monetary policy. Some of these changes were made under duress. For example, the passage of the U.S. Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 authorized unilateral action against net exporters like Japan. Faced with trade sanctions against Japanese manufacturers in the United States, Japan agreed to further open and deregulate home markets. Despite changes like these, however, Japan never met its target for importing Amer­ican semiconductors agreed to in 1986. Nor did it make any of the general reforms to stimulate U.S. imports outlined in the Structural Impediments Initiative. Part of the difficulty for Japan was that its private-­sector industries had grown so successful and powerful that governmental guidance of industry diminished, especially through the 1980s. The other obstacle to making general adjustments to Japan’s home markets rested more on sentiment. Many Japanese, resentful of U.S. demands for change, felt that Amer­icans were asking Japan to save the United States from its own economic shortcomings. After all, U.S. trade deficits resulted partly from Amer­ican consumers repeatedly choosing Japanese goods over Amer­ican goods throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1984 Akio Morita, the CEO of Sony, lamented that “America no longer makes things; it only takes pleasure in making profits from moving money around” (Cohen 1998, 44). By the late 1980s, Japan had become such a significant world economic power that many Japanese, and many Amer­icans as well, talked of a Japanese model of capitalism more dynamic and successful than the Amer­ican model. In Japan, many business leaders felt that the United States should respect and emulate the Japanese model rather than ask Japan to dismantle it. Information on the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, including its sponsors and legislative history, along with an overview, summary, and text, can be found at the U.S. GovTrak website (www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/100/hr4848). Sentiments like these—and their opposite among Amer­ican leaders—produced increasing trade tensions through the late 1980s. The end of the Cold War only intensified the trade conflict, as the security interests that held U.S.–Japan relations together began to fall away. This wave of anti-­Japan sentiment in the United States climaxed with the recession of 1990 and 1991. A distressed economy helped elect President Bill Clinton in 1992 and provided the new administration broad support for a strong stance against Japan in bilateral trade negotiations. By July 1993, new U.S. efforts on trade resulted in the first set of quantitative criteria for U.S. access to Japan’s home market. The “Framework for a New Economic Partnership” was signed by President Clinton and Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa that year. Like previous U.S. efforts, it succeeded on a diplomatic level but failed to seriously alter U.S. trade deficits. Details on the Framework for a New Economic Partnership, including objectives, areas of reform, and shared goals in the global economy, can be found at the website for the U.S. Department of State (https://1997-2001.state.gov/www/regions/eap/japan/framewrk. html). The limits of U.S. achievements drove policymakers to seek alternate ways of making Amer­ican-­made goods more competitive at home and abroad. Between 1985 and 1994, in particular, the United States looked to broader multilateral trade and international monetary agreements as a means of improving the competitiveness of Amer­ican goods. In many ways these efforts were much more successful at improving U.S. trade fortunes than any single bilateral

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agreement with Japan; they also showed, as many Japanese observers had suggested, that the trade difficulties faced by the United States in the 1980s had more to do with aspects of the U.S. economy than with bilateral trade with Japan. The most significant of these U.S. efforts, for both Japan and the United States, was the pursuit of U.S. monetary devaluation against other national currencies. This process culminated in the 1985 Plaza Accord, agreed to by the finance ministers of the five leading capitalist economies (the United States, Japan, West Germany, France, and United Kingdom) following successful negotiations at the Plaza Hotel in New York. In the United States, monetary contraction had tamed inflation since late 1982. At the same time, however, this policy of high interest rates increased the value of the U.S. dollar relative to other leading currencies, making Amer­ican-­made goods more expensive in overseas markets. By 1985 the value of the dollar had increased 50 percent in less than five years, and domestic producers were lobbying for relief measures in Congress. This prompted the Reagan administration to pursue trade adjustment through monetary devaluation rather than though new trade barriers. The Plaza Accord committed all five countries to bring down the value of the dollar in order to reduce U.S. trade deficits. Finance Minister Takeshita Noboru signed the agreement for Japan, committing his country to low interest rates and fiscal stimulus to increase domestic demand. The Plaza Accord had different effects in each country. For the United States, exports of Amer­ican-­made goods increased, though not enough to change its bilateral trade deficit with Japan. For Japan, the accord represented a mixed blessing. Monetary policy, in particular, increased investments in productivity among Japanese firms, which lowered costs and improved competitiveness. At the same time, expansionist monetary policy helped turn a pattern of sound investing into a speculative mania that inflated asset values, especially in Japanese stocks and real estate. Among economic historians, there is an argument that draws a direct line from the Plaza Accord to the bubble economy of the late 1980s and the so-­called lost decade of the 1990s, in which Japan experienced zero or negative GNP growth. For both countries, even in the short term, the Plaza Accord increased the bilateral trade imbalance it sought to improve. By inflating asset values in Japan, it sent many Japanese firms and investors overseas in search of property and investments that now appeared inexpensive by comparison. Roughly 40 percent of all Japanese investment in the years after the Plaza Accord came to the United States. A digital reproduction of the official Plaza Accord, signed by the United States, Japan, West Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, can be found at the G-­8 information center website hosted by the University of Toronto (www.g8.utoronto.ca/finance/ fm850922.htm). Japan’s specific obligations are outlined in the conclusion. The economic background for international monetary policy coordination in the 1980s can be uploaded from the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research, in a digitized chapter of the volume Amer­ican Economic Policy in the 1980s (www.nber.org/ chapters/c7756.pdf ). The late 1980s and early 1990s were thus a period in which the rising economic power and influence of Japan seemed to contrast starkly with the image of U.S. economic decline, especially during the recession of 1990–1991. Even before the recession, the wave of Japanese direct foreign investment in the United States had sparked a new wave of anti-­Japan sentiment among many Amer­icans. Amer­ican newspapers and television news programs reported breathlessly on Japan’s investments. In 1985 the New York Times ran a feature article titled “The Danger from Japan,” which presented Japan as an unrelenting economic competitor. In 1989 the Atlantic ran a feature warning of Japan’s rising economic power titled “Containing Japan,”

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transferring the idea of containment, the strategic metaphor for halting Soviet aggression in the Cold War, to post-­Cold War Japan. Indeed, during this period, a number of scholars, trade officials, and journalists made careers warning of Japanese economic domination. In 1991 the sentiments spilled over to the many doomsayers in the Amer­ican foreign policy establishment. One such analyst, George Friedman, wrote a book titled The Coming War with Japan in 1991. Of course, none of these predictions came to pass. Nevertheless, as these examples indicate, many Amer­icans increasingly viewed Japan as an economic rival, if not an enemy. The New York Times article “The Danger from Japan” can be found on the paper’s website (www.nytimes.com/1985/07/28/magazine/the-­danger-from-­japan.html). The Atlantic article “Containing Japan” can be found on the magazine’s website (www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1989/05/containing-­japan/376337/). Among the more sober-­minded observers of the relative decline of Amer­ican economic power in an increasingly global economy, many turned to the regional expansion of free trade as a means to indirectly challenge Japan’s trade surpluses. These efforts culminated with the ratification of the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993. Since at least 1971, successive U.S. administrations had looked for ways to compete with the higher-­quality and lower-­priced exports of emerging economies—Japan and West Germany, in particular. NAFTA offered the United States something that no bilateral agreement with Japan or structural adjustment could: access to labor cheap enough to make Amer­ican manufacturers competitive with those of Japan. The process that culminated in NAFTA began in the Reagan administration with the U.S.–Canada Free Trade Agreement of 1987. Negotiations to include Mexico in a larger zone of free trade continued across three U.S. administrations, until President Clinton successfully pushed the treaty through Congress. Officials in the Clinton administration explicitly argued for NAFTA using the specter of Japanese economic power to whip votes in the U.S. Senate. In the United States, reaction to the establishment of NAFTA cut across traditional political lines; it was favored by many business leaders and financial institutions, but opposed by manufacturing workers, who would bear the heaviest burden of trade liberalization. In the short term, NAFTA did little to settle tensions in U.S.–Japan trade relations. Over the long term, however, it did improve the competitiveness of Amer­ican firms that moved manufacturing to Mexico to gain huge savings in the cost of labor. The result for Mexico was a surge in foreign investment and foreign exports. In the decade after ratification of NAFTA, Mexico’s export of manufactured goods went from $10 billion per year to $120 billion per year. Thus, NAFTA tended to make Amer­ican firms more competitive, reducing U.S. trade deficits generally. However, in the age of globalization, these reduced trade deficits did not translate into more high-­paying manufacturing jobs for Amer­ican workers. Taken together, the establishment of NAFTA and the earlier agreement reached in the Plaza Accord helped improve the U.S. position in the global economy. It also demonstrated the enormous economic influence the United States still possessed despite the rise of Japan. Details on NAFTA and side agreements on labor and the environment can be found at the website of the government of Canada (www.international.gc.ca/trade-­agreementsaccords-­commerciaux/agr-­acc/nafta-­alena/index.aspx). Official remarks made by President Bill Clinton after signing NAFTA can be found at the website of the Miller Center at the University of Virginia (http://millercenter.org/ president/speeches/speech-­3927).

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By 1996 the U.S.–Japan trade conflict had declined significantly. In 1995 a new agreement on automobiles further opened Japan’s home market to Amer­ican automakers. The following year, an agreement on semiconductors was seen as a victory for Japanese manufacturers. Trade negotiations also began to shift away from bilateral issues and toward general multilateral adjustments reached through the World Trade Organization (WTO), an international governing body that institutionalized the trade rules established under GATT beginning in 1995. By the mid-­1990s, Amer­ican anxieties about the rise of Japanese economic power receded as it became clear that Japan was suffering economically from more than just the collapse of its bubble economy. While Japan’s fortunes waned, optimism about the U.S. economy moved in a positive direction based on a series of interlocking trends. By 1992 the U.S. economy was clearly emerging out of recession. Soon after, tax increases and bipartisan budget agreements by Congress and the White House placed the U.S. government on the path to fiscal surplus, which provided a foundation for low interest rates and the expansion of private investment. The resurgence of the technology sector centered in California’s Silicon Valley and the first boom surrounding the commercialization of the Internet added to these broad economic changes, producing a period of sustained economic growth in the United States from 1992 to 2001. Under these conditions, the U.S.–Japan trade conflict was replaced on the front pages of Amer­ican newspapers by emerging issues like stabilization in post-­Soviet Eastern Europe, nuclear proliferation, and market liberalization in China. Why did the U.S.–Japan trade conflict decline without significant structural changes in the bilateral trade relationship? The shift in relative economic fortunes was certainly one reason. The change in perspective also rested on a new material and psychological equilibrium reached by most Amer­icans. The place of Japanese goods in Amer­ican consumer society had become part of a new normal. Accommodation was driven by growing consumer experiences with Japanese goods. In addition, by the late 1990s many Japanese firms had moved large portions of their business operations to the United States, making many Amer­icans employees and managers in Japanese corporations. The initial impulse was to avoid trade barriers, but the long-­ term result of these moves was to make Japanese firms a regular part of Amer­ican economic life, subject to U.S. labor laws and increasingly influenced by Amer­ican norms in the workplace. Finally, the image of Japan as an economic enemy faded because visions of Japanese economic domination predicted by many Amer­ican observers failed to materialize.

The Real Challenge from Japan In October 1989, Sony Corporation of Japan purchased Columbia Pictures for $3.4 billion. News of the sale of the Amer­ican movie studio became one of the most widely noted episodes in the economic rivalry between the United States and Japan. Known for its eye-­grabbing covers, Newsweek ran a cover days after the announcement depicting the iconic goddess of the Columbia Pictures logo dressed as a geisha, under the breathless headline, “Japan Invades Hollywood.” The Newsweek feature elaborated on themes of Japanese invasion, take-­over, and domination that, by then, had become common in Amer­ican public debate about the rise of Japanese economic power. In a 1993 survey, for example, eight out of ten Amer­icans who followed bilateral trade closely viewed Japan as an unfair trading partner (Destler 1997, 17). Certainly, since the mid-­1980s, Japanese investors had been on something of a buying spree across the United States. Rising asset prices and easy money policies in Japan had sent them abroad in search of opportunity. Honolulu, Los Angeles, and New York quickly became major destinations for Japanese capital. Japanese real estate investments in Los Angeles were so widespread that the city was increasingly referred to as the twenty-­fourth ward of Tokyo (Lewis 1991, 97). Media narratives like the Newsweek piece followed each high-­profile Japanese investment. The net result was the creation of an image of Japan as an advancing economic juggernaut—a capitalist

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army on the march—in which managers and workers sacrificed personal gain and comforts for the monolithic interests of the Japanese nation-­state. As it turns out, most of this contemporary analysis missed the central issue related to the rise of Japanese economic power. Economic interdependence, not economic invasion, was the most significant challenge that emerged between the United States and Japan in the decades after 1971. Before the 1970s, the United States could afford to ignore foreign competitors in domestic and overseas markets. As the U.S. record in the 1950s and 1960s shows, Amer­ican officials consistently supported the growth of export economies like Japan in the name of Cold War solidarity. In addition, growing economic interdependence often favored the United States in trade relations with Japan, despite Amer­ican anxieties about increasing bilateral trade deficits. Japan expanded rapidly during the initial era of high-­speed growth, and again beginning in the late 1970s. For Japan, however, that pattern of economic growth depended on further growth in exports. This central economic fact made the preferences of Japan’s largest trading partner, the United States, a powerful force in Japanese politics. Interdependence did not leave Japan powerless; rather, it imposed incentives to reach mutual accommodation on trade issues with the United States. Japan repeatedly accepted the terms of U.S. efforts to limit Japanese exports, open Japan’s markets to Amer­ican goods, and coordinate monetary policy in order to help Amer­ican manufacturers. The central problem with this kind of increasing U.S.–Japan economic interdependence was that accommodations like these often placed politicians and policymakers in direct conflict with their own domestic constituents. Announcements of VERs and other trade concessions made by Japanese leaders often created waves of popular dissent at home. The Japanese public was justifiably proud of the country’s incredible economic transformation and saw no reason for such changes in policy. These sentiments ran so deep that, as the historian Stephen D. Cohen (1998) wryly noted, the only effective opposition party on trade issues in Japan was the United States. Thus, the central question associated with the rise of Japanese economic power was not one of hegemonic decline, but rather a question of domestic politics—changes in trade destabilized politics in both countries. Like their Japanese counterparts, U.S. policymakers also struggled. U.S. politicians were burdened with competing obligations to uphold free trade in the international economy, while also protecting Amer­ican firms and workers faced with foreign competition.

Conclusion What does the history of the U.S.–Japan trade conflict tell us about the relationship between hegemonic powers and emerging economic rivals in the era of globalization? Foremost, it highlights the way world-­historic changes on this scale create inevitable frictions. It is quite certain that, given the chance, most Amer­icans would freeze global economic conditions in time somewhere around 1945, when the United States accounted for almost all high-­ technology manufactured goods and about 25 percent of total world economic output. Evidence of this attitude was seen in the anti-­NAFTA and Amer­ican First slogans pushed by Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. This history also tells us, however, that anxieties regarding new rivals experienced by hegemonic powers can be transitory— often resting more on a perception of economic threats than on reality. The emergence of Japanese economic power significantly altered the organization of—and the balance of power in—the global economy. This development, however, did not create a new economic enemy in Japan; it instead created a new power center with equal interest in maintaining the open international economy established by the United States after 1945. Finally, the rise and fall of the U.S.–Japan trade conflict tells us that the process of globalization not only changes economic relations between nation-­states, but also creates new economic relations between interests groups and governments within nation-­states.

