The Future of Geopolitical Aligments

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RUA TIRADENTES, 17 - ING, NITERI / RJTEL.: (021) 717-1235FAX: (021) 719-3286

UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL FLUMINENSEFACULDADEDE ECONOMIA

GREMIMT

Grupo de Estudo sobre EconomiaMundial, Integrao

Regional &Mercado de Trabalho

The Futureof GeopoliticalAlignments

THEOTNIODOS SANTOS

Textos para discussoSrie 1 N 8, 2002

RUA TIRADENTES, 17 - ING, NITERI / RJTEL.: (021) 717-1235FAX: (021) 719-3286


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Este texto encontrado tambm no site da Ctedra e Rede UNESCO UNU sobre Economia Global eDesenvolvimento Sustentvel www.reggen.org.br

"We don't know like we used to know"

General Colin Powel, American Military Commander,answering a question about who are the possibleenemies that will be confronted by the new US SpecialForces (International Herald Tribune, May 20).

* A first version of this paper was presented orally in the XI International Colloquium onthe World Economy: "1989: The End of an Era?" Starnberg, June 28 to 30, 1991.

This paper is a result of my research activity from 1990 to 1991 with the financial supportof the CNPq and the Ford Foundation of Brazil. I dedicate this to my 12-year-old step-sonRafael who was under the tension of my work in this period, debating with me with warmintellectual curiosity on these complex international problems.

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1. Looking for an Interpretative Model:The Foundations of the New Geopolitical Changes

The world is changing drastically. We are at the border of a new economic, social,political and cultural era. What defines this new age is essentially the creation of a globaldimension of life which is the starting point for a planetarian civilization. At this moment, weare being obliged to confront with the process of globalization of economic, social, politicaland cultural life and its demands and consequences, and we are just creating the theoreticalinstrument for that. To describe this new reality we use indiscriminately the wordsglobalization, world system, world economy, and world order that evoke or precede theformation of a planetarian civilization. However, they are different faces of a commonhistorical phenomenon, as we can see by the following attempts to define them:

GLOBALIZATION (that corresponds to the French word "mondialisation") means essentially theglobal management and tends to reproduce themselves as part of a global world creation ofseveral world phenomena that transcend all national boundaries, demand a system, even whenthey can depend yet on national or local systems to assure their total reproduction. Theconcept of globalization or "mondialization" is the highest level of the concepts ofinternationalization, multi-nationalization and transnationalization which were discussed veryintensively in the 60's and 70's.

WORLD ECONOMY is a concept that stresses the growing autonomy of the world market andthe interdependence among different branches of local industrial economics and between thethree economic sectors (agriculture, industry and service) on the world scale, forming aninternational division of labor. This conception affirms also the role of monopolic economicrelations on the world scale, and the presence of the national states in this process of worldintegration, but puts special emphasis on the role of the multinational corporations as a cell ofthis process. This concept has its roots in the definition of imperialism as a stage of worldcapitalism, but tried also to explain the interrelations between monopolic and dependentcapitalism and the socialist economies as different social formations in the contemporaryworld.(1)

WORLD SYSTEM is a broader concept that searches to integrate the global and the inter, multiand transnational realities. According with the concept, the reproduction of the world system isstill based on the national states. Michel Beaud, for example, insists particularly on theseinterrelations establishing the notion of "systme national, mondial hirarchis" (worldnational hierarchical system). Braudel and Wallerstein developed the concepts of conomie-monde and world economy. They analyze the historical formation of different conomies-monde until the emergence of modern capitalism that gives to this concept the universalcharacter of a world system. Andr Gunder Frank gives to the concept of world system a verylarge meaning. He claims to identify a world system that started in the early ancient age andcontinues through the Greco-Roman period and the Byzantine Empire and several otherimperial formations (Arab, Mongol, Ottoman, etc) until the creation of the modern worldsystem. This system was based on permanent interconnections and systemic relations that werede-structurized and re-structurized several times.(2)

In the seventies the concept of a new world order tried to relate the idea of world system withthe question of governability. Concrete measures were proposed to assure a more equaldistribution of wealth on a world scale(3). The Trilateral organization tried to respond to thechallenges of the Third World with the concept of a trilateral schema of governability of thecontemporary world based on the Alliance among United States of America, Europe andJapan(4). The concept of World Order reappeared in 1991 pub by the Bush administrationafter the victory against the Iraqi government in the 1991 Gulf War. The real meaning of thisGRUPODE ESTUDOSSOBRE ECONOMIA MUNDIAL, INTEGRAO REGIONAL & MERCADODE TRABALHO 3


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concept is still not clear. It seems that it is associated with the idea of an American Pax basedon the end of the Cold War and the consolidation of parliamentary and multi-partydemocracies. This world order would be established under North-American hegemony. The

possibility of this hegemony and its limits will be discussed later(5).

The concept of a planetarian civilization is based on the idea of convergence ofcultures andcivilizations toward a plural convivium or conviviality in a unique planetariumsystem. This new stage of civilization has not yet arrived but is already requested by thecommon interests of all countries and all governments that need to survive in a common planetintegrated by modern means of communication and transportation. All those dependent on thesame global natural resources and their populations depend on a common biological andcultural heritage of all humankind.

But before we describe and define this new planetarian civilization (that we canconceive also as the consolidation of the world system that is in large part based on a worldeconomy) we need to analyze the historical reasons for its creation as a new radical historicalformation.

What has changed so radically in the world that de-stabilized the institutional base ofthe present international system? What happened that went beyond the limits of the nationalstates that was until now the foundation of the world order?

In my understanding the reason behind this new historical age is the change in theproductive forces that support the production and distribution of goods and services in thecontemporary world. The scientific and technological revolution that was consolidated in the1940's changed the relation between the productive base of society and its super-structuralelements(6). The hegemony of science over technology and of technology over production gavea hegemonic role to knowledge, education, formation and development of human resources inrelation to other aspects of productive forces. Consequently society depends more and more onthe existence of a large economic surplus created by automation and technological changes todevelop these new conditions of production. At the same time, the emergence of a systematicand institutional process of research and development (as a consequence of the scientific andtechnological revolution) change the role of innovation in the accumulation and reproduction ofcapital. In this new historical pattern of production, the innovation, the technological change,and the mutation of the material base of society are more and more permanent elements of theaccumulation and reproduction of capital.

Until now culture, taboos, and religion sought to educate human being to restrictedconsumption and to reproduce what humankind has accumulated. The industrial revolutionstarted to put technological and social change as an important objective of daily life. Todayeducation, morality and ideology need to prepare the individual to accept and promote thesubstitution of accumulated old means of production and obsolete knowledge by newtechnologies, new knowledges, new rules, new morality, new ideological context, newesthetical patterns, etc. Man must be prepared for fundamental changes during each decade ofhis life. Humankind can not reproduce itself as the same one but as a new economic, social,

political and cultural structure adapted to these constant qualitative changes. These changeslead humanity to a new stage of development as part of a world system in constant change(7).

Each new stage of development requires more subjective capacity to manage humannature, human biology, human psychology, human interrelations and human relations with thehuman and non-human environment. These stages are related with cyclical movements of theworld economy that are profoundly related with world system and the planetarian environment.

We can even admit that the world economy evolve under the pattern of cyclical waves of riseand fall and that each new long economic cycle is based on a new technological paradigm (8)

and that the new technological paradigm in emergence will suppose very radical changes as aGRUPODE ESTUDOSSOBRE ECONOMIA MUNDIAL, INTEGRAO REGIONAL & MERCADODE TRABALHO 4


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consequence of the global impact of scientific and technological revolution. Maybe we areparticipating in a profound historical mutation.

At present, we are in the end of a depressive phase of a long wave of 50 yearsidentified by Kondratiev. This b phase started in 1967 when the world economy began todiminish its rate of growth, the dollar starts to be detached from gold (which was definitely

established in 1971) and gives origin to the fluctuation of world currencies. The unitariancapitalist world created by Bretton Woods around the United States currency, commerce andinvestment, was definitely broken. The united ideological front around the United States thatgave origin to the cold war and entered crisis. And only now, after 20 years, it is finishingunder the Soviet initiative of perestroika, glassnost and the new mentality.

