reorient global apartheid

Wed, 18 Mar 1998 10:44:27 -0500 (EST)
Gernot Kohler (gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca)

"ReOrient" (AG Frank, reading the synopsis circulated on internet) and
"global apartheid" (term used by a small group of global apartheid
watchers) fit together nicely. "ReOrient" can be interpreted as a
critique of the ideology of global apartheid (critique of the superiority
complex of the West). One element seems to be missing in "ReOrient",
however, namely: Have Europen and Western nations NOT been *exceptionally
violent* in history? (I am thinking of European conquests of other
continents, Germany under Hitler, USSR under Stalin, nuclear overkill in
the hands of USA and Russia.) I guess I am implying that the world
economic system is, at the same time, a world military-political system
where both dimensions are inseparable and influence each other. If there
is no Western exceptionalism in economics, as Professor Frank argues, one
still wants an explanation of why the West has been at the global top for
the last little while. Exceptional brutality by the West is a possible
explanation. How does truly globo-level historiography assess the
relative militancy/brutality by the West?

--gk