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References and Further Research Bergsten, C. Fred, and William R. Cline. 1987. The United States–Japan Economic Problem. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Cohen, Stephen D. 1990. “United States–Japan Trade Relations.” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 37, no. 4 (January): 122–136. Cohen, Stephen D. 1998. An Ocean Apart: Explaining Three Decades of U.S.–Japanese Trade Frictions. Westport, CT: Praeger. Cohen, Warren I. 2000. East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the West. New York: Columbia University Press. Destler, I. M. 1989. Dollar Politics: Exchange Rate Policymaking in the United States. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Destler, I. M. 1997. Has Conflict Passed Its Prime? Japanese and Amer­ican Approaches to Trade and Economic Policy. Ibaraki, Japan: Graduate School of International Political Economy, University of Tsukuba. Destler, I. M., and Hideo Sato. 1982. Coping with U.S.–Japanese Economic Conflicts. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Dower, John W. 2000. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W. W. Norton. Eckes, Alfred E. 1999. Opening America’s Market: U.S. Foreign Trade Policy Since 1776. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Frieden, Jeffry. 2006. Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century. New York: W. W. Norton. Friedman, George. 1991. The Coming War with Japan. New York: St Martin’s. Gordon, Andrew. 2007. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hart, Jeffrey A. 1992. Rival Capitalists: International Competitiveness in the United States, Japan, and Western Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Heale, M. J. 2009. “Anatomy of a Scare: Yellow Peril Politics in America, 1980–1993.” Journal of Amer­ican Studies 43, no. 1 (April): 19–47. Helleiner, Eric. 2014. Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods: International Development and the Making of the Postwar Order. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Iacocca, Lee. 1984. Iacocca: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam. Irwin, Douglas A. 1998. Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade. Reprint ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ishihara, Shintaro. 1991. The Japan That Can Say No: Why Japan Will Be First Among Equals. New York: Simon & Schuster. Johnson, Chalmers A. 1982. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. LaFeber, Walter. 1998. The Clash: U.S.–Japanese Relations Throughout History. New York: W. W. Norton. Lewis, Michael. 1991. Pacific Rift. New York: W. W. Norton. McKinnon, Ronald I., and Kenichi Ohno. 1997. Dollar and Yen: Resolving Economic Conflict Between the United States and Japan. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Metzler, Mark. 2013. Capital as Will and Imagination: Schumpeter’s Guide to the Postwar Japanese Miracle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Miyao, Ryuzo. 2002. “The Effects of Monetary Policy in Japan.” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 34, no. 2 (May): 376–392. Morioka, Koji. 1999. “Causes and Consequences of the Japanese Depression of the 1990s.” International Journal of Political Economy 29, no. 1 (April): 8–25. Morita, Akio. 1986. Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony. New York: E. P. Dutton. Okawara, Yoshio. 1990. To Avoid Isolation: An Ambassador’s View of U.S.–Japanese Relations. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Okita, Saburo. 1990. Japan in the World Economy of the 1980s. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.

182   John Taylor Vurpillat Sloan, John W. 1999. The Reagan Effect: Economics and Presidential Leadership. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Steil, Benn. 2013. The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vogel, Ezra F. 1980. Japan as Number One: Lessons for America. New York: Harper Collins. Zeiler, Thomas W. 1999. Free Trade, Free World: The Advent of GATT. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

15

Globalization and Transnational Capitalism Jerry Harris Globalization has connected the world in a vast array of networks. Culture, media, travel, economics, politics, and technology have deepened and extended human interactions. As a result, society has begun to change in fundamental ways, and power and class relationships are part of this change. Economic activity is no longer centered on national circuits of production and exchange. Rather, a global accumulation of profits and worldwide assembly lines determine the modern capitalist system. So how is this different from the nation-­based economies that dominated world economic systems for the last several centuries? The old international system was centered on national markets, production, and employment. Large corporations were national champions protected and promoted by national governments. While there was a vigorous world economy, it was based mainly on exports produced in the home country and sold abroad. One way to understand these changes is to remember the old General Motors (GM) slogan from the 1960s: “What’s good for GM is good for America.” This was such an effective motto because the large majority of GM’s employment, sales, and assets were inside the United States. That’s no longer true, however. Today, the majority of its production, profits, and employment come from outside the country. The transformations at GM represent in microcosm the overall change from a national to a transnational economy. Transnational capitalism is a global system of accumulation, cross-­border financial investments, and world-­spanning networks of production. While exports are still important, most take place within firms, such as Walmart, which contracts with producers in China that ship those products to be sold in its U.S. stores. Even more important than exports, corporations locate facilities directly in foreign markets. Additionally, poorer countries in what has been called the Third World (and now commonly referred to as the Global South) no longer only supply raw materials to world markets. Today, many of these countries have become key links in value-­ added manufacturing. This case study examines how capitalism has become globalized through three lenses: GM, as a key player in the auto industry; Apple, as a key player in the high-­tech industry; and the international financial system, as a key beneficiary of technological change. The chapter concludes with considerations of how the practices of all three represent huge transformations in transnational economic power across national boundaries.

The U.S. Auto Industry The auto industry provides one of the most powerful illustrations of how national production has transformed into transnational production. Automobiles are still particularly strong carriers of national identity. GM, Ford, and Chrysler are seen as uniquely U.S. corporations. As noted

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in the New York Times in 2009, “GM factories churned out … muscle cars with taut, sculptured body panels that were rolling displays of Amer­ican DNA” (Maynard 2009). Our perception of other nations is also tied to some extent to the cars they produce. When we think of Germany, we think of the engineering superiority of BMW; Britain brings to mind the aristocratic Rolls Royce; and for Japan we admire the efficiency of Toyota and Honda. The symbolic representation of cars as extensions of their countries of origin remains strong in the popular imagination. But in reality the auto industry has been globalized through international mergers, joint ventures, global assembly lines, linked research and development, foreign subcontractors, and the importance of world markets. When the economic crisis hit the United States in 2008, President Barack Obama used government tools and resources to save GM and Chrysler—a move his conservative opponents decried as socialist. But exactly what is meant by a U.S.-defined auto industry in an era of globalization? Are we talking about corporations committed to maintaining a large base of good-­ paying Amer­ican jobs? Newly hired GM assembly-­line workers make just under $16 per hour, according to the United Autoworkers (2015), hardly a living wage for an individual, let alone one raising a family. Do we mean an industry pledging allegiance to protect and build the national economy first and foremost, ahead of its global interests? GM’s largest and fastest-­ growing market is China. Are these corporations expected to depend mainly on their sales, employment, and assets in the United States? Today the balance of these indicators comes from foreign sources. Or do the definitions simply mean U.S.-located headquarters linked to an assumption of national economic loyalty? As is so often stated in the corporate community, loyalty is first and foremost to the stockholders, many of whom invest from outside the United States. Thus, none of these definitions fit GM or Chrysler. In fact, Chrysler was saved only when an Italian corporation, Fiat, purchased it in 2009. Today, GM spans every region and continent in the world. In 2018 the company offered careers in twenty-­four countries, sold cars in 125 nations, and had operations on six continents (General Motors 2018a). Of the eight brands it owned and produced, four came from foreign mergers and acquisitions: Autobaojun, Fawjiefang, Holden, and Wuling (General Motors 2018b). GM had joint ventures in advanced technology with Chrysler, Daimler, BMW, and Toyota, and major vehicle manufacturing ventures with Toyota, Suzuki, Shanghai Automotive, AvtoVAZ of Russian, and Renault. While the United States is still GM’s largest single market, China has emerged as the world’s largest market for auto sales and is a linchpin in GM’s global strategy. GM employs 97,000 foreign workers (Long 2017) out of a total workforce of 225,000 (Statista 2018b). Overall, the transnationalization of GM has meant that foreign production, foreign assets, and foreign employment are all key elements in the company’s global empire. Whether it be Toyota, Volkswagen, or Ford—or in fact any major auto company, no matter its country of origin—the same type of global pattern exists. Table 15.1 shows key data for major auto producers, including the Transnational Index (TNI). The TNI, used by the United Nations, is based on the ratio of economic performance indicators—foreign assets, sales, and employment—to national figures in the same categories. Note that in the years between 2004 and 2016, each auto corporation increased its transnational character. The data show that auto corporations are deeply integrated into global assembly lines, are financially connected to other global players, and base their corporate strategies on worldwide accumulation, not national markets. In fact, such patterns are true for every major industry, and they represent a fundamental change from nation-­centric to transnational capitalism.

Table 15.1  Selected Auto Corporations (TNI), 2004–2016 Corporation

World rank by assets, 2016 1

Foreign assets, 2016 2

Total assets, 2016 2

Foreign sales, 2016 2

Total sales, 2016 2

Foreign employed, 2016

Total employed, 2016

TNI % 2016

TNI % 2004 3

Toyota Daimler AG Honda Ford GM

6 12 23 9 31

303,678 138,967 130,067 70,153 53,687

435,958 256,127 169,537 237,951 221,690

173,529 143,547 112,614 58,367 48,070

254,753 169,555 129,228 151,800 166,380

148,941 112,430 143,424 93,000 101,000

348,877 282,488 208,399 201,000 225,000

60.2 59.6 77.6 38.1 32.7

49.0 29.2 68.5 48.74 34.04

Source: UNCTAD “World Investment Report, 2017,” Annex Table 24: “The World’s Top 100 Non-financial MNEs, Ranked by Foreign Assets, 2016.” http:// unctad.org/en/Pages/DIAE/World%20Investment%20Report/Annex-Tables.aspx. Notes 1 World rank is by total assets. 2 US$ (millions). 3 World Investment Report, 2006, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (New York and Geneva: United Nations), p. 280. 4 The TNI often fluctuates on a year-by-year basis.

186   Jerry Harris

Apple’s Global Empire Apple, an icon of corporate America, exemplifies U.S. innovation and technology. But the company relies on resources, both human and otherwise, from many countries. With about 123,000 employees in 2017 (Statista 2018a), including close to 80,000 in the United States (Apple 2017b), and global suppliers that employ some 2.4 million workers (Apple 2017a), Apple creates its products through an immense supply chain that stretches around the world. While most design occurs in the United States, parts are made everywhere, with a large majority of assembly work done in China. Table 15.2, relating to Apple’s signature iPhone product, shows the reach of the company’s transnational network of production. But this only offers a partial picture, as many companies in the supply chain subcontract work themselves. This outsourcing is particularly true of U.S. and European firms, which use many Asian suppliers not reflected in the figures in Table 15.2. Table 15.2 shows the number of fabricators involved in the manufacturing of an iPhone on a country-­by-country basis. More recent information, while not quantified on a per-­ country basis, is available at Lifewire’s webpage “Where is the iPhone Made?” published in October 2017 (www.lifewire.com/where-­is-the-­iphone-made-­1999503). The analysis in this article tells us that many components are made by U.S.-based companies, but in factories outside the United States. As with the discussion of GM, the details of Apple’s transnational structure are revealing. As noted above, most design and engineering takes place in the United States, alongside production of the most advanced chips. LCD (liquid crystal display) panels come from Sharp and Japan Display in Japan and LG in South Korea, as does the engineering that creates that smooth swipe-­and-zoom control. Another South Korean corporation, Samsung, makes the iPhone’s microchips. From Taiwan come more chips, flash memory, and DRAM (dynamic random access memory). A French-­Italian company operating in Switzerland designs the smartphone’s gyroscope. China supplies the rare earth minerals necessary for key functions such as the color screen, circuitry, and speakers. And, of course, China also provides hundreds of thousands of assembly-­line workers who produce the final product in Foxconn factories. Table 15.2  Apple’s Global Supply Chain: Where the iPhone is Made (as of 2014) Country

Number of Suppliers

China Japan United States Europe Taiwan Malaysia Philippines Thailand Singapore Vietnam Mexico and Latin America Israel Total suppliers

330 148 75 41 35 26 23 19 18 10 9 5 739

Source: FinancesOnline.com, “How and Where iPhone is Made: A Surprising Report on How Much of Apple’s Top Product is US-Manufactured.” http://financesonline.com/how-iphone-is-made/.

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Although many of the company’s manufacturing jobs could be located in the United States, Apple executives are clear about the advantages of sourcing labor globally. Foxconn employees live in barracks and work six days a week, often twelve hours a day, for about $102 dollars a week. Foxconn came to worldwide attention in 2010 when a number of their young workers, distraught over poor living and working conditions, committed suicide by jumping off the factory roof. In 2012 another 150 workers threatened suicide in protest over poor working conditions. The Taiwanese-­owned corporation manufactures about 40 percent of all consumer electronics in the world, also producing items for Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-­Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony. When President Obama asked then Apple CEO Steve Jobs about bringing work back to America to help the unemployed, Jobs replied, “Those jobs aren’t coming back” (Duhigg and Bradsher 2012). Apple executives have stated that U.S. workers just don’t have the speed and flexibility of their Chinese counterparts. But when corporate leaders complain about unproductive Amer­ican employees, what most of them really mean is that laws and unions protect U.S. workers from poorer conditions, work rules, and pay scales allowed under looser labor regulations in China. Another critical part of Apple’s global strategy is to keep the majority of its profits outside the United States. It does this through a number of tax evasion tricks and by registering its intellectual property in low-­tax countries. For example, in 2013, although only 4 percent of Apple’s labor force was employed in Ireland, the company registered 65 percent of its worldwide profits there, paying a tax rate of only 2 percent (Landon and Pfanner 2013). Apple’s strategy is to shift profits among a web of subsidiaries that spans continents. Many have no official employees and simply occupy an empty office with an Apple nameplate. Because of this arrangement, Apple claims these subsidiaries are stateless, and therefore exempt from taxes, record-­keeping laws, and the need to file tax returns. Senator Carl Levin (D-­MI), who chaired the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, stated, “Apple sought the holy grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars while claiming to be a tax resident nowhere” (Schwartz 2013). President Obama added, “I don’t care if it’s legal. It’s wrong” (Davis 2014). It remains to be seen whether this kind of “offshoring” of profits for the purpose of tax avoidance will change under the U.S. tax reforms put in place at the end of 2017. In the first quarter of 2017, Apple kept $239.6 billion abroad and only $17.2 billion at home in the United States. But it wasn’t the only company operating in this way, as other transnational corporations employ the same tax avoidance strategy. For example, Microsoft kept $122 billion abroad, with $4 billion at home; Alphabet (Google’s parent company) had $55.7 billion abroad, with $33.7 billion at home; and Qualcomm kept $26.8 billion abroad, with just $2.1 billion at home. And many other companies avoid U.S. taxes in this way, including Cisco, Intel, Oracle, eBay, and General Electric (Meisler 2017). This costs the U.S. government billions of dollars in tax revenues, resulting in less money for environmental protection, health, education, and other public services. As is the case with automobile corporations, Apple is deeply entwined in a transnational system of production and finance. But a strategy committed to national employment and paying a fair share of taxes would put them in a less profitable position, thereby angering global stockholders and rendering the company less competitive. The system of global production and supply chains is so deeply embedded in contemporary capitalism that no major corporation can remain competitive without becoming part of these worldwide networks. This has had a profound political impact, because government technocrats and politicians now develop policies to benefit national economies within transnational circuits of finance and production. No strategy for national development outside globalization exists, at least for all mainstream and dominant political parties, whether it be the Communist Party of China, the Democratic and Republican Parties in the United States, or the social democratic and conservative parties of Europe.

188   Jerry Harris

Figure 15.1  An Electronics Factory in Shenzhen, China, in 2005. Workers Assembling Components Wear Protective Glasses to Protect Them from the Epoxy Used in the Assembly Process; a Supervisor is Walking in the Aisle, Overseeing the Work. Source: Steve Jurvetson/Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Electronics_factory_in_ Shenzhen.jpg.

The New Global Capitalism? The Industrial Revolution that began in the mid-­1700s, followed by imperialist expansion in the 1800s, encouraged the dominance of capitalism throughout the world. But this earlier capitalist world system was based on different types of relationships from those that exist now. Until the 1970s, less-­developed countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America mainly supplied raw materials under the control of colonial powers. These materials were then brought to the home country for production and distribution. Advanced industries and production technologies were kept inside the dominant, imperialist states. The resulting wealth allowed the capitalist class to make concessions to the labor movement and enabled workers to demand better pay and working conditions, creating a social contract between industries and the growing middle classes in Western Europe and the United States. Health care, public education, home and car ownership, social security, pensions, holidays, and the chance to start small businesses—all were now within the reach of middle-­class citizens. Of course, none of these benefits and opportunities was extended to workers in the Global South, who continued to be exploited, and whose nations were oppressed. This traditional economic and political system was based upon nation-­states engaged in an international system of state-­to-state relationships and interests. The majority of products, such as cars, clothes, and electrical appliances, were made in the home country and exported abroad. Economic competition took place through trade and access to primary resources. But in the 1970s this system began to change, led by the integration of global production and finance.

Globalization and Transnational Capitalism   189

This process of outsourcing production to many former colonial states was an important step in the formation of a transnational rather than international economy. These transformations were both a political and an economic process. Manufacturing spread as global assembly lines became key to the production of most commodities. As this economic integration proceeded, governments rewrote the laws, rules, and regulations that oversaw and structured the new economy. This was a worldwide trend, as pro-­ globalists began to gain dominance within most major political parties. Some argue that globalization has made national governments and state institutions less relevant and less powerful, but in fact governments are as important as ever, except that their function has changed. They are now committed to creating the infrastructure that can oversee and promote a global economy. Consequently, national governments pass legislation and regulations that promote cross-­border capital investments and production, such as the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the 1994 agreement that loosened trade and investment barriers between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Such initiatives aim to break down national barriers to free trade so that transnational corporations and capital can freely flow everywhere. For web-­based resources on globalization, the following sites are recommended: • • • • •

Global Studies Association (http://net4dem.org/mayglobal). Network for Critical Studies of Global Capitalism (http://netglobalcapitalism.wordpress.com/). Focus on the Global South (http://focusweb.org/). Women’s Environment and Development Organization (www.wedo.org/). Institute for Research on World-­Systems (http://irows.ucr.edu/).