At this new period, the mass productive process, that founded the economic growthfrom the 1920's to 1980s, based on the "scientific administration" or taylorism or fordism wasalso surpassed. This "scientific" management was in fact a systemic appropriation of workers'activity and of their knowledge of productive processes by capital or the "scientific" observers

payed by it. It was used to establish a regularization of production in the highest levels ofproductivity. It was the time of the production line and other forms of authoritarian submission

of labour to the machine or more concretely to the system of decision of the capital (9).

The new technological pattern that is emerging from the scientific and technologicalrevolution is completely different. It is based on the substitution of labour by flexible and

programmed robots and by systems of production commanded by computer through verysophisticated programs. If in the former period we had a process of automatization thatsubstitutes human labour by machines, in this new period we are moving to the automation

process that eliminate human direct labour and substituted human management and control ofproduction by electronic and informatic systems of information and decision (10).

At the same time that automation made a serious advancement in the 1980's - with theapplication of robots to production - we had changes in the relative position of economicsectors. The central articulator of industrial economy was steel and metal industry that was thefundamental base of industrial development. In the last decades they were replaced by newmaterials from the most different origins. Construction, textile, transportation andcommunication changed (and are still in the process of changing) radically the materials onwhich they were based. Radical innovations change completely the role of these basicindustries. The new materials are a part of a new set of technologies that are already in the

process of industrial integration or that are still emergent technologies (11). Both come fromconstant advances in basic and applied sciences, particularly in bio-technology, nuclear

physics, physico-chemical of new materials, space, laser, optics, informatics (with specialemphasis on artificial intelligence) and other fields in the process of development. Among thosefields it is important to take in consideration the ecological or environmental industries that aretransforming in industrial demand the appeals to ecological equilibrium and defense ofenvironment on a world scale(12). This interdependence among production, new technologies,research and development and applied and basic sciences is creating a new economic realitythat obliged the economic and social actors like national, multi-national and global enterprisesand particularly the national states or alliances of national states to take new radical decisions,in the place of the private economic actors of liberal economy. The scale of production is alsochanging in a very fast way, to gigantic dimensions that are measured in terms of mega-markets or even world markets. The implantation of some new revolutionary technologies onlycan be made on a world scale to be economically viable. The case of high definition television(HDT) is an important example. Japan has already had the technology to install it since 1985

but was obliged to wait for a unique world system of production and regulation of this newrevolutionary technology. The United States accepts it but Europe is trying to create its own

HDTV. Even when Japan decided to start its own production in 1991, it depended on:a) international regulation of the utilization of the system;



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b) space technology to send satellites with new transmissions in HDTV.

We can see a similar situation in a traditional sector like the automobile industry thatis surviving with local plants in the US and Europe only based on a strong protectionismagainst Japanese technological superiority, based on the adoption of new materials, and morefavourable scales of production because of its highest concentrationm combined with flexiblesubcontracting integration. The same problem is passing in an advanced sector like electronicsand in the information industry where all enterprises of the sector are obliged to integrated itscomputers and programs in compatible world logical systems or softwares (13). We can findsimilar cases in all sectors of the productive process because these new changes in the

productive forces affect all of them by the implant of a new technological paradigm or pattern.

In this new pattern we have two very fundamental aspects:

a) the dependency of new technologies on research and development is beingcompleted by the dependency of R&D on applied and basic science. Thisobliged the State to finance more and more science and technology, to defineindustrial policy and to articulate itself with an enterprise system that is

becoming more and more dependent on scientific and technological researchand development. The dependence of technological changes on basic sciencesis obliging big firms to develop their own centres of basic research (14).

b) new scales of production exacerbated the international fight for domination ofmarkets. This conduced to the management of complex enterprises to combineglobal geographical perspective and global sectorial approach withspecialisation. These new planetarian scales of production obliged firms todevelop the flexibility of industrial structures. They need to be capable, in avery short period, to substitute old technologies, or to transfer them tosubcontractors or inter-related sub-economic national powers (the case ofJapan with Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and in part Hong Kong and otheremergent new industrial countries in Asia). It created the need for a newinternational division of labour highly dynamic to permit the leaders to bealways concentrated in the key technologies (15).

In this new world, regional integration represents a possible solution to these needs,even though temporary. It is important to emphasise the fact that regionalization createsstronger confrontations between coalitions of economic and political forces, creating some

powers and disintegrating some others, producing anarchies and irrationalities at aninternational level. In consequence, we can perceive a highest degree of unequal and combineddevelopment among developed, underdeveloped and developing nations, among local,multinational, and global enterprises, among national states, local or regional government,

among ethnic and nationalistic groups, etc(16)

.This new technological pattern is related also with a new internal division of labour

that affects several levels of relations between countries, regions or relations between firmsrelations. It creates new rates of labour exploitation, changes the work day, modifiedsubstantially the process of working, the role of labour in production and its responsibility andqualification. It also changes the structure of employment the rate of unemployment and under-employment and informal labour. All these changes destabilised old social movements, socialcategories and groups and stimulate an important intervention of old and new socialmovements in the definition of new social and moral behaviour, political parties and strategiesand social policies of the state (17).

It is important to take into consideration that this new technological pattern - that willimpulse a new period of growth and capital accumulation on a world scale (since 1994



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presumably), according with the Kondratiev cycle - will be based in an intensive automation ofproduction that is already producing and will produce even more drastic diminishing of thequantity of labour socially necessary to produce the same products we have today. This isaffecting and will affect the costs of industrial products but also employment and the length ofthe working day(18).

Consequently we will have two big problems in the next decades:

a) The diminishing of the working force and specifically the manual labourdemand will produce unemployment in these sectors and this will be adramatic problem, even in the period of growth. The extension of this problemwill depend on the diminishing of working day (at present all labour unionsare fighting for a labour week of 36 hours) and of the extension of the time ofeducation of the population and the growing of the time for the formation ofhuman resources (extension of basic, graduate and post graduate studies,continuous education, technical formation, re-training of labour force for newfunctions, etc.). All these are related with the position of working movement inthe new society based on scientific and technological revolution, and the

influence of socialist ideology of the old working movement in the new labourforce that is also a wage force but living in very different social condition and

participating in a new process of production (new discipline, timing, externalconstraint, etc.) and participating in a new pattern of consumption(19).

b) The demographic changes in process in developed countries will lead the agedsector of the population to prevail demographically at the same time that indeveloping and underdeveloped countries young populations will be stronglymajoritarian for a large period (20). As job opportunities increase in developedcountries, these populations will press hard a strong tendency towardsemigration or will develop rebellious and radical behaviour in their owncountries. Urban and rural marginality is creating a new social category withits own culture and behaviour. Fundamentalist religious radicalism,nationalism or tribalism are part of this context(21).

The emergence of new technologies will fortify also the oligopolistic competition at aninternational level. Lowest prices of production are diminishing the barriers of entry in severalindustries and new enterprises - more specialized and flexible - can intensify theircompetitiveness on a world scale. These new enterprises are fighting and will fight also toliberate the state apparatus from the control of old monopolistic group and can utilize theliberal ideology in favour of their entrance in the protected sectors(22).

It is evident that, in this situation, the big investors that created large and heavy

economic empires are in a bad competitive position. Installed capacity can be a negativeweight. Big firms of the past are in an unfavourable position if they can not be liberated oftheir old assets. We need in consequence a period of devaluation of speculative and obsoleteassets. This will permit us to devaluate the fixed capital necessary to new investments andconsequently, this will favour a new wave of economic growth based on new technologies.False liquidity based on easy credit, financial, land and estate speculations are in decline since1989 and they need to be more strongly devaluated (23). The present recession (1989-91-92)will define who will be sufficiently determined to purges their economic backwardness andcreate the basis for a new phase of investment that will incorporate actively the technologies ofthe new paradigm.

