ological, a our Chapter 8 Global crises and the future of globalization le No doubt, the decade following 9/11 gave an unexpected jolt to the over the meaning and the direction of globalization. As struggle US President George W. Bush made clear time and again, his global war on terror' was bound to be a lengthy conflict of global proportions. Against all expectations, the first term of his Nam successor Barack Obama saw as much continuity as change in this regard. Although President Obama removed the last remaining troops from Iraq in December 2011, he failed to close down the infamous military prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base that sument rporate me still houses nearly 200 alleged 'unlawful combatants' in violation Qaeda meie senting ke of international law. He also continued the 'war of the willing'in ic system Afghanistan, but made clear that his administration was no longer engaged in a global war against a tactic-terrorism-but against militari Al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates. But what seemed to worry the charismatic US President more than terrorism were the lingering effects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) as the US, Europe, and many countries around the world remained mired in enormous budgetary problems, high unemployment, and anaemic eir confiden rican Empi non contain i justicegli диа economic growth As we noted in previous chapters, however, the GFC is not the only crisis of global proportions that is stalking our interdependent world of the 21st century. Across political, economic, and cultural dimensions, the expansion and intensification of social relations 131 ER 8 E across world-space and world-time has both generated and responded to new global crises beyond the reach of the nation state and its affiliated political institutions. In addition to worldwide challenges include climate change and environmental financial volatility and transnational terrorism, these new degradation; increasing food scarcity: pandemics such as disparities in wealth and wellbeing; increasing migratory AIDS, SARS, and HiN1; threats to cyber-security; widening protests (see Illustration 14) cresting in the Arab world and pressures, and manifold cultural and religious conflicts. Moreover, the remarkable new wave of popular demonstrations and mass elsewhere might succeed in toppling entrenched undemocratic or condemn vast regions to long-term social and political regimes, but it also has the potential to lead to savage civil wars nds of protestors at Cairo's Tahrir Square, 20 April 2012 Globalization This raises the final question we will consider in our examination of globalization: Will these global crises eventually contribute to more extensive forms of international cooperation and interdependence, or might they stop the powerful momentum of globalization? down, such a powerful set of social processes as globalization. On first thought, it seems highly implausible that even a protracted GFC or European debt crisis could stop, or even slow In fact, the recent emergence of the Group of Twenty (G20) (see Illustration 15) as a rather effective deliberative body with the a global scale suggests that perhaps the solution to our global problems is not less but ability to design and coordinate action on a nore (and better forms of) globalization. the other hand, a close look at modern history reveals that ce and lasting social crises often lead to the rise of extremist ical groups. The large-scale violence they unleashed d capable of stopping and even reversing previous ization trends. 132 133 manifestations of social interdependence that emerge as a result of globalization. However, these transformative social processes must have a moral compass and an ethical polestar guiding our collective efforts: the building of a truly democratic and egalitarian global order that protects universal human rights without destroying the cultural diversity that is the lifeblood of human evolution. Hence, the United States--together with China, India, Russia, Brazil, and other rising powers-has a special responsibility to search for new and alternative ways of dealing with problems such as the precarious state of the world economy and the natural environment of our beleaguered planet. Only a decade ago, in the wake of the first powerful justice-globalist demonstrations, representatives of the wealthy countries assured audiences worldwide that they would be willing to reform the global economic architecture in the direction of greater transparency and accountability. Yet, even in the wake of the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, little progress has been made to honour these commitments and consider justice-globalist alternatives to market-globalist business-as-usual. Globalization This questionable strategy of reacting to global crises by fortifying the market-globalist paradigm with a new rhetoric of mild reformism might work for a relatively short period. But in the long run, the growth of global inequality and the persistence of social instability harbours the potential to unleash reactionary social forces—both communist and fascist—that dwarf even those responsible for the suffering of millions during the 1930s and 1940s. In order to prevent the escalation of violent confrontations between market globalism and its ideological opponents on the Left and Right, world leaders must design and implement a comprehensive Global New Deal that builds and extends genuine networks of solidarity around the world. Without question, the years and decades ahead will bring new crises and further challenges. Humanity has reached yet another critical juncture-the most important in the relatively short existence of our species. Unless we are willing to let global problems fester to the point where violence and intolerance appear to be the only realistic ways of confronting our unevenly integrating world, we must link the future course of globalization to a profoundly reformist agenda. As I have emphasized in the Preface of this book, there is nothing wrong with greater 136 137 In an As we noted in Chapter 2, the period from 1860 to 1914 constituted an earlier phase of globalization, characterized by the expansion of transportation and communication networks, the rapid growth of international trade, and a huge flow of capital. Great Britain, then the most dominant of the world's 'Great Powers, sought to spread its political system and cultural values across the globe much in the same way the United States does today. But this earlier period of globalization was openly imperialistic in character , involving the transfer of resources from the colonized global South in exchange for European manufactures. Liberalism, Great Britain's chief ideology, translated a national, not a global, imaginary into concrete political programmes. In the end, these sustained efforts to engineer an‘inter-national market under the auspices of the British Empire resulted in a severe backlash that culminated in the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. enduring study on this subject, the late political economist Karl Polanyi locates the origins of the social crises that gripped the world during the first half of the 20th century in ill-conceived efforts to liberalize and globalize markets. Commercial interests came to dominate society by means of a ruthless market logic that effectively disconnected people's economic activities from their social relations. The competitive rules of the free market destroyed complex social relations of mutual obligation and undermined deep-seated norms and values such as civic engagement, reciprocity, and redistribution. As large segments of the population found themselves without an adequate system of social security and communal support, they resorted to radical measures to protect themselves against market globalization. Polanyi notes these European movements against unfettered capitalism eventually gave birth to political parties that forced the passage of protective social legislation on the national level. After a prolonged period of severe economic dislocation following the end of the Great War, such national-protectionist impulses experienced their most extreme manifestations in Italian fascism and German Nazism. In the end, the liberal dream of subordinating all nation-states to the requirements of the free market had generated an equally extreme counter-movement that turned markets into mere appendices of the totalitarian state. Global crises and the future of YIDDU The applicability of Polanyi's analysis to the current situation seems obvious. Like its 19th-century predecessor, today's version of market globalism also represents a gigantic experiment in unleashing economic deregulation and a culture of consumerism on the entire world. Like 19th-century Britain, the United States is the dominant cheerleader of neoliberalism and thus draws both admiration and contempt from less developed regions in the world. And those who find themselves to be oppressed and exploited by a global logic of economic integration led by an American Empire' tend to blame the hegemon for both the emergence and persistence of global crises. 5. US President Barack Obama with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard at the G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, 19 June 2012 134 135
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