The Globalization of Finance and the Role of Technology The financial industry has also radically changed under globalization—with an assist from advances in technology—in what many economists call the “financialization” of capitalism. Every day, trillions of dollars flow across borders in the world of finance. The figure of a trillion dollars doesn’t mean much to the average person. But to understand the amount of currency rocketing around the digital world on a daily basis, compare one million seconds, which runs just twelve-­and-a-­half days, to one trillion seconds, which spans 36,000 years. For example, the Foreign Exchange Market (just one market out of many) trades $5.3 trillion in currencies across the world’s borders each day. This market doesn’t invest in building anything; it just trades one currency for another. To accomplish this, computers are programmed to look for opportunities to engage in currency arbitrage, or the exploitation of small differences in the price of money in different parts of the world at the same moment in time. Algorithms operating in tens of thousands of computers are reading each other’s information. Consequently, J. P. Morgan’s computer may see that euros are being sold for one-­tenth of a penny less in Tokyo than in Frankfurt. Within milliseconds, the computer might buy hundreds of millions of euro in Japan and offload them in Europe, with a profit of several million dollars. The speed required for this kind of trading is made possible by fiber optic cables that transmit data at about a billion feet per second—enough speed to circumnavigate the earth 7.6 times a second. How big is the total trade in financial markets compared to the total export and import of manufactured products? Some 90 percent of all money moving among countries is for financial products. One of the most telling statements on financialization was issued by Bain Capital. It reported that by 2010, financial assets had reached $600 trillion, or ten times the value of the global output of all goods and services (Harris et al. 2012).

190   Jerry Harris

But the reach of transnational finance goes beyond the trade in currencies. Financial institutions have controlling interests in the largest corporations in the world. A study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, as reported by Andy Coghlan and Debra MacKenzie (2011), provides significant insight into this dominance by tracing ownership of transnational corporations. Investigating a database of thirty-­seven million companies and investors, the study examined shareholding networks, focusing on a core group of 147 predominantly financial institutions that control the most important sectors of the entire network. The study found that 47,819 individual and institutional shareholders from 190 countries hold principal positions within the world’s largest transnational corporations (Vitali et al. 2011). In other words, members of the transnational capitalist class, living in countries around the globe, invest their wealth primarily through a handful of cross-­ border financial firms that hold positions of power in the world’s 15,500 biggest companies. This multi-­trillion-dollar economy would be impossible without the revolution that has occurred in information and communication technologies. Technology has always been about competitive advantage, whether it was a crossbow in medieval France or a blast furnace in Birmingham during the Industrial Revolution. One of the unique features of this particular moment in history is that profits are being acquired through the power and speed of an algorithm, rather than the competitive advantage of a skilled and productive workforce. While algorithms are written by skilled programmers, never in history could the work of five to ten people produce a technology that, once in operation, would continue without human oversight and produce billions of dollars in profits. This type of technology represents a difference in kind rather than degree, working at speeds no person can match and without real-­time human control and direction. The resources listed here provide a critical perspective on financialization. • • • •

Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys (W.W. Norton, 2014). Inside Job, written and directed by Charles Ferguson (www.sonyclassics.com/ insidejob/). Inequality for All, written by Robert Reich (http://inequalityforall.com/). Capitalism, A Love Story, written and directed by Michael Moore (http:// topdocumentaryfilms.com/capitalism-­love-story/).

When the point of production is inside a computer and work is carried out by an algorithm, the social contract between people at different points on the economic spectrum is undermined. Wealth can be accumulated in ever greater quantities, with ever less reliance on people’s labor. Workers in developed economies thus face a double threat: globalization ships their jobs around the world, while technology makes their labor less necessary at home. This gives the transnational capitalist class greater distance and freedom from any nationally based working class. The result is a shrinking middle class, as the number of part-­time and temporary workers increases, expanding poverty and weakening democracy.

Conclusion Globalization has been a powerful force of transformation, sweeping across the world and changing people’s lives. Some lives have changed for the better, as new technologies allow people to connect with each other, participate in world events, and access information as never before. Such transparency has helped to organize social movements that challenge dictatorships and inequality the world over. In addition, access to education has spread and business opportunities have opened up.

Globalization and Transnational Capitalism   191

These free videos present insights on various aspects of globalization: •

•

•

Jerry Harris: Globalization of Capitalism (www.youtube.com/watch? v=aHMzNF5U1oM). Jerry Harris, the national secretary of the Global Studies Association, explains the growing globalization of capitalism and its impact on democracy. Presented at the Brecht Forum in New York, on November 14, 2008. William I. Robinson: The Crisis of Globalization (www.youtube.com/watch? v=oFtnIyxpfS0). William Robinson, a professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara, is a leading proponent of the school of global capitalism. Presented at the University of California, Santa Barbara, January 28, 2009. Richard Wolff: Global Capitalism: The US Position Weakens (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3PsAqfL-_pM). Richard Wolff, an economist, author, and professor emeritus University of Massachusetts, speaks on the U.S. role in global capitalism in a regular lecture series, “Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff.” Produced and presented by Democracy at Work, and broadcast on its YouTube station, this lecture was presented at the Judson Memorial Church, New York City, in May 2017.

But these same technologies have been used by powerful corporations to build global monopolies that have deepened the exploitation of labor. The relationship between the working class and the capitalist class has been redefined, with new access to billions of workers in China, Russia, India, and other countries. Cheap labor and new global markets are at the heart of economic globalization. Consequently, the traditional nationally centered economies have been radically disrupted as the social contract, constructed over decades of struggle and compromise, has been torn apart. Finance has been set free from restrictions, and corporations can now divest and invest wherever the most profits can be made. Within the political landscape, new tensions have grown over the economic inequality that has accompanied globalization. Sometimes this leads to rapidly spreading protests. The anti-­ globalization movements in both the Global North and South—which largely began with the 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference, and with the subsequent Occupy Movement, which began during the 2011 protests against Wall Street and the “1 percent”—are part of the same critique against the imbalances produced by globalization. These social tensions also create political deadlock as politicians try to chart a way forward. But the system is caught between policies supporting economic globalization and the social tensions such policies have produced. The elite politicians and corporate leaders who have contributed to the development of the transnational economy have little idea of how to fix the imbalances, and most don’t even want to. Crying out for a new direction, people become both more radical and more conservative, seeking answers and assigning blame. The future is filled with challenges. How can stakeholders create a world economy that serves everybody and not just the few? How can governments and the people they serve construct open and more democratic political systems? Such a world offers exciting but difficult times for the coming generation.

References and Further Research Apple. 2017a. “Supplier Responsibility 2017 Progress Report.” https://images.apple.com/supplier-­ responsibility/pdf/Apple-­Progress-Report-­2017.pdf. Apple. 2017b. “Two Million U.S. Jobs: And Counting.” May. www.apple.com/job-­creation/. Barnet, Richard J., and John Cavanagh. 1994. Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster.

192   Jerry Harris Bello, Walden. 2001. The Future in the Balance: Essays on Globalization and Resistance. Edited by Anuradha Mittal. Oakland, CA: Food First Books. Coghlan, Andy, and Debora MacKenzie. 2011. “Revealed: The Capitalist Network That Runs the World.” New Scientist, October 19. www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-­the-capitalist-­ network-that-­runs-the-­world/. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld. 2014. “White House Weighs Action to Deter Overseas Tax Flight.” New York Times, August 5. www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/business/Action-­in-washington-­on-corporate-­inversions.html. Davis, Mike. 2007. Planet of Slums. London and New York: Verso. Duhigg, Charles, and Keith Bradsher. 2012. “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work.” New York Times, January 21. www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-­america-and-­a-squeezed-­middle-class. html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all. Fisher, William F., and Thomas Ponniah, eds. 2003. Another World is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum. London: Zed Books. Freeland, Chrystia. 2013. Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-­Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. New York: Penguin. General Motors. 2018a. “Our Brands.” www.gm.com/our-­brands.html. General Motors. 2018b. “Our Company Overview.” www.gm.com/company/company-­overview.html. Greider, William. 1997. One World, Ready or Not. New York: Simon & Schuster. Harris, Karen, Andrew Schwedel, and Austin Kim. 2012. “A World Awash in Money.” Insights/Bain Report, November 14. www.bain.com/publications/articles/a-­world-awash-­in-money.aspx. Harris, Jerry. 2008. The Dialectics of Globalization: Economic and Political Conflict in a Transnational World. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars. Harris, Jerry. 2016. Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press. Landon, Thomas, Jr., and Eric Pfanner. 2013. “Even Before Apple Tax Breaks, Ireland’s Policy had its Critics.” New York Times, May 21. www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/business/global/ireland-­defendsattractive-­tax-rates.html. Long, Heather. 2017. “GM, Chrysler Have More Workers in Mexico than Ford.” CNN Money, January 5. http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/04/news/economy/ford-­gm-chrysler-­mexica. Maynard, Micheline. 2009. “After Many Stumbles, the Fall of a Giant.” New York Times, May 31. www. nytimes.com/2009/06/01/business/01downfall.html?adxnnl=1&dlbk=&adxnnlx=1438275606TYSPUeRW37KCLEz3JV4WSA. Meisler, Laurie. 2017. “The 50 Largest Stashes of Cash Companies Keep Overseas.” Bloomberg, June 13. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-overseas-­profits/. Robinson, William I. 2004. A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Schwartz, Nelson D. 2013. “Apple Avoided Billions in Taxes, Congressional Panel Says.” New York Times, May 20. www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/business/apple-­avoided-billions-­in-taxes-­congressionalpanel-­says.html?pagewanted=all. Steger, Manfred B., James Goodman, and Erin K. Wilson. 2013. Justice Globalism: Ideology, Crises, Policy. London: SAGE. Statista. 2018a. “Apple’s Number of Employees in Fiscal Years 2005 to 2017.” www.statista.com/ statistics/273439/number-­of-employees-­of-apple-­since-2005/. Statista. 2018b. “Number of General Motors Employees Between FY 2010 and FY 2017.” www.statista. com/statistics/239843/employees-­of-general-­motors/. Tabb, William. 2001. The Amoral Elephant: Globalization and the Struggle for Social Justice in the Twenty-­First Century. New York: Monthly Review Press. United Autoworkers. 2015. “General Motors Contract Summary.” October. https://uaw.org/app/ uploads/2015/10/64171_UAW-­GM-Hourly-­Highlights-Revp-­11-final.pdf. Williamson, John. 2004. “The Washington Consensus as Policy Prescription for Development.” Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics. www.piie.com/publications/papers/ williamson0204.pdf. Vitali, Stefania, James B. Glattfelder, and Stefano Battiston. 2011. “The Network of Global Corporate Control.” PLoS ONE 6, no. 10: e25995. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal. pone.0025995.

16

When Weak States Win: Providing Opportunities at the WTO Stephanie S. Holmsten Traditionally, studies of international relations have focused on the role of power as a central feature of the global order. Whether it be military strength or economic influence, the world’s most powerful countries possess key resources that can be used to shape the nature of international relations and urge other states to do what they might not otherwise do. Leading countries may also exert soft power through less coercive means, such as through rewards in the form of aid, trade and alliance, or normative influence. While the importance of power is undeniable, the growing interconnectedness of national economies makes crises in one place affect many other countries as well. The Asian financial crisis, for example, reminded global investors that a collapse in Asia could impact the health of economies throughout Europe and North America. The creation of the G-­20 marked the recognition of the need to incorporate more economies into global leadership institutions, as countries such as South Africa, Mexico, and Indonesia joined the leading economies of the world to discuss pressing issues of the day, including trade, development, and security. Similarly, the reform of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the World Trade Organization (WTO) was partially motivated by a growing GATT membership through the inclusion of developing countries. But, has the international order included the voices of developing countries in more substantial ways in recent years? To explore this question, this chapter investigates the dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) of the WTO. As discussed in Chapter 8, the WTO’s DSM provides a court-­like procedure by which any member state can file a grievance against a policy of another member state that is perceived to be noncompliant with WTO rules. Given the role of state power in international relations, it is commonly assumed that richer states win compliance in WTO disputes, mainly because they can make creditable threats of retaliation against the noncomplying member. Yet scholars have also found that legal mechanisms, including the WTO’s DSM, provide opportunities for weaker states to negotiate advantageous trade conditions with powerful states that would otherwise be impossible without the legal mechanism. The use of the law privileges “right over might,” making legal considerations more important than power. This study focuses on descriptive data about complainants, defendants, and the conditions of retaliatory punishment. It explores the ways that this legal mechanism provides an opportunity for weaker states to negotiate with powerful ones.

GATT and the DSM Toward the end of World War II, leaders from forty-­four countries gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to create a new framework for a global order aimed at preventing another world war. These meetings in July 1944 resulted in the creation of three new global institutions.

194   Stephanie S. Holmsten

The World Bank was designed to provide lending for reconstruction after the war, and it soon provided long-­term, low-­interest-rate loans for development projects. The International Monetary Fund (IMF ) aimed to provide monetary stability by overseeing a fixed exchange rate regime, anchored by the U.S. dollar. The IMF also began to provide short-­term financial support for monetary crises among developing countries. The GATT emphasized the importance of lowering trade barriers and encouraging greater, coordinated global trade. Protectionism was seen as one of the root causes of global conflict, as European markets, by 1947, had more than 200 bilateral quota agreements that limited imports by specific amounts. When the world leaders met at Bretton Woods, many were concerned about the negative consequences of protectionism and wanted to create a new global order to promote free trade. This led to the creation of GATT in 1947 as a negotiating forum for the reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade. Three key principles guided the foundation of GATT, according to scholars. The first principle was nondiscrimination, in which all signatory nations received the same treatment in terms of market access. Any special concessions, such as most-­favorednation status, would be extended to all GATT members, so that all trading partners were treated equally. The second principle was national treatment, meaning that a domestically produced good could not be favored over an import. All foreign goods had to be treated the same as those produced domestically. The third principle was reciprocity, which requires that any trade reduction between two countries be applied to all member states. These principles supported GATT efforts to reduce trade barriers among signatory countries. In addition to these three principles of free trade, GATT also included a variety of exemptions that allowed member states flexibility within the rules. For example, regional free-­trade areas were allowed, such as the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU), even though they violated the principles of free trade by providing special treatment to certain countries and denying reciprocity to the entire membership. GATT also excluded agriculture and services from any agreement that reduced tariffs. This was largely a result of the U.S. and EU agricultural protections that helped to support and sustain famers in these two regions. In addition, GATT included exemptions for low-­income countries, sometimes referred to as “developing countries.” The special and differential treatment (S&D) provisions gave low-­ income countries special rights within the agreement. Low-­income countries had a longer period of time for compliance and were often exempt from achieving the elimination of trade barriers. The Generalized System of Preferences, for example, allowed for special treatment for certain products exported by low-­income countries. Such provisions for low-­income countries were included in recognition of the particular challenges that low-­income economies faced, and of the vulnerability that global trade might bring, while still allowing low-­income countries to be included in the trade agreement. They therefore produced a truly global arrangement. The history of GATT is explored on the WTO web page titled “The GATT Years: From Havana to Marrakesh” (www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact4_e.htm). There are also various nongovernmental organizations that conduct research on WTO policies and advocate for changes within the WTO. Two key organizations are Oxfam International (www.Oxfam.net) and the Third World Network (www.twn.my). Both organizations focus on the impact of WTO policies; general free trade; and economic, social, and environmental well-­being in the Global South. A final foundational component of GATT was the DSM. Dani Rodrik (2011) argues that the dispute settlement procedure was a crucial component of the agreement, as such deep integration

When Weak States Win   195

required “an enforcer.” The dispute settlement procedure was structured like a court. One country, called the complainant, could file a grievance against another member country, called the defendant. A panel of three judges heard the case, and if there was evidence of a treaty violation, the court issued a ruling to remove the violating trade barriers. The procedure was relatively ineffective under GATT. Any member could block the court process at any stage, allowing the defendant, in particular, to stall the procedure. There were no deadlines for the stages of the process, so many were never fully considered. And any GATT member could reject the ruling, as the rulings were passed by unanimous consent, thus allowing one vetoing member to block a ruling. This gave the defendant and any other member with similarly violating barriers the ability to refuse a trial and/or punishment. As a result, the GATT’s DSM could do little to enforce compliance.