We can expect for the middle of the 1990's a recuperation of the world economy (24).

According to our belief, this will be the beginning of a new phase of growth and consequentlythe question of the hegemonic power that can integrate this new phase of expansion of theworld system will be put. This hegemonic power will function like the core of capitalGRUPODE ESTUDOSSOBRE ECONOMIA MUNDIAL, INTEGRAO REGIONAL & MERCADODE TRABALHO 7


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accumulation on a world scale. Around this core will be displayed the dependent or"peripheral" and "semi-peripheral" economies (accepting the Wallerstein concepts that followsthe Prebish perception of world economy) (25).

The periods of decline in the long waves (the phases b) are marked by a disintegrationof the world economy and a fight for hegemony. The periods of growing (the phases a) are

characterized by the establishment of a centre or core of world economy that is in generalrelated with political and military hegemony.

2. Looking for a New Hegemonic Center and the "New World Order"

Geopolitics pretended to be a "science" of distribution of power on a world scale. Thisdiscipline tried to study the distribution of natural resources, economic, political and military

power in the international arena to establish the strategic objectives of each nation. It wasconceived as a foundation to military and political national state strategy. Its identification

with Germany related it to Nazism and put it in a second rank of academic and scientificthought. However it continues to be studied in the military academies and in the head-quartersof all national armies (26).

Today we need to be very cautious about the principles that orient geo-politicalanalysis. We saw in the former chapter the main economic factors that can influencedistribution of power on a world scale in the next twenty or thirty years. The world system thatwas the common base for the capitalist economy in the last five centuries is going through aradical change. The scientific and technological revolution that emerged during the SecondWorld War is assuring the basis for a world accumulation of capital and a self reproduction ofthe world economy. The multinational, transnational or global enterprises are trying tosubstitute in part the national states as the foundation of the world economy. But they still

depend on the economic power of the centralized capital - these collective capitalists that arethe national states. States provide subsidium, financial and cultural background to theexpansion ofMNE. At the same time, states cooperate among themselves and create regionaland international institutions to manage and organize this new phase of the world economy.

These national states still have their geopolitical strategies but they need to submitthem to the objective of economic, military and political alliances (inter-state alliance) thatorganize international life in the present moment. The end of the Second World War created aworld economic system around the hegemony of the United States that represented at thatmoment about half of the world economy and had the military leadership of the world with theatomic bomb, only shared with Britain (27).

In this situation the institutional framework of the world system was completely basedon the US hegemony: World Bank, International Monetary Fund, General Agreement on Tariffand Trade (GATT), United Nations. These institutions were completed by the cold warinstitutions like the Marshall Plan, Point Fourth, NATO and others that tried to stabilize or"contain" (28) the military and ideological influence of the Soviet Union (that was, in reality,militarily and economically destroyed even when its morale was extremely high because of themilitary victory against Fascism). The Soviet Union was obliged to accept the rules of theYalta Conference. It was a victory to her to occupy the role of marginal power in this worldsystem under North American hegemony. I am completely in agreement with Wallenstein andother authors that do not accept the idea that mere existed a bipolar world. The Soviet Unionnever had the economic, political or military power to be an alternative pole (or core) to theUnited States (29). After the Second World War there existed only one world power: the United

States. After her, Britain and the Soviet Union stay as important military power but verydistant from the American standards.



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A. The shared hegemony of the United States

But the hegemony of the United States could not be eternal. The recuperation of

European (mainly German) and Japanese economies, the reconstruction and growing of theSoviet economy (today so misrepresented), the Indian and Chinese revolutions and their Asianeffects generated new centres of capital accumulation, of scientific and technologicaldevelopment, and of economic expansion. The anti-colonial revolutions with the emergence ofthe Third World States and their coordination after the Bamdung Conference and the No-Alignment Movement permitted the appropriation of their fundamental natural resources bythese countries. The nationalization of oil in Mexico, in the end of the 30's, and of Brazil in the50's continued in the Middle East and Venezuela in the 70's and 80's. These nationalizationscompleted a process initiated during the 30's and 40's. Several other basic resources wereconverted to state property and explored by state enterprises diminishing the area of action of

private capital, as with the case of copper in Chile in 1972.

In this new world, the United States can not exert the same hegemonic power anylonger. Their relative economic position decayed very strongly from 1945 to 1967 and fromthe end of the Vietnam War to the present. Even in the Reagan period and in the recent GulfWar, when the United States pretend to have important military and economic victories, thiscountry is experiencing an irreversible loss of economic and military power at internationallevel(30).

Historically, hegemony was a condition for the positive functioning of the Worldsystem during the periods of uprise. But one of the characteristics of the negative or recessive

phase b of Kondratiev's long waves was exactly a dissolution of a clear hegemony in the worldsystem and a consequent loss of a central source of capital accumulation on a world scale. Butthe systemic functioning is in a difficult situation when we have a non-clear hegemony in the

phases a, characterised by economic rising or ascent. In this sense, the present period can beassimilated to the 1890-1914 period when the world economy had a new important expansionat the same time that Great Britain was losing her power and Germany, Japan, Italy, Russiaand specially the United States were arriving to the world system as competitive central

powers or core economies.

At the present moment, when the post Second World War institutional system basedon US hegemony (and its subsystem that was the Cold War) is completely dismantled, we arein a transitional period in which a new system of Alliances will be built. This system - as I willtry to show - can not be other that a system where the United States will have a sharedhegemony with the other possible central powers. It means: integrated Europe, under Germanleadership, Japan Asia-Pacific system and Soviet Union that are very wrongly beingmarginalized from the core of world system by some ideological attitudes.

This "shared hegemony" will try to assimilate in a second rank the New IndustrialEconomies (NIEs) from Asia (through Japanese leadership) and will try to open a way to

NIEs countries like Mexico and Brazil and also the Middle East powers to participate in asubordinate and regional position in this new system of decision. Countries like China andIndia will have also to find their geopolitical space in this new phase of the world system, asregional and international powers.

The United States is still the biggest relative world power. But they can not stop theirdecine. The new phase of development of productive forces on a world scale needs the highestlevel of market competitiveness (31), state intervention (32), and economic concentration (33) thatcannot be exclusive of a country or region. From the other side, the United States is beingdominated by a new militarist and technocratic bourgeoisie that was created and grew underthe Pentagon's purchase power and its subsidies to research and development. Even against a



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clear opposition of the old American oligarchy and a large sector of public opinion, theycontinue to obtain a very high military budget that maintains and even expands the fiscaldeficit in the country. The fiscal deficit creates at the same time a financial bourgeoisie thatdepends on this irrational fiscal policy (34). The deficit creates new demands internally andexternally. This demand is the source for the tremendous growth of export of Japan, Germanyand the new industrial countries during the 80's. But it also origins the American commercial

deficit and the American external debt that appeared in the 1980's with tremendous force andenergy.

This economic model created economic growth in the world economy from 1983 to1989 (35) and permitted the United States to advance in military technology that was used inthe Gulf War as a demonstration of military and technological power.

But this model is not sustainable because it is based on a non-manageable fiscal andforeign debt of the United States. Both tend to produce a strong devaluation of the dollar thatwill transform the United States into a non-hegemonic power. At the moment, we are in the

process of creation of a new world monetary system with three basic currencies (dollar,german mark and yen) (36). Until now, Japan and Germany have been sustaining the dollar in

the world market because (among other reasons) they have enormous assets in dollars. Butthey will not be capable of doing it indefinitely. The dollar will decline to permit NorthAmerica to increase its export and diminish its trade deficit to a more "acceptable" level(around 50 to 70 billion dolars per year). At this moment, North America will confront the factof its transformation to a regional power. But this situation can prolong to about 15 or 20years the moment of truth when it will be clear that the US will not have the means to maintainthe deficit. This intermediary period will coincide more or less with a new Kondratiev Wave ofinvestment between 1994 and 2020.

