Re: new materials on the Chase-Dunn/Barendse et al. and other debate s

I think one could find the same kind of alarmism, and much 
the same evocation of a 'yellow peril' threatening the 
sanctity of middle-class security (with all its moralistic 
connotations) in the mid-late-19c. Similar apocalyptic 
scenarios of global culture/economic clash were all 
the vogue amongst the military then, too. Given the 
sources, I think there is little cause for concern -James 
Goldsmith's political perspicacity is something of a joke, 
and Luttwak simply rewrites whatever he has a grant to do to
fit his own (and his paymasters') ideological 
preoccupations of the moment (see, eg his rather 
creative work on the Roman Empire's defences at the time of 
the dominance of 'domino theory' in Western strategic 
thought).

Both seem concerned, like Sam Huntington, to construct a 
unitary 'West' that is 'threatened'. Even allowing that 
such concerns do impinge upon the world-consciousness of a 
fictive Anglo-European middlebrow professional 
as-historical-subject, people are capable of reasoning 
things through for themselves more ably than Luttwak, 
Goldsmith, or Huntington (or Haider) could possibly 
foresee from the standpoint of their hack psychology and 
reified (or fixated?) conceptualisations in which 'the 
West' is analysed in terms of what, for them, it SHOULD be. 
As an laternative see, for instance, the chapter on 
'Failure' in Richard Sennett's 'The Corrosion of Character'.

Mike Drake

On Mon, 7 Feb 2000 16:30:27 +0100  "Tausch, Arno" 
<Arno.Tausch@bmags.gv.at> wrote:
> Read these interesting research materials (interesting does not 
>necessarily
> mean, I or anyone else would or does endorse them)
> 
> The conservative Anthony Harrigan quite interestingly says:
> 
> Here and there one finds students of the world economy who warn of another
> enormous economic crisis with grim implications for First World societies
> and political institutions. One of these far-sighted economic observers is
> Sir James Goldsmith, the Franco-British financier. Two years ago, he began
> to voice ominous warnings. He said that in the case of Western Europe, 
>with
> some 20 percent unemployed, "the critical mass is here for implosion and
> social upheaval and political instability on a global scale." He predicted
> that the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 will pale into insignificance when
> compared to this upheaval. And the situation in Western Europe has 
>worsened
> since he issued that warning.
> Now the United States hasn't this kind of unemployment problem, except in
> its inner cities. The overall unemployment rate for the nation as a whole
> has risen a bit, but underemployment has risen on a colossal scale. 
>Millions
> of Americans have jobs that don't provide sufficient income to support a
> family - even with husband and wife working. And many of these millions
> don't have the benefits associated with the good jobs that existed in the
> decades after World War II.
> Dr. Edward M. Lutwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies
> in Washington has analyzed this problem. Dr. Lutwak has observed:
>       The problem in question is the unprecedented sense of personal
> economic insecurity that has rather suddenly become the central phenomenon
> of life in America, not only for the notoriously endangered species of
> corporate middle managers, prime targets of today's fashionable downsizing
> and re-engineering, but for virtually all working Americans except tenured
> civil servants - whose security is duly resented.
> The reasons for the economic insecurity felt by millions of Americans are
> numerous and complex. A key element is exploding technology which has made
> many jobs as out-of-date as buggy-making. And this has made much 
>employment
> temporary in nature, thereby endangering working people and their families
> who don't have advanced technical skills or the education to obtain such.
> But there are other powerful forces at work: and these forces have a
> tremendous bearing on Europeans as well as Americans. These forces cause 
>the
> displacement of European and American-made goods, wipe out jobs on both
> sides of the Atlantic, and produce the most terrible anxieties, as well as
> threatening, as Kevin Phillips has written, to cause the near descent of
> Europe and North America into Third World status.
> It is important to reflect on the words of Sir James Goldsmith. In an
> article published in The Washington Times, November 27, 1994, Sir James
> said:
>       During the past few years 4 billion people have suddenly entered the
> world economy. They include the populations of China, India, Vietnam,
> Bangladesh and the countries that were part of the Soviet empire, among
> others. These populations are growing fast. In 35 years, that 4 billion is
> forecast to expand to more than 6.5 billion. The nations where those 4
> billion live have very high levels of unemployment and those people who do
> find jobs offer their labor for a tiny fraction of the pay earned by 
>workers
> in the developed world. That means that new entrants into the world 
>economy
> are in direct competition with the work forces of developed countries.
> This is a situation unprecedented in the history of the older industrial
> countries. China, for example, is directed in large measure at capturing 
>the
> domestic markets of the Western countries and, thereby, acquiring hard
> Western currencies for their own purposes - for a massive military buildup
> in the case of China. Simultaneously, therefore, the Western countries are
> losing their internal markets on which their peoples depend and are
> financing new foreign military challenges. Europeans, chiefly the French,
> are increasingly mindful of this threat. But the United States is fixated 
>on
> Third World countries as trading partners, not as a developing military
> threat. This kind of fixation is nothing new. Fifteen years ago, the great
> business interests of the United States were desperate and determined to
> sell the most advanced technological equipment to the Soviet Union -
> products such as super-computers and ball bearings for missile
> installations. 
> 
> Read, whoever can read, these lines and in between them:
> 
> http://hdc-www.harvard.edu/cfia/olin/pubs/no7.htm
> 
> http://www.csis.org/
> 
> http://www.csis.org/ee/
> 
> http://www.csis.org/gt2005/country.html
> 
> http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/ssipubs/catalogs/westeur.htm
> 
> http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/ssipubs/pubs98/natoafter/natoafter.htm
> 
> 
>http://www.multimedia.calpoly.edu/libarts/mriedlsp/Publications/GSA99/GSA99.
> html
> 
> http://www.mankind.org/harrigan.203.html
> 
> http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000203/bin.html
> 
> http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000204/it.html
> 
> http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000204/cx.html
> 
> http://www.adl.org/
> 
> Kind regards
> 
> 
> Arno Tausch
>