Power Matters When enforcement is weak, powerful states can do as they wish. At the end of World War II, the United States was the dominant country in the world, with the largest economy and strongest military. Whereas World War II decimated cities throughout Europe, the United States experienced a growing middle class and booming economy. At this time of heightened U.S. power, the United States embedded itself within the global institutions created at Bretton Woods. The institutions gathered strong and weak states together into the same international project. In effect, the institutions limited U.S. power, while binding all other states through long-­term, institutional commitments to the new order. To make the new commitment credible, the United States restrained its own power within the institutions. By engaging in “strategic restraint,” the United States led the way in creating and maintaining a new political order that aimed to provide peace and stability. By restraining the powerful, the institutions also “locked­in” other, weaker states, to the new order. G. John Ikenberry, in his book After Victory (2001), offers a detailed description of the nature of powerful states binding themselves within the institutions. We can draw from Ikenberry’s analysis that institutions can at times “mute” power imbalances by restraining the powerful to include the weak. The first chapter of G. John Ikenberry’s After Victory is available online from the publisher, Princeton University Press, at https://press.princeton.edu/titles/6981.html. Yet power remained a central feature of GATT, as it is with its successor organization, the WTO. In trade negotiations, powerful states can threaten to limit trade, sanction a member by cutting it off from global trade, or withhold particular commodities. Larger economies have stronger negotiating positions in trade deals because they have sufficient supply and demand to sustain adequate levels of economic activity. Because of relative self-­sufficiency, they can credibly threaten to cut off trade connections. Smaller economies, in contrast, are more dependent on international trade than larger economies to provide new markets for products, technological transfer for innovation, and foreign direct investment for growth. Small economies wither without imports, and threats of restricting their exports are largely meaningless because they make up such a small proportion of the market. As a result, scholars argue that power matters in trade negotiations. The role of power is evident in decision-­making processes as well. The WTO, like GATT, operates on a “one country, one vote” system. This decision-­making structure is different from the structure of the World Bank and IMF, where country contributions to the organization, based on economic size, determine the voting power of members. The one country, one vote

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system eliminates the explicit bias toward large economies. In addition, consensus decision-­ making, in theory, encourages negotiators to find the most widely acceptable solution. Yet, in practice, consensus decision-­making can generate remarkable advantages for powerful countries. Rather than following the consensus of all members, decisions are usually made through informal negotiations among small groups of countries. Essentially becoming the de facto mode of operation, these negotiations are called “mini-­ministerials.” Reflecting the influence of powerful countries, these negotiations are also called “Green Room” negotiations (because the director-­general’s office in Geneva is green). These conferences are criticized by developing countries, which are often completely left out of the negotiations.

The Evolution of GATT The GATT increased its membership with each consecutive round of negotiations, and it continued to eliminate trade barriers. Between 1947 and 1992, various rounds, which often went on for decades, resulted in significant reductions in tariffs and freer trade. But problems began to emerge. Members were getting smarter about using nontariff barriers for trade as a way to continue insulating their domestic industries while complying with GATT rules. Programs such as tax preferences, for example, generated incentives for new technology but imposed trade barriers. Requirements for foreign investors became more common, as did the use of “safeguards” to restrict imports when an unforeseen event hurt domestic economies. The Uruguay Round, which was conducted from 1986 until 1994, became the key tipping point, as GATT faced serious pressure from both high-­income and lower-­income countries. Membership in the institution had grown, particularly with the addition of low-­income countries that had recently gained their independence. These new members began to articulate a collective critique of the institution as being largely controlled by the industrialized countries for their own gain. Lower-­income countries, often referred to as the “Global South,” argued that the institution no longer focused on the needs of the majority of the members. The primary source of concern for the developing world was the continued protection of the agriculture industry. Many lower-­income countries rely on trade in agriculture to sustain their economies. Yet, subsidies in the developed world, particularly the United States and EU, give farmers in rich countries an advantage in the global market. Such subsidies provide U.S. and EU farmers a guaranteed price for agricultural goods, regardless of market forces, and therefore create an inflated price within U.S. and EU domestic markets. While the price guarantee gives farmers in the developed world an incentive to increase production, the higher levels of production cause global prices to fall. Lower global prices make it harder for farmers in low-­income countries to make a living. Many high-­income countries were also discontent and complained that GATT no longer served the needs of the new global market. Many new tradable goods, particularly services and investments, as well as intellectual property rights—all important to wealthier countries—were not covered in GATT. High-­income nations were also concerned that special provisions for developing countries had given these countries a free ride for too long.

The WTO and the DSM As a result of the mounting critiques, the conclusion of the Uruguay Round led to the creation, in 1995, of the WTO. Many describe the WTO as “GATT-­Plus,” meaning that the WTO took the GATT agreement and added new provisions. The WTO continues to be the foundation of global trade liberalization, based on the principles of equalization of tariffs among all members and national treatment of international goods. But the WTO also includes new provisions, covering, for example, consumer services (including hotels and restaurants), producer services

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(investment and banking), textiles, clothing, and intellectual property rights. Important for this chapter, the WTO also strengthened the DSM. Unlike GATT, the WTO DSM includes a clear timeline for disputes. There are time limits for each stage of the negotiation, from establishing a panel, to adopting a panel report, to complying with the rule or authorizing retaliation. In addition, the DSM under the WTO instructs the panel to approve a monetary value to the trade injury, and it permits the complainant to impose retaliatory sanctions. This strengthens the punishment mechanism of the dispute process. Finally, the WTO DSM cannot be rejected by the vote of a single member; it can only be overturned with unanimous consent of all WTO members, making a rejection nearly impossible to achieve. For these reasons, the DSM is stronger under the WTO than it was under GATT. Despite these changes, the WTO still faces criticism. Of primary concern to lower-­income countries, agricultural subsidies continue within the United States and EU. Under the 2002 U.S. Farm Bill, for example, three overlapping policies essentially guaranteed U.S. cotton farmers a minimum income of 72 cents per pound. Direct payments promised 6.66 cents per pound of cotton, the commodity loan program guaranteed a minimum fixed payment of 52 cents per pound, and countercyclical payments kick in when the farmer’s income per pound from the direct payments plus the loan rate is less than the target prices of 72.24 cents per pound. By

Figure 16.1  Bales of Cotton Lined up in a Cotton Field in Brooks County, Georgia. The Cotton Industry Has Been Protected by U.S. Policies, Including Those Established in the 2002 U.S. Farm Bill. Such Measures, According to Many Observers, Put African Countries that Produce Cotton at a Disadvantage in the World Market. Source: Michael Rivera/Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Round_bales_of_cotton,_ Brooks_County_cotton_field.JPG.

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mid-­2004, the average world price of cotton was 38 cents per pound, meaning that U.S. farmers got paid twice the world market price for their cotton. In the event that this high price hurts the U.S. textile industry, the U.S. government, through the Step 2 Program, pays U.S. textile mills to purchase U.S. cotton. This protects the U.S. cotton industry from competition from cheaper imported cotton. These policies affect other producers, particularly in countries in West Africa where the government cannot afford to subsidize cotton. West African cotton farmers can produce cotton at lower prices than Texas growers, but U.S. government support ensures the competitiveness of domestic cotton producers. The increased volume of U.S. cotton on the world market also harms non-­U.S. producers of cotton by depressing prices: the more cotton on the world market, the lower the price. According to some estimates, the removal of U.S. subsidies would increase the world market price by anywhere between 3 and 16 percent. Pietra Rivoli’s Travels of a T-­Shirt (2005) provides a remarkable description of the global cotton industry. An excerpt is available online from the book’s publisher, John Wiley, at www.wiley.com/en-­us/The+Travels+of+a+T+Shirt+in+the+Global+Economy %3A+An+Economist+Examines+the+Markets%2C+Power%2C+and+Politics+of+Worl d+Trade+New+Preface+and+Epilogue+with+Updates+on+Economic+Issues+and+Main +Characters%2C+2nd+Edition-­p-9781118950142. A second criticism of the WTO is that it challenges national sovereignty. Consider a handful of dispute cases. The U.S. Endangered Species Act aims to protect sea turtles from harm caused by the shrimping industry, but it is illegal under WTO rules. WTO members argued that the law formed a trade barrier against non-­U.S. shrimp farmers. Compliance with WTO rules would require the United States to repeal the act. But the act arguably reflects environmental concerns among the U.S. public, and it represents national interests within the context of the global market. Yet WTO compliance could require surrendering these national interests to the principle of free trade. In another WTO dispute, the United States requested that the EU reduce its trade barrier against hormone-­treated beef. European consumers, who supported the ban, argued they had the right to protect themselves against artificial hormones. The WTO ruled against the EU, and the United States has sanctioned trade with the EU in retaliation for the ban. India’s ban on patents for seeds and medicines was the subject of another WTO dispute, in which the EU claimed that the ban on patents for pharmaceuticals violated intellectual property rights. India claimed it was supporting the development of generic drugs that make treatments more affordable for the public. The DSM ruled that India’s laws were in violation of WTO rules, but India’s Supreme Court continues to push back against the extension of patents in order to preserve generic drugs. Such cases against environmental laws, consumer protection efforts, and generic drugs represent an affront to national sovereignty and the ability of national governments to use trade policy in ways that support citizen preferences. A third concern about the WTO comes from labor unions, consumers, and environmentalists, who argue the WTO serves the interests of multinational corporations. Consider Dominica, for example. Dominica is a small island in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean Sea. There are more than 70,000 people living on the island, with an average per capita income of less than $7,000. More than 40 percent of the population work in agriculture, where bananas are the dominant crop. Under the Lomé Convention, the EU guaranteed former colonies preferential trade. For Dominica, this meant a guaranteed market for its bananas. As a small,

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mountainous island country, production costs are high, as are transportation costs to move the product off the island. Dominica competes with large and efficient banana plantations in South and Central America. In 1996 the United States filed a complaint against the Lomé Convention, arguing that this provision represented an unfair trade advantage for Dominica. EU defenders claimed that the United States filed this complaint at the request of Chiquita, a large banana producer in Central America, because of a decline in production between 1988 and 1999. As a result of the WTO ruling against the convention, exports from Dominica have fallen sharply. A final concern is the growth of regionalism. The EU is the most advanced trading bloc in the world, with a combined economy of more than $9 trillion covering the movements of people and goods. Other regional blocs, including NAFTA, provide special provisions for bloc members, clearly violating nondiscrimination and reciprocity principles of trade liberalization. Ten Southeast Asian economies are connected through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), El Mercado Común del Sur, or Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) provides deeper economic integration for close to ten countries in South America, and the Asia-­Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) promotes free trade throughout the Asia-­ Pacific region. These regional trade blocs offer preferential treatment for member countries in violation of WTO trade liberalization principles. While allowed under WTO rules, these regional trade blocs essentially break up the global arrangement, possibly undermining the global effort. To explore the debate in the scholarly literature about the strengths and weaknesses of the WTO, check out Global Backlash: Citizen Initiatives for a Just World Economy, edited by Robin Broad, and then read Jagdish Bhagwati’s article “Reshaping the WTO.”  Broad’s volume focuses on the efforts of grassroots activists in advocating for a “just world economy,” and excerpts are available through Google Book’s preview function (https://books.google.com/books/about/Global_Backlash.html?id=VMv4t6-2S4UC). Bhagwati, meanwhile, defends WTO efforts against its critics. His article, published in the Far Eastern Economic Review, is available from, among other online sources, the Columbia Academic Commons (https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ ac:123644). In defense of the WTO, supporters point to economic growth produced by freer trade that is facilitated by WTO commitments, and to renewed attention within the institution to low-­ income countries. The 2008 “July package,” for instance, negotiated as a part of the Doha Development Agenda, places emphasis on support for low-­income countries, reaffirming S&D treatment and increasing technical assistance and capacity building for these countries. According to the WTO (n.d.), in the Doha Round the ministers sought “to place developing countries’ needs and interest at the heart of the Work Programme adopted in this Declaration.” Analysts argue that, in fact, attention to development during the Doha Round was necessary in part because low-­income countries had become more active in negotiations than ever before. At the 2003 Cancun meetings, developing countries blocked the agricultural agreement presented by the United States and EU and made it clear that trade negotiations could not be achieved without meeting their needs. These events suggest greater participation and a stronger negotiation position among low-­income countries. In addition, the legalization of dispute settlements may provide greater opportunities for low-­income countries to seek retribution for trade barriers imposed by developed countries.

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The WTO website describes the Doha Round and its focus on development on the following web pages: • • • •

“The Doha Round” (www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/dda_e.htm). “The July 2008 Package” (www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/meet08_e.htm). “The Doha Ministerial Declaration” (www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/dda_e. htm#declaration). “The Doha Declaration Explained” (www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/ dohaexplained_e.htm).

How the DSM Works The WTO DSM works like a court. A complainant has a grievance concerning the trade practices of another member country, and files a case against that country (the defendant), who has a chance to argue in support of the offending trade policy. In addition to the defendant and complainant, other WTO member countries can file as third-­party observers. In this capacity, third parties can be heard by the panel and submit additional written comments. In order to be a third party in a dispute, the member state must prove it has a substantial interest in the case. All cases begin with a request for consultation between the disputing states, in which the complainant identifies the defendant’s trade violation. If the disputing states cannot find resolution through consultation, the complainant may request the formation of a panel. In response to the request, the WTO forms a three- or five-­judge panel of legal experts to hear the formal case. Both sides argue their case before the panel, which collects relevant data about the trade barrier. Finally, the panel issues a report, providing a ruling on whether the trade policy is in violation of WTO rules and, if necessary, assessing a monetary value for the trade violation. If the panel rules that the policy is in violation of WTO rules, the defendant can appeal the ruling. If the appeals process fails, the defendant must comply with the ruling. This court-­like mechanism establishes a legal context for the airing of disputes between countries. Scholarly analysis suggests that legalization, or the strengthening of legal norms and mechanisms, diminishes the influence of power so that right becomes more important than might. Therefore, because the dispute settlement is a legal mechanism, its focus, hopefully, is on resolving legal issues rather than brokering political negotiations, where power matters most. As a result, the DSM offers an opportunity for less powerful states to negotiate with powerful states by taking them to “court.” Despite the “legalization” of the DSM, however, one crucial factor differentiates it from a court proceeding: the nature and effectiveness of punishment. If a court rules that a defendant is guilty, the court sentences the defendant to some form of punishment, determined by the court ruling and the nature of the crime; moreover, the criminal system ensures that the punishment is served. In a DSM case, however, if the defendant does not comply with the ruling and remove trade barriers, the complainant punishes the defendant by issuing trade sanctions. The complainant submits to the court a precise dollar amount in tradable goods that it will sanction against the defendant, equal to the trade lost due to the offending policy, and gives a list of the defendant’s products that will be restricted. Such a request serves as a warning, or a threat, to the defendant of the punishment, approved by the DSM, in the case of noncompliance. Given the nature of punishment in the DSM, most scholars focus on the role of economic power in producing successful dispute outcomes, that is, on the likelihood of compliance. Larger, stronger economies are able to issue more meaningful threats of economic retaliation, and therefore are more likely to ensure that the defendant complies. If the threat for noncompliance is

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relatively meaningless, the defendant can continue in violation of the WTO rules. According to the Africa Group, low-­income countries in sub-­Saharan Africa are less likely to win compliance because many of their economies are too small to offer a meaningful threat; in fact, they are more likely to be harmed by any such trade restriction. Economic strength may also help high-­income countries at the DSM, because of greater domestic technical and legal capacity. The volume and complexity of WTO agreements, as well as the cost of litigation, place a proportionally higher burden on lower-­income countries than on developed countries. As a result, lower-­income countries are less likely to bring a case. Economic strength may therefore be more important than legalization in the DSM.

Conflicting Data Research by Marc Busch and Eric Reinhardt (2002, 2003), two leading international trade experts, test aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP per capita to predict whether economic power and legal capacity affect dispute outcomes. They have found that increased legalization of the WTO dispute process has benefited developed countries more than developing countries. On the other hand, economist Chad Brown (2004) finds that, while power still matters, improvements to the DSM under the WTO have helped lower-­income countries. Brown’s study shows that developing countries have more economic success under the WTO than under GATT.