During this period United States will be obliged to reinforce her regional power(37).US will need to promote not only the North American common market with Canada andMexico but also to promote regional integration at a Latin American level. Not in the terms of

the present modest "Initiative of America" but the United States will need to communicate andnegotiate with the Latin American countries and accept in part their integration (38).

During these years of shared hegemony, the United States will see - impotent - theemergence of new world powers and alliances. In this period, the world will look for a newhegemony/, or we can expect a mutation in the world system and the appearance of theconditions for a planetarian civilization based on cultural pluralism and economic and politicalconcert of nations. Before that mutation will be possible, I believe that we will have a period ofinstability because of the fight for world hegemony or for relative power in a shared hegemonywith the United States.

It is very possible also that the US will try to reinforce their relations with the Pacific

Basin. But this policy will have a strong co-participation of Japan and can not assure the USof recuperation of her hegemonic power in this large region. On the contrary, retreat to thePacific Area, as a consequence of losing power in the North Atlantic area will reinforce the

power of negotiation of Japan that, at this moment, will be in a much more globally strategicposition.

B. Japan: from the exclusive Pacific power to the expansion in the Asian continent

The most commented on alternative to the US hegemony is at present Japan'seconomic success. But Japan has very decisive limits to becoming a world hegemonic powereven with its good economic performance. The recent history of Japan is very much determined

by its failure to build an empire and to conduct a war mainly with the United States in thePacific. This failure is also tragically related with the first and unique case of detonation of an



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atomic weapon. Hatred and frustration are part of this very recent history. And it has produceda strong anti-militarist feeling in a large part of the Japanese people. But the humiliation of thedefeat to such a perseverant nation was also a stimulus to rebuild the Japanese power in a new

base (39). And even when the United States supported the progressive forces of Japan againstthe old oligarchy that made the war (dismantling the keiretzus, doing agrarian reform,suppressing military investments) the United States was also responsible for the atomic

bombing of the Japanese people. In this so complex and tragic context we can understand howcontradictory can be Japanese behaviour and their deep feelings as people, culture andcivilization.

This is the first limit to the Japanese world hegemony. Japanese dominant classes didnot develope a planetarian vision of geopolitics and strategy and was restricted toward theirregional drama (40). And also Japanese culture has not conceptual tradition of world scalevisions and models. This is also related with its territorial limit and isolation that could only becompensated by imperial conquest (already rejected as an alternative) or a policy of regionaldevelopment capable of putting Japan in the leadership of a strong and developed South Asiaand Pacific region.

Japan's dependency on the US after the Second World was not only economic but alsomilitary and strategic. This obliged Japan to adopt the conception of a Global Alliance with theUS that means a complete abandonment of any global autonomous strategy.

At the same time, Japan is profoundly afraid of the hatred that its colonial powergenerated. Anti-Japanese feelings are very strong especially in Korea but also in other regionsof its old empire. Japan justified its empire as an anti-west alternative and this kind ofideological propaganda can not be used at the present time, even when anti-west feelings havestrong foundations (41).

At the same time, the Pacific Basin approach was based on the American market and astrong connexion with the West coast of the United States. Japan invested too much in thismarket to dissociate from it (42).

But we also need to think from the other side: that the global situation is changingevery day.

First of all the decadence of the United States and the artificial base of their marketstregnth, supported by fiscal debt, is obliging Japan to rethink its global alliance (43). Japaneseinvestment in the US is more and more oriented toward safest assets, mainly estate investment,direct investment and new ventures with enterprises of strategic importance. It is not a timeany more to put all eggs in the American economic basket, particularly in the bounds based onthe American debt.

At the same time American and European pressure against the expansion of Japanesecapital and its competitiveness obliged Japan to look for new markets and fields of investment.As well as obliging Japan to think by itself and rebuild its world strategy, this time more globaland self-sustained.

This obliged Japan to remake its relationships with the regions of its old empire on anew basis. But it means re-finding an old Asian vocation of Japan.

China was part of this vocation and it is open now to a very strong complementaritywith Japanese economy, culture and politics. The amount of Japanese investment in China issurpassing that of all Western countries and everything makes us think that it will be more andmore historical tendency.



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South Korea was integrated in Japanese industrial policy and strategy. Today SouthKorea is trying to escape from its Pacific Basin limits in reaction to the decay of the NorthAmerican market. It is looking for new zones of investment and Siberia is certainly the mostimportant region to create a whole new economy that is already emerging in this Asianregion (44). And Korea has the absolute support of Japanese capital for this new strategicdirection. At the moment Japanese strategists feel as a great danger for their relations with the

United States to force a direct economic intervention in so important a region. At the momentthe unification of South and North Korea is absolutely necessary. And it will means theappearance of a new economic power in the Asian region. If Japan wants to have strongneighbours to protect it from external pressures, this will be a good way.

The integration of the Japanese economy and the regional production of raw materialsand agrarian products was enriched by the MITIs policy of a regional division of labour. This

policy is based on sub-contractist industries producing for Japanese, American or othermarkets. It supposes also a certain transference of technology (semi-obsolete, less strategic or

polluted technology) to concentrate the specializsation of Japanese industry in high and mostadvanced technology. This system is being imitated by South Korea, Singapore and Taiwanthat are passing also technologies to a third zone of investment in the ASIAN countries.

At the same time, the countries that forme the old Indochina are looking for Japanesehelp for their economic development. Vietnam, Laos and mainly Cambodia can be highlycomplementary to the Japanese economy. The United States is getting out of this conflictiveregion and even passed the management of the complicated Cambodian situation to theJapanese government.

In summary, we see a tendency of Japan to assume growing responsibilities in theAsian continent with a very important perspective at long term: to recreate a powerful Asianeconomy very much around heras a centre of accumulation of capital, a monetary frameworkand a technological power(45).

At the same time, Japan is increasing its influence in Latin America where it is beingperceived as a source of direct investment in place of to North American and European capitalthat abandoned the region in favour of East Europe or as a result of the restriction imposed bythe loss of economic power as in the case of the United States that was transformed in animporter of capital and a debtor country. In some cases, like Mexico, Japanese capital has anopen space of investment to penetrate the United States markets through North Americanintegration. Brazil is also very interested in Japanese capital that has a very favourable

perception in the region. Peruvian president Fujimore was elected using his Japanese ethnicorigin to assure him as a possible negotiator for Japanese investment in the country.

But Japan does not have a clear policy with regard to Latin America. It is afraid to

confront North American interests in the region. Japan has also important gaps in its globalvision of the world. It does not have a policy towards the Middle East, wich it considers onlyas a source of oil. The same happens to Africa, India or Pakistan, where Japan has no interestat all. In Europe, Japan is shifting from a wrong alliance with Britain towards a more incisiveapproaching with Germany (46). Its vision of East Europe and the the Soviet Union is veryvague and indefinite. It is using a minor issue of two islands lost during the Second World Waras a principle of foreign policy in relation to a very large and key country, the Soviet Union...

After all, the possibility of an agreement with the Soviet Union for a directexploitation of Siberia and the possibility of a large maritime and spacial collaboration withthe Soviet Union will permit Japan to be much more close to a world power than now.Anyway, the next two decades will be a period of strong reorientation of Japanese international

policy and will give place to its appearance in the international arena as a growing independentgeopolitical force. As representative of Asian culture and civilization, an independent Japan



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will reverse very much the directions of the winds. They will come more and more from theOrient, but they will not be hegemonic yet.

