Events in the world are unfolding at a dizzying pace. Virtually every day we awaken to startling headlines concerning Afghanistan, the Middle East, Argentina or the Enron scandal in the United States. It is impossible to predict where we are headed. The spiral of global violence could accelerate, the forces of repression led by the Bush administration could tighten their grip on power, or the regional revolts and protests against US domination could gain momentum.
In this context the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil and the demonstrations against the corporate and political elites at the World Economic Forum in New York could serve as a bellwether as to where we are headed and perhaps even nudge the world in a positive direction. Both events begin on 31 January 2002. The theme of the anti-globalization gathering in Porto Alegre is "Another World is Possible". Upwards of 50,000 people are expected to attend and hundreds of workshops and meetings will be held over a six-day period. The demonstrations in New York are also important. A militant and vibrant turnout of protestors could capture the attention of the established media, and perhaps open up a more critical discussion of the global war waged by the Bush administration and the corporate forces that stand to benefit from it.
Below is an essay from an anthology that is being released in early February 2002: September 11 and the US War: Beyond the Curtain of Smoke. Edited by Roger Burbach and Ben Clarke, it contains articles from more than 20 authors and is published by City Lights Books and Freedom Voices Press. It is hoped that this essay will provide a context for the left and progressives to understand the events of recent months and enable us to act more incisively as the anti-globalization movement approaches a new rendezvous with history on 31 January.**
In the immediate aftermath of 11 September 2001 it appeared that the anti-globalization movement had been eclipsed by the onslaught of world events. However, as we acquire distance from the attacks, the movement's critique of the destructive impact of globalization has been rendered more relevant than ever. Even more importantly, the anti-war and anti-globalization movements now occupy the middle ground in a world that is threatened by the polar extremes embodied in the figures of Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush. Each is entrenched in fundamentalist positions that see the world in absolutist terms of good and evil, and each is bent on imposing their respective world views on the rest of humanity by unleashing the dogs of war.
The process of globalization is central to explaining the upheaval in the Arab and Islamic worlds that has led to the rise of terrorism. In 1995 Benjamin Barber published Jihad Versus McWorld in which he argued that a basic conflict was brewing in the world between traditionalist, tribal and nationalist movements on the one hand and the forces of international corporate capitalism on the other. McDonalds - or McWorld - was the name he gave to the materialist, secularizing corporations whose sole objective was to make profits by spreading their corporate interests and culture around the globe.
At around the same time Samuel P. Huntington released his Clash of Civilizations. It asserted that fissures or conflicts were developing between Western civilization and seven or eight other civilizations, including Islam. This thesis has received prominent play among the media and in foreign policy circles, particularly in the aftermath of 11 September. Cast in pseudo-intellectual terms, Huntington's thesis feeds into xenophobic tendencies among Americans. It is also the backdrop for understanding George W. Bush's early portrayal of this conflict first as a "crusade", and then as a struggle of "good" (us, the civilized in the West) versus "evil" (them, the terrorists in the Islamic world).
To counteract this sinister interpretation of 11 September and the ensuing war we need to start by recognizing that there is indeed a global clash occurring. However, it is not between the Islamic and Western worlds, but between the forces of international corporate capital and the innumerable cultures, societies and even civilizations that are being undermined, uprooted and shattered as corporate capital expands its hold on the globe's peoples and resources.
The many variants and tendencies of Islam have been hard hit by this global trauma and upheaval. From Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, it is virtually impossible to categorize the innumerable ways in which global capital has impacted these countries and societies. But there is little doubt that, across the Islamic world, the values and interests of "McWorld" have often penetrated to the most remote areas of these societies. Crass materialism, selfish individualism and the gross and often offensive imagery of Hollywood, with all its violent and often racist themes, are the concepts and experiences that are thrust upon much of the Islamic world.