New Evidence While economic strength may explain many outcomes at the WTO, it may not explain everything that happens under the legalized DSM. What does the evidence tell us about whether the DSM gives weaker countries opportunities to negotiate against powerful countries? Using data from the WTO on DSM cases, I find that high-­income countries are still significantly more likely to use the DSM than lower-­income countries. Nonetheless, many weaker countries have taken powerful countries to the dispute settlement court and won their cases. This suggests that while rich countries make more frequent use of the court, the court offers lower-­income countries an opportunity to negotiate trade concessions. Let’s take a look at data about which countries use the court. Table 16.1 presents simple descriptive data about the use of the DSM by region. North America (32 percent), Asia (22.5 percent), and Western Europe (18.3 percent) have brought more cases than other regions of the world. Of the 578 cases filed between January 1995 and January 2018, the United States was the complainant in 123 cases and the EU in ninety-­seven cases, representing close to 40 percent of all cases. No country in sub-­Saharan Africa has brought a case to the court, though a few countries from the region have sat as third parties for a dispute. This suggests that the court is largely used by the most powerful states in the system. We can also consider the role of economic strength, as measured by national GDP and GDP per capita. Using World Bank data on income, presented in Table 16.2, I divided countries into four common categories based on income: high, upper-­middle, lower-­middle, and low-­income countries. Indeed, high-­income countries bring the majority of DSM cases (60.7 percent). Lower-­middle-income countries have brought only seventy-­seven cases, or 13.3 percent of all cases. Only one low-­income country has brought a case to the DSM. These data confirm the conventional wisdom that high barriers exist for lower-­income countries to participate in the DSM. Arguably, the court remains largely a tool of high-­income economies. A closer look at the experience of lower-­income countries may help us determine what role dispute settlement plays when developing countries take a dispute to the court. The cases

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Table 16.1  Dispute Cases by Region (January 1995–2018) Country

Percent of DSM Cases

Number of DSM Cases

North America Asia Western Europe South America Central America and Caribbean Eastern Europe South Pacific countries Middle East/North Africa Africa Total

32.0 22.5 18.3 13.2 5.9 4.7 2.9 0.5 0 100

185 130 106 76 34 27 17 3 0 578

Source: Compiled by author from the WTO’s Dispute Settlement documents (www.wto.org/english/ tratop_e/dispu_e/find_dispu_documents_e.htm).

Table 16.2  Dispute Cases by Income Level (January 1995–2018) Income Level

Percent of DSM cases

Number of DSM cases

High income Upper-middle income Lower-middle income Low income Total

60.7 25.8 13.3 0.2 100

351 149 77 1 578

Source: Compiled by author from the following data: DSM cases: WTO, Dispute Settlement documents (www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/find_dispu_documents_e.htm). Note Income-level categories are based on World Bank, World Development Indicators (http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators).

brought by low- and lower-­middle-income countries are listed in Table 16.3. Bangladesh is the only low-­income country to bring a dispute to the court, and the case was brought against India in 2004. It was the first case ever brought to the court by a least-­developed country (LDC), according to the WTO definition of LDCs. The case involved a trade barrier used by India against lead acid batteries from Bangladesh. The case was settled in the consultation phase, where the parties were able to find a mutually satisfying solution before the panel heard their arguments. India removed the violating policy. As listed in Table 16.3, thirteen low- and lower-­middle-income countries have used the courts to settle disputes. Almost 40 percent (five out of thirteen) of those countries have only taken one dispute to court. India, one of the larger economies in this category, has taken twenty-­four cases to the court, close to one-­third of all cases from this income level. This continues to confirm that low- and lower-­middle-income countries are less likely to use the court than middle- and high-­income countries. Table 16.3 shows that more than half, 62 percent, of the cases brought by low- and lower-­ middle-income countries were against high-­income countries. This includes cases primarily against the United States and the EU, but also the Netherlands, Poland, Korea, Australia, Peru, and Chile. A little more than one-­quarter of all cases (28 percent) were brought against upper-­ middle-income countries, and only 10 percent of all cases were against lower-­middle-income

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Table 16.3  Disputes Initiated by Developing Countries as of May 2015 Country

Income Level

Bangladesh Nicaragua Moldova Sri Lanka El Salvador Vietnam Pakistan Philippines Ukraine

Low Lower middle Lower middle Lower middle Lower middle Lower middle Lower middle Lower middle Lower middle

1 1 1 1 1 4 5 5 7

Honduras

Lower middle

8

Guatemala

Lower middle

9

Indonesia

Lower middle

11

India

Lower middle

24

Total

Number of Cases

78

Against India Mexico Ukraine Brazil Dominican Republic Indonesia, United States Egypt, EU, South Africa, United States Australia, Brazil, Thailand, United States Armenia, Australia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia Australia, Dominican Republic, EU, Nicaragua, Chile, China, Dominican Republic, EU, Mexico, Peru Argentina, Australia, EU, Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, United States Argentina, Brazil, EU, Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, United States

Source: Compiled by author from these sources: DSM cases: WTO, Dispute Settlement documents (www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/find_dispu_documents_e.htm). Note Income-level categories are based on World Bank, World Development Indicators (http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators).

countries. The data suggest that developing countries use the DSM as a platform to address trade barriers maintained by powerful countries. This study does not consider compliance, that is, whether the defendants modified their trade barriers, but it does consider whether developing countries are using the mechanism. While, in proportion to rich countries, lower-­income countries are less likely to bring cases to court, when they do bring cases, they often bring cases against richer economies. This suggests that the DSM acts as a platform for weaker states to seek a hearing against powerful ones. Data on dispute cases can be found on the WTO website, at www.wto.org/english/ tratop_e/dispu_e/find_dispu_cases_e.htm.

Future Research These conclusions point to the need for future research about the conditions under which lowand lower-­middle-income countries are more likely to initiate a dispute and secure compliance. A variety of factors may affect lower-­income countries’ use of the dispute settlement. Overcoming the financial and legal obstacles to initiating the cases is certainly important for making the DMS available to lower-­income countries. The WTO offers support for navigating the litigation process, and this support provide new opportunities for developing countries. Lower-­income

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countries are also learning from past cases, and from each other. As low-­income countries bring more cases, they might gain valuable institutional capacity to strengthen future efforts. Financial support may explain when lower-­income countries bring cases to the DSM. A variety of economic and political factors may improve the success of lower-­income countries in gaining concessions when they do use the DSM in disputes against high-­income countries. Higher levels of cooperation with other countries may strengthen the position of low-­income countries in negotiations. The international political economists Edward Mansfield and Eric Reinhardt (2003) find that preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) boost member states’ “bargaining positions” within the WTO. In general, therefore, countries with deeper trade connections would be more likely to initiate a dispute. This might help to explain why India has brought the most disputes among developing countries. With a robust trading sector, India has more to lose from trade barriers and more to gain from reducing barriers among its trading partners. In addition, India’s economy is growing, and with greater trade connections it may desire to shape trade rules. Second, it is also plausible that compliance is affected by the value of the specific, political relationship between the defendant and the complainant. In studies of economic sanctions, scholars suggest that the defendant is more likely to comply when it values the benefits of the overall relationship with the sanctioning state. This again suggests that a more integrated economy might have more motivation to file a suit, as well as the connections to win. Third, the value of the specific retaliatory threat may affect compliance. A threat may be especially strong if there are fewer suppliers of the sanctioned product, and weaker if the defendant can obtain it from other trading partners. This raises the question of whether disputes are more likely, and possibly more successful, when a low-­income country has a particular commodity that is valuable to the defendant. Indeed, the extent to which a low-­income country has the corner on the market for a particular commodity may help in negotiating disputes. As the globe becomes more integrated, lower-­income countries stand a chance to benefit from deeper connections, regional trade arrangements, and advantages in specific commodities. In reverse, greater isolation may discourage lower-­income countries from using the DSM. In summary, increased use of the DSM among lower-­income countries—and success in the process—might arise with greater market integration, political partnerships, and specialization of particular commodities.

Conclusion The question asked in this case study is whether the special provisions for low-­income countries, put in place with the establishment of the WTO, have in fact allowed lower-­income countries new power through the DSM. The mechanism is available to all member states to seek legal resolutions to trade disputes. This increased legalization may provide opportunities for less powerful states to negotiate on a more level playing field through the WTO. The evidence shows that high-­income countries have filed the majority of dispute settlement cases. Low-­income and lower-­middle-income countries are less likely to request a DSM panel, and no countries in sub-­Saharan Africa have requested one. This may be a feature of the size of the economy and of the extent to which the domestic economy is tied to the global economy. High-­income, developed countries have more trade connections around the world and therefore have more occasions for trade disputes. Yet when lower-­income countries take cases to court, they are often against larger economies, suggesting that developing countries seek to change the policies of developed countries through the DSM. In fact, the DSM might offer a forum for weaker countries to seek trade concessions from powerful states. If the use of the mechanism increases over time, it offers weaker states an opportunity to negotiate on a more level playing field. The DSM has the potential, therefore, to offer weaker states leverage over powerful states, thereby reducing the influence of power in the global order.

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References and Further Research Bhagwati, Jagdish. 2005a. “From Seattle to Hong Kong: Are We Getting Anywhere?” Global Economy Journal 5, no. 4. Bhagwati, Jagdish. 2005b. “Reshaping the WTO.” Far Eastern Economic Review 168, no. 2: 25–30. Bown, Chad P. 2004. “Developing Countries as Plaintiffs and Defendants in GATT/WTO Trade Disputes.” World Economy 27, no. 1: 59–80. Broad, Robin, ed. 2002. Global Backlash: Citizen Initiatives for a Just World Economy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Busch, Marc, and Eric Reinhardt. 2002. “Testing International Trade Law: Empirical Studies of GATT/ WTO Dispute Settlement.” In The Political Economy of International Trade Law, edited by D. Kennedy and J. Southwick, 457–481. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Busch, Marc, and Eric Reinhardt. 2003. “Developing Countries and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement.” Journal of World Trade 37, no. 4: 719–735. Dai, Xinyuan. 2005. “Why Comply? The Domestic Constituency Mechanism.” International Organization 59, no. 2: 363–398. Destler, I. M. 2005. Amer­ican Trade Politics. 4th ed. Washington, DC: Institute for International ­Economics. Elliott, Kimberly Ann. 2006. Delivering on Doha: Farm Trade and the Poor. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. www.cgdev.org/publication/9780881323924-delivering-­doha-farm-­tradeand-­poor. Goldstein, Judith, Miles Kahler, Robert O. Keohane, and Anne-­Marie Slaughter. 2000. “Introduction: Legalization and World Politics.” International Organization 54, no. 3: 385–399. Hiscox, Michael. 1999. “The Magic Bullet? The RTAA, Institutional Reform, and Trade Liberalization.” International Organization 53, no. 4: 669–698. Hudec, Robert E. 1993. Enforcing International Trade Law: The Evolution of the Modern GATT Legal System. Salem, NH: Butterworth Legal Publishers. Hufbauer, Gary Clyde, Jeffrey Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliott, and Barbara Oegg. 2007. Economic Sanctions Reconsidered. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics. Hurrell, Andrew, and Amrita Narlikar. 2006. “A New Politics of Confrontation? Brazil and India in Multilateral Trade Negotiations.” Global Society 20, no. 4: 414–433. Ikenberry, G. John. 2001. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lacarte-­Muro, Julio, and Petina Gappah. 2000. “Developing Countries and the WTO Legal and Dispute Settlement System: A View from the Bench.” Journal of International Economic Law 3, no. 3: 395–401. Lawrence, Robert Z. 2003. Crimes and Punishment? Retaliation Under the WTO. Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics. https://piie.com/bookstore/crimes-­and-punishments-­ retaliation-under-­wto. Mansfield, Edward D., and Marc Busch. 1995. “The Political Economic of Nontariff Barriers: A Cross-­ National Analysis.” International Organization 49, no. 4: 723–749. Mansfield, Edward D., and Eric Reinhardt. 2003. “Multilateral Determinants of Regionalism: The Effects of GATT/WTO on the Formation of Preferential Trading Arrangements.” International Organization 57, no. 3: 829–862. Polaski, Sandra. 2006. Winners and Losers: Impact of the Doha Round on Developing Countries. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. http://carnegieendowment.org/ 2006/03/13/winners-­and-losers-­impact-of-­doha-round-­on-developing-­countries-pub-­18083. Reinhardt, Eric. 2001. “Adjudication Without Enforcement in GATT Disputes.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 45, no. 2: 174–195. Rivoli, Pietra. 2005. The Travels of a T-­Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Rodrik, Dani. 2011. The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: W. W. Norton. Rogowski, Ronald. 1987. “Trade and the Variety of Domestic Institutions.” International Organization 41, no. 2: 203–223.

206   Stephanie S. Holmsten Singh, J. P. 2006. “The Evolution of National Interests: New Issues and North-­South Negotiations During the Uruguay Round.” In Negotiating Trade: Developing Countries in the WTO and NAFTA, edited by John S. Odell, 41–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vreeland, James Raymond. 2003. The IMF and Economic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. World Trade Organization. n.d. “The Doha Round.” www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/dda_e. htm#declaration.

17

Conclusion to the Case Studies Michael R. Anderson The case studies in this volume illustrate the broad array of perspectives and methodologies associated with global studies scholarship. Although diverse in nature, these investigations reveal some common themes associated with global studies discussed in the introduction to this volume. First is a recognition of the complex interaction among international organizations, state actors, and civil society. Second is the employment of interdisciplinary approaches in understanding contemporary political and economic matters. Third is an appreciation of the ways in which local and regional matters have global political and economic consequences. In this concluding section, we will consider the ways in which the case studies use global studies perspectives to further our understanding of the key concepts and processes covered in the rest of Part One: imperialism, security, development, sustainability, and global governance. The past informs the present political and economic order around the world, and two case studies in particular contend with the global legacy of imperialism. R. Joseph Parrott’s “The Anti-­Apartheid Movement in the Western World” (Chapter 11) and Sean Killen’s “The Treaty of Waitangi and the Waitangi Tribunal” (Chapter 12) each demonstrate the ways in which European colonial regimes created the basis for unequal relations between white settlers and native peoples in different parts of the world. Yet, by the 1970s, growing transnational activism resulted in economic and political pressures on South Africa and New Zealand, respectively, to recognize the rights and aspirations of their residents. Traditional arguments on behalf of state sovereignty were no longer possible in an age in which nongovernmental actors were able to convince corporations and eventually governments to uphold the rights of blacks in South Africa. Similarly, international pressure in the United Nations and other bodies gave rise to new assertion of indigenous peoples’ rights around the world. New Zealand ultimately came to respect the Māori population’s demands as an extension of a wider global movement rather than a purely domestic problem. The international human rights movement transformed state-­ specific controversies into global matters of concern and thus provided a framework for the empowerment of previously marginalized peoples. How can we assess international security through a global perspective? Brandon Gentry’s “Regional and Global Impacts of Post-­Gaddafi Libya” (Chapter 10) argues that we must understand the consequences of the overthrow of the longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi not simply through the lens of geopolitics but also through a careful tracking of the transnational flows of people, weapons, and drugs within the region and beyond. The chaotic aftermath of Gaddafi’s downfall in 2011 unleashed a number of consequences with effects rippling far beyond North Africa. Militant movements around the globe have benefited from arms smuggled out of Libya over the past several years. Disruptions to Libya’s oil and natural gas industries were instrumental in temporarily hiking global energy prices. And, in recent years, post-­Gaddafi Libya has served as a main conduit for refugees from regional conflicts into southern Europe, creating a political crisis for Europe that has threatened decades of work in integrating the continent. The limited humanitarian intervention that resulted in Gaddafi’s

208   MICHAEL R. ANDERSON

demise was hailed at the time for saving lives, but this chapter shows that policymakers need to consider carefully the global political and economic ramifications of such actions in the future. “Development” and “sustainability” are concepts embedded within a wider debate over economic growth and the nature of global capitalism today. Two case studies deal with the ramifications of economic globalization in the context of the movement of people and goods around the world. John D. Graeber’s “The Causes and Consequences of International Migration” (Chapter 13) places European migration in a global context. Graeber argues that migration cannot be explained solely through the lens of individual choice, but rather through a more systematic perspective of “world-­system theory,” which contends that migration expands as capitalism expands from developed nations into less-­developed areas of the world. The structural reality of economic globalization thus forces these migrant flows, with all of their attendant political and economic consequences. Similarly, Jerry Harris’s “Globalization and Transnational Capitalism” (Chapter 15) examines Amer­ican-­based companies (General Motors and Apple Computers) to argue that contemporary global circuits of production of exchange have removed these corporations from their traditional national markets and have transformed their leaders into agents of a transnational capitalist class. All major corporations, Harris contends, must either “go global” or give up. In our current era of global capitalism, business elites have found new markets, but such practices have exploited labor and widened economic inequalities. Reckoning with these global imbalances remains a project for future generations. Economic globalization may be a reality, but global governance for the international economy remains a work in progress. Two case studies use the subject of trade in order to assess the policy consequences of such interdependence. John Taylor Vurpillat’s “Patterns of Fear: Hegemony, Globalization, and the U.S.–Japan Trade Conflict, 1971–1996” (Chapter 14) augments the traditional bilateral narrative of great-­power rivalry by placing the story in a broader context of global connectedness. Amer­ican policymakers were interested not simply in defending their own national interests, but in maintaining an economic order that they helped establish at the end of World War II. In the United States, a solution to the trade rivalry involved expanding free trade in North America (through the passage of the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]) rather than embracing more protectionist policies. Stephanie S. Holmsten’s “When Weak States Win: Providing Opportunities at the WTO” (Chapter 16) examines the dispute settlement mechanism within the World Trade Organization, and argues that this mechanism provides the means through which lower-­income states can challenge their richer, more powerful counterparts. This chapter challenges critical views of the WTO and other international organizations as being mere vehicles for the Global North. Like Killen’s chapter on the Waitangi Tribunal in New Zealand, this perspective holds out hope for the possibilities of greater political and economic equity through international law and the reform of existing institutions. In sum, these seven case studies represent a cross-­section of the kind of challenges and opportunities faced by the contemporary political and economic global order. They contend with disputes within states that have spilled into transnational crises. They assess the degree to which nongovernmental entities have influenced governmental actors at the national and even international levels. They understand the constraining effects of larger structures like capitalism while appreciating the potential for individual actors and movements to change the course of history. And, in their own ways, they call upon readers to reflect upon their own relationship to the big political and economic questions of our time, both as scholars and as citizens.