C. European Integration, East Europe and the Role of The United Germany

Willy Brandt, defending Berlin as capital of the unified Germany, made a verysurprising historical comparison. For him, to accept Bonn as the capital of the unifiedGermany would be the same as if the French accepted Vichy as capital of liberated France (47).This historical comparison shows how much the Second World War injuries are still alive.And how much Germany feels herself having submitted to and been occupied by externalforces all these years of good relations with an apparently untouchable Atlantism. The Englishgeopolitician H. Mackonder views, in the beginning of the 20th century, the world "pivot" asthe continental mass dominated by Eurasia, or the "heartland", that constituted at that time a

potential menace to the maritime power of Great Britain, that passed to the United States afterthe Second World War. the United States geopoliticians continued this perception of an unifiedEurasian heartland as opposed to the American hegemony. The opposition between Atlantismand European integration is in part an expression of this perception. The incorporation of theSoviet Union in a common policy of integration with Germany is a very dangerous anddefinitive event to the American strategy as a hegemonic force in the world.

United Europe is essentially a German geopolitical conquest. This policy was capableof neutralizing the Atlantism of Mitterand's first presidency during the begining of the 80's.The United States played a completely and radically different role in the 80's. In this period, aunified policy between US and Great Britain (the Reagan-Thatcher Alliance) was a drasticoffensive of conservative forces to support an anti-United European conception of theAtlantism. As a reaction to this conception we had the final adhesion of France to Europeism,in the end of 80's. A decadent Britain was isolated at the side of a decadent the UnitedStates(48).

The East European "revolution" was in great part a consequence of this newgeopolitical situation. Confronting the concrete possibility of a Unified Europe with Germanhegemony on one side, and a rising Japan on the other side, the Soviet Union was induced toabandon an unconfortable geopolitical position based on an artificial confrontation with theUnited States. The Soviet Union started to articulate new world politics outside the frameworkof the cold war and gave valorous steps in these direction with the support of II International(Social-democracies), American liberals and even conservatives forces (trilateral, for example)that are against the strategy of high military technological expenditures of the Pentagon(particularly the Star War or IDS), the Pope and other religious forces including ChristianDemocracy, the Non-Alyned Movement, social movements for peace and defense ofenvironment, and many other political and cultural forces.

This very strong left-center and even conservative alliance of forces led the Russiandiplomacy to an active leadership in the conception and execution of world policy, through"perestroika", "glasnost", and the "new mentality" initiated by Michael Gorbachev. But thisnew political phase was progressively determined by the Russian perception of the SovietUnion and of world geopolitics. According to the Russian people, the the Soviet Union andEast Europe were a negative weight to their nation (Russia). Contrary to other imperialist

powers that received economic surplus from outside by exploiting their empires, Russia wasobliged to transfer its economic surplus (particularly agrarian surplus but also raw materials,

particularly oil) to the backward regions of the Soviet Union and to the East Europe and otherallies. At the same time, Russia was obliged to buy bad industrial products from these regionsas a consequence of its isolation from the world economy and according to egalitarian andsocialist division of labour. All that impedes Russia to participate in the modern conspicuousconsumption.



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This perception determined a growing Russian consensus against Soviet domination ofEast Europe and against the federative union of Soviet republics. These ideas influenced moreand more the Russian "intelligentsia", Russian populist nationalism, and religious ideology(that is still very strong in this country) and culminated by influencing the reformist sector ofthe Communist Party and the key group from the KGB that organized in great part thisreformist movement. From the original group of Perestroika, Boris Yeltsin first and several

other (even an anti-Russian like Schevarnatze), accepted these basic ideas.

If we added to that the juncture of a Gorbachev surrounded by non-reformist forcesinternally and very conservative apparatinicks in East Europe we can understand the need ofGorbachev with the reformist group of the Communist Party and the KGB apparatus to forcethe elimination of old communist bureaucracies from power in East Europe. This policyconduced to the juncture of 1989 when we had pressure from above (Gorbachev and reformistsin the Soviet Union) to put down very weak communist governments created by Soviet troopsof occupation in each East European country, in alliance with very weak local politicalsocialists or populists (or even conservatives forces, like the case of Poland).

Where a mature opposition existed like in Poland and Hungary, these changes were

more or less managed. Where they did not exist, the changes were pushed in any way. Popularreaction was much more radical than was expected originally and a blend of anti-Sovietnationalism, anti-communism and anti-bureaucratic privileges feelings conflued to an anti-socialist and pro-liberal popular movement. These tendencies were already very superficial andideologically confusing. They will be temperated by social democrats and socialist forces, thathistorically opposed, much more radically than conservatives and rightist liberals, thestalinism, the autocracy and the East Europe occupation.

But the important factor in this new context is the opening of East Europe toreincorporate their economy in West Europe where they historically belong. But this should bedone without losing the important expansion to the East made during the integration with theSoviet Union and COMECON (that was dismantled now but that will need to be rebuilt in the

near future).

To Germany (49) this situation is very favourable. It opens a large market in EastEurope and a bigger one to the Soviet Union to be conquered by Germany, using EastEuropean investment to penetrate internally in the Soviet Union. Will this be the integration ofthe heartland: the Europe from the Mancha Canal to Wlativostok(50) is a much more vastEurope that De Gaulle conceived? Will it mean the consolidation of Euro-Asian hegemony andthe decline of maritime powers, mainly the United States?

The answer is: only in part. Today the globalization of technology - that we discussedin the first part of this article - is creating new geopolitical conditions that are based muchmore on education, training, research and development and advanced technology. But theUnion of German (and European) science and technology with Soviet science and advancedtechnology (mainly military and space), will create a new economic, social, political, militaryand cultural power that humanity never knew in the past. It is very difficult to predict theeffect of such a collaboration in the evolution of humanity. In any case this will destabilizecompletely the hegemony of the United States.

Even during a period of transition, the collaboration of the United States will be askedand the local European powers (including the Soviet Union) will accept a secondary position ina world coalition of forces hegemonized by the United States (shared hegemony), at the end ofa new period of economic growth and of concretization of these virtual tendencies, thishegemony will be completely jeopardized and only a new mentality, a planetarian ideology andaction, will permit to manage the enormous disequilibrium that will be created in the period.



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D. Soviet Union: a dead dog?

We live in a moment where the Soviet Union is being considered an economic andpolitical "disaster", almost finished as an economic regime, political system and as a federationof nations. These easy conclusions are very superficial propaganda. The world press continueswith a "cultural cold war" that impedes a real knowledge of events, tendencies and globalsituations.

The Soviet Union is not a death dog. It is alive and very alive. And it will influencevery decisively the evolution of world economy and world system in the next years anddecades. What is dead (since 1954 but it is finally decisively dead) is Stalinism as a politicaldoctrine and as an ideological system. What is also dead (since 1967 when the United Statesstarted to lose its hegemony at world level) is the cold war. It means the capacity of theindustrial and military complex and North American rightist forces to command internationaldiplomacy. Stalinism is not the inventor of the cold war. On the contrary, Stalin was the Sovietleader more enlogized and supported by Western leaders (during the Second world War veryclearly and enthusiastically and during the "purges' of 1935 also, when the western presscovered and justified the Stalinist process of Moscow that "legally" assassinated theBolchevique leadership in the Soviet Union).

Stalin was transformed into a "monster" by the western press after the Second WorldWar, as part of the Cold War. And the Cold War was in part an external containment and in

part a "self" containment (according to Yalta's agreements) of the Soviet Army in Europe andAsia (that could not impede Chinese and Yugoslav and other revolutions).

But it was also an instrument of ideological consolidation of American influence andhegemony over the "western" christian world (including in the "West" and "christian" worldJapan and other Asian regions). But in part the "Cold War" was also a justification forAmerican militarism (and its Soviet counter-part that used Stalinism as an ideological support)that gave origin to what Einsenhower called the "Industrial Military Complex" and that grew

and imposed American policies until the failure of the Vietnam War. And this interest wasrestored to government during the Reagan and in part the Bush administrations.

