Re: Boles => Grimes on China

Could you elaborate on how US policy (of destabilizing other regions?)
brought capital back to the US (from Asia?) in the 80s and 90s?
Roz
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Grimes" <p34d3611@jhu.edu>
To: "WSN" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2001 1:46 AM
Subject: Boles => Grimes on China


>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 15:51:20 -0500
> From: "Boles (office)" <facbolese@usao.edu>
> Subject: RE: Fact Sheet on US-China "Trade Relationship"
>
>
> Interesting.  But for one, I wouldn't underestimate Japan's military
> industrial complex.  It is, after all, one of the largest in the world,
> within the top five, depending on which estimate one reads.  It would
> follow, if one believes that the cycle is repeating as it has in the past,
> that Japan right now, in the midst of its economic malaise and with its
> ultra-conservative and unapologetic leaders still in place, ought to
pursue
> military keynesianism and strike against China again.  Most Japanese may
not
> stomach militarism, yet alone war, despite the lingering recession.
> However, I think there are other more compelling reasons why this not
> happening.
>
> I think the world situation is entirely different from prior cycles.  The
> system seems to have been in transition since 1945, I think, in part
because
> the US disolved a structure/process of the system that was integral to its
> geographic expansion and the causes of prior world wars and hegemonies --
> territorialism.  Territorialism was eliminated by, in Wallerstein words,
the
> political incorporatioin of the periphery (i.e. decolonial sovereignty).
> That, along with the creation of UN insitutions of core governance, made
all
> areas safe for all core capital, as Arrighi points out.   Capital doesn't
> need "its" core state's protection when it has the protection of all
states
> (most of the time anyhow) and so has become more international and
> interlocked than ever.  Prior to 1945, the firms of Japan and Germany had
to
> play the territorial game to gain access to resources for
industrialization,
> and that meant war.  Depression didn't help of course, just as it isn't
> helping Japan today.   But after 1945, all states got access to all areas,
> with of course, the exception of the Soviet Bloc, which gave some states,
> the Soviet Union above all, access to the resources of certain areas for
> industrialization.  And that of course helped legitimize the policies of
US
> hegemony.
>
> But since the US created a free-enterprise system, which has become truly
> global since 1989, there is no reason for states to engage in world war
over
> resources or markets, for they already have access and are gaining more
> access all the time.  We may be more likely to see wars between the core
and
> semi-peripheral states that are secular but have gone "rogue" (e.g. Iraqi,
> Panama), or which have given up on development and see the US as evil
> incarnate (Iran).
> China is a player, not a fighter.  Of course, Chinese leaders, it seems to
> me, want their due say in the area.  They expect that their political
power
> and prestige should grow in tandum with their economic power, both
> regionally and within the international institutions of power, like the
UN,
> WTO, etc.
>
> It is the US which is increasingly not "playing the rules by the game" and
> which may provoke instability in East Asia, as the US has elsewhere, in
> order to drive capital to the safe shores of the US, as has happened
during
> the 1980s and 1990s resulting in the greatest capital inflow and stock
> market boom ever.  That seems a possibility that could be affected by the
> domestic politics of US decline.  For as many have pointed out, in this
era
> of hegemonic decline, there is no rising continental nation-state with
> military power comparable to the declining hegemon, whose military power
has
> in fact increased.  What's to stop the US from using it?  International
> capital, among others, for the time being.  But will that always be the
> case?
>