Index

Page numbers in bold denote tables. 2030 Agenda for Sustainability Development 64 9/11 31–32 Abdullah, King of Saudi Arabia 7 Aborigines Protection Society 150 Abu Salim prison massacre (1996) 122 Abu-Lughod, Janet 17 Adaptation Fund 90 Afghanistan 47, 155, 161 Africa 17, 21, 24, 43, 45, 59; Chinese investment in 7, 8, 39, 89; sub-Saharan 52, 83; see also individual countries Africa Group 201 Africa Groups of Sweden 141 African National Congress (ANC) 135–137, 138, 140, 141, 142–143; Freedom Charter 140; Youth League 135 African Union (AU) 37 After Victory (Ikenberry) 195 agricultural subsidies 103, 104, 194, 196, 197–198 al-Mulathameen (The Masked Brigade) 128 al-Qaeda 31, 122, 124 Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) 126, 128 Albright, Madeleine K. 29, 75 Algeria 124, 128, 137, 158 algorithms 190 Alphabet 187 alter-globalization 31 American Century 27–28, 47, 69, 70–72 American colonies: independence 42, 43; Revolutionary War (1775–1783) 19, 43 American Committee on Africa (ACOA) 138, 141 American Dream 47 American Empire (Bacevich) 48 Americanization 27 Americans for South African Resistance 138 Amgola Comit‚ 141 Amnesty International 4, 92, 101 Amritsar massacre (1919) 22–23 Amsterdam Treaty (1997) 160 anarchy 68, 74, 78 Ancient Greece 42

Anderson, Benedict 67 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company 74 Angola 106, 138, 141; Chinese investment in 8 Annan, Kofi 97 Ansar Dine 126 Antarctic sea ice 86–87 anti-apartheid see South Africa and anti-apartheid movement Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), Britain 138, 141 anti-globalization movement 30–31, 57, 58 Anti-Slavery Society 150 apartheid see under South Africa Appiah, Kwame Anthony 5–6 Apple 15, 118, 186–187, 308 Arab Movement of Azawad (MAA) 126–127 Arab Spring 5, 33, 93, 120–121 Arabs: commercial law 17; merchant trading routes 17 Arbenz, Jacobo 74 arbitration, principle of 21–22 Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) 89 Arctic Council 86, 90 Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy 90 Arctic ice cap 86 Argentina 56, 59, 101 arms and arms trade 126; Libya 122, 123–125, 126, 127, 128–129, 131, 207 Aruba 159 Asia 21, 24, 43, 52, 59, 107 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 109, 199 Asian financial crisis 60–61, 107, 193 Asian tigers 56, 60 al-Assad, Bashir 121, 124 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 37, 109, 199 Association of Western European Parliamentarians Against Apartheid 141 asylum seekers 160–161, 166, 167 Atlantic 177–178 audience costs 111 austerity, European Union 36

210  index Austria 165, 166 Austro-Hungarian Empire 22 autarky 23 authoritarianism 25, 28, 33; competitive 25, 34; and economic growth 55 automobile industry: transnational production 183–184, 185; and U.S.–Japan trade conflict 170–171, 174–175, 179 Bacevich, Andrew J. 48 Bahrain 120 Bain Capital 189 balance of power 69 bandwagoning 74 Bangladesh 88, 202 Barber, Benjamin 31 Barcelona Development Agenda 62 Barnett, Michael 100 Basel Committee on Banking Supervision 100 Basque separatists 122 Bayly, C.A. 19 Before European Hegemony (Abu-Lughod) 17 Beijing Consensus 39, 62 Belarus 34 Belgian Congo 105 Belgium 43, 158, 159, 165, 166 Belmokhtar, Mokhtar 128 Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine 120 Berbers 125 Berlin Conference (1884–1885) 44 Berlin nightclub bombing (1986) 122 Biko, Steve 139, 140 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 65 biotechnology 8 bipolar world order 29, 68, 69, 74 Birdsall, Nancy 62, 86 Bismarck, Otto von 43–44 Black Consciousness movement 139, 140 Black Lives Matter 5 Black Power movement 139 Blustein, Paul 61 BMW 184 Boko Haram 127 Bolívar, Simón 34 Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) 34 Bond, Michael 93 Borlaug, Norman 8, 89 Bosnia-Herzegovina 74, 75, 161 Botswana, Sustainable Budget Index 52 brain drain 162, 163 Brazil 8, 16, 38, 107; debt crisis 56; sugar plantation system 18 Bread for the World Institute 51–52, 63 Bremer, Paul 32 Bretton Woods 23–24, 97, 100, 101–104, 172–173, 193–194 Brexit vote 37, 131 BRICS countries 16, 37–38 Britain 47, 68; and anti-apartheid movement 137, 138; asylum seekers 161; Brexit vote 37, 131;

Corn Laws 54; ethnic minority/foreign-born population 159, 166; and Europe 144, 147, 149; and free trade model 20, 43, 54; immigration 158, 159, 160, 166; “informal empire” 20–21, 43; investment in land abroad 7; opium trade 20, 54; Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes 146; and Suez Crisis 74, 105; vote share in World Bank/IMF 102 British East India Company 18 British Empire 18, 43, 69 Broad, Robin 65 Brown, Chad 201 Brundtland Report (1987) 83 bubble economy, Japan 177, 179 Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce 55 Busby, James 145 Busch, Marc 201 Bush Doctrine 32 Bush, George H.W. 28–29 Bush, George W. (and Bush administration) 31–33, 91; democracy promotion 32–33; freedom agenda 32–33; and Iraq 31–32, 33, 35; National Security Strategy (NSS) 32 Buzan, Barry 25 Cambodia 106 Camdessus, Michel 77 Camp David Accords 122 Canada 29, 47, 59, 107, 109 capitalism 11, 16, 25, 44, 50, 53; global 11, 18, 118, 155–156, 183–192, 208; Marxist critique of 21, 58 carbon emissions 85, 89, 90 Carnation Revolution, Portugal 109 Carson, Rachel 91 Carter, Jimmy 101 Castles, Stephen 158 Castro, Fidel 34 Center for Budget and Policy Priorities 52, 53 Center for Global Development 62 Central African Republic 124 Chad 124, 127 chain migration 157, 159 Charlie Hebdo attack (2015) 130, 131 chartered companies 18 The Chastening (Blustein) 61 Chávez, Hugo 34, 123 China 17–18, 22, 38–39, 72, 107, 109, 134, 137, 170, 173, 186; and Africa 7, 8, 39, 89; auto sales 184; collectivization 38; economic growth 38, 56; economic reforms 38; food security concerns 7; Go Out strategy 39; Great Leap Forward (1958–1960); 38; and India water conflict 88; inward turn after 1500 18; land acquisitions abroad 7, 8, 39, 89; Ming dynasty 42; and Opium War (1839–1842) 20–21, 54; political reform 38–39; revolution (1949) 21; seafaring prowess (fifteenth century) 17–18; state bureaucratic model 25; Tiananmen Square

index   211 protests (1989) 38; vote share in World Bank/ IMF 102; and WTO 29, 38; Yuan dynasty 17 Chinese Communist Party 38, 39 chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) 89 Chrysler 183, 184 Churchill, Winston 28, 70; “Iron Curtain” speech (1946) 72, 73 Cisco 187 civil rights 51, 110 civil rights movement, United States 134, 137, 147 civil society 4–5, 12, 64, 76, 97, 207; global 133, 143; and sustainability issues 92–94 civil wars 74–75, 106, 155; Syria 121, 124, 128 civilizational differences 75 civilizational order 44–45 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (Huntington) 75 class 44; see also ruling class; working class Clean Development Mechanism 90 climate change 7, 12, 83, 84, 85, 86–87, 89–91 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap (2014) 87 Clinton, Bill 90, 176, 178 coal 84 Cobden-Chevalier Treaty 54 Coghlan, Andy 190 Cohen, Stephen D. 180 Cohn, Carol 80 Cold War 12, 24, 46, 56, 68, 69, 72–74, 111, 134, 137, 173; end of 11, 28, 35, 74–75, 109; and migratory flows 160–161 Coll, Steve 41 collective action 94 collective security 71–72, 105 collectivization, China 38 colonialism 11, 19, 22, 23, 58, 155, 156, 157, 207 Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire (Ferguson) 48 Columbia Pictures 179 Comit‚ Maritime International (CMI) 21 Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) 37, 109, 199 communications technology 19, 20, 190 communism 21, 24, 25, 58, 72–73, 111, 137, 173 communist parties 72; China 38, 39; South Africa 135, 138 competitive authoritarianism 25, 34 Congo 105; Chinese investment in 8 Congress Alliance, South Africa 135, 137 constructivism 78, 100–101 consumerism 54 containment policy 72–73, 173 coordination among states, possibilities for 97–98, 111, 112 coordination goods 69 copyright 21 core–periphery model 16, 59, 156–157 Corn Laws 54 corporatist model 23 corruption 30 cosmopolitan sovereignty 79

cosmopolitanism 5–6 cotton industry 197–198 creative destruction 53 Crimea, Russian annexation of 34, 107 crimes against humanity 80, 106 crimes against peace 79 Croatia 74, 75, 161 Cuba 34 cultural capital 69 culture 75, 76 Cyprus 166 Dahl, Robert 110 Daimler 184, 185 Daley, Herman 85 Danish People’s Party 165 Das Capital (Marx) 21 Dayton Accords (1992) 75 De Grazia, Victoria 47 De Klerk, F.W. 142 debt crisis: European 36; Latin America 56 debt relief 63 Déby, Idriss 124, 127 decolonization 134, 137, 144, 147; internal, New Zealand 118, 149, 151; and migration flows 155, 161, 162 deforestation 88–89 Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now) 36 democracy 11, 19–20, 22, 23; and economic growth 55; electoral 33; essential aspects of 109–110; and global governance 97, 98, 109–112; and industrialization 54–55; liberal 25, 28, 38, 110, 111; promotion of 32–33, 111–112; transition to 100, 109, 111; waves of 109 democratic peace theory 20, 111 Deng Xiaoping 38 dependency theory 50, 59 depression 1930s 23 deregulation 25, 30, 56, 104, 175 Deskaheh, Haudenosaunne chief 150 developing countries see low-income countries development 11, 12, 50–66, 77, 208; and remittance flows 162–164 development economics 60 Development as Freedom (Sen) 51 developmental state 60–62 Diamond, Larry 4 Diaz, Augusto Willemsen 148 disarmament 21–22 Disraeli, Benjamin, “One Nation” speech (1872) 44 diversification 54 Doha Development Agenda 199 dollar 23, 69, 102, 106, 173, 175, 177, 194 Dominica 70, 198–199 Downs, George 55 Drayton, Richard 18 dual labor market theory 156 The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Lugard) 45

212  index dumping, trade 174 DuPont 9 Dutch Antilles 159 Dutch Disease 85–86 Dyer, Brig.-Gen. Reginald 23 Earth day 92 Earth Summit (1992) 83 Earth Summit (2012) 64 the East 16, 17–18 The East Asian Miracle report 62 East Germany (GDR) 161 Eastern Europe 16, 109; migratory flows from 160–161; see also individual countries eBay 187 Eckes, Alfred 173 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) 109 economic growth 50, 51, 69, 84; and authoritarianism 55; and democracy 55; exportled 56; human-centered 59, 63–65; and industrialization 83, 84; natural resources and 85–86; and security 68; state-centered policies 11, 59, 60–62; sustainable 85; see also marketled growth economic integration 4 economic interdependence: and global governance 97, 98, 108–109; U.S.–Japan 180 economic liberalism 53 economic power 6, 68, 69 Economy, Elizabeth 7 education 51, 63, 77 Egypt 33, 74, 105, 106, 120, 122, 124, 128, 129, 134, 137 Eisenshower, Dwight D. 47 El Salvador 106 elections, free and fair 109–110 electoral competition 25, 34 electoral democracy 33 empire 11, 41, 42, 48–49; consequences of 18–19; end of 22–24; evolution of 42–44; informal 20–21, 43 Empire (Hardt and Negri) 48 “end of history” debate 28–29, 74 Endangered Species Act, U.S. 198 energy: consumption 84; production 84–85; see also fossils fuels; natural gas; oil Enloe, Cynthia 80 environmental sustainability 84–94; and civil society and NGOs 92–94; climate change issues 7, 12, 83, 84, 85, 86–87, 89–91; UN and international efforts concerning 89–91; water and arable land 87–89 environmentalism 12, 31, 91–92 Eritrea 161 ethnic cleansing 106, 161 ethnic conflict 74–76 ethnic identity 75 Eurasia Union 34 euro 36