This time the new military industrial complex was developed at a new level of post-industrial research and development military complex that showed its efficiency (and limits!) inthe Gulf War. The Reagan policy was based on the CIA thesis according to which the growingof military expenses will oblige the Soviet Union to make a military effort impossible for her.As a consequence, the Soviet Union will be confronted with economic shortage and politicalnational crisis that will destroy its military and economic power. The CIA thesis exposed atthe end of the 70's was correct, except in one point: the capacity of Soviet leadership - withsupport of a large number of forces on a world scale and specifically in the United States - totake the initiative of an anti-militarist world policy and to abdicate its military, political andeconomic expansion at the regional and world level. The Soviet Union could very quicklyescape the trap of Reagan's cold war revival and create a new international situation where itwill finally find a place in the world economy (as all its political and ideological leaders wantedfrom Lenin to Gorbachev passing by Bucharin, Stalin, Kruschev, Brechnev and theiropposition like Trostky, Beria or Andropov).

So, to understand what is happening in the Soviet Union we need to dissolve thisideological and propagandistic confusion that involves its historical experience. From the sideof the anti-socialist ideology there existed the tendency to identify socialism with the historical

problems of Soviet economy and policy. From the side of pro-socialists though existed theintent to identify the "treasons" that the practice of "real" socialism represents to "true"socialism. From the side of Stalinism existed the process to convert in a closed official

philosophical, economic and political doctrine the rationalization of this historical experience



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(producing one of the most monstrous ideological constructions ever built in all history - thatwas exactly Stalinism, also called very erroneously* as "Marxism-Leninism").

*The concept of "Leninism" was created by Stalin in his famous article "Principles ofLeninlsm" in 1926. Lenin will never identify himself with a scholastic exercise of politicalthought like this article and what follow it. Other followers of Lenin like Trotsky, Zinoviev,

Kamenev and Bukarin were eliminated by Stalin.

If we study the Soviet Union's experience outside this ideological - and scientificallyirrelevant - context we need to start by contesting several consensual untruths:

First, "The post-Second World War period was characterized by a bi-polarconfrontation between two super-powers: the United States and the Soviet Union". This is anabsolute untruth transformed in unquestionable truth. The Soviet Union was a backwardcountry, essentially peasant, in 1917 and still in the 1950's. At the end of the Second WorldWar, despite its military victory over Germany, it was a country destroyed by nazi invasion(20 million Soviet deaths, the cities and a large part of countryside were completely destroyed,terrible military expenses, etc), it had no atomic bomb (that it could obtain only in 1950 with

the help of industrial intelligence in the US and Britain) and was in consequence strategicallycompletely dominated by North American and British military power.

The Soviet Union only started to have an independent (not alternative) technology in1958 when she started space technology with the Sputnik. From 1960 to 1985, the SovietUnion had a fantastic technological, industrial, scientific, social and urban development thatfinished with all geopolitical and social basis of Stalinism. She established a militaryequilibrium with the United States (at a very high social cost, as the CIA forecast). Sheestablished an enormous scientific apparatus, limited by war investments that drew herscientific and technological energy, and by the need to compete in the very expensive activitiesof advanced science and technology (because of the COCOM boycott of transference of existtechnology to the Soviet Union, and because of the Cold War in general).

In this period the Soviet Union developed a majoritarian urban population with a veryparticular employment composition in relation to capitalist economies (a larger working classthan western countries, a larger scientific and technological, intellectual, entertainment andartistic population, a restricted business, commercial, financial population, a large

bureaucratic population not only in the state and in the enterprises, like in the West, but also inthe party, converted in a bureaucratic clone of the state).

All these changes converted the ideological building of Stalinism into an emptyphantom. Stalinism that started its development in the middle of the twenties was the ideologyof "socialism in one country" and, after the Second World War, of "Socialism in one area". Ittried to justify and defend the model of socialist primitive accumulation that was developed inthe Soviet Union as an intrinsical and exclusively and desirable model of socialism. Itsdifficulties resulted from backwardness and from external pressure and the consequent internalisolation and its necessarily authoritarian and even despotic form was transformed into positiveand necessary aspects of socialism.

When these geopolitical conditions were surpassed by industrial and scientificdevelopment and military and political international equilibrium, the stalinist doctrine and its

political survival were transformed into a disgusting and oppressive historical dinosaur. Itmeans that the Soviet Union is developing now a new socio-economic and political system thatwill be an adjustment between her historical experience and her ideological framework (afusion between religious absolutism and enlightened modernization under the form of a"marxist" economic, political, social and intellectual thought).



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If we try to understand the present Soviet situation as a consequence of the failure ofan economic system as the Cold War press is doing (with tremendous intellectual effects) wecan not understand anything about what is happening in the world now.

Second, "the 1989 'revolution' in East Europe was an anti-Soviet movement thathappened without her will and against Soviet objectives". This is another completely wrong

idea. Anti-Sovietism and anti-Russian feelings were not something new in this region. Whatwas absolutely new in 1989 was the determination and political will and action of the SovietUnion leadership (through the party, the government but mainly by KGB action) to annihilatethe bureaucratic establishment (created, nourished and supported by Soviet occupation forces)in these countries under the name of Communist Parties. The social forces that pressed in thisdirection in the Soviet Union were very strong and clearly majoritarian after the Yeltsinelection to deputy by Moscow. What was their argument?

To a large part of Russians (mainly European Russians) the Soviet Union,COMECON and proletarian internationalism were a very unfavourable political context toRussia. The peasants from Russia were obliged to pay for the primitive accumulation to thedevelopment and industrialization of backward regions of the Soviet Union. After the SecondWorld War the price of re-building East Europe was also paid by Russian industry obliged to

buy bad technological products from these regions in a name of the socialist division of labour.Russia had not the imperialist surplus that enriched Britain and West Europe and on thecontrary was obliged to pay for the development of backward regions of the Soviet Union, EastEurope, Cuba, Vietnam and recently Africa and Afghanistan. These expenses and the militaryexpenses to defend the country from world capitalist economic blockage and militaryencirlement produced a framework of poverty and retard that European Russians don't want to

pay for anymore. Catholic Orthodoxy, old Russian monarchical revival, European proximityand particularly the possibility to join European unity, all that create an ideological frameworkto the idea of "be free of East Europe". No more direct exchanges! Payment in hard currencies!

No more subsidized oil! No more obliged importation of East Europe products but possibilityto buy from West Europe, the United States and Japan or anywhere. Free trade! Why not?

These questions go deeper and deeper. And surrpass these limits. Why not liberaldemocratic and parliamentary regimes that function so well (?) in Europe, the USA andJapan? Why not a party system similar to Europe to permit Russia to be full part of thiscontinent? Why not do everything to create the European House? It is evident that socialconquests of Russian Revolution must be maintained. How? Let's see! But the specificity ofRussia? Her orthodox religion? Her Asian cultural background? Her historical perspective?Peter The Great and Saint Petersburg or Petrograd or even Leningrad should be the vanguardof Russia again? But the rest?

It is evident that these Russophilous (pro-European) feelings exacerbated nationalconflicts in the Soviet Union. Russians started by supporting Baltic claims for independence.

Small countries, coming later and counterfeitly to the Soviet Union, they were the idealspearhead to redefine the the Soviet Union in a more favourable way to Russia. That is whywe had this strange situation: in 1990 a plebiscite about the destiny of the Soviet Union showsthe core of the "empire" voting for the dissolution of it and the "periphery" voting for itsconservation. This shows that may be the Russian rhetoric corresponds to reality. Soviet"Imperialism" was against the interest of the Centre (Russia). On the contrary, an idependentRussia in relation with "independent" national states of the Soviet Union maybe will permitRussia to exploit these countries.

So, East European independence and the end of the Soviet Union was not a product ofexternal opposition but very clearly internal - Russian - political will and cultural, economicand social movements. The same can be said about democratic evolution of Russia in the

direction of, on one side, a Christian Democratic or Populist Party, on the other side, a SocialDemocratic or Democratic Socialist Party, and may be a small Liberal pro-western party in



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the middle. But the rest of the Soviet Union, except the Baltics, Ukraine and Bielo Russia)will be much more populist- or socialist- oriented for the reasons we discussed. That is why itis still difficult to know what kind of common agreement will be made in the new the SovietUnion pact or common-wealth. It is necessary that all these forces measure their power toestablish a common political framework.

