'Empire' versus 'Cosmopolis': The clash of globalizations

Globalizations

Volumn 2, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 5-13

  Gills, Barry K ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84861167239     PISSN: 14747731     EISSN: 1474774X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14747730500164828     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. The relationship between globalization and global history and the questions it raises for knowledge construction and world politics are addressed in Barry K. Gills and William R. Thompson, 'Globalizations, Global Histories, and Globalities', in Barry K. Gills and William R. Thompson, Eds, Globalization and Global History, London: Routledge, 2005, forthcoming.
2. For example, the historian Niall Fergusson has written two volumes to illustrate the thesis of the positive impact of imperialism: Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World; and Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. The economist Deepak Lal has produced a work entitled In Praise of Empires, Palgrave, 2005, in which he addresses the relationship between globalization and empire and argues that the US could bring untold benefits to the entire world if only it would cast off the idea 'that empires are bad things per se' (Andrew Roberts in The Sunday Telegraph).
3. See for example the collection edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, entitled The New Imperial Challenge, Socialist Register 2004, Merlin Press, 2003, and particularly the article by David Harvey 'The 'New' Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession', pp. 63-87. See also David Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. For another example of this genre see the special issue of Monthly Review entitled 'Imperialism Now', July-August 2003, Monthly Review Press, and particularly the lead essay by one of the journal's editors, John Bellamy Foster, 'The New Age of Imperialism', pp. 1-14. See also: Gore Vidal, Imperial America, Temple Lodge Publishing, 2004; and Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, Penguin, 2004, in which he discusses 'imperial grand strategy' in the present context. For a review of Michael Mann's Incoherent Empire, New York and London: Verso, 2003 as well as the recent works on empire by Chalmers Johnson (2004), David Harvey (2003), and Emmanuel Todd (2003) see the article by Ganesh K. Trichur on 'the new imperial conjuncture' in this volume.
4. Such a sudden change of perception could come in one of several ways: for example a sudden shift in the value of the dollar following a significant change in the purchase of US treasury bonds, especially by East Asian countries; the onset of another major regional or global financial crisis or a serious global economic downturn; further acts of extreme violence perpetrated by terrorist cells within the territory of the United States itself; the outbreak of a major regional conflict between great powers; a sudden and catastrophic epidemic spreading around the world with millions of deaths; an environmental catastrophe deemed to be the direct result of climate change and global warming.
5. One of the most important studies in this regard is that by Emmanuel Todd, After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, London: Constable and Robinson, 2004. He is the author of the extremely prescient study La Chute finale, Paris: Seuil, 1976. Translated as The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere, New York: Karz, 1979, in which he predicted the decline and fall of the USSR. His new research on the US argues that far from being at its apogee of power, the US has already started its decline and therefore the urgent question for the world is how to manage this period to limit the damage. For an earlier and very interesting work on the coming hegemonic transition, understood in historical context, see Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly J. Silver, Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999, particularly the Conclusion and its analysis of the global financial expansion of the 1980s and 1990s and its anticipated consequences for world order.
6. For studies that point to the dangers of increased competition, rivalry and conflict in the international order see: Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001.
7. Robert Harvey, Global Disorder: How to Avoid a Fourth World War, London: Robinson, 2003. See also the paper by Heikki Patomaki in this volume.
8. We have heard much rhetoric about 'evil Empire'. But what if all Empire is more evil than good? The selfjustification for Empire rests on a tautology. It goes like this: our present world order is 'good' (for us); therefore anything that contributed to bringing it about is by definition good (i.e. Empire); since we are intrinsically good, and it was/and is we who built Empire (past and present), then it follows that not only is this world order good but we also are good for having built such a world. This reasoning is convenient, but deeply flawed. Let us apply this reasoning to an individual person. Can one say one is virtuous by making a comparison to a much more evil person, or even to the worst of men or women? Does doing so render our claim to be virtuous the truth about ourselves, or is it merely a self-serving and probably selfdeceptive moral justification? Yes, by comparison to the worst of men, perhaps I can say that I am virtuous or 'good', and yet this in no way confirms the reality of my own virtue, which must always be a quality in itself. This logic in turn leads to a trap of self-righteousness, which so many imperialists (as well as persons) have fallen into willy-nilly. The trap works like this: to the extent that one believes absolutely in one's own virtue and goodness, i.e. in one's own righteousness, is the extent to which one may also fall into the trap of believing that 'I am good, therefore anything that I do is for the good, therefore I can do no wrong'. As a consequence, anything I may do is (self) justified, regardless of the harm or suffering I may inflict on others. This is so because I do not take account of the real effects of my actions and may even be blind to them. I only take account of my intentions, which are by definition 'good', regardless of the real consequences. At its worst extreme, this attitude allows one to commit almost any crime, no matter how heinous, and still believe one has done no wrong, or even that one has done 'good'. Unfortunately, the present political climate of the global 'war on terror' is redolent with such 'moral' undertones on both sides of the conflict. Indeed some have argued that the antagonists in this conflict constitute mirror images of one another in some respects. For an example, see Tariq Ali's recent book, published by Verso, The Clash of Fundamentalisms.
9. David Held, for example, has called for a new global covenant, which we may link to his ideas on cosmopolitan democracy and global social democracy.
10. Chalmers Johnson advanced the thesis of 'blowback' upon American society and interests prior to the events of 9/11 (in the book by the same title) and has more recently continued this theme of analysis in The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004. The term blowback was based on the CIA's own word for the unanticipated consequences of unacknowledged actions (by the US) in other people's countries; i.e. covert actions and other forms of secret intervention or subversion.
11. For more on this thesis see Barry K. Gills (ed.) Globalization and the Politics of Resistance, London: Palgrave, 2001.
12. See for example: Paul Kingsnorth, One No, Many Yeses: A Journey to the Heart of the Global Resistance Movement, The Free Press, 2003; and David Held and Antony McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization, Polity, 2002. See also the papers by Scott Byrd and Ray Kiely in this volume.
13. Immanuel Wallerstein made this comment, having attended the Mumbai WSF in 2004. The WSF in Porto Alegre in early 2005 was meant to place less emphasis on the plenary system and more on mass participation and focussed strategic discussion, following Mumbai's lead, where mass movements and trade unions played a very central visible role. For an in-depth analysis of the WSF and its potential see Teivo Teivainen, Democracy Unbound: The World Social Forum and the Dilemmas of Global Democracy, Routledge, series on Rethinking Globalizations, Series editor: Barry K. Gills, forthcoming.
14. Lecture by Jan Aart Scholte, 'Towards Global Democracy?' delivered at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, in the 'Globalizations' lecture series, 14 March 2005.
15. Most of this list is taken from Heikki Patomaki and Teivo Teivainen, A Possible World: Democratic Transformation of Global Institutions, London: Zed Books, 2004. See also an earlier version by the same authors, Global Democracy Initiatives: The Art of the Possible, NIGD Working Paper 2/2002, Network Institute for Global Democratization, Helsinki, Finland and Notingham Trent University, UK. See also: 'Reforms of the System of International Institutions to make Another World Possible', London Declaration, 1 April 2004 of the World Campaign for In-Depth Reform of the System of International Institutions, www.reformcampaign.net, supported by a coalition of institutions in Catalonia, Spain. Susan George has a recent work entitled Another World is Possible If. which addresses the strategic issues of the movements.