European Coal and Steel Community 35 European debt crisis 36 European Economic Community (EEC) 35, 147, 160 European integration 35–37; as driver of migration 154, 160, 167 European Parliament, nationalist political parties 37 European Union (EU) 35–37, 100; agricultural subsidies 103, 104, 194, 196; austerity measures 36; demographic trends 166; enlargement 161, 162, 165; far-right movements 36–37, 130–131, 165; fertility rate 166; and GM crop imports 9–10; immigration issues see migration in Europe; and neoliberal agenda 35–36; Russia policy 108; WTO DSM cases 201 Eurozone 36 exchange rates 100, 102, 106, 173, 194 export-led growth 56 ExxonMobil Corporation 41 failed states 105, 106 fair growth practices 62 family reunification 157, 159, 160, 167 Fanon, Frantz 139 far-right movements: anti-immigration platforms 37, 118, 130–131, 165, 166–167; Europe 36–37, 130–131, 165 Farley, Joshua 85 fascism 23 Fearon, James 111 feminist security studies 80–81 Ferguson, Niall 48 fertility rates 166 financial crisis: Asian 60–61, 107, 193; global 25, 36 financial deregulation 25 financial system 118, 183, 189–190 financialization 189, 190 Finland 165 Finnemore, Martha 4, 100, 101 First International Meeting for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism (1996) 30 fiscal effects of migration 164 fixed exchange rate regime 100, 102, 106, 173, 194 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 7, 52–53, 64 food aid 9, 10 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), US 9 food production 87 food security 6–10; applying levels of analysis to 8–10; interdisciplinary investigations 7–8 Ford Motor Company 175, 183, 184, 185 Foreign Exchange Market 189 fossil fuels 83, 84–85, 94 Foxconn 186, 187 fracking 84 France 43, 68, 102, 105; and anti-apartheid movement 137; anti-immigration sentiment 37, 130; asylum seekers 161; colonial empire 42;

index   213 immigration 158, 159, 160; National Front party 37, 165; National Immigration Office (ONI) 158; oil imports 130 Frank, Andre Gunder 17 free market economy 23, 28, 38, 53, 55 free movement of people 160 free trade 20, 25, 43, 50, 54, 69, 77, 84, 172, 173, 178, 189, 194 Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) 34 free-ride problem 94 Freedom House 33 Freedom Party of Austria 165 freedom of speech and association 110, 111 French Revolution 19 Frieden, Jeffry 76, 103 Friedman, George 178 Friedman, Thomas 60 Fukuyama, Francis 28, 74 G-6 106, 107 G-7 (or 8) 107 G-20 24, 107, 193 Gaddafi, Muammar 35, 117, 121–122, 207–208; anti-Israel position 121, 122, 123; authoritarian policies 121; Green Book 121–122; policies towards African neighbors 12, 125; sponsorship of state terrorism 121, 122 Gallagher, John 43 Gandhi, Mahatma 135 gas see natural gas gender equality 64, 77 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 29, 71, 100, 103–104, 173, 193, 194; consensus decision making 104; dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) 104, 194–195; evolution of 196; exemptions 194; Generalized System of Preferences 194; “Green Room” negotiations 104; and low-income countries 103, 194, 196; power and 195–196; special and differential treatment (S&D) provisions 194; Uruguay Round 104, 196 General Electric 187 General Motors (GM) 118, 183, 184, 185, 208 General Postal Union 21 Generalized System of Preferences 194 genetically modified (GM) crops and organisms 8–10, 89 genocide 79, 106 Genocide Convention (1948) 79 George III, king of Great Britain 19 Germany 23, 43, 102, 137; asylum program 161; East (GDR) 161; foreign population 159–160; guest worker program 158–159; immigration 158–159, 160, 161; Nazi 79, 158, 160, 161; population projections 166; West 109, 160, 161 Ghana 137; Chinese investment in 8 Gilpin, Robert 53 glasnost 74 global capitalism 11, 18, 118, 155–156, 183–192, 208

global civil society 133, 143 The Global Cold War (Westad) 24 global financial crisis (2008) 25, 36 global governance 12, 97–113; democracy and 97, 98, 109–112; and economic interdependence 97, 98, 108–109; international organizations and 97, 98–107 Global Political Economy (Gilpin) 53 global studies: defined 3; interdisciplinary approach 5; levels of analysis 3–4 global warming 85 globalization 3, 4, 5–6, 144, 183; historical foundations 10–11, 15–25; see also antiglobalization GMO Awareness 9 gold standard 23–24 Golden Dawn party, Greece 37 Gorbachev, Mikhail 74 governance see global governance GRAIN 9 Gramsci, Antonio 47, 69 Graziano da Silva, Jose 64 The Great Convergence (Mahbubani) 39 great powers 68 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 23, 46 Greater Middle East Initiative 33 Greece 36, 71, 159; Ancient 42; anti-immigration sentiment 130; Golden Dawn party 37 Green Book (Gaddafi) 121–122 Green Revolution 8, 89 greenhouse gas emissions 85, 90–91, 94 Greenpeace 4, 92, 93 gross domestic product (GDP) 57 gross national income (GNI) 51 gross national product (GNP) 51, 171 Guatemala 74 guest workers 158–159 Guinea-Bissau 138 Gulf War (1990–1991) 28 Habermas, Jürgen 92 Hafter, Khalifa Belqasim 129 Hagel, Chuck 87 Hague conventions (1899 and 1907) 21–22 Haiti (Saint-Domingue) 19 Hamad bin Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa, king of Bahrain 120 Hammarskjold, Dag 105 hard power 69 Hardt, Michael 48 health 64, 77 health care 51, 63 hegemons 68 hegemony 47, 69; U.S. 33–35, 47 Held, David 62, 79 high-income countries 51, 59; and WTO DSM cases 201 Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative 63 Hindus 75

214  index Ho Chi Minh 22 Hobson, J.A. 44 Hobson, Capt. William 145 Holocaust 79 Holy Roman Empire 42 Homer-Dixon, Thomas 88 Honda 185 Hong Kong 56 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) 73 Howard, Mark Hoj‚ 165 human capital 63 Human Development Index (HDI) 51, 63, 77 human rights 100–101, 106, 107, 114, 147–149, 207; indigenous peoples 148–149, 150–151 Human Rights Watch 4, 101 human security 12, 76, 77–78, 78–79, 80, 106 human sustainability 83–84 human-centered growth 59, 63–65 Hungary, Jobbik party 37 hunger 52–53, 64, 83, 84 Huntington, Samuel 75, 109 Hussein, Saddam 28, 35 Iacocca, Lee 170 identity 75, 76; ethnic 75; national 44–45, 67 Ikenberry, G. John 195 Ikenberry, John 103 Imagined Communities (Anderson) 67 immigration see migration imperialism 7, 41, 42, 58, 59, 111, 188, 207; critique of 44–46; new 43–44; postcolonial 46–49 import-substituting industrialization (ISI) 60 income 77; inequality 50, 52; national 51, 69 India 8, 16, 17, 38, 107, 134; Amritsar massacre (119) 22–23; and anti-apartheid cause 137; ethnic conflict 75; home-rule movement 22; and Kashmir 105; patents for seeds and medicines 198; water conflict 88; WTO DSM cases 202, 204 indigenous peoples: human rights 148–149, 150–151; self-determination 145, 148, 149, 150; see also New Zealand, Māori peoples Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, ILO 148, 150 indirect rule policy 45 individualism 111 individuals: power of 6; role of 3, 4, 97, 98 Indochina 22 Indonesia 52, 56, 60, 61, 89, 109, 193 Industrial Revolution 19, 20, 84, 188 industrialization 11, 44, 53–55; and economic growth 83, 84; import-substituting 60 inequality 4, 11, 23, 36, 52, 53, 77, 191, 208; income 50, 52 infant mortality 52 inflation 29, 130, 174, 175, 177 information and communication technologies 190 Inkatha Freedom Party 140 Intel 187

intellectual property rights 21, 196, 197, 198 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 101 interconnectedness 4, 5–6, 98 interdependence 76–77, 78, 79; see also economic interdependence interdisciplinary perspective 5, 207 interest rates 177, 179 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 7, 84, 86 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development see World Bank International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 77 international community, and human security 77–78 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) 147 International Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 149 International Court of Justice (ICJ) 148 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 147, 148 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) 147 International Criminal Court (ICC) 80 International Development Association (IDA) 102 International Energy Agency 129 International Food Policy Research Institute 87 international humanitarian law 80 International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) 148 International Labour Organization, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 148, 150 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg 79 International Military Tribunal for the Far East 79 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 3, 24, 30, 63, 71, 97, 100, 102, 147, 172–173, 194; and Asian debt crisis 61; budget contributions 102; and European debt crisis 36; Extended Fund Facility 102; and Mexico debt crisis 56; reform 107; voting structure 102, 107 international organizations (IOs) 3–4, 79, 207; and consensus around policymaking 99–100; exclusion of apartheid South Africa from 137; and global governance 97, 98–107; and nationstate collaboration 98–99, 107; and norms 98, 100–101, 107; prisoner’s dilemma analogy 99 international relations theory: constructivism 78, 100–101; liberalism 76–77, 79, 98; realism 68–70, 79, 97 International Trade Organization 103 International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) 148 Iran 25, 33–34; nuclear weapons 34; U.S. and 33–34, 74 Iraq 161; invasion of Kuwait 28; ISIS in 128–129; oil 86; U.S. and 31–32, 33, 35, 47, 97, 129 Ireland 36, 166 Irish Republican Army 122 Islamic Movement of Azawad 126 Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) 128–129, 131

index   215 Islamist militant groups 122, 126–127, 128–129, 130, 131; see also individual groups Islamophobia 165 isolationism, U.S. 98 Israel 105, 106, 121, 122, 123 Italy 68, 109; anti-immigration sentiment 130; asylum seekers 161; fascism 23; migrants 158, 159, 160; nineteenth century nationalism 20; oil imports 130 Japan 22, 56, 61, 68, 102, 109; bubble economy 177, 179; economic miracle 171–173; see also United States (U.S.)–Japan trade conflict Japanese Empire 23, 46; Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 23, 46 Jefferson, Thomas 19, 43 Jews 79 Jihad vs. McWorld (Barber) 31 Jobbik 37 Jobs, Steve 187 Jubilee USA 63 Karl, Terry Lynn 110 Kashmir 105 Kazakhstan 8, 34 Kennan, George F. 72 Kenya 25, 34 Keohane, Robert O. 76 Keynes, John Maynard 101 Kipling, Rudyard 45 Kissinger, Henry 76 Klare, Michael 84, 85, 87, 89 Klusmeyer, Douglas B. 160–161 Korean War (1950–1953) 73, 173 Kosovo 75, 161 Kosovo Albanians 74, 161 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) 75 Krasner, Stephen 69 Kupchan, Charles 40 Kuwait, Iraqi invasion of 28 Kyoto Protocol 90–91 labor: cheap 18, 155–156, 161–162, 187; migration and supply and demand for 155–156; see also slavery labor market, and immigrant labor 156, 164, 166 labor rights 31, 36 labor unions 36 LaFeber, Walter 27, 72 land 84, 87, 88–89; international investment in 7–8, 39, 89 land grabs 7, 8, 89 land rights, indigenous peoples (Māori) 145, 146, 148, 149, 151 language 75 Lanzieri, Giampaolo 166 Latin America 21, 24, 59, 107, 109; debt crisis 56; democratic transitions 109; see also individual countries Lawson, George 25

Le Pen, Jean-Marie 165 Le Pen, Marine 37 League of Nations 45–46, 72, 137, 150 Lend-Lease Act (1941–1945) 70–71 Lenin, Vladimir 44, 58 Leopold II, king of Belgium 43, 43 levels of analysis 3–4 Levin, Carl 187 liberal democracy 25, 28, 38, 110, 111 liberalism 76–77, 79, 98; economic 53; embedded 101 liberalization, trade 56–57, 65, 100, 101, 102–103, 104 Liberia 109 Libya 35, 117, 120–132, 161, 207–208; African neighbors and Tuareg challenge 125–126; arms and arms trade 122, 123–125, 126, 127, 128–129, 131, 207; as engine for regional unrest 126–128; European connection 129–131; and illegal immigration 130–131; National Transitional Council 123; oil and gas 123, 125, 129–130, 131, 207; pariah status 121–122; sanctions against 122; and U.S. relations 122, 123; see also Gaddafi, Muammar Libya Dawn 129 Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) 122 life expectancy 63, 77 Limongi, Fernando 55 Lipset, Seymour 55 Locke, John 146 Lockerbie bombing 122 Lomé Convention 198–199 Love Canal disaster 91–92 low-income countries 51, 55, 59; and GATT/WTO 103, 194, 196, 197, 198–199, 201–204, 208 Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) 88 lower-middle-income countries 51, 201, 202–203, 204 Luce, Henry 27, 28 Lugard, Lord 45 Lundestad, Geir 47 Luthuli, Albert 135, 136 Luxembourg 159, 166 Maastricht Treaty (1992) 36 MacArthur, Gen. Douglas 73 McCarthy, Joseph 73 Macedonia 74, 161 McHugh, Paul 149 MacKenzie, Debra 190 McNeill, William H. 15–16 McSweeney, Bill 76 Maduro, Nicolás 34 Mahbubani, Kishore 39 Malawi 9 Malaysia 25, 34, 56, 60, 89, 109 Malcolm X 139 Mali 124, 125, 126–127 man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) 124–125, 128

216  index mandated territories 45–46 Mandela, Nelson 135, 136, 142 Manela, Ezra 22 Mansfield, Edward 100, 111, 204 Manuel, George 148 Mao Zedong 38, 72, 73, 173 Māori see New Zealand, Māori peoples maritime law 21 market, and state 11, 59, 60–62 market-led growth 50, 53–57, 104; alternatives to 57–59 market-oriented sector-selective (MOSS) negotiations. U.S.–Japan 175 Marshall Plan 71, 102 Martin, Lisa 101 Martin, Philip 162 Marx, Karl 21, 58 Marxism 21, 58 Marxism–Leninism 58 Masheed, Mohamed 87 Massey, Douglas S. 157 Matthews, Jessica 93 May 15 (15M) movement 36 Mazek, Salah 130 Mazzini, Giuseppe 20 Mearsheimer, John 98 media, NGO use of 93 Mediterranean Europe 16 mercantilism 42, 43, 53–54, 57–58 MERCOSUR 37, 100, 109, 199 Mexico 8, 193; debt crisis 56; and NAFTA 4, 29, 30, 109, 178 Mexico Solidarity Network 30 Microsoft 187 Middle East 17, 22, 33, 45 migration 118, 144, 154–169, 208; chain 157, 159; economic drivers of 155, 160, 161–162; and global capitalism 155–156; networks 157, 159, 161; noneconomic factors 155; world-systems view of 156–157, 208 migration in Europe 37, 118, 130–131, 154, 158–169; decolonization and 161, 162; economic effects on sending countries 162–164; economic and political effect on European countries 164–167; European integration and 154, 160, 167; and family reunification 157, 159, 160, 167; fiscal strains 164; forced 160–161; high-skilled workers 162, 164, 166; labor market effects 164, 166; median age of immigrants 166; perceived cultural threats 165; postwar 158–160; public opinion and 165, 166; and welfare systems 164 military power 68, 69 Mill, John Stuart 146 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 64, 83 Miller, Mark J. 158 Milošević, Slobodan 75 Miyazawa, Kiichi 176 The Modern World-System (Wallerstein) 16 modernization theory 50, 54–55

monarchy, and mercantilism 57–58 monetary policy 177 Mongol Empire 17, 42 Monsanto 9, 89 Monterrey Consensus (2001) 64 Montreal Protocol 89, 90 Moore, Barrington 55 Morocco 158, 159 Mossadegh, Mohammad 33, 74 most-favored nation status 103, 194 Movement of Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) 126, 127 Mozambique 9, 63, 138, 141 Mubarak, Hosni 120 Mugabe, Robert 110 Muir, John 91 multiculturalism 67 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 51 multinational corporations 144, 156–157, 183–187; and anti-apartheid movement 117, 141; financial institutions’ control of 190; and World Trade Organization (WTO) 198–199 multipolar international order 68 Museveni, Yaweri Kaguta 110 Muslim Brotherhood 129 Muslims 75 Myanmar 39 Nakasone, Yasuhiro 175 Namibia 138 narcotics trafficking 126 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) 83 Nasser, Abdel 74, 105 nation-states 3, 20, 21, 42; international organizations and collaboration among 98–99, 107; possibilities for coordination 97–98, 111, 112; Responsibility to Protect (R2P) 77–78, 106; and security 67–70, 77–78; sovereignty 12, 34–35, 37, 79, 97, 104, 137, 198 National Forum, South Africa 140 National Front party, France 37, 165 national identity 44–45, 67 national income 51, 69 National Indian Brotherhood 148 National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) 126, 127 National Party (NP) government, South Africa 134, 135, 136, 137, 141, 142 National Snow and Ice Data Center 86 national treatment, GATT/WTO principle 194 nationalism 21, 76, 100; nineteenth century 20, 45; right-wing, EU 36–37 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 47, 123, 138 natural gas 84; Algeria 128; Libya 123, 131, 207; Russia 108, 130 natural resources: depletion 83, 84; Dutch Disease 85–86; and economic growth 85–86; resource curse 52, 85–86

index   217 Nazi Germany 79, 158, 160, 161 Negri, Antonio 48 Nelson, Gaylord 92 neo-mercantilism 58 neoliberalism 25, 30, 31, 32, 35–36, 55–56, 60, 61 Netherlands 18, 138, 158; foreign population 160; immigration 159, 160, 166; Party for Freedom 165 New International Economic Order (NIEO) 62 new world order (George H.W. Bush) 28–29 New York Times 37, 177, 184 New Zealand: and Britain’s European turn 144, 147, 149; Declaration of Independence (1835) 146; and IMF 147; and Vietnam War 147 New Zealand Land Company 146 New Zealand, Māori peoples 117–118, 144–153, 207; human rights 144, 148–149, 150–151; and internal decolonization process 118, 149, 151; land rights 145, 146, 149, 151; sovereign status 117–118, 145, 146, 150, 151; Treaty of Waitangi (1840) 145–146, 149, 150; Treaty of Waitangi Act (1975) 145, 146; Waitangi Tribunal 145, 146, 148, 149, 151 New Zealand Wars (1845–1870) 146 newly industrialized countries (NICs) 56 Newsweek 179 Nicaragua 52 Niger 122, 124, 125, 127–128; oil 128; uranium 127–128 Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ) 128 Nigeria 127 Nixon, Richard 102 Noburo, Takeshita 177 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 4, 97; and sustainability issues 92–94 nondiscrimination principle, GATT/WTO 194, 199 norms: international organizations and establishment of 98, 100–101, 107; social 78 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 4, 29, 30, 93, 109, 178, 189, 194, 208 North Korea 73 Norway 165 nuclear weapons: Iran 34; see also weapons of mass destruction (WMD) Nuremberg Tribunal 79–80 Nye, Joseph S. 69, 76 Nyerere, Julius 139 Obama, Barack 34, 184 oil 56, 84; Arctic 87; Iraqi 86; Libyan 123, 125, 129–130, 131, 207; Niger 128; peak-oil argument 85; Russian 130 oil shock (1973) 106 Okawa, Yoshio 170 Olson, Mancur 94 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act (1988), U.S. 176 Operation Desert Storm 28 Opium War (1839–1842) 20–21, 54 Oracle 187