This new the Soviet Union will be not actively related to the Third World by thereasons we gave. Except for some important points:

The Soviet Union is an important producer of raw materials and minerals (mainly goldand oil) and she can not ignore the interest of Third World countries to have better prices ofthese basic products. The Soviet tentative approach to South Arabia on a common oil policywith OPEC was one of the reasons of North-American hard line against the Iraq invasion ofKuwait. It was necessary to establish a strong American presence in the area to contain thesekind of agreements.

Russia is also a buyer of agrarian products from the Third World, mainly Argentina,paying better prices than Europeans or Americans. This can create good relations with Third

World economic policies to obtain more diversified food exportation and better prices.

But no more than that. The Soviet Union will diminish her military aid and other formsof aid to underdeveloped countries. The case of Cuba will always be special, because of theIsland's special historical relation with the Soviet Union and because of her geopolitical

position at the side of the US. But these special relations will not be permanent.

The new the Soviet Union that will emerge from all these adjustments will put herstrongest effort and energy in her integration to Europe, particularly with Germany and in the

peace agreements with the United States. But this Russian approach will be corrected byreality: Asian frontiers of the Soviet Union will count strongly. Relations with India, China,Japan and the Siberian development will create a new geopolitical context for the Soviet Union

(and for Europe that see in these frontiers of the Soviet Union a new frontier for Europe). Thegeopolitical wiseness of Europeans will compensate for the lack of expertise of Russians.

But Europe (and Germany in particular) have their eyes also in the islamic part of theSoviet Union: a very important door to the Middle East. The Soviet Union is an oil power andan islamic country. These are two very important geopolitical advantages of the Soviet Unionthat russophiles can not perceive.

Military and space high technology, the biggest world scientific apparatus, newfrontier zones, basic raw materials, a very educated population in the final process ofmodernization, very strong cultural background, all that make the Soviet Union a basic card inthe future. The fact that she get a large part of these advantages in a very short historical

period and that a post capitalist social regime and philosophical point of view was theinspirator of a large part of these conquests is also a very positive factor, even when thepresent changes will try to ignore it because of a dialectical historical movement against herrecent past.

The Soviet Union can not substitute for the United States in this new historical phase(and she never could be a world hegemonic power, much more clearly in the past) and she iscompletely in agreement to accept the share hegemony of the United States on the World scale.But in the next 20-30 years this country will advance very strongly and will occupy (inAlliance with Europe and particularly with Germany) a very strong position in the making of anew world society. Maybe her non-private economic structure; her scientific and technologicalrelation with the space industry; her historical links with a dialectical philosophical thought

(even deformed by the Dialect - Materialist, Soviet version of marxism) and the humanistselements of the cultural formation of her people will be very strong factors in favour of a more



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planetarian approach of the world economy and system. These elements are already present inher new international policy based in the "new mentality" and in the philosophical conceptionof "perestroika" and "glasnost".

E. The Third World Still Exists?

The idea of a Third World was a product of the process of de-colonization after theSecond World War. The decadent Britain and European powers opened their colonial spacefor a new competitive economic domination under the hegemony of the United States. In othercountries, the national and democratic movements that grew after the First World War andduring the 1929's crisis produced new nation-states with ambitions of autonomy and produceda new historical subjectivity that looks to leninism as an alternative thought to liberalism andto the Soviet Union as an alternative power to imperialism. This produced a new ideologicalframework on a world scale. These new movements in Asia and Africa converged with theLatin American nationalistic, democratic and anti-imperialist culture.

Even if the countries from this region had their national independence and establishednational states in the beginning of XIX century, they could not assure their economicindependence and would have been subjugated under semi-colonial or dependent economiccondition first from Britain and after from the US that affected also their politicalindependence. Consequently, it was natural that Latin American countries or their national-democratic movements adhered or supported the Asian-African movements of independence.This common framework led to the creation of Tri-lateral organization as a militantrevolutionary instance and the non-Aligned Movement as a state organization. The Bandungconference of 1955 unified Afro-Asian leadership under the influence of Yugoslavian socialistexperience and Tito's conception of a no-cold war international arena.

The acceleration of de-colonization after Bandung stimulated the creation of severalorganizations and movements under the inspiration of a new world order. Opposition to coldwar and affirmation of the possibility of world peace was a main principle of this newideological framework. Conceptualization of international negative terms of interchange wasan objective Latin American contribution to this movement that led to the formation of theGroup of 77s and the creation of UNCTAD. The criticism of monopolic internationaldomination, of the formation of multinational enterprises in conflict with national-stateregulations, aggregated with the propositions of national autonomous development, stateautonomy and the international right of self-determination created the Third World ideology, or

perspective, or approach. Here is not the place to criticize this ideology and established herhistorical possibilities and limits (51). It is important to see also that this ideological frameworkwas so majoritarian and consensual at a certain moment that it was incorporated by completely

opposing points of view like liberalism and marxism. Both have in common that they are bynature internationalist and cosmopolitan or planetarian points of view. These theoreticalparadigms take cousciousness of the emptiness of their conception of humanity, totality,globality and universality and they were obliged to accept more and more a pluralisticconception of humanity, world, development, etc.

As a result of these historical movements and of the world presence of these neweconomic forces with a new subjectivity, the world strategy needs to change, needs to admit thehypothesis of the generalization of development, democracy, egalitarianism for all the world,all nations, all people, all ethnic group, all minorities and so on. In a certain moment, in 1968,all the subjectivities converged to a new global and radical ideological context at an economic,

political and ideological level. But this new general framework was too abstract to include theconcrete historical reality. The seventies were characterized by the emergence of a completelynew world: new social movements challenge the core of the world system and the economicand political and ideological principles in which it was based; the Soviet Union established a



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military equilibrium with the United States and surpassed Europe military power; the OPECsoil cartel established new prices and generated a big surplus of financial and monetaryresources (the petrodollars) and developed new military and economic powers in the MiddleEast and Persian Gulf; the US was militaryly and ideologically defeated in Vietnam; Europeand Japan gained strategic and political relative independence in the world system based on agrowing economic power; the new industrial countries emerged as important economic powers

but also as new sources of political will and strategic power; India and China developed theirown strategic conceptions as nuclear powers. All these events indicate a growing complexity ofthe world system and a growing of the political agents and the social actors at local andinternational levels. In this new reality the Third World countries gained a new position thatled to the North-South talks in the seventies.

To assure this new challenge was conceived the tri-lateral strategy (52), whose basicelements still survive, as coordination among the three basic regions of the North (US, Europeand Japan) to confront Third World challenge and its socialist support. The Soviet Union thatwas very hostile to a Third World Strategy in the fifties and sixties started to change her

position in the seventies promoting a common action with OPEC, the New InternationalWorld Order, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77, the UNCTAD, the UNESCOnew international information order, and so on. This new strategy changed completely theworld correlation of forces and obliged to adopt a new strategy in the core. The Iranianrevolution was the maximum expression of this situation that should be "corrected" by thecore. The US needed to be more active and aggressive and re-establish her hegemony.

This new strategy starts with the Reagan new economic and diplomatic policy that re-established economic growth and American leadership at the world level. But the cost of this

policy was a bigger and bigger fiscal deficit, a tremendous balance of payments deficit and anequally important international debt ofUS. The real weakness of the dollar was delayed andcovered by a policy of high interest rates, that attract capital to the US but could not impedethe decline of industrial production (de-industrialization) and of productivity in key sectors.The definitive economic weakness of America was the price for the maintenance of the dollarand of the consumer power ofUS. This power was based in the fiscal deficit that produced astrong financial decline at the end of the decade. But the fiscal deficit financed mainly themilitary technology and power (in check today because of its absence of economic sustenance).

This unrealistic economic policy was completed with a diplomatic policy thatdiminished the role of multi-lateral and international institutions to favour the US free action.At the same time an aggressive military strategy of low profile wars created an economic andmoral deterioration of revolutionary regimes but created at the same time a clandestineapparatus in the US.

