Re: role of Third World governments

At 02:24 PM 12/31/00 +0000, Richard K. Moore wrote:

>In the core, we have the structural changes brought by
>neoliberalism - de-funded governments, abandonment of middle
>classes, abandonment of consensus politics, transfer of
>sovereignty to WTO, etc.  What this means structurally is
>that the Western nations have been reduced to the level of
>semi-periphery, and the core has been boiled down to a tiny
>elite and their globalist institutions, backed up by the
>militaries of the US and EU.>

The Western nations now semiperipheral?  I don't follow you.  "Semiperiphery" in the classic Wallersteinian sense refers to a group of middle-income countries that serve as a "global middle class"--i.e., they moderate the demands of the periphery.  It's not obvious to me that Western countries are doing anything of this sort.  

There has been lots of political rhetoric, especially from politicians and labor unions in the part of the world in which you now reside, about the dangers of parts of the UK and Ireland becoming "peripheral" or "Third World" areas.  I think the rhetoric is overblown, though.  





>The shifts in the relationship with the periphery are best
>described by Huntington, in 'Clash of Civilizations', and
>are exemplified by the US installation of the Ayatollah in
>Iran.  

I take it you mean the shah rather than the Ayatollah in Iran?  The U.S. certainly didn't install the Islamic Republic.

Instead of the pretense of 'universal democratization'
>of the postwar years, we now have a doctrine of 'civilizational
>[ethno-cultural] differences' and ongoing 'civilizational'
>conflict.  This shift provides a functional long-range doctrine
>which can be used to justify on-going periphery suppression.
>


Except that neither the United States nor anyone else in the West has shown a great deal of interest in being involved in the politics of the periphery in recent years.  U.S. military involvements during the Clinton years have been selective, confined to crisis spots like the Persian Gulf and the former Yugoslavia, or driven by the legacy of Cold War involvements rather than cultural conflicts, as in the cases of Taiwan and the Korean peninsula.  One possible exception to this generalization is the mission to Somalia, which proved abortive.  The administration seems to have learned to stay out of Africa from the experience.  The unwillingness of the West to become involved in ethnic conflicts and humanitarian crises in Africa did not go unnoticed by, e.g., Boutros Boutros Ghali and others.  President-elect Bush has spoken dismissively of the Clinton administration's foreign policy, deriding the notion of using the military to do "social work".  

Note also that Samuel P. Huntington himself does not consider "the clash of civilizations" a desirable state of affairs.  He considers that such conflicts are more difficult to resolve than conflicts outside the cultural arena, although the ability of the international community to manage such conflicts has improved.  Furthermore, Huntington would be the last to claim that his notion of a "clash of civilizations" implies some kind of crusade on behalf of Western civilization.  He has argued that his analysis implies a world order based upon civilizations, but that countries should involve themselves in disputes that affect their own civilization, and refrain from intervention in conflicts that affect only other civilizations (Huntington 1996a and 1996b, Huntington 1997).

The point:  my suspicion is that that the peripheral involvements of the United States, at least, will be more selective and driven more by vital national interests than cultural concerns in the years immediately before us.

REFERENCES

Huntington, Samuel P.  The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Huntington, Samuel P.  "The erosion of American national interests."  Foreign Affairs 76 (September/October 1997):  28-49.

Huntington, Samuel P.  "The West:  unique, not universal."  Foreign Affairs 75 (November/December 1996):  28-46.
--
Jeffrey L. Beatty
Doctoral Student
Department of Political Science
The Ohio State University
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