Organization of American States 100 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 56, 106, 129 Ottawa Declaration (1996) 90 Ottoman Empire 22, 42, 45, 54 outsourcing 186, 187, 189 Oxfam 63; GROW campaign 9 Oxfam America 85 Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza (shah of Iran) 33–34 Pakistan 25, 88, 105 Palestine 129 Palestine Liberation Organization 122 palm oil 89 Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) 135, 136, 137 Pan Am flight 103 bombing (1988) 122 Pan-Arabism 74 Papademetriou, Demetrios 160–161, 162 Paris climate agreement (2015) 91 Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1883) 21 Paris Peace Conference (1919) 22 Party for Freedom, Netherlands 165 patents 21, 198 Patrick, Stewart 34 peacekeeping 105–106 People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH) 4 perestroika 74 Permanent Court of Arbitration 22 Persia 17, 42 petrodollars 56 Pevehouse, Jon C. 100 philanthropy 65 Philippines 8, 109 Pinchot, Gifford 91 Plaza Accord (1985) 177, 178 Poland 158 polarization thesis 75 policymaking consensus 99–100 Polish immigrants 160 political parties: Chinese Communist Party 38, 39; far-right 37, 118, 130–131, 165, 166–167; see also names of individual parties political power 6, 68, 69 political rights 51 population decline 166 population growth 6, 88 populism 36–37, 111 Portugal 18, 36, 42, 43, 159; Carnation Revolution 109 postal services 21 postcolonial imperialism 46–49 poverty 11, 50, 51, 52, 53, 64, 65, 77, 83, 84; remittances and reduction of 163 power 6, 68–70, 193; balance of 69; economic 6, 68, 69; and GATT/WTO 195; hard 69; military 68, 69; political 6, 68, 69; smart 69; soft 69, 193 Prebisch, Raúl 59 preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) 204 Prendergast, Chief Justice James 146

218  index price stability 56 prisoner’s dilemma 99 privatization 25, 30, 36, 56, 104; Russia 61 Progress Party, Norway 165 property rights 33, 111, 146 protectionism 23, 98, 102–103, 194 Przeworski, Adam 55 public goods 94 public sphere 92 Putin, Vladimir 34, 108 Qatar 129 Qualcomm 187 The Race for What’s Left (Klare) 84, 89 Ramo, Joseph Cooper 62 Ratana, T.W. 150 Reagan, Ronald 41, 74, 141, 175, 178 realism 68–70, 79, 97 reciprocity principle, GATT/WTO 194, 199 Red Brigades 122 refugees 144, 155, 158, 160–161 regional organizations 37, 100, 109, 199 Reinhardt, Eric 201, 204 religion 75 remittances 157; common channels for 163; and economic development 162–164 resource curse 52, 85–86 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) 77–78, 106 Rhodesia 138 Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (2012) 64 Rio Summit (1992) 83 The Rise of the West (McNeill) 15–16 Robinson, Ronald 43 Rodrik, Dani 54, 103, 194–195 Roman Empire 17, 42 Romanian immigrants 160 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 70, 172; “Four Freedoms” speech (1941) 23 Roosevelt, Theodore 91 Ross, Michael 85 Rostow, W.W. 54 Rouhani, Hassan 34 Roundup Ready crops 8, 9 Ruggie, John 71, 101, 103 rule of law 33, 111 ruling class 69 Russia 16, 25, 34, 38, 39; competitive authoritarianism 25, 34; elections 110; intervention in Ukraine and Crimea 34–35, 107, 130; oil and natural gas 108, 130; privatization 61; see also Soviet Union Russian Revolution 21 Rwanda 80, 106 Sahel region 125, 126 Saint-Domingue (Haiti) 19 Saleh, Ali Abdullah 120 Sandinistas 122

Saudi Arabia 7, 89, 120, 129 Saudi Star Agricultural Development 7 Schengen Convention (1995) 118, 160, 161, 165, 166 Schimitter, Philippe 110 Schultz, George 175 Schumpeter, Joseph 44, 53 Seattle WTO protests (1999) 31, 57 Second World War (1939Ä1945) 23 security 11–12, 67–82, 98–99, 207–208; collective 71–72, 105; and constructivism 78; feminist security studies 80–81; human 12, 76, 77–78, 78–79, 80, 106; and liberalism 76–77, 79; and realism 68–70, 79; state-based notions of 67–70 security dilemma 68 Seeley, J.R. 44 self-determination 22, 23, 137, 145, 147; indigenous peoples 145, 148, 149, 150 semi-peripheral countries 16 Sen, Amartya 51 September 11 terrorist attacks (2001) 31–32 Serbia 75 services 194, 196–197 Sharpeville massacre (1960) 136 Sierra Club 91 Sikkink, Kathryn 101 Silent Spring (Carson) 91 Simmons, Beth 101 Sinai region 105, 128 Singapore 25, 34, 56, 109; fall of (1942) 23 slavery 16, 18, 19, 43 Slovenia 74, 75 smart power 69 Smith, Adam 20, 53 Smoot–Hawley Tariff 102 Snyder, Jack 100, 111 social Darwinism 45, 53 social democratic model 23, 25, 62 social justice 12, 31 social norms 78 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Moore) 55 social stability 69 socialist model 23, 28 soft power 69, 193 Somalia 106 Sony Corporation 179 South Africa 16, 38, 193; apartheid system 117, 133–134; National Party (NP) government 134, 135, 136, 137, 141, 142; Truth and Reconciliation Commission 52 South Africa and anti-apartheid movement 117, 134–143, 207; African National Congress (ANC) 135–137, 138, 140, 141, 142–143; boycotts and sanctions 138, 140, 141, 142; Congress Alliance 135, 137; international arena 137–139, 140–142, 143; multinational corporations and 117, 141; non-violent protest 135, 136; and Sharpeville massacre (1960) 136; Soweto uprisings (1976) 139–140, 141 South African Communist Party (SACP) 135, 138

index   219 South African Indian Congress 135 South African Native National Congress 135; see also African National Congress (ANC) South Korea 56, 60, 61, 109 South Sudan 155 South–South cooperation (SSC) 62 sovereignty 144; cosmopolitan 79; Māori 117–118, 145, 146, 150, 151; state 12, 34–35, 37, 79, 97, 104, 137, 198 Soviet Union 11, 12, 23, 24, 28–29, 46, 68, 173; and anti-apartheid cause 137; collapse of 68, 74, 109; glasnost and perestroika policies 74; and U.S. relations see Cold War Soweto uprisings (1976) 139–140, 141 Spain 159, 166; colonial empire 18, 42; demonstrations (2011) 36; economic crisis 36; fascism 23; oil imports 130; unification (1469) 18 Stages of Economic Growth (Rostow) 54 Stalin, Joseph 71 state: developmental 60–62; and economy 23, 30; and market 11, 59, 60–62; see also nation-states state bureaucratic model 25 Stead, W.T. 21 steam power 20 Stearns, Peter N. 17 Steger, Manfred 32 Stiglitz, Joseph 61, 63 structural adjustment policies 56 Structural Impediments Initiative (1989), U.S.– Japan 175, 176 sub-Saharan Africa 52, 83 Subramanian, Arvind 86 subsidies, agricultural 103, 104, 194, 196, 197–198 Sudan 122 Suez Crisis 74, 105 suffrage 109, 110 sugar plantation system 18 superpowers 68 Surinam 159 sustainability 12, 64, 83–84, 208; human 83–84; see also environmental sustainability Sustainable Budget Index, Botswana 52 Sustainable Development Goals 64, 83, 84 sustainable economic growth 85 Suttner, Bertha von 21 Sweden 159; and anti-apartheid movement 138, 141; asylum seekers 161 Sweden Democrats 165 Swiss People’s Party 165 Syria 88, 106, 120, 121, 124, 128, 129, 155, 161 Taiwan 56, 109 Tambo, Oliver 135, 136, 137 Tanzania 25, 137 tax 30, 36, 164; avoidance 187; cuts 175 technology 190 telegraph 20 terrorism 12, 31–32, 124, 144; Gaddafi support for 121, 122; war on terror 31–32, 122

Thailand 56, 60, 61, 109 Thatcher, Margaret 141 “The Imperialism of Free Trade” (Gallagher and Robinson) 43 Thomas, Caroline 77 Thompson, Kenneth 71 Thörn, Håkan 143 Tickner, Ann 80 time, standardization of 21 Touré, Amadou Toumani 125 Toussaint L’Ouverture, François-Dominique 19 Toyota 184, 185 trade 108–109, 111, 112; agreements 98, 103, 109, 144; early transregional 17; free trade model 20, 25, 43, 50, 54, 69, 77, 84, 172, 173, 178, 189, 194; liberalization 56–57, 65, 100, 101, 102–103, 104; low-income/developing countries 103; mercantilist 42, 43, 53–54, 57–58; mostfavored nation status 103, 194; national treatment principle 194; nondiscrimination principle 194, 199; nontariff barriers 196; openness 69–70; protectionism 23, 98, 102–103, 194; reciprocity principle 194, 199; tariff barriers 54, 58, 102–103; U.S.–Japan trade conflict 118; see also General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade Act (1974), U.S. 174 trading companies 18 TransAfrica 141 transnational capitalism see global capitalism transnational corporations see multinational corporations Transnational Index (TNI) 184, 185 transportation technologies 19, 20, 54 tribalism 31 True Finns 165 Truman Doctrine 71, 72 Truman, Harry S. 73 Trump, Donald 34, 37, 180 Tuaregs 125–126, 128 Tunisia 33, 93, 120, 122, 124, 158, 159 Turkey 71, 88, 129, 159 U.S.–Canada Free Trade Agreement (1987) 178 Uganda 63, 110 UK Independence Party (UKIP) 165 Ukraine 34–35, 107, 130 Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation, or MK) 136, 137, 140 underdevelopment 51, 55 undernourishment 51–52, 64, 84 unemployment, and migration 155, 164–165 Union of Resistance Forces (UFR) 127 unipolar world order 68 United Arab Emirates (UAE) 120, 129 United Auto Workers 175, 184 United Democratic Front (UDF) 140 United East India Company 18

220  index United Fruit Company 74 United for Global Change demonstrations (2011) 36 United Kingdom see Britain United Nations (UN) 24, 71, 79, 81, 97, 105–106, 137, 147; and anti-apartheid movement 137–138; Charter 24, 35, 72, 105; and decolonization 147; and environmental issues 83, 89–90, 92; General Assembly 24; and interests of powerful states 97, 106; and Libya sanctions 122; Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 64, 83; Millennium Summit (2000) 64; peacekeeping 105–106; Security Council 24, 29, 35, 72, 105; Sustainable Development Goals 64, 83, 84 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 87 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992) 83 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (1972) 83, 92 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 60 United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960) 147 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 148 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 50, 51, 52, 77; Human Development Report 51, 63 United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) 59 United Nations Economic and Social Council 148 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 4, 88 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) 83, 92 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 90 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 155 United States (U.S.) 11, 12, 16, 24, 27–35, 46, 59, 68, 109, 195; and Afghanistan 47; agricultural subsidies 103, 104, 194, 196, 197–198; and the “American Century” 27–28, 47, 69, 70–72; and anti-apartheid movement 137, 138, 139, 141; and APEC 109; automobile industry 170–171, 174–175, 179, 183–184; Black Power movement 139; and Bretton Woods institutions 195; civil rights movement 134, 137, 147; and climate change 90–91; containment policy 72–73, 173; cotton industry 197–198; democracy promotion 32–33, 111; Endangered Species Act 198; environmental protection legislation 92; and Europe, post-war support 70–71, 102; and European integration 35–36; Federal Employees Loyalty Program (1947) 73; and free trade 172, 173; genetically modified (GM) crops 8–10; Greater Middle East Initiative 33; hegemony 33–35, 47; House Un-American

Activities Committee (HUAC) 73; hunger in 53; and IMF 102; imperialism 41, 46–48; income inequality 52; and International Criminal Court (ICC) 80; investment in land abroad 7; and Iran 33–34, 74; and Iraq 28, 31–32, 33, 35, 47, 97, 106, 129; isolationism 98; and Japan trade relations see United States (U.S.)–Japan trade conflict; Lend-Lease Act (1941–1945) 70–71; and Libya relations 122, 123; Manifest Destiny 43, 111; military power 69; National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68) 73; National Security Strategy (NSS) 32; Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act (1988) 176; protectionism 98, 102–103; September 11 terrorist attacks (2001) 31-32; Smoot–Hawley Tariff 102; and Soviet Union relations see Cold War; Trade Act (1974) 174; war on terror 31–32; and World Bank 102; and World War I 22; WTO DSM cases 201 United States (U.S.) Department of Agriculture (USDA) 8 United States (U.S.) Energy Information Administration (IEO) 84 United States (U.S.)–Japan trade conflict (1971–1996) 118, 170–182, 208; automobiles 170–171, 174–175, 179; and economic interdependence 180; Framework for a New Economic Partnership 176; Japanese dumping incidents 174; market-oriented sector-selective (MOSS) negotiations 175; and NAFTA 178; and Plaza Accord (1985) 177; Structural Impediments Initiative (1989) 175, 176; and U.S. trade deficits 173–176, 177; and voluntary export restrictions (VERs) 174–175, 180 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 100–101, 106, 147 Universal Postal Union 21 upper-middle-income countries 51 uranium, Niger 127–128 urbanization 6, 54, 55 USSR see Soviet Union UTA flight 772 bombing (1989) 122 Venezuela 25, 34 Videla, Jorge Rafael 101 Vietnam 22, 39 Vietnam War 73, 138, 147 Vlaams Belang 165 Volatire 42 voluntary export restrictions (VERs) 174–175, 180 voting rights 109, 110 wages, and migration 155 Waitangi, treaty of (1840) 145–146, 149, 150 Waitangi Tribunal 145, 146, 148, 149, 151 Wallerstein, Immanuel 16, 59, 156 Walmart 183 war crimes 79–80, 106 war on terror 31–32, 122 Washington Consensus 25, 29–31, 55, 56, 63, 65

index   221 Washington Office on Africa 141 water resources 84, 87–88 Watt, James 20 Wealth of Nations (Smith) 53 weapons of mass destruction (WMD) 35, 97; see also nuclear weapons weights and measures, standardization of 21 welfare systems 25, 164, 166 well-being 50, 51, 63, 76 Wendt, Alexander 78, 101 West, the 15–16; and non-West 75 West Germany 109, 160, 161 Westad, Odd Arne 24 Western Sahara 148 Westphalia, treaty of (1648) 67 White, Harry Dexter 101 Wilders, Geert 165 Wilkinson, Steven 75 Williamson, John 30, 56 Wilson, Woodrow 22, 32, 45, 71 Wolfensohn, James 77 working class 55, 69 Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) 148 World Bank 3, 24, 30, 62, 63, 71, 97, 99, 100, 102, 194; budget contributions 102; voting structure 102 World Council of Churches 138 World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) 148 World Economic Forum 31 World Health Organization (WHO) 87, 99 World History Association 19

World Social Forum (WSF) 31 World Trade Organization (WTO) 10, 29, 36, 44, 71, 104, 119, 179, 193, 208; Cancun meetings (2003) 199; Chinese membership of 29, 38; consensus decision-making 195–196; dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) 119, 193, 196–204, 208; Doha Round 199; “Green Room” negotiations 196; low-income countries and 197, 198–199, 201–204, 208; and multinational corporations 198–199; national sovereignty and 198; power and 195–196; preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) 204; Seattle protests (1999) 31, 57 World War I (1914–1918) 22, 45 World War II (1939–1945) 79 World Wildlife Federation 93 world-system perspective 16–17, 59, 156–157, 308 xenophobia 165 Xuma, A.B. 135 Yemen 120 Yom Kippur War (1973) 106 “Young Europe” associations 20 “Young Italy” movement 20 Yugoslavia 74–75, 80, 159, 161 Zambia 9, 137 Zapatista National Liberation Army 4, 30, 93 Zeidan, Ali 128 Zimbabwe 9, 110, 138 Zolberg, Aristide 156