Or the second.... (?)
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This did not seem to work the first time I sent it.
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Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 12:33:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Adam K. Webb" <akwebb@yuma.princeton.edu>
To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject: Reply to Arno Tausch on core war
I wholly agree that core war among USA+EU+Japan is unlikely; there
is an illustrative remark by a character in a Milan Kundera novel, that
"war among European peoples [presumably this extends to a broader category
now] is now impossible--not just politically impossible,
_anthropologically_ impossible." Apart from the convergence and
denationalisation of economic interests, it seems that such populations no
longer have the psychology for a major war involving mass sacrifice.
China seems another matter, however, and by any reasonable
assessment the only likely _nation-based_ challenger to the United States.
I was in China for two months recently, and the simmering nationalism and
desire to "prove" something vis-a-vis the West are quite evident
throughout much of the population. This is no longer ideological, rather
a manifestation of a nationalist desire to "stand up" and recover China's
place in the world, parallel to the nationalist German inferiority complex
preceding both of the last core wars. It is no coincidence that a recent
poll found the most admired historical leader among Chinese male high
school students to be none other than Adolf Hitler.
Anyway, all of this leads to a question. I suspect that there are
built-in structural shortcomings that soon will slow China's development
and turn it into a more orthodox Southern state--both economically and
especially in terms of mass political psychology--such that Chinese ethnic
chauvinism would be nothing more than an irritating obstacle in the course
of pan-Southern antisystemic mobilisation. Yet there is another
possibility: that China can join the core in the next three to four
decades and become the successor to the United States as global hegemon,
clearly the objective of the current leadership and its "red capitalist"
cronies. China's population is sufficiently large--at core GDP per capita
levels, it would mean an economy and military four times the size of the
USA--to permit it to fulfil growing core-hegemon responsibilities, while
still declining as a proportion of global population--down from 20% to 7%
in the next century, by some estimates--such that its core status would be
economically supportable within a world-systems context. Furthermore,
some cultural factors may particularly suit China to be the symbol of a
redefined late-capitalist core: eg. a kinship-limited notion of social
obligation, leading to ever more appalling amoral familism under modern
capitalist conditions; a greater acceptance of "efficient" soft
authoritarianism; and an intelligentsia not exactly known for critical
opposition to the prevailing ideology. I doubt that this scenario in fact
will materialise, but it might behoove us to prepare both analytically and
practically for this contingency, since it would drastically complicate
the project of antisystemic resistance.
Regards,
--AKW
===============================================================================
Adam K. Webb
Department of Politics
Princeton University
Princeton NJ 08544 USA
609-258-9028
http://www.princeton.edu/~akwebb