These values of corporate-driven globalization clash directly with what Islam has represented historically for most Muslims. By and large, Islam has not meant the fanaticism of the Taliban or bin Laden. Islam is a faith with a clear sense of moral justice, often much more deeply rooted than that of many Christian believers. In countries where the government has been weak in terms of providing social services, the Mosque has often been the one place where Muslims could feel equal and empowered, where they could go for help and assistance in time of need. Lending would occur, usually without interest, and educational and technical training could even be arranged through the Mosque.
Of particular note is that the millions of pilgrims who travel every year to the "holiest of holy" sites, Mecca, wear the same or similar white garb, symbolizing that they are all equal in the eyes of Allah. This is the very antithesis of what the sociologist Max Weber called the "Protestant ethic", the value system that helped precipitate the rise of capitalism. Protestant religions, particularly those with roots in Calvinism, came to believe that individuals who accumulated wealth and capital were being visibly rewarded by God on this earth. In today's globalized world, accumulation and greed may no longer be viewed simply as Christian values, but the ever increasing divide between the wealthy and the impoverished certainly feeds deep resentment in the Islamic world and elsewhere against those who perpetrate globalization and materialist values.
Along with this clash of social and economic mores, it is also important to recognize that entrenched in the Islamic countries is the most ruthless sector of international corporate capital, the petroleum companies. They may represent "classic imperialism" in that these companies have been pursuing oil or "Black Gold" in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf long before the advent of globalization. But with globalization, the quest for the life-blood of the global economy has intensified and accelerated, generating new conflicts and wars in the Islamic world. It was after all Bush the elder, who simultaneously proclaimed the New World Order (read globalization) while he constructed a war-time coalition bent on insuring that Iraq and Saddam Hussein would not dominate the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf by taking over Kuwait. Even the current war in Afghanistan has oil interests standing in the background as it is widely known that the world's largest remaining oil reserves in the Caspian Sea region can best be accessed by a pipeline running across Afghanistan.
In light of this pillaging and plundering of the Arab and Islamic worlds under the aegis of globalization, it is understandable why fanatical sectors like bin Laden and the Taliban would gain a following. But we also need to realize that, in the aftermath of 11 September, the Bush administration and the most reactionary sectors in the United States and other parts of the world are bent on polarizing the globe into two warring camps. This is not a religious war or a clash of Islam with the Western world. Rather, it is the clash of a particular sector of international capital that is intent on imposing its economic and military hegemony on the rest of the world.
It is astounding, but the complex entity called the United States of America has placed in political power one of the narrowest ruling cliques in recent history. George W. Bush not only lost the popular vote to the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, but once in office he began to consistently act as the prodigy of a very narrow group of economic interests that can be characterized as the "military-energy complex". Many executive orders and pronouncements, before and after 11 September, have served these particular interests in one way or another. The United States' abandonment of the Kyoto treaty to control global warming, the attempts to drill in the Arctic Circle, and calls for the disavowal of nuclear arms treaties in order to pursue a multi-billion-dollar Star Wars programme - these policies and others cater directly to the interests of the military-energy complex.
The Bush family, even though it does not number among the world's fabulously wealthy, is nonetheless part of the global ruling class. And its interests are closely tied to the military-energy complex. George W. Bush, for example, in one of his first business endeavours after his graduation from Harvard Business School, formed a partnership with Salem bin Laden, the brother of Osama, to found Arbustos Energy. By the time he became governor of Texas he had major investments in petroleum and related industries. And his father, soon after leaving the presidency, joined Carlyle Associates, a 12-billion-dollar private equity firm that has extensive investments in the energy sector and the Middle East.
It is the military-energy complex that will benefit most from the war with no end against terrorism that is advocated by the Bush administration. Defence budgets were almost immediately bloated in the aftermath of 11 September. And the energy companies stand to benefit enormously if the conflict extends from Afghanistan to any of the Islamic countries that are significant oil producers. The global recession in recent months may have caused a drop in the price of petroleum, but prices would skyrocket if the war expanded just as they did in the early days of the Gulf War, leading to gross profiteering by petroleum interests.