This policy had important impacts on the Third World. First of all it accentuate the

division between successful industrial exporter countries, old primary product exporters,internal market industrialised and marginalized countries (53).

The successful industrial exporters are the countries that were positively affected bythe growing of North American market based on the fiscal deficit and the consequent worldrecovery from 1983 to 1988 (54). Among these countries we need to distinguish the "Asiantigers" that had not important external debts and could use the surplus of balance of paymentto reinforce their industrialization (like South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan) andthe Latin American successful industrial exporters like Mexico and Brazil that used theirsurplus of balance of payments to pay the services of external debt and to other transfers ofresources to the developed countries and entered in a process of economic weakness, socialdeterioration and general impoverishment (55).

Some traditional exporters like Argentina had also enormous commercial externalsurplus that was used to pay for the service of foreign debt and to finance foreign illegalGRUPODE ESTUDOSSOBRE ECONOMIA MUNDIAL, INTEGRAO REGIONAL & MERCADODE TRABALHO 20


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investment of Argentineans. As in this period remittance of profits from foreign enterpriseswas very high, without new investments in the region, the transfers of surplus to the developedcountries was much higher than in any other phase of the history of these countries (56).

It is evident that the situation of all traditional exporters was even worse with thedeterioration of terms of trade as a consequence of lower prices of primary products, at the

same time that all international surplus was immediately remitted abroad to pay a fictitiousservice of a fictitious debt. If we aggregate to this grave situation a strong logic of destructionof old self-sustained economies (mainly agrarian) completely ruined by the diminishing pricesof the food products and raw materials of developed countries (because of the subsidies,discussed in the Uruguay Round, and also because of the technological change in the sector),we can have the picture of a marginalization of the world market without local alternativeinvestments or economic activities.

Both logics affect negatively the industrialized Third World countries (like India, inpart Brazil, and others) that have important internal markets and growing populations and cannot specialize their industrial park only to export and to very efficient high technology andworld competitive production (like small and very export-oriented countries like Chile, Hong

Kong or Singapore can do). These countries can not diminish so drastically their productiveapparatus without marginalising larger and larger quantities of people. Even if theindustrialization continues, its capacity to generate employment (with its high technologically-oriented industrialization, only capable to resist in the international market) is very restricted.

Even the most successful cases of dependent export-industrialization based on thegrowing of the international market (theNIEs) will be confronted with the growing masses ofmarginal population (coming from the declining sectors, mainly the remnants of the selfconsumption economy, and from the high rates of birth in the poor abandoned populations)concentrated more and more in huge urban centres (Third World megalopolises).

Internal marginality, restricted productive apparatus and low opportunities of work for

middle class educated people will push these persons to emigrate to developed countries,accentuating world inequality and the gap between developed and underdeveloped countriesand north/south contradictions.

Several observers of the international scene think that this contradiction will dominatethe next years. It is not so clear because the "shared hegemony" will be affected also by stronginternal conflicts as we formerly saw. But it will be common to all these developed countries totry to contain Third World claims to share the wealth of developed countries and mainly theaspiration of important Third World Powers to participate in the definition of World policy.The price of successful containment of Third World development will be marginality and animportant world demographic disequilibrium that will jeopardize all intent to create a stableworld order. Abandoned and marginalized, Third World masses will go more and more to

support messianic and fundamentalist religious or ethnic or national movements.

Growing democracy in these countries will open the way for these masses to livebetween aspiration for modern consumption - stimulated by modern means of communication -and its concrete marginalization, impoverishment or even misery. A profound spiritualdeception will conform these urban no-employed masses (that will have also importantsegments among the unemployed population of developed countries) and a profound rejectionof modernity will be a way to protest against this situation and articulate some kind of actionwithout clear historical objectives.

Some sectors of these masses can be utilized also by the increasingly richer systems ofcontravention: mainly drug, contraband, clandestine sex activities, prostitution, robbery,

assaults and other crimesthat are growing in this contradictory world situation. This criminalworld is certainly a door of escape and even an improvement of the level of life for the most



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intelligent individuals in this extended marginal and semi-marginal world. The valorization ofthe "informal economy" is the result of a complete failure of capitalism to prevent these kindsof phenomena. The informal economy is nothing more that an organization of this growingmarginality in its different levels and stages. While this marginality is beeing reduced to miseryand hunger, there are no grave problems to the core of the system. But when they start to bearmed and organized by a rich criminality they will start to be a challenge.

And when we see as examples of economic recovery in the Third World the countriesthat are related to drug, and that open their economic system to the drug economy (like Bolivia,Colombia, Mexico, Thailand, etc.) we can understand the extension of the organized crimeintervention in the economy and politics and in the spiritual dimension of the Third World (57).

It is also clear that force and violence will be utilized to change this negative situation.Not only revolutionary movements (that will not disappear) but mainly state action will beused against theses conditions of world marginality. The Iraq fight to maintain an independentinternational strategy had a parallel in the intent of Argentinan and Chilean military regimes tohave their own military strategy. Ayatholah's Iran, or Maghreb reaction against French

participation in the Gulf War, or Pakistan intent to produce nuclear bombs, or Brazilian

military ideology of "Brazil as a Big Power", or India's aspiration to be a world militarypower, or China's determination to build a technologically independent power, and so on, areall expressions of discontent with a world order that excludes these nations from the power ofdecision.

The dangerous policies that try to ignore the Third World and that refuse to openinstitutional space for its participation in the world order will accentuate these kinds ofreactions and will not create space for equilibrium and peace.



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3. Is It Necessary and Possible to Manage such a Complex World?

The complexity of the present world, the presence of such important new actors andnot only a new international juncture, create the obsolescence of the Post Second World Warinstitutions. These institutions were based on a post-liberal world. After years of world

economic crisis, victory of fascism and its expansion at world level, growing of monopoly andstate capitalism, particularly during the war, emergency of a centrally planned socialisteconomy with the victory and expansion of the Soviet army in Europe, and the power of theanti-nazi resistances in several countries, it was very difficult to think in a world directed bythe invisible hands of the free market. The Post Second World War institutions were based onthe idea of intervention on a world scale and in all aspects of the economy and society. Theseinstitutions will be led by the triumphant powers of the Second World War and particularly bythe United States, whose economic, military and ideological hegemony was not contested. Thecold war was a superdetermination that imposed the exclusion of the Soviet Union and newsocialist powers from this new institutional world.

Both contexts are completely surpassed. The exclusion of defeated powers in theSecond World War from the centres of decision is not possible any-more because Germany,Japan and Italy are today powerful economie, political and diplomatic (and potentiallymilitary) powers. The exclusion of the Soviet Union and China, and Korea, and so on... is nowcompletely impossible because of the multiplication of this kind of socio-economic regime andtheir growing economic, technological, political and military power. For these reasons theworld war and cold war institutional framework are obsolete today. The imertial forces that ledto their preservation create new circumstantial or transitional institutions, but we need anacceptable and rational institutional framework to manage this new complex world system andrelations. At the present moment, with the creation of the "shared hegemony" system, theUnited States is interested in conserving all this institutional paraphernalia without a clearsystemic rationality, because she is the only nation that can participate in almost all worldinstitutions and consequently have a power of global influence. For this reason Americandiplomacy developed the thesis of the interdependence of the different instances of worlddiplomatic policy.

At the same time that the Post Second World War and the Cold War created theirdiplomatic institutions, the post colonial situation and its economic, political, ideological anddiplomatic consequences created also their own institutional framework and also influencedother institutions, changing their nature (this is essentially the case of the United Nations andUNESCO, but also several other global institutions).

If it is true that a large part of these new institutions do not include the the UnitedStates, because of her regional nature, it is also true that the United States is in general themain interlocutor or interface of these institutions. It is the interest of the United States to

preserve some of these organizations, and to finish with some others (mai

The Future of Geopolitical Aligments

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