Dear wsn,
I appreciated the several thoughtful responses to my posting, and hope this
thread is of general interest to the list. The thesis was refined through
debates here, and the latest exchange continues that process.
Permit me to comment on the various responses in separate posts...
---I had said: >> The first program in this array was the division of the world into three >> distinct partitions: the socialist (demarcated by the "Iron Curtain"), the >> core (Western Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan [?]) and >> the periphery (ie, the Third World).
Dennis R Redmond wrote: >I'm not sure, however, that the typology quite holds up for the case of East >Asia and Central Europe;
Certainly the core-periphery analysis of the "Free World" system gets arbitrarily complex (fractal-like) the closer you look. But I do believe the functional distinction I make between the core states (US-Euro powers, Japan) and the rest is a valid one, and that is all I use in my analysis. The finer distinctions are, I believe, not relevant to the thesis, although a qualifying remark is in order.
>You could also argue that whereas multinational corporations and global >financial markets are clearly the hegemonic social forces in the >Anglo-Saxon countries, things are trickier in the EU and East Asia, where >global integration seems to be taking a far more nuanced, complicated >path. Why have an EU at all if corporations already rule the world?
>Well, the answer is, the EU isn't just about corporate power, it's also about >extending democracy and the reach of the welfare state onto a dangerously >(from capital's point of view) or emancipatory (if you're a Leftie) >transnational level.
The staunch promoters of the EU and the European Commission (people like Kohl) are also staunch supporters of the globalist beureaucracies (G7, WTO, IMF et al). They are aware, although it is absent from their Euro rhetoric, that whatever progressive measures might be enacted by the EU will ultimately be superceded by the authority of those bureaucracies, in the same way that IMF guidelines today supercede whatever ambitions debtor nations might have as regards to social welfare. Have you looked at MAI (the Multilateral Agreement on Investment)?
The whole notion of a strong united Europe -- a power on an economic par with the US and Japan -- is in fact antiquated in this era of "offshore" production, budget-constrained First World nations, and globalized corporations. It harks back nostalgically to the pre-1980 nationalist paradigm, but in current reality it is a sham vision, and this cannot be unkown the the likes of Kohl and other G7 VIP's.
The net consequence of Brussels-empowerment is a greasing-of-the-skids for the European slide into globalist domination. France and other sovereign European nations might in the end have turned against globalization -- as its downsides became more obvious -- but the Brussels string-pullers are firmly in the globalist camp.
The EU is a globalist Trojan Horse and the green liberalism rhetoric is an attractive bridle on the horse. But inside the horse is hidden globalization and corporate domination. Once Brussels reels in sovereign control -- and the play of the lines _is_ ever so "nuanced" -- green liberalism will find itself on the defensive. Already the Euro is being used as an excuse to move toward "austerity". This topic will be treated more comprehensively in:
V. D. Devolution, the EU, and 'peacekeeping': a trojan cavalry
>My own suspicion is that, barring major political changes, the US may well >lose its "core" status in the medium-term future, due to the rise of the >euro, more efficient East Asian coordination, and the generalized >neoliberal decadence of what used to be the American Empire, and become >a very large but declining semi-periphery. But maybe that's too >pessimistic; maybe Microsoft and Silicon Valley will somehow pay for our >trade deficits and invest in our schools after all. Ya gotta dream!
Indeed the U.S. will lose its privileged core status; that is already happening (now largest debtor nation), and it will happen to all core states. As I put in a revised version of the posting:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=- The consequence of globalization is that _all_ states (core and periphery) are to be treated by megacorps as colonial plantations. Privileged core states are no longer needed by megacorps as safe-base homes; all states can now be periphery states; megacorps alone can make up the core sub-system. As in the periphery today, the major role of formerly core governments will be to maintain public order and to seek to be "competitive" in attracting corporate favors.
The centralized military force, highly automated and needing only an elite corps to man it, will be wrested from the influence of the vagaries of even U.S. politics, and placed under the control of yet another megacorp-dominated bureaucracy, no doubt to be dubbed something like the "World Peace Organization". -=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-
rkm