Before going on to discussing the implications of having this narrow ruling clique in power, it is important to see how specific events in the aftermath of 11 September demonstrate that the anti-globalization movement was right on the mark in its critique of the international financial and trade institutions that help drive globalization. Two of the key players, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have been stripped of their incessant public relations claims that they are somehow serving the interests of the impoverished in the world. Just days after the Bush administration announced that Pakistan was a key ally in the war against terrorism, an IMF delegation was dispatched to Islamabad to help restructure the country's debt and to make new disbursements. According to William Easterly, a veteran World Bank economist, economic criteria for loans by the IMF and the Bank are being discarded as "political pressure" is brought to bear to lend "to countries that are going to be allies in the war against terrorism" (Washington Post, 30 September 2001)
Pakistan, which received at least 22 loans from the IMF and World Bank prior to 11 September, has made virtually no headway in altering the country's enormous inequities. The government spends less then 2 US dollars per person on health annually, while it is building a costly expressway linking Islamabad and Lahore that benefits only the elites. Easterly blames corruption for this state of affairs, and international surveys regularly rank Pakistani's governing and economic elites as being among the world's most corrupt.
Bush, in his trip to the economic summit of the leaders of Pacific rim countries in Shanghai, China, in late October 2001, openly declared that one of his objectives in the war against terrorism was to mobilize financial and business interests to defend globalization and free enterprise. In a speech to a gathering of leading corporate executives at the summit, Bush asserted that they were all being threatened by the al-Qaeda network as it sought to "shatter confidence in the world economic system" and "to turn the openness of the global economy against itself" (New York Times, 21 October 2001).
Bush was correct in perceiving al-Qaeda as a threat to corporate-dominated globalization. But it is also important to recognize that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are an integral part of the brave new world erected by globalization. They are not just the representatives of rebellious tribal or nationalist forces portrayed by Benjamin Barber in Jihad Versus McWorld. As Mary Kaldor noted in The Nation, warring groups like al-Qaeda "flourish in those areas of the world where states have imploded as a consequence of the impact of globalization on formerly closed, authoritarian systems, and they involve private groups as well as remnants of the state apparatus". She adds their "goal is not military victory; it is political mobilization" (Kaldor, "Wanted: Global Politics," The Nation, 5 November 2001).
Al-Qaeda is a very loose network, very well adapted to the era of globalization, not at all like the old centralized Marxist-Leninist parties that could not adjust to new challenges emanating from the capitalist world. Al-Qaeda is spread throughout the Arab, Islamic and even Western worlds. And it is very adept at employing the techniques and technologies of globalization, using international financial networks to move funds, and the internet to purchase airline tickets and to carry out the communications and the coordination necessary for strikes like those of 11 September.
In the aftermath of 11 September the peace and anti-globalization movements soon began to move into the breach between the warring worlds of Osama bin Laden and George Bush. As in the days prior to 11 September, the anti-globalization movement drew sustenance from its international scope and sweep. The demonstrations in San Francisco and Washington D.C. at the end of September were followed two weeks later by the turnout of tens of thousands in London and Berlin. Similar demonstrations occurred in Latin American cities, and of course in the Islamic world, from the capitals of Nigeria and Pakistan to Indonesia. A speaker at the London demonstration moved the entire crowd with a quotation from Bertha von Suttner, the inspirer of the Nobel Peace Prize and one of its first recipients: "Only a fool would try to remove an ink spot with more ink, or an oil spot with oil; how can anyone believe that blood stains can be removed by shedding more blood?"
It is true that 11 September momentarily took the wind out of the sails of the anti-globalization movement. The polls indicated that George W. had 90 per cent popularity poll readings, but this support was shallow. However, the anti-globalization movement drew resiliency from its diversity, utilizing the tools of the information age to bring together people with alternative experiences, perspectives and insights into the events of 11 September. By the time of the meetings of the World Trade Organization in Qatar in November 2001 the movement's critique of the destructive impact of globalization had been rendered more relevant than ever. As demonstrators at the trade talks noted, two decades of neo-liberalism and a corporate-driven free trade agenda had helped "create the conditions for terrorism."
In the United States, and internationally, an incredible cross-communicating and cross-pollinating of ideas and experiences has occurred. The internet is central to this process, as electronic networking is used to organize national demonstrations and workshops, community gatherings and pot-lucks, and even to facilitate good old human bonding by arranging get togethers among a handful of like-minded individuals and/or families to discuss their views of what is happening in the world. And, interestingly, the demonstrations that were planned before 11 September against the World Bank and the IMF in Washington D.C. and San Francisco for the final weekend in September, were quickly turned into the first major protests against Bush's impending war in Afghanistan. As the New York Times noted by late November, "Internet activists may well be spreading their message farther and faster than their predecessors in political protest" ("Protesters Find the Web to Be a Powerful Tool," New York Times, 21 November 2001).
The war strategy of the Bush administration is fatally flawed. It does not fully comprehend the decentralized and global nature of the al-Qaeda challenge. It has announced it is carrying out a global war against terrorist networks, but its war strategy is essentially centred on the nation state and the belief that the United States is a hegemonic power able to impose its fiat around the globe. Bush talked of a grand coalition of nations to fight terrorism, but the United States has essentially embarked on its military campaign unilaterally, excepting the support of its British yes-man, Tony Blair, and token assistance from countries like Germany. Moreover, as noted earlier, the war of the Bush administration responds primarily to the needs of the military-energy complex. As the war continues, other corporate sectors, which depend on stability and the unimpeded flow of commodities around the globe, could turn against a war-obsessed administration.
Walden Bello, a leading anti-globalization activist, noted in the days prior to 11 September that the economic and institutional forces sustaining globalization - like the IMF and the World Bank - were entering into crisis. The US war strategy will only further deepen this crisis as it destabilizes the global economy and undercuts moderate Islamic governments and forces. Bin Laden may be captured and executed, but this will mean little. The upheaval could be profound as the war continues. Governments from Indonesia and Pakistan to Saudi Arabia and Egypt could conceivably fall or become gripped by internal upheavals.
Our role as an anti-war and anti-globalization movement is now more important than ever, especially in the United States, where millions are still entranced by the war rhetoric and flag-waving patriotism of the Bush administration and its domestic political allies on the right. As Ed Whitfield, a self-defined black community and educational activist from Greensboro, North Carolina, wrote in a letter posted on a community website in mid-October:
Does anyone seriously believe that the Afghans who are being starved and bombed were conspirators with the people who attacked the US financial and military symbols and killed Americans [on] 11 September? Does anyone believe that killing a few hundred or a few thousand or even a few million of them will actually make America safer? When you get right down to it, the similarities between George W. and Osama bin [Laden]'s way of thinking are pretty striking. Both, it seems, think that issuing non-negotiable demands and unleashing murder and mayhem when those demands are not met is an appropriate course of action. I have had to remind some of my hawkish friends and relatives on several occasions that the reason that I think George W. is wrong is because I think al-Qaeda is wrong. If I were to support Bush's methods, I would have a need to support bin Laden's because both are responding to what they see as injustice. But while most Americans are clear that destroying the lives that were taken in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in that rural field in Pensylvania is not the appropriate response to US policies in Iraq, Israel and Saudi Arabia, they have a difficult time seeing that destroying the lives of innocents in Afghanistan, who first heard about [the] Sept[ember] 11 events after we knew about it here, is just as brutal and in many ways even more irrational.
Just as before 11 September, the diverse and diffuse movement that mobilizes under the banner of anti-globalization has to confront the destructive forces of corporate-dominated globalization. As Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians noted in Qatar at the WTO meetings, "There is a Third Way, and that is not the agenda of economic fundamentalism the North is pushing on the South, but fair trade practices." The basic objectives of our movement remain the same before and after 11 September - peace and global justice, or "one world with room for many worlds".
**To order copies of September 11 and the US War: Beyond the Curtain of Smoke, click here. Or for further information on the book, email here.
